Kaleidoscope

He showered and shaved, made himself coffee and left for work, and he noticed when he read the newspaper on the subway that Eloise had a new best seller. Good for her. It was all she had in life, and he knew how happy it made her. He envied her sometimes. He would have liked to be as fulfilled, as obsessed, as totally enthralled with what he did that it didn't matter what else happened in his life. He loved his work, but he wanted so much more than that. And so far, he hadn't found it. It was one of the reasons why he was excited about the Patterson case. There was something about it that excited him and he hadn't been this excited about his work in aeons. The first thing he wanted to do was find the oldest one, Hilary. There was something about her that haunted him. And God only knew what had happened to her after Arthur had abandoned her in Charlestown. He knew from her visit to Arthur's office in later years that she had wound up in Jacksonville, Florida. Somehow, but how or when or why, neither of them knew, and maybe it wasn't important. And what had happened to her afterward was a mystery too. She had never contacted Arthur again. She had simply disappeared. And then there was the clipping from The New York Times Arthur had given him of the woman named Hilary Walker at CBA Network. But was that even the same woman? He doubted it. It seemed extremely unlikely.

Chapter 16

John got to the office before nine o'clock. He had a lot to do before leaving early for the weekend, there was something he wanted to do before he left. He wanted to try calling the Hilary Walker in Arthur's clipping. It probably wasn't the woman he wanted but it was worth a shot. It was a lead, and he couldn't afford to ignore it. She might just be at CBA, right under their noses, working near the top at a major network.

He glanced at his watch. It was nine-fifteen, and he picked up the phone himself. He called information, and then dialed the number.

“Hilary Walker, please.” His mouth felt a little dry, and he was surprised. He didn't know why he was getting to care about the Patterson case so much.

A secretary answered, and he asked for her again.

“May I tell her who's calling?” a voice asked.

“John Chapman of Chapman Associates, she doesn't know me, and it's a matter of some urgency, if you'd be good enough to tell her that.”

“Just a moment please.” The girl at the other end gave away nothing. She had called Hilary oh the intercom, and she couldn't figure out who the hell John Chapman was or why he was calling. She had a major production meeting to run at ten o'clock and she didn't have time to waste with crank callers.

“Ask him if I can call him back later,” she told the secretary and then countermanded her own orders. “Oh never mind, I'll talk to him myself.” She pushed the button with the flashing light, and her cool, deep voice came on the line. “Yes? This is Hilary Walker.” And for an odd moment, John was reminded of his mother's deep voice. She was the only other woman he knew with a voice as deep as that, but he got down to business with her quickly. Whether she was the right Hilary Walker or not, this one was a very busy woman.

“Thank you for taking my call, I appreciate it, and I'm going to be direct with you, in the interest of saving time. My name is John Chapman, I'm the head of Chapman Associates, I'm looking for a woman named Hilary Walker. Her father was Sam, her mother Solange, and she lived with a couple named Jack and Eileen Jones in Boston. Are you that woman?” It was fortunate that he could not see her face at the other end. She was chalk-white and shaking from head to foot as one hand clutched her desk, but her voice betrayed nothing.

“No, I'm not. What is this about?” Her first instinct had been to deny it, but she had to know why he was looking for her. Was it for the others? Not that it mattered anymore. They were long gone, and probably didn't even remember her. She had given all that up years before. All she had now was the network. And much more likely, it was Arthur. The bastard.

“This is part of an investigation for a client. He was hoping to find this Miss Walker. And he saw the articles about you in the Times and The Wall Street Journal, and hoped that you might be the right one. It was a long shot, and I'm sorry to have disturbed you.” He could hear in her voice that she wasn't the right one, and he had to admit he was disappointed.

“I'm awfully sorry not to be able to help you, Mr. Chapman.” Her voice was smooth and cool, but she was definitely not moved by his inquiry. It would have been much too simple if she had been the right one.

“Thank you for your time, Miss Walker.”

“Not at all.” And with that, she hung up, and he quietly hung up the phone. He had struck out. And he couldn't see the woman who sat pale and shaken at her desk across town. It was like getting a phone call from a ghost. She was sure it was Arthur looking for her, the old son of a bitch, well he'd never find her. She had no reason to reach out to him, to soothe his conscience for him. He had never done anything for her or her sisters. To hell with him. And John Chapman. And all of them. She didn't need them.

She walked into the meeting at ten o'clock and tore heads off for the rest of the day. But she was still shaken when she left the meeting and so was everyone else. She had fired three producers, and threatened everyone else in the meeting. She was merciless, but then again she was known for it. She was only slightly worse after the call from John Chapman.

Chapter 17

In his office, John Chapman sat staring into space in disappointment. The woman in the article was not the Hilary Walker they wanted … he wanted … He sighed deeply and put the clipping back in the file with a notation. Later, he would have to call and tell Arthur. But two of his associates were anxious to speak to him in the meantime.

Three of their biggest cases were coming to court, and they had gotten the goods in all three. It was very rewarding. And at noon, John looked at his watch and made a decision. He had handled pretty much everything he wanted to, the rest could wait till Monday. His parents weren't expecting him till dinnertime. And if he caught the two o'clock commuter flight out of La Guardia, he'd be in Boston at three, and he could stop in Charlestown on his way to his folks. He'd still be there in plenty of time, and he wanted to see if he could turn up anything on Hilary Walker. He had what he needed to go straight to Jacksonville on her, but he still liked to be thorough in his investigations. And a trip to Charlestown might turn something up on one of the others. It was worth a look in any case, and he was going in that direction.

He told his secretary where he'd be in case she needed him, and took a cab back to his apartment. It took him ten minutes to pack a bag. He knew exactly what he needed for a weekend with his family. And by one o'clock he was already on his way to La Guardia. He bought a seat on the commuter flight, arrived at three-ten, and rented a car at the airport. And from there it was a thirty-minute drive to Charlestown.

He checked the information in the file again and made sure he had the correct address, and cringed inwardly as he began driving down the streets of Charlestown. It was one of those areas that had been ugly forty years before, and had not improved with age. There were other sections that had been lucky in recent years, and were being restored by loving hands, but these houses were not among them. And if they had been ugly when Hilary lived there, they were worse now. They were truly awful. Filthy, broken down, with paint peeling everywhere, and many of the houses boarded up and crumbling. There were signs here and there, on houses that had been condemned by the city, and John could almost feel the rats waiting to sneak out at nightfall. It was an awful place, and the house where he stopped was one of the worst among them. He stood for a moment, looking at it from the sidewalk, the weeds were shoulder-high in the yard, and the smell of trash was heavy in the air, and the front door was almost falling off its hinges.

With trepidation, he walked up the front steps, trying to avoid the two broken ones so as not to fall through, and he knocked on the door resoundingly.

The doorbell was hanging by a thread and clearly broken. And although he heard noises within, no one came to the door for a long time, and then finally a toothless old woman answered. She stared at him, confused, and then asked him what he wanted.

“I was looking for Eileen and Jack Jones. They lived here a long time ago. Did you know them?'.” He spoke loudly, in case she was deaf. But she did not seem so much deaf as stupid.

“Never heard of 'em. Why don't you ask Charlie across the street. He been living here since the war. Maybe he knew 'em.”

“Thank you.” A glance into the house told John that it was depressing beyond belief, and he only hoped that it had been more pleasant when Hilary and her sisters lived there. Though it was hard to imagine it ever having been much better. The street had become a slum, but it didn't look as though it had even been pretty. “Thank you very much.” He smiled pleasantly, and she slammed the door in his face, not because she was annoyed, but only because she didn't know there was any other way to do it.

He looked up and down the street, and thought of talking to some of the other residents. But he went first to the house she had pointed to. He wondered if anyone would be home at four o'clock on a Friday afternoon, but the old man she had called “Charlie” was rocking on his front porch, smoking a pipe, and talking to an old mangy dog who lay beside him.

“Hi there.” He looked friendly, and smiled at John as he came up the steps.

“Hello. Are you Charlie?” John smiled pleasantly. He had been good at this, in the days when he actually did the legwork. Now he just determined it from his desk on Fifty-seventh Street, but there was a certain thrill to doing this part of it again. He had tried to explain to Sasha once how much he loved it. But she couldn't understand it. To her, there was only dancing … and Lincoln Center … and rehearsals. Nothing else mattered. Sometimes he even found himself wondering if he did.

“Yes, I'm Charlie.” The old man answered. “Who wants to know?”

John stuck out a hand. “My name is John Chapman. I'm looking for some people who lived here years ago. In that house,” he pointed, “Eileen and Jack Jones. Do you remember them by any chance, sir?” He was always polite, friendly, at ease, the kind of guy everyone wanted to talk to.

“Sure, I do. Got Jack a job once. Didn't keep it long of course. Drank like a son of a bitch, and she did too. I heard it finally kilt her.” John nodded as though it were something he already knew. That was part of the art form. “I used to work in the navy yard. Damn good work too, durin' the war. I was 4-F 'cause I had rheumatic fever as a boy. Spent the whole war right here, close to home, with my wife and my kids. Sounds kinda unpatriotic now, but I was lucky.”

“You had children then, did you?” John looked at him with interest.

“They're all growed now.” He rocked back and forth and a sad look came into his eyes as he gnawed on his pipe. “And my wife's gone. Died fourteen years ago this summer. She was a good woman.” John nodded again, letting the old man ramble on. “My boys come to see me from time to time, when they can. Daughter lives in Chicago. Went to see her last year, Christmas, colder'n a witch's teat. Got six kids too. Her husband's a preacher.” It was an interesting history and John patted the dog as he listened.

“Do you remember three little girls who came to live with the Joneses about thirty years ago … right about this time of year … it was the summer of '58, to be precise. Three little girls. One about nine years old, one five, and the littlest one was a baby. She must've been about a year old.”

“Naw … can't say as I do … they never had any kids, Jack and Eileen. Just as well. They weren't real nice people. Used to have some knock-down drag-out fights those two. Nearly called the cops on 'em one night. I figured he'd kill her.” It sounded like a charming home in which to leave three children.

“They were her brother's children. They were just here for the summer, but one of them stayed on afterward …” He let his voice trail off, hoping to jog Charlie's memory, and suddenly the old man looked up at him with a frown, and pointed the pipe into John's face with a burst of recognition.

“Now that you say all that, I do remember … some terrible thing … he had killed his wife, and the little girls were orphans. I only seen 'em once or twice, but I remember Ruth, that's my wife, tellin' me how cute they were and how terrible Eileen was to 'em, that it was a crime to leave those children with her. Half starved 'em, Ruth said, she took 'em some dinner once or twice, but she was sure Jack and Eileen ate it and never gave it to the children. I never knew what happened to 'em though. They left pretty soon after that. Eileen took sick, and they went somewhere. Arizona, I think … California … someplace warm seems like … but she died anyway. Drank herself to death if you ask me. Don't know what happened to them little girls though. I guess Jack musta kep' 'em.”

“Only one of them. The rest of them left that summer. They just kept the oldest one.”

“I guess Ruth musta known that. I forget.” He leaned back in his chair, as though remembering more than Jack and Eileen, it was all so long ago, and his wife had been alive then … it was bittersweet to remember back that far … he seemed to forget John as he rocked back and forth in his rocking chair, and he had given John what he'd come for. He hadn't learned anything he desperately needed to know, but it was a little piece of the puzzle. It explained some of Arthur's guilt. He must have known how terrible they were, and yet he had left them there … and left Hilary to them … in effect abandoned her to them. He could only begin to imagine what her life had been like in the house across the street, with the kind of people Charlie had described to him. The thought of it made John shudder.

“Do you think anyone else along here would remember them?” John asked, but Charlie shook his head, still lost in his reverie, and then he looked up at John and answered.

“No one lived here that long, 'cept me. The others all been here ten, fifteen years … most of 'em less. They stay a year or two, then move away.” It was easy to see why. “My eldest boy wants me to come live with him, but I like it here. … I lived here with his ma … I'll die here one day.” He said it philosophically. It was all right with him. “I ain't goin'.”

“Thanks for your help. You've been a big help to me.” He smiled down at Charlie who looked up at him with open curiosity for the first time.

“Why you want to find Eileen and Jack? Somebody leave 'em some money?” It hardly seemed likely, even to him, but it was an intriguing idea, but John was quick to shake his head.

“No. Actually, I'm looking for the three girls. A friend of their parents wants to find them.”

“That's a hell of a long time ago to lose someone and then go looking for 'em.” John knew only too well how true that was.

“I know. That's why you've been such a help. You put the picture together with little tiny pieces of what people remember and now and then you get lucky, like I did with you. Thank you, Charlie.” He shook the old man's hand, and Charlie waved his pipe at him.

“They pay you good for a job like that? Seems like a lot of wild-goose chasin' to me.”

“Sometimes it is.” He left the previous question unanswered and waved as he stepped off the porch and walked back to his car. It was depressing just driving down the street, and it was as though he felt Hilary's eyes on him, as though he were Arthur leaving her there, and he couldn't help wondering how Arthur could have done it.

The drive to his parents' house after that took less than an hour, and his older brother was already there when he arrived, drinking a gin and tonic on the terrace with his father.

“Hi, Dad. You look great.” The old man looked more like sixty than nearly eighty. There was no tremor in his voice, he still had his hair, and he had the same long, lanky legs as John as he strode across the terrace to put an arm around his shoulders.

“Well, how's my black-sheep son?” They always teased him, but they were proud of him too. He was successful, attractive, led an interesting life. The only thing his parents regretted for him was that he had divorced Eloise, they had always hoped the two would stay together and have children. “Keeping yourself out of trouble?”

“Not if I can help it. Hello, Charles.” He shook hands with his brother and the two men smiled. There was always a certain distance between them, and yet John was fond of him. He was a partner in an important law firm in New York and he had done well. He was forty-six years old, he was powerful in the field of international law, he had an attractive wife who was president of the Junior League, and he had three very nice children. By the standards of John's family, Charles was the major achiever. But John always felt there was something missing from Charles's life, excitement perhaps, or maybe just plain old romance.

And with that, Leslie, his wife, walked out of the house with her mother-in-law, who gave a whoop of delight when she saw John talking to his brother and father.

“The prodigal son has arrived,” she intoned in her husky voice, hugging him close to her. She was still a handsome woman at seventy, and even in her plain yellow linen dress, there was an innate elegance about her. She wore her hair in an elegant knot, a string of pearls around her neck that her husband had given her on her wedding day, and the rings that had been in her family for five generations. “Don't you look well, darling! What have you been up to?”

“A little work on the way up. I just started a new investigation.” She looked pleased. She enjoyed her sons. They were all handsome and different and intelligent, and she loved them all, but secretly she had always loved John just a little bit more than the others.

“I hear you've gotten involved with the ballet.” Leslie said coolly, eyeing John carefully over her Bloody Mary. There was something mean-spirited about the girl which always irked John, but he was amazed that no one else even seemed to notice. She was one of those women who had everything and should have enjoyed it, two lovely daughters, a charming son, a handsome, successful husband, and yet she seemed to begrudge everyone everything they had, particularly John. She always felt that somehow he had done better than Charles, and it annoyed her. “I had no idea you were interested in the dance, John.”

“You never know, do you?” He smiled noncommittally, amazed that she had heard about Sasha, and then he chuckled to himself inwardly, thinking that maybe she had been meeting a lover at the Russian Tea Room.

Moments later, Philip arrived, looking very tan after a European vacation. He and his family lived in Connecticut, and he played tennis constantly. He had a son and a daughter and a wife with blond hair and blue eyes and freckles. She looked exactly like what she was, the childhood sweetheart he had married in college. He was thirty-eight years old, and so was she, and she won all the tennis tournaments in Greenwich. They were truly the perfect family, except for John, who had never quite fit into the mold, and never done what was expected.

And bringing Sasha up here would have complicated things even further. Eloise had been difficult enough. When she wanted to be sociable, she was great, and when she didn't, she would bring a type-writer, and insist on working till lunchtime, which drove Leslie nuts, and made his mother worry that she wasn't having a good time. Eloise was definitely not easy. But Sasha would have really been a shock to them with her leotards and her skintight blue jeans and her fits of petulance and her scenes of defiance. The very thought of her made him grin to himself as he looked at the ocean.

“What's so funny, big brother?” Philip clapped him on the back, and John asked him all about Europe. The hardest thing of all was that they were all such nice people, and he loved them, but they bored him to death, and by Sunday afternoon, it was a relief to be driving to the airport. He felt guilty for thinking it, but they all led such normal, suburban lives. By the end of a weekend, he always felt like a misfit. At least his mother had had a nice time. Each of her sons had given her something special that was important to her. John had bought her a beautiful antique diamond pin with a matching bracelet, and it was just the kind of thing he knew his mother loved. Charles had given her stock, which John thought was an odd gift, but she seemed to be pleased with it, and Philip had given her something she had said she wanted for years, but never bought herself. A grand piano was being delivered to the house in Boston on Monday. It was just like him to do something like that, and John thought it was a terrific gift and wished he'd thought of it himself. But she seemed happy with the pin and bracelet.

He returned the rented car at the airport, and flew back on the commuter with a mob of people returning from the weekend, and by eight o'clock he was back in his apartment making himself a sandwich for dinner, and going through Arthur Patterson's file again. He didn't know anything more than he did before, except the kind of home Hilary had been left in. And he knew exactly what he was going to do the next morning.

But Sasha was far from thrilled when he told her when she came to his apartment later that evening. “What? You're going away again?” She was furious. “What is it this time?”

John tried to pacify her as best he could, they had been on their way to bed when he mentioned it to her, which was a mistake, he recognized now, but he was still hoping to make love to her that night. It had been days, and with Sasha you had to hit it right, when she wasn't too tired, her muscles weren't too delicate, she didn't have a big performance the next day. It was a real feat getting her to bed at all, and he wasn't about to blow it for Arthur's investigation.

“I told you, baby, I have a big case, and Km handling this one myself.”

“I thought you were the boss. The choreographer, as it were.” He smiled at the comparison and nodded.

“I am. But this is an exception. I agreed to do the legwork myself, if I could. It's a very important case to my client.”

“What's it about?” She looked at him suspiciously, as she stretched out again on his bed, with all her clothes on.

“I'm looking for three girls … three women actually. He lost track of them thirty years ago, and he has to find them quickly. He's dying.” He couldn't tell her more than that, even that was something of a violation of Arthur's confidence, but he wanted to spark Sasha's interest and her allegiance.

“Are they his daughters?” He shook his head as he unbuttoned his shirt. “Ex-wives?” He shook his head again. “Girlfriends?” He smiled and shook his head again. “Then what are they?”

“They're sisters.”

“And they're in Florida?” She thought it all sounded very boring.

“One of them was, a long time ago. I have to start way back at the beginning. I thought I had her here in New York, but I didn't. So now we go back to the beginning.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“A few days. I should be back by Friday. We can do something nice this weekend.”

“No, we can't. I have rehearsals.” There was no denying, her schedule was not easy.

“All right, then we'll work around it.” He was used to that.

“You're sure you're not just going to Florida on vacation?”

“Hardly. I can think of a lot of places I'd much rather go, with you, my lovely.” He slid across the bed, took her by surprise and kissed her, and this time she laughed. She let him undress her, and wound her sinewy legs around his body in a way that drove him mad as they began to make love, and then suddenly she pulled away, and he was afraid he had hurt her. He looked at her through his veil of desire and whispered in a hoarse voice, “Are you all right?”

She nodded, but she looked worried. “Do you know what I could do to myself in positions like this?” But she seemed to forget about it as his ardor increased and along with it, her own passion. But she was always thinking about herself, her dancing, her muscles, her feet, her body.

“I love you, Sash.” He whispered as they lay in each other's arms afterward, but she was oddly silent. Her eyes were open and she was looking at the far wall and she seemed upset as he watched her. “What's the matter, sweetheart?”

“That son of a bitch screamed at me all afternoon today, as though I were doing something wrong … and I know I wasn't …” She was obsessed with her dancing, and for a moment it depressed him. He had been there before, only the last time it had been Eloise's goddam characters and her books, and the plot she couldn't get a grip on. Women like them were exhausting. He wanted Sasha to be different, yet he wanted her to care about him, and in the moments when he was honest with himself, he was not sure that she did. He wasn't even sure she was capable of it. She was totally engrossed in herself. And when he got up to get something to drink from the kitchen, she didn't even seem to notice his absence. He sat on the couch for a long time, in the dark, listening to the noises from the street, and wondered if he would ever find a woman who cared about him, a woman who cared about his work, his life, his friends, his needs, and enjoyed being with him.

“What are you doing in here?” She was standing in the doorway, silhouetted gracefully in the moonlight, her voice a whisper in the darkened room, and she couldn't see the sadness in his eyes as he watched her.

“Thinking.”

“What about?” She came to sit beside him and for a moment it almost seemed as though she cared and then she looked down at her feet and groaned. “God, I should go back to the doctor.”

“Why?”

“They hurt all the time now.”

“Have you ever thought about giving up dancing, Sash?”

She stared at him as though he were crazy. “Are you mad? I would rather die. If they told me I couldn't dance anymore, I would kill myself.” And she sounded as though she meant it.

“What about children? Don't you want kids?” He should have asked her all those things long before, but it had been hard to distract her from her dancing.

“Maybe later.” She sounded vague. Eloise used to say the same kind of thing to him. Until she was thirty-six, and decided it would interfere too much with her career, and had her tubes tied while he was away on business. And she was probably right. She was happier alone.

“Sometimes if you put it off, 'later' never happens.”

“Then it was never meant to be. I don't need children to be fulfilled.” She said it proudly.

“What do you need, Sash? Do you need a husband?” Or did she only need the ballet? That was the real question.

“I've never thought I was old enough to worry about being married.” She said it honestly, looking up at him in the moonlight. But he was forty-two years old, and he was thinking of all those things, he had been for a long time now. He didn't want to be alone forever. He wanted someone to love him, and whom he could love, not just between books and ballets and rehearsals.

“You're twenty-eight. You should start to think about your future.”

“I think about it every day, with that old maniac screaming at me.”

“I don't mean your professional future, I mean your real life.”

“That is my real life, John.” But that was precisely what he was afraid of.

“And where do I fit into all that?” It was a night for soul-searching, and he wasn't sure if he should have started it. But it couldn't be helped. Sooner or later they'd have to talk about something other than her feet and her rehearsals.

“That's up to you. I can't offer you more than this for the moment. If it's enough, wonderful. And if it's not …” She shrugged. At least she was honest. And he wondered if he could change her mind, if he could induce her to marry him … to want a child … but it was crazy to do that again. He seemed to have this incredible penchant for challenges and lost causes. “You ought to try climbing Everest sometime,” his younger brother had told him once, “it might relieve some of the tension.” He had met Sasha twice and thought John was crazy. “Do you want me to stay tonight?” she was asking him now. She was perfectly willing to go. She didn't mind the chaos of her apartment on the West Side with the eight million roommates and fourteen million dance bags.

“I'd like you to stay.” In truth, he wanted a great deal more from her. More even than she had to give, and he was only beginning to understand that.

“Then I'll go to bed now.” She got up matter-of-factly and went back to his bedroom. “I have an early rehearsal tomorrow.” And he had to fly to Jacksonville. And more than that, he wanted to make love to her again, but she said she was too tired and her muscles were sore when he got back into bed with her and tried it.

Chapter 18

The flight to Jacksonville was brief and gave Chapman time to read some of his papers. He signed half a dozen things he had to read, but his mind always drifted back to Hilary … and the life she must have led with Eileen and Jack Jones, according to the description of the old man in Charlestown.

In Jacksonville, he went directly to the juvenile hall, asked for the senior administrator, and explained his investigation. It was unusual in cases like that to lay files open to anyone, but so many years had passed, and the girl would be thirty-nine years old. There could be no harm in looking back into the past now. And John assured them of his total discretion.

The signature of the judge assigned to the juvenile court had to be obtained, and John was told to come back the following morning. In the meantime, he checked into a motel downtown, and wandered the streets aimlessly. He spent some time going through the phone book and found five Jack Joneses, and then on a whim, he decided to call them. Three of them were black, and the fourth one didn't answer. But the fifth said his father had grown up in Boston and he thought he'd been married to a woman named Eileen who died before his dad married his mother. He said he was eighteen years old, and his dad had died of cirrhosis ten years before, but he'd be happy to tell him anything he could. John asked him if he knew where his father used to live, say twenty-five years before, if maybe his mother knew, but the answer to that was simple.

“He's always lived in the same house. We still live here.” Chapman's interest rose sharply and he asked if he could come out and see it.

“Sure.” He gave him the address, and John was not surprised to discover that it had much the same feeling of their neighborhood in Charlestown, the same seedy, depressing kind of area, near a naval yard, only this one was mostly black, and there were young boys on motorcycles cruising the area, which made Chapman nervous.

It was not a nice place to be, and like the Charlestown place, it looked as though it never had been.

Jack Jones Jr. was waiting for him, with a motorcycle parked in his own front yard, and he looked as though Chapman's visit made him feel important. He rattled on briefly about his dad, showed him some pictures, and invited him inside to meet his mother. Inside the house there was a terrible stench, of stale urine, old booze, and the filth of a lifetime. The house was beyond grim, and the woman Jack Jr. introduced as his mother was pathetic. She was probably only in her late forties, but toothless, and she looked thirty years older, and it was impossible for John to determine if her infirmities were due to abuse or an illness. She smiled vaguely at him, and stared into space beyond him, while Jack Jr. made excuses for her, but she remembered nothing about a niece of Jack's previous wife. In fact, several times she seemed not to know who her own son was. Eventually, John gave up, and was on his way out, when Jack Jr. suggested he might want to talk to the neighbors. They had lived there for years, and even knew Jack Sr. when he was married to his late wife. John thanked him and knocked on the door, and an elderly woman came to the screen door with caution.

“Yeah?”

“May I speak to you for a moment, ma'am?” It had been years since he had done this himself, and he suddenly remembered how difficult it was to win people's trust. He suddenly recalled how many doors had slammed in his face in the old days.

“You a cop?” It was a familiar question.

“No, I'm not. I'm looking for a woman named Hilary Walker. She lived here a long time ago; when she was a little girl. Would you have any idea where she might be today?”

The woman shook her head and seemed to be looking John over. “What you want with her?”

“A friend of her parents wants to find her.”

“They shouldda looked for her twenty-five years ago. Poor kid …” She shook her head, remembering, and John knew he'd struck pay dirt. She was still talking to him through the screen door, but slowly it swung open, and she stood there in a house dress and slippers, staring at John, but not inviting him in. “That so-called uncle of hers beat her to within an inch of her life. She crawled out of that place in the pouring rain and damn near died on my doorstep. My husband and I, we took her to the hospital, and she almost didn't make it. They said he'd tried to rape her.”

“Did anyone bring charges against him?” Chapman stared at her, horrified. The story was getting worse. Hilary's fate had truly been a nightmare.

But she only shook her head. “She was too scared … little Hilary.” She shook her head. “I'd forgotten her all this time.”

“What happened after that?”

“She went to a couple of foster homes, and eventually I think she just stayed in juvie. We went to see her twice, I think it was, but it was like … well, there was somethin' missin' outta that girl, not that you could blame her. She didn't warm up to no one.” It was easy to understand that, in the face of what he was hearing.

“Thank you. Thank you very much.” So that was the reason for juvenile hall, not that she had broken the law herself. Or maybe she'd done that too eventually. Sometimes that was the way it happened.

But in her case, it hadn't. They handed the files to him the first thing the next morning. The judge had signed the order without a problem. But the file of Hilary Walker was far from exciting. She had been a model student, had given no problems to the State, had been in two foster homes, whose addresses were given, and had then spent three years in juvenile hall without event. She had been given two hundred and eighty-seven dollars upon completion of her last year of high school, and five days later, she had left, never to be heard from again. It was a slim file, and told him precious little about the girl, except that her caseworkers' reports said that she was withdrawn, had no known friends, but posed no disciplinary problem either. The caseworkers who had known her then were all long since gone, and he imagined that both foster homes had disappeared too, but just to be sure, he went to the addresses listed in her file. The first woman was, amazingly, still alive and at the same address, and she thought she remembered her although she wasn't sure.

“She was the one who was so high and mighty. Didn't stay long neither. Can't remember how she worked. She started pining, and they sent her back to the hall. That's all I remember 'bout her now.” But it was enough, the woman's harsh words about other girls, the home itself told its own tale. And the second foster home had been torn down for a development years before. No wonder the woman at CBA knew nothing about her. The girl who had been here had gone God knows where to finish her life in the same kind of misery and squalor it had started, or been condemned to at the age of eight, when her father killed her mother, and then committed suicide and their best friend had abandoned her, after taking her sisters from her. In some ways, John felt as though Arthur had led her to slaughter. And it was easy to understand why she had come to Arthur's office twenty-two years before to vent her hatred. The question was, where had she gone from there? The trail was as cold as death, and he had no idea where to go from here. Where did one begin looking for a girl who had known so much pain and misery at such an early age? He had run her rap sheet through various states and the FBI, and nothing had turned up, but that didn't mean anything. She could have changed her name, gotten married several times. She could have died in the past twenty-two years. She could have done a number of things. But if she was still in New York, John promised himself he would find her.

He left Jacksonville without regret, and with a sense of relief to be escaping the humidity and the squalor he had seen there. He could only imagine how Hilary felt on her way to New York to find her sisters, only to find that Arthur had not kept track of them, any more than he had of her. What a bitter disappointment it must have been for her.

He got home on Thursday night, and left a message on Sasha's answering machine. He knew it was the night of her big performance, but it was ten o'clock when he finally got home, and he was exhausted.

And the next day at the office, he reported to Arthur Patterson what he'd found, and there was a long, sad silence at the other end. John Chapman couldn't see the silent tears rolling down Arthur's cheeks as he listened.

“After she visited you, the trail's cold. I have no idea where she went from there, but I'm working on it.” He had already given one of his assistants a list of things he wanted, he wanted him to check out schools, hospitals, employment agencies, youth hostels, hotels, all the way back to 1966. It was no small task, but somewhere something would turn up, and they could go on from there. Meanwhile, he was going to start looking for Alexandra. “I'll need to come down to your office on Monday. I want to go through the files on George Gorham's estate. I want to see if they contacted his widow recently.” Arthur nodded his head, and brushed away the tears he had shed for Hilary. John Chapman was certainly thorough.

It was a terrible thought to realize what had been Hilary's fate … but how could he have known … if only … he began coughing terribly as he thought of it, and eventually had to hang up the phone. And John went back to work. There was a mountain of files waiting for him on his desk, after being in Florida all week, and he stayed in the office until seven-thirty, and then stopped for a hamburger at the Auto Pub on the way home. It was nine o'clock when he got home, and the phone was ringing. It was Sasha.

“Where've you been all night long?” She sounded suspicious and angry.

“At my office. And I stopped and had something to eat on the way home. And how are you, Miss Riva?” There had been no preamble, no inquiry as to how he was, and she hadn't called him in Florida all week, even though he'd left his number on her machine, but he knew she'd been busy with rehearsals.

“I'm all right. I thought I'd done something to one of my tendons yesterday, but thank God I didn't.” Nothing had changed in his absence.

“I'm glad. Want to come over for a drink?.” He half wanted to see her and half didn't. The week in Florida had been incredibly depressing and he needed cheering up, but on the other hand he didn't want to listen to the familiar litany about her ligaments and her tendons.

“I'm exhausted. I'm already at the apartment. But I'm free this weekend. We could do something tomorrow.”

“Why don't we go somewhere? How about the Hamptons or Fire Island?” The summer had already set in, and it was hot everywhere. It was going to be a beautiful weekend.

“Dominique Montaigne is having a birthday party on Sunday. I promised him I'd be there, and I can't let him down. I'm really sorry.” Ballet, ballerinas, dancers, rehearsals, performances. It was endless.

“That's all right. We could go for the day. I'd love to get out of town and lie on a beach somewhere.”

“So would I.” But he knew she would lie down for exactly half an hour and then she would start prancing around and flexing muscles, so nothing got stiff while she was relaxing. And there were times when it was extremely unnerving.

“I'll pick you up at nine o'clock. Okay?” She agreed, and he hung up, feeling suddenly sad, and indescribably lonely. She was never there for him when he needed her, and instead he found himself thinking about a girl he didn't know, who had been bounced between foster homes and juvenile hall more than twenty years before. It was crazy to be thinking about her now. He felt like Eloise with her imaginary characters. It made about as much sense, but she had become so real to him in the last week. Much more than he wanted.

The next day he and Sasha went to the beach. In the end they just went to Montauk, on Long Island, and it was relaxing and nice. He jogged along the beach while she exercised, and they stopped for a lobster dinner on the way home. It was eleven-thirty that night before they got back to his apartment, and fell into bed like two kids. She was in a good mood, and they made love without Sasha's complaining once that his passion was going to do her great bodily harm or permanent damage. And wrapped around each other, they slept until ten o'clock the next morning, when she bounded out of bed, looked at her watch, and gave a shriek that woke him.

“What's wrong? … where are you? …” He squinted in the sunlight streaming across his room, and saw her rushing into the bathroom, and heard her turn on the shower. He threw back the sheets, and lumbered slowly in to see what she was up to. “What are you doing in there?” The bathroom was full of steam, she had her hair tied in a knot on top of her head, and her face was turned full into the shower.

“What does it look like?”

“What are you doing up so early?”

“I promised Dominique I'd be there by eleven-thirty.”

“Oh for chrissake. What's the hurry?”

“I'm making lunch for everyone.” She announced as she turned off the shower and started to dry herself off.

“That's interesting. You never cook here.” He was annoyed. They had had such a nice day the day before, and now she was in such a hurry to leave him. He had wanted to make love to her again before she left, but she was all business.

“This is different.” She explained, looking as though what she said made sense. “These are dancers.”

“Do they eat differently than everyone else?”

“Don't be silly.” He wasn't silly. He was just tired of the endless aggravation. “I'll call you tonight when I get home.”

“Don't bother.” He walked out of the bathroom, picked up a cigarette on his dresser, and lit it. He rarely smoked, but when she upset him particularly, it seemed to ease the tension, or add to it, he was never quite sure which, but it did something.

“John,” she said, smiling angelically at him as she brushed her hair with his hairbrush, “don't be childish. I'd take you along, but they're all dancers. No one brings outsiders to these events. You know”—she smiled and for the first time he saw something vengeful in her eyes—“kind of like when you visit your family in Boston.” So that was it. Or part of it anyway. Well, to hell with her games, and her dancers. “Will I see you tomorrow night?” She hesitated doe-like in the bedroom.

“Possibly. I have a lot of work to do on Monday.”

She walked over to him with her firm, lithe body straining against his and kissed him hard on the lips which visibly aroused him. He was standing naked in his bedroom doorway. “I love you.” She had a way of taunting him that he half loved and half hated, and before he could say anything to her, she was gone, and he wanted to scream in frustration.

For lack of anything better to do, he called his younger brother, and spent the day in Greenwich with them, playing doubles with Pattie and Philip and their son, and swimming in the pool with their daughter. It was a relaxed, easy day, and he was always embarrassed to admit to himself, as he did on the drive home, how intensely they bored him. But they were decent people, and they were family after all, and it had been a pleasant escape from New York and the reminders of Sasha.

The phone was ringing when he got home, but he didn't answer it. He didn't want to hear about Dominique and Pascal and Pierre and Andre and Josef and Ivan or any of the others. He was sick to death of them all, and even a little bit of Sasha. And the next morning, he went to Arthur's law firm and went through the files of George Gorham's estate himself after Arthur gave him carte blanche, and he found exactly what he had wanted. Arthur could have found it himself, years before, if he had looked. The last contact they had had with Margaret Millington Gorham was in 1962, at which time she was already the Comtesse de Borne and living on the rue de Varenne in Paris. There had been no contact since then, but she couldn't be too hard to find. And a search of the Paris telephone directory that afternoon showed her still living at the same address, listed as Borne, P. de, and the address was the same one. Now if she was only still alive and could tell him where Alexandra was, he'd be in business.

Chapter 19

“Not again!” Sasha looked outraged, but he was unmoved this time. Business was business. “What did you do, get a job with the airlines?” She was incensed. This was his third trip in as many weeks.

“I won't be gone long.” Things were a little cooler between them than they had been.

“Where to this time?”

He smiled. Jacksonville it wasn't. “Paris. At least my working conditions are pleasant.” She didn't answer him at first and then she shrugged. For all she knew he was lying and flying all over with assorted girlfriends. He had certainly never done all this traveling before. It seemed odd that he was suddenly doing “the legwork” himself, as he'd told her. “I should be back by Friday. Monday at the latest.”

“Have you forgotten? I go out on tour next week for three weeks. I won't see you till I get back. Unless you want to fly in to see me one night.” But he knew what that was like, a whole troupe of dancers completely hysterical and on edge, and Sasha barely coherent enough to acknowledge his existence.

“That's all right, I'm going to be busy too.” But they wouldn't see each other for a month. A year ago that would have worried him. Now he thought it might be a relief, for him at least. Her obsession with her work was beginning to oppress him.

They slept side by side that night, without making love, and he dropped her off at her apartment the next morning on his way to the airport.

“I'll see you when you get back.” He kissed her on the mouth, and she smiled up at him looking very innocent and pure.

“Have a good trip. I'll miss you.” Unusually kind words for her, ordinarily she would have been predicting the weather from the pain in her feet. And her sudden gentleness made him sorry to see her go. The problem with her was that she really had no idea how totally egocentric she was. To her, it seemed perfectly normal.

He waved at her from the cab, and promised to call from Paris as they rounded the corner, and a moment later, he sat lost in thought, wondering what he was going to find in Paris. Surely not a life like Hilary's if Margaret Gorham had married a French count. At least he hoped not.

At Arthur's request, he flew first class, and his flight landed in Paris at midnight, local time. He went directly to the Hotel Bristol after clearing customs, and was in bed by two o'clock, but he was too tired to sleep, and it was five A.M. before he fell asleep, and he was horrified to discover that it was eleven o'clock when he woke up the next morning. He instantly jumped out of bed, ordered coffee and croissants, and dialed Margaret's number, before taking his shower.

He asked for the Comtesse de Borne when the phone was answered by a male voice, speaking French, and stumbled in his limited French when the butler asked him “De la part de qui, monsieur?” He gave him his name but was unable to translate the words but she doesn't know me. But whatever was said at her end, she was on the phone with him a moment later.

“Monsieur Chapote?” she said in French with a heavy American accent, sounding puzzled.

“Sorry.” He smiled. He liked her voice. “John Chapman, from New York.”

“Good God. André can never get American names. Do I know you?” She was blunt and direct, and there was something in her voice that suggested quick laughter.

“No, ma'am. I'm here on a business matter I'd like to discuss with you at your earliest convenience.” He had no intention of telling her over the phone though.

“Oh.” She sounded a little startled. “All my business matters are handled in New York.” She told him the name of the firm. “Except my husband's of course. Is this about an investment?”

“No.” He didn't want to frighten her, but he had to tell her something. “Actually, it's a little more personal than that. It's about an investigation I'm conducting for a partner of your late husband's.”

“Pierre? But he didn't have any partners.” It was a very confusing conversation.

“I'm sorry. I meant Mr. Gorham.”

“Oh poor George … but that was so long ago. He died in 1958 … that was thirty years ago, Mr.… er … Chapman.”

“I understand that, and this goes back an awfully long time.”

“Was there anything wrong?” She sounded worried.

“Not at all. We were just hoping you could help us find someone. It would be a great help to us if you could. But I'd rather not go into the entire matter over the phone. If you could spare me a few moments, I would like very much to see you. …”

“All right.” But she sounded uncertain. She wished she could ask Pierre, or someone, if they thought she should see this man. What if he were a charlatan, or a criminal of some kind … not that he sounded like it. “Perhaps tomorrow, Mr. Chapman? And the name of your firm in New York?”

He smiled. She was right to check him out. “Chapman Associates on Fifty-seventh Street. My name is John Chapman. What time would you like to meet?”

“Eleven o'clock?” She wanted to get this meeting out of the way. He was beginning to make her nervous. But when she checked him out with her attorneys in New York, they knew the firm, and her attorney was even personally acquainted with John Chapman, and he assured her that he was entirely aboveboard. He just couldn't imagine what Chapman was doing, speaking to Margaret de Borne in Paris.

He arrived punctually the next morning, and the elderly butler let him in with a subdued bow, and then led him upstairs to wait in the countess's formal study. It was a room filled with beautiful Louis XV furniture, and a tiny Russian chandelier with what looked like a million crystals that caught the sunlight shining into the room and cast it into a myriad of rainbows against the walls. It was the prettiest thing John had ever seen, and he didn't even hear her come in, as he stared at the beautiful lights, and the lovely garden in the distance.

“Mr. Chapman?” She was tall and elegant, with a firm handshake and a strong voice, and the look in her eyes was warm and friendly. She was wearing a yellow Chanel suit, and their classic shoes, and a beautiful pair of yellow diamond earrings that had been a gift from her late husband. She smiled warmly at John and waved at one of the room's larger chairs. Most of them were extremely small and not very inviting, which always made her smile. She laughed as they both sat down. “I'm afraid none of these pieces were designed for people of our proportions. I don't use this room very often. It was designed as a ‘lady's study,’ and I've never quite gotten the hang of it. My six-year-old granddaughter is the only person I know who looks comfortable here. My apologies.”

“Not at all, Countess. It's lovely.” It seemed odd to be calling her that, particularly with her easy smile and happy laughter, but he thought she might have expected the formality, and he wanted her as his ally. “I'm afraid I'm here on a rather sensitive matter. I've been hired by Arthur Patterson.” He waited for the name to have an effect on her, but she didn't look as though she knew it. “He was a partner of Mr. Gorham's many years ago, and he was instrumental in bringing Alexandra Walker to you for adoption.” He watched her eyes, and she suddenly looked as though she were going to faint. Her face went pale as she watched him. She waited for him to go on without saying a word. But it was obvious that she now remembered Arthur.

“He is very ill now, and for whatever reasons, all of them personal, I assume, he is anxious to find all three Walker girls. Their parents were close friends of his, and he feels an obligation to know that they're all right, before he …” As he groped for the right word, she interrupted.

“Isn't it a little late, Mr. Chapman? They're certainly no longer children.”

“I agree. But he seems to have let it go until the eleventh hour, and now he wants the reassurance that they've had a good life.”

“At whose expense?”

“I beg your pardon?”

She looked angry. And she stood up and began to pace the room, walking through the shower of rainbows. “At whose expense does he want that reassurance? Surely those young women no longer care about Arthur Patterson, if they even knew him. And if they did, they won't remember him now. They were all very young children.” Chapman's heart sank at the look in her eyes. It was obvious that she was prepared to do anything to keep him from her daughter. “What on God's earth does it matter? They're all grown up. They don't know him. They don't even know each other.”

John Chapman sighed. In a way she was right. But he was working for Arthur. “That is part of the reason for my investigation.” He spoke in a gentle voice, anxious to calm her down and show her that she could trust him. “Mr. Patterson wants to bring the sisters back together.”

“Oh, my God.” She sat down hard again, in one of the uncomfortable small Louis XV chairs. And then, with intransigence, “I won't allow it. What need is there to torture them? My daughter is thirty-five years old, God only knows how old the others are. Why would they want to discover two unknown sisters? It can only be an embarrassment to them, not to mention painful. Do you know what the circumstances of their parents' deaths were, Mr. Chapman?” He nodded, and she went on, “So do I. But my daughter does not, and there is no need for her to know it. George and I loved her very much, like our own, and the count took her in as his own daughter. She has grown up as our child, with every advantage that could be given her, she has a happy life with a husband and children of her own. She does not need this heartache.” Not to mention how she would keep it from her husband. The very thought terrified Margaret. Not only was she adopted but her real father had murdered her mother.

“I understand that, but maybe she would like to meet her sisters … it's possible … maybe she has a right to make that choice herself. Does she know she's adopted?”

Margaret hesitated thoughtfully. “Yes. And no. We told her … a long time ago … but I'm not sure she remembers. It's no longer of any importance. To anyone, Mr. Chapman. I will not tell her about your visit.”

“That's not fair to her.” He spoke in a quiet voice. “And if you force me to, I'll find her. I would prefer it if you spoke to her, and explained the reason for my visit. I think that would be a lot easier for her.”

Margaret de Borne's eyes filled with tears of anger. “That's blackmail. You're forcing me to tell her something that will make her very unhappy.”

“If she doesn't wish to see them, she doesn't have to. She has a right to refuse to see them herself. No one can force her. But she has the right to choose. Maybe she'd like to see them.”

“Why? Why after thirty years? What kind of people are they now? What does she have in common with them? Nothing.” It was certainly true in the case of Hilary, but he didn't yet know about Megan. While Hilary was being kicked around and raped by her uncle and living in nightmarish foster homes, her sister was riding ponies in Paris. It seemed an unfair turn of fate, but at least one of them had been blessed, from all appearances, but it only made him ache more for Hilary. Life had not been kind to her for a single moment.

“Countess … please … help me make it easy for her. She has a right to know. And I have an obligation to tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

“That she has two sisters somewhere in the world, and perhaps they want to see her.”

“Have you found them yet?”

He shook his head. “No, but I think we will.” He was being optimistic, but he didn't want to share his fears with her.

“Why don't you come back when you've found them.”

“I can't afford to waste a moment. I've already told you, Mr. Patterson is dying.”

“It's a shame he didn't die before he decided to ruin everyone's life.” She sounded bitter and very angry. For years, she had shielded Alexandra from the truth, and now this stranger, this man was coming to hurt her. It made her want to kill him, and John felt sorry for her. She was a nice woman, and it was unfortunate that this was so upsetting for her.

“I'm sorry. Truly, I am.”

She looked at him long and hard. “Perhaps you are. Can't you just tell him you couldn't find her?” John shook his head and she sighed.

“I'll have to think about this. It will come as a great shock to her, particularly if I have to tell her about her parents.” But at least, John thought to himself, she was old enough to withstand it. She wasn't a young girl, or a child. Maybe it was just as well he had waited. “I'll be seeing her tomorrow for lunch. I'll speak to her about it then, if I find an appropriate moment.”

He nodded. He couldn't ask for much more. “I'm at the Bristol. I would like to speak to her myself, after you've told her.”

“She may not wish to see you, Mr. Chapman. In fact, I hope she doesn't.” Margaret de Borne stood to her full height and did not hold out her hand, as she rang for the butler. “Thank you for your visit. Good day, Mr. Chapman.”

“Thank you, Countess.”

He was escorted downstairs by André, who wore a stern look of disapproval. It was obvious to him by the way the countess had said good-bye that John Chapman was persona non grata, and he treated him accordingly as he closed the door resoundingly behind him.

Chapter 20

Alexandra found her mother, as usual, in the small flowery sitting room she preferred, but she was not doing needlepoint when she arrived, and most uncharacteristically, her mother was wearing a navy blue dress and very little jewelry.

“You look very serious today, Maman. Did you have a meeting at the bank this morning?” Alexandra kissed her warmly, and Margaret smiled up at her, but the smile looked distracted and halfhearted. She had barely slept the night before, after Chapman's visit that morning.

“No, no, I'm fine.” Margaret said distractedly, and looked around the room, as though hoping for an escape. And Alexandra frowned, watching her.

“Is something wrong?” She hadn't seen her that nervous since her father died, and wondered if something had happened to upset her.

“No, just some unpleasant business meetings yesterday.” She smiled nervously. “Nothing to worry about, darling. Ah, here's lunch.” She looked enormously relieved, and dove into her salad, giving Alexandra the latest gossip she had heard at her hairdresser's, and it was a relief to Alexandra to hear her mother laughing. But it was obvious that she was troubled about something, and as the meal drew to a close, she fell strangely silent.

“Maman.” She eyed her mother seriously. “What's bothering you? I can tell, something's wrong. Now what is it?” She hoped it wasn't her health. She was remarkably youthful, but nonetheless. And then suddenly she worried that that was why she had just gone to New York the week before. Perhaps it was to see a doctor, and not go shopping. She had brought back marvelous things for the girls, and a beautiful new Galanos for Alexandra.

But Margaret only looked at her mournfully, wishing she had never heard of John Chapman. She took a deep breath, and waited while André poured their coffee, and then discreetly left the room. Not that it mattered, he was terribly deaf, and spoke no English. But nonetheless, Margaret waited.

“I had a rather unpleasant visit yesterday. Sort of a ghost from the past.” She looked at her daughter, and her eyes filled with tears, and Alexandra was shocked. She had never seen her mother look so worried.

“What kind of a ghost?”

“Ohhh …” Margaret dragged her feet, unable to find her footing. And she looked at her daughter and dabbed at her eyes. “I don't know where to begin. It's such a long and confusing story.” She blew her nose discreetly in a lace handkerchief she'd had tucked in her sleeve, and held out a hand to Alexandra. Alexandra moved closer to her, and held her mother's hand tightly in her own. It was obvious that whatever the news from this man had been, it had been ghastly. Margaret was looking up at her and fighting back tears as Alexandra gently stroked her hand to reassure her. “Do you remember a long time ago, a very long time ago, before I married Pierre?”

“Not really, Maman.” It was all a distant blur now. She supposed if she tried very hard, she might remember something. “Why? What is it that I'm supposed to remember?”

“Do you remember that I was married to someone before your father? I mean before Pierre …” It was going to be just as difficult as she expected, and Alexandra narrowed her eyes thoughtfully, and then nodded.

“Yes … sort of … I suppose that was my real father … but to be honest I don't remember him. All I remember is Papa.”

Margaret nodded. That's what she had always thought. “Well, I was married before, and that was obvious because I think you might remember that Pierre adopted you right after we got married.”

Alexandra smiled at the dim memory. She had almost forgotten, until her mother jogged her memory. But now she vaguely remembered. They had gone to a lawyer's office, and the mairie, and then they had all gone to lunch at Maxim's to celebrate. It had been the happiest day of her life … and it was odd that in a way she had forgotten. “You know, it's funny. I think I'd almost forgotten I was adopted.” And then she blushed. “I suppose I should have told Henri, but I never really thought it was important. And Papa said …” They both knew what Pierre had told her. And she had instinctively sensed that Henri would be very angry if he knew she were adopted. So she had never told him or allowed herself to remember.

“Your father thought of you that way. You were like his own flesh and blood … and more …” she added softly. And then she went on with her painful story. “But you were adopted”—she paused as though trying to gain courage—“not only by Pierre … but by my previous late husband. We adopted you when you were almost six years old, your parents were both dead, and a partner of George's firm came and spoke to us about you … and we fell in love with you the first time we saw you.” The tears were pouring copiously down her cheeks and dripping on their clasped hands, as Alexandra stared at her. What was she saying? What did she mean? Margaret was not her mother? Suddenly, her arms went around Margaret, and she held her tight, as though afraid to lose her.

“I don't remember that part at all, I thought … I always thought … that you were my mother….” How could she have forgotten? … How was it possible? … Not that it really changed anything. But who had her parents been, and who was really her mother?

Margaret sniffed and blew her nose again. This was even harder than she had expected. “You were four or so when your parents died … your mother anyway … and your father died a few months later. You were left with an aunt, I believe, on your father's side, but she didn't feel able to keep all … to keep you …” She stumbled and went on. “So a friend of the family was looking for someone to adopt you. And you made us the happiest people in the world, and six months later George died, and we came to France, and you remember the rest after that.” She was glossing over some of it, but Alexandra was still trying to digest the fact that Margaret wasn't her mother.

“How did my parents die?” There was a long silence as their eyes met and held, and Alexandra felt a chill go up her spine. She knew deep in her heart that something terrible had happened. Margaret closed her eyes and then opened them, speaking in a gentle voice.

“There was a terrible argument no one ever understood … he was a famous actor on Broadway, and they said she was very beautiful …”

“That's not what I asked you, Maman …” The tears were pouring down Alexandra's cheeks as she waited. She knew, she already knew, that was the awful part, but now she needed to hear it from Margaret.

“Your father killed her.”

Alexandra spoke in a haunted whisper, looking beyond her mother at the garden. “And my father committed suicide. They told me he had killed himself …” Her hand flew to her lips and a sob escaped her, as Margaret took her in her arms and let her cry. “And I forgot … I forgot all of it … how could I forget that? … and my mother had red hair … and … she spoke French, didn't she? Oh, my God … but that's all I remember.” And then she looked up at Margaret again, the pain of the memories etched on her face ravaged by the tears born of what she suddenly remembered. “Was she French?”

Margaret spoke with obvious pain as she answered. It was terrible beyond words, and she hated John Chapman and Arthur Patterson for visiting this on them so unnecessarily, so many years later. “I think she was French … probably …” And she probably had red hair, because Alexandra did, when she wasn't rinsing it blond to please her husband. And little Axelle looked so exactly as Alexandra had at the same age. It was like seeing her again as she had the first time each time Margaret saw her.

“Why did my father kill himself? Because he killed her?” She wanted to know. It was awful, but suddenly she needed the answers to questions that were so long forgotten.

“He killed himself because he was convicted of killing her. It was a terrible, shocking story. And it left you and … it left you an orphan.” But she couldn't keep avoiding the rest of the story. That was the worst of it. She had to tell her. She took Alexandra's hand in her own again, and gently stroked the graceful fingers that looked nothing like her own. In fact, physically, they were very different, but Alexandra had never given it much thought. And suddenly she understood it … but all she could remember was the red hair, and nothing else … there was no face to go with it. She felt her heart was being torn from her chest, as though pain and memories long buried were rising to haunt her. “You had … you had two sisters as well.” Her words struck through Alexandra like a knife, and she could feel them echo in her head like ricocheting bullets … two sisters … two sisters … two sisters … Axie, I love you … I love you … My God, how could she have forgotten? She remembered the touch, the smell … black, black hair, and big sad eyes … Hillie … Hillie … and a baby. Without thinking Alexandra pulled away from her mother and walked across the room to stare out at the garden. “We couldn't take all three of you … we didn't feel …” Alexandra wasn't listening to the voice, the apologies, she kept hearing the same words … “always remember how much I love you … I love you, Axie …” and a little girl sobbing uncontrollably. Who was that little girl? Was it her sister?

“What were their names?” She had to know now. She had to, but Margaret shook her head. She knew very little about the others.

“I don't know. I only know that one was older than you …”

Alexandra finished the sentence for her as though in a trance, “… and the other one was a baby.” She stared at Margaret as though in great pain. “I remember them, Maman … I remember something now. How could I have forgotten?”

“Maybe it was all too painful for you then. Maybe it was easier to forget. You didn't do anything wrong. You had a right to a new life. We loved you very much, and we did everything we could to make you happy.” She looked so bereft, suddenly it was as though with one fell swoop she had lost her only daughter, and Alexandra went to her and put her arms around the woman she had known as her mother for thirty years.

“You are my mother, Maman. You always will be. None of this will ever change that.”

“Do you mean that?” She needed to hear it, and cried unashamedly as Alexandra reassured her. “It's so awful that these people have come back to haunt you now, they have no right to do so.”

“Why have they come back?” Alexandra looked at her with eyes full of questions.

“Arthur Patterson, the man who arranged your adoption, was a friend of your family's … of your parents … and he wants to know now that you and your …” She almost choked on the word, “… sisters … are all right. And if possible, he wants to bring you together.” Alexandra looked shocked.

“Do they know where the others are?”

“Not yet. But they're looking. And they found you, so I suppose they'll find the others.”

Alexandra nodded. It was a lot to absorb at once. Suddenly, in one afternoon, she had acquired two sisters, and a father who had killed a mother with red hair who was probably French, and the mother she'd loved all her life was no longer her mother, not to mention two adopted fathers she'd discovered instead of one. It was a bit much to swallow at one sitting, and she smiled weakly at Margaret and took a big swig of wine, with an apologetic look.

“I think I need it.”

“So do I.” And with that, Margaret stood up, and rang for André, and when he appeared she told him to bring her a double bourbon. “American habits die hard, particularly in moments of crisis.” And then she turned to Alexandra, over her drink, as she slowly swirled the ice cubes with one finger.

“Do you want to see them, Alex?”

Alexandra looked up at her thoughtfully. “I don't know. What if we all hate each other and are terribly different? Thirty years is a long time.”

“That's what I told Chapman. In truth, it's ridiculous. What can you possibly have in common?”

Alexandra agreed, and yet there was an undeniable attraction to meeting the others. But there was another problem she had to deal with first, a more pressing one. Her husband. “What do you suppose Henri would say to all this, Maman?” She eyed her mother cautiously, but they both knew what Henri would say. He would be outraged. “Do you really suppose it will make a difference to him?” Margaret could see that she desperately wanted reassurance. But she couldn't give it to her. The scandal would surely be too much for Alex's husband.

“It shouldn't, if he loves you. But I think it would be a shock to him. That's inevitable. And frankly, I still don't see why you should tell him. Your father and I talked about it when you married him, and we decided it wasn't important. We love you, you are our daughter in every possible way and what happened thirty years ago is no one's business. Perhaps not even your husband's.”

“But that's so dishonest, Maman. I owe it to him to tell him. Don't I?” Her eyes were still full of questions.

“Why? Why upset him needlessly?” Margaret tried to sound calm, but the whole thing was turning into a nightmare.

“Because the fact that I'm the daughter of the Comte de Borne is very important to him, Maman. He believes in all that lineage, and you know it. He's barely able to tolerate the fact that you're American, for heaven's sake, and only the fact that he knows what a fancy family you're from makes him willing to overlook it. How about telling him instead that my father was an actor, and killed my mother, origin unknown. I am the daughter of an unknown murderer and suicide, American to boot, with two unidentified sisters.” She grinned in spite of herself. It was a difficult situation. “Frankly, I think he'd drop dead from a heart attack. And if he survived, he'd divorce me. And take my daughters if he could get away with it. But if I don't tell him, I'm being knowingly dishonest.”

“Don't be foolish, Alex. This isn't the Dark Ages. He couldn't be that unreasonable. And besides, I still don't think you should tell him.”

“You don't know my husband. If I tell him, he might leave me and the girls, but the rest of it's not so farfetched. Particularly with his political aspirations. My God, mother, he'd die…. And if he found out in some other way … if I didn't tell him … if someone else found out.” Alexandra visibly shuddered as she paced the room, and Margaret couldn't disagree with her.

“I told you. Don't tell him.”

“And if he finds out? If there's a scandal? At least before I didn't know most of it myself. But now that I do, how can I not tell him? That's deceitful.” It was before, too, but now she was hiding a veritable mountain of information.

“Oh don't be so bloody innocent for heaven's sake.” She took a huge sip of bourbon and looked at her daughter. “You can't always be the perfect wife. You have to think of yourself from time to time, not that you do it very often. And it would be stupid to make a confession to Henri. What purpose would it serve except to cause you a great many problems?” And she could hardly disagree with her mother. There was so much at risk. She could lose everything. Her husband. Her marriage. Her children.

“But what if I decide I want to see the others? How do I explain that? How do I slip away to America to meet my sisters? I can't exactly say I'm coming here to lunch and then disappear for five days, can I?”

“Are you so sure you want to go?” Margaret was disappointed to hear it, but Alexandra shook her head.

“I'm not at all sure … but if I wanted to, I don't know what I'd tell my husband.” Margaret's solution would have been not to go at all then, but she knew it wasn't fair to say that. She had her own reasons for not wanting Alexandra to go, it was foolish but she was afraid that in some way she would lose her, to the specter of a mother long dead, and three sisters who would help prove that blood was thicker than water. It was childish, but she wanted Alexandra to turn her back on them. But she was wise enough not to say it.

“I don't think you should say anything to him, Alexandra. Nothing at all. You would be wisest if you kept your own counsel.” She scribbled something on a piece of paper then, and handed her John Chapman's name, and the name of his hotel and phone number. “Mr. Chapman wants you to call him, so he can explain it all to you. If you want to, you can call him at the Bristol.”

“Why is he here?”

Margaret hesitated, but only for an instant. “To see you.”

“That's why he came to Paris?” Margaret nodded in answer. “Then I'll call him. I owe him that at least.” And as she slipped the paper with his name into her bag, she saw the time. It was after five o'clock, and she was horrified. She had to get home to Henri and the children. It had been an amazing afternoon, full of unexpected admissions. And Margaret walked her to the door, and hugged her long and hard before she left, as Alexandra looked into her eyes with tears rolling down her cheeks again. “Maman, please know how much I love you.”

“You'll always be my little girl.” The tears began sliding down her cheeks again, and the two women held each other for a long time before Alexandra left her. It had been a shocking afternoon and she could hardly think straight on the drive home. She kept hearing a voice from the distant past … Axie … always remember how much I love you….

Chapter 21

Alexandra was still in shock when she got home. It was difficult to absorb everything her mother had told her. She felt as though she were moving in a dream, and she kept trying to remember things that had been gone for years … the woman with red hair … and the little girl she had called Hillie.

“You're late.” Henri was waiting in her study as she walked into the room, feeling as though she had lead weights on her shoulders.

“I'm sorry, I …” She jumped when she saw him, startled from her reverie. But to Henri, it made her look guilty. “My mother had some papers I had to discuss with her … I didn't think it would take … Henri, I'm sorry.” There were tears in her eyes when she turned to him, and he was looking at her as though he didn't believe her.

“Where were you?”

“I told you …” Her hands trembled as she hung up the jacket to her suit. He made her feel as though she had somehow betrayed him. “I was at my mother's.” She tried to make her voice sound calm, but she sounded nervous, even to her own ears.

“Until now? It's six o'clock.” His voice was filled with disapproval, but suddenly she turned on him, her nerves frayed beyond control. She needed time to think, to absorb what she'd been told … she needed time to remember.

“Look, I'm sorry I'm late. I told you, I was at my mother's.”

He backed down quietly, but he still looked angry. “See that it doesn't happen again. I don't know why she keeps you this late. She knows you have important obligations.”

Alexandra clenched her teeth so as not to answer him. Her mother had kept her late so that she could tell her she had been adopted twice … and her natural father had murdered her mother … that she had two sisters she'd entirely forgotten about … little things like that. Nothing important.

She dressed hastily in a black silk dress, and sheer black stockings. She slipped into black satin pumps, washed her face, changed her makeup, redid her hair, and put her lipstick and compact in a black satin handbag. And within twenty minutes she was downstairs again, joining Henri in the front hall as they left for the evening. She barely had time to say good night to the girls, and when she did, she almost cried. As she looked at them, she was reminded of the sisters she had all but forgotten.

“Be good to each other, you two,” she whispered as she kissed Marie-Louise good night. “You don't know how lucky you are to have each other.” And a life such as theirs, filled with people who loved them, safe from harm. She herself had been lucky to be adopted by Margaret and Pierre. But now suddenly, as she looked at Henri, she fel as though she had a guilty secret.

“Why doesn't your mother take her problems to her attorney or her banker?” Henri asked in a voice filled with annoyance as they drove to the restaurant where they were meeting some new acquaintances of Henri's.

Alexandra looked vague as she glanced out the window. “She thought I could help her. That's all.” He laughed, as though it were a ridiculous suggestion.

“She could at least come to me. I could be of assistance.” But she knew perfectly well that Margaret would never go to her husband. They barely tolerated each other.

They arrived at Taillevent, and Alexandra looked around the familiar decor distractedly as Henri led her to their guests and made the necessary introductions. The room was filled with le Tout-Paris, men in dark suits, and beautiful, elegantly dressed women. The room was as magnificent as it always was, with the rich panelling, magnificent chandeliers, and goblets filled with fresh flowers. It was a place where only the most elite were able to get in, and even they had to wait months for a reservation.

It was Henri's favorite restaurant, and he enjoyed going there with her and their friends, and even business associates like tonight. The people he was dining with were potential backers for his political career, and Alexandra could sense that the evening was extremely important. But no matter how hard she tried, she found herself unable to concentrate, and by the end of the evening she was near tears, as Henri glared at her, and she fought desperately to stay afloat in the conversation.

“Excuse me?” she said for at least the tenth time that evening. She had totally missed what the woman said … had it been something about the south of France … or was it something about her children? “I'm terribly sorry …” Alexandra's eyes filled with tears and she dabbed at her eyes with her napkin, as though she were coughing. She felt as though the evening were never going to end, and Henri was furious with her when they left.

“How could you do that to me?” He railed on the ride home. “Your attitude was an open insult!”

“Henri, I'm sorry … I wasn't feeling well … I couldn't concentrate … I …” But all she could think of was John Chapman at the Bristol, and how desperately she wanted to call him.

“If you weren't well, you shouldn't have come tonight. You did more harm than good.” He was livid.

“I'm sorry … I tried … truly I did …” There were tears sliding down her cheeks. She hated to let him down, but there was so much on her mind now.

“You have no excuse!” He raged. But she did. And she couldn't tell him. “I won't tolerate your behaving like that.” And then, the final blow. “You're always impossible after you've seen your mother.” As though she were a naughty child, and he had a right to scold her.

“My mother has nothing to do with it, Henri.” Alexandra spoke in a quiet voice as she blew her nose, and he glared at her as they stopped at a light on the way home. He didn't even care if their driver heard him.

“Then where were you tonight until six o'clock?” That again. Alexandra only shook her head, and stared out the window, and then looked back at him again.

“I told you. I was at my mother's.”

“Was anyone else there?” He had never been suspicious of her before, and it hurt her deeply.

“Of course not. My God, what do you suspect me of?” She wanted to tell him that she didn't engage in the same sports as he, but she didn't want to open a Pandora's box that would cause even greater problems. She reached out and touched his hand then, but he showed no inclination to soften. “Henri, please …”

“You disgraced me tonight.”

“I'm sorry. I had a terrible headache.”

He never said another word to her, but when they reached the house on the Avenue Foch, he courteously opened the door to her, and then went to his own rooms, and firmly closed the door behind him.

Chapter 22

As soon as Henri had left for the office the next morning, Alexandra looked up the number of the Hotel Bristol, and dialed the number. She asked for John Chapman, feeling her hand tremble on the phone, and her voice cracked as she identified herself to him. It was like high espionage, and she was extremely nervous. If Henri had any idea what she was doing, or what she had learned, he would very probably divorce her.

“You've spoken to your mother?” Chapman had a calm, smooth voice, and she found him easy to talk to.

“Yesterday … I … I had forgotten everything.” Even that she was adopted. She had allowed herself to deny it to herself for all these years … not to mention the fact that she'd been adopted once before … and Hillie … and the woman with red hair … But Chapman didn't seem to condemn her.

“Maybe it was easier for you not to remember. There was no reason to.” He paused for a moment, and then spoke to her gently. “Could we meet sometime today? … er … uh … I'm terribly sorry, I don't know your married name. All I know is your mother's name now.” He sounded very polite and well-bred and well educated. She had been nervous that he might be one of those seedy investigators one saw in B movies.

“De Morigny. Alexandra de Morigny.” She didn't bother with the title. It seemed very unimportant.

“Thank you. I was hoping we could meet. Perhaps later this morning. I'd like to show you the files I have. Perhaps you have something to add to them … or in any case, you have a right to know as much as we do.”

“Thank you very much. I could meet you at your hotel …” She glanced at the clock on her desk, and made a rapid calculation. She had to bathe and dress, and leave instructions for the help. Henri was having guests for dinner. “At eleven. Would that be all right?”

“Perfect.” And with luck, he could catch a flight to New York that night. He had a lot of work to do, and he didn't want to cool his heels in Paris forever. “I'll meet you in the lobby. I'm six feet two, I have blond hair parted on the side, and I'll be wearing a tweed jacket, a blue shirt, and gray trousers.” He sounded more like a college student than a private eye, and she smiled as she imagined the outfit. He sounded like one of her American cousins. And then she realized that he didn't know what she looked like.

“I have blond hair too. I'm one meter sixty …” And then she laughed. “I'm sorry. I always forget what that is in English. Five feet five, I think. And I'll be wearing a gray suit.” She had a gray silk suit in mind, one that Henri liked, not that it mattered. And when she dressed, she wore it with a pink silk blouse, and a pink Hermès scarf and the Bulgari coins on her ears that she wore when she didn't want to wear anything flashy. She looked respectable and chic, as she walked slowly into the Bristol, feeling her heart pound as her heels clicked on the marble floor and she glanced around the lobby. She was about to go to the desk and have him paged, but she saw him instantly, sitting quietly in a chair, holding a copy of the Paris Herald Tribune, and he stood up and smiled at her, walking toward her on long legs, and with a smile that left her a little breathless. He had perfect teeth, and gentle eyes, and she liked him instantly. He looked as though he would have made a good friend, and she shook hands with him solemnly, trying not to look at the briefcase he carried in his other hand. She knew that within it lay the secrets of her past, and that of her sisters.

“I'm sorry I'm late.” She spoke barely above a whisper, and he sensed easily that she was frightened. “I drove myself, and I had a terrible time finding a parking place. I finally just gave the car to the doorman.” He nodded, and they sat down in a corner, in two large red velvet chairs that seemed perfectly suited to the occasion.

“Would you like a drink? Or a cup of tea?” But she was too nervous to eat or drink, and she shook her head as he pulled the file out of his briefcase. It was much thicker than it had been when Arthur Patterson first gave it to John. There was what he knew of Hilary's life in it now. And soon there would be Alexandra's.

“Thank you, I'm fine.” Her eyes looked deep into his. “Are you close to finding the others?”

“We hope so.”

“The last trace we have of Hilary was when she went to see Arthur Patterson about twenty years ago, to find you and your younger sister, and she was furious to discover that he hadn't kept track of any of you. I suppose she tried to find you herself, and obviously couldn't. In any case, she held him responsible for the breakup of your family, and I imagine she hates him. And that is not difficult to understand, from what we know of her early life.

“I don't know what's happened to Megan yet, but certainly compared to you, Hilary got the worst deal possible.” He told her what he knew and Alexandra's eyes filled with tears as she listened, thinking of what a terrible fate a life like that would be for anyone. She tried to imagine it happening to her own two little girls, and the very thought made her ill. No wonder Hilary was bitter. She had every right to be. Abandoned, beaten, forgotten. “I gather that when she went to New York, she went to see Patterson, and after that we've lost her. But I have a very intense investigation going on this week, and I imagine there will be more recent information on Hilary when I get back. We already thought we'd found her once, but it was a mistake.” He was referring to the woman at CBA. But wherever she was, he would find her. “But next time it won't be.”

“My God, what an awful life.” Alexandra discreetly wiped the tears away and he offered her the file for her own inspection. She could hardly bear what she read, and looked up at him finally with anguish on her face. “How could she survive it?” Alexandra felt a wave of guilt wash over her as she thought of her own life in comparison to her sister's. “Why did this happen?”

“I don't know that. The turns of fate are not always kind, Mrs. de Morigny.”

“I know.” She spoke softly, but she had never seen it quite so clearly. It was like one of the kaleidoscopes she gave to her children, you turned it just a fraction, and all of the same pieces fell into a totally different pattern. One moment they were flowers, and the next moment they were demons breathing fire. It seemed so wrong to her that Hilary would have been left to the demons. With effort, she turned her thoughts back to John Chapman. “What can I do to help you find them?”

“Nothing at the moment, unless you remember anything specific that might help us. But your knowledge would have ended a long time ago, I don't think it's of much use now. I'll call you as soon as I've found the others, and Mr. Patterson would like you to come to his home in Connecticut to meet them. It's the one thing he wants to do before he dies.” It seemed a noble wish, but less so if you thought of the pain he had caused them.

“What's he like? It's odd, but I don't remember him at all.” Nor did she remember her father. She had glanced at the clippings of Sam in John Chapman's file, and had been struck by how handsome he was, and how successful. There were only two photographs of her mother, one of a smiling young woman with cascading shafts of bright red hair, and in a funny way, she looked a little bit like Alexandra's youngest daughter. And the other photograph showed the three little girls, Alexandra and Hilary in matching white dresses and shiny black shoes, and the baby in a long ruffled gown in her mother's arms, taken just after Megan was born, on the last Easter their mother was alive. It was taken outside their house on Sutton Place, but it didn't look familiar to Alexandra.

Chapman tried to answer her question. “Mr. Patterson is very old, and very sick. I don't think he'll live much longer. He's very anxious to get the three of you together before he dies. It means a great deal to him.”

“And if he dies before you find them?” Alexandra asked bluntly.

“He's made provisions to continue the investigation and bring you together. But he would like to be around to see it.” She nodded. He had thought of everything. It was only a shame he hadn't thought of it thirty years sooner. It would have made a big difference to Hilary. And she said as much to John Chapman. “If he was so close to my parents, why didn't he take us, and keep us together?”

John Chapman shook his head. “I don't know. He said something about his wife not feeling able to cope with it. I think he regrets it now. Sometimes we make terrible mistakes, but we only see it in hindsight.” He dared to ask her then what Arthur wanted to know. “Are you happy, Alexandra? Forgive me for asking …” But it meant a great deal to Arthur. And she smiled at John.

“I have always been very happy. I have been blessed with wonderful parents whom I have loved deeply. Pierre de Borne was a remarkable man, and I'm only grateful he lived as long as he did. He was the joy of my life,” she blushed, “and I of his.” And then she smiled more broadly. “And you met my mother yesterday. She's wonderful, isn't she? She's my closest friend and greatest ally. This has been very hard for her.” Alexandra's face sobered as she thought of her mother's tears the day before. “It was terribly hard for her to remind me of the past. I don't suppose it will be easy for anyone to dredge all this up, particularly given the way it all happened.” She sighed and looked hard at him. “Does anyone really know why he killed her?”

“Not really.” He shook his head. “Some sort of an argument, I believe. I think he was drunk. Temporary insanity, as the defense said. Mr. Patterson maintains to this day that Sam, your father, adored her. It's difficult to understand people giving way to that kind of violence and emotions.”

She nodded, but she was thinking about Hilary and they still hadn't found out about Megan. “I hope Megan's all right. I hope they both are.” It was as though she knew them now, as though they had already come back to her, like her own children. “I have two little girls of my own, Axelle and Marie-Louise. It's odd,” she mused thoughtfully, “I think Marie-Louise looks rather like Hilary.” It was odd too that Alexandra had returned to her mother's native country.

And then Chapman asked her a difficult question. “Have you told your husband about all this?”

Slowly, she shook her head. “I'm afraid Henri won't understand it. I think he'll be very upset that my parents didn't tell him when we got married. And until you find the others, there's no point confronting him. It will only make him unhappy.” It was a story she had been telling herself since the night before, and she was almost convinced now.

“And when we find the others?”

“Then I'll have to tell him something.” She smiled uncomfortably. “I don't normally go off to America at the drop of a hat, Mr. Chapman.”

“You did not deceive him, you didn't know all this.” He was trying to soothe her, but she knew better.

“My parents did though. He will be very angry. He believes me to be the daughter of the Comte de Borne. The bloodline means a great deal to Henri. He can trace his family back nine hundred years. I don't really think that a murderer and a French war bride were exactly what he had in mind for the grandparents of his children.” Perhaps it was just as well they had never had a son. Then he would never forgive her. And perhaps he wouldn't as it was. Chapman felt sorry for her as he watched her face. He sensed that her husband was not an easy person.

“I think he'll adjust. You've obviously been married for a long time. And he loves you. That counts for a lot.”

“Not to everyone, Mr. Chapman.” She smiled wistfully. And how could he be so sure that Henri loved her? She wasn't sure of it herself sometimes. He owned her, like a fine piece of Louis XV furniture, or a very good painting. And if the painting turned out to be a fraud? Would he still love it enough to keep it? She knew some would, but she wasn't at all sure Henri was among them. He was obsessed with quality and veracity and perfection. And she knew now that her pedigree was badly flawed. It was not difficult to imagine Henri's reaction.

Chapman was looking at her gently as they sat quietly in a corner of his hotel, and he realized that he liked her. She was gentle and shy, and she had kind eyes, the kind of eyes he had always wanted to find in a woman. She was so graceful, and so gentle. He hoped that Arthur's investigation was not going to cause her pain. She had done nothing to deserve it.

“May I invite you to lunch, Alexandra? And will you forgive me for being so informal?” He smiled his boyish smile at her and she laughed.

“You know all the secrets of my life. I hardly expect you to call me by my husband's title.”

“Oh, dear … is he titled too then?”

“Of course.” She laughed again, and when she did she looked so much younger. “The Baron Henri Edouard Antoine Xavier Saint Brumier de Morigny. Lovely name, isn't it?” She was almost giggling. It had been a very tense morning, and she needed the relief. They both did.

“Does it all fit on his driver's license?”

She laughed at the thought. And then sobered. “And you, Mr. Chapman, what do you think of all this? You're an intelligent man. It must all seem rather shocking.”

“Nothing shocks me anymore. I think it's a shame so many lives were destroyed by one act of madness. And in some ways, I think it's a shame to disturb the embers. But it's not for me to make those judgments, and perhaps it will bring some comfort to some of you to be reunited. Are you curious about the others?” She nodded. She had to admit she was.

“I remember Hilary a little bit … just flashes and little bits, ever since speaking to my mother yesterday.” And then she sighed. “It was a tremendous shock for her.”

“And for you too.” There was compassion in his eyes and he wanted to reach out and touch her hand, but he didn't. “I'm sorry to cause you so much trouble.”

“You haven't yet.” But he would, when he found the others.

“Can I induce you to have lunch with me, in spite of all that?” He liked her, and funnily enough, he wanted to get to know her. He told himself it was so he could report back to his client, but he knew it was more than that. The pieces of the mystery were beginning to fall into place, and she was a lovely woman, and he liked her.

She hesitated for only a fraction of an instant, calculating what harm it could do, and decided it could do none. “I'd love it.”

“Any suggestions? I haven't been here recently, and I'm afraid I'm not very much up-to-date on the in places.”

“The best places, Mr. Chapman, are the old ones.” She stood up and smiled, and he put everything back in his briefcase and locked it. For an odd moment, she wanted to ask him for the picture of her as a little girl with her sisters, but she imagined that he needed it to show to the others, when he found them. And now suddenly she understood why there were no photographs of her as a baby. She thought of it suddenly as they crossed the lobby and he insisted that she call him John, and he noticed an odd look in her eyes then.

“I just realized something I'd never really understood before. My parents have no photographs of me as a baby, and I just accepted it, as though it were normal.”

“You had no reason to doubt them. Where are we going for lunch?”

“I thought we'd have lunch at the Ritz, with all the little old ladies.” She grinned and he laughed as she took his arm and they began walking.

“It sounds delightful.”

“They make me look terribly young and attractive.”

“You are, or haven't you noticed that lately?”

“I try not to look. I only see the wrinkles.” But it was only idle talk, she didn't even look thirty, and she had exquisite skin and silky hair, which reminded him that she looked different than he had expected.

“You know, it's funny. I thought you'd have red hair.”

She smiled guiltily, and looked very female, and he was struck again by how pretty she was, in a subtle way. It was almost as though she were trying to hide it, with her ladylike hairdo and subdued clothes. He wondered what she would look like if she really let herself go wild. Probably a great deal like her mother.

“I do have red hair.” The smile dimmed and then faded. “My husband doesn't like it, so I rinse it blond. Axelle, my youngest daughter, has red hair too. But I haven't been a redhead in years. Henri thinks it vulgar.” She said it in a matter of fact way and John silently decided that Henri was clearly an idiot.

Their lunch at the Ritz was relaxed and easy and pleasant. They talked about Boston and New York, and Cape Cod and Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, where they each spent their summers. They talked about sailing, and summers as a child, and how he had started his career instead of going into law, as was expected. They were like comfortable old friends, and they were both sorry when she finally left him at his hotel, and she got back into the car she had left with the doorman.

“Call me as soon as you know something, John.”

“I promise.” He touched her hand on the wheel, and then leaned in to kiss her cheek. “Take care of yourself. And I hope next time I see you, you have flaming red hair!” They both laughed, and she waved and drove into the flow of traffic, feeling as though she had made a new friend. He was handsome and charming and bright, and she wondered why he wasn't married. He had said only that he was divorced and had a penchant for difficult women and had let it go at that. But she liked him so much, she couldn't imagine why someone hadn't snatched him up the moment he'd gotten divorced from his first wife.

But her mind drifted quickly back to the reason he had come to Paris to see her. It was all more than a little bit amazing. And she was stunned to realize as she walked in the door that it was already four o'clock. And she was giving a dinner party that evening. She hastily checked on the flowers and the wines, saw the cook, and glanced around to make sure that everything was in order. And then she went to see her daughters, playing in the garden with a friend. They were excited that school was almost over, and they'd be leaving for Cap-Ferrat soon.

At six-thirty, she went to dress, and she heard Henri in his study, but she didn't want to disturb him. Instead she ran her bath and laid out her dress, a white silk floor-length gown. She usually wore it with long diamond earrings that had belonged to Henri's late mother. And she was just taking them out of her jewel box when the door opened and he strode into the room with a look of fury.

“Hello darling,” she stood up to greet him, but the smile froze on her face when she saw him. “Is something wrong? I checked everything for tonight and it looked fine to me …” But it was obvious that something terrible had happened in the meantime.

“What exactly do you think you're doing, making a fool of me, all over Paris?”

“My God, Henri, what are you talking about?”

“I mean that you were seen today, dining with a man at the Ritz, thinking you were hiding.”

Her face went very white, but she stood extremely still as she explained it. “If I thought I were hiding, I would hardly go to the Ritz. It was a business lunch. He's here from New York, on some business matters for my mother.”

“I heard that yesterday, Alexandra. And you won't get away with it twice. But it certainly explains your behavior last night. You couldn't think straight. Well, I'm not going to tolerate an outrage of this kind. You will leave for Cap-Ferrat in the morning.” She was being banished, like a naughty child, and tears filled her eyes at the injustice of what he was thinking.

“Henri, I have never cheated on you. You must believe that.” She didn't dare approach him, and they stood at opposite ends of the room, she in bleak despair, and he in outrage.

“I believed that until now. But you cannot expect me to believe it in this instance.”

“It's true.”

“That's nonsense. And I have every intention of telling your mother what I think of her providing a smokescreen for you. I do not wish to see her at Cap-Ferrat this summer.”

“Henri, that's not fair. She wants to see the children …”

“She should have thought of that before she began covering for you with your lovers.”

“I don't have any lovers!” Alexandra screamed. “And my mother has nothing to do with this …”

“Aha … I thought this was a business matter for her.” He advanced on her slowly, victory in his eyes, and Alexandra sank into a chair, beaten and desperately unhappy.

“It is …”

“What kind of business matter is it?” He roughly tilted her chin up so she had to face him, but he knew she wasn't entirely telling him the truth, and she could do nothing about it. To tell him the whole truth would have been far worse. She knew that.

“I can't explain it right now. It's all confidential business matters of my parents.” She looked pale and shaken, and he stalked out of the room again, and then turned to look at her from the doorway.

“I never would have expected this of you, Alexandra. See to it that it never happens again, or you will be going back to your mother's house, without your daughters. Have your things packed for the Riviera by noon tomorrow.” And with that he slammed the doors to her boudoir, and she sat and sobbed in despair. She had had such a pleasant time with John, and it was all so harmless, and now Henri thought she was cheating on him. And then suddenly, she realized she had to call him. She went hastily to the phone on her desk, and called the Bristol. Fortunately, he was there, and she was able to tell him that they were leaving for Cap-Ferrat several weeks early, in case he needed to reach her. She gave him the number and thanked him for lunch again, never letting on for a moment how much pain it had just caused her.

“I hope I'll be in touch with you again soon.”

“So do I.” But she was ashamed for thinking it for several reasons. He was so kind and so understanding. But he had his own life to lead, and so did she. She had enough trouble without indulging in fantasies about him.

“I'll call as soon as I hear something.”

“Thank you, John. Have a good trip back.”

“I will. I'm leaving in the morning.” He had hoped to get on a flight that night, but he had gotten back to the hotel so late after lunch that he was no longer in the mood to pack and run, and he decided that a last night in Paris wouldn't do any harm. He was feeling relaxed and pleased about his lunch with Alexandra, and when he'd called Sasha from the hotel she was in one of her impossible moods. He was suddenly in no hurry to get back. He was looking forward to dinner at a bistro nearby, and a pleasant stroll through the streets of Paris.

He said good-bye to Alexandra and she hung up and walked slowly into her bathroom, unable to believe that Henri so easily thought the worst of her, and wondering what the summer would be like now. But she got a taste of it that night. He spoke to her in tones of ice, and until the next morning when she and the girls left, he treated her like a pariah.

“You will do no entertaining until I arrive, is that clear? You are to stay in the villa, and I will call you.” He treated her like a convict who had attempted to escape and her own fury was building slowly as they said good-bye the next morning.

“May I go to the beach, or should I stay in my room wearing a ball and chain?”

“I'm sorry you feel our marriage such a burden, Alexandra. I never realized it caused you such anguish.” He had an answer to everything and for the first time she hated him as they drove away. The chauffeur and two maids were accompanying them on the trip, and they were putting the Citroën and the Peugeot station wagon on the overnight train to the Riviera.

“Why was Papa in such a bad mood?” Axelle inquired as they drove through the traffic to the station. “Was he mad at you?”

“Just a little bit.” She smoothed the coppery curls as Hilary had done for her so long ago, and she smiled now at the distant memory of her sister. She was excited now at the prospect of seeing them again. She just hoped that Chapman would find them soon, and that she would be able to get away to see them. But Axelle didn't give her the time to ponder it as they drove through Paris.

“Papa didn't look a ‘little bit’ mad to me. He looked very mad. Did you do something terrible, Maman?” Alexandra smiled and took Axelle's hand in her own. It was going to be nice to get to the Riviera, and perhaps nice too to have a few weeks breather from her husband.

“I only did something a little bit foolish.”

“Like when you bought the hat he hated with all the feathers and the veil?” Axelle had loved it, and Henri had made Alexandra send it back the same day.

“Something like that.”

“Did you buy another hat?”

“Hmm … yes … uh … sort of …”

“Was it pretty?”

“Oh yes.” Alexandra smiled at her youngest child, “Very.”

Axelle smiled up at her with obvious pleasure as they reached the station.

Chapter 23

The material they had dug up on Hilary in John's absence was excellent and he was immensely pleased. They had found her enrollment in night school, her job at the employment agency, and from there they had followed her to CBA. It was perfect. They had everything they needed, and as Chapman looked through the file, he realized that they had been right the first time. It was the right Hilary Walker he'd spoken to when he called her at CBA, and it was equally obvious she didn't want to be found. So be it, he would wait until he found Megan, and then confront her himself. For the moment, he would let her think she had lost him.

But as he thought of her, he felt that same odd tug in his heart he felt every time he read her file. He wanted to tell her that everything was all right, that people still cared about her, that she could stop running. It was terrible to think about her angry and alone, and then he realized that there might be a lot more to her current life than he knew. He ordered his assistant to begin a full-scale investigation of Hilary Walker at CBA Network. She could be married, divorced, have six children of her own. The broken little girl he had been following from Boston to Jacksonville to New York might well be leading a happy life now. And for the most part, he hoped so. And yet, he knew that he would not feel at peace about her until he met her. It was crazy, but he was obsessed by the women in his case, their lives, and their good and bad fortunes. So much so that he called his ex-wife, and asked her to lunch, and tried to press her into explaining to him again how she felt about her characters when she was writing.

“Do you ever fall in love with them, Ellie?” He looked at her in confusion, as they sat next to the fountain at the Four Seasons. It was where all the city's publishing notables ate lunch and he knew it was her favorite place, even though he still preferred the sensual, artsy chaos of the Russian Tea Room. But Eloise was a different girl. She was tall and cool and controlled, she had masterminded a successful career and done it brilliantly, and she seemed better suited to the cool marble and discreet fountains of the Four Seasons.

“Fall in love with them? What do you mean? Are you thinking of writing a book?” She looked amused and he shook his head.

“No, I'm just working on this crazy investigation. It goes back about thirty years, and the people are so damn real to me, I can't think straight anymore. I dream about them at night … I think about them in the daytime … little girls who are practically middle-aged women now tear at my heart and I want to help them.”

“It sounds more like food poisoning than love.” She grinned, and then she reached out and patted his hand sympathetically. She still liked him. They had lunch with each other a couple of times a year, and he had even introduced her to Sasha, but Eloise had told him bluntly on the phone the next day that she thought he could do a lot better. “You got it bad, kid. Sounds like you ought to write a book about it.”

“No one would believe the story. And besides, I can't. That's not my bag. You know that. It's just that it's driving me crazy. How can people on paper become real?”

“Somehow they do.”

“Do they finally go away?”

“Yes, when you resolve it.” She said reassuringly, eating her salad. “When I finish a book, the characters finally disappear. For good. But before that, they drive me crazy, it's like being haunted.”

“That's it!” He waved his fork at her. “That's it exactly!” He was being haunted by Hilary, and when he wasn't being tormented by Hilary, he was thinking of Alexandra. He had called her as soon as he was sure that it was Hilary at the network, and she had been jubilant. Now she was waiting for news of Megan, and John had been putting pressure on all his operatives to speed it up, because Patterson seemed to be fading. “What do I do to get rid of this thing? It's driving me crazy.”

“Finish it. Wind up the case, do whatever you have to do, and then it'll go away. That's how it works for me. Is it a tough case?” Unlike Sasha, she was always interested, but then she was always looking for new stories.

“Very. But we're two-thirds there. I just have to find one more piece of the puzzle and we've got it. It's kind of an exotic tale, I'll tell you about it when the case is closed.”

“I could use a good story. I'm starting a new one next week. I rented a place on Long Island for the summer.” It was amazing. The woman worked like a fiend, but it was obvious that she loved it. And then she grinned at her ex-husband. Their relationship was more like brother and sister now that they were no longer married. “How's your ballerina?” She said it without venom. She wished him well. She hadn't been crazy about the girl when she met her, but she knew he was.

But he shrugged as he answered. “So-so. People involved in ballet seem to live in their own world. She doesn't have a great grasp on reality, mine anyway.”

“Worse than writers?” Eloise smiled.

“Much worse. At least you didn't complain about your feet night and day, and worry about every muscle in your body. Just breathing is a threat to them, they might do something to themselves that could keep them from dancing.”

“Sounds exhausting.” She finished her salad, took a sip of wine, and smiled at him. He was one of the nicest people she knew, and sometimes she was sorry they hadn't stayed married. She wondered if she should have tried harder but she was also smart enough to know it wasn't in her. And it wouldn't have been right for them. She needed to be alone with her work, and she had always felt he should be married and have children. “Somehow I don't see her as the final answer for you.”

“Neither do I. But it's taken me a while to see that. There aren't a hell of a lot of people out there who intrigue me. Most of them aren't too bright, or they're not nice, or they really don't give a damn about anyone but themselves.” Without meaning to, he realized he had just described Sasha. She had been wearing thin on him ever since he'd gotten back from Paris. “What about you? Prince Charming heading toward you on the horizon?”

She shrugged with an easy smile, and waved at a publisher she knew. “I don't have time for much of that stuff. Nothing much has changed as far as that goes. It's hard to have a career and a real life.”

“But it can be done,” he always pointed out to her, “if you want to.”

“Maybe I don't” She was always honest with him. “Maybe I don't want more than I've got. My typewriter and my old nightgowns.”

“El, that's terrible. It's a hell of a waste.”

“No, it's not. I never really wanted all that other stuff. I would have hated having kids.”

“Why?” It seemed so wrong to him. People were meant to have children. He had wanted one for the past twenty years. It just hadn't worked out for him to have one.

“They're too demanding. Too distracting. I'd have to give too much of myself. That's why I was such a lousy wife to you. I wanted to save it all for my books. I guess that's crazy, but it makes me happy.” And he knew it did. They were both better off the way things were now. And then suddenly he laughed.

“You were always too damn honest. I was just going to tell you I met a great woman in this case.” Eloise raised an eyebrow with interest. “She just happens to be married to a French baron, and not exactly available.”

“She sounds a lot better than your ballerina.”

“She is. But she's totally wrapped up in her proper life. It's a damn shame too … she's lovely.”

“You'll find the right one, one of these days. Just stay away from the artsy ones. They make lousy wives. Take it from me. I know!” She smiled ruefully, and leaned over to kiss his cheek as they left the table.

“Don't be so hard on yourself. We were both young.”

“And you were terrific.” She stopped to say hello to her editor-in-chief, and they walked out into the sunshine together. Then John wished her luck on her new book, hailed a cab for her, and walked back to his office on East Fifty-seventh.

And there was a windfall waiting for him when he got back to the office. One of his assistants had found the Abramses in San Francisco.

“Are you serious?” He was jubilant. They had tried everything and turned up nothing. But they had finally given up looking for David, and in doing so had found Rebecca. It turned out that they had left Los Angeles in the early sixties and gone to the deep South to march with Martin Luther King and participate in sit-ins and voter registration campaigns. They had provided free legal service to blacks in Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and had eventually set up a full-scale legal aid office in Biloxi. And eventually from there they had gone to Atlanta. It was only in 1981 that they had finally gone back to California, but David had retired after extensive surgery, and Rebecca had joined an exclusively female practice in San Francisco, to defend women involved in feminist causes. For all their lives, they had been the classic liberals.

John's assistant had explained nothing to them. John had left strict orders that once Megan was located he would make contact. He had his secretary make an appointment with Rebecca Abrams, and he was set to fly out the following afternoon, which was perfect. Sasha was still on tour, and there was something he had wanted to do for days. It was something he hadn't done himself in years, but he knew now that he had to do it. It was part of what he had tried to explain to Eloise at lunch … part of being haunted.

He left the office just before four o'clock and took a cab to the network. He flashed a security badge and a police pass downstairs, both of which had been hard-earned and almost impossible to come by, and the network security were satisfied and instantly let him into the inner sanctum.

He took the elevator upstairs, and waited inconspicuously in the reception area. He picked up a phone there and dialed her extension, and her secretary told him she was in a meeting.

“In her office, or upstairs?” He sounded like someone who knew and the secretary was quick to give him the information.

“She's here. She's with Mr. Baker.”

“Any idea what time she'll be through?”

“She said she's leaving at five-thirty.”

“Thanks.” Chapman hung up the house phone and the secretary had no idea who had phoned, but she assumed that it was someone who knew Hilary, obviously someone higher up at the network.

She came out at exactly five-fifteen, and John recognized her at once, even without the receptionist's good night as she sped past. “Good night, Miss Walker.” Hilary turned to glance at her sharply and then nodded, she didn't seem to notice anyone else in the waiting area, or John as he followed her to the bank of elevators and stepped into one beside her. He almost felt weak at the sight of her, he could see every strand of the shining black hair twisted into a knot, the graceful hands, the long neck, he could even smell the crisp scent of her perfume. She walked with a sure step, a long stride, and when he bumped into her once, she looked up at him with green eyes that pierced straight to his soul, eyes that said don't touch me, don't even come near me. She got on a bus on Madison Avenue, instead of fighting for a cab, and she got out at Seventy-ninth Street. She walked two blocks farther north, and then he realized she was going to a doctor's appointment. He waited patiently outside, and then followed her again when she took a cab and went to Elaine's where she met another woman. He sat in a booth close to theirs, and was intrigued by what might be said. The other woman was a well-known anchor from the network, and she looked upset. She started to cry once, and Hilary looked unmoved. She watched her, unhappy, but not sympathetic. And then finally John remembered as the two women shook hands outside the restaurant, that the woman who was the anchor had been fired when he was in Paris. It had created an enormous stir, and she was either pleading with Hilary for her job, or telling her side of the story. Her firing had supposedly come from higher up, but maybe she thought if she could gain Hilary's ear, she might get back in. But it was obvious from the unhappy look on Hilary's face as she walked slowly downtown alone, that she couldn't help her. She stopped to glance in shop windows once or twice, and walked with a purposeful stride, yet a feminine sway to her hips, which kept him riveted as he watched her. She turned on Seventy-second Street finally and walked all the way to the river, to an old brownstone set near a tiny park. It was a pretty place, yet everything he sensed about her told him she was lonely. She had a solitary air, and a kind of hardness and determination about her that suggested walls she had built long before and never taken down since. As he had when he read her file, he felt intensely sorry for her, and he felt sad as he walked the few blocks back to his own apartment. She lived so nearby, yet she seemed to exist in a universe of her own, a universe filled with work and little else, and yet it was not fair for him to make that judgment. Maybe she was happy after all, maybe she had a boyfriend she was deeply in love with, but everything about her present and her past suggested a solitary person with no one to love and no one who loved her. And when he walked into his apartment and turned on the light, he had an overwhelming urge to call her, to hold out a hand, to become her friend, to tell her that Alexandra still cared … all was not lost … yet … or maybe she wouldn't care. As he had explained to Eloise at lunch, he felt as though he were being haunted.

He tried to get some sleep, but he tossed and turned, and finally, for lack of something better to do, he turned on the light and called Sasha in Denver. She was in her room, she had just gotten in from the concert hall and her feet were killing her.

“I'm glad nothing's changed.” He laughed as he lay on his back, thinking of her. He wondered if he'd been too hard on her when he talked about her at lunch. She still excited him in some ways, and that night he missed her. “Want to meet me in San Francisco?”

“When?” she sounded noncommittal.

“I'm going tomorrow. I should be through in a couple of days. When do you finish in Denver?”

“Tomorrow. We go to Los Angeles. San Francisco canceled.”

“I'll meet you in L.A.”

“I don't think you should.” There was a long silence, and he frowned.

“What's up?”

“It might upset some of the other dancers,” she said vaguely and he sat up slowly in bed. He was no fool, and he had played this game before. But it was not a game he liked playing.

“Would it upset anyone in particular, Sasha?”

“Oh I don't know. It's too late to talk about it tonight.” And as she said it, he heard a male voice in the background.

“Is that Dominique, or Pierre, or Petrov?”

“It's Ivan,” she said petulantly. “He pulled a hamstring tonight, and he was very upset.”

“Tell him I'm sorry. But tell him after you explain to me what the hell's going on. Sash, I'm too old for this kind of bullshit.”

“You don't understand the pressures of being a dancer,” she whined into the phone, and he sank back against his pillows.

“Well, I've tried for chrissake. What is it that I don't understand exactly?”

“Dancers need other dancers.”

“Ah … now we get to the root of the problem. You mean like Ivan?”

“No, no … well … yes … but it's not what you think.”

“How the hell do you know what I think, Sasha? You're so busy worrying about yourself and your feet and your ass and your tendons you wouldn't notice what anyone thought if they wrote it out in neon.”

“That's not fair!” She was suddenly crying, and for the first time in months he found he didn't care. Suddenly, in the space of one phone call, it was over. He had had it.

“It may not be fair, baby,” he spoke in his deep, gentle voice, “but it happens to be true. I think maybe you and I had better take our bows, and step back gracefully while the curtain comes down. If I read the program correctly, the fourth act just ended.”

“Why don't we talk when I get back?”

“About what? Your feet … or about how dancers need other dancers? I'm not a dancer, Sash. I'm a man. I have a very demanding job, I have a full life I want to share with a woman I love and who loves me. I even want to have children. Can you see yourself doing that?”

“No.” At least she was honest. The thought of it horrified her. She had no intention of giving up dancing for a year at any point in her life, and then fighting to get back all her muscles. “Why is that so important?”

“Because it just is, and I'm forty-two years old. I can't waste my time with games like this anymore. I gave to the artistic community once. I made my contribution. Now I want something different.”

“That's what I mean … you don't understand the pressures of being a dancer. John, babies aren't important.”

“They are to me, little one. And so are a lot of other things you don't have room for. You don't need me. You don't need anyone. Be honest with yourself.” There was a long empty silence as she listened, and suddenly he wanted to get off the phone. There was nothing left to say. They had said it all, and run out of words a long time since. They just hadn't noticed. “Good-bye, Sash … take it easy. I'll see you when you get back. Maybe well have lunch or a drink.” He knew she'd want the things she'd left in his apartment, but the truth was that he wasn't even anxious to see her.

“Are you really telling me it's over?” She sounded shocked and he could hear the male voice in the background again. He wondered if they were sharing a room, not that it really mattered.

“I guess I am.”

“Is that why you called me?”

“No. I guess it just happened. It was time.”

“Is there someone else?” He smiled at the question.

“Not really.” In a funny way there were three of them, the three women he was searching for day and night who filled his thoughts and his heart now, but not in the way Sasha had meant it.

“No one important … take it easy, Sash.” And with that, he quietly hung up and turned out the light. And he smiled to himself as he went back to sleep. He felt free for the first time in months, and he was glad he had called her. It was finally over.

PART FOUR

Megan

Chapter 24

The flight to San Francisco was easy and he arrived at two in the afternoon, local time, which gave him plenty of time to get to Rebecca's office at four o'clock. When he got there, it was an old Victorian in a rundown neighborhood. But he was surprised when he stepped inside, to find the house well maintained, pleasantly decorated, and filled with plants, and Rebecca Abrams herself was an attractive woman. She was in her early sixties and wore her gray hair in a single braid down her back. She wore clean blue jeans and a starched white shirt, red espadrilles and a red flower in her hair, and she looked like a very attractive, very intelligent, well-kept elderly hippie. She smiled warmly at John, and ushered him into her office. She had no idea what he wanted, and didn't look perturbed when he left his suitcase in her outer office.

“You don't look like most of our clients, Mr. Chapman.” She smiled warmly at him and pointed to a sunny little kitchen off her office. “Would you like some coffee or tea? We have about a dozen different kinds of herb tea.” She smiled at him again and he shook his head. He hated to upset her, but he suspected that he was going to.

“I'm here on a personal matter, Mrs. Abrams. I've been looking for you and your husband for quite some time, and I had a little trouble finding you. My last address for you was in New York, in 1957.”

Rebecca Abrams smiled again, and sat back peacefully in her chair. She had been doing yoga for years, and it showed in her tranquil manner. “We've moved around quite a bit over the years. We spent a lot of time in the South, and then we came back here when my husband got ill. He had a quadruple bypass six and a half years ago, and we both decided that it was time for him to take it easy and enjoy life. So now I'm practicing solo, or rather with a group of women I enjoy very much. But it's a different kind of practice than I had with David, although some of the concepts aren't so different. We deal with a lot of cases that involve discrimination and civil rights. We've been doing this for many years.”

“And your husband?”

“He teaches twice a week, at Boalt. He gardens. He's busy doing a thousand things he enjoys.”

“And your daughter?” Chapman held his breath.

“She's fine. She's still in Kentucky. How do you know our family, Mr. Chapman?” She frowned slightly but the smile still didn't leave her eyes.

“I don't. I'm afraid I come to you rather indirectly. I'm an attorney too, and I run a firm called Chapman Associates in New York. Unlike you, I've never been terribly in love with the law, and I got hooked on investigations years ago, so that's what I do. And my client, in this case, is Arthur Patterson. I don't know if the name rings a bell, but he was instrumental in bringing Megan to you in 1958. I'm sure that now you remember.”

She nodded, the smile had faded now in earnest. “Is something wrong? Why would Mr. Patterson wish to contact us now?” She looked frightened, as though he could still take her away from them. That was what she had always been afraid of.

“Simply put, Mrs. Abrams, he's dying. And he wants to know that the girls are all right, that they're happy and well, and not in any kind of need. And he hopes to bring them together once before he dies, so that they have the benefit of knowing their sisters.”

“Now?” She looked horrified. “After thirty years? Why would they possibly want to meet their sisters?” She looked as though she were about to throw him out of her office.

“He felt it might mean something to them, and I can appreciate your feelings. Thirty years is a long time to wait before having any contact.”

She shook her head as though in disbelief. “We told him at the time of the adoption that we wanted no continued contact with him or the other girls. That was the main reason why we left New York and went to L.A. I don't think it would be fair to Megan to drag her past out now.”

“Maybe she should make that choice. You mentioned that she is still in Kentucky.”

“She's finishing her residency there, in Appalachia. She's a doctor. She's specialized in obstetrics.” Rebecca said it with deep pride, but she looked at John with open hostility.

“May I contact her there?” To him it was a formality, but to her it was an offense and she half rose in her seat as she answered.

“No, you may not, Mr. Chapman.” She sat back down again and glared at him in outrage. “I can't believe you'd come to us after all these years and expect us to expose Megan to that pain and confusion. Are you aware of the cause of her parents' death?”

“I am. Is Megan?”

“Of course not. In fact, I will tell you very bluntly, Mr. Chapman, this whole thing is totally out of the question. My daughter doesn't know she's adopted.” She looked him straight in the eye and he felt his heart stop. How could they not tell her? As liberal as they were, and as freethinking, they had never told her she was adopted. It certainly complicated the matter for them.

“Do you have other children, Mrs. Abrams?”

“No we don't. And my husband and I felt she had no need to know. She is our only child, and she came to us when she was a baby. There was absolutely no reason to tell her as she got older.”

“Would you be willing to tell her now?” He looked deep into her eyes and was frightened of what he saw there. Rebecca Abrams was not going to make this any easier for him. But at least he knew where Megan was now. If he had to, he would find her in Kentucky. It seemed a cruel thing to do, but she had a right to know about her sisters.

Rebecca hesitated for a long time. “I don't know, Mr. Chapman. Honestly, I don't think so. I'm going to have to discuss this with my husband, and with his doctor first. He's not well, and I don't want to upset him.”

“I understand. Will you get back to me in a day or two? I'm staying at the Mark Hopkins.”

“I'll get back to you when I can.” She stood up to indicate that the interview was over, and she might as well have been wearing a navy blue pinstripe suit. She looked as formidable as if she'd been wearing one. “Will you be going back to New York in the meantime?”

“I'd rather wait for the answer here, in case your husband would like to see me.”

“I'll let you know.” She shook his hand, but the look in her eyes was not warm as she led him to the door and closed it behind him. And when she went back to her desk after he was gone, she put her head down on her arms and cried. It was thirty years later, but they were still going to try to take away her baby. They were going to awake a curiosity she had never had, and bonds she never knew, and introduce her to blood relatives she had never longed for. It wasn't fair after all they had done for her, and given how much they loved her.

She went to see David's doctor that afternoon, and he felt that David was strong enough to hear the news. But it took her two days to get up the courage to tell him, and when she did she sobbed in his arms, and poured out all her fears and he stroked the long gray hair and held her close and told her how much he loved her.

“No one's going to take Meg away from us, sweetheart. How could they?” He was touched by her reaction. When Megan had been a little girl, she had worried about the same things. She had wanted Megan to be theirs, and no one else's.

“All of a sudden, she'll want to know everything about her biological parents.”

“So we'll tell her.”

“But what if she feels different about us after that?”

“You know better than that, Becky. Why should she? She loves us too. In all the important senses of the word, we're her parents. She knows what that means as well as we do. But that doesn't mean she won't want to see her sisters. If someone told me tomorrow I had two sisters I'd never known, I'd want to see them too, but it wouldn't make me love you any less, or Megan.” But Rebecca was still frightened and they talked about it long into the night. Rebecca wanted to keep their pact of silence, and David felt that they owed it to Megan to tell her. It took them another full day to resolve it. And when they finally called, John felt relief sweep over him, he had been going crazy in his hotel room. But he didn't want to leave until he knew where things stood, and he didn't want to press them.

She invited him to come to their house in Tiburon that night, and the three of them talked for a long time about the difficulties of telling Megan after so many years that she was adopted, and it was obvious that Rebecca was still fearful, but David was both adamant and supportive. He told John that his only request was that they wanted to tell Megan themselves, and in person. She was due home in two weeks for a brief vacation, and they would tell her then. They would call him as soon as she knew, and he was welcome to speak to her after that and set up the meeting that Arthur Patterson wanted so badly. And John had no recourse but to accept. They had all the cards in their hands and he wanted to do the right thing for them, and for Megan.

He went home that weekend, and called Arthur Patterson at home. It was obvious that he was not doing well, and John knew he had given up going to the office. He explained that he had found the Abramses, and that they wanted to tell Megan themselves. It meant waiting two weeks, but Chapman felt there was no choice. It was the only decent thing to do, and Arthur reluctantly agreed, and hoped he lived long enough to complete his mission.

“What's left to do now?” he asked John.

“Wait to hear from them. Then I'll set up the meeting with Megan and the others. Alexandra is ready to come when I call her, and I still have to deal with Hilary. But I don't want to do that until the last minute.” He instinctively sensed that the later he did it, the more likely she might be to come to the meeting. “That gives us another two weeks to cool our heels. I'll let you know if I hear anything sooner.”

“Thank you, John.” And then, unexpectedly, “You've done a fine job. I'm amazed that you've found them.”

“So am I.” John smiled at his end. He had never really thought he would, and he had … and in a few weeks they would be back together, and his job would be over. Part of him felt bereft at the thought, and another part felt relieved and he thought of what Eloise had said when they had lunch. He would be free when it was over.

Chapter 25

The call came from the Abramses in two and a half weeks, as promised, and John could tell from the strain in David's voice that telling Megan hadn't been easy for them.

“She took it very well.” His voice broke, “We were very proud of her … we always have been….” and then he went on, sounding stronger. “She said she'd call you herself when she gets back to Kentucky, if you'd like to talk to her.”

“Would it be possible for me to talk to her now?” John asked carefully, and David had conferred with someone at the other end and then handed the phone to someone, whose voice John recognized within moments. Without the French accent, she sounded just like Alexandra, she had the same intonations, the same voice, the same laughter.

“Mr. Chapman?”

“Yes.”

“This is all something of a surprise.” She sounded matter-of-fact, and young, but very pleasant.

“I'm sorry about that. I truly am.”

“It couldn't be helped. I understand you wanted to speak to me.”

“I did. I was hoping to meet you in Kentucky briefly before I set up the meeting. When do you suppose you could come to Connecticut to meet with the others?”

“I won't know that till I get back. My schedule won't be set until the day I return. But I could call you then, if you like.”

“I'd appreciate it very much.” And she did. She called punctually the day she arrived, and John wondered if that meant she was anxious to meet the others or if she was just that kind of person.

She told him that she would be free to see him, in Kentucky, that Sunday afternoon, between one and five. And she would be able to come to Connecticut for two days three weeks later, but no sooner.

Chapman frowned as he listened to her, wondering if Arthur would live that long, and he shared his concerns with her.

“I can try and trade with one of the other docs, but it won't change things by more than a few days. We're terribly understaffed, and you'll see what we're up against when you come down here.”

“You could make it in three weeks though?”

“I could. Unless there were a major emergency, but I can never predict that.”

“I understand.” She was businesslike and very firm for a young woman of thirty-one, and while she had the same voice, she seemed very different from the others. She was intent on a single purpose, and she had been brought up with values and traditions much different from those of Hilary or Alexandra. She was hell-bent on helping unfortunates and fighting the war on poverty. It was something Alexandra had certainly never thought of, and Hilary had been far too busy surviving to concern herself with the more esoteric problems of the masses. It was intriguing how different they were. And John remembered something Alexandra had said to him in Paris.

The kaleidoscope had taken yet another turn and produced a totally different image … this time the demons had been turned into snow-covered mountains.

He agreed to come to Kentucky the following Saturday afternoon, and would meet her at the hospital during her free time there. He thanked her for spending it with him, and he confirmed the date for the meeting with her sisters. They set it for September first, and he called Arthur as soon as he hung up. And the following morning he called Alexandra on the Riviera. They had a terrible connection, but eventually the line cleared and she could hear him.

“Already?” She sounded excited. “You've found them both?” It was amazing. “Where was Megan?”

He smiled at her gentle voice. She already spoke of her like a sister she had never lost, who had merely been gone on a long vacation. “She's a doctor in Kentucky.”

“Oh my God. And Hilary's all right?”

“Yes. I've seen her.”

“Has she agreed to come on the first?” She held her breath waiting for the answer, and her hopes were dashed as soon as John told her he hadn't called her.

“I don't want to give her too much time to think about it. I'll give her a call in a week or so.”

“What if she goes away?” Alexandra was worried.

“Don't worry. I'll find her.” They both laughed and a moment later they hung up, and Alexandra hurriedly called her mother. She was staying at Cap d'Antibes, at the Hotel du Cap where she always stayed. And Henri had finally relented on her exile.

“Maman?”

“Yes, darling, is something wrong?”

Alexandra sounded breathless, and suddenly very young, like one of her own daughters.

“He's found them both.”

“Both what?” She had just gotten up and was drinking her coffee and reading the Herald Tribune. She couldn't imagine what Alexandra might have lost that someone else might have found. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“My sisters! Chapman found them both!” She sounded ecstatic and Margaret's blood suddenly ran cold. She had somehow hoped that he wouldn't find them.

“How nice.” She tried to force herself to sound happy. “Are they well?”

“One of them is a doctor, the younger one, and the other one, Hilary, works for a television network in New York.”

“They sound like quite an illustrious group. And you're a baroness. They ought to make a movie about you.” But she was not amused, and Alexandra knew it.

“Don't worry, Maman. It's not going to change anything. Please know that.”

Margaret wished she could be sure of that. Her fears were not so different from those of Rebecca Abrams. “When are you meeting them?”

“On the first of September. I just got the call. I'm going to Connecticut.”

“What are you going to tell Henri?”

“I haven't figured that out yet. I thought maybe I'd tell him I was going with you … or perhaps on business for you.”

“He won't believe that.”

“No. But I can hardly tell him the truth. I'll think of something.” They talked for a moment longer and then hung up, and five minutes later Margaret called her back, and her first words stunned Alexandra.

“I'm going with you.”

“What? … Maman … you can't….”

“Why not?” She had made up her mind, and thought it an excellent idea, aside from providing Alexandra with the alibi that she needed. Besides, that way she could keep an eye on things, and stay close to Alexandra. She was desperately afraid of that meeting.

“It's such a lot of trouble for you. You weren't even going back to Paris until the end of September. You told me you were going to Rome for a few weeks.”

“So? I can go to Rome in October. Or on the way back from New York. All I wanted to do was visit Marisa”—one of her oldest friends—“and buy some decent shoes. But I'd much rather go to New York with you,” and then, almost shyly, “… if you'll have me.”

“Oh Mother …” Tears sprang to her eyes as she thought of it. She sensed how frightened Margaret was, but she didn't need to be. No one, no blood relative, no husband, no friend, could ever replace her. “Of course I'd love you to come. It just seems like such an imposition.”

“Don't be ridiculous. I'd be a nervous wreck if I stayed here.” And then she had a totally crazy idea, but she liked it. “Shall we take Axelle and Marie-Louise?” Alexandra's face lit up at the thought. She didn't like just leaving them at the end of the summer, even for only a few days. And Henri couldn't possibly object to a family trip like that.

“That's a wonderful idea. The three of you can stay in New York while I go to Connecticut, and then we can all have a little fun before we go back to Paris. The girls don't start school until the eleventh.”

“Marvelous, I'll call the Pierre and make the reservations today. You call the airlines. What day will we arrive?”

“Friday is the first … maybe we should fly on Thursday, the thirty-first of August.”

“Perfect. I'll make reservations for ten days. We can always change them if you want to come back sooner.”

“Maman …” There was a lump in her throat the size of a fist as she thought of the only mother she had ever known. “I love you.”

“Everything's going to be fine, darling. Just fine.” And for the first time since John Chapman had appeared at the rue de Varenne, she really thought so.

Alexandra didn't say anything to Henri for another week. And then she mentioned it casually to him one afternoon as they lay on the terrace.

“My mother wants me to go to New York with her, at the end of the summer.” She said it easily but he looked up at her angrily. He was still angry at her for her supposed transgression before they'd left Paris. They had never discussed it again, but she knew he hadn't forgiven her.

“What's that all about now?”

“Nothing. She has some business to take care of in New York. Some investments of her family's that need looking into, and she asked me to come along and bring the girls.”

“That's ridiculous. Why would you go to New York in August?” He was suspicious of both of them, and the plot they were obviously cooking up against him.

“It's actually not till the very end of August. And it might be fun for the girls to do something a little different.”

“Nonsense. You can go to New York some other time, this winter without the children.” But the harshness of his words sent a chill down her spine. He didn't know it, but nothing was going to stop her from going, or from taking her children with her.

“No, Henri. I'm going now. With my mother. And the children.”

He bolted to a sitting position and stared at her angrily. “Aren't you getting rather independent suddenly, Alexandra? May I remind you that I make the decisions here, for you, as well as the children.” He had never put it quite so bluntly, but it was true, or had been until then. But slowly, things had begun to change, since John Chapman had come to Paris.

“I don't think this is worth getting excited about, Henri. It's an invitation from my mother, for myself and the girls.”

“And if I forbid you to go?” His face was red with unspent fury, and her shocking behavior.

“I will have to go anyway. My mother has asked me to come with her.”

“Your mother is not an invalid. I'll call her myself and tell her you're not going.” But this time Alexandra stood up and faced him. She spoke in a quiet voice, but there was no mistaking the steel beneath the velvet.

“I do not wish to disobey you, but I must go to New York with my mother.”

“Why? Tell me that. Give me one valid reason.”

“It's too complicated to explain. It's all family business.”

“Alexandra, you're lying to me.” He was right, but she had no choice, the truth was too frightening to share with him.

“Please don't say that. I won't be gone long. Just a few days.”

“Why, dammit, why?” He pounded his fist on the glass table and she jumped.

“Henri, please, you're being unreasonable.” And she was frightened that he would force her to tell him. “My mother wants to visit her family, and she wants me to come along. There's nothing wrong with that.”

“What's wrong with it is that I didn't say you could go, and I see no reason for you to do so.”

“Perhaps because I want to.”

“You don't make those kinds of decisions for yourself. You are not a single woman.”

“Nor am I a slave. You can't decide everything for me, for heaven's sake. This is the twentieth century, not the Dark Ages.”

“And you are not some sort of modern women's libber to do as you please. Or if that's what you wish, Alexandra, you may not do it under my roof. Please keep that in mind before you start making your own travel arrangements.”

“This is ridiculous. You act as though I've committed a crime.”

“Not at all. But it is I who decide what you'll do when. That's how it's been for fourteen years, and I see no reason to change it.”

“And if I do?” she asked ominously. For the first time in her life the way he treated her truly rankled. She knew he was a kind and decent man, but he ran her life in such a way that she was no longer happy with it. And what's more, she knew it.

“You'll have trouble with me if you try out this independence. I'm warning you now.”

“And I'm telling you, as politely as I can, that I'm going to New York with my mother on the thirty-first of August.”

“That remains to be seen. And if I let you go, you are not taking my daughters. Is that clear?” It was all a power play and she suddenly hated him for it. All he needed was a whip to complete the image he was making.

“Are they prisoners here too then?”

“Is that how you see yourself?”

“Lately, yes. Ever since you sent me down here as a punishment for a sin I didn't commit. You've treated me like a criminal all summer.”

“Perhaps it's your own guilt that makes you feel that way, my dear.”

“Not at all. And I refuse to feel guilty about a trip with my mother, or to bow and scrape and beg, I don't need to do that. I'm a grown woman, and I can certainly do something like that, if I choose to.”

“Ah, the young baroness spreads her wings. Are you telling me that you don't need my support because of the size of your own income?”

“I would never say such a thing, Henri.” She was shocked at how bitter he seemed to be. But he was furious that she wouldn't bend to his wishes.

“You don't need to, my dear. In any case, I've decided. You're not going.”

She looked at him and shook her head in despair. He didn't understand that he was choosing the wrong issue on which to take his stand. Nothing could have kept her from going. Not even her husband.

Chapter 26

When John Chapman arrived in Kentucky, it was like landing on another planet. He had to change planes twice, and a jeep met him and took him over three hours of bumpy roads into the mountains, until he was deposited at a “motel” with a single room and an outdoor toilet. He sat huddled in his room that night, listening to the owls outside and sounds he had never heard before, and he wondered what Megan would be like when he met her the next morning.

He slept fitfully, and woke early. He walked to the town's only restaurant and ate fried eggs and grits, and a cup of truly awful coffee. And the jeep came for him again after lunchtime, with a toothless driver, who was only sixteen years old, and drove him to the hospital, high up in the mountains, under tall pine trees and surrounded by shacks where assorted families lived, most of them with a dozen children running around barefoot in what could only be called rags, followed by packs of mangy dogs hoping to find some crumbs, or leftover food the children might have forgotten. It seemed difficult to believe that this godforsaken outpost could be huddled in such beautiful country, and only hours away from places like New York, or Washington or Atlanta. The poverty John saw was staggering. Young boys who looked like bent-over old men from poor working conditions, bad health, and acute malnutrition, young women with no teeth and thin hair. Children with swollen bellies from lack of food. John wondered how she could stand working there, and walked into the hospital, not sure of what he'd find there.

He was directed to a clinic around the back, and he went there, only to find twenty or thirty women, sitting patiently on benches, surrounded by screaming kids, and obviously pregnant again with what in some cases was their eighth or ninth child even though they were only twenty. It was an amazing sight, and when he looked toward the desk, he saw a head of bright red hair, braided and in pigtails, worn by a pretty girl in jeans and hiking boots, and as she walked toward him, he knew without a doubt, it was Megan. She looked incredibly like Alexandra.

“Hello, Doctor.” She smiled at the greeting and led him to a small room nearby, where they could talk privately. He showed her the file he had shown Alexandra, and told her about Alexandra as well, and explained that the meeting was set for September first, as she had suggested. “Can you still make it?” He looked worried and she reassured him with a warm smile. She had some of the mannerisms of Rebecca, but actually she looked a great deal like Alexandra.

“I can. If I can get away from them.” She waved toward the army of women waiting on the benches.

“It's an awesome sight.”

“I know.” She nodded seriously. “That's why I came here. They need help desperately. Medical care, and food, and education. It's incredible to think that this exists right in our own country.” He nodded, unable to disagree with her, and impressed that she was doing something about it.

She looked over the file again, thoughtfully, and then asked him some questions about her parents. She wanted to know the same thing Alexandra had asked him. Why had Sam killed Solange? And then, what had happened to the others? She was saddened by what she read of Hilary, and smiled after he finished talking about Alexandra.

“Her life sounds a far cry from mine, doesn't it? A French baroness. That's a long way from Kentucky, Mr. Chapman.” She said it with a drawl and he laughed with her, but she still wanted to meet both her sisters. No matter how different they were. “You know, my mother is very frightened about the meeting.”

“I sensed that when we met. Your father was trying to reassure her.”

“I think it's very threatening to any adoptive parent to have their adopted child seek out their birth family. I saw that during my residency, before I came here. But she has nothing to worry about.” She smiled up at him with ease. She knew exactly who she was, where she was going, and why she wanted to go there, not unlike the people who had formed her. David and Rebecca had lived by their beliefs too, and they were exactly the kind of parents she needed. Decent, intelligent, filled with integrity and love for the people and causes they believed in. And Megan knew it too. She had told her mother that before coming back here. “She'll be all right. I promised to call her after it was all over. I think they'll probably visit me after that, if I know my parents.” They both laughed, and John watched her eyes. They were filled with light and life and excitement. She was a girl who loved what she was doing and felt fulfilled, and it was exciting just being near her. She was so different from girls like Sasha, who were so totally wrapped up in themselves. This girl thought of no one but the needy people around her. And halfway through the afternoon, she had to leave him to do an emergency cesarean section. She was back in two hours and apologized for the delay.

“This is supposed to be my free afternoon. But it's always like this, that's why I don't get too far.” And then she invited him to dinner at her place. She lived in a simple shack, with simple furniture and beautiful quilts she had bought from some of her patients. She cooked up a plain pot of stew and they relaxed and talked about her youth and her parents and the people she had met. She seemed to love her parents deeply and she was grateful for all they had done for her, yet at the same time it seemed to intrigue her to think that she had once belonged to entirely different people.

She smiled once over her glass of wine, and looked very young and girlish. “In a funny way, it's kind of exciting.” He laughed and patted her hand. In a way she seemed the least distressed, the most secure, the happiest of the three women. She was doing exactly what she wanted.

And afterward she drove him back to where he was staying in the jeep her father had given her when she'd moved to the mountains. John wanted to sit in the moonlight and talk to her for hours, but she had to get back. She went back on duty at four-thirty the next morning.

“Will I see you in Connecticut on the first?” she asked him cautiously, as he looked down at her in the moonlight.

“I'll be there.” He smiled. “For a while anyway. I promised Mr. Patterson I'd be there to greet all of you and help get things started.”

“See you then.” She waved as she drove off and John stood looking after her for a long time, as he heard the owls hooting in the tree, and felt the mountain air soft on his cheeks, and for a moment he wished he could stay there with her forever.

PART FIVE

Reunion

Chapter 27

Alexandra had already done all her packing, and all she had left to do was organize the girls when Henri confronted her in the hallway, and grabbed her by the arm.

“I thought you understood me. I told you, you are not going to New York.”

“Henri, I have to.” She didn't want to fight with him about it. It was something she had to do, and it wasn't fair to try to stop her now. He followed her back into their bedroom where he stood glaring at her in silent fury as her suitcases lay open on the bed.

“Why are you being so obstinate about this?” He knew instinctively it had to be a man. There was no other conceivable reason.

“Because it's very important to me.”

“You've told me nothing that explains that. Why does a trip to New York with your mother mean so much to you now? Would you care to explain that?”

Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at him across the bed. He had been so unkind to her all summer, and it was so unfair of him to be difficult now. “I really can't explain it. It has to do with something that happened a long time ago.”

“Something that involved a man?” He looked at her accusingly, and as she watched him in the harsh sunlight of the Riviera, he suddenly looked very old, and she wondered if perhaps he was frightened … frightened that she was involved with a younger man. It made her feel sorry for him and for a moment she let her guard down, as she shook her head.

“No, it has nothing whatsoever to do with a man. It has to do with my parents.” That was true, but she did not mean the Comte and Comtesse de Borne.

“What about them? Alexandra, I expect you to tell me what's going on.” And then suddenly, as though she could fight him no longer, she sat down in a chair, and began to cry. But he did not approach her. He offered her no comfort. From all that he knew, she still owed him an explanation, and perhaps much more.

“I didn't want to explain this to you … it … it's difficult to explain. I've only known it myself since June.” She looked up at him with deeply troubled eyes, and he suddenly realized that something was very wrong, that the transgressions he had punished her for for two months were perhaps not what he had thought them. A shiver of guilt sliced through him, but only briefly, as he waited, standing near the window, as she went on. “My mother … my parents … there was something they should have told you … I should have told you, except that I had almost forgotten, and I told myself it wasn't important. But I suppose now that it was….” There was an inner shudder of horror as he waited and she caught her breath and continued, “Henri, I was adopted.” He stared at her in utter amazement.

“You were? Why didn't someone tell me? Your father never said anything.” He looked horrified, but she bravely went on. She was going to tell him all of it, no matter what it cost her.

“I was also adopted before that. By Margaret and her previous husband as well.” She waited for the full impact to hit him, and as it did, he sat down slowly on the bed and went pale as he stared at Alexandra.

“Are you serious? You were not the biological child of Margaret and Pierre de Borne?.” It was as though someone had just told him the Renoir for which he had paid five million dollars was a fraud. His lovely wife with the impeccable breeding was not a countess by birth, but an unknown. She nodded. She knew how deeply it had shocked her when Margaret told her, and she knew how much more Henri would be stunned. “And before that? Margaret is not even your mother?” His voice was a whisper and Alexandra nodded, ready to tell him all.

“No, she's not.”

He gave a bitter crack of laughter. “And to think how often I've worried that you or the children were too much like her. Then who are your parents? Do you even know?” She could be anyone … a girl from the streets … from the gutter … of unknown parents and breeding. The thought of it almost made him ill. For ten centuries his family had married and bred with the utmost caution, and he had married a complete stranger of unknown background.

“I have known for two months. And I've wanted to spare you. That has been the secret I've been keeping from you. Nothing else.” But he was not appeased, he looked at her angrily, and strode across the room with fury, as he glanced at her over his shoulder.

“I'd have much preferred if it was a man.”

“I'm sorry to disappoint you.” She spoke with great sadness. He was letting her down. She had inwardly prayed that he would accept her … that it wouldn't matter to him. But she had known better than that. These things meant too much to her husband for him to be magnanimous about a surprise of this kind. And she had known it. She had only wished it might be different, but it wasn't.

“And your parents? Who are they? The real ones …”

She took a deep, brave breath and told him. “My mother was a Frenchwoman, I know only that her name was Solange Bertrand, a ‘commoner’ as you would put it. My father met her when he liberated Paris with the Allied forces. I know nothing more. My father was an actor, a well-known one, much respected, named Sam Walker. They were said to be very much in love, and they had three daughters, of which I am the second one. And then …” She almost choked on her words as she told him, but in an odd way it was a relief to say the words, “… as a result of some madness, he killed her. And when he was convicted of the crime, he committed suicide in his cell, leaving me and my sisters penniless and orphaned. We were left with an aunt for a few months, and then a friend of the family, an attorney, found homes for us, and got us adopted, two of us anyway. I was very fortunate in that I was given to Margaret and her first husband, a lawyer named George Gorham. I was five years old at the time. I was apparently four when my father killed my mother, which is why I don't recall it. And I don't remember anything about the man named George Gorham. Apparently, six months later, he died, and my mother … Margaret, that is … came to France to recover, and she met my father … Pierre … and you know most of the rest. He adopted me as soon as he married my mother, which you did not know, and I suppose I had forgotten, and we lived happily ever after, and then you came along, Henri.” She tried to smile, but her face froze as she watched him.

“What a tidy little story.” Henri looked at her with unleashed fury. “How dare you perpetrate that hoax on me for all these years? And even if you had forgotten, as you say, your mother certainly hadn't. And your ‘father’ as you call him … bande de salopards! … I could sue you for divorce on the basis of fraud … and damages in the bargain!”

“Do you call your daughters ‘damages’ Henri? I had no idea … truly….” The tears coursed slowly down her cheeks and onto her yellow silk blouse as she watched him, but she saw no mercy there.

“I call the entire charade disgraceful! And this trip to New York? What is that all about? To put flowers on your parents' graves?”

“The lawyer who placed us for adoption was my parents' closest friend, and he is dying. He has spent months trying to locate my sisters, and he wishes to bring us together. He feels he owes it to us for whatever pain he caused us in taking us away from each other. I was very fortunate, but at least one of us was not.”

“And what is she? A prostitute in the streets of New York? My God, it's unbelievable! In one hour I have inherited a war bride, a murderer, a suicide, and God knows what else in the bargain, and you expect me to wave my handkerchief and shed tears of joy that you are being reunited with your sisters, whom even you cannot care about after all this time. And your mother? What part has she played in this? Is she responsible for getting you back in touch with the attorney? Did she think you needed a little excitement in your life? I know how dull she thinks me, but I assure you this is not my idea of excitement.”

“Nor is it hers.” Alexandra looked at him proudly. She had told him who she was, and if he chose to reject her, it was his loss, his sin, his lack of compassion. She had done everything possible to protect him and he had demanded an answer to his questions. Now he had it. And it remained to be seen what he would do about it. “My mother was heartbroken to have to tell me. She never wanted any of this to come out. But I want to see my sisters. I want to see who they are. And no, my sister is not a prostitute. She runs a major television network, and she has had a tragic life. My younger sister is a doctor, working in Appalachia. And I don't even know if I'll like them, or if they'll like me. But I want to see them, Henri. I want to know who they are, and who I am, other than just your wife.”

“That's no longer enough for you, is it? You had to bring this on our heads. Can you begin to imagine what this would do to my career if it got out? What would happen to my bank? To my political connections? My relatives? Can you imagine what your own children would think if they knew their grandfather murdered their grandmother. My God …” He sat down again, boggled, at the thought. “I can't even begin to imagine it.”

“Neither can I,” Alexandra said in a small voice. “But I don't see why it should get out. No one is going to publicize this meeting. The children don't even know why I'm going. They just think that Grandma invited us, and we're going to New York. I'm going to spend one weekend in Connecticut, ‘with friends,’ while the girls and my mother stay in New York.”

“I don't understand why you want them with you. It makes no sense.” But-it did to her … and to Margaret.

“Maybe I need them for emotional support.” And then she took a big step, one she hadn't imagined a moment earlier. “You're welcome to come along. It's a little frightening going back thirty years to see people you don't know, but must have once loved.”

“I can't even begin to imagine. And no, I will not join you. In fact, Alexandra …” He stood up and looked at her sadly. As far as he could see, their lives had been shattered, in his eyes, beyond repair. “I implore you not to go. I don't have any idea what, if anything, can be salvaged from our marriage, but it serves no purpose to go and see these people. They're beneath you. You must not go back there….” And then, in a whisper, “Please don't.”

But this time, she could not oblige him. After fourteen years of devoted obedience to Henri de Morigny, she could not do more. She had to go to New York, for her own sake, and maybe even for that of her children. But she had to go, and face these women, reach out and touch them, maybe even love them, or not, and put to bed some old ghosts she hadn't even known existed. “I'm sorry, Henri … I have to … I hope you can understand that. It's terribly important to me. And none of this has to hurt our marriage. I'm doing something I need to do … for me … not to hurt you.” She went to him then and gently tried to put her arms around him, but he wouldn't let her. He treated her like a stranger, which in his mind, she was now.

“I don't even know who you are anymore.”

“Does my family tree make so much difference?” But she knew the answer to that, before she asked the question, and he shook his head sadly, and walked out of the room, as she blew her nose resolutely, and walked down the hall to pack for her daughters. No matter what happened to her marriage, there was no question in her mind. She had to go to New York. She had to. She was going.

Chapter 28

It was only three days before the scheduled meeting, when John Chapman went back to the network, flashed all his passes, and went upstairs to her office. He smiled at her secretary, and looked as though he belonged there, as he asked if Hilary was in her office.

“She's leaving in a few minutes …” She was about to ask him who he was, but he slipped past her and she shrugged. She couldn't keep track of everyone who went in to see Miss Walker. They were legion, and he looked all right. In fact, he looked a lot better than that. She smiled to herself, wondering if this was someone Hilary was involved with. No one ever knew anything about Hilary's private life. And as the door closed silently behind him, he stood in Hilary's office, and she looked up, startled.

“Yes?” She thought it was a delivery of some kind, a script, or urgent instructions. She was used to new faces popping in and out of her office, but not this one. And he stood staring at her quietly, as though he knew her well. It was an odd feeling as he approached her, and she was suddenly frightened as she reached for the phone to call for help. But as he smiled at her, she felt foolish. He looked intelligent and coherent and handsome, but she still couldn't figure out who in hell he was or what he was doing there as he spoke to her in a deep, gentle voice.

“Miss Walker?” But he didn't need to ask the question. He knew exactly who she was, possibly even better than she herself did. “I'm sorry to barge in on you like this. I have to speak to you for a moment.” She stood up behind her desk, as though to take control of the situation as he approached her. The green eyes were as cold as ice, and her voice was curt.

“I'm on my way out. You'll have to see me tomorrow. What department are you from?”

It was a tough question and he wasn't sure what to answer. He didn't want her to call security and have him thrown out. Instead, he said something totally outrageous. “I'm here because of Megan and Alexandra …” He waited to see the effect, and like a deep knife wound, or a gunshot, at first there was no bleeding. Her eyes were still steady green ice. “… They want to see you.”

“Who are you?” This time her hand was shaking as she reached for the phone, and he beat her to it, and held it in its cradle.

“Please … just give me five minutes. I won't hurt you. It's a long story, but I'll make it as quick as I can.” And suddenly she knew that he was the man who had called her, and he knew that she remembered.

“I don't want to see them.”

“They want to see you. Both of them. Alexandra is coming all the way from France … Megan from Kentucky….” He was stalling and she was showing signs of pain in her eyes … incredible sorrow …

“That old son of a bitch sent you, didn't he? Why now?” She stood to her full height and watched him, abandoning her grip on the phone.

“He's dying.”

“Good.”

“Maybe he wants to repent for his sins. He wants to bring the three of you together, this weekend, at his house in Connecticut. He has spent months finding you …”

“Bullshit.” She cut him off. “I know better. I went to him over twenty years ago, and he had no idea and no interest where anyone was. Who found us? You did?” He nodded, not sure if she would hate him or not. He was just stirring up more pain for her. And she had long since put the past to rest. She had given up on finding her sisters after the last time she saw Arthur. After ten years, the dream had died. And now after more than twenty, she didn't want to revive it. She didn't need them anymore. She had cut everything out of her life that might remind her of them. There were no men, no children, no love life of any kind. There was work, soothing work, and lots of it, and the people she trampled on the way up. She didn't have to feel guilty or sorry. She was headed in one direction. And she was all by herself. “It's too late, whoever you are.”

“Chapman. John Chapman.”

“Well, tell him I'm not interested. He's twenty years too late … make that thirty.” She looked unspeakably bitter as she sat down. In some ways, he noticed, she looked younger than she was, and in others she looked older. She had eyes that were older and sadder than time.

“And what do I tell your sisters?”

“Tell them … Tell them …” Her voice faltered and she looked up at him sadly. “Tell them I loved them then but … it's too late for me now.” He shook his head and sat down across the desk from her, praying that he could touch something still living in her heart, if anything had survived the endless pain she'd endured in her childhood.

“It's not too late, Hilary … it can't be … you were everything to them then….” Arthur had said so. He had once described to John how she cared for the other two girls, and just talking about it had made him cry. “You can't turn your back on them now.”

She looked into his eyes, wondering who this man was, how he had found her, and how he knew so much. “They don't need me anymore, Chapman. They're grown up now. What are they? Secretaries? Housewives?” It was the best fate she could hope for them, as John Chapman smiled.

“One's a baroness in France, with two children, and the other's a doctor in Kentucky. They're both interesting women. I think you'd like them.” But that was beside the point, even though she was curious about them.

“Who's the doctor?” It was difficult to imagine either of those little girls as a doctor.

“Megan. She's terrific. And so is Alexandra. She's warm and compassionate and kind.”

“She was, even as a baby.” Her voice was a whisper, and then dropping her face into her hands, she shook her head. “The thought of finding them kept me alive through ten years of hell. I stole ten thousand dollars from my aunt, and I was going to come to New York to find them.” She laughed into her hands, and Chapman could see that there were tears on her desk. “And then he told me he hadn't kept track of them … he had no idea where they were. … I couldn't find them either.” She looked up at John with empty, broken eyes. “What's the point now, except to cause each other pain with the memories of what happened?”

“You're the only one who has those, Hilary. The others have nothing. Alexandra remembers you, and Megan knows nothing at all. All you have now is each other. What happened to your parents is no longer important. Just the three of you … you can't turn your back on that now.”

“That old bastard destroyed us. Why should I let him soothe his conscience by getting us back together now? My life won't change if I don't see them. That's all over. They're gone. Just … like my parents … like the past.”

“Your parents are gone forever … but your sisters aren't. They're real and alive, and they want to know you. Even if you go and you hate them; at least you can tell yourself you tried.” But she shook her head slowly and stood up again, her eyes shooting emerald fire at him.

“I won't do it. Tell Patterson how much I hate him … no … you couldn't even imagine how much I hate him.”

“Why? I know he didn't keep the three of you together, but was there more?” He had wanted to ask her that since he first read her file.

“It doesn't matter anymore. He knows what he did to us. Let him live with it. For me … it's over … I have my life … my work … I don't need more than that.”

“It's a hell of an empty life, Hilary. I know, because that's all I have. Who do you talk to at night in the silence? Who holds your hand when you're sick or tired or scared? I have an ex-wife and my parents and two brothers. Who do you have? Can you afford to turn your back on those two women?”

“Get out of my office.” She walked to the door and pulled it open. She had heard enough, and she couldn't take any more. But he took a piece of paper out of his pocket. On it were the instructions of how to get to Arthur's place in Connecticut on the first of September, the phone number, the address, and he looked into her eyes as he laid it on her desk and then walked to the door.

“I've lived your life, Hilary Walker, for months now. I've cried for you. I've been to Charlestown, to Jacksonville, I've talked to the neighbor who found you near death on her doorstep, I've been to your foster homes. I know how badly he hurt you … I know what a rotten deal you got,” and there were tears in his eyes as he looked down at her and spoke, “but please God, please don't do this … don't turn your back on them now. They need you, and you need them … Hilary … please … go to the meeting. I'll be there to help you. I'll do anything I can.” She was looking up at him in amazement, wondering how he had known all that. “Just be there … please …” And with that he squeezed her arm gently, and left her office, as she stood there, staring after him, all the old pain of the past revived in her, along with a new confusion. She didn't want to go and see them … she didn't want to remember Axie's bright red curls and Megan's little cries in the night. They were gone now. Gone forever. And she couldn't go back anymore. Not even for John Chapman.

Chapter 29

“You're really going?” Henri stood looking at her across their bedroom. In Cap-Ferrat they shared one bedroom, or they had, until Alexandra had confessed everything to him. He had moved into the guest room that night. And the gesture needed no explanation.

“I am.” She looked serious and firm. The girls were dressed and ready. Their bags were downstairs, and Margaret was meeting them at the airport in Nice. They had managed to book a direct flight to New York without going back to Paris.

“You won't reconsider?”

She shook her head slowly. “I'm sorry, darling, I can't.” She walked toward him in the hope that he would let her touch him, but when she reached his side, he took a step back from her, and it cut her to the quick when he did it.

“Please don't,” he said quietly. “Have a good trip then.”

“I'll be back no later than the tenth.” He nodded. “And I'll be at the Pierre in New York, if you need me. I'll call you.”

“That won't be necessary. I'll be very busy.” He turned away and walked out onto the terrace, and with a last look at his back, she left and went downstairs. She didn't see him watching her as they drove away, or the tears in his eyes as he stared out at the sea and thought about her. He knew he loved her a great deal and now he felt as though he had lost her. It was incredible to him … all that had happened … he just didn't understand it. How they could have let it happen … in a way, he realized, she was as much the victim of circumstance as he. But to him it was so much more important, and now she was off on this wild-goose chase to meet two unknown sisters. He only wished he could have stopped her, but it was obvious that he couldn't.

Margaret had insisted they take first class on the flight, and the girls were enchanted as they ordered Shirley Temples, and blew at each other through the little red straws.

“Girls, please!” Alexandra admonished, still thinking of her husband, and Margaret told her to let them have some fun. And then as the two little girls walked down the aisles to see if they could find any children to play with, Margaret asked her how Henri had taken the news. Alexandra had told her only briefly several days before that she had told him the entire truth before leaving.

“He didn't say so in so many words,” Alexandra said solemnly to her mother, “but I think it's over. I'm sure I'll come home to find he's contacted his attorneys.”

“But you didn't have to tell him, either. You could have just told him I was dragging you to New York.”

“He knew it was something else, Maman. I had to tell him something, so I told him the truth.” And despite the price to pay, she didn't regret it. At least she had a clear conscience.

“I think that was a great mistake.” And she didn't tell Alexandra, but she suspected that her daughter's suspicions were right. Henri would almost surely ask for a divorce. Not even ask for it, demand it, and Alexandra would never put up a fight. Margaret just prayed he left her the children. None of it was pleasant to think about, and it distracted her when Axelle and Marie-Louise came back to announce that in spite of the fact that every seat was sold, and packed, there was “no one” on the flight.

“In other words, there are no children?” Margaret inquired with a grin, and they laughed. “Then you'll just have to put up with us.” She played Old Maid and Fish and War and taught them gin rummy, and they watched the movie, as Alexandra sat lost in her own thoughts. She had a great deal to think about … her parents … her sisters … and her husband, if she still had one when she went back to France. But she was still sure she had made the right decision, and the next morning, after a good night's sleep at the Pierre, she called the concierge and made an appointment. She went only a few blocks away to Bergdorf's, and she was very pleased with the results. When she met her mother and the girls for lunch, they were stunned. She had had the blond rinse stripped off her hair, and she was once more a redhead.

“Maman, you look just like me!” Axelle squealed in delight and Margaret laughed as Marie-Louise clapped her hands.

“What on earth brought that on?” Margaret inquired over the girls' heads.

“I've wanted to do it for a long time. Maybe it's that I am who I am now, for better or worse. But I'm not hiding anymore.” And it felt good to her, as Margaret watched her.

“I love you,” Margaret whispered as she touched her daughter's hand.

They had lunch at “21,” and stopped at Schwarz's for a “little gift” from Grandma. As usual, she spoiled both the girls. And as planned, at four o'clock, Alexandra's limousine was waiting. She had explained to the girls that she was spending the weekend with some old friends in Connecticut, and they were staying in the city with their grandmother.

“I'll call you tonight.” She promised as she got into the car with one small suitcase, wearing a very chic black linen dress from Chanel.

“We're going to the movies with Grandma!” Axelle shouted.

She held her mother tight, hugged the girls, and then blew kisses to all three of them, and her eyes held her mother's for a long moment as they drove away. She was sure she could see tears on her mother's cheeks while she was waving, and tears stung Alexandra's eyes as well. It was frightening to be going back into the past, and ahead into the future, all at the same time. But it was also very exciting.

Chapter 30

The drive to Stonington on the Connecticut shore took slightly less than two hours, and Alexandra sat in the backseat, thinking of the people she had left behind her. Margaret, and the love she had lavished on her for thirty years, Axelle and Marie-Louise, so infinitely precious to her, perhaps even more so now … and Henri, so angry at her seeming betrayal of him. She had thought of calling him that morning, before she left, but she couldn't think of what to say. In fact, there seemed to be nothing left to say at all. She knew how he felt about her trip to the States. He had forbidden her to go, and for the first time in their married life, she had disobeyed him. And suddenly, as she drove along in the back of the hired limousine, she felt oddly free, and different than she had in a long time … almost the way she used to feel when she was a little girl, running with her father in the fields near their country house, with the wind in her hair, totally sure of herself, and completely happy. She felt as though he were with her now, as she took the journey back into the past that she felt so compelled to take. And without thinking, she ran a hand through her hair and smiled to herself. She was Alexandra de Borne again … Alexandra Walker, she whispered in the silent car. And for the first time in fourteen years, she was once more a redhead.

There was an electronic gate when they arrived, and they were buzzed in by an unknown voice, but other than that bit of security the property looked simple and unimpressive. There was a long winding drive up a hill, and after a sharp turn, there was a pretty Victorian with a wide porch and widow's walk. It looked like someone's grandmother's house, or that of a great-aunt. There was a lot of wicker furniture on the porch, and an old barn behind the house. It looked cozy and inviting, and Alexandra stepped out of the limousine carefully, looking around, thinking how pretty it was, and how much her children would like it. And then she saw a familiar face watching her from the porch, and she smiled as he hurried toward her.

“Hello! … how was your trip?” It was John Chapman, in khaki slacks and an open blue shirt. He looked totally at ease and his eyes were warm and friendly as he shook her hand and then took her valise from the chauffeur.

“It was fine, thank you very much. What a nice place this is.”

“It is, isn't it? I've been poking around all afternoon. There are some wonderful old things in the barn, I guess Mr. Patterson has owned this place for years. Come on in, you'll love the house.” And he walked her slowly toward it, silently admiring the shining red hair that was so different from the quiet blonde she'd been before. And then finally he decided to go ahead and say it. “Your hair looks wonderful, if it isn't rude to say it.”

But she only laughed and shook her head. She was pleased that he liked it. “I decided to go back to my natural color in honor of this trip. It's going to be hard enough for us to recognize each other without complicating things any further.” She smiled and their eyes met, and she finally got up the courage to ask him what she most wanted to know. “Have the others arrived yet?”

He knit his brows and glanced at her, trying to look unconcerned, but he was still worried about Hilary. She had given no indication that she would come, and he was desperately afraid that she wouldn't. “Not yet. Megan said she'd get here around six o'clock. And Hilary …” His voice drifted off and Alexandra looked at him long and hard and then nodded. She understood, and it saddened her. But it wasn't really surprising.

“She hasn't agreed to come, has she?”

“Not in so many words. But I told her how badly you wanted her to. I thought it was fair to say that.” She nodded in answer and silently prayed that her sister would have the courage to face them. She knew that the past was deeply painful for her, more so than for the others, and she might just decide not to do it. But Alexandra hoped that she would. Deep within, a small forgotten child desperately needed to see her. “We'll keep our fingers crossed,” Chapman added as they walked into the front hall. There was a small sitting room on the right, and a large parlor on the left, with a cozy fireplace, and well-kept Victorian furniture. She wondered where Arthur Patterson was, their benefactor who had brought them back together, and she asked John as much in a whisper.

“He's upstairs, resting.” He had brought two nurses with him, and when John saw him that morning, he realized that it was a miracle the man was still alive at all. It was as though he had hung on, just for this, and couldn't possibly hang on much longer. He had aged twenty years in the past four months, and it was obvious that he was in great pain all the time now. But he was coherent and alert, and anxious to see the three women he'd finally brought back together.

“Are you sure they'll come?” He'd pressed John, and Chapman had assured him, praying that Hilary wouldn't let them down. But as much as she hated Patterson, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing after all if she didn't come. Chapman wasn't sure how well the old man would weather that kind of confrontation. And after lunch, his nurses had put him to bed, and urged John to let him rest until dinner. He was determined to come downstairs that night and dine with his guests. And the plan was for John to leave after dinner. By then the women would have settled in, he would have introduced them all to each other and the rest was up to them … and to Arthur.

Alexandra was peeking around the living room, and from there, wandered into the dining room with the long English table.

“It looks as though he spent a lot of time here,” Alexandra observed, “the place looks well loved.” He smiled at her choice of words, and said he wasn't sure how much time Arthur had spent in Connecticut, and he didn't add that Arthur had told him he wanted to die there.

“Would you like to go upstairs?”

“Thank you.” She smiled up at him, wondering how old he was. He seemed so boyish in some ways, and yet so mature. He was serious and yet fun … a world away from Henri, and yet he looked childish to her compared to her husband. She was so accustomed to Henri's forceful ways, his habits of command, his way of striding into a room and taking charge, with his stern face and his powerful shoulders, and it was odd how suddenly she missed it. He made other men seem weak, and too young, and as though somehow, no matter how nice they were, they lacked something. And she couldn't help wondering if things would ever be the same again, if he'd even take her back when she returned to France … maybe she'd be forced to live with her mother again, or find her own house. For the time being, everything was uncertain.

John showed her to a sunny room at the corner of the house; it was still hot from the afternoon sun, and the bedspread was sparkling white with lace trim, with a cozy rocking chair next to it, and the same Victorian furniture that seemed to fill the house. There was a love seat and a porcelain washstand, and someone had put flowers in the room, and for some reason the room made her feel young again, as though she were a young girl coming home. And there were tears in her eyes when she turned to John and thanked him.

“It's so odd being here,” she tried to explain but she couldn't find the words, “it's like being very young and very old … visiting the past … it's all very confusing.”

“I understand.” He left her to freshen up, and she came downstairs in a little while in a beige linen suit, her makeup fresh, her beige shoes with the familiar black toe of Chanel, and her red hair bringing it all to life. She looked elegant and in control, and she turned as she heard a stir of voices on the stairs behind her. It was Arthur coming downstairs with the assistance of the two nurses. He was bent over and frail, and he groaned with every step, but suddenly as he saw her, he stopped, and gave a startled sound, and then tears began to roll down his cheeks, as Alexandra walked halfway up the stairs to meet him.