“Did this just happen, or is it something you planned?” Heloise asked her.
“We had them by IVF, in vitro fertilization. We worked hard at this. It didn’t just happen. It was our dream.” Heloise looked at her father as Natalie said it. She couldn’t imagine this being his dream too. It was obviously her idea. Her father had never said he wanted more children, quite the reverse. He always said that he was happy with the one he had and that was enough for him. And now they were having three of their own. It reminded her of her mother having two babies with Greg, after she abandoned her. It made Heloise feel a little sick. She stood up then and looked at them both.
“I think I need to think about this. Give me a little while to absorb it. I can’t deal with it right now.” It was better than her reaction the year before, when they told her they were in love. It was beginning to feel like every Christmas they hit her with another atom bomb. And this one was really big. She left their apartment quietly and went downstairs to her own. And then she called Brad. He could hear instantly that she was upset.
“What’s up?”
“Umm … it’s complicated to explain. I’m feeling kind of weird.”
He sounded instantly worried. “Are you sick?”
“No. I just need to talk to you. Can you come down as soon as you finish studying?”
“Sure. I should be done in half an hour. I can come now if you want, and finish later. Is something really wrong?”
“Yes … no … I don’t know … I’m just upset. I’m probably being stupid.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No, of course not.” And then she started crying. She was very upset, and she needed a reality check from him. Maybe she was crazy. But she wasn’t happy about their babies. And her mother’s two children had never made her happy either. She didn’t even like them. And why would she like these any better?
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said seriously. He wasn’t going to be able to study now anyway, while he was worrying about her.
He was at the door to her apartment in twenty minutes, and she was sitting on the couch crying. She folded silently into his arms the moment he walked in, and it took her another five minutes to regain her composure. He was staring at her intently then.
“Tell me what happened.”
She blew her nose in a tissue she’d been holding and looked at him. “This probably sounds stupid to you. But Natalie is pregnant. She’s having triplets. They knocked themselves out to have them by IVF.” She started crying again then as he listened. “So now they have each other. They’re madly in love and they have three babies. They’re suddenly the perfect family overnight. And I have a mother who hates me and never remembers I’m alive, and she had two new kids too, after she dumped me. So where am I now in all this? Who am I to all of them? Where do I fit in? I feel like I’ve been fired. I’m the old model. Now they have three new ones.” He didn’t say a word to her at first, he just held her as tightly as he could and listened to her as he stroked her hair. He was just glad that she could articulate what she was feeling. And he could see how painful it was for her and why it would be. Her mother had abandoned her, and now her father was in love and having three more children. It would have hurt anyone’s feelings.
“First of all—” he pulled away to look at her as tears slid down her cheeks and she hiccupped— “I don’t think you’re stupid. I would feel exactly the same way. It’s gotta be a strange feeling. But I don’t think you’ve been replaced. They can’t replace you. You’re you. And your father loves you. And I know Natalie really likes you. She’s never had kids, and she’s probably desperate for them before it’s too late, so they did the science project thing and had three test-tube babies, which probably feels a little crazy to all of you. But I don’t think in a million years your father thinks they’re going to replace you.”
“What if he likes them better than he does me? Old guys like having babies. It makes them feel young. Half our sixty-five-year-old hotel guests have twenty-year-old wives and two-year-old children.” It was only a slight exaggeration and a phenomenon of modern times. Just this year one of their fifty-year-old female clients had had a baby, and an eighty-six-year-old retired diplomat from Europe had married a twenty-two-year-old and had twins.
“He’s still not going to forget you. You have twenty-one years of history, just the two of you. No one can ever take that away,” Brad said, and put his arms around her again and held her. “To tell you the truth, I feel sorry for them. That’s a hell of a lot to take on at their age. It would freak me out too.”
“Yeah, and I’m not going to babysit for three screaming babies. I’ve got enough to do in this hotel without that.” Brad laughed at the image.
“I’ll help you. Or better yet, we could really freak them out and have one of our own, and we wouldn’t need a test tube to do it.” She smiled at him. She almost liked the idea, but not to annoy her father. But she also didn’t want a baby. She was just head over heels in love with him and not with the idea of babies yet. She sighed as she looked at him and snuggled into his arms.
“Thank you for understanding. I’m sorry I got so crazy. I just feel like I have no place in their family, not if they have three new kids.” It made her sad to say it to him. But she’d already had that experience with her mother and Greg.
“Yes, you do have a place, and one day you’ll have a family of your own. It’s just weird with all these old people now who decide they want kids when they’re in their forties and fifties.” She nodded.
“Thanks for coming over and talking to me.” They went for a walk, and he said to her that if his parents divorced and remarried, he’d be pissed if they had more kids too. He remembered how furious he had been when his brother was born when he was eight, and his twin sisters when he was four, and he’d like it even less now. Afterward she called Natalie and apologized for getting upset. There was no war this time. There was no point. It wouldn’t change anything. And Brad had helped a lot.
Natalie was relieved to hear from her and thanked her for her call. Heloise told her Brad was there, and she invited them to come up, but Heloise said they were both tired. She needed some space. Her father came down to see her later on; he was worried about her. He had seen the shock and hurt on her face when she heard the news, and it made his heart ache for her. He chatted with Brad and her for a little while, and then he hugged his daughter and went back upstairs. Brad had brought his books with him and did some studying, and he spent the night, which was comforting for her. He was staying with her more and more often, and they were comfortable with each other. Everything worked better and made more sense when they were together.
It was a strange Christmas for Heloise after Natalie’s announcement. Everything felt surreal. She watched the big Christmas tree go up in the lobby and supervised the installation of it, and everyone commented on how exciting it was that her father and Natalie were having triplets. Jennifer was already planning a shower. It made Heloise feel left out again, but she forced herself to ignore it and not react. Her father had a new wife and family, and all she could hope was that he still loved her. Time would tell.
And she had Brad now. They went out whenever they had time, or he came over. But privately she was down about the triplets. It was hard to know where she fit in now. She was part of history for her father. The triplets were his future. And if she wanted to be part of a family, she knew she’d have to make her own one day, and she wasn’t ready to yet.
Brad went home to his family in Philadelphia for Christmas, and Natalie convinced Hugues to go to Philadelphia with her for two days, while she could still travel. But Heloise didn’t want to go. She told her father she’d keep an eye on the hotel, and he felt badly about it, but Natalie was insistent that she wanted to go home, and he felt torn. Heloise was staying in New York. And Natalie was so emotional now that she was pregnant and she cried about everything constantly. In the end he agreed to go, and Heloise signed up for all the Christmas shifts. Her father called her as soon as they got there, and first thing on Christmas morning. She was already at the front desk by then. And for the first time, but not surprisingly, her mother didn’t call her at all.
Chapter 22
A GROUP OF Dutch businessmen checked into the hotel in January and took four of the big suites, on the ninth and tenth floors. They apparently represented a European consortium, and Heloise saw her father with them several times. It wasn’t unusual for him to spend time with important guests. They had taken over the big conference room, and she saw two of them in her father’s office one afternoon, chatting with him, and two others walking around the hotel with Bruce Johnson, the head of security, and Mike, the head engineer, which she thought was strange. But the hotel was so full that she didn’t have time to think about it, and it was only after they left that Mike said something to her.
“That’ll be strange, won’t it, if your father sells the place? I hear they’re willing to offer him a fortune for it!”
“Who is?” She looked at him as though he had grown a tree out of his head or were a creature from outer space.
“Those Dutch guys. The ones who were here last week. Your father had us show them everything. I hear they’re going to make an offer that’s impossible to refuse, or maybe they already did. The rumor is that he’s going to sell.” She felt dizzy when she heard his words. The ground rolled under her feet and she felt sick.
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” she said, wanting to squelch the rumor immediately, and she was shaking when she walked into her father’s office. He was alone at his desk, and Jennifer was out to lunch. She wanted to hear it from him, if he was going to sell. And if it was true, he should have told her long before this. She knew that he worried about their overhead, but the hotel was a huge success.
“Something wrong?” She looked as though she had seen a ghost, and he assumed she’d had a problem with a guest. So far, she was handling even the most delicate situations extremely well. She had a wonderful way with people and was learning a lot about the business.
She didn’t beat around the bush. She never did with him. “Mike says you’re selling the hotel.” She didn’t know what to think. First he got his wife pregnant with three babies, intentionally, and now he was selling her home. “Is that true?” She was still shaking as she stood on the other side of his desk.
He hesitated for a long moment. Too long. And he answered her with a look of pain. But he knew he had to tell her the truth, or she’d hear it from someone else. “I wasn’t trying to. But if they offer me enough, I might. I haven’t decided yet. It depends on what they offer. It fell from the sky. I didn’t look for the offer. It found me.” He looked guilty as he said it.
“How can you do that?” she blazed at him. “This hotel is our home. It was your dream. Now it’s mine. You can’t sell our dream.” Her voice was shaking with fear and rage.
“I’m fifty-three years old. In a few months I’ll have four kids, not just one. And I have to think of all of you, your future, Natalie’s, and mine. If someone is crazy enough to offer me an insane amount of money, I’d be even more insane not to take it.” It was a concept she was too upset to understand. She had a lifetime ahead of her. He didn’t. And he had a lot more people to worry about now. His family was about to double in size and he suddenly felt old, and a little scared.
“You have no loyalty to anyone or anything,” she accused him, so furious with him that she could hardly speak. “I’ll never respect you again if you sell,” she said vehemently, and he nodded. He suspected that would be the case. But if the offer was big enough, he had no choice but to sell. She didn’t want the money, she wanted the hotel. “I’ll never forgive you if you sell the hotel, Papa,” she said, looking him squarely in the eye, and then she turned around and walked out of the room.
She didn’t talk to him for the next three days, and when she saw him in the elevator, she said not a word. The rumors were flying all over the hotel. She told Brad about it, and he knew how upsetting that was for her. She wanted to work there for the rest of her life and take over from her father one day. It was why she had gone to the Ecole Hoteliere, and now he had made a mockery of her career and all she’d learned.
It was a tense, unhappy time for her, and the only comfort in her life was Brad. Her father knew how upset she was and was staying away from her. And once again she blamed Natalie. She understood nothing of the hotel or their business, and she had no idea what it meant to both of them. Heloise could easily imagine her encouraging Hugues to sell just in order to make a lot of money. But the Hotel Vendome was not about money to Heloise. It was about love and dedication, the people who worked there, and her father’s vision, and dreams, and now her own. You couldn’t pay for that with money. Her father had promised to tell her what his decision was as soon as he got the offer.
She was at war with her father and Natalie again, and this time she wasn’t relenting. She had meant what she said about never forgiving him if he sold the hotel. And Brad had never seen her so determined. She didn’t talk to anyone but Brad about it, but he understood what it meant to her. Her father no longer did. And she refused to discuss it with anyone else. She was too upset.
She was in her room after work one afternoon, and she and her father were living now on separate floors like strangers. She hadn’t spoken to him or Natalie since the day Mike had told her the news that her father might be selling. And she had no desire to speak to either of them again until she knew what he was going to do. Which made it surprising when she got a call from Natalie that afternoon, on her cell phone. She sounded like she was being strangled.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?” Heloise asked her coldly. “You sound terrible.”
“Can you come up? Are you in the hotel?”
“I’m in my apartment.” Heloise’s tone was as cold as she felt. Once again they had betrayed her. Or they were hoping to, if the consortium paid them enough money. She didn’t want the money. She wanted to live and work at the Vendome forever. “Is something wrong?” Heloise asked Natalie, and she made a terrible groaning sound in answer.