Back-to-School Support Suppers in September.”
Marie’s fists opened and closed repeatedly. How well she remembered those suppers that the agency hosted to aid kids in foster care who were beginning their new school years. For some, including Marie, the start of the school year was wrought with either dread or apprehension. Dread if the previous year hadn’t gone well but they were returning to the same school. And apprehension if they were starting at a new school.
Kids could be cruel. But to orphans and other children in foster care, mercilessly so. The unkind ones already knew who the foster kids were, and would find ways to taunt and tease them. They’d yell out meanness to Marie that she was unwanted. That she had no family. That nobody loved her. Like many in her situation, Marie grew a thick outer shell and learned not to cry in front of the bullies. Not that she didn’t shed a million tears in private.
The September suppers the agency held had been a godsend for Marie. Psychologists, social workers and education specialists were all on hand to discuss problems and develop strategies. Without them, the pressure of the new school year might have swallowed Marie up and left her too isolated and anxious to have succeeded in her classes.
Now she was going to be part of creating those dinners that had meant so much to her. As an adult, she had long accepted the fact that she would never be part of a typical family. But by working at the agency she was in some small way making other orphans feel that somebody cared about them. In that, she felt great pride and satisfaction.
“There’s a note on my list to check the budget after the gala,” Marie reported to Felice.
“We’ll have to see what funding the gala brings in, in order to determine how much money we can spend on the September suppers and how many of them we can offer throughout the country.”
“Of course.”
As a teen, it had never occurred to Marie how programs the APCF provided were financed. Only that they were able to help with the extra services people might not be able to afford. Orphaned children sometimes had mental health issues such as depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. Others had learning disabilities or physical conditions. And, maybe most important, once they reached adulthood there was often no place for them to turn for transitional help into higher education or the workforce. The APCF did as much as it could for as many as it could.
Once she started working for the organization, Marie understood that any money it spent on its programs came from outside donations. She glanced up from her powwow with Felice and thanked the air surrounding her that this agency existed and that she was brought into it by one of her few schoolteachers who cared. A quick wince reminded her of some who didn’t.
“I need to return a call.” Felice looked up from her phone to Marie. “Why don’t you continue to match up your notes and see how much information you have?”
“Okay.”
“Zander has all of the data for the gala on his own computer. He’s very specific about what he wants. He’ll go over that with you. We’re lucky to have him chairing the event this year, so let’s make every effort to facilitate his plans.”
“Who’s Zander?” Marie realized that Felice hadn’t answered when she’d asked the first time.
“Felice!” a shrill voice called out from the main office space.
“Let me go deal with that—” Felice stood up “—and let’s touch base at the end of the day. After Zander comes.”
As the director charged out the door, Marie asked yet again, this time to the back of her jacket, “Who is Zander?”
* * *
What a difference a year made.
Zander de Nellay surveyed the sweeping view of the Cannes shoreline through the floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors of his posh penthouse. The palm-tree-lined promenade of La Croisette followed the crescent-shaped curve of the sparkling Gulf of Napoule and its white-sand beaches. It was a sight to behold, indeed.
Little, if nothing, of the vista appeared any different from how it had last spring. Although then, as he had in years past, Zander had stayed in an elegant suite at one of the grand dame hotels on the promenade. And had partied every night with Hollywood film producers and the glamorati who flocked to Cannes from all over the world.
This season, he’d instead be ensconced in a penthouse apartment that kept the town’s constant revelry at arm’s length.
Gliding one of the doors open, he stepped out onto the terrace. The sun was bright but the air was crisp, a combination he’d always enjoyed. Cannes in late spring was a marvelous place to be.
Fortunately, to Zander’s precise specifications, the rental agent was able to find him a suitable penthouse with a terrace that was walled-in cement rather than the typical iron balcony railing, which he wouldn’t have trusted was safe enough for eighteen-month-old Abella, even though he knew she would never be outside on her own. But securely enclosed, Zander could create a little play area out here for her so that she could get plenty of the fresh sea air. He’d just need a patio umbrella or other covering to shelter her from the strength of the sun.
He shook his head to himself. A year ago Zander was an unattached bachelor, much to his mother’s chagrin, with thoughts only of what suited him. He rotated his life between time spent in his native Charlegin, his apartment in Paris’s tony Sixth Arrondissement and his travels throughout the world on behalf of his charitable endeavors.
Now his mind was on baby-safe balconies.
Stepping back into the penthouse’s sitting room, he watched the deliveries arriving. Movers carried in the petal-pink upholstered rocking chair he’d had sent from his apartment in Paris. Rather than buying one here in Cannes, he wanted the exact chair that Abella had become comfortable with. Truth be told, he was accustomed to it, too. He loved quietly sitting in that chair with her.
Yes, one of the most eligible playboys in Europe now found himself preferring to rock baby Abella in his arms than cavorting with the high society he’d always been surrounded by. And Zander was keenly aware of the realness exchanged between them in those moments.
Heading toward the master bedroom suite, he saw Iris, a compact woman in her sixties who had been Abella’s nanny since the day she was born. “Is she asleep?”
“She’s just starting to rouse.”
There went that funny tap in the center of Zander’s chest. It was a sensation that had arrived around a year ago. The mere thought of seeing Abella pulled at his heart. Her cherubic pink cheeks and that cute way she stretched her back after a nap as if she’d been farming in the fields all day.
“The wardrobe is here,” one of his assistants announced as Zander entered the master suite. “I believe you wanted to go over it.”
Zander didn’t really envision himself as fussy when it came to clothes. But with all the charitable organizations he endorsed and all of the fund-raising benefits and balls he attended, his wardrobe had to be appropriate. He’d come to Cannes for the spring social season and would be attending a dozen formal events and countless others that called for business attire. Even the black slacks and black shirt he wore at the moment were bespoke from the finest tailor in London.
“Create a file for me of what I’m wearing from head to toe for each
