Providence had come in the form of a letter from France. There had been a small case pending in the French courts, a minor judgment, but her father had won. It was a matter of six or seven thousand dollars. Would she be so kind as to have her attorney contact the French firm? What attorney? She called one from a list she got from one of her aunts, and he referred her to an international firm of lawyers. She had gone to their offices at nine o’clock on a Monday morning, dressed in a little black dress she had bought with her father in France. A little black Dior, with a little black alligator bag he had brought her back from Brazil, and the pearls that were all that her mother had left her. She didn’t give a damn about Dior, or Paris, or Rio, or anything else. The promised six or seven thousand dollars was a king’s ransom to her. She wanted to give up her job and go to art school day and night. In a few years she’d make a name for herself with her art. But in the meantime maybe she could live on the six thousand for a year. Maybe.

That was all that she wanted when she walked into the huge wood-paneled office and met Marc-Edouard Duras for the very first time.

“Mademoiselle…” He had never had a case quite like hers. His field was corporate law, complex international business cases, but when the secretary had relayed her call, he had been intrigued. When he saw her, a delicate child-woman with a frightened beautiful face, he was fascinated. She moved with mystifying grace, and the eyes that looked into his were bottomless. He ushered her to a seat on the other side of the desk, and looked very grave. But his eyes danced as they talked their way through the hour. He too loved the Uffizi, he too had once spent days at a time in the Louvre; he had also been to São Paulo and Caracas and Deauville. She found herself sharing her world with him and opening windows and doors that she had thought were sealed forever. And she had explained about her father. She told him the whole dreadful tale, as she sat across from him, with the largest green eyes he had ever seen and a fragility that tore at his heart. He had been almost thirty-two at the time, certainly not old enough to be her father, and his feelings were certainly not paternal. But nonetheless he took her under his wing. Three months later she was his wife. The ceremony was small and held at city hall; the honeymoon was spent at his mother’s house in Antibes, followed by two weeks in Paris.

And by then she understood what she had done. She had married a country as well as a man. A way of life. She would have to be perfect, understanding-and silent. She would have to be charming and entertain his clients and friends. She would have to be lonely while he traveled. And she would have to give up the dream of making a name for herself with her art. Marc didn’t really approve. In the days when he courted her, he had been amused, but it was not a career he encouraged for his wife. She had become Madame Duras, and to Marc that meant a great deal.

Over the years she gave up a number of dreams, but she had Marc. The man who had saved her from solitude and starvation. The man who had won her gratitude and her heart. The man of impeccable manners and exquisite taste, who rewarded her with security and sable. The man who always wore a mask.

She knew that he loved her, but now he rarely expressed it as he had done before. “Shows of affection are for children,” he explained.

But that would come too. They conceived their first child in less than a year. How Marc had wanted that baby! Enough to show her once more how much he loved her. A boy. It would be a boy. Because Marc said so. He was certain, and so was Deanna. She wanted only that. His son. It had to be; it was the one thing that would win her his respect and maybe even his passion for a lifetime. A son. And it was. A tiny baby boy with a whisper in his lungs. The priest was called only moments after the birth and christened him Philippe-Edouard. In four hours the baby was dead.

Marc took her to France for the summer and left her in the care of his mother and aunts. He spent the summer working in London, but he came back on weekends, holding her close and drying her tears, until at last she conceived again. The second baby died too, another boy. And having Marc’s child became her obsession. She dreamed only of their son. She even stopped painting. The doctor put her to bed when she became pregnant for the third time. Marc had cases in Milan and Morocco that year, but he called and sent flowers and, when he was at home, sat at her bedside. Once more he promised that she would have his son. This time he was wrong. The long-awaited heir was a girl, but a healthy baby, with a halo of blonde hair and her father’s blue eyes. The child of Deanna’s dreams. Even Marc resigned himself and quickly fell in love with the tiny blonde girl. They named her Pilar and flew to France to show her to his mother. Madame Duras bemoaned Deanna’s failure to produce a son. But Marc didn’t care. The baby was his. His child, his flesh. She would speak only French; she would spend every summer in Antibes. Deanna had felt feeble flutterings of fear, but she reveled in the joy of motherhood at last.

Marc spent every spare moment with Pilar, showing her off to his friends. She was always a child of laughter and smiles. Her first words were in French. By the time she was ten, she was more at home in Paris than the States-the books she read, the clothes she wore, the games she played had all been carefully imported by Marc. She knew who she was: a Duras, and where she belonged: in France. At twelve, she went to boarding school in Grenoble. By then the damage was done; Deanna had lost a daughter. Deanna was a foreigner to her now, an object of anger and resentment. It was her fault they didn’t live in France, her fault Pilar couldn’t be with her friends. Her fault Papa couldn’t be in Paris with Grand-mère who missed him so much. In the end they had won. Again.

Deanna walked softly down the steps, her bare feet a whisper on the Persian runner Marc had brought back from Iran. Out of habit she glanced into the living room. Nothing was out of place; it never was. The delicate green silk of the couch was smoothed to perfection; the Louis XV chairs stood at attention like soldiers at their posts; the Aubusson rug was as exquisite as ever in its soft celadon greens and faded raspberry-colored flowers. The silver shone; the ashtrays were immaculate; the portraits of Marc’s enviable ancestors hung at precisely the right angle; and the curtains framed a perfect view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the bay. There were no sailboats yet at this hour, and for once there was no fog. It was a perfect June day, and she stood for a moment, looking at the water. She was tempted to sit down and simply watch. But it seemed sacrilege to rumple the couch, to tread on the rug, even to breathe in that room. It was easier to simply move on, to her own little world, to the studio at the back of the house where she painted… where she fled.

She walked past the dining room without looking in, then soundlessly down a long corridor to the back of the house. A half flight of stairs led to her studio. The dark wood was cold on her feet. The door was stiff, as always. Marc had given up reminding her to have something done about it. He had come to the conclusion that she liked it that way, and he was right. It was difficult to open, and it always slammed rapidly closed, sealing her into her own bright little cocoon. The studio was her own precious world, a burst of music and flowers tenderly tucked away from the stifling sobriety of the rest of the house. No Aubussons here, no silver, no Louis XV. Here, everything was bright and alive-the paints on her palette, the canvases on her easel, the soft yellow of the walls, and the big, comfortable, white chair that embraced her the moment she relinquished herself into its arms. She smiled as she sat down and looked around. She had left a terrible mess the morning before, but it suited her; it was a happy place in which she could work. She flung back the flowered curtains and pushed open the French doors, stepping onto the tiny terrace, the bright tiles like ice beneath her feet.

She often stood here at this hour, sometimes even in the fog, breathing deeply and smiling at the specter of the bridge hanging eerily above an invisible bay, listening to the slow owl hoot of the foghorns. But not this morning. This morning the sun was so bright that she squinted as she stepped outside. It would be a perfect day to go sailing, or disappear to the beach. The very idea made her laugh. Who would tell Margaret what to polish, who would respond to the mail, who would explain to Pilar why she could not go out that night? Pilar. This was the day of Pilar’s departure. Cap d’Antibes for the summer, to visit her grandmother and her aunts, uncles, and cousins, all down from Paris. Deanna almost shuddered at the memory. After years of enduring those stifling summers, she had finally said no. The eternal charm of Marc’s family had been insufferable, politesse through clenched teeth, the invisible thorns that ripped through one’s flesh. Deanna had never won their approval. Marc’s mother made no secret of that. Deanna was, after all, an American, and far too young to be a respectable match. Worst of all, she had been the penniless daughter of an extravagant wanderer. It was a marriage that added nothing to Marc’s consequence, only to her own. His relatives assumed that was why she had snared him. And they were careful not to mention it-more than twice a year. Eventually Deanna had had enough, and had stopped making the pilgrimage to Antibes for the summer. Now, Pilar went alone, and she loved it. She was one of them.

Deanna leaned her elbows on the terrace wall, and propped her chin on the back of one hand. A sigh escaped her unnoticed as she watched a freighter glide slowly into the bay.