“Actually, I do. The boys will argue about which red, white, and blue flag shirt to wear, India always hates the dress I pick out for her, Ben eats ribs and drinks beer all night and passes out the minute we come home. I gain five pounds eating apple pie with ice cream. I think I’d rather come to France and skip it this year. Why? What do you have in mind?”
“Mom suggested a sisters’ weekend, and she might come for the last two days, if she can get away. You can stay as long as you want,” Nadia said generously.
“I’ve got to finish the spring line, but we’re getting there. A long weekend in Paris wouldn’t kill me,” Venetia said, considering it.
“I was thinking about doing it at the château, so we can really relax.”
“Great idea,” Venetia said enthusiastically. She was always up for an adventure, especially with her sisters. She wanted to be there for Nadia in the crisis. “Count me in. I’ll tell Ben he’ll have to manage without me this year.”
“Will he be pissed?”
“No, he’s a good sport about those things, and he loves you. I’ll tell him you were crying when you called me and begged.”
“Don’t make me sound pathetic!” Nadia pleaded.
“He has a soft spot for you.” Venetia grinned. “What about the others? Can they do it?”
“I called you first. I’m not sure we can keep Olivia off their sailboat for four whole days, but I’ll try. And I’m not sure when Athena’s show goes off air for the summer.”
“Call them, and tell them they have to come.”
“I will,” Nadia promised, excited that Venetia was coming. The two of them had always been close. Venetia got along with all of them, and they all got along with each other. Although Venetia didn’t say it, this was a sister crisis now, and they all wanted to be there for Nadia. It also sounded like a ton of fun to Venetia. She told Ben about it that night and he agreed to be full-on dad for the whole Fourth of July weekend so she could go to France to see Nadia and all her sisters.
“I knew there was a reason why I love you,” she said, as he slipped a hand under her sweater, and she locked the door to their bedroom before the kids could interrupt them. She was going to miss her handsome husband for four days, but it would be that much sweeter when she got home. They were just as attracted to each other now as they had been when they got married sixteen years before.
* * *
—
When Nadia called to invite Olivia to Normandy for the Fourth of July weekend, she caught her during a brief break in court proceedings. She was in her chambers reading a document the defense counsel had just submitted. She was concentrating on it when she heard her cellphone vibrate on her desk, glanced at it, and saw that it was Nadia. She answered in a hurry. She didn’t want to let Nadia’s call go to voicemail in case something new had happened.
“What’s the bastard done now?” she said curtly for openers.
“Nothing. Did I get you at a bad time?” Nadia said, daunted by her sister’s tone.
“I’m in trial, but it’s okay, I’ve got a few minutes. I’m in chambers by myself. We just called a recess so I could read something.” Decorating and interior design seemed so insignificant to Nadia compared to what Olivia did. She was always slightly intimidated by her next oldest sister, who had the most important career of all of them, or at least the most serious.
“You must have everyone in the courtroom trembling,” Nadia said, and Olivia laughed. “You just scared the hell out of me.”
“I hope so. That’s what the state pays me for,” and the chance to use her Yale Law School education. Olivia loved being a judge, much more than she had being a lawyer. She had been a family law attorney, worked for the ACLU for two years in her liberal youth, and had done a lot of pro bono work for the courts. And she had progressively become more conservative over time. It had put her on the fast track and she’d become a superior court judge eight months before. She finally felt that she was in the right place doing what she was supposed to, taking tough positions with criminals.
“Can I help you with something?” Olivia asked. She still had to read the document in front of her, but she was relieved to know that nothing more had happened in the current soap opera that was her sister’s life. Olivia had told her mother how she felt about it. She wanted Nadia to divorce Nicolas immediately, to teach him a lesson. But if she did, it was going to be a very long-term lesson for them and their children, like forever. Olivia hoped her sister was strong enough to see it through, and not go easy on him.
Olivia had become a firm believer in accountability and harsh sentences. She had been instructing juries accordingly since she’d been on the bench. She felt that society and the individual could only benefit from tougher consequences for their actions, and that was what the victims were due. She felt that way about her younger sister too, and she wanted Nicolas to really hurt for what he was doing to her. She had expressed it clearly to Nadia, their mother, and her other two sisters. Olivia was a force to be reckoned with. She was no pushover. She was very much afraid that Nadia was too forgiving by nature, and still too much in love with Nicolas to see clearly and make him pay a hefty price for his crimes.
“I’ll try to make it quick,” Nadia said, sounding flustered. She didn’t want to deal with another tirade from her sister about how fast she should get divorced. She hadn’t come to that place yet, and was still living their situation day-to-day.
“I know you’re busy. I’m trying to get all of us together here for the Fourth of July weekend, just the girls, if you can get away. I don’t know if you can leave Harley and Will for the holiday weekend, but I wanted to ask. Venetia said she’ll make it for the whole four days. Mom is going to try to come over the weekend, but you know how that is. If there’s a crisis with a deadline, she won’t make it. I haven’t called Athena yet.” But their oldest sister was more easygoing than the others. If she didn’t have to do her show, she was the most likely to come, and Olivia the least. She planned everything, stuck to her schedule as though it was set in stone, and never left her husband and son for a weekend, or a trip. There was a silence at the other end that lasted so long Nadia thought they had been disconnected. “Hello?…Hello?…Ollie?” She still called her that, even after all the years since they’d grown up.
“I’m here. I’m thinking. We’re going to Maine, and Will is bringing a friend. I’m not sure Harley wants to deal with two fourteen-year-old boys all weekend,” but her son was very well behaved, and as serious as his parents. There was no teenage rebellion at their house. It wouldn’t have been tolerated by either parent. Nadia liked her brother-in-law, but he was extremely straightlaced and sober at sixty, but so was her sister, who was not quite forty yet. Olivia seemed much older than her years in her behavior, not her appearance. She was a beautiful slim blonde, and looked a lot like their mother, in a smaller version. She and Nadia looked as different as night and day, the one dark, the other fair, and they were so close in age and size that people had always mistaken them for fraternal twins.