I’d spent my youth trying and failing to impress him. I’d thought he’d spend more time with me if he could see how smart I was. Consequently, I became the top student. Though that hadn’t been much effort as I was naturally analytically minded. I adored science and mathematics. My father called me a nerd.

Then I thought if I played more sports, I’d garner his praise, so I joined the football team. That had come harder. When other boys had perfected fancy footwork in the streets and parks after school, I had been headfirst in a book or being chauffeured to music and chess. But I persevered, and finally made it, becoming center forward and then captain of our local club team. My father never came to a game.

Then when I was an older teen I thought I could garner his praise if I became a ladies’ man. A wild child. After all, he seemed to respect men with a roving eye, who weren’t chained to their wives and families. And so, I drank. I fucked. I broke hearts. But all it got me was a reputation as a fuck up, tears from my mother, and contempt from my father who came to see me as a wastrel. As did the French press who so closely monitored our family.

It was only after I realized the family money was just something my father had married into and spent frivolously, and that he’d only respect me if he needed something from me, that I finally got my head out of my ass. The scales had fallen from my eyes, and my father had become … just a man.

A weak man.

A man who made questionable deals, trusted the wrong people, and slept with the help.

Someone I had no intention of emulating.

When we arrived at the beach club, my father was in true form. His eyes missed nothing, not the tension in my shoulders and not the expanse of leg on display by my daughter’s minder. Women at the beach club wore less than her, but Josie still tugged on the hem of her cover-up, and she still drew eyes to her like a magnet. My own included.

“Papa,” I said, forcing a joviality I didn’t feel into my tone as he clapped me on the back more heavily than he needed to.

I could tell he was feeling on top of the world. Bold and optimistic that he could get me to invest in his latest venture. “Great to see you,” he greeted me. “Just great. And my sweet little Dauphine!” he crowed as she leapt into his arms. “Who is your new friend?”