Five Days in Paris

She asked about his family, and he told her about his parents and his sister. He told her of his mother and sister dying of cancer, and why Vicotec meant so much to him.

“If they'd had a product like that available to them, it might have made a difference,” he said sadly.

“Maybe,” she said philosophically. “But sometimes you can't win, no matter how many miracle drugs you have at your disposal.” They'd tried everything, and they still hadn't been able to save Alex. And then she turned to him, thinking of his sister.

“Did she have lads?” He nodded, and tears filled his eyes as he looked into the distance. “Do they come to visit?”

He felt ashamed when he answered. He looked Olivia in the eye, and knew how wrong he had been. Suddenly, being with her made him want to change that. It made him want to change a lot of things, some of which were easier than others.

“My brother-in-law moved away, and remarried within the year. I didn't hear from him for a long time. I don't know why, maybe he wanted to put it all behind him. He didn't call and tell me where they were till he and his new wife needed money. I think they had a couple of more kids by then. And I let Katie tell me that it had been too long, that they probably didn't give a damn, and the kids didn't know me. I let it go, and I haven't heard from them in a long time. They were living on a ranch in Montana the last time I heard from them. Sometimes I wonder if Katie likes the fact that I have no family, except for her and the boys and Frank. She and my sister never really hit it off, and she was furious that Muriel inherited the farm and I didn't. But my father was right to give it to them. I didn't want it or need it, and my father knew that.” He looked at Olivia again then, knowing what he had known for years, and refused to acknowledge, in deference to Katie. “I was wrong to let those kids slip out of my life. I should have gone out to Montana to see them.” He owed that to his sister. But it would have been painful, and it had been so much easier to listen to Katie.

“You still could,” Olivia said kindly.

“I'd like to do that. If I can still find them.”

“I'll bet you can, if you try.”

He nodded, knowing what he needed to do now. And then he was startled by her next question.

“What if you'd never married her?” Olivia asked him with curiosity. She loved playing games with him, and asking him questions that were difficult to answer.

“Then I'd never have the career I have now,” he said simply. But Olivia was quick to shake her head in disagreement.

“You're absolutely wrong. And that's your whole problem,” she said without hesitating for an instant. “You think that everything you have is because of her. Your job, your success, your career, even your house in Greenwich. That's crazy. You would have had a brilliant career anyway. She didn't do that, you did. You would have had a fabulous career wherever you were, maybe even back in Wisconsin. You have that kind of mind, and I suspect that kind of ability to seize opportunity, and run with it. Look what you've done with Vicotec. You said yourself that was entirely your baby.”

“But I haven't done it yet,” he said modestly.

“You will though. No matter what Suchard says. One year, two, ten, who cares. You'll do it,” she said, with absolute conviction. “And if this doesn't work, something else will. And it has nothing to do with who you're married to.” She wasn't wrong, he just didn't know that. “I'm not denying the Donovans gave you an opportunity, but other people would have too. And look what you've given them. Peter, you think they've done it all for you, and you're still embarrassed about it. You've done it all yourself and you don't even know it.” It was certainly a perspective he'd never had before, and listening to her gave him confidence. She was a remarkable woman. She gave him something no one ever had before, and certainly not Katie. But he gave her something too, a kind of warmth and caring and tenderness she had longed for. They were a rare combination, and she was grateful for it.

It was the end of the afternoon when they went back to her hotel, and ordered salade incoise, and bread and cheese to eat on the terrace. And at six o'clock he looked at his watch, and realized he had to head back to Paris. But after a day of swimming and sun, and restraining the passion he felt for her, he was almost too tired to move, let alone drive ten hours.

“I don't think you should,” she said, looking very pretty and young and tan and somewhat worried. He would have liked to stay with her forever. “You haven't had a decent night's sleep for two days, and you won't get back until four in the morning, even if you leave in the next ten minutes.”

“I have to admit,” he said, looking pleasantly fatigued, “it's not terribly appealing. But I should get back.” He had called the Ritz and there were no messages for him at least, but he still had to go back to Paris, and eventually Suchard would call him. He was just relieved that neither Katie nor Frank had called him that morning.

“Why not stay the night, and drive to Paris tomorrow?” she said sensibly, and he looked at her and debated.

“Will you come back with me if I go tomorrow?”

“Maybe,” she said, looking suddenly very fey as she looked out at the ocean.

“That's what I love about you, a real passion for commitment.” But she had a passion for other things, and the little he had tasted of her had already nearly driven him to distraction. “All right, all right,” he said finally. He really was too tired to undertake the drive that night, and preferred to do it after a good night's sleep, the following morning.

But when they went to rent the other single remaining room at her hotel, they found that it had already been rented. There were only four rooms in all, and she had the best one. It was a small double room with a view of the ocean, and they stood looking at each other for a long moment.

“You can sleep on the floor,” she said finally with a mischievous grin, attempting to honor their commitment to each other not to do anything they'd regret later. But at times it was difficult to remember.

“It's depressing to admit,” he grinned, “but that's the best offer I've had in a long time. I'll take it.”

“Fair enough. And I promise to behave. Scout's honor.” She held up two fingers and he pretended to look disappointed.

“That's even more depressing.” They were both laughing as they went off arm in arm to find him a clean T-shirt, a razor, and a pair of blue jeans. And they found all of it in the local store. The T-shirt advertised FANTA, the jeans fit him perfectly, and he insisted on shaving in her tiny bathroom before dinner, and he looked better than ever when he emerged. She was wearing a white cotton lace skirt, a halter top, and a pair of espadrilles she had bought on the trip down, and with her shining dark hair and her tan, she looked really lovely. It was hard to realize now that this was the woman he had read about, and been fascinated by for so long. She didn't seem like the same person anymore. She was his friend, and the woman he was falling in love with. And there was something very sweet about the way they felt about each other physically and emotionally, and in spite of the opportunity, refused to indulge it. It was wonderfully romantic and old-fashioned.

They held hands and kissed, and went for a long walk at midnight on the beach, and when they heard music in the distance, they danced on the sand, holding each other close, and then he kissed her.

“What are we going to do when we go back?” he said finally, as they sat down side by side, still listening to the music in the distance. “What am I going to do without you?” It was a question he had asked himself over and over.

“What you always did,” she said quietly. She had no intention of breaking up his marriage, or even encouraging him to think about it. She had no right to do that, no matter what happened between her and Andy. And besides, despite the attraction they shared, in some ways, she barely knew him.

“What is it I always did?” he asked, sounding suddenly unhappy. “I can't remember anymore. Everything back there seems so unreal to me now. I don't even know if I was happy.” But the worst of it was that he was beginning to suspect he wasn't. And that was a new concept to Peter.

“Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe you don't need to ask yourself those questions,” she said wisely. “We have all this right now …we'll have the memory of today. That will hold me for a long time,” she said sadly, and then looked up at him. They both knew the truth about his life, that he had sold out without even knowing it, but she would never have said that. He had made excuses to himself, and let Kate and Frank run everything, from his home to his business. It had happened gradually. And the only thing that amazed him, as he looked at it now, from Olivia's eyes, was that he couldn't understand why he had never seen it. But it had been so much·easier not to.

“What am I going to do without you?” Peter said miserably as he held her close to him. He couldn't imagine not having her to talk to. He had survived forty-four years without her, and now suddenly he couldn't bear the thought of a single moment separated from her.

“Don't think about it,” she said, and this time she kissed him. And it took all their strength to pull away from each other again and walk slowly back to the hotel, with their arms around each other. And as they walked slowly up to her small room, Peter smiled at her and whispered.

“You may have to stay awake and throw cold water on me all night,” he said with a rueful grin. He would have done anything to wave a magic wand and change their circumstances, but they both knew that they had no right to what they wanted, and it was a real test of their integrity not to indulge themselves and just grab it.

“I'll do that,” Olivia promised with a grin. She still hadn't called Andy, and seemed to have no intention of doing so at the moment. Peter didn't mention it again. He felt it was up to her to make that decision, but her stubbornness about it intrigued him, and he wondered if she was punishing him, or just afraid to call him.

Olivia was as good as her word when they got to her room. She handed all the pillows to him and one of the blankets, and helped him make an awkward bed on the carpet next to her side of the bed. He slept in his jeans and T-shirt and bare feet, and she changed into her nightgown in the tiny bathroom. And finally, they lay in the dark, she lay on the bed, and he on the floor next to her, and they held hands and talked in the dark for hours, but he made no move to kiss her, and it was nearly four o'clock when she finally stopped talking and drifted off to sleep. He stood up very quietly, and tucked her in, looking down at her sleeping like a little girl, and he leaned down and kissed her ever so gently. And then he lay down on the floor again, on his makeshift bed, and thought about her until morning.

Chapter Six

It was nearly ten-thirty when they both woke up the next day, and the sun was streaming in through the window. Olivia woke up first and she was looking down at him from the bed when he first stirred. And she smiled at him the moment he saw her.

“Good morning,” she whispered cheerily, and he groaned as he rolled over on his back. Despite the thin carpet and the blanket, the floor had been hard and he was more than a little tired after falling asleep at seven. “Are you stiff?” She saw his face as he turned, and offered to rub his back for him. They were both very proud of themselves that they had gotten through the night without misbehaving.

“I'd love that.” He accepted her offer of a back rub with a broad smile, and rolled over on his stomach with another groan, which amused her. She was still lying on her stomach on the bed, reaching down to him, and gently massaging his neck, and he lay happily on his makeshift bed with his eyes closed.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked, doing his shoulders after his neck and trying not to think about how smooth his skin was. He had skin like a baby.

“I lay here thinking about you all night,” he said honestly. “It's definitely a tribute to my being a gentleman that I behaved myself, or maybe it's just a sign of stupidity and old age.” He rolled over and looked at her then, and he took her hands in his, and then without any warning, he sat up easily, and kissed her.

“I had a dream about you last night,” she said, as he sat on the floor next to her, their faces next to each other's, and his hands played with her hair, as he kissed her lips again and again. He knew he was going to have to leave her shortly.

“What happened in the dream?” he whispered as he kissed her neck, his promises to himself slowly being forgotten.

“I was swimming in the ocean, and I started to drown …and then you saved me. I think it's pretty representative of what's happened ever since I met you. I was drowning when I met you,” she said, looking at him, and this time he put his arms around her and kissed her. He was on his knees by then, and she was still on the bed, and suddenly his hands began to explore her breasts beneath her nightgown. She moaned softly at his touch, and wanted to remind him of their mutual promises, but in a single instant she forgot them, and reached out to him and pulled him toward her.

Their kisses were increasingly passionate as she pulled him slowly toward her in the bed, and a moment later their bodies were entwined, and they were tangled in the sheets, she still in her nightgown, and he was still wearing blue jeans. They lay there together for a long time, kissing each other and forgetting themselves and discovering things about each other that they had promised not to explore. As Peter kissed her, he wanted to devour her, to just swallow her whole, until she was a part of him, and he could keep her near him forever.

“Peter …” she whispered his name, and he held her close to him, and then he was kissing her again, and she was reaching for him in total starvation.

“Olivia …don't … I don't want you to be sorry later….” He tried to be responsible, for her sake more than his own or Kate's, but he couldn't stop himself either by then. Without saying another word, she peeled his jeans away from him, his T-shirt was already gone, and he tossed her thin nightgown high into the air, and it settled somewhere on the floor nearby as he began making love to her. And it was nearly noon when they caught their breath again, and they lay in each other's arms, completely spent and sated. But neither of them had ever looked happier, and Olivia smiled up at him from where she lay in his arms, her exquisite limbs completely entwined with his now.

“Peter … I love you …”

“That's a good thing,” he said, pulling her so close to him that they almost seemed like one person, “because I've never loved anyone so much in my life. I guess I'm not a gentleman after all,” he said, looking only faintly regretful, and so pleased with what they'd done, and she smiled sleepily at him.

“I'm glad you're not.” She sighed and snuggled still closer to him.

They said nothing for a long time, and just lay there in each other's arms, grateful for every moment that they shared. And finally, knowing they would have to leave each other again, they made love again, one last time. And when they got up at last, Olivia clung to him and cried. She never wanted to leave him, but they knew they had to. She had decided to go back to Paris with him. And they left their hotel at four o'clock looking like two children banished from the Garden of Eden.

They stopped and got something to eat, and shared a glass of wine and some sandwiches sitting on the beach, looking out at the ocean.

“I'll be able to visualize you here, if you come back,” he said sadly, looking at her, and wishing, as she did, that they could stay there together forever.

“Will you come to see me?” she asked, smiling wistfully at him, her hair hanging over her eyes, with grains of sand along the side of her face where she'd been lying.

But for a long time Peter didn't answer. He wasn't sure what to say to her. He knew he couldn't make any promises. He still had a life with Kate, and only an hour before, Olivia had said she understood that. She didn't want to take anything away from him. All she wanted was to cherish what they had shared for the past two days. It was more than some people had in a lifetime.

“I'll try,” he said finally, not wanting to break a promise to her even before he made it. They both knew how difficult it was going to be, and they had already said that they couldn't continue their affair. It would have to remain nothing more than a memory. Their lives were too complicated, and they were both far too involved with other people. And once Olivia went back to her own world, the paparazzi who normally followed her would never let something like this happen. What they had shared here was a miracle and could never be repeated.

“I'd like to come back here and rent a house,” Olivia said solemnly. “I think I could actually write here.”

“You ought to try it,” he said as he kissed her.

They threw the last of their lunch away, and stood for a moment, hand in hand, looking out at the ocean.

“I'd like to think we'll be back here one day. Together, I mean,” Peter said, promising her something he hadn't dared to say before, that there was some dim, distant hope for a future. Or maybe just another day. Another memory to carry with them. Olivia expected nothing of him.

“Maybe we will,” she said quietly. “If it's meant to be, maybe that will happen.” But they had obstacles to overcome first, hurdles they had to jump, burning hoops they had to leap through. He had Vicotec to see through to the end, his father-in-law to contend with, Kate waiting for him in Connecticut, and she had to go back and deal with Andy.

They walked quietly to his car, and she had bought some food for the road. She put it in the backseat and hoped he couldn't see the tears in her eyes, but even without looking at her, he could feel them. He could feel them in his heart. He was crying for the same reasons that she was. He wanted more than either of them had a right to.

He pulled her close to him, as they stood looking out to sea for a last time, and told her how much he loved her. She told him the same thing, and then they kissed again, and then finally got into his rented car to begin the long drive back to Paris.

They hardly spoke to each other for a while, and then finally they both relaxed again, and started talking. They were each dealing with what had happened in their own way, trying to absorb it, make it theirs, and accept the inevitable limitations.

“It's going to be so hard,” Olivia said, smiling through tears in spite of herself as they passed la Vierrerie , “knowing that you're out there somewhere and I can't be with you.”

“I know,” he said, feeling a lump in his throat as well. “I was thinking the same thing when we left the hotel. It's going to drive me crazy. Who am I going to talk to?” And now that they had made love, in some ways he felt she was his now.

“You could call once in a while,” she said hopefully. “I could let you know where I am.”

But they both knew that wherever he was, he was still going to be married. “That doesn't seem fair to you.” None of it was. It was the danger in what they'd done, but they both knew it. And not making love wouldn't really have changed anything. In some ways, it might even have made it harder. At least this way, they had had it all, and they could take it with them.

“Maybe we should meet somewhere in six months, just to see what's happening in our lives.” She looked embarrassed for an instant, thinking of one of her favorite movies with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. It was a classic and she had cried over it a thousand times when she was younger. “Maybe we could meet at the Empire State Building,” she said only half jokingly, and he shook his head quickly.

“That's no good. You'd never show up. I'd get mad about it, and you'd wind up in a wheelchair. Try another movie.” He smiled and she laughed at him.

“What are we going to do?” she asked, looking mournfully out the window.

“Go back. Be strong. Go back to whatever it is we did before to make it all work. I think that's easier for me than for you. I was so stupid and blind, I didn't even realize how unhappy I was. I think you have a lot to sort out though. The trick for me is going to be making it look like nothing has happened, as though I haven't seen the truth during my week in Paris. How would I ever explain that?”

“Maybe you won't have to.” She wondered how badly the Vicotec mess was going to rock his boat if it didn't do well in the tests. That remained to be seen, and Peter was getting increasingly worried about it.

“Why don't you write to me, Olivia?” he said finally. “At least let me know where you are. I'll go crazy if I don't know. Will you promise me that?”

“Of course.” She nodded.

They talked as they drove through the night, and it was nearly four A.M. when they arrived in Paris. He stopped a few blocks from the hotel, and although they were both tired by then, he pulled over.

“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” he asked, remembering his opening line in the Place de la Concorde, and she smiled sadly.

“You can buy me anything you like, Peter Haskell.”

“What I want to give you can't be bought, at any price,” he said, referring to all he felt for her and had from the first moment he saw her. “I love you. I probably will for the rest of my life. There's never going to be anyone like you. There never has been, never will be. Remember that, wherever you are. I love you.” He kissed her then, long and hard, and they clung to each other like two people drowning.

“I love you too, Peter. I wish you could take me with you.”

“I wish that too.” He knew that neither of them would ever forget what they had shared for the past two days, and what had passed between them that morning.

He drove her back to the hotel then, and let her out at the far end of the Place Vendome. She had no bags with her, only the cotton skirt she wore. She had rolled up her jeans and T-shirt and was carrying them. She left nothing with him, except her heart, and she looked at him for a last time, and he kissed her again, and then she ran across the square, with tears streaming down her cheeks when she left him.

He sat there for a long time, thinking of her, and watching the entrance to the hotel where he had last seen her. He knew she had to be in her room by then, and this time she had promised him she would go back and not disappear again. And if she did, he wanted her to come to him, or at least let him know where she was. He didn't want her wandering around France. Unlike her husband, Peter was far more concerned with her safety. He was worried about everything, about what they'd done, about what would happen to her now when she went back, and whether or not she would once again be used and exploited, or if this time she would leave him. He worried about facing Kate again, when he went back to Connecticut, and if she would sense that something had changed between them. Or had it? Olivia had made him realize his success was his own, but he still felt he owed so much to Kate, in spite of what Olivia had said to him. He couldn't just let her down now. He had to go on as if nothing had happened. What had happened with Olivia had no past, no present, no future. It was simply a moment, a dream, an instant, a diamond they had found in the sand and held between them. But they both had other obligations which took precedence. It was Kate who was his past, his present, and his future. The only problem was the ache in his heart. And as he walked back into the Ritz, he thought his heart would break as he thought about Olivia. He wondered if he would ever see her again, and where she was at that exact moment. A life without her was beyond imagining, but that was all he had now.

And when he opened the door to his room, he saw the small envelope waiting for him. Dr. Paul-Louis Suchard had called, and requested that Mr. Haskell call him at his earliest possible convenience.

He was back to real life, to the things that mattered to him, his wife, his sons, his business. And somewhere in the distance, receding into the mists, was the woman he had found but could never have, the woman he was so desperately in love with.

He stood at his balcony as the sun came up, thinking about her. It all seemed like a dream, and perhaps it was. Perhaps none of it was real. The Place de la Concorde …the café in Montmartre …the beach at La Favière … all of it. He knew that no matter what he felt for her, or how sweet it had been, he had to let it go now.

Chapter Seven

When the wake-up call came at eight, Peter was dead to the world, and as soon as he hung up the phone, he wondered why he felt so awful. He felt as though there were lead in his soul, and then just as suddenly, he remembered. She was gone from him. It was over. He had to call Suchard, and fly back to New York and face Frank, and Katie. And Olivia had gone back to her husband.

It was hard to believe how miserable he felt as he stood in the shower, thinking of her, and forcing his mind back repeatedly to the business he had to deal with that morning.

He called Suchard precisely at nine, and Paul-Louis refused to tell him what the results were. He insisted that Peter come directly to the laboratory. He said that all of the tests were complete now. He wanted an hour of Peter's time, and said he could easily catch a two o'clock plane. Peter was annoyed that he wouldn't at least give him a summary of their results on the phone, and agreed to come to his office at ten-thirty.

He ordered coffee and croissants, but could eat none of it, and he left the hotel at ten, and arrived ten minutes early. Suchard was waiting for him, and his face was grim. But in the end, the results were not quite as bad as Peter had feared, or Paul-Louis had predicted. One of the essential substances of Vicotec was clearly dangerous, and it was possible they would have to find a substitute, but the entire product did not have to be abandoned. It had to be “reworked,” as Suchard said, and it could prove to be a lengthy process. When pressed, he admitted that the changes could be effected in six months or a year, perhaps less if a miracle occurred, though it was doubtful. More reasonably, the process would take about two years, which was pretty much what Peter had suspected after their first conversation. Perhaps, if they put extra teams on it, they could get Vicotec on its feet in less than a year, which wasn't the end of the world, though it was certainly disappointing. But the substance, as it existed now, and as they had planned to market it, was virtually a killer. It didn't have to be, and Suchard had several suggestions as to how to effect the necessary changes. But Peter knew that Frank would not consider any of this good news. He hated delays, and the extensive research that still had to be done would be costly. There was no hope of asking for early human trials now from the FDA, or attending the hearing they had set up for September in order to get it on the “Fast Track.” What Frank wanted, of course, was early release of the drug as quickly as possible, resulting in massive revenues, which was different from what Peter wanted out of it. But whatever their reasons or their goals, right now they had nothing to ask for.

Peter thanked Paul-Louis for his input and his thorough research, and he sat lost in thought as he rode back to the hotel, trying to think of the right words to tell Frank. Paul-Louis's exact words still rang in his own ears uncomfortably: “Vicotec, as it stands now, is a killer.” It was certainly not what they had intended, or what he would have wanted for his mother and sister. But somehow Peter couldn't see Frank taking the news reasonably, or even Katie. She hated things that upset her father. But even she would have to understand this time. No one wanted a series of tragedies, or even one, they could not afford to let that happen.

Peter closed his bags back at the hotel, and as he waited the last ten minutes for the car, he flipped on the news. And there she was. It was almost exactly what he had expected. The big news of the hour was that Olivia Douglas Thatcher had been found. And the tale they told was too strange to be true, and of course it wasn't. She had gone out to meet a friend, apparently, had a minor car accident, and had been suffering from mild amnesia for three days. Apparently no one in the small hospital where she was had recognized her or seen the news, and miraculously the night before, she had come to her senses again and was now happily reunited with her husband.

“So much for honest reporting,” Peter said, shaking his head and looking disgusted. They ran all the same old, tired photographs of her, and then ran an interview with a neurologist speculating on lasting brain damage from a minor concussion. But they concluded with a statement wishing Mrs. Thatcher a complete and speedy recovery. “Amen,” he said, and flipped off the tube. He looked around the room for a last time, and picked up his briefcase. His bag was already gone, and there was nothing left to do but leave his hotel room.

But it gave him an odd feeling of nostalgia this time leaving the room. So much had happened during this trip, and he wanted suddenly to run upstairs, just to see her. He would knock on the door of their suite, say he was an old friend …and Andy Thatcher would probably think he was crazy. Peter wondered if he suspected anything about the last three days, or if he didn't even care. It was hard to gauge and the story they had told the press was a thin tale at best. Peter thought it was ridiculous and wondered who had come up with that story.

And when he went downstairs, the usual cast of characters was there, the Arabs, the Japanese. King Khaled had gone to London after the bomb scare. There seemed to be a whole flock of new arrivals checking in as Peter made his way past the desk, and there was a large group of men in suits with walkie-talkies and earpieces as he stepped through the revolving door, and then he saw her in the distance. She was just getting into a limousine, and Andy was already in it with two of his people. He was turned away from her, talking to them, and as though sensing Peter nearby, Olivia glanced over her shoulder. She stopped, mesmerized, and looked at him. Their eyes met and held for a long time, and Peter was worried that someone might have noticed. He nodded slightly at her, and then, as though she had to tear herself away from him again, she slipped into the limousine, and the door closed, and Peter stood staring after her on the sidewalk, unable to see in the darkened windows.

“Tour car is waiting, monsieur,” the doorman said politely, anxious to avoid a traffic jam in front of the Ritz. Two models were trying to leave for a shoot and Peter's limousine was blocking them. And they were getting hysterical, shouting at him and waving.

“Sorry.” He tipped the doorman and got in, and without another word, or even a last look at her, he looked straight ahead as the driver headed swiftly toward the airport.

And in their car, Andy was taking Olivia to see two congressmen and the Ambassador at the embassy. It was a meeting he'd had planned all week, and he had insisted she go with him. He had been furious with her at first, over the stir she'd caused, but within an hour of her safe return, he concluded that her disappearance was a bonus to him. He and his managers had worked out a series of possibilities, all of them designed to arouse sympathy, particularly in light of his current plans. He wanted to make her another Jackie Kennedy. She had the right looks for it, and that same waiflike quality, coupled with her natural style and elegance, and her courage in the face of adversity. His advisors had decided she was perfect. They were going to have to pay more attention to her than they had in the past, and groom her a little bit, but there was no question in their minds that she could do it.

She'd have to stop pulling her little disappearing acts though. She had done things like that for a while after Alex died, taken off for a few hours, disappeared for a night somewhere, she was usually at her brother's or her parents'. This had gone on for longer than in the past, but he had never truly had a sense that she was in danger. He knew she'd turn up eventually, he just hoped she didn't do anything stupid in the meantime. And he told her just what he thought of it before they left for the embassy, and told her what was expected of her now. At first she had said she wasn't going with him. And she had objected vehemently to the story they were releasing to the press about her.

“I sound like a complete moron,” she said, horrified. “A brain-damaged one at that,' she said, complaining bitterly about the story.

“You didn't leave us much choice. What would you like us to say? That you were dead drunk in a hotel on the Left Bank for three days? Or should we tell the truth? What was the truth, by the way, or do I want to know it?”

“It's not nearly as interesting as anything you'd make up. I needed some time to myself, that's all.”

“That's what I thought,” he said, looking more bored than annoyed. He did plenty of disappearing acts himself, but he was subtler than his wife about it. “Next time, you might leave me a note, or tell someone.”

“I was going to,” she said, looking embarrassed this time, “and then I wasn't even sure you'd notice.”

“You must think I'm completely unaware of what goes on,” he said with a look of annoyance.

“Aren't you? About me, at least.” And then she gathered her courage in both hands and said what she had planned to all along. “I'd like to speak to you this afternoon. Maybe when we get back from the embassy.”

“I have a lunch,” he said, losing interest in her immediately. She was back. She hadn't embarrassed him. They had satisfied the press. He needed her at the embassy, and after that he had other things to think of.

“This afternoon will be fine,” she said coolly. She could see the look in his eyes that told her he didn't have time for her. It was a familiar look to her, and not one that endeared him to her.

“Is something wrong?” he asked with a look of surprise at her. It was rare that she demanded his time, but he didn't in any way suspect what was coming.

“Not at all. I always disappear for three days at a time. What could be wrong?” He didn't like the look in her eyes or the way she said it.

“You were damn lucky I was able to clean that up for you, Olivia. If I were you, I wouldn't be so snotty about it. You can't expect to go wandering off like that, and have everyone be amused when you get home. If the press wanted to, they could really rake you over the coals for it. So why don't you just back off,” he said. He was all too aware that stunts like that could badly damage his chances.

“Sorry,” she said, looking grim. “I didn't mean to cause you so much trouble.” He had never said a single word about being worried about her, or afraid she might have come to some harm. In truth, he had never thought about it. Knowing her as well as he did, he had remained convinced that she was hiding. “Why don't we talk after you get back from your appointments this afternoon. It can wait till then.” She tried to say it calmly. But she was angry at him too. He always let her down. He hadn't been there for her in years now. And it was even more difficult now not to compare him to Peter.

Peter was all she could think of, and when they left for the embassy a little while later, it almost broke her heart when she saw him. She had been afraid to make any sign to him. She knew that the press would be watching her closely for a while. They were probably suspicious of the concocted story too, and every little tidbit they could ferret out would please them.

She was lost in her own thoughts, the whole time they were at the embassy. And Andy didn't ask her to join him for lunch afterwards. He had a longstanding appointment with a French politician. But when he came back at four o'clock, he was in no way prepared for what she told him. She was waiting quietly in the living room of the suite, sitting in a chair, and staring out the window. Peter was on a plane to New York by then, and it was all she could think of. He was going back to “them,” the other people in his life, the ones who didn't care about him. And she was back in the hands of the exploiters too, but not for much longer.

“What's the big deal?” Andy asked as he came in. Two of his assistants were with him, but when he saw her face, and how serious she was, he rapidly dismissed them. He had only seen her look that way once or twice, when his brother died, and when Alex did. The rest of the time she always seemed withdrawn from him, and removed from the world he lived in.

“I have something I want to say to you,” she said quietly, not sure where to begin. All she knew was that she had to tell him.

“I figured out that much,” he said, looking more handsome than any man she knew. His blue eyes were huge, and his still-blond hair made him seem boyish. He had broad shoulders and a narrow waist, and as he sat down in one of the brocade chairs he crossed his long legs. But Olivia wasn't dazzled by him anymore, she wasn't even charmed. She knew how selfish he was, and how obsessed, and how little he cared about her.

“I'm leaving,” she said simply. That was it. It was out. It was over.

“Leaving where?” he said, looking puzzled. He didn't even understand what she was saying, and she could only smile at that. It was beyond his understanding and imagination.

“I'm leaving you,” she translated for him, “as soon as we get back to Washington. I can't do this anymore. That's why I went away for the last few days. I had to think about it. But I'm sure now.” She wanted to be sorry about what she was saying to him, but they both knew she wasn't. And he didn't look sorry either, just startled.

“Your timing's not great,” he said pensively, but he didn't ask her why she was going.

“It never is. There's never a good time for something like this. It's like getting sick, it's never convenient.” She was thinking of Alex, and he nodded. He knew how hard that had hit her. But it had been two years. In some ways, he thought she had never recovered. And neither had their marriage.

“Is there anything specific that brought this on? Is something bothering you?” He didn't bother to ask her if there was someone else. He knew her better than that, and sensed easily that there wasn't. And he was absolutely convinced that he knew everything about her.

“There's a lot bothering me, Andy. You know that.” The two of them exchanged a long look, and neither of them would have denied that they had become strangers. She didn't even know who he was now. “I never wanted to be a political wife. I told you that when we got married.”

“I can't help that, Olivia. Things change. I never expected Tom to be killed. I never expected a lot of things. Neither did you. Things happen. You do your best to face them.”

“I've done that. I've been there for you. I campaigned with you. I've done everything you expected, but we're not married anymore, Andy, and you know it. You haven't been there for me in years. I don't even know who you are now.”

“I'm sorry,” he said quietly, and he sounded sincere, but he didn't offer to change it either. “This is a bad time for you to do this to me.” He looked at her with a pointed look that would have frightened her if she had known what he was thinking. He needed her desperately, and there was no way he was willing to let her go now. “There's something I've been meaning to discuss with you. I didn't make the final decision until last week.” And whatever decision it had been, it was equally clear to her that she had been no part of it. “I wanted you to be among the first to know, Olivia.” “Among the first,” but not the first, it was the whole story of the recent years of their marriage. “I'm going to run for the presidency next year. It means everything to me. And I'm going to need your help to win it.” She sat staring at him, and if he had hit her with a baseball bat, he couldn't have hit her harder. It wasn't that she hadn't been expecting it. She knew it was a possibility, but now it was real, and the way he said it to her brought it home like a bomb in her hands, and she had no idea what to do now. “I've been thinking a lot about this, knowing how you feel about political campaigns. But I would imagine there's a little appeal to being first lady.” He said it with a small smile, encouraging her, but she did not smile at him in answer. She looked horrified. The last thing in the world she wanted to be was first lady.

“There's no appeal to it whatsoever,” she said, shaking.

“But there is to me,” he said bluntly. It was the one thing he wanted, more than he wanted her, or any marriage. “And I can't do it without you. There's no such thing as a separated president, much less a divorced one. That's not news to you.” She was a political pro, after growing up with her father. But as he looked at her, he had an idea. If nothing else, he had to salvage what he could from this, though he made no effort at all to convince her he still loved her. She was too smart for that, he had already put too many stamps in the coupon book. It had gone too far, and they both knew it.

“Let me suggest something to you,” he said thoughtfully. “It's not exactly a romantic idea, but maybe it would suit both our needs. I need you. Practically speaking, for the next five years at least. One for the campaign, and four more for my first term. After that, we can either renegotiate, or the country will have to adjust to our situation. Maybe it's time for people to understand that even their president is human. After all, look at Prince Charles and Princess Di. England survived it, surely we will.” In his own mind, he was already the president, and people were going to have to adjust to him, just as she did.

“I'm not quite sure we're in those leagues,” she said ironically, but he didn't seem to notice.

“Anyway,” he went on, ignoring her, thinking ahead and concentrating on making it sound appealing, “we're talking about five years. You're very young, Olivia. You can afford that, and it will give you a cachet you never had before. People will not just feel sorry for you, or curious about you, they will come to adore you. My boys and I can make that happen.” She wanted to vomit as she listened to him, but she let him continue. “I will put five hundred thousand dollars in an account for you at the end of each year, after taxes. At the end of five years, you'll have two and a half million dollars.” He held up a hand to anticipate any comment. “I know you can't be bought, but if you're going to go off on your own afterwards, that's a nice little nest egg with which to do it. And if we have another child,” he smiled at her, sweetening the deal, “I will give you another million. We've been talking about that recently, and I think that could be an important issue. You don't want people to think that there's something strange about us, or say that we're both gay, or you're obsessed by tragedy. They say enough of that already. I think it's time for us to move on, and have another baby.” Olivia couldn't believe what she was hearing. “We've been talking about a baby,” meant he and his campaign people. It was beyond disgusting.

“Why don't we just rent a baby?” she said coldly. “No one would have to know. We could just take it on the campaign trail with us, and then give it back when we get home. It would be a lot easier. Babies are so incredibly messy, and so much trouble.” He didn't like the look in her eyes when she said it.

“Comments like that are unnecessary,” he said quietly, looking like exactly what he was, a rich boy who had gone to all the best prep schools, followed by Harvard undergraduate and law school. He had lots of family money behind him, and he had always believed that there was nothing he couldn't have if he either bought it or worked hard enough for it. He was willing to do both, but not for her. And there was no way in the world she was going to have another baby with him. He was never around for the first one, even once he had cancer. It was part of why Alex's death had been so hard on her, and somewhat easier for Andy. He hadn't been nearly as close to their son as she was.

“Your proposal is revolting. It's the most disgusting thing I ever heard,” she said with a look of outrage. “You want to buy five years of my life, at a sensible price, and you want me to have another child because it will help you get elected. I may throw up if I sit here and listen to you for much longer.” The look on her face told him exactly what she thought of his proposal.

“You always liked children. I don't understand why that's a problem.”

“I don't like you anymore, Andy, and this is why, or part of it. How can you be this crass and insensitive? What has happened to you?” Tears burned her eyes, but she refused to cry for him. He wasn't worth it. “I love children. I still do. But I'm not going to have a baby for a campaign, with a man who doesn't love me. What were you suggesting, that we do it by artificial insemination?” He hadn't slept with her in months, and she didn't really care. He didn't have time, and he had other resources he exploited regularly, and she didn't have the interest.

“I think you're overreacting,” he said, but he was faintly embarrassed by what she was saying. There was some truth to it, and even he knew it. But he couldn't back down now. It was too important to him to win her over. He had told his campaign manager that she would balk at having a baby. She had been terribly attached to their first child, distraught when he died, and he suspected that she would never be willing to have another. She was much too afraid now to lose it. “All right, I'd like you to think about it, though. Say a million for each year. That's five million dollars for five years, and another two if you have a baby.” He was serious and all she could do was laugh now.

“Do you think I should hold out for two a year and three if I have a baby? What does that make,” she pretended to consider it, “let's see …that's six if I have twins …nine if I have triplets. I could take Pergonal shots …maybe even quadruplets …” She turned and looked at him with wounded eyes. Who was this man she had once believed in? How could she have been so wrong about him? Listening to him, she wondered if he'd ever been human, yet deep in her heart, she knew he had been, way, way at the beginning. It was because of the person he once had been, and not the one he was now, that she stayed and listened. “If I do any of this for you, and I doubt that I will, it will be out of some distorted sense of loyalty to you, not out of greed, or because I'm trying to get rich off you. But I know how badly you want this.” It would be her final gift to him, and then she'd never have to feel guilty for leaving.

“It's all I want, Olivia,” he said, so intent, he was pale. And she knew that for once he was being honest.

“I'll think about it,” she said quietly. She didn't know what to do now. That morning she had been convinced that she'd be back in La Favière by the end of the week, and now she was about to become first lady. It was a nightmare. But she felt as though she owed him something. He was still her husband, and he had been the father of her child, and she could help him get the one thing he wanted in life. It was an incredible gift to give anyone. And without her, she knew he couldn't do it.

“I want to announce it in two days. We're going back to Washington tomorrow.”

“Nice of you to tell me.”

“If you stuck around, maybe you'd get our travel plans,” he said bluntly, watching her, wondering what decision she'd make. But he knew her well enough to know he couldn't force her. He wondered if talking to her father would do anything, but he was afraid that in the end it might work against him.

It was a long agonizing night for her in the hotel, and she wished she could go for another long walk alone. She needed time to think, but understandably, she knew that the security people were skittish about her. And she wished more than anything that she could talk to Peter. She wondered what he would think, if he would say that she owed Andy this final gift, this one last great gesture of loyalty, or if he would say that she was crazy. Five years seemed like an eternity, and she knew that it would be five long years that she hated, particularly if he won the election.

But by morning, she had made up her mind, and met Andy over breakfast. He looked nervous and pale, not at the prospect of losing her, but with total terror that she wouldn't help him win the election.

“I suppose I should say something philosophical,” she said over coffee and croissants. He had asked everyone else to leave, which was rare for him. She hadn't been alone with him for years, except in bed at night, and this was the second time in two days. He looked at her strangely, convinced she was about to refuse him. “But I guess we're beyond philosophy, aren't we? I just keep wondering how we got here. I keep remembering back to the beginning. I think you were in love with me then, and I can never quite figure out what happened. I remember the events, like newsreels that I replay in my head, but I can never quite figure out the exact moment when it all went sour. Can you?' she asked him sadly.

“I'm not really sure it matters,” he said, sounding subdued. He already knew what she was going to tell him. He had never thought she would be this vengeful. He had had his share of dalliances, he had done a lot of things, but he had never thought it really mattered to her. He realized now he'd been very foolish. “I think things just happen over time. And my brother died. You don't know what that was like for me. You were there, but it was different for me. Suddenly everything that had been expected of him was expected of me. I had to stop being who I was and become him. I guess you and I got lost in the shuffle.'

“Maybe you should have told me then.” Maybe they should never have had Alex. Maybe she should have left him right in the beginning. But she wouldn't have given up the two years of Alex's life for anything. But even that didn't make her want another child now. She realized, as she looked at him, that she had to put Andy out of his misery. Waiting for her to finish what she had to say, he was dying. And she decided to do it quickly. “I've decided to agree to stay with you for the next five years, at a million a year. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, give it to charity, buy a castle in Switzerland, start a research fund in Alex's name, whatever it is, I'll figure it out later. You offered me a million a year, and I'll take it. But I have my conditions too. I want a guarantee from you that I'm out at the end of five years, whether or not you get reelected. And if you lose this time, all bets are off, and I'm gone the day after the election. And there's to be no pretense anymore. I'll pose for all the pictures you want, and go on the campaign trail, but you and I are no longer married. No one else has to know, but I want it clearly understood between us. I want my own bedroom wherever we go, and there will be no more children.” It was blunt, it was quick, it was direct, and it was over. Except that she had just plea-bargained herself into a five-year sentence, and he was so shocked he didn't even look pleased yet.

“How am I supposed to explain the separate bedroom?” He looked worried and pleased all at once. He had gotten almost everything he wanted, except a baby, and that had been his campaign manager's idea in the first place.

“Tell them I'm an insomniac,” she answered his question for him, “or I have nightmares.” It was a good idea, and he figured they'd come up with some fantasy to cover it … he had so much work to do …the stress of the presidency …something like that.

What about adoption?” He was negotiating down to the last points of the deal, but she remained firm on that one.

“Forget it. I'm not in the business of buying babies for politics. I won't do that to anyone, and certainly not an innocent child. They deserve a better life than this, and better parents.” One day she thought she might like to have another child, or even adopt one, but not with him, and not part of a business contract as loveless as this one. “And I want all of this in a contract. You're a lawyer, you can draw it up yourself, just between us, and no one ever has to see it.”

“You need witnesses,” he said, still looking bemused. She had absolutely overwhelmed him with her answer. After all she'd said the night before, he'd been certain she wouldn't do it.

“Find someone you trust then,” she said quietly, but that was a tall order in his world. Everyone surrounding him would have sold him out in an instant.

“I don't know what to say to you,” he said, still looking astonished.

“There's not much left to say, Andy, is there?” In one fell swoop, he was running for the presidency, and their marriage was over. It made her sad, thinking about it, but there was no tenderness, not even friendship left between them. It was going to be a long five years for her, and for her own sake, she hoped he wouldn't win it.

“What made you do it?” he asked softly, more grateful than he had ever been to anyone in his life.

“I don't know. I felt I owed it to you. It didn't seem right to have the ability to give you something you wanted so much, or withhold it. You're not keeping me from anything I really want, except freedom. I want to write eventually, but that can wait.” She looked at him with interest, and for the first time in years, he realized that he never knew her.

“Thank you, Olivia,” he said quietly as he stood up.

“Good luck,” she said softly, and he nodded and left the room, without looking back at her. And she realized once he left that he'd never even kissed her.

Chapter Eight

When Peter's plane touched down at Kennedy, there was a limousine waiting for him. He had arranged it all from the plane, and Frank was waiting for him at the office. In some ways, the news wasn't as bad as Peter had feared it would be, but it still wasn't good. And he knew that it would all be new to Frank, and would take a lot of explaining. Everything had been looking so good only five days before, when Peter left Geneva.

The Friday night traffic into town was miserable. It was rush hour, and it was June. Cars were jammed everywhere, and it was after six o'clock when Peter finally got to Wilson-Donovan, and he looked both strained and exhausted. He had spent hours going over Suchard's reports and notes on the plane, and for once he wasn't even thinking of Olivia. All he could think of was Frank, and Vicotec, and their future. The worst news of all was that they would have to cancel the FDA hearings asking for early release, but that was a practical matter. But Peter knew Frank would be bitterly disappointed.

His father-in-law was waiting for him upstairs, on the forty-fifth floor of Wilson-Donovan, in the large corner suite that he had occupied for nearly thirty years since Wilson-Donovan had moved to the building. And his secretary was still outside. She offered Peter a drink when he arrived, but all he wanted was a glass of water.

“So, you made it!” Frank looked distinguished and jovial, in a dark pin-striped suit with a full mane of white hair, and Peter noticed out of the corner of his eye that there was a bottle of French champagne cooling in a silver bucket. “What's all this secrecy? It's very cloak-and-dagger!” The two men shook hands, and Peter asked if he was well. But Frank Donovan looked healthier than he did. He was seventy, but he was vital and in good health, and very much in charge of everything, as he was now. He almost ordered Peter to tell him what had happened in Paris.

“I met with Suchard today,” Peter said as he sat down, wishing now that he had said something to warn him on the phone before that. The unopened champagne was staring at him like an accusation. “He took forever on the tests, but I think it was worth it.” He felt his knees tremble like a lad's, and he almost wished he didn't have to be there.

“What does that mean? A clean bill of health, I assume.” He squinted at his son-in-law, and Peter shook his head and faced him squarely.

“I'm afraid not, sir. One of the secondary components went crazy on him in the first round of the tests, and he absolutely wouldn't give us clearance on it till he ran them all again and figured out if we had a serious problem here, or their testing systems were mistaken.”

“And which was it?” Both men looked grave now.

“Our product, I'm afraid. There's one single element we have to change. When we do, well be home free. But right now, in Suchard's words, as things stand, Vicotec is a killer.” Peter looked as though he were ready to face anything, but Frank merely shook his head in disbelief, and sat back in his chair, contemplating what Peter had just told him.

“That's ridiculous. We know better than that. Look at Berlin. Look at Geneva. They ran those tests for months, and we came up clean every time in their testing.”

“But we didn't in Paris. We can't ignore that. At least it only appears to be one single element, and he thinks it can be changed 'fairly easily.' “ He was quoting Suchard now.

“How easily?” Frank scowled at him, wanting only one answer.

“He thinks, if we're lucky, the research could take six months to a year. If not, maybe two years. But if we put on double teams again, I think we might get it ready by next calendar year. I don't think we can do it any sooner.” He had calculated it all meticulously on his computer on the flight over.

“That's nonsense. We're asking for early human trials from the FDA in three months. That's how long we've got, and that's what it'll take us. It's your job to see to it. Get that French fool over here to help, if we have to.”

“We can't do it in three months.” Peter looked horrified by what Frank was saying. “That's impossible. We have to withdraw the request for early trials from the FDA, and we'll have to postpone our appearance at the hearings.”

“I won't do that,” Frank bellowed at him. “We'll look ridiculous. You've got plenty of time to work the kinks out before we go before them.”

“And if we don't, and they give us the release we want, we'll kill someone. You heard what Suchard said, it's dangerous. Frank, I want to see this product on the market more than anyone. But I'm not going to sacrifice people to do it.”

“I'm telling you,” his father-in-law spoke to him through clenched teeth. “You have three months to work it out before the hearing.”

“I'm not going to FDA hearings with a product that's dangerous, Frank. Do you understand what I'm saying?” Peter had raised his voice to him, which was a first for him. But he was tired, it had been a long flight, and he hadn't had a real night's sleep in days. And Frank was acting like a lunatic, insisting that they were going to the hearings to request they start human trials and put Vicotec on the “Fast Track,” when Suchard had just told them it was a killer. “Did you hear me?” He reiterated to Frank, and the older man shook his head in silent fury.

“No, I did not. You know what I want from you on this. Now do it. I'm not throwing more money down the tubes to develop this further. It's either going to fly now or it won't fly at all. Is that clear?”

“Very,” Peter said quietly, back in control again. “Then I guess it won't be flying. Whether or not to commit further research funds is your decision,” he said respectfully, but Frank only glared at him in anger.

“I'm giving you three months.”

“I need more than that, Frank. And you know it.”

“I don't care what you do. Just be sure you're ready for those September hearings.”

Peter wanted to tell him he was out of his mind, but he didn't dare. He had never known him to make dangerous decisions. He was being completely unreasonable and doing something that could bring the company down around them. It was ridiculous, and Peter could only assume he'd come to his senses in the morning. Like Peter, he was just disappointed.

“I'm sorry about the bad news,” Peter said quietly, wondering if Frank expected him to give him a ride to Greenwich in the limo. If so, the ride was going to be long and uncomfortable, but Peter was willing to do it.

“I think Suchard is out of his mind,” Frank said angrily, striding across his office and pulling open the door, as a sign for Peter to leave him.

“I was upset about it too,” he said honestly, but at least he had been more reasonable than Frank, who seemed not to understand the ramifications of what he was saying. You could not ask for early clinical trials, aiming toward early release on a product that was still clearly dangerous and had not been perfected, or you were just plain begging for trouble. And Peter just couldn't see why Frank refused to understand that.

“Is that why you stayed in Paris all week?” Frank asked, obviously still furious at him. It wasn't Peter's fault, but he was the bearer of bad tidings.

“It is. I thought he'd move more quickly if I was there, waiting.”

“Maybe we shouldn't have bothered to have him test it.” Peter couldn't believe what he was hearing.

“I'm sure you'll feel differently when you give it some thought, and read the reports.” Peter handed him a stack of papers from his briefcase.

“Give it to research.” Frank pushed it away impatiently. “I'm not going to read that garbage. They're just looking to delay us needlessly. I know the kind of work Suchard does for us. He's a nervous old woman.”

“He's a prize-winning scientist,” Peter said firmly, determined to hold his ground, but the meeting with Frank had been a nightmare from beginning to end, and he was anxious to leave, and get home to Greenwich. “I think we should discuss this further on Monday, when you've had some time to digest it.”

“There's nothing to digest. I'm not even going to discuss it. I'm sure Suchard's report is nothing more than hysteria, and I refuse to pay attention to it. If you want to, that's your business.” And then he narrowed his eyes and wagged a finger at him. “And I don't want this discussed with anyone. Tell both our research teams here to keep their mouths shut. All we need is this kind of gossip flying around and the FDA will withdraw our application for us.” Peter felt as though he were in a surrealistic movie. It really was time for Frank to step down, if he was going to make these kinds of decisions. They had no choice. They could not go to the FDA with Vicotec before it was ready. And he had no idea why Frank wouldn't listen. But Frank looked increasingly annoyed when he moved on to the next matter of business.

“We received notification from Congress, while you were gone,” he snapped at Peter. “They want us to appear in front of a subcommittee in the fall, to discuss the high prices of pharmaceutical products in today's market. More whining crap from the government, about why we're not handing out drugs free on street corners. We do plenty of that in clinics and third world countries. This is an industry for God's sake, not a foundation. And don't think we're going to price Vicotec like a giveaway. I won't have it!” The hair on Peter's neck stood up as his father-in-law said it. The whole purpose of the drug was to make it accessible to the masses, to make it available to people in remote or rural areas, or home situations that made it difficult, or even impossible, to get to medical practitioners for treatment, like his mother and sister. If Wilson-Donovan was going to price it like a luxury drug, they were going to defeat the purpose, and Peter had to fight back a wave of panic.

“I think price is going to be an important issue here,” Peter said calmly.

“So does Congress,” Frank barked at Peter. “They're not calling on us just for this, it's the broader issues, but we still have to make a stand for high prices, or they're going to cram our words right down our throat when Vicotec hits the market.”

“I think we should keep a low profile,” Peter said, his heart sinking as he said it. He didn't like anything he was hearing. It was all about profit. They were developing a miracle drug, and Frank Donovan was going to take full advantage of it.

“I've already accepted. You're going. I thought you could do it in September, when you go to the FDA hearings. You'll be in Washington anyway.”

“Maybe not,” Peter said sternly, determined to put the battles off till later. He was exhausted. “Would you like a ride out to Greenwich?” he asked politely, hoping to change the subject. He was still stunned by how stubborn Frank had been. It was way beyond reason.

“I'm having dinner in the city,” Frank said curtly. “I'll see you this weekend.” Peter was sure that he and Katie had arranged something, and she would tell him when he got home. But all he could think about when he left was the insanity of Frank's position. Maybe he was senile. No sane person would have wanted to appear in front of the FDA, asking for early release on a product that was dangerous, not after what Suchard had said, not if there was any risk at all. And as far as Peter was concerned, it had nothing to do with legalities, or liability, it had to do with moral responsibility. Imagine if Vicotec was cleared for sale, and they killed someone. There was no doubt in Peter's mind that in that case he and Frank would be responsible, and not the drug. It was out of the question.

It took him the entire hour of the trip to recover from the meeting with Frank, and when he got home Katie and all three boys were milling around the kitchen. She was trying to organize a barbecue and Mike had promised to help, but he was on the phone setting up a date for later that night, and Paul said he had something else to do. Peter looked at his wife ruefully, took off his jacket, and put on the apron. It was two o'clock in the morning for him, but he hadn't been home all week, and he felt more than a little guilty.

He tried to kiss Kate hello once he had the apron on, but he was surprised by how cool she was, and wondered if she suspected something about Paris. The telepathy of the female race amazed him. He had never cheated on her in eighteen years, and the one time he had, he suspected she knew it. The boys disappeared almost immediately, to pursue their own plans, and she remained chilly with him all through dinner. It was only once the boys were gone that she actually said something to him, and his heart sank when he heard it.

“My father tells me you were very rough on him tonight,” she said quietly, looking daggers at her husband. “I don't think that's fair. You've been gone all week, and he was all excited about the launch of Vicotec, and you spoiled it.” It wasn't another woman she was upset about, it was her father. As usual, she was defending him without even knowing what had happened.

“I didn't spoil it, Kate, Suchard did,” he said, feeling drained. He couldn't fight both of them. He had barely slept all week, and he wasn't up to it, besides the fact that he had to defend his business decisions to her upset him deeply. “The laboratory in France detected a serious problem, a flaw in the makeup of Vicotec which could potentially kill someone. We have to change it.” He said it calmly and matter-of-factly, but she still looked suspicious as he explained it to her.

“Dad says you're refusing to take it to the hearings.” Her voice was a plaintive sound in their kitchen.

“Of course I am. Do you think I want to take a product with a serious flaw to the FDA and ask for an early release, to sell it to an unsuspecting public? Don't be ridiculous. I have no idea why your father reacted the way he did. But I assume that, when he reads the reports, he'll come to his senses.”

“Father says you're being childish, that the reports are hysterical, and there's no need to panic.” She was relentless and a muscle tightened in Peter's jaw. He was not going to discuss it with her any further.

“I don't think this is the right time to talk about it. I'm sure your father was upset, so was I. And just like him, I didn't want the results to be what they were. But denial is not the answer.”

“You make him sound stupid,” she said angrily, and this time Peter snapped at her.

“He acted like it, and you're acting like his mother, Kate. This is not between us. This is a serious business matter in the company, and an important life-threatening decision. It's not yours to make, or even to comment on, and I don't think you should be involved here.” It infuriated him that Frank had obviously called her to complain the moment he left the office. And it reminded him suddenly of everything Olivia had said. She was right. Kate did run his life, and so did her father. And what annoyed him was that he had never allowed himself to see that.

“Dad says you don't even want to appear before Congress about pricing.” She sounded wounded as she said it, and Peter sighed, feeling helpless.

“I didn't say that. I said I thought we should keep a low profile right now, but I haven't made any decision about Congress. I don't know anything about it.” But she did. Frank had told her everything. And as usual, she knew more than he did.

“Why are you being so difficult?” Kate hounded him as he put their plates in the dishwasher, and tried to help her. But he was so exhausted and so jet-lagged he could hardly see straight.

“You don't belong in this, Kate. Let your father run Wilson-Donovan. He knows what he's doing.” And he shouldn't have been whining to his daughter. Peter was livid.

“That's exactly what I was saying to you,” Kate said victoriously. She didn't even look pleased to see him. All she wanted to do was defend her father to him. She didn't even seem to care how tired Peter was, or how disappointed he was himself by the flaw in Vicotec, and their inability to go to the FDA with it, or commence production. Her only thought was for her father. It had never been as obvious to him as it was now, and seeing the look in her eyes hurt him deeply. “Let my father make the decisions. If he says you can go to the FDA with it, there's no reason not to. And if it makes him happy for you to appear before Congress on pricing issues, why not do that?” Peter wanted to scream as he listened.

“Appearing before Congress is not the issue here, Kate. And going to the FDA too soon on a product that's potentially dangerous is suicide, for all of us in the company, and for the patients who might choose to use it, unaware of potentially lethal complications. Would you take thalidomide knowing what you do now? Of course not. Would you ask for early release by the FDA? Of course you wouldn't. You can't ignore potentially fatal flaws in these products once you're aware of them, Kate. That's insane, and so is going to the FDA prematurely. You can turn the whole country off the drug by exposing it too soon, or unwisely.”

“I think Father's right. You're a coward,” she said bluntly.

“I can't believe this,” he said, staring at her in disbelief. “Is that what he said to you?” She nodded in answer. “I think he's overwrought and I'd like you not to get involved in this. I've been gone for nearly two weeks, and I don't want to get in an argument with you about your father.”

“Then don't torment him. He was very upset by the way you behaved this afternoon. I think that's rotten of you, Peter, and unkind, and disrespectful.”

“When I need a conduct report from you, Kate, I'll ask for one. But until then, I think your father and I can work this out for ourselves. He's a grown man, and he doesn't need you to defend him.”

“Maybe he does. He's almost twice your age, and if you don't have any respect for him, you'll drive him into an early grave, if you ride over him roughshod.” She was near tears as she berated her husband, and he sat down and took off his tie. He couldn't believe what he was hearing.

“Oh for God's sake, will you stop? This is ridiculous. He's a grown-up. He can take care of himself, and we don't need to fight over him. You're going to put me in an early grave if you don't give me a break. I've hardly slept this week, worrying about the testing at the laboratory,” and then of course there was Olivia, and three nights spent talking to her and driving to and from La Favière. But none of that was mentioned, and it seemed so unreal now that even he could no longer believe it. Kate had catapulted him back into his own world with the subtlety of a nuclear explosion.

“I don't know why you were so cruel to him,” she said, blowing her nose, and Peter stared at her, wondering if she and her father were both crazy. This was a product they were dealing with. It had some problems to work out. It was not personal. His refusal to go to the FDA with it was not a mutiny against Frank, nor was his candor with him meant as an affront to Katie. Were they all nuts? Had it always been like this? Or was it suddenly worse than ever? As tired as he was, it was difficult to make heads or tails of it, and Katie crying over it was the last straw, as he got up and put his arms around her.

“I wasn't cruel to him, Katie, believe me. Maybe he had a bad day. So did I. Let's go to bed, please …I'm so tired I feel like I'm dying.” Or was it losing Olivia that made him feel that way? He couldn't figure any of it out now.

Katie went to bed with him reluctantly, and she was still complaining about his injustices to her father. It was so ridiculous he stopped answering her, and in five minutes he was asleep, dreaming of a young girl on a beach. She was laughing and beckoning to him, and he ran toward her thinking it was Olivia, but when he got to her, it was Katie, and she was angry at him. She was shouting at him, and as he listened, he saw Olivia disappearing into the distance.

And when he awoke the next day, he felt leaden again. It was that overwhelming feeling of despair that felt like rocks had been dropped on him. He couldn't remember what it was, or why he felt that way, and then as he looked around and saw the familiar room, he remembered. He remembered another room, another day, a different woman. It was hard to believe it was only two days before. It might as well have been a lifetime. And as he lay in bed, thinking of her, Katie came in and told him they were playing golf that afternoon, with her father.

Olivia was gone, the dream was done. This was the reality he had come home to. It was the same life he had always led, it was just that suddenly it all felt so different.

Chapter Nine

Things settled down somewhat eventually. Katie's spirits improved, and she stopped defending her father as though he were a child in the sandbox. They saw a lot of him socially, and after the first few days Peter was home, both she and her father were in better humor. And Peter always liked it when the boys were around, though this year they seemed to spend less and less time with their parents. Mike had a driver's license now, and he drove Paul everywhere, which lightened the load on them and also meant they didn't see them. Even Patrick seemed to spend very little time with them. He had a crush on the girl next door, and spent most of his waking hours at her house.

What is it about us this year? Do we have leprosy?” Peter complained to Kate one morning over breakfast. “We never see the kids anymore. They're always out somewhere. I thought they were supposed to spend time with us when they came home from boarding school, instead they're out with their friends all the time.” He felt genuinely bereft without them. He liked spending time with his kids, and it made him feel sad somehow when he didn't. They provided a kind of companionship and ease he no longer shared with Katie.

“You'll see them at the Vineyard this summer,” she said calmly. She was more used to their comings and goings and more inured to their busy lives, than he was. And in truth, she didn't enjoy them quite as much as he did. He had always been a terrific father, even when they were little.

“Should I make an appointment with them now? I mean hell, August is only five weeks away. I'd hate to miss them. I'll only be there for a month.” He was only half teasing and she laughed at him.

“They're all grown up,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Does that mean I've been fired?” He looked genuinely startled. At fourteen, sixteen, and eighteen, the boys didn't have much use for their parents.

“More or less. You can play golf with my dad on weekends.” The irony was that she still spent more time with her father than her own sons did with their parents. But he didn't point it out to her, or say that their sons' reactions were far more normal.

And things were still more than a little strained between Peter and Frank. Only that week, Frank had approved an enormous research budget for Vicotec, conducted by double teams, working night and day, but he had still not agreed to cancel their appearance before the FDA, although Peter had grudgingly agreed to appear before Congress on pricing issues, to please Katie's father.

He didn't like doing it, but it wasn't worth fighting over, and it was prestigious for the firm for Peter to be seen there, He just didn't like having to defend the high prices they, and others in the industry, charged for products they didn't have to. But as Frank pointed out, they were in the business for profit. They were caring for mankind's ills, but they still expected to make money. But Peter wanted Vicotec to be different, he was hoping to convince Frank to make their profit on volume rather than astronomical prices. And for the beginning at least, there would be no competition for the product. But for the moment, Frank wasn't willing to discuss it. All he wanted was Peter's promise that he would still try to get to the FDA with it by September. It had become an obsession. He wanted to bring Vicotec into the marketplace as fast as he could, at all costs. He wanted to make history, and several million dollars.

He continued to insist that they had plenty of time, and with any luck at all, they'd “work the kinks out” before September. Peter had finally stopped arguing with him, and knew that, if need be, they'd withdraw from the hearings later. There was a slim chance they could be ready by then, but according to Suchard, it was doubtful. And Peter thought Frank's goals were unrealistic.

“What about bringing Suchard here? That might speed things up a little,” Peter suggested, but Frank didn't think it was a good idea, and when Peter called Paul-Louis to discuss it with him, he was told that Dr. Suchard was on vacation. Peter thought that surprising, and was annoyed at his timing. But no one in Paris knew where he had gone for his holiday, and there was nothing Peter could do to find him.

It was the very end of June before things seemed calm again, and by then it was time for Frank, Kate, and the boys to leave for the Vineyard. Peter was going to spend the Fourth of July weekend with them, and then come back to town and start commuting. He was going to use the company studio in town during the week, and work longer hours at the office. And then go to Martha's Vineyard on the weekends. Monday through Friday, he wanted to be available to the research teams, to help them in any way they wanted. And he liked staying in the city. It was lonely for him in Greenwich anyway, without Kate or the children. It was a great opportunity to get a lot of work done.

But it wasn't only work he had on his mind at the end of June. He had seen the announcement two weeks before that Andy Thatcher would be running for president, first in the primaries, and if he won them, in the national elections a year from November. And Peter had noticed with interest that when Thatcher held his first press conference, and even subsequent ones, Olivia had been standing beside him. They had promised each other not to call, so he could hardly call now to ask her about it. Her sudden high visibility at Andy Thatcher's side was disconcerting to him, and he wondered what it meant in light of her earlier plan to leave him. But they had agreed not to call each other, and as hard as it was, Peter stuck by it. And he decided that her regular appearances at Andy's side in the political arena clearly meant that she had decided not to leave him. He wondered how she felt about it, and if Andy had somehow manipulated that decision. Knowing what he did of her, and their relationship, it seemed unlikely that she had done it out of affection. If anything she had stuck by him out of a sense of duty. He didn't really want to believe it was because she loved him.

It was strange how they had to go on with their lives, after the brief time they'd spent together in France. And he couldn't help wondering if, for her, like for him, suddenly everything was different. At first he had tried desperately to resist it, to tell himself that nothing had changed. But things that had never bothered him before were suddenly major problems. Suddenly everything Kate said or did seemed to have something to do with her father. His work seemed more difficult. The research on Vicotec had wrought no changes yet. And Frank had never been as unreasonable as he was now. Even his sons didn't need him. But worst of all, Peter felt as though there was no joy in his life anymore, no excitement, no mystery, no romance. There were none of the things he had shared with Olivia in France. But most painful of all, there was no one to talk to. He had never realized over the years how far he and Katie had drifted apart, how busy she was with other things, and how totally preoccupied she was with her own activities and friends, most of which involved committees or women. There seemed to be no room for him anymore, and the only man who mattered to her at all was her father.

He wondered if he was being sensitive, or unreasonable, if he was still overtired, or overwrought after the disappointment over Vicotec, but he didn't think so. And even when he went to the Vineyard with them for the Fourth of July, everything irked him. He felt out of step with their friends, out of synch with her, and even here he felt as though he hardly saw the boys. It was as though, without even realizing it, everything had changed, and his life with her was over. It was incredible as he watched his life unravel. He wondered too if he was somehow forcing things to a showdown with her, without realizing it, as though to justify what he'd done with Olivia in the south of France. Doing that in a defunct marriage would have been more understandable, more easily forgivable, but doing it in a live one was more difficult to live with.

He found himself searching the newspapers for photographs of Olivia, and on the Fourth of July, he saw Andy on TV. He was at a rally on Cape Cod, and there was coverage of him with his enormous sailboat tied up at the dock just behind him. He suspected that Olivia was there somewhere, nearby, but try as he might, he couldn't see her.

“What are you doing, watching television in the middle of the day?” Katie had found him in their room, and when he glanced at her, it was hard not to notice her still-trim figure. She was wearing a bright blue bathing suit and the gold bracelet with the heart dangling from it that he had brought her from Paris. But even with her blond hair and her pert face, she didn't have the powerful effect on him that Olivia had on him each time he saw her. It made him feel guilty all over again, and Kate was startled by his worried expression. “Is something wrong?” she asked. Things had been difficult between them for a while now. He seemed testier than usual, and more irritable, which wasn't like him. He had been that way ever since his last trip to Europe.

“No, everything's fine. I just wanted to see the news.” He looked away from her, aiming the remote control at the TV with a vague expression.

“Why don't you come outside and swim?” she said, smiling. She was always happy there. It was a pleasant place, and their house there was easy to maintain. And she enjoyed being surrounded by her children and their friends. It had always been a good place for her and Peter too. Although this summer everything seemed slightly different. There was a lot of pressure on him, with the research being conducted on Vicotec, and all she could do was hope that it would go well and they'd get the results Peter and her father wanted. But for the moment, Peter seemed unhappy and distant.

It was two full weeks later before he was able to find out the truth at the laboratory, and Peter sat and stared into space after he hung up. He couldn't believe what he'd heard, and he drove all the way to Martha's Vineyard to discuss it in person with Katie's father.

“You fired him? Why? How could you do that?” Frank Donovan had shot the messenger that had brought them the bad news. He still didn't understand that in the long run Paul-Louis had saved them.

“He's a fool. He's a nervous old woman seeing demons in the dark. There was no reason to keep him.” For the first time in eighteen years, Peter was beginning to think that his father-in-law was crazy.

“He's one of the foremost scientists in France, Frank, and he's forty-nine years old. What are you doing? We could have used him here to help us speed up our research.”

“Our research is going fine. I discussed it with them yesterday. They tell me they'll be ready to roll by Labor Day. There will be no kinks left in Vicotec by then, no 'flaws,' no ghosts, no danger.” But Peter didn't believe him.

“Can you prove that? Are you sure? Paul-Louis said it might take a year.”

“That's my point. He didn't know what he was saying.” But Peter was frightened by what Frank had done, and he used company records to locate Paul-Louis, and he called him his first night back in New York to tell him how sorry he was, and talk to him about Vicotec, and their progress.

“You're going to kill someone,” Paul-Louis said in heavily accented English. But he had been touched by the call, and he had always had a great deal of respect for Peter. At first he'd been told that his dismissal had been Peter's idea, but later he had learned that the order actually came all the way from the chairman. “You cannot take a chance on it yet,” Paul-Louis reiterated. “You must go through all the tests, and it will take months, even with double teams working around the clock. You must not let them do this.”

“I won't. I promise you that. I appreciate Everything you've done. I'm just sorry about the way it happened.” And he genuinely meant it.

“It's all right,” the Frenchman shrugged, smiling philosophically. He had already had another offer from an important German pharmaceutical company with a large factory in France, but he wanted to take some time off to ponder his decision. And he had gone to Brittany to do that. “I understand. I wish you good luck with this. It could be a wonderful product.”

The two men chatted for a little while, and Paul-Louis promised to keep in touch, and the following week Peter followed their research results even more closely. If Paul-Louis was right, they still had a lot of work to do before they could “greenlight” the product in good conscience.

But by the end of July, they seemed to be making good progress. And Peter was encouraged when he left for his vacation in Martha's Vineyard. The research department had promised to fax him daily reports from the office. But as a result, he found it harder to relax than usual. He seemed constantly tied by the umbilical cord of his fax machine to both the research on Vicotec, and his office.

“You're not having any fun this year,” his wife complained, but she didn't pay much attention to him either. She had lots of friends to see, gardening to do, and she was spending a lot of time at her father's place, helping him renovate, and deciding whether or not to remodel his summer kitchen. She helped him entertain his friends, and organized several dinner parties for him, which she and Peter attended. But Peter complained about that too. He said she was never around, and every time he saw her, she was rushing off to meet her father.

”What's happening to you? You were never jealous of Daddy before. I feel like I'm being pulled by both of you,” she said, looking annoyed. Peter had always been so good about the things she did with her father, and now he complained constantly. And her father wasn't any better, he was still angry at Peter for his position about Vicotec.

There was a definite tension between the two men that year, and by mid-August, Peter was ready to go back to town, and use work as an excuse. He had had it. He wasn't sure what it was, maybe it was just him, but he had had several arguments with the kids, he thought Katie was being unusually difficult, and he was sick to death of going to Frank's house for dinner. On top of it the weather had been miserable, and they had had a week of storms, and there was the threat of a hurricane coming up from Bermuda. By the third day, he sent everyone to the movies, and he had secured the shutters, and tied down the terrace furniture. Later he was eating lunch in front of the television, watching a ball game, when he switched to the news during a break just to hear about Hurricane Angus. But he was instantly startled when he saw a picture of an enormous sailboat followed by a still photograph of Senator Andy Thatcher. The coverage had already been on for a while, and the anchor was talking about “…the tragedy occurred late last night. And the bodies have not, as yet, been recovered. The senator has been unavailable for comment.”

“Oh my God,” Peter said it aloud to himself, and suddenly he was standing there, as he put his sandwich down on the table behind him. He had to know what had happened to her. Was she dead or alive, was it her body they were searching for? He was near tears as he stared at the tube and began frantically changing channels.

“Hi, Dad. What inning?” Mike asked as he drifted through the room, back from the movie. Peter hadn't heard them come in, and he looked like a ghost as he faced him.

“No inning … no score … I don't know …never mind …” He looked back at the TV again, as Mike left, but at first Peter couldn't find it. And then he found it on Channel Two, and this time he heard it almost from the beginning. They had been caught in a storm in treacherous waters just outside Gloucester, in Andy's hundred-and-ten-foot sailboat. And in spite of its size and alleged stability, they had hit some rocks in a storm, and the boat had sunk in barely more than ten minutes. There had been roughly a dozen people aboard. The boat was computerized and Thatcher had been sailing it himself with the help of only a single deckhand, and some friends. For the moment, several passengers were missing, but the senator himself had survived. His wife had been aboard, and her brother the junior congressman from Boston, Edwin Douglas. But tragically, the congressman's wife and both young children had been swept overboard. Her body had been found early that morning, but neither of the children had been found yet. And then, in a single breath, the anchor said that the senator's wife, Olivia Douglas Thatcher, had nearly drowned. She was still in critical condition in Addison Gilbert Hospital, and had been rescued late the night before by the Coast Guard. She had been found unconscious, but had been kept afloat in the storm by her life vest.

“Oh my God … oh my God …” Olivia. And she was so afraid of the ocean. He could only begin to imagine what had happened to her, as he thought frantically of going to her now. But how would he explain it? What would they say on the news? An anonymous businessman appeared at the hospital today, desperate to see Mrs. Thatcher, and was turned away. He was put in a straitjacket and sent home to his wife to regain his senses. … He had no idea how to get to her, or how to see her without causing problems for either of them. And as he sat down again, and stared at the television, he realized that for the moment, while she was still critically ill, there was probably no way to do it. Another channel said she hadn't regained consciousness yet, and was said to be in a deep coma, and they ran all the tabloid pictures of her and indexed every tragedy, just as they had in Paris. The reporters were camped outside her parents' house in Boston as well, and they showed a few minutes of coverage of her grief-stricken brother leaving the hospital, having just lost his wife and children. It was painful beyond words just seeing him, and Peter felt tears rolling down his cheeks as he watched him.

“Is something wrong, Dad?” Mike had come back in and he was worried when he saw his father.

“No, I'm …I'm fine …something just happened to some friends. It's terrible. A storm off Cape Cod last night, Senator Thatcher's boat went down. It sounds as though a number of people were lost, and several others were injured.”…And she was still in a coma. Why had this happened to her? What if she died? It was beyond thinking.

“Do you know them?” Katie seemed surprised as she walked through the living room on her way to the kitchen. “There was something about the accident in the paper this morning.”

“I met them in Paris,” he said, afraid to say more to her, as though she would know from the tone of his voice, or worse yet, see him crying.

“They say she's very strange. I hear he's going to run for president,” Katie said through the kitchen doorway, and Peter didn't answer. He had gone upstairs as quietly as he could, and was calling the hospital from their bedroom.

But he learned nothing from the nurses at Addison Gilbert. He said he was a close friend of the family, and they told him exactly what he had heard on TV. She was in ICU and hadn't regained consciousness since she was rescued. And how long could that go on? He wondered if she would be brain-damaged, if she would die, if he would ever see her again. Just thinking about it made him want to be with her. But all he could do was lie on his bed now, and remember.

“Are you all right?” Katie came upstairs looking for something, and was surprised to see him lying on their bed. He had been behaving strangely for days, as far as she was concerned, actually all summer. But her father had too. From what she could see, Vicotec had been disastrous for both of them, and she was sorry they had ever decided to develop it. It wasn't worth the price that any of them were paying. Katie looked down at Peter then, and she thought his eyes looked damp. She had no idea what he'd been doing. “Are you feeling all right?” she asked again, concerned. She put a hand on his head. But he didn't have a fever.

“I'm fine,” he said, feeling guilty toward her again, but so desperately frightened for Olivia that he could barely think straight. Even if he never saw her again, he knew the world would be a different place without her gentle face, her eyes that always reminded him of brown velvet. He wanted to go to her now and open them, and kiss her again. He wanted to be there for her. And when he saw Andy on TV again, he wanted to strangle him for not being with her. He was talking about everything they'd done, how quickly the storm had come up, how tragic it had been that the children couldn't be saved. And somehow, without actually saying it, he managed to convey that in spite of the loss of life, and the danger to his wife, he was a hero.

Peter was still quieter than usual that night. The promised hurricane had passed them by and he called the hospital again. But nothing had changed. For him, and for the Douglases waiting at the hospital, it was a nightmarish weekend. But late Sunday night, after Katie had gone to bed, he called again. It was the fourth time that day, and his knees felt weak when the nurse said the words he had prayed for.

“She's awake,” she said, as he felt his throat fill with tears for her. “She's going to be okay,” she said gently, and when he hung up, he put his face in his hands and cried. He was all alone, and he could let it out now. He had been able to think of nothing else for the past two days. He hadn't even been able to leave a message for her, but he had sent her all his good thoughts and his prayers. He had even surprised Kate by going to church by himself on Sunday morning.

“I don't know what's happened to him,” she'd said to her father that night on the phone. “I swear, it's all that nonsense with Vicotec. I hate that stuff. It's making him sick, and driving me crazy.”

“He'll get over it,” her father said. “We'll all be happier once it's on the market.” But Katie was no longer so sure, Their battles over it were just too painful.

And the next morning, Peter called the hospital again, but they wouldn't let him talk to her. He kept leaving false names, and this time said he was a cousin from Boston. There was no way of even sending a coded message to her, because he had no way of knowing who might intercept it. But she was alive, and doing well. Her husband said in a press conference how fortunate they'd been, and that she'd be home in a few days. And he left for the West Coast later that morning. He was on the campaign trail, and she was out of the woods now.

He came back in time for the funeral of Edwin's wife and their children. Peter was mesmerized by all the TV coverage and he was relieved to see that, mercifully, Olivia wasn't there. Peter knew her well enough to know that she couldn't have borne it. It would have reminded her too much of her own child. But her parents were there, and Edwin, grieving visibly and standing close to them, and of course Andy with an arm around Olivia's brother. They were the consummate political family, and every possible newspaper and television channel was there, covering it from a discreet distance.

Olivia watched it on television from ICU, and she cried terribly. The nurses didn't think she should watch, but she had insisted. They were her family, and she couldn't be there, but later when she saw Andy give an interview about how brave they had all been, and what a hero he was, she wanted to kill him.

And afterwards, he didn't even bother to call her to tell her how Edwin was. When she called home, her father sounded as though he were drunk, and said her mother had had to be sedated. It was a terrible time for all of them, and Olivia was sorry she hadn't been able to give her life instead of them. The children were so young, and her sister-in-law had been pregnant again, although no one knew it. And in Olivia's eyes, she herself had nothing to live for. She was living an empty life, as the puppet of an egotist. It wouldn't have mattered to anyone if either of them had died, except maybe her parents. She thought of Peter then, and the hours they had shared, and wished there were some way she could see him. But like other people she had loved, he was part of the past now, and there was no way to include him in her present or future.

She lay in bed afterwards, once the television was turned off, and cried, thinking of how futile life was. Her nephew and niece had died, their mother, her own baby had …Andy's brother Tom. So many good people. It was impossible to understand why some were spared and others weren't.

“How's it going, Mrs. Thatcher?” One of the nurses asked her gently as she cried. They could see how unhappy she was. And with her whole family in Boston for the funerals, no one had been in to see her. The nurse was worried about her, and then she remembered. “Someone's been calling you every few hours since you came in. A man. He says he's an old friend,' and then she smiled, “and this morning he said he was your cousin. But I'm sure it was the same one. He never leaves his name, but he sounded very worried about you.” And without a moment's hesitation, she knew it had to be Peter. Who else would call and why wouldn't he leave his name? It had to be him, and she raised eyes filled with sorrow to the nurse standing near her.

“Can I talk to him next time?” She looked almost like a battered child. She was covered with terrible bruises where she had been hit by debris that was torn off the sailboat. It had been a terrible tragedy, and she knew that she would never again go near the ocean.

“Ill try to connect you if he calls again,” the nurse reassured her and moved on. But when Peter called again early the next morning, she was sleeping. And after that, a different nurse was on duty.

Olivia lay in bed thinking of him constantly after that, wondering how he was, and what had happened to Vicotec and the FDA hearings. She had no way of getting news of him, and they had agreed not to contact each other when they left Paris. But now it seemed so difficult. Especially here, in the hospital. She had so much to think about, there was so much about her life now that she hated. She had promised Andy to stick by him, but it was costing her everything she had to fulfill her promise. And suddenly all she could think of was how brief and unpredictable life was, and how precious. She had sold her soul for the next five years, which seemed like an eternity now. She could only hope he didn't win the election. She knew she'd never survive it. And the wife of a president couldn't simply disappear. For the next five years, she would have to stand and face the music.

She spent another four days in ICU, until her lungs were almost clear, and they could move her to another room, and then Andy flew up from Virginia to see her. He had had some work to do there, but as soon as he arrived at the hospital, there were suddenly reporters everywhere, and a camera crew, and one of them even snuck in to see her. She disappeared under the sheets immediately, and a nurse escorted them off the floor, but Andy attracted press like blood attracted sharks, and Olivia was the little fish they wanted to feed on.

But Andy had a great idea. He had arranged a press conference for her at the hospital the next day, right outside her room. He had a hairdresser coming for her, and a makeup man. It was all set up, and she could talk to the press from a wheelchair. But as he explained it to her, she could feel her heart pound, and her stomach turn over.

“I don't want to do that yet.” It reminded her of when Alex had died, and when the press had hounded her constantly. Now they would want to know if she had seen her niece and nephew die, or her sister-in-law, and how she felt now that they were gone and she had survived, and how could she explain it. She felt strangled just thinking about it, and all she could do was shake her head in panic. “I can't, Andy …I'm sorry …” she said, turning away from him, wondering if Peter had ever called again. She hadn't seen the same nurse since she left ICU, and no one had ever told her. And she couldn't ask for him, a man with no name who had been calling for days. She couldn't do anything at all that might draw attention to her.

“Look, Olivia, you have to talk to the press, or they'll think we're hiding something. You were in a coma for four days. You don't want the country to think you're brain-damaged, or something.” He spoke to her as though she were, and all she could think of was her tearful conversation with her brother that morning. He was a mess, and she could only imagine how he felt, after all she'd gone through with Alex. But he had lost his entire family, and now Andy wanted her to talk to the press from a wheelchair.

“I don't care what they think, I'm not doing it,” she said firmly.

“You have to,” he snapped at her, “we have a contract.”

“You make me sick,” she said, turning away from him, and the next day, when they came, she refused to see them. She wouldn't see the hairdresser, or the makeup man, and she never came out of her room in the wheelchair. The press thought they were playing games with them, and Andy held a press conference in the lobby without her. He explained about the trauma she'd been through, and the guilt of being one of the few survivors. He said he was suffering from it too, but it was hard to believe Andy Thatcher was suffering from anything, except an overwhelming desire for the White House, no matter what it cost him. But he wasn't about to lose this opportunity, and the next day, he let three reporters into her room himself. And when she looked up and saw them, Olivia looked pathetically frail, and desperately frightened. She started to cry, and a nurse and two orderlies forced them to leave her. But they'd man-aged to get half a dozen photographs of her before they left the room, and congregated together back in the hallway where they chatted with Andy. And when he returned, after the reporters left the hospital, she came out of her bed and flailed at him with a vengeance.

“How could you do that to me? Edwin's whole family just died, and I'm not even out of the hospital.” She was sobbing as she pounded her hands against his chest, overwhelmed by a sense of violation. But he had needed to prove to them that she was alive and well, and that she hadn't snapped, as they were beginning to suspect, since she seemed to them to be hiding. What she was trying to preserve was her dignity, but Andy couldn't have cared less. What he was protecting was his political survival.

Peter saw the photographs of her on the news that night, and his heart went out to her. She looked frightened and frail as she lay in bed, and cried. The abandoned look in her eyes tore his heart out. She had a hospital nightgown on, and she had intravenous tubes in both arms, and one of the reporters said she was still suffering from pneumonia. It was a dramatic glimpse of her, and sure to arouse a lot of sympathy, which was exactly what her husband had wanted. And Peter could think only of her after he turned the set off.

But Olivia surprised Andy when the hospital told her they were willing to release her at the end of the week, she said she wasn't going home with him. She had already spoken to her mother about it. She was going home to her parents. They needed her. And she was going to the Douglas house in Boston.

“That's ridiculous, Olivia,” Andy complained when she told him over the phone what she was doing, “you're not a little girl, you belong in Virginia with me.”

”Why?' she asked him bluntly, “so you can let reporters into my room every morning? My family has been through a terrible ordeal, and I want to be with them.” She didn't blame him for the accident. The storm hadn't been his fault, but the way it had all been handled since certainly lacked dignity or compassion, or even decency, and she knew she would never forgive him. He had exploited all of them. And he did it again, when she found a fleet of reporters waiting for her in the hospital lobby when she left Addison Gilbert. Andy was the only one who knew when she was getting out, he was the only one who could have told them. And they appeared at her parents' house too, and this time her father put his foot down.

”We need some privacy here,” he explained, and as the governor, people listened. He gave a few select interviews, but he explained that neither his wife, nor his daughter, and certainly not his son, were in any condition to entertain members of the press at the moment. “I'm sure you understand,” he said graciously, posing for a single picture. And he said he had no further explanation for Mrs. Thatcher's presence in his home, except that she wanted to be with her mother, and brother, who was also staying with them. Edwin Douglas couldn't bring himself to stay at his own house yet, let alone begin to sort through it.

“Have the Thatchers been estranged since the accident?” One of the reporters shouted at him and he looked surprised by the question. It hadn't even occurred to him, and he asked his wife the same thing that night, wondering if she knew something he didn't.

“I don't think so.” Janet Douglas frowned at him. “Olivia hasn't said anything,” but they both knew she kept a lot to herself. She had been through a great deal in the past few years, and she liked to keep her own counsel.

But Andy was quick to complain to her when he heard about the question. He told her that if she didn't come home soon, she would start rumors.

“I'll come home when I'm well enough to leave here,” she said coldly.

“When will that be?” He was going back to California in two weeks, and he wanted her with him.

She was actually planning to go back to Virginia in a few days, but his pushing her only made her want to stay away longer, and after she'd been there a week, her mother finally questioned her about it.

”What's happening?” she asked gently, as Olivia sat in her mother's bedroom. Her mother got migraines regularly, and she was just recovering from one, while wearing an ice pack. “Is everything all right with you and Andy?”

“That depends on your definition of 'all right.“ Olivia said coolly. “Nothing's any worse than usual. He's just annoyed that I'm not letting the press beat me to death, or reenacting the accident for them on tabloid TV. But give him a day or two, Mom, I'm sure hell arrange it.”

“Politics does strange things to men,” her mother said wisely. She knew better than anyone what it was like, and how much it had cost them. Even her recent mastectomy had been announced on TV, with diagrams and an interview with her doctor. But she was the governor's wife, and she knew she had to expect it. She had been in the public eye for most of her adult life, and it had taken a lot from her. And she could see now that it had already taken something from her daughter. One paid dearly for winning, or even losing, elections.

And then Olivia looked at her quietly, and wondered what her mother would say if she told her the truth. She had been thinking for days. And she knew what she had to do now. “I'm leaving him, Mom. I can't do this. I tried to leave him in June, but he wanted the presidency so badly, I agreed to do the campaign with him, and stay for the first four years if he won.” She looked at her mother unhappily. The crassness of what she'd done sounded awful in the telling. “He's paying me a million dollars a year to do it. And the funny thing is I didn't even care. It sounded like play money when he offered it to me. I did it for him because I used to love him. But I guess I didn't love him enough, even way back in the beginning. I really know now I can't do it.” She didn't owe this to anyone, not even Andy.

“Then don't,” Janet Douglas said bluntly. “Even a million dollars a year wouldn't be enough. Ten wouldn't either. No amount is worth ruining your life for. Get out while you can, Olivia. I should have done it years ago. It's too late now. It drove me to drink, it ruined my health, it destroyed our marriage, it kept me from doing everything I wanted to do, it hurt our family and made life hard for all of you. Olivia, if this isn't what you want, if you yourself don't want this desperately, get out now, while you still can. Please honey,” her eyes filled with tears as she squeezed her daughter's hand, “I beg you. And no matter what your father says, I'm one hundred percent behind you.” And then she looked at her even more seriously. It was one thing to abandon politics, another to abandon a marriage that might still be worth saving. “What about him? What about Andy?”

“It's been over for a long time, Mom.”

Janet nodded again. It didn't really surprise her. “I thought so. But I wasn't sure.” And then she smiled slowly. “Your father is going to think I lied to him the other day. He asked me if everything was all right with you, and I said it was. But I wasn't sure then.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Olivia said, putting her arms around her. “I love you.” Her mother had just given her the greatest gift of all, her blessing.

“I love you too, sweetheart,” she said as she held her daughter. “Do whatever you have to do, and don't worry about what your father says. He'll be fine. He and Andy will make some noise for a while, but they'll get over it. And Andy's young. He can always get remarried and do it next time. They haven't seen the last of him in Washington. Don't let him bully you into coming back, Olivia, unless you want to.” What she really wanted for her daughter was to be far from here. She wanted her freedom.

“I don't want to go back, Mom. I never will. I should have left him years ago …before Alex was born, or at least after he died.”

“You're young, you'll make a life for yourself,” she said wistfully. She never had. She had given up her own life, her career, her friends, her dreams. Every ounce of energy she'd had had gone into her husband's political career, and she wanted something very different for her daughter. “What are you going to do now?”

“I want to write.” She smiled shyly and her mother laughed.

“It all comes full circle, doesn't it? Do it then, and don't let anyone stop you.”

They sat and talked all afternoon, and they made lunch together in the kitchen. Olivia even thought of telling her about Peter, but in the end she didn't. She did say that she thought she'd probably go back to France, to the fishing village she loved so much. It was a good place to write, a good place to hide, but her mother warned her about that too.

“You cannot hide forever.'

“Why not?” She smiled sadly. There was nothing else for her to do now, except disappear, legitimately this time. But she wanted nothing more to do with the press or the public.

Her brother joined them for dinner that night. He was grief stricken and subdued, but at least she made him laugh once or twice, and he kept up with what was happening in Washington by phone and fax every day. It was incredible to Olivia that he could even think about that now, but even in the face of such a major loss, he was still very much like their father. It was obvious that he was consumed by politics in very much the same way as her father and her husband. And late that night she called Andy and told him that she had made an important decision.

“I'm not coming back,” she said simply.

“Not that again.” He sounded annoyed this time. “Have you forgotten our contract?”

“There's nothing in it that says I have to stay with you, or follow you to the presidency. It only says that if I do, you'll pay me a million dollars a year. Well, I've just saved you a bunch of money.”

“You can't do that,” he said, sounding angrier than she'd ever heard him. She was interfering with the one thing he wanted.

“Yes, I can. And I am. I'm leaving for Europe tomorrow morning.”

She wasn't actually leaving for a few days, but she wanted to be sure he knew it was all over. He showed up in Boston the next day anyway, and as her mother had predicted, her father entered the fray with them. But she was thirty-four years old, she knew her own mind, and she was a grown woman. And she knew that nothing would sway her.

“Do you realize what you're giving up?” her father shouted at her from across the room, as Andy looked gratefully at him. To Olivia, it looked almost like a lynch mob.

“Yes,” she said quietly, looking straight at them, “heartbreak and lies. I've experienced both of them for quite a while now, and I think I'll manage fine without them. Oh, and I forgot, exploitation.”

“Don't be so grand,” her father said in disgust, he was a politician of the old school, and not quite as lofty as Andy. “It's a great life, a great opportunity, and you know it.”

“For you maybe,” she said, looking at her father with undisguised sorrow. “For the rest of us it's a life of loneliness and disappointment, of broken promises along the campaign trail. I want a real life with a real man, or alone if it has to be that way. I don't even care anymore. I just want to get as far from politics as I can, and never hear the word again.” She cast a sidelong look at her mother, and saw that she was smiling.

“You're a fool,” her father raged at her, but when Andy left their house that night, he was truly venomous, and promised her she'd pay for what she'd just done to him. And he wasn't lying. On the day she left for France, three days later, there was a story in the Boston papers that she knew only he would have planted. It said that after her recent, tragic accident, in which three members of her family had died, she had suffered severe traumatic stress, and she had just been admitted to a hospital with a nervous breakdown. It said that her husband was deeply worried about her, and although the article didn't actually come out and say it, there was the hint of an estrangement, because of her mental state. And the article was entirely slanted to sympathize with Andy for being saddled with a nutcase. He was covering his tracks nicely. If he said she was crazy, then it would be okay to dump her. Round one for Andy … or was it round two … or ten? Had he knocked her out, or had she simply run away and saved her own life while he wasn't looking? She was no longer sure now.

Peter saw the story too, and suspected that it had been planted by Andy. It didn't sound like Olivia, even after the short time he knew her. But he couldn't check this time, since it didn't say what hospital she was in. There was no way to find out the truth and it drove him crazy with worry.

Her mother took her to the airport on a Thursday afternoon a few days after she'd told Andy she was leaving. It was late August by then, and Peter and his family were still at the Vineyard. Janet Douglas put her daughter on the plane, and stood there until the plane took off. She wanted to be sure that she was safe, and truly gone. Olivia had escaped a fate worse than death as far as her mother was concerned, and she was relieved as she saw the plane swoop slowly overhead, on its way to Paris.

“Godspeed, Olivia,” she said softly, hoping she wouldn't come back to the States for a long time. There was too much pain waiting for her here, too many memories, too many rotten, selfish men waiting to hurt her. Her mother was happy knowing she had gone back to France. And as the plane flew out of sight, Janet signalled to her bodyguards, and walked slowly out of the airport with a sigh. Olivia was safe now.

Chapter Ten

As the month of August wore on, and faxes continued to roll in about the research on Vicotec, the tension between Peter and his father-in-law seemed to heighten. By Labor Day weekend, it was almost palpable, and even the boys had begun to feel it.

”What's happening between Granddaddy and Dad?” Paul asked on Saturday afternoon, and Kate frowned at him as she answered.

“Your father is being difficult,” she said quietly, but even her son could see that she blamed Peter for the tension between them.

“Did they have a fight or something?” He was old enough to understand, and his mother was usually pretty candid with him, although “fights” didn't usually proliferate in their family. But once in a while he knew that his father and his grandfather disagreed about something.

“They're working on a new product,” she said simply, but it was a great deal more complicated than that, and she knew it. She had asked Peter repeatedly to go easy on him. Her father had been worked up about it all summer, and at his age, it wasn't good for him. Although even Kate had to admit that her father looked better than ever. At seventy, he still played tennis for an hour every day, and he swam a mile every morning.

“Oh.” Paul was satisfied with her explanation. “I guess it's no big deal then.” He brushed off the multimillion-dollar trouble with Vicotec with an easy sixteen-year-old assessment.

They were all going to a big party that night to celebrate the end of the summer. All their friends were going to be there, and in two days they were all leaving. Patrick and Paul were going back to school, and Mike was off to Princeton. And on Monday they were all moving back to Greenwich.

Kate had a lot to do, closing her own house, as well as her father's, at the Vineyard. And she was putting some of her clothes away when Peter wandered in and watched her. The summer had never gotten off the ground for him. The double blow of nearly losing Vicotec and having to give Olivia up only moments after they'd met had been an agony for him straight through August. The worries about Vicotec had put a damper on things to be sure, and Frank's constant pressuring hadn't helped, but neither had Katie's constant clandestine involvement in what should never have been her business. She was too involved with what happened between them, too concerned about protecting her father. And there was no denying that what had happened to Peter in France had changed things. He hadn't wanted it to. He had been so determined to come back and pick up where he had left off, but that just didn't happen. It was like opening a window and seeing a view, and then boarding up the house again. He kept standing in the same place, staring at a blank wall, and remembering what had been there, even if only briefly. The scenery he had seen with Olivia had been unforgettable, and although he had never intended it to, he knew now that it had changed his life forever. He wasn't going to alter anything, and he wasn't going anywhere. He had never contacted her, except to call the hospital after her accident and get reports on her from the nurse in ICU. But he couldn't forget her either. And her accident had terrified him, just knowing she had almost died seemed like terrifying retribution. But why her and not him? Why should Olivia be punished?

“I'm sorry it's been such a lousy summer,” Peter said sadly, sitting down on the bed, as Katie put a stack of sweaters away in a box with mothballs.

“It wasn't that bad,” she said kindly, glancing at him over her shoulder from the top of a short ladder.

“It was for me,” he said honestly. He had been miserable all summer. “I've had a lot on my mind,' he said in an oversimplified explanation, and Kate smiled at him again, and then her eyes grew serious as she watched him. She was thinking of her father.

“So has my dad. This hasn't been easy on him either.” She was only thinking about Vicotec. Peter was thinking about the extraordinary woman he had met in Paris. Olivia had made coming home to Katie nearly impossible. Kate was so independent and so cool, so willing to function without him. They didn't seem to do anything together anymore, except see their friends at night occasionally, and play tennis with her father. He wanted more than that. He was forty-four years old, and suddenly he wanted romance. He wanted contact with her, he wanted comfort, and friendship, and even some excitement. He wanted to snuggle next to her, and feel her flesh next to his. He wanted her to want him. But he had known Katie for twenty-four years, and there was very little romance left between them. There was intelligence, and respect, and a variety of shared interests, but he didn't stir when he saw her lie next to him, and when he did, she usually had phone calls to make, or a meeting somewhere, or an appointment with her father. They seemed to miss every opportunity to make love, to be alone, just to laugh sometimes, or sit around and talk, and he missed it. Olivia had shown him just exactly what he was missing. And in truth, what he had with her, he had never had with Katie. There was a kind of heady excitement to everything he did with Olivia that took his breath away. Life with Katie had always been more like going to the senior prom. With Olivia, it was more like going to the ball with a fairy princess. It was a silly comparison, and it made him laugh when he thought about it, and then he saw that Katie was staring at him.

“What are you smiling at? I was just saying how hard this has all been on my father.” He hadn't heard a word she was saying. He'd been dreaming of Olivia Thatcher.

“That's the price you pay for running a business like ours,” Peter said matter-of-factly. “It's a huge burden, and a tremendous responsibility, and no one said it was going to be easy.” He was tired of hearing about her father. “But I wasn't thinking about that just then. Why don't you and I go somewhere? We need to get away.” Martha's Vineyard hadn't been the restful vacation it had been in previous years. “Why don't we go to Italy or someplace else? Maybe the Caribbean, or Hawaii?” It would be different and exciting just being there with her, and he thought maybe a trip like that would put a little life back into their marriage.

“Now? Why? It's September, I have a thousand things to do, and so do you. I have to get the boys into school, and we have to take Mike to Princeton next weekend.” She looked at him like he was crazy, but he was persistent. After all these years, he had to at least try to keep them together, “After we get the kids settled in school then. I didn't mean today, but maybe sometime in the next few weeks. What do you think?” He looked at her hopefully as she came down the ladder and he wanted to feel more for her than he did. But the agony was that he didn't. Maybe a trip to the Caribbean would change that.

“You have to go to the FDA hearings in September. Don't you have to prepare for that?”

He didn't tell her that no matter what her father said, he had no intention of going, and he wouldn't let her father go either. They couldn't perjure themselves on the remote chance that all the problems would be solved sometime before Vicotec hit the market. “Let me worry about that,” was all he said to her, “just tell me when you can get away, and I'll plan it.” The only thing on his schedule were the congressional hearings on pricing he had finally agreed to appear at. But he knew that, if he had to, he could postpone his appearance. It was more a matter of courtesy and prestige than a life-and-death situation. To him, their marriage was far more important.

“I've got a lot of board meetings this month,” Katie said vaguely, and opened another drawer full of sweaters. And as Peter watched her work, he suddenly wondered what she was really saying.

“Would you rather not go away?” If that was the case, he wanted to know it. Maybe there was something bothering her too, and then he had a sudden thought that hit him like a bolt of lightning. Had she had an affair too? Was she in love with someone else? Was she avoiding him? It could have happened to her too after all, though it had never even occurred to him, and he felt suddenly foolish at the realization that she was just as vulnerable as he was. She was still attractive, and fairly young, and there were a lot of men she would appeal to. But Peter had no idea how to ask her if that had happened. She was always fairly cool, and somewhat prim, and asking her if she'd ever had an affair was out of the question. Instead, he narrowed his eyes at her as she threw some more mothballs in another box of sweaters. “Is there some reason why you don't want to take a trip with me?” he asked as bluntly as he could, and she finally looked up at him, and gave him an answer which annoyed him greatly.

“I just don't think it would be fair to my father right now. He's upset about Vicotec. He has a lot on his mind. I think it would be really selfish of us to go lie on a beach somewhere while he sits in the office and worries.” With difficulty, Peter tried to hide his aggravation. He was sick of worrying about Frank. He had been doing just that for eighteen years now.

“Maybe right now we need to be selfish,” Peter pressed her. “Doesn't it worry you sometimes that we've been married for eighteen years, and we don't pay much attention to us, or what we need, or our marriage?” He was trying to say something to her, but not set any alarms off while he did it.

“What are you saying to me? That you're bored with me, and you need to see me on a beach somewhere to put a little spice into it again?” She turned around and looked at him and for a moment he wasn't sure how to answer. She was much closer to the truth than he would have dared to tell her.

“I just think it would be nice to get away from your father, and the kids, and our answering machine, and your board meetings, and even Vicotec. Even here, we're hounded constantly by the fax machine, or at least I am, it's like being in the office, with sand. I'd just like to go away with you somewhere, where there are no distractions and we can talk, and remind ourselves of what it was we were crazy about when we first met, or when we got married.”

She smiled at him then. She was beginning to understand. “I think you're having a midlife crisis. And what I really think is that you're nervous about the FDA hearings, and you want to run away, and you're using me to do it. Well, forget that, young man. You'll be fine. It'll all be over in a day, and we'll all be proud of you.” She was smiling as she said it, and he felt his heart sink. She didn't understand anything, least of all the fact that he needed something from her that he wasn't getting, nor that he had no intention of going to the FDA hearings. The only thing he was going to do was appear before Congress about pricing.

“This has nothing to do with the FDA,” he said firmly, trying to sound calm, and refusing to discuss the hearings with her again. He got enough of that from her father. “I'm talking about us, Kate. Not the FDA hearings.” But one of the boys interrupted them then. Mike wanted the keys to the car, and Patrick was downstairs with two friends, and needed to know if there were any more frozen pizzas hidden somewhere, they were starving.

“I was just going to the store!” She called down to them, and the opportunity was lost. She turned and looked at her husband over her shoulder as she left their bedroom. “Don't worry, everything will be fine.” And then she was gone, and he sat on their bed for a long time, feeling empty. At least he had tried. But he had gotten nowhere, which was small consolation. She had no idea what he was talking about, and the only thing she could focus on was her father, and the hearings.

Frank mentioned them to him again at the party. It was like listening to a broken record, and Peter did his best to change the subject. Frank had been telling him to be a “good guy” and “go along with things” for a while. He was sure that their research teams would find all the bugs long before Vicotec hit the market, and they would lose face, and important ground, if they backed out now on asking for early release from the FDA. In Frank's mind, it would be a red flag signalling to the industry that their product had serious problems.

“It could take us years to live that down. You know what it's like once that kind of talk gets started. It could taint Vicotec forever.”

“We have to take that chance, Frank,” Peter said, with a drink in his hand. It was a litany he knew by heart now, and the two men remained glued to their polarized positions from each other.

As soon as Peter could, he walked away from him, and a little while later he saw Frank talking to Katie. He could guess what about, and it depressed him watching them. It was obvious to him she was not discussing their proposed vacation. And he knew without a doubt that that little plan would never come to fruition. He didn't say anything more about it to her that night. And for the next two days, they were busy closing up the house. It had never been winterized, and they wouldn't be back until next summer.

On the drive back to town, the boys talked about going back to school. Paul was looking forward to seeing his friends at Andover, Patrick wanted to visit Choate and Groton that fall. And all Mike could talk about was Princeton. His grandfather had gone there, and all his life he had heard about eating clubs and reunions.

“Too bad you didn't go there, Dad. It sounds so great.” But a degree earned at night from the University of Chicago was hardly Princeton.

“I'm sure it is great, son, but if I had gone there, I would never have met your mother,” he said, remembering their first meeting at the University of Michigan.

“That's a point,” Mike said with a smile. He was planning on joining his grandfather's eating club as soon as they would let him. He had to wait a year, but he was going to talk to some fraternities in the meantime. He had everything planned, and everything worked out already. And he talked about it all the way back to New York, which left Peter feeling left out, and somehow lonely. It was strange, he'd been one of them for eighteen years, and yet sometimes he still felt like an outsider, even with his own kids now.

And as they drove south, and the others weren't speaking to him, his thoughts drifted to Olivia. He remembered their talks in Montmartre the first night, and walking on the beach with her in La Favière. There had been so much to say, so much to think about. He almost hit another car as he let himself daydream about her, and everyone in the car shouted as he veered to avoid a collision.

“God, what are you doing, Dad!” Mike couldn't believe what had just happened.

“Sorry!” he said, and drove on more carefully, but she had given him something no one else had. He remembered too her saying that what he had accomplished had been thanks to him, and not the Donovans, but that was hard to believe, especially for Peter. It was so obvious to him that Katie and her father had made it all happen.

But as his thoughts drifted back to Olivia again, he wondered where she was now, if the story about her being in a hospital was true. Everything about it had seemed phony. It sounded like one of those cover-ups for a separation, or an affair, or a facelift, and he knew that in her case, at least two of those were unlikely. He wondered suddenly if, in spite of Andy's bid for the presidency, she had left him. And it was just like Andy to say she had gone crazy.

And two days later, he realized he'd been right, when he got a postcard from her in the office. It was sitting on his desk when he got back from lunch. There was a drawing of a little fishing boat on it, and the postmark said La Favière.

It was written in her small, careful hand, and was somewhat cryptic. “I'm back here again. Writing. At last. I'm out of the running for good. I couldn't do it. Hope all is well with you. Don't forget how brave you are. It's all you. You've done it all. It takes more courage to do it, than to run away, as I have. But I'm happy. Take good care. Love always.” And she had signed it simply '?.” But along with her words, he felt what was between the lines. He could still remember the hoarseness in her voice when she said she loved him. And he knew she still did, just as he loved her. He would always love her. She would live in his heart, and his memories, forever.

He read the postcard again, thinking about it. She was so much stronger than she knew. It was leaving that had taken the real courage, not staying, as he had. He admired her. And he was glad for her that she had escaped the life she led. He hoped she was happy there, and peaceful. And he was sure that whatever she was writing would be brilliant. She was so brave about what she felt, so willing to be who she was, to say what she was thinking. She sliced through the mists like a knife, as she had with him. There was no hiding with her, no falsifying anything. She was a woman who lived by the truth, no matter what it cost her. She had made her compromises too, and she admitted that. But she wasn't now. Olivia was free now, and he envied her, as he put the postcard away, hoping no one else had seen it.

The test results came in on Vicotec the next day, and they were better than he'd hoped, but in terms of an early release of the drug, they were disastrous, and Peter knew it. He was becoming a pro at interpreting them now, and even he knew what these meant, and so did Katie's father. The two men had scheduled a meeting to discuss them at length on Friday, and they met in the conference room next to Frank's office at two o'clock. Frank was waiting for him with a stern expression, already anticipating what Peter would tell him. And they wasted no time on chitchat, except to talk about Mike. Peter and Katie were taking him to Princeton the next morning, and Frank was visibly proud of him. But the moment that subject had been touched on, he turned back to serious business.

“We both know why we're here, don't we?” he said, looking deep into Peter's eyes. “And I know you don't agree with me,” he said carefully. His whole body seemed to be coiled with anticipated tension, he looked like a cobra about to spring. And Peter felt like his prey, as he prepared to defend himself, and the integrity of the company, but Frank had anticipated him, and he was prepared to pull rank if he had to. “I think you're just going to have to trust my judgment here. I've been through this before. I've been in this business for nearly fifty years, and you've got to believe me when I tell you I know what I'm doing. It's not wrong to go to them now. By the time we put this product on the market officially, we'll be ready. I wouldn't take a chance on this if I didn't think we can deliver.”

“And if you're wrong? If we kill somebody? Even one person …one man, woman, or child …what then? What do we say? How do we live with ourselves? How can we take that chance by asking for an early release date?” Peter was like the voice of his conscience, but Frank thought it was the voice of doom, and he accused him of being an old woman like “that idiot in Paris.” “Suchard knows these things, Frank. That's why we hired him, to tell us the truth. Even when it's bad news we have to listen. I know he's no longer an issue here, but we opened a Pandora's box we can't just ignore. And you know it.”

“I'd hardly call ten million dollars' worth of additional research in two months 'ignoring it,' Peter. And we've turned up nothing. Face it, he sent us on a witch-hunt …worse than that, it's a wild-goose chase. There's nothing there. We're talking about an element which 'could' react, or 'might' cause an extraordinarily rare series of circumstances on a million-to-one bet, on the off chance that everything lines up wrong and we wind up with a problem. Now for God's sake, you tell me, does that sound reasonable to you? Hell, you can take two aspirins with a drink and have that go sour on you. So what's the deal here?”

“Two aspirins and a drink won't kill you. Vicotec will if we're not careful.”

“But we are careful. That's the whole point. Every drug has its risks, its side effects, its downside. If we weren't willing to live with that, we'd have to close our doors and start selling cotton candy at the state fair. For chrissake, Peter, stop busting my chops on this, be sensible. I want you to understand I am going to override you on this. I'll go to the FDA myself if I have to, but I want you to know why. I want you to know that I truly believe Vicotec is safe, I'm willing to stake my life on it!” he said, and by the time he finished what he had to say, he was shouting at Peter. He was red in the face, and agitated, and his voice had gotten louder and louder as they sat in the conference room, and as Peter watched him, he suddenly saw that Frank was shaking. Frank was in a complete state over it, he was perspiring, and gray, and he stopped for a moment and had a sip of water.

“Are you all right?” Peter asked quietly, watching him. “This isn't worth staking your life on. That's really the whole point. We have to treat this clinically, and address it calmly. It's a product, Frank, that's all it is. I want it more than anyone, but in the end, it'll either work, or it won't, or it may work, but maybe it'll just take longer than we wanted to get it ready. Nobody wants to get it on the market more than I do. But not 'at all costs,' not as long as there's a single factor we're not sure of. There's a loose wire in here somewhere. We know that. We've seen signs of it. Until we find it, we can't let anyone use it. It's as simple as that.” He spoke concisely and clearly, and the more agitated Frank got, the calmer he was.

“No, Peter, no …it's not that simple!” Frank bellowed at him, provoked to even greater fury by his son-in-law's maddening coolness. “Forty-seven million dollars in four years is not 'simple' by any means. Just how much money do you think we're going to pour into this for chrissake? How much money do you think there is?” He was getting nasty, and Peter refused to rise to the bait as he addressed him.

“Enough to do it right, I hope, or kill the product. We always have that option.”

“The hell we do!” Frank was on his feet shouting at him. “Do you think I'm just going to throw nearly fifty million dollars out the window? Are you crazy! Whose money do you think it is? Yours? Well, think again, it's mine, and the company's, and Katie's, and I'll be goddamned if you're going to tell me anything. You wouldn't even be here today if I hadn't bought you, lock, stock, and barrel for my daughter.” His words hit Peter like a club and took his breath away, and suddenly all he could think of were his father's words eighteen years before when he had told him that he and Katie were getting married. 'I'll never be anything more than a hired hand, son …don't do it.“ But he had, and look what had happened. This was what they thought of him eighteen years later.

Peter was on his feet too by then, and if Frank Donovan had been even a few years younger, and a little less crazed, Peter would have hit him. “I'm not going to listen to this,” Peter said, feeling his whole body shake as he restrained himself from hitting him, but Frank wouldn't give it up. He grabbed Peter by the arm and went on shouting.

“You'll listen to anything I goddamn tell you, and you'll do whatever I want here. And don't give me that holier-than-thou look, you sonofabitch. She could have had anyone, and she wanted you, so I made you what you are today, so she wouldn't have to be embarrassed. But you're nothing, you hear me, you're nothing. You start this whole goddamn project here, you cost us millions, you make promises, you see rainbows, and then when there's a little problem that some French prick thinks he sees in a dark room, you stab us in the back and want to squeal like a little pig all the way to the FDA. Well, let me tell you something, I'll see you dead before I'll let you do it!” But as he said the words, he clutched his chest, and began to cough frantically. His face was so red it was almost purple, and it was obvious he couldn't breathe. He clutched both Peter's arms then, and Peter was supporting the older man's full weight as he began to fall, and Peter almost went with him. For an instant, he couldn't believe what had happened, and then he knew. He set him down quickly on the floor, and dialed 911 as fast as he could, and gave them the details. Frank was vomiting by then, and still coughing, and as soon as Peter set down the phone, he knelt next to him, turned him on his side and tried to support his weight, and keep his face out of his own vomit. He was still breathing, though with extreme difficulty, and he was barely conscious, but Peter was still reeling from everything the old man had said to him. He had never known he was capable of so much venom, so much that it may have killed him. And all Peter could think of as he crouched holding him was what Katie would say if he died. She would blame Peter for it, she would say it was his fault for being so difficult and challenging him on Vicotec. But she would never know what Peter had just heard, what her father had said to him, the unforgivable things he had just hurled at Peter. And he knew, just as the paramedics came, that no matter what happened afterwards, it would be impossible to forget, or forgive him. These were not just affronts conjured up in a fit of rage, these were deep, ugly weapons that he had been hiding for years, concealing from him, and keeping to use on him one day. They were hurtful daggers that had run him through, and Peter knew he would never forget them.

The paramedics were working on Frank by then, and Peter stood up and backed away. His own clothes were covered with vomit, and Frank's secretary was standing in the doorway in hysterics. Several people were in the hall, and one of the paramedics looked up at Peter and shook his head. His father-in-law had just stopped breathing. The other two paramedics took the defibrillator out, and ripped his shirt open, just as half a dozen firemen came through the doorway. It looked like a convention, and they all knelt, working on him for half an hour, while Peter watched them, wondering what he was going to tell Katie. He was just beginning to think there was no hope at all when the paramedics told the firemen to get the gurney. His heart was beating again, irregularly, but it was no longer in fibrillation, and he was breathing. Frank looked up at Peter blearily, with an oxygen mask on, but he didn't say anything, and Peter touched his hand as he went by him. They were carrying him to the ambulance, and Peter had had the secretary call his doctor. They were waiting for him at New York Hospital with a team of cardiologists. He had come within a hair of dying.

“I'll meet him there,” Peter told the paramedics and hurried to the men's room to see what he could do with his pants and jacket. He kept a clean shirt in a drawer, but the rest of him was a mess. Even his shoes were covered with what Frank had vomited on him. But even more than that, Peter still felt covered by the ooze of what he'd said to him just before that. The viciousness that he had hurled at him was so vile it had almost killed him.

And five minutes later, Peter emerged from the men's room in a clean shirt, pants that had been cleaned as best he could, a sweater, and clean shoes. He went to his office to call Katie. Luckily, she was still at home, she had been just about to go out and do some errands. And as she answered the phone, Peter almost choked on his own words. He didn't know how to tell her.

“Katie …I …I'm glad you're home.” She wanted to ask him why, he had been so strange with her lately, clingy in an odd way, and depressed. He had watched television a lot a few weeks before, and then not at all. He had been obsessed with CNN for a few days, and he had been so strange about wanting to take a vacation with her.

“Is something wrong?” She glanced at her watch. She still had a number of things to do for Mike before he left for Princeton in the morning. He needed a rug for his room, and she needed to get him a new bedspread. But she was suddenly caught short by the tone of her husband's voice when he answered.

“Yes …there is …Katie, he's all right now, but it's your father.” She almost stopped breathing when he said it. “He had a heart attack in the office.” He didn't tell her how close he'd come, or that his heart had actually stopped beating for a few seconds. The doctors could tell her that later. “They just took him to New York Hospital and I'm on my way there now. ? think you should come in as soon as you can. He's feeling pretty rocky.”

“Is he all right?” She sounded as though the bottom had just fallen out of her world, and it had, and for an ugly moment Peter couldn't help wondering if she would have sounded like that if it had been him instead of her father. Or was Frank right? Was he just a toy they had bought and paid for?

“I think he'll be all right. It looked a little grim there for a minute, but the guys from 911 were great. We had paramedics here and the fire department,” and there was still a policeman outside calming everyone down, and taking a report from Frank's secretary, though even she didn't know exactly what had happened. They were waiting to talk to Peter, but it all seemed pretty straightforward. But as Peter listened to his wife, he realized that she was crying. “Take it easy, sweetheart. He's fine. I just think you should come in to see him.” But he suddenly wondered if she'd be in any shape to drive. He didn't want her having an accident on the way in from Greenwich. “Is Mike around?” She sobbed into the phone that he wasn't. He could have driven his mother in if he'd been there. Paul only had a learner's permit, and wasn't a good enough driver to come all the way in from Greenwich. “Could you get one of the neighbors to drive you?”

“I can drive myself,” she said, still crying. “What happened? He was fine yesterday. He's always been in such good health.” He had, but there were mitigating factors.

“He's a seventy-year-old man, Kate, and he's under a lot of pressure.”

She stopped crying then, and her tone was hard when she asked the question. “Were you two having an argument about the hearings again?” She knew they'd been planning to meet about it.

“We were discussing it.” But they were doing more than that. Frank had been hurling abuse at him, but he didn't want to say anything about it to Katie. What her father had said had been too hurtful to repeat, particularly in light of what had happened after. If he died now, Peter didn't want Kate to know that had come between them.

“You must have been doing more than 'discussing' if he had a heart attack,” she said, accusing him, but he didn't want to waste time with her on the phone and he said so.

“I think you should come in. We can talk about all this later. He's going to cardiac ICU,” he said bluntly, and she started crying again. Peter hated the thought of her driving. “I'm going over now, and see what's happening. I'll call you in the car if anything changes. Make sure you leave your phone on.

“Obviously,” she said with a cutting edge to her voice as she blew her nose. “Just make sure you don't say anything to upset him.”

But Frank was beyond listening to anyone when Peter got to New York Hospital twenty minutes later. He had to talk to the police first, sign some forms the paramedics had left, and he got caught in endless traffic on his way to the East River. And when he got there, Frank had already been heavily sedated. He was being closely watched, and his face had gone from florid to gray now. His hair was disheveled, there was still dried vomit on his chin, and his bare chest was covered with wires and sensors. He was attached to what looked like half a dozen machines, and he looked both extremely sick and far older than he had an hour before. And the doctor told Peter honestly that Frank was by no means out of the woods yet. He had had a major heart attack, and there was still a risk that his heart would go back into fibrillation. The next twenty-four hours were crucial. And looking at him, it was easy to believe all of it. What was impossible to believe was that two hours before, he had actually looked youthful and healthy when Peter walked into his office.

Peter waited for Kate in the lobby downstairs, and he tried to warn her before she came up. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and her hair was a mess, and she had a wild-eyed look of panic as she rode up in the elevator with her husband.

“How is he?” she asked for the fifth time since she'd arrived. She was completely distraught, and unusually distracted.

“You'll see. Calm down. I think he looks a lot worse than he is.” The machines attached to him were frightening, and he looked like a body they were working on, more than just a patient. But Katie was in no way prepared for what she saw when she went to the CICU and caught a glimpse of her father. She started sobbing the moment she saw him, and had to force herself not to cry when she stood next to him and clutched his hand. But he opened his eyes and recognized her, and then drifted off to a drug-induced sleep again. They wanted him to rest completely for the next few days, in the hope that he'd live through it.

“Oh my God,” she said, nearly collapsing into Peter's arms as she left the room. He had to get her into a chair as quickly as he could, and a nurse brought her a drink of water. “I just can't believe it.” She couldn't stop crying for the next half hour, and Peter sat with her. And when the doctor finally came back to talk to them, he said that Frank had about a 50-50 chance of surviving.

His words sent Kate into hysterics again, and she spent the rest of the afternoon crying in a chair outside the CICU, and going in to visit him every half hour for five minutes, when they let her. But most of the times she went in, he was unconscious. And by the end of the day, Peter tried to get her to leave to get something to eat, but she absolutely refused. She said she would sleep in the waiting room for as long as she needed to, but she wasn't leaving, not for an instant.

“Kate, you have to,” Peter said gently. “It won't help anything if you get sick too. He'll be all right for an hour or so. You can go to the apartment and lie down, and they'll call you if they need to.”

“Don't waste your breath,” she said stubbornly with the look of a child who would not be moved. “I'm staying with him. I'm sleeping here tonight, and for as long as I have to till he's out of danger.” In truth, it was nothing more or less than Peter had expected.

“I should go home and check on the boys at some point,” he said thoughtfully, and she nodded. Her children were the last thing on her mind as she sat in the bleak hallway. “I'll go out and settle them down, and then I'll come back later tonight,” he said, making a plan while he talked, and she nodded. “Will you be all right while I'm gone?” he asked her gently, but she scarcely looked at him. She already looked bereft as she stared out the window. She couldn't even imagine a world without her father. For the first twenty years of her life, he had been all she had in the world. And for the next twenty, he had been one of the most important people in her life. Peter thought Frank was a land of love object to her, a passion of sorts, almost an obsession, and although he would never have said it, she seemed to love him more than her own children. “Hell be all right,” he said softly, but she only cried and shook her head as he left, and he knew there was nothing more he could do for her. All she wanted was her daddy.

Peter drove home as quickly as he could in the Friday night melee, and fortunately all three boys were home when he got in, and he told them as gently as he could about Frank's heart attack, and all three of them were deeply worried. He reassured them as best he could, and when Mike asked, he said only that they'd been having a business meeting when it happened. Mike wanted to go into town to see his grandfather, but Peter thought it was better to wait. When Frank was feeling up to it, his oldest grandson could come in to see him from Princeton.

“What about tomorrow, Dad?” Mike asked. They were supposed to take him to Princeton the next day, and as far as Peter knew, almost everything was ready except for the rug and bedspread Kate hadn't been able to get that afternoon, but Mike could make do without them.

“I'll take you in the morning. I think your mom is going to want to stay with Granddad.”

Peter took them out to a quick dinner, and by nine o'clock he headed back to town, and called Kate from the car. She said there was no change, although she thought he looked worse than he had a few hours before, but the nurse taking care of him had said that was to be expected.

Peter got back to the hospital at ten, and stayed with her till after midnight, and then he went back to Greenwich to be with the boys. And he took Mike to school with all his trunks and bags and sporting gear at eight o'clock the next morning. He had been assigned a room with two other guys and by noon Peter had done everything that was expected. He gave Mike a hug, wished him well, and headed back to New York to see Kate and her father. He got there just before two, and he was astonished at what he found there. Frank was sitting up in bed, looking weak and tired. He was still pale, but his hair was combed, he had clean pajamas on, and Kate was spooning soup into him like a baby. It was a huge improvement.

“Well, well,” he said as he walked in. “I'd say it looks like you turned a corner,” he said, and Frank smiled. But Peter was still cautious with him. He couldn't forget the things he'd said, or the tone with which he'd said them. But in spite of that, he didn't begrudge him his survival. “Where'd you get the fancy pajamas?” He certainly didn't look like the same man who'd lain on his office floor, covered in his own vomit only the day before, and Kate smiled brightly. She didn't have those memories to contend with, nor the ones of his vicious attack on Peter about having been bought and paid for.

“I had Bergdorf messenger them over,” she said, looking pleased. “The nurse said they might move Daddy to a private room tomorrow if he keeps improving.” Kate herself looked exhausted, but she didn't falter for a moment. She would have given him all her strength, all her lifeblood, if it would have helped him.

“Well, that's good news,” Peter said, and then told them both about Mike's arrival at Princeton. Frank looked extremely pleased, and a little while later, Kate gently helped him lie down again for a nap, and she and Peter walked out into the hallway. But she didn't look nearly as animated as she had when she was spooning soup into her father. And Peter knew instantly that something had happened.

“Daddy told me about yesterday,” she said with a pointed look as they wandered down the hallway.

“What does that mean?” He was tired himself, and had no interest in playing games with her. He found it hard to believe his father-in-law had confessed how vicious he had been, or repeated what he'd said to and about Peter. Peter had never known him to apologize, or admit a mistake, even when it was blatant.

“You know what it means,” she said, stopping to look at him, wondering if she even knew him. “He said you threatened him about the hearings, almost to the point of violence.”

“He said what?” Peter almost couldn't believe it.

“He said he'd never heard you speak to anyone like that, and you refused to listen to reason. He said it was just too much for him, and …and then …” She started to cry and couldn't go on speaking for a moment as she looked up at him, her eyes filled with accusations. “You almost killed my father. You would have, if he weren't basically so strong …and so decent …” She looked away from him then, unable to face him any longer, but Peter heard what she said very clearly. “I don't think I can ever forgive you.”

“That makes two of us then,” he said, looking at her with unbridled fury. “I suggest you ask him what he said to me before he went down. I believe it was something about having bought me years ago, lock, stock, and barrel, and seeing me dead if I didn't go to his goddamn hearings.” He looked down at his wife with clear blue eyes, and she saw something in them she'd never seen before, and then he strode away as fast as he could, and got in the elevator while she watched him. She made no move to follow him, but it didn't matter to him now. There was no question in his mind anymore about her allegiance.

Chapter Eleven

Frank recovered surprisingly well from his heart attack, and within two weeks he was sent home, and Katie went to stay at his house with him. Peter thought it was just as well, they both needed some time to think, and decide how they felt about each other. She had never apologized to him for what she'd said to him in the hospital, and he'd never brought it up again. But he hadn't forgotten it either. And of course, Frank made no mention again of Peter having been “bought and paid for.” Peter almost wondered if he even remembered.

He was cordial with his father-in-law when he visited him, which he did regularly, both out of courtesy and to see Kate, but relations between Peter and Frank were visibly cool. And Katie was keeping her distance from Peter. And she was too busy with her father to even pay much attention to Patrick. Peter was taking care of him, cooking dinner for him every night, and he really was no trouble. The two older boys were away at school, and they had already heard from Mike several times. He was crazy about Princeton.

It was exactly two weeks after his heart attack that Frank brought up the hearings again. Both men knew that in spite of everything, they were still on the FDA agenda. And the hearings were only days away. If they were not asking for early approval from the FDA, their appearance in front of them had to be canceled.

“Well?” Frank asked, leaning back against the pillows Kate had just fluffed for him. He was impeccably shaven and clean, and his barber had just come to give him a haircut. He looked like a magazine ad for pajamas and expensive sheets, not a man returning from death's door, but Peter was nonetheless anxious not to upset him. “Where do we stand these days? How does the research look?” They both knew what he was asking.

“I don't think we should discuss this.” Katie was downstairs making lunch for him, and Peter had no intention of starting an argument with him, and then having to deal with both Donovans. As far as he was concerned, until the doctors told him otherwise, Vicotec was a taboo subject.

“We have to discuss it,” Frank said staunchly. “The hearings are only a few days away. I haven't forgotten that,” he said calmly. Nor had Peter forgotten what he had said to him in his office. But Frank made no mention of that as he looked at his son-in-law. He was a man with a mission. It was easy to see now where Kate got her stubbornness and perseverance. “I spoke to the office yesterday, and according to the research department, We've come up clean on everything.”

“With one exception,” Peter added.

“A minor test, done on laboratory rats in exceptional conditions. I know all about it. But apparently, it's irrelevant, because the conditions represented in those tests could never be reproduced in humans.”

“That's true,” Peter conceded to him, praying that Katie wouldn't come in and catch them in this discussion, “but technically, in terms of the FDA, that disqualifies us. I still say we don't go to the hearings.” And what's more, they hadn't been able to complete their redo of the French tests yet, and those were crucial. “We need to check Suchard's material again too. That's where the real flaw lies. The rest of this has all been fairly routine. But we need to go over the same ground he covered.”

“We can do that before Vicotec is ever used clinically, and the FDA doesn't need to know anything about it right now. Technically, we've passed all their requirements with flying colors. They don't want anything more than we have. That should satisfy you,” he said pointedly to Peter.

“It would. If Suchard hadn't come up with a problem, and we'd be lying if we concealed that fact from the FDA.”

“I give you my word,” Frank said, ignoring him, “if anything …anything at all …the merest hint of a problem appears on the subsequent tests, I' pull it. I'm not crazy. I don't want a hundred-million-dollar lawsuit. I'm not trying to kill anyone. But I don't want us killed either. We've got what we need. Let's go with it. If I give you my word to pursue it to the nth degree even if we get approval for early human trials, after all our laboratory tests, will you appear at the hearings? Peter, what harm can it do? …Please …” But it was wrong, and Peter knew it. It was premature, and it was dangerous. With approval for early clinical trials, they could administer it to humans immediately, and he didn't trust his father-in-law not to do that. It didn't matter to Peter that the clinical trials would involve extremely low doses of Vicotec used on a very small number of people. The whole point, to him, was not taking undue and irresponsible risks with even one single person. They had been warned of potential hazards in using Vicotec, as it was now, and Peter was unwilling to fly in the face of that warning. Other companies had experienced horror stories when they did, and there were even legendary stories of products that had been fully packaged and sitting on trucks, waiting for FDA approval, so they could be delivered moments after they got it. Peter was afraid that his father-in-law had something like that in mind eventually for Vicotec, despite its potential problems. If Frank wasn't prepared to be reasonable, the possibilities for abuse were endless. And the abuse could result in needless loss of life. Peter couldn't endorse it.

“I can't go to the FDA,” Peter said sadly. “You know that.”

“You're doing this as revenge … for what I said … for God's sake, you know I didn't mean it.” He did remember then. Had he said it only to be cruel, or because he believed it? Peter would never know now, and he also knew he would never forget it. But he was not vengeful.

“It has nothing to do with that. It's a question of ethics.”

“That's bullshit. What do you want then? A bribe? A guarantee? You have my word that I won't go forward if there's still a problem when we complete all the tests. What more do you need?”

“Time. It's only a matter of time,” Peter said, looking tired. The Donovans had worn him out in the past two weeks, and actually, if he thought about it, long before that.

“It's a matter of money. And pride. And reputation. Can you calculate the loss to us if we back out of those hearings now? It could even hurt our other products.” It was an endless round-robin and neither of them agreed with the other's position. They were both looking grim when Katie came in with Frank's lunch, and suspected they were having forbidden discussions.

“You're not talking business, are you?” she asked both of them, and they both shook their heads, but Peter looked guilty, and she cornered him a little while later. “I would think you'd want to make it up to him,” she said cryptically, as they stood in her father's kitchen.

“Make what up to him?”

“What you did.” She still thought Peter had nearly killed him, and had caused his heart attack by upsetting him, and nothing anyone could have said would have changed her mind about it. “In a way, you owe it to him to go to those hearings. There would be no real harm done. It's a question of saving face as far as he's concerned. He stuck his neck out for early trials, and now he doesn't want to admit he's not ready. He's not going to use Vicotec on people if it's dangerous. You know that about him. He's not stupid, or crazy. But he's sick, and he's old, and he has a right not to lose face in front of the entire country. You could give him that if you wanted to, if you gave a damn,” she said accusingly. “Somehow, it doesn't seem too much to ask. Unless you really don't care about him. He told me he said some pretty rotten stuff to you the other day, because he was upset. But I'm sure he didn't mean it. The question is,” she said pointedly, “are you big enough to forgive him? Or are you going to make him pay for it by taking away the one thing he wants from you? You're going to Congress at the same time anyway, you could still appear at the FDA. You owe him that much after what you did. And he can't go himself now. You're the only one who can do it.” She made him feel like a real sonofabitch for not doing it, and she was determined to make him feel responsible for her father's heart attack. And she seemed hooked, as her father did, on the idea of his getting revenge on Frank for the things he'd said. It all seemed so petty and twisted.

“It has nothing to do with that, Kate. It's a lot more complicated. It has to do with integrity, and ethics. He has to look beyond just saving face. What would people think, the government for instance, if they ever found out that we went to the hearings prematurely? They'd never trust us again. It could destroy the business “ Worse yet, it would destroy him. It violated all his beliefs, and he knew he couldn't do it.

“He told you he'll pull it, if he has to. All you're giving him is a grace period, and an appearance before the FDA.” She made it sound like so little, and she was far more convincing than her father. She made it sound as though he had to do it, as though it were such a small thing to ask, that she couldn't understand why he wouldn't. And she somehow managed to interject herself into it, as though he owed it to her to prove he still loved her. “All he's asking you to do is compromise. That's all. Are you so small you can't do that? Just give him that …this once. That's all. The man almost died. He deserves it.” She sounded like Joan of Arc as she waved the flag at him, and Peter never knew why, but when he looked at her, he could feel himself slipping. He felt as though his whole life were on the line. She had put it there. And the stakes were too high now for him to resist her. “Peter?” She looked up at him, seductive suddenly, the temptress she had never been, endowed with superhuman abilities and wisdom, and he didn't even have the strength to answer her, let alone resist her. Without even meaning to, he nodded. And she understood. It was done then. She had won. He would go to the hearings.

Chapter Twelve

The night before he went to Washington was a nightmare for Peter. He still couldn't believe what he had agreed to do for them. But Kate had been obviously grateful to him ever since he'd agreed, and her father had actually improved by leaps and bounds, and he was overflowing with warmth and praise for Peter. And Peter felt as though he had been catapulted onto another planet where nothing was real, his heart had turned to stone, and his brain was weightless. He could barely fathom what he was doing.

Intellectually, he could still rationalize it to himself, just the way Frank had. Vicotec was almost there, and if there were further wrinkles in it, they would pull it before it ever hit the market. But morally and legally, what they were doing was wrong, and they all knew that. And yet, Peter knew he had no choice now. He had promised Kate and her father he would do it. The only question for him was how he would live with himself after that, or was it simply a matter of chipping away at his ethics gradually? Once he did this, would other slippage occur, other violations of principles he had previously adhered to? It was an interesting philosophical issue, and if he hadn't felt as though his life were at stake, he would have been deeply interested in it. As it was, he couldn't eat, he couldn't sleep. He had lost seven pounds in a matter of days, and he looked dreadful. His secretary asked him if he was ill the day before he was to leave for Washington, and he merely shook his head, and just said he was busy. With Frank gone, and planning to stay at home for another month, there was even more than usual on his shoulders. And he was appearing before Congress on the pricing issues, on the same day as the FDA hearings, in the morning.

He had stayed at his desk late that afternoon, looking at the latest research. It looked good actually, except for one little blip that coordinated perfectly with some of the things Suchard had said in June, but Peter was entirely sure what the latest blip meant. According to the researchers, it dealt with a relatively minor issue, and Peter didn't even bother to call Frank about it. He knew what his take on it would be anyway. “Don't worry about it. Go to the hearings, and we'll work it all out later.” But Peter took the reports home with him anyway, and read them all again that night, and he was still troubled by them at two o'clock in the morning. Katie was asleep in the bed next to him. She wasn't staying at her father's anymore, and she was actually coming to Washington with him and had bought a new suit for it. She and her father were so pleased that he'd capitulated that they'd both been in high spirits ever since he'd agreed to go to Washington for them. It still felt like a mission from hell to him, and Katie had chided him for overreacting. She tried to pretend he was just nervous about appearing before Congress.

But as he sat in his study in Greenwich at four A.M., he was still thinking about the latest reports, and staring out the window. He wished there were someone knowledgeable he could talk to. He didn't know the men on the German and Swiss research teams personally, and he didn't have a good rapport with the new man in Paris. Frank had obviously hired him because he was malleable and a yes-man, but he was also difficult to understand, and so scientific in his approach to everything that it was like listening to Japanese to Peter. And then he thought of something, and flipped through the Rolodex on his desk. He wondered if he had the number at home and then he found it. It was ten o'clock in the morning in Paris, and with any luck at all he'd be there. He asked for him by name as soon as the switchboard answered. The phone beeped twice, with the sound of a friendly robot, and then the familiar voice was on the phone.

“Allo?” It was Paul-Louis. Peter had called him at the new company he worked for.

“Hi, Paul-Louis,” Peter said, sounding tired. It was four A.M. for him, and it had been an endless night. He wondered if Paul-Louis would be able to help him make a decision he could be comfortable with at least. It was the only reason he'd called him. “This is Benedict Arnold.”

“Qui? Allô? Who is this?” he asked, confused, and Peter smiled as he answered.

“He was a traitor who was shot a long time ago. Salut, Paul-Louis,” he said then in French, “it's Peter Haskell.”

“Ah …d'accord.” He understood instantly. “You're going to do it then? They forced you?” He knew the moment he heard him. Peter sounded ghastly.

“I wish I could say they forced me,” he said gallantly, although they had, but he was too gentlemanly to say that. “I volunteered, more or less, for a variety of reasons, Frank had a near-fatal heart attack nearly three weeks ago. Things haven't been quite the same since then.”

“I see,” he said solemnly. “What can I do for you?” He was working for a rival company, but he had a real fondness for Peter. “Is there something you want from me?” he asked bluntly.

“Absolution, I think, although I don't deserve it. I just got some new reports in, and I think they're fairly clean, if I understand them correctly. We substituted two of the materials and everyone seems to think that solved the problem. But there's one odd series of results that I'm not sure I understand, and I thought maybe you could shed some light on it for me. There's no one I can talk to candidly here. What I want to know is if we're going to kill anyone with Vicotec. It boils down to that basically. I want to know if you still think it's dangerous, or if we're well on our way now. Do you have time for me to go over this?” He didn't, but he was willing to make time for Peter. He told his secretary to hold all his calls, and was back on the line in an instant.

“Fax it to me now.” Peter did, and there was a long silence, while Paul-Louis read the memo. For the next hour they went backward and forward over the research, while Peter answered as many questions as he could, and then finally there was yet another long silence, and Peter sensed that Paul-Louis had made his mind up. “It's very subjective, you understand. At this stage, there is not necessarily a clear-cut interpretation. It is a good thing, of course. It is a wonderful product which will change our ability to cope with cancer. But there are additional elements that must be evaluated. It is that evaluation which is so difficult to give you. Nothing is sure in life. Nothing is without risk, or cost. The question is if you are willing to pay it.” He sounded very French in his philosophy, but Peter understood him.

“The question for us is how great the risk is.” “I understand that.” He understood it perfectly. It was what had worried him in June while Peter had been in Paris. “And the new research is good, unquestionably. They're on the right track now …” His voice trailed off as he frowned and lit a cigarette. All the scientists Peter had met in Europe were smokers.

“But are we there yet?” Peter asked hesitantly, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“No …not yet …” Suchard said sadly. “Perhaps soon, if they continue to work in this direction. But you are not there yet. In my opinion Vicotec is still potentially dangerous, particularly in unskilled hands,” which were precisely the hands it was meant for. It was being made for laymen to use, at home if necessary. It meant staying at home for chemotherapy, and not going to hospitals, or even doctors.

“Is it still a killer, Paul-Louis?” That was what he had called it in June. Peter could still hear him.

“I think so.” The voice on the other end sounded apologetic but clear. “You're not there yet, Peter. Give it time. You will be.”

“And the hearings?'

“When are they?”

Peter looked at his watch. It was five o'clock in the morning. “In nine hours. At two o'clock this afternoon. I'm leaving the house in two hours.” He was taking an eight o'clock plane, and planned to appear before Congress at eleven.

“I don't envy you, my friend. There is very little I can say. If you want to be honest, you must tell them that this will be a wonderful drug, but it is not ready yet. You are still in process.”

“You don't go before the FDA to say that. We're asking for permission for early clinical trials, based on our laboratory testing. Frank wants it on the market as soon as we can push it through all the phases of human trials, and get FDA approval.”

Suchard whistled at the other end. “That's frightening. Why is he pushing so hard?”

“He wants to retire in January. And he wants to know it's well on its way before that. This would have been his farewell gift to mankind. And mine. Instead it feels like a time bomb.”

“It is, Peter. You must know that.”

“I do. But no one else wants to hear it. He says he'll pull the product before the end of the year if we're not ready to use it on humans. But he's still insisting we go to Washington. To tell you the truth, it's a long story.” It had to do with the ego of an old man, and calculated risk in a billion-dollar business. But in this case, Frank's calculations were not good ones, and they were based on his ego. It was a dangerous move that could destroy his whole business, but he still refused to see that. And the odd thing was that Peter saw it so clearly. Frank was being stubborn to the point of insanity. Maybe he was getting senile, or just crazed with his own power. It was impossible to know that.

He thanked Paul-Louis for his help, and the Frenchman wished him luck, and when he hung up, Peter went to make a pot of coffee. He still had the option to back out, but he just couldn't see how to do that. He could also go to the hearings, and then resign from Wilson-Donovan, but that wouldn't protect the people he had tried to help and was being forced to put at risk now. The trouble was he didn't trust Frank to cancel its human trials, if their lab reports didn't improve radically in the immediate future. Something told Peter he was too willing to gamble. There was too much money to be made here, no matter what the risk to human life. The temptation was too great now.

Katie heard him stirring a little while later, and she came out to the kitchen before the alarm went off. She found Peter at the kitchen table with his head in his hands, drinking his second cup of coffee. She had never seen him like that before, he looked almost worse than her father right after his heart attack.

“What are you so worried about?” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. But it was too hard to explain it to her, it was obvious she didn't understand it, or want to. “It'll be over before you know it.” She made it sound like a root canal, instead of the violation of everything he believed in. His ethics, his integrity, his principles were all in jeopardy and she couldn't see that. He looked up at her unhappily as she sat across the table, looking as trim and as cool as ever in her pink nightgown.

“I'm doing this for all the wrong reasons, Kate. Not because it's right, or because we're ready for it. But I'm doing it for you, and your father. I feel like a Mafia hit man.”

“That's a disgusting thing to say,” she said, looking annoyed at him. “How can you make a comparison like that? You are doing it because you know it is right, and you owe it to my father.”

He sat back in the kitchen chair, and looked at her, wondering what the future held for them, at the rate they were going. Not much, from what he could see lately. And now he knew how Olivia had felt when she said she had sold out to Andy. It was a life built on lies and pretense. And in this case, blackmail.

“What is it that you both seem to think I owe you?” he asked calmly. “Your father seems to think I owe him a lot. As far as I've known for all these years, it's all been a fair exchange, I work hard for the company and get paid for it. And you and I had a real marriage, or I thought so. But lately this concept of 'owing' seems to keep getting into things. Why exactly do either of you think I 'owe' it to you to go to these hearings?”

“Because,” she trod very carefully on delicate ground, knowing it was potentially a minefield, “the company has been good to you for twenty years and this is your way of paying it back, standing up for a product that can make billions for us.”

“Is that what this is all about then? Money?” He looked slightly ill as he asked her. Was that what he had sold out for? Billions. At least he hadn't sold himself cheaply, he thought, wincing.

“Partly. You can't be that much of an innocent, Peter. You share in our profits. You know what we're all here for. And consider the children. What would happen to them? You'd ruin their lives too.” She looked very cold and very calculating, and very hard. And for all her talk about her father, she still cared about the money.

“It's funny. I had this crazy idea that it was for the good of mankind, or at the very least to save lives. I think that's why I did it, why I've pushed it for the last four years. But I wasn't willing to lie for it, even then. And I'm even less inclined to now, 'for money.'”

“Are you backing out now?” she asked, looking horrified. She would have gone to the hearings herself, if she could. But she wasn't employed by the company, and her father was still too ill to go, so it was up to Peter. “You know, I'd give it some very serious thought before I backed out of this,” she said, standing up and looking down at him. “I think it would be fair to say that if you chicken out on us now, your bright future at Wilson-Donovan is about over.”

“And our marriage?” he asked, playing with fire now, and he knew it.

“That remains to be seen,” she said quietly. “But I would view it as the ultimate betrayal.” And he could see she meant that, but suddenly, just looking at her, he felt better. She was so crisp and so clear, so much what she had always been, although he hadn't always seen it.

“It's good to know where you stand on this, Kate,” Peter said calmly, their eyes meeting over the kitchen table as they stood on either side of it. And before she could answer, Patrick came in for breakfast.

“What are you two doing up so early?” he asked, looking sleepy.

“Your mother and I are going to Washington today,” Peter said firmly.

“Oh, I forgot. Is Granddad going too?” Patrick yawned and poured himself a glass of milk as he chatted.

“No, the doctor said it was too soon,” Peter explained, and Frank called a few minutes later. He wanted to catch Peter before he left, and remind him what he wanted him to say to Congress about pricing. They had already discussed it a dozen times in the past few days, but Frank wanted to be sure Peter would stand by the party line in front of Congress.

“We're not giving anything away, and certainly not Vicotec, when it comes around. Don't forget that,” he reminded Peter sternly. Even his ideas about pricing Vicotec went against everything Peter believed in. Kate was watching him when he came back to the table.

“Everything all right?” She smiled at him as he nodded. And then they both went to dress, and they drove to the airport half an hour later.

Peter seemed strangely calm on the way there, and he said very little to Kate. He had terrified her for a little while, but she realized he must have been nervous. She had been afraid he would back out, but now she was just as sure he wouldn't. Peter always finished what he started.

It was a short flight from La Guardia to National Airport, and Peter spent most of it going through his papers. He had several files on pricing issues in front of him, and all the new reports on the Vicotec research. He particularly went over the parts Suchard had pointed out to him earlier that morning when Peter called him. The Vicotec material worried him a lot more than his appearance before Congress.

Kate called her father from the plane and assured him that all was going along on schedule. And in Washington, they were met by a limousine, which took them to Congress. And as soon as they got there, Peter felt much calmer. He knew what he was going to say to them more or less, and he wasn't really worried.

Two congressional aides were waiting for him in the staff room, and he was led to a conference room, where he was offered a cup of coffee. Kate was still with him then, but a page came for her shortly after that, and escorted her to a seat in the gallery, where she could watch him. She wished him luck, and touched his hand as she left, but she didn't stop to kiss him. And a few minutes later, he was led into the room himself, and for an instant he looked startled. No matter how well prepared he was, it was still an extraordinary experience to face the men and women who ran the country, and offer them his opinions. It was only the second time he had ever been there, and the first time, Frank had done all the talking. This time was entirely different.

Peter was led to a witness table, and sworn in. The members of the subcommittee sat across from him, with microphones, and after he gave his name, and the name of his company, the questions began without further ado, as the members of Congress listened with interest.

He was asked specifically about certain drugs, and his views about their extraordinarily elevated prices. He tried to give easily comprehensible reasons for it, but in fact, even to his own ears, the explanations sounded hollow and somewhat futile. The truth was that the companies producing these drugs were making a fortune overcharging the public, and the members of Congress knew it. Wilson-Donovan was guilty of some of it, though their practices and their profits were not quite as blatant as some of the others.

They brought up some insurance issues after that, and at the very end, a congresswoman from Idaho said that she understood he was appearing in front of the FDA later that day, to request early human testing for a new product. And just to keep them informed on new developments in the field, she asked him to tell them something about it.

Peter explained it as simply as he could, without going into technicalities, or jeopardizing any secrets, and he told the members of Congress that it was going to change the nature of chemotherapy, and make it accessible to the layman, without need for professional assistance. Mothers could administer it to children, husbands to wives, or with care, one could administer it to oneself. It was going to revolutionalize the care of all patients with cancer. It was going to make the common man able to treat himself or his family, in rural or urban areas, anywhere that it was needed.

“And will the 'common man, as you say, be able to afford it? I think that's the key here.” Another congresswoman asked, as Peter nodded.

“We certainly hope so. It is among our goals for Vicotec, to keep the price down as much as possible, and make it accessible to everyone who needs it.” He looked quiet and strong as he said the words, and several heads nodded approval as they listened. He had been a very knowledgeable, straightforward, and impressive witness. And a short time later they thanked him as he was excused, the entire panel of the subcommittee shook his hand, and they wished him luck at the FDA hearing that afternoon, with his clearly remarkable product. Peter was pleased as he left the room, and walked back to the conference room behind an aide. And a moment later, Katie joined him.

Why did you say that?” she asked him unhappily under her breath as he gathered up his papers. She had yet to congratulate him or tell him how well he'd done. Even strangers had done that much. But his wife was looking at him with scarcely concealed disapproval. It was like looking at Frank as Peter watched her. “You made it sound like we're going to give Vicotec away. You know that isn't the impression Dad wanted you to create here. It's going to be an expensive drug. It's got to be if we're going to make our money back, and make the kind of profit we deserve to on it.” Her eyes looked calculating and hard as he watched her.

“Let's not talk about it,” Peter said as he picked up his briefcase, thanked the aides and walked out of the building with Katie right behind him. He had nothing left to say to her. She didn't understand any of it. She understood the profit in the drugs they sold, but not the heart, she understood the words, but not the meaning. But she also didn't dare push him now. He had successfully overcome one obstacle, but now he had his biggest hurdle in front of him, at the FDA hearings. They had a little over an hour left before he had to appear, as they got into the limo.

Kate suggested they go somewhere for lunch, but Peter only shook his head. He was thinking of what she had just said to him after the congressional hearings, He had blown it, as far as she was concerned. He had failed, he had not upheld the party line, promising to keep Vicotec, and all their other drugs, as expensive as possible, so they could make a huge profit on them, and please her father. He was glad he had said what he had, and he was going to fight like a dog in the next months, to keep Vicotec's price down. Frank had no idea how relentless Peter planned to be about it.

In the end, they ate roast beef sandwiches in the limousine, with coffee in paper cups. And Peter looked nervous to Kate as the car stopped at the FDA at 5600 Fishers Lane in Rockville, Maryland. It had taken them half an hour to get there from Capitol Hill, and when they arrived, Peter could see easily it was not a pretty building, but important things happened here, and that was all Peter could think of. He kept thinking of what was going to happen here today. What he had come here to do. What he had promised Frank and Katie. The promise he'd made them hadn't come easily, but being there was far worse, knowing that he was hiding a dangerous flaw from the FDA, and promising them the drug was ready to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public. He just prayed that Frank held up his end of the deal, and would pull the product if they had to.

Peter's palms were damp as he walked into the hearing room, and he was too nervous to notice the people attending the hearing. He said not a word to Katie as she left him and took her seat. In fact, he forgot all about her. He had important work to do, he had ideals to sacrifice, and principles to relinquish. And yet, if the product worked, they would save lives, or at the very least extend them. It was still a terrible quandary for him, knowing what he did, and also how badly the drug was needed.

At the FDA, Peter was not sworn in, but here truth was even more crucial. And as he looked around, he felt light-headed. But at least he knew what he had to do now. And it would be over soon. He hoped that his betrayal of the very people he had hoped to help would take only a few minutes, though he feared it might take considerably longer.

He felt his hands shake as he waited for the advisory committee to begin asking him questions. It was the most terrifying experience of his life, and nothing like his appearance before Congress only that morning. That had been so harmless and so simple compared to this. His appearance at the FDA seemed so ominous in comparison, there was so much more at stake, so much resting on his shoulders. But he kept telling himself that all he had to do was get through it. He couldn't allow himself to think of anyone, not Kate, not Frank, not Suchard, not even the reports he had read. He had to stand up and speak about Vicotec, and he knew everything about it, as he sat, waiting nervously at the long narrow table.

He thought suddenly of Katie then, and all he had sacrificed for her, and her father. He had given them the gift of his integrity, and his courage. It was more than he “owed” anyone, her or her father.