The Sins of the Mother by Danielle Steel Read Free Book Online Page A

She was perfectly made up, and had her long blond hair pulled back. She looked like a model.
    “The summer invitation,” she mumbled, as she continued to read about the boat.
    “To what?” Phillip asked as he helped himself to a yogurt from the fridge. Amanda didn’t cook. She had other things to do with her time and she was always on a diet. She had been to the gym that day, as usual, at six A.M. , but it paid off. She had a spectacular figure and, like his mother, looked nowhere near her age. Amanda could have passed for thirty, not the forty-four she was.
    “Your mother’s birthday trip,” Amanda explained, continuing to read the details about the yacht. She didn’t look excited or pleased. She never was about that trip. And she didn’t think his nieces and nephew should join them—it was tiring for the adults to have them along. She had particularly disliked it when they were younger. But even now she had nothing to say to them. They and Amanda politely ignored each other on the trip every year, although Phillip sometimes enjoyed them, and liked taking his nephew, Alex, fishing with him and John. It was Phillip’s only contact with young people, and Alex was a bright kid. He was a junior in high school, and hoped to go to Stanford, instead of Princeton, where his mother taught literature.
    “Where’s she taking us this year?” Phillip asked with interest. He enjoyed the vacations with his siblings, in spite of Amanda’s complaints about them. He had learned not to pay attention to what she said, since she went anyway. His only regret was that they had done nothing like it when their father was alive and the kids were young. There had been family vacations in Maine, but his mother had spent most of the time on the phone to the office, and she and his father had spent the entire time talking business and making plans for new developments she had in mind. It was the only thing that interested her then, or that was how it had felt to Phillip. Olivia just hadn’t had time for them when they were young. The mother figure in his life, and that of his siblings, had been his maternal grandmother, Maribelle—Granibelle as they called her. She lived with them and had been ever-present in their daily lives. She and their father had brought them up, Olivia had appeared between trips and when she came home, usually late, from the office. Their father had always insisted to them how much their mother loved them, and maybe she had, but as far as Phillip was concerned, there had been no evidence of it when he was a child.
    Phillip was still fiercely devoted to Granibelle, and visited her whenever he could. She had finally retired to a senior residence on Long Island. It was luxurious, and she was comfortable, and seemed content. She had been a happy person all her life. It was what he remembered most about his childhood, the love and joy she had shared with them, and the affection she lavished on them. She still had a twinkle in her eye at ninety-five, and he always teased her and asked her if she had a new beau, which made her laugh. There had been a ninety-two-year-old a few years before who had been very attentive to her, and then he died. But Maribelle was not a sad person. Whatever the circumstances, she had seen the glass as more than half full, even overflowing with blessings. And her four grandchildren had been one of the great joys in her life. Phillip often tried to get Amanda to visit his grandmother with him, but she rarely had time. She was too busy at the office, not unlike his mother when he was young. And yet Olivia was warmer than Amanda. There was a coolness to Amanda like no other woman Phillip had ever known.
    “She’s chartered a boat,” Amanda said with a cool expression as she looked up at him.
    Phillip raised an eyebrow in surprise. “That’s going to make my sister Liz nervous. I wonder if she’ll come. She gets seasick. Mom knows that. I wonder why she picked a boat this time.”
    “I