The Sins of the Mother

Chapter 24


As promised, Peter arrived shortly after Olivia got home from work, but he looked unusually somber, and Olivia was instantly worried. She had sensed it on the phone two days before and he had denied it. With the recent loss of her mother, reminding them of their mortality, she was suddenly afraid he might be sick.

They chatted for a few minutes about a worrisome situation that had come up in the office, a fire in their warehouse in New Zealand, and then Olivia couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Peter, are you all right?”

“Yes, I am,” he said smiling at her, “very much so.”

“You seem so serious,” she said, and he smiled at her and took her hand in his own.

“Something unexpected came up this weekend, and I want to talk to you about it, but I didn’t want to do it on the phone.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Not at all,” he reassured her. He was still a little stunned himself. “Emily has decided to go into rehab. I think the children talked her into it. It’s long overdue, and it would be wonderful for her if she can finally stop drinking. I can honestly say it’s ruined her life, and ours, and impacted the children. We talked about it after the children left on Thanksgiving. She’s very determined. She has the place all picked out, and it’s supposed to be very good. They have a very good success rate, and she’s prepared to stay there as long as it takes.”

“I’m happy for her,” Olivia said quietly. She knew what an agony his wife’s drinking had been for him. And she was silently wondering what that change was going to do to them. Maybe if his wife got sober, he would want to end their affair. If so, she had no right to object, and she wouldn’t. Emily was his wife after all, and Olivia had no claims on him. He was a married man. She accepted the fact that she had no right to him at all.

“As it turns out,” Peter went on, “she wants to make a clean slate of it. She’s convinced that one cause of her drinking was her unhappiness in our marriage, and I think she’s right. It’s an addiction, but we were never happy, right from the beginning. We were never suited to each other. She feels now that she wants to cut our losses. She’s filing for divorce. And I agreed. I think it will be a huge blessing for us both.”

“My lord,” Olivia said, stunned. She had never expected that in a million years. “Well, that is a surprise. Do you really think she’s serious?”

“Completely. She had already called her lawyer when she told me. And we’re in complete agreement about the divorce and the division of property. I think it will all be taken care of very quickly. And what that means,” he said, looking deep into Olivia’s bright blue eyes, “is that I’m about to be a free man.” And before she could stop him, he was in front of her, down on one knee. She hadn’t seen that since Joe had proposed to her forty-seven years before.

“Peter, what are you doing?” she asked with a look of astonishment. She hadn’t been prepared for this at all.

“I’m proposing to you, Olivia,” he said with his deep love for her in his eyes. For the second time in her life, a worthy man was asking for her hand in marriage. “Will you marry me? I would be deeply honored, and I will try to make you happy for the rest of my days.”

“I’m sure you would,” she said with a lump in her throat. “But Peter, I’m seventy years old. I’m too old to get married.” She had never considered it a remote possibility for them, and she still didn’t now. They had always had their own lives, and there had been no hope of their getting married as long as Emily was alive.

“As the French say very intelligently, love has no age. Olivia, will you marry me?” he asked again, and she dropped her face into her hands and then looked at him.

“Peter, I truly love you, but I can’t. I’ve never considered getting married again. I never thought you’d get divorced.”

“Neither did I,” he said sincerely. And he had never held that hope out to her. He was an honest man. “Emily is giving me a great gift now. We haven’t been in love with each other in years. She knows it as well as I do. And with the hope of being sober, she wants to be free as much as I do. We don’t belong together, we never did. But you and I do. I think we’d be happy together and a very good match.”

“So do I. But why do we have to get married? Why can’t we just date, and do what we do now? Spend the night together when we can?” He was sitting in a chair, looking at her by then, and had come up off his knees. It hadn’t gone as smoothly as he thought it might. He had expected her to throw herself into his arms, or hoped she would, after all these years of loving each other in secret. She suddenly wondered if her mother had felt this way when Ansel’s wife died, but her mother had said they’d gotten engaged. She didn’t even want to do that. She loved Peter. But she would have felt unfaithful to Joe if she married someone else. And she really didn’t want to be married. She was comfortable now the way things were. He looked infinitely surprised, and sorely disappointed by her answer.

And he laughed ruefully at what she had just said. “You feel too old to get married. I feel too old to date. I want to be at home in my own bed, with the woman I love. Dating may be exciting, but it’s not for me. It never was.” She knew that he and Emily had married very young, and made a colossal mistake. She didn’t want to make one herself. And she thought getting married would be, for her in any case, although maybe not for Peter. She wondered if he would look for someone else, and the prospect of that hurt, but not enough to force her into marriage.

“So now what do we do?” Olivia said sadly.

“I guess we go on as we are,” he said with a look of resignation. “I’m not going to lose you, and I’m not going anywhere. I love you. But I don’t consider this dating. You’re the woman I love. I’ll stay with you as often as you let me. I’ll look for an apartment in the city. Emily thinks we should sell the apartment. I think she’s right—it’s a depressing place, it’s seen too many unhappy times. I’ll get something small, for me. You can stay with me if you like, if you want to spend a night in the city, and I’ll stay here with you whenever you’ll have me.” He was a very reasonable man, and he loved her very much.

“Peter, I don’t deserve you,” she said beaming at him. “I truly love you. I just don’t want to get married. But if I did, it would be you. I promise you that.” He believed her, and he had the hope that eventually she might change her mind. Olivia knew she wouldn’t. She was sure.

They talked about his divorce for a few more minutes. It was an amazing development in their lives. And things were going to be so much simpler. They could go out in public, he could escort her places, they might travel together, and they could spend holidays together at last. He was a free man.

And then, after they had sorted it all out, they wandered into her bedroom. He still couldn’t keep his hands off her after all these years, and they made love, to celebrate not their engagement, as he had hoped, but the freedom of their love.

Afterward she lay looking at him and gently touched his face, trying to find an explanation for herself for why she didn’t want to marry him, even though she loved him.

“Maybe I just like living in sin better,” she said, and he laughed and pulled her closer to him.

“You’re an evil woman, Olivia Grayson,” he teased her, and she giggled mischievously, feeling young after making love with him.

“Yes,” Olivia said happily, “I suppose I am.” It was the only explanation she could come up with for not marrying him. And she found herself wondering if Maribelle would approve of what she’d done. One thing was certain, the world was upside down. Her oldest son was getting divorced and married again, which she was pleased about, Liz “thought” she was having an affair but wasn’t sure, Cass was having a baby out of wedlock with a rock star, and her grandson was gay. And she had just opted to continue living in sin after loving a married man for ten years. The world had certainly changed.