From This Moment On (54 page)

It stands to reason that we supported each other during this time of our mutual betrayal, staying in touch, mostly by phone and email every couple of days, as I’d left for Canada at this point. After all, who else could understand better what the other was going through? However, since our previous interactions had always been in the context of our two families, we almost didn’t know how to act with each other directly. We were polite, almost formal. Fred is especially traditional when it comes to social boundaries, always very friendly but appropriate. For both Mutt and me, teaching our son good manners has always been very important. Mutt reminds Eja often that “manners maketh man,” and I believe this is true. I also believe there is another layer to this philosophy that is equally important, if not more so: honesty maketh humanity.

Fred is someone who possesses both manners and honesty with a natural ease. Raised in a family of doctors and lawyers on both his mother’s and his father’s sides, Fred grew up in a formal, refined social environment—a privileged upbringing. Considering the comfort and stability of growing up almost sheltered from social and economic
struggle, Fred is still a real salt-of-the-earth kind of person. An open book, and deep in his natural being, he is a genuine and sincere human being. It is one thing to be mindful of your manners, to be polite and respectful, but if you don’t mean it, what does it stand for? Sincerity holds incredible value to me personally, and as much as I think it’s important to have good manners, if you question something or someone but you hide behind your manners because they’re easier and less messy to manage, you are being deceitful and compromising your integrity. I would rather teach a child to speak his mind or live out actions that are true to what he thinks and believes, while at the same time expressing himself with grace, humility, and consideration. I feel strongly that you can be honest and achieve all this at the same time. This is a worthy intention, to remain truthful but considerate. This is how I would describe Fred: a true gentleman.

Together Fred and I tried to hash out what had happened to each of us. Sometimes we argued over who was to blame for this disaster. “He” must have done this. No, “she” must have done that. We didn’t want any of it to be true and simply didn’t know who was responsible. I didn’t want it to be my husband any more than he didn’t want it to be his wife, and neither of us wanted to believe our friend would do such a thing. There were so many angles and tangles to the long web of lies and deception, it was enough to make you dizzy.

Nearly six months later, in September 2009, I returned to Switzerland from the cottage in Canada so that Eja could go back to school. Fred and I continued bonding over our lives, our children, our woes, our dreams, our recovery. It was fall and getting cooler, and we would often have evening campfires outside the front door of the annex, as the main house was still under renovations. Roasting marshmallows, playing music, dancing, and singing—we had so much fun, and Fred and I were getting very good at swing dancing. The kids would join in and sometimes stand on the side to cheer us on. One night in December they were both up on the second-floor bedroom balcony watching us with a bird’s-eye view, while Fred and I danced below beside the campfire, unaware of their gazing down on us. Fred and I must have
appeared to be pretty lost in each other because at one point the kids piped up and said, “Why don’t you guys kiss?”

Fred and I stopped dead, stunned, and said in unison, “What?”

“Why don’t you guys just kiss?” they repeated, rolling their eyes while smiling from ear to ear. We looked at each other, quite surprised that the kids had recognized a connection between us that we’d been feeling for some time but felt uncomfortable revealing openly. We responded to the kids with an “okay,” and we kissed on the cheek. The kids said, “No, on the lips.” Fred and I couldn’t believe our own children were cheering us on to kiss, for real, so we did. Fred and I perked our kissers, pecked on the lips, and the kids smiled and giggled. We were happy. Relief came rushing through us, as the ice had been broken. Fred and I were surprised and relieved by our children’s encouragement to be ourselves in love, and from that moment on, the four of us began to form a reassembled family, building a nest, a new foundation, reconstructing our lives as a unit after the fall of the ones we’d lost.

Fred and I proceeded with caution, because we were both keenly aware that our mutual grief might be the main thing binding us together. We also considered the dangers of confusing the children with a rebound romance. But it wasn’t.

What attracted me to Fred was his selflessness. He was going through the same agony as I was—maybe even worse, because as a father, he would have to battle his soon-to-be ex for the right to see his own daughter. At least that was something I never had to face. Yet he was never too busy to nurse me through my emotional lows. I think it’s fair to say that he was more of a support to me than I was to him at first. While I was a self-pitying spigot of never-ending sadness in the initial period of my grief, he showed strength, kept a healthily clear, pragmatic perspective, and was infinitely patient and understanding. I admired him.

He was also there for Eja, who had known Fred his whole life. In fact, not long ago, Fred showed me a picture taken of my son only
hours after he was born. “I don’t recall ever seeing this photo before,” I said to Fred. “I don’t remember who took this photo.”

“Me,” he responded.

That warmed my heart. He really was always there, like a gift under the Christmas tree, pushed to the back where I couldn’t see it. A gift with my name on it, only hiding, as I wasn’t meant to open it till much later when it was time to take the tree down, then all of a sudden there it was, this present, for me! As if labeled, “From heaven—to Eilleen,” Fred was for me; it was just a matter of time.

I describe what happened to Fred and me this way: we were two people who had been jettisoned from our lives as if we’d been shoved off the edge of a high cliff. Thankfully, we managed to grab on to each other on the way down in midair and break each other’s fall.

It would be easy to say that we eventually fell in love because we were a couple of castaways in the same lifeboat, adrift at sea with no one else to turn to for comfort. Believe me, when we first realized that we had feelings for each other, it scared me. I was in denial, in fact. I didn’t want to love again; I wanted Fred to know up front that love was the last thing I needed. Although I was going to work hard to avoid my true feelings for Fred, his only request was to leave him the right to love, care, and worry for me, even if I didn’t want to love in return. The fact that I was honest about my new pessimistic point of view on love and men in general did not deter Fred.

I spent months shutting myself off from any thoughts of a relationship, but Fred loved me and was brave enough to come out and say it, even though I had made it clear that the thought of ever being in love again scared me out of my wits. I made it very clear that I was not ready.

Fred would email me quotes like this one from an anonymous author: “Love comes to those who still hope even though they’ve been disappointed, to those who still believe even though they’ve been betrayed, to those who still love even though they’ve been hurt before.” Whoever wrote these words must have had a Frederic Nicolas
Thiébaud in his or her life, too. Or this one, from fiction writer Maria Robinson: “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” He was right, I knew it, and I also recognized how irresistible this beautiful person was becoming to me. It turned out that my heart was still connected after all, and I finally stopped fighting my true emotions. I was falling in love with him.

The realization that our marriages were over was already nine months behind us. Nine months of emptiness, loneliness, fear of what was next, confusion over what had happened and why. There were still no answers, no closure or healing of the open wounds. Although I didn’t feel ready to open the door, kindness, understanding, and love were tapping. I just had to accept that it wasn’t my offenders tapping, the ones I expected to be offering these things I needed so badly. I had been so preoccupied with waiting for them to come knocking with compassion, explanation, and remorse that at first I couldn’t hear Fred, the one who really cared.

The more time we spent together, however, the more I/we discovered how much we shared in common and that there was an undeniably natural bond forming between us. We had a surprisingly long list of things in common: sports, music, parenting, and our overall philosophies on life, and these launched us into hours of conversation, where time just disappeared. Soon it felt as though we were constantly running out of time, with never enough of it to be together. That December, I accompanied Fred on a business trip to Miami. While in Florida, we went skydiving. It was Fred’s idea, and when he asked me, my response was, “Why not?” I was ready to throw caution to the wind, to let go completely, to experience losing control by choice, unlike the loss of control I had over my marriage ending, who loved me, or who I loved. I wasn’t afraid, only ready to follow through with accepting that whether I lived through this experience or not was out of my hands, and that was part of the liberation for me: making a choice to do something potentially fatal, not needing to know what was going to happen next. That is truly letting go.

We also took in a Michael Bublé concert at Madison Square Garden in New York before heading home to Switzerland in time for Christmas. We’d been listening to a lot of Bublé’s music, as Fred is a real fan of crooners, and we both love to dance to big-band swing, so it was a treat to see Michael in person. Two of our favorite tunes he recorded are “I’m Your Man” and “Everything.” It’s very romantic music, perfect for falling in love.

Fred got his first taste of what it’s like to travel with a celebrity in our star-crazed culture. I had been living a hermetic existence in Switzerland for several years, so I was completely unprepared for the onslaught of paparazzi waiting for us the moment we landed in the United States. That was naïve of me, and I really should have known better. The flashing cameras caught us together but apart, so nobody knew what to make of this athletic-looking, handsome man who
appeared
to be with me. Fred wasn’t used to this, naturally, and found the intrusion very annoying—as anybody in his right mind would. We both realized quickly that from that point on, the only place for us to find privacy would be behind closed doors.

Fred and I decided to spend our first Christmas as rejected spouses together in Verbier, a charming ski resort not far from our home. Even though we were finding solace through each other’s company and support, special occasions—especially Christmas and New Year’s—are tough when you’ve experienced deep loss. There are so many memories from the past that come flooding back to haunt you, reminders of how much has changed, that things will never be the same, and the finality and permanency hits you all over again. Fred and I were determined to face the future with bold hearts, however, and bring in the New Year with a positive attitude. We stayed busy with friends and family, and we would all have a splendid holiday and New Year’s together. I cooked my heart out; we laughed our heads off, filled up with food and fun, played seasonal music ad nauseam, and bathed in the atmosphere of Noel in the winter-land beauty of the Swiss Alps, with its snow, evergreens, and smoking chimneys. There
were occasional lows—but we held each other up. And the seasonal cheer kept our hearts warm and cozy.

December 28 would mark my fifteenth wedding anniversary. I was facing my first wedding anniversary separated from Mutt. It was Eja’s first Christmas without his father and overall, a struggle for me emotionally.

Fred planned a surprise for me earlier in the week as my Christmas gift, but it didn’t pan out due to the weather, so the first opportunity for it to happen, ironically, fell on the twenty-eighth. My heart was broken. It was so hard not to think that, that very day a year ago, Marie-Anne was wishing us a happy anniversary, and all the while she was seducing my husband. It was going to take something powerful to change my focus that day, and little did I know that it could happen because of an incredibly special person.

Fred’s amazing surprise was to ski with me to two airplanes, so Fred could get there first, that would take us to a Swiss glacier, where we would toast to new beginnings with a glass of champagne. This amazing day helped me forget my sorrow, created new memories for me at that time of year, and made me fall further in love with Fred. It was fifteen below zero with no wind, sunny, and we were alone. The pilots agreed to leave us for forty-five minutes on our glacier plateau so we could celebrate our excitement for life and love in complete peace. Fred presented me with a gorgeous watch engraved with a “love” dedication, and the date, and he presented it down on one knee. He had been to the site before me, as he’d gone ahead with his own pilot to carve out a bench in the snow, spray paint a huge, red heart over the white surface, and place roses along the perimeter. He even had a bottle of pink champagne and glasses chilling in the snow. It was magic, and Fred created this magic. He wanted to set a romantic atmosphere to declare his love for me. It was like a marriage proposal, only he wasn’t asking for a commitment of marriage. He was asking me to allow him to love me. “Sunshine,” he said, “just let me love you.” Even if I wasn’t ready for commitment, he wanted me to know how he felt, expecting nothing in return. He was merely asking
me to accept the engraved watch as a token of his love. He wanted us to move into 2009 with him having declared his love for me.

Fred had more romantic plans to come and loved to catch me off guard with the most beautiful ideas I could ever dream of. Fred is a romance god, and I lap it up. I’m spoiled rotten, and I admit it. Another one of his best was the time he rented his friend’s movie theater for the night to surprise me with the most elaborate, romantic experience. He walked me into the empty foyer of the movie house with my eyes closed and led me up to a table decorated with glowing tea candles, a bouquet of roses in the center, and champagne on ice. Fred had gone to the theater during lunch that day to set up everything, and he’d instructed his friend to light the candles just before we entered and then disappear so there was no one in sight. It was magical.