Turning Point(41)
“No, it doesn’t,” she said. “Those things are an accident of birth. It doesn’t say your family made their money by being nuclear arms dealers, or selling immigrant women into sexual slavery. Your family is part of the establishment, and you’re a conscientious doctor who lives below the radar. After the initial shock has worn off, it’s not much of a story one way or the other.”
“I don’t want women pounding on my door because of it, or maniacs threatening to kidnap my children.” He was grateful they didn’t live in San Francisco if that was going to become an issue, and Athena’s father had had security for her for years, since he had a vast fortune too. It was the only common point they’d shared, rich parents, so he hadn’t needed to worry about her motives, they had had enough other problems without that. It wasn’t something he wanted to worry about. It was just easier if no one knew what his family had and he would have one day. He had already inherited quite a bit at thirty and thirty-five, and stood to get another windfall in a few months at forty, but that was no one’s business but his own. The way he lived and dressed, nothing showed. No one would have guessed how rich he was. He was modest and humble.
“I can understand your concerns,” Wendy said kindly, sympathetic to him. “I grew up in New Hampshire, and my father was kind of a small-time operator in a small town. He and my uncle made some shady deals. Nothing too large scale, but enough to get them into trouble, and my father went to jail for tax evasion for three years. It was the most exciting thing that had happened in our town since Paul Revere rode through it and Thomas Jefferson once spent a night there. It was all over the local newspapers, and I thought I’d die every time someone mentioned it, which they did quite a lot for a while. It gets old, people forget. My father died two years ago, and I was worried about their dragging up old history in his obituary. He did a lot of good things for our town in his final years, and they gave him a hero’s farewell, with not a word in his obit that he had ever gone to prison. And no, people won’t forget what you come from, it’s part of who you are, but if they know you, they won’t care. Trust me, it’s true.” He was touched by what she said, and thanked her, and he was calmer when they left for their meetings that afternoon, but it was still major news, and the people he was working with liked him even better because he never was pompous, showed off, or acted as though he was enormously wealthy. They respected him even more than before.
Only Paul, the young firebrand in the group, dared to tease him about it, as they headed across town in the van to visit some of the injured victims of the lycée shooting. “Now that the secret is out, Bill, I was hoping you’d buy a Ferrari, so I could ride around in it with you and pick up women.” His brazen irreverence made Bill laugh since he knew it was well intended and Paul was joking. But the others held their breath for a minute, waiting to see how Bill would take it. Marie-Laure had shared how upset he was, and they had seen it for the past few hours since he’d read the piece.
“I’ll buy you one before I leave,” Bill quipped back. “I’m planning to buy a Deux Chevaux for myself.” It was the classic small model antiquated Citro?n, the smallest they made, the kind poor students drove.
Paul rolled his eyes with a look of disgust. “Some people just don’t know how to spend their money. You’ll never get a decent woman with that pile of junk.”
“That’s exactly the kind of woman I want,” Bill said, as the others laughed, and everyone relaxed. Paul had broken the ice, and after that, they all treated Bill as they had before, and not like the heir to Browning Oil. He hoped things would go as smoothly in San Francisco, if word got out there. And their reaction increased his respect and affection for his new friends.
* * *
—
On Friday, Bill left from the office to take the Eurostar to London to see his girls. They’d all had a hard week in Paris, and were hoping to get some downtime on the weekend. Marie-Laure and Wendy were planning to visit some of the injured children, and were going to have dinner afterward. Marie-Laure’s mother was helping with her children for the weekend, which gave her some free time.
Valérie was meeting with various groups in the counseling program, and she wanted to visit Solange to see how she was. She hadn’t been to school since the shooting, and her grandmother had told Valérie that she was very depressed about her father’s death. Tom was trying to get Valérie to take an evening off and have a quiet dinner with him. He was worried about how hard she was working. She was running all the counseling programs, visiting victims, meeting with bereaved parents, and had been on TV twice that week in draining interviews about the shooting and the loss of so many children, a first in France. She had a lot of weight on her shoulders, and Tom wanted to help her as best he could. He put aside his own plans to be available to her, and she was grateful to him for it. A new man had emerged from the joker he’d been when he arrived.
It meant Paul was on his own to cruise the bars, but after what they’d been through that week, he wasn’t in the mood anyway. No one was. There was a pall over the whole city, and all of France. Gabriel was planning to stay at the apartment with Stephanie. They were inseparable now. In less than two dizzying weeks, Gabriel had become her life.