Danielle Steel - 44 Charles Street

“Not in France,” she and Marya said in unison, and then they laughed. Eileen had gone out. She said she had a date with a new man. She was the busiest girl in town, and the happiest these days. Things seemed to be going well for her. Francesca was pleased. She loved her job and her roommates, and she was having fun again after the incident with Brad. He was history.

“He’s certainly a very handsome, charming man,” Thalia said admiringly about Charles-Edouard, and Francesca brought her to earth and told her he had been in love with Marya for years.

“That’s not fair,” Thalia complained directly to Marya. “You don’t even want a man. You said so. I do, and he’s in love with you.”

“He’s not in love with anyone,” Marya said easily. “He just likes women. In quantity. We’ve been good friends for years.”

“What a waste,” Thalia said mournfully, as they walked back in, and she tried her charms on the famous chef again. And even though she had always embarrassed her, Francesca had to admit that her mother was beautiful. She looked sensational in the black dress and high heels, and she had the legs of a twenty-year-old as she crossed them enticingly, but Charles-Edouard only had eyes for Marya, and was unimpressed. Her mother looked a little deflated when she left. For once, her beauty and charm hadn’t worked, although he thought her a very beautiful woman, but not for him. And besides, Francesca thought to herself, he had a wife. There were a few too many women floating in his soup.

It was another perfect evening thanks to him, with lots of interesting conversation and great food. He had a passion for history and literature, as well as food. And it was a lazy Sunday the next day. Charles-Edouard came to pick up Marya, and wanted to try a new Chinese restaurant with her. He knew the chef, and had met him in Beijing. Chris and Ian were going to the model boat pond. Francesca had things to do in the house, and Eileen hadn’t come home the night before.

Francesca was looking at slides of new artists on a light box that afternoon when she heard Eileen come in. She called out to her but couldn’t see her from where she was sitting, and Eileen headed up the stairs. Francesca got up to get more slides then, and she caught a glimpse of Eileen hunched over and barely able to move. She turned to look at Francesca with a look of devastation, as Francesca caught her breath. She had been beaten up again.

“Who did that to you?” Francesca asked her as she put an arm around her to help her. Eileen was crying, and she refused to say. “Did you see Brad again?” And slowly Eileen nodded.

“He was so nice to me. He’s so loving, and then I upset him again. He thought I was making fun of him. He said I humilated him in front of his friends.”

“Eileen, swear to me you’ll get help. You can’t see him again.”

“I know. He said he never wants to see me again. He says he’s through with me, and never to call him again. He’s gone.” Francesca knew now that he wasn’t and never would be. He’d be back. To do it to her again. She had to be the one to walk away. And Francesca’s worst fear was that Eileen didn’t have the courage or the strength.

She helped Eileen upstairs to bed and left her there. Francesca felt sick, thinking about her, as she went back down the stairs. Chris’s fears for her had been well founded. Eileen was hooked on the man and the abuse.

THE RESIDENTS OF 44 Charles Street were less sympathetic to Eileen this time. Marya gave her a motherly lecture, after bringing her soup and soft foods for five days. This time Brad had not only blackened her eyes, and made mincemeat of her face, he had loosened her teeth. She had to see the dentist twice in three days. Marya told her that she couldn’t allow herself to see him again. Francesca was being firm with her and begging her to get help. And Chris wanted nothing to do with her.

“I’m tired of lunatics and addicts and self-destructive people,” he said harshly to Francesca. “She’s addicted to the guy, and even if you chain her to the wall in her room, she’ll sneak out to see him, and he’ll beat her up again. She’s too sick. I went through the same thing with Kim and drugs. You can’t fight people’s addictions, and I’ve gotten smart enough not to try. She’ll do anything to protect her addiction. It’s no different than drugs. You can’t fix them, or stop them, and you’ll break your heart trying.”

“I can’t just sit there and not say anything to her about it,” Francesca insisted. She thought Chris sounded very cold.

“You’re wasting your time. She has to want to get help, and until she does, nothing you do or say will have any effect on her.”

It was heartbreaking to watch, and Francesca hated to see the condition she was in. She was such a sweet girl, with no self-esteem whatsoever. That was clear now. Her father had pummeled it out of her. Abuse was what she expected and thought she deserved.

Her employers were equally fed up with her. She had to take a week off, until she could cover the bruises with makeup. And when she went back to work, they fired her. She came back to the house in shock that afternoon. She was out of a job. Brad was no longer speaking to her and had told her he wanted nothing more to do with her. He had shut her out, and she kept asking Francesca if she thought he would ever call again. It was sick.

“I hope not” was all Francesca would say to her, but she was beginning to realize that Chris was right, and the abuse was an addiction. She was having withdrawal from not seeing Brad even if he abused her. And she refused to get help. Francesca just hoped he would stay away long enough for Eileen to come to her senses and to detox from him.

And Ian’s mother was demanding to see her son in jail. Chris flatly refused, and claimed it would destroy him. Two psychiatrists who spoke to Ian agreed. He was happy with his father and leading a normal life with him. He and Chris were doing healthy, normal things.

Charles-Edouard was spending a lot of time at the house these days to see Marya, and do the preliminary work on their book together, and Ian was his shadow whenever he was there. He was teaching him French and to cook simple things. He loved the boy, and was wonderful with children, although he had never wanted any of his own. But he felt sorry for Ian and all he’d been through. Ian particularly loved it when Charles-Edouard pretended to pull an egg out of his ear, and sometimes two, and begged him to do it again, and the flamboyant chef did.

“He’s around quite a bit these days, isn’t he?” Francesca mentioned casually one day when she was alone in the kitchen with Marya.

“We’re working on the book,” she said innocently.

“Are you sure he’s so devoted to his wife?” Francesca asked, hoping he wasn’t. They were so cute together. She would have loved to see Marya with him, who always insisted that would never happen and believed it. And she had no intention of having an affair with a married man, and Charles-Edouard knew it, although he still tried to convince her, as he had for thirty years. Marya just laughed at him, and reminded him regularly of his marriage and wife at home.

He was leaving for Paris shortly, at the end of the month, and to the South after that. Marya was planning to meet him in July to work on their book there. And then she was going to Spain on her own, and Italy after that, all to visit chefs she knew and restaurants she wanted to explore. And she wanted to spend August in Vermont, before she came back to New York in September. She was going to be away for more than two months, and Francesca knew she would miss her. Francesca was trying to figure out her own summer plans. Marya invited her to Europe with her, as did her mother, but Francesca wanted to go sailing in Maine with friends as she did every summer, and had for four years with Todd. They were friends of his, but she loved them dearly and they had become her friends as well. Todd was planning to visit them too with his fiancée, but at a different time.

“That’s not healthy,” her mother pointed out to her. “You’re doing the same things you did with him. You need to do something new.” Her mother was going to St. Tropez and Sardinia, as she did every year. She was a creature of habit too. But Chris commented on it to Francesca as well.

“Are you sure you want to go to the same place he is, even if you go on different weeks? That sounds a little dicey to me.” They both knew Todd was going with his fiancée.

“I love sailing in Maine,” she said stubbornly.

“You can come and visit me and Ian in Martha’s Vineyard. We’d love to have you.” Chris would be in Martha’s Vineyard with Ian for all of July and most of August. He was planning to do work while he was at the Vineyard. His family had an enormous compound there, but she felt odd doing that. She and Chris were just friends, and now that she knew who his family was, she thought they were too high-powered for her. She would have been scared to death. She had thought about going to a ranch in Montana or Wyoming to see the Grand Tetons, but she didn’t want to go alone. Her father and Avery were going to Aspen, but she didn’t want to go there either, nor to Europe with her mother or Marya. She didn’t know where to go, and she couldn’t afford an expensive vacation. It was easier to go sailing in Maine again, on her friends’ boat. She resisted the idea that she was running the gallery she had started with Todd, living in the house they had bought together, and spending the same summer vacation she had shared with him for years.

“Maybe you need to let go of some of that,” Chris suggested gently. She was stuck in a rut. She couldn’t seem to think of anything to do that she hadn’t done with Todd. But she didn’t want to admit it, even to herself. At least sailing in Maine would be a change of scenery, relaxing, and fresh air. She had always had fun there. She was going for the first three weeks of August.