The three visitors went to their rooms to relax before dinner, since they were from different time zones and had only arrived that morning. Nadia went for a last swim with her girls, and had fun playing with them in the pool. They were just getting out of the pool when Nadia’s cellphone rang. It was Nicolas, asking to talk to Sylvie and Laure. He tried to talk to Nadia for a minute, but she handed the phone to Sylvie quickly, and walked away while they talked to their father. She was thinking of everything her sisters had said on their walk that afternoon.
They had dinner at the château that night, cooked by Athena, who made some delicious dishes all with vegetables. She even made a pizza for the girls with a crust made of cauliflower. Nadia roasted two chickens to add to the meal. She set a pretty table, with small vases of flowers that Sylvie and Laure had gathered for her. Before dinner, they watched the sunset from the terrace and shared a bottle of excellent Chateau Margaux from Nicolas’s wine cellar.
“We’ll go to the beach tomorrow,” Nadia promised, looking around at her sisters. It felt so good to be together, and however different their lives, their lifestyles, and their opinions, there was a bond that kept them close. They were bound by blood and history, their love for each other and their parents. She realized now how much all of that mattered. Their parents’ strong, loving marriage between two kind, intelligent, honorable people had served as a role model for them. Each of them had close, loving marriages and relationships, even Athena without the benefit of paperwork, which seemed insignificant to her. Nicolas’s parents had had a long marriage, but he had admitted to Nadia that early disappointments in their union and differences between them had led his father to have several mistresses and many affairs. His mother had turned a blind eye to it, as French women of their generation did, but she had never forgiven him for it. A chilly, polite, well-bred upper-class bitterness had set in. Nicolas said that he could always feel it when he was with them, and his mother hadn’t been a happy woman. Now he had created the same scenario, and provided an insurmountable obstacle for them that Nadia didn’t feel able to overcome.
“Papa said he misses us,” Laure had said when she handed her mother the phone after talking to her father.
“That’s nice,” Nadia said, forcing herself not to think about him, or who he was with. She didn’t want to spoil her four days with her sisters by thinking too much about him.
Their first dinner together turned out to be a festive affair, with Venetia reminding them of some of their most outrageous adventures as young girls. Athena sneaking out of the house to go to parties their parents wouldn’t give her permission to attend, so she took matters into her own hands, Venetia getting drunk at senior prom, and the others helping to get her into the house, and running smack into their father in the kitchen at three a.m. He had carried her upstairs and put her to bed. Olivia had accidentally started a fire in her bedroom once, while hiding an ashtray with a cigarette in it under her sheets, and then forgetting it. Nadia dyed her hair blue. They talked about their good and bad boyfriends, their best friends at school, the parties they went to, and the ones they gave when their parents went away for a weekend and left them in the care of their trusted housekeeper, who let them get away with murder and was deaf anyway. They hadn’t done anything truly terrible, but had gotten up to plenty of mischief, and were partners in crime.
Things had begun to change when Nadia decided to stay in Paris after junior year. Olivia went to law school then, Venetia had gone to Parsons to study design, got married, and pregnant almost immediately, and Athena moved to L.A. after dropping out of Connecticut College. It had been the slow unraveling of their tight-knit group. They were known everywhere in school and among their friends as the McCarthy Girls, a united front, the four musketeers. Wherever you found one, you rapidly noticed the others. There had been strength in numbers, and joy and fun, and unforgettable adventures. And even now, whenever they were together, there was that same feeling of allegiance and unity, of being allies and knowing that the others would always be there for them. Their mother had called them the four-headed monster whenever they banded together against her. Later, she admitted that they were a force to be reckoned with. There had always been honor codes between them. They never dated the same boys or stole men from each other. They never betrayed each other’s secrets. They never squealed to their parents, or got each other in trouble in school or at home. There had been plenty of papers for school that one of the others had written for them. Olivia had gotten the best English and history grades in high school, Athena had math and science nailed. Venetia was the most creative, and Nadia and Olivia got the best overall grades. If there was a stray dog in the neighborhood, it came home with Athena. She was still doing it. She told Sylvie and Laure all about her latest rescue dogs over dinner, and showed them pictures of the two tiny Chihuahuas, Chiquita and Juanita, riding on the back of Stanley, the mountain dog. The Chihuahuas were wearing little sparkling tutus and looked like dancers on horseback in the circus, which the girls loved.
The girls were sorry that their aunt Venetia hadn’t brought her children with her. They always had a wild time with them, playing tag and hide-and-seek and running around outside. Olivia’s son acted like the elder statesman in the group, and was very circumspect. He was the same age as Venetia’s oldest son, Jack, who climbed trees and gave the younger ones piggyback rides, while Will, Olivia’s boy, would sit quietly and read a book. Venetia’s second son, Seth, and Will played chess sometimes, but her children preferred more athletic pursuits and contact sports, which Will didn’t indulge in. Just as the sisters were different from each other, their children reflected it, and the personalities of the next generation were just as varied. India, Venetia’s youngest, had the face of an angel, and took charge and ran them ragged wherever she was. She had her mother’s spirit, and her father’s irresistible charm. They all agreed that she would be a heartbreaker one day. Sophie and Laure were sweet, well-behaved little girls. And now there would be another child outside the circle, Nadia thought, Nicolas’s child with Pascale. She assumed that Sylvie and Laure would be spending time with him or her in the future, and they would be half sisters to a child none of their cousins would be related to or resemble. Until now, there was a family look among all of them. To some degree, they all looked like siblings, and there was a link between each of them, however slight.
Nadia quietly went upstairs to put the girls to bed while the others were drinking coffee. When she returned, they poured themselves more wine. They exchanged more memories, and then Athena asked Olivia how she liked being on the bench.
“I love it!” she said as her face lit up. “I’ve been jealous of Harley for years. I like it way better than just practicing law. It’s so three-dimensional, and I feel like I’m making a difference. It’s been really exciting.” They knew that Venetia was passionate about her job in fashion, and Athena had fun with her TV show and loved cooking, and Nadia had always loved her interior design work. She had important clients all over Europe, and had done two big apartments in New York and a spectacular vacation home in the Dominican Republic for one of her French clients recently, before the storm hit.