Remembrance

But Serena seemed to be sitting even straighter in her chair, and the emeralds in her eyes had suddenly caught fire. “I'll be rewarded?”

“Yes.” Margaret looked pleased. She was obviously on the right track. “Quite handsomely. Brad's father and I discussed it again last night. Of course you must understand that once you sign these papers you will have no right whatsoever to attempt to sue for more. You'll have to take what you get, and leave it at that.”

“Of course.” Serena's eyes blazed, but now she too sounded matter-of-fact. “And for precisely what price are you buying your son back?”

For an instant Margaret Fullerton looked annoyed. “I don't think I like your choice of expression.”

“But isn't that what you're doing, Mrs. Fullerton? Buying him back from an Italian whore? Isn't that how you view it?”

“How I view it is entirely immaterial. What you have done, snagging my son as you did while he was overseas, is liable to affect his entire future, and his career. What he needs is an American wife, someone of his own class, his own world, who can help him.”

“And I could never do that?”

Margaret Fullerton laughed and spread her hands in the small elegant den. “Look around you. Is this your world? The world you come from? Or is this only what you wanted? What exactly did you plan to give him, other than that pretty face and your body? Have you anything to give him? Position, connections, resources, friends? Don't you understand that he could have a career in politics? But not married to an Italian charwoman, my dear. How can you live with what you have done to his career … his life?” The tears stood out once again in Serena's eyes and her voice was husky when she answered.

“No, I have nothing to give him, Mrs. Fullerton. Except my heart.” But she answered none of the other questions. It was none of the woman's business what she came from. In truth, she came from something far grander than this, but who could explain that now? It was all over. Gone.

“Precisely.” Margaret went on. “You have nothing. And to be blunt, you are nothing. But I suspect that you want something. And I have what you want.” Do you, you bitch? Serena silently raged.… Do you have love … and patience and understanding and goodness and a lifetime to give me? Because that's what I want to give him. But she said nothing.

Without saying another word, Margaret Fullerton opened the folder she had brought from her desk, and handed a check to Serena. It was made out in the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars. “Why don't you have a look at that?” Out of curiosity Serena took it from her, and glanced at the numbers in disbelief.

“You would give me that to leave him?”

“I would and I am. In fact we can have this business over with in a matter of minutes, if you will simply sign here.” She pushed a single typewritten document toward Serena, who stared at it in amazement. It said that she agreed to divorce Bradford Jarvis Fullerton III, or obtain an annulment, as soon as possible, that she would either leave the country or reside in another city, and would never, at any time, discuss any of this with the press. She would fade out of Brad's life immediately, in exchange for which she was to be paid the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars. Furthermore, the paper went on, she swore that at this moment in time she was not pregnant and would attempt to make no future claim on Brad for paternity of any child she subsequently had. When she saw that, a smile broke out on her face and a moment later she began to laugh. They had thought of everything, those bastards, but suddenly now it seemed funny.

“Apparently you find something amusing here?”

“I do, Mrs. Fullerton.” There was still a green blaze in Serena's eyes, but now she felt mistress of the situation at last.

“May I ask what amused you? This document was very carefully prepared.” She looked furious at Serena's reaction, but she didn't dare let the girl know.

“Mrs. Fullerton.” Serena smiled at her sweetly and stood up. “Brad and I are having a baby.”

“You're what?”

“I'm pregnant.”

“And when did that happen?”

“Two months ago.” Serena looked at her proudly. “The baby is due in December.”

“That certainly adds a new dimension to your schemes, doesn't it?” The older woman was almost overwhelmed by fury.

“You know”—Serena looked at her, with one hand on the door —”you may find it very hard to believe, but I have no schemes about Brad, and I never have, right from the first. I know that you think I am a poverty-stricken little tramp from Rome, but you're only partly right. I have no money. That is all. But my family was quite as illustrious as yours.” Her eyes strayed to the portrait on the wall. “My grandfather looked not unlike that man. Our house” —she smiled at the older woman—”was far grander than this one. In fact all three of our houses were. But the important thing, Mrs. Fullerton, is that I want nothing from your son. Except his love and our baby. The rest I don't want, not his money or your money or his father's money, or that check for twenty-five thousand dollars. I will never take anything from any of you except,” she spoke very softly, “my husband's love.” And with that, she slipped quietly out of the room and closed the door, as Margaret Fullerton stared at it with sheer fury, and an instant later anyone passing her boudoir would have heard the shattering of breaking glass. She had thrown her glass of sherry at the fireplace. But as far as she was concerned the battle wasn't over. Before Brad left New York for San Francisco, she would see to it that Serena was gone, baby or no baby. And she had two weeks in which to do it. And she knew she would.

22

The family dinner that night was an event of intriguing auras and currents. Margaret sat at the head of the table in her sapphire-blue silk looking beautiful and charming. There was no sign of what had come before the meal, and if she avoided any conversation with Serena throughout it went unnoticed. At the opposite end of the table sat Charles Fullerton, pleased at having all three of his sons home at once, which was a first since the war, and he toasted all three of them handsomely, as well as the two young women, who were “new additions” to the family, as he put it. Greg seemed unusually expansive at dinner. Brad realized after the first course that his brother was drunk, and he looked searchingly at Teddy, wondering why. Was it the excitement of the impending wedding? Nerves? Or was he uncomfortable around Brad, because he was marrying Partie? Pattie herself chattered incessantly and was playing her “adorable” role, flirting with her big blue eyes and managing to take in all the men in the family each time she told a story. She was nauseatingly deferential to her fiance's mother, and she managed to ignore Serena completely. Only Teddy really paid any attention to Serena. Brad was seated too far from her to be of much help. She was seated between Teddy and Charles, and his father offered little conversation throughout the meal, so it was left to Teddy to make her feel welcome, which he was glad to do. He leaned toward her and spoke to her quietly, made her laugh once or twice, but mostly he noticed that she was far more withdrawn than she had been that afternoon in his study. He wanted to ask her how the private interview had gone with his mother, but he was afraid that someone might overhear him.

“Are you all right?” he finally whispered halfway through the meal. She had been staring into her wineglass and saying nothing.

“I'm sorry.” She apologized to him for being so dreary, pleaded exhaustion from the emotions of their arrival, and managed not to convince him.

“I think something's wrong, Brad.” Teddy looked at him with concern after dinner as they walked quietly into the library behind the rest of the family.

“I'll say there is. Greg is plastered out of his mind, Pattie is all caught up in playing Scarlett O'Hara, you look like you've just been to a funeral, and Mother's so busy running the show that Dad can't get a word in.” Brad looked discouraged by his first night back home.

“You mean you remembered it different?” Teddy tried to look amused. “Or were you hoping it had changed in your absence?”

“Maybe a little of both.”

“Don't hold your breath. It can only get worse over the years.” As he said it he glanced at Greg and Pattie. “Has she said anything to you at all?”

“Only thank you when I congratulated her and Greg.” And then, as he knit his brows, “She didn't say a single goddamn word to Serena at dinner, and neither did Mother.”

“I didn't expect Pattie to, but Mother …” Teddy looked troubled and then touched his brother's arm. “Brad, something was wrong with Serena at dinner. I don't know if she just wasn't feeling well because of the baby or what, but she was awfully quiet.”

“Do you think it was Mother?” The two brothers exchanged a glance.

“you'd better ask her. Did you see her after she was with Mother before dinner?”

“No. I didn't see her until we were all at table.”

Teddy nodded thoughtfully, with a worried look in his eyes. “I don't think I like it.”

But Brad smiled at the look on his younger brother's face. “Come on, old man, you worry more than all of us put together. Why don't you have a drink and relax for a change?”

“Like Greg?” Teddy looked at him pointedly in annoyance.

“How long has he been doing this number?”

‘Two or three years now.” Teddy spoke in an undervoice and his older brother looked shocked.

“Are you kidding?”

“Nope. Not a bit. He started drinking when he went in the army. Dad says it's boredom. Mother says he needs a more challenging job now, like something in politics maybe. And Pattie is pushing him to go to work for her father.”

Brad looked chagrined, and then met his wife's eyes and forgot what his little brother was saying. “I'll be back in a minute, Ted. I want to make sure Serena is all right.” He was standing beside her a moment later, and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “You feeling okay, sweetheart?”

“Fine.” She smiled up at him, but it was not the usual dazzling smile that left him aching to kiss her and almost breathless. There was something very subdued about her tonight and he knew that his brother was right. Something was wrong with Serena. “I'm just tired.” She knew that he didn't believe her. But what could she tell him? The truth? She had promised herself that she wouldn't do that, as soon as she had left his mother's room. She wanted to forget what the woman had told her, and shown her, the check, the paper, the unkind words, the accusations, all of it. For a moment, as she had left the boudoir, she had felt like a tramp, just from the assumptions that had been made. Now she wanted to forget it and put it behind her.

“Do you want to go upstairs?” he whispered to her, still with the same worried forwn.

“Whenever you're ready,” she whispered back. In truth, it had been a very depressing evening. Mr. Fullerton was precisely as Brad had described. Weak—a man with no spine. She had been literally unable to look at his mother, Pattie had filled her with terror as she had chirped and flirted her way through the evening, and Serena had been frightened that she would create a scene and call her some of the things she had called her from the terrace in Rome. Greg had been pathetic, drunk before the first course, Brad had been seated too far away to be of much help, and only Teddy had helped her get through the evening. Suddenly she had to admit that she felt drained, and for a moment as she sat there in her chair in the library, looking out over the park, she felt as though she might faint, or burst into tears. She had been through too much in the past three hours and she suddenly felt it.

“I'm taking you upstairs.” Brad had seen it too, and standing close enough to overhear him, Teddy nodded his approval.

“She looks beat.”

Brad nodded and offered her his arm, which she took with a grateful look as he made his excuses to the rest of the group, and a moment later they were on the stairs, and at last in their room, and as Brad closed the door behind them Serena lay down on the bed and burst into tears.

“Baby … Serena … honey … what happened?” He looked stupefied as he stood staring at her. It took a moment to register what had happened and then he was instantly beside her, lying on the bed, cradling her gently, and stroking her hair. “Serena … darling … tell me. What is it? Did someone say something to you?” But she was determined not to tell him. She only lay there and sobbed, shaking her head and insisting that it was a combination of pregnancy and exhaustion. “Well, in that case”—he looked at her in growing concern when at last she stopped and wiped her eyes—”you're staying in bed tomorrow.”

“Don't be silly. I'll be fine after a night's sleep.”

“Nonsense. And if I have to, I'll call the doctor.”

“What for? I'm fine.” The prospect of being trapped in bed in his mother's house depressed her still further. What if Margaret came upstairs to torment her some more, or press her with another paper? But that was unlikely, Serena knew, what could she do now, now that she knew they were having a baby? “I don't want to stay in bed, Brad.”

“We'll discuss it in the morning.” But that night he held her tightly in his arms and she had cried out in her sleep several times, and by the morning he was genuinely worried. “That's it, no discussion. I want you in bed today. We still have the rehearsal this evening, and the rehearsal dinner after that. You have to rest up and get your strength.” Emotionally if not physically he was right, but the prospect of staying in bed still depressed her. “I'll come home this afternoon right after I see the tailor, and I'll keep you company.”

“Promise?” She looked like a beautiful child as she sat up in their bed in the sunny room.

“Absolutely.”

He kissed her before he left, and she lay in bed with her eyes closed for half an hour, just letting her mind drift, remembering their walks in the garden in Rome, moments in Paris, the day they got married, and she was so intent on her pleasant imaginings that she didn't even hear the knock on the door just before lunch.

“Yes?” She suspected that it might be Teddy, and when the door opened, she was already expecting him, with a warm smile. But her smile faded quickly when she saw that it was Margaret. She was wearing a perfectly simple black silk dress and she looked ominous as she stood there.

“May I come in?”

“Certainly.” She hopped quickly out of her bed and put on the pink silk robe Brad had bought her in Paris. Margaret said nothing as she watched her put on the wrapper, and waited until the girl was standing before her, nervous and expectant. She knew that her mother-in-law hadn't just come to see her to see how she felt. She could feel her heart pounding within her, and she indicated the two comfortable chairs at the far end of the room. “Would you like to sit down?”

Margaret nodded, and a moment later they both sat down. She looked at Serena inquiringly then. “Did you tell Brad about our little conversation?” Serena shook her head silently. “Good.” Margaret regarded that as hopeful. Surely it meant that Serena wanted to make some arrangement with her. If she were a decent girl, Margaret assumed, she would have been shocked and would have told Brad. “I have just spent two hours with my lawyer.”

“Oh.” Almost without warning, there were tears in Serena's eyes, but it happened to her a lot lately. The doctor had told her that crying easily wasn't uncommon in the first months of pregnancy, and neither she nor her husband should take it seriously. Until the day before she hadn't, nor had Brad. But suddenly she felt very different. She felt as though this woman was single-handedly out to destroy her. And she was right.

“I'd like you to read over some papers, Serena. Perhaps we can come to some agreement after all, in spite of the child.” She spoke of it like a handicap, and Serena began to hate her in earnest. She quietly shook her head and held out a hand as though to stop Margaret physically, if she couldn't stop her words.

“I don't want to see them.”

“I think you will.”

“I don't.” The tears began to spill onto her cheeks, and without saying a word, Margaret took the papers out of her handbag and handed them to Serena.

“I know this must be very difficult for you, Serena.” It was the first humane thing she had said. “I'm sure there are even some emotions between you and my son. But you must think of what's best for him, if you love him. Trust me. I know what's best for him.” Her voice was deep and powerful as she attempted to cast her spell over Serena, and in amazement Serena read what Margaret had handed her. It was extraordinary and like something in a nightmare, that this woman was so desperate to separate her from her son. It was worse than the very worst she had expected. She had expected tears, hysterics, names, accusations, but not this cold-blooded series of papers and contracts and dollar signs, in order to end their love. This time Margaret had come up with several alternatives. For one hundred thousand dollars, she and her unborn child were to relinquish all claim on Brad, and never to see him again. In addition there would be support in the amount of two hundred dollars a month until the child reached the age of twenty-one, which equaled an amount of fifty thousand four hundred dollars, the paper informed her. Or she could have an abortion for which they would pay, in which case she could have one hundred fifty thousand dollars immediately, all cash. Of course she'd have to, again, give up Brad. Margaret felt that that was the best plan, she told Serena, as Serena stared at her in disbelief.

“Do you really mean this?” She was stunned.

“Of course I do. Don't you?”

Quietly Serena handed her the papers. “I was so shocked last night that I didn't say very much, but I thought that you understood that I would never do anything like this. I would never give Brad up, like this, for money. If I did give him up, it would be for his own good, not for any ‘reward’ to me, as you put it. And”—she almost choked on the words—”I would never … never … dispose of our baby.” Tears spilled onto her cheeks as she said it. She looked up at Margaret Fullerton then, her eyes open and green and candid, filled with hurt and something very much akin to despair, and for an instant Margaret Fullerton was ashamed. “Tell me, why do you hate me so much? Do you really think I want to hurt him?”

“You already have. Thanks to you, he's staying in the army. He knows there's nowhere else for him now. Except the army, with crude men and their war brides, and their half-breeds. Is that the life you want for him if you love him?” Serena choked on her sobs and Margaret went on. “If it weren't for you, he'd have a magnificent life, a great career, and he'd be married to Partie.”

“But he didn't want her.” Serena sobbed again, almost unable to control herself now. “And I will make him happy.”

“Physically perhaps.” His mother withdrew into her shell. “But there are other more important things.”

“Yes, like love, and children, and a good home, and—” Margaret Fullerton waved an impatient hand. She wanted to get the business done before Brad returned from downtown.

“You're a child, Serena. You don't understand. Now, we have some business to attend to, don't we?” She tried to sound forceful, but Serena stood up, her whole body shaking, and her voice choked with tears.

“No, we don't. You can't take him from me. I love him. And he loves me.”

“Does he? Don't you think he's just infatuated, Serena? And what will you do in a year or two if he grows tired of you? Will you divorce him, or let him divorce you? And what will you do then? You'll try and get the money you won't take from me now.”

“I will never want money from him.” She was shaking so hard, she could barely speak now, but the old woman had thought of this contingency too.

“Prove it. If you don't ever want money from him, Serena, prove it.”

“How? By running away? By killing my baby?” Serena was sobbing almost hysterically.

“No. By signing this.” She took another paper out of her handbag and handed it to Serena, who clenched it in her trembling hand and did not read it. She only stared at the woman she had come to hate so much in only two days. “It says that if Brad leaves you, or dies intestate, that you relinquish all right to any money from him, or from his estate, for you or any children you may have. What it basically says is that if you don't have him you don't want his money either. Will you sign that?” Serena looked at her with unveiled hatred. The woman had thought of everything.

But this time Serena nodded. “Yes, I will sign it, because if he leaves me, I don't want his money anyway. I only want him.”

“Then sign it.” It wasn't what she had wanted. She had wanted to get rid of the girl for good, but failing that, at least this way she knew that Brad was protected, and in time she could work on him. He couldn't stay married to the girl forever, no matter how pretty she was. For the moment she was young, but in a few years he would tire of her. And perhaps by then he would be tired of the army too. It wasn't too late after all, he was only thirty-four. And in the meantime she had Greg to take care of. She had time to wait for Brad to get rid of this girl. As she watched, Serena signed the paper with trembling fingers, and handed it back to her mother-in-law. A moment later Margaret Fullerton left the room and before she went, she turned to Serena with a look of determination. “This paper is legal, Serena. You won't be able to overturn it. As long as you're not married to him any longer, either widowed or divorced, you won't get a dime from him, or from us. Even if he wants to give you something. I'll have this, and that will stop him. You can't take anything from him now.”

“I never wanted to.”

“I don't believe that.” And with those words, she turned and closed the door.

Serena almost stumbled to the bed, and lay down on it, and once again, as they had the night before, the sobs came and shook her whole body until she lay in bed feeling spent.

When Brad returned from downtown, he was horrified at how pale and exhausted Serena looked. Her eyes were swollen from crying, and she was obviously feeling very ill.

“Sweetheart, what happened?” As she had the night before, she had decided not to tell him. It seemed the final betrayal to her to tell him about what his mother had done. It was something between her and Margaret Fullerton. She would never tell Brad.

“I don't know. Perhaps it's the change of water or climate. I've been feeling very ill.”

“You've been crying?” He looked upset.

“Only because I didn't feel well.” She smiled wanly at him.

He shook his head slowly, dismayed at how worn she looked. “I think I should call the doctor.”

“Brad, don't.” He gave in to her finally, but he was still distressed half an hour later when he went downstairs to make her a cup of tea himself and he found Teddy in the kitchen, making himself a sandwich.

“Can I make you one too?” Brad shook his head as he put the kettle on to boil. “What's up?”

“I'm worried about Serena. She hasn't looked right since last night.”

Teddy suddenly looked worried too. “Something happen today?”

“Not that I know of. But I just got back from lunch, and she looks awful. She looks like she's been crying since I left, and she's pale and shaky.” He smiled sheepishly at his brother. “You don't know enough about all that yet to tell anything by taking a look at her, do you? I wanted to call Mother's doctor for her, but she won't let me. I'm afraid she might have a miscarriage or something.”

“Is she having cramps?”

“She didn't say so. Do you suppose that's why she's been crying? Maybe she knows something's wrong and she doesn't want to tell me.” He looked suddenly panicked, as the water for her tea started to boil. “I'm going to call the doctor.”

“Now, calm down.” Teddy took the kettle from him and set it back on the stove. “Why don't you ask her first. Find out if she has cramps or she's had any bleeding.”

“Oh, Christ.” Brad looked pale at the thought. “If something ever happened to her or the baby …”He didn't dare finish the thought, but Teddy put a hand on his arm.

“Nothing is going to happen to Serena, or the baby either, most likely. So just stop getting yourself worked up. Why don't you go upstairs and see how she's doing, and I'll bring her tea up in a second. All right?” Brad looked at him with immeasurable affection.

“You know something, you're even better than you were as a kid. You're going to be some doctor, Teddy.”

“Shut up. You're embarrassing me. Now go take care of your wife. I'll be right up.” But a few minutes later, on his way up, Teddy ran into his mother in the hallway.

“Where are you off to? And drinking tea? Good Lord, that's a new one!” She smiled at him in amusement.

“It's for Serena. Brad says she doesn't feel well.” He had been about to make light of it, but as he said the words he saw his mother's face.

“Well.” He decided not to stall any longer. “I'll let you know if she needs to see a doctor.”

“Do that.” But she had asked not a single question as to how Serena was.

Teddy knocked on the door of their bedroom, and Brad pulled it open quickly and stepped aside.

“Something wrong?” He could see the look in Teddy's eyes, but the younger brother only shook his head and covered his own concern with a smile.

“No. Nothing. How's she feeling?”

“Better, I think. Maybe she's right. Maybe she's just exhausted.” He lowered his voice, she was combing her hair in the bathroom. “She says she hasn't had cramps or bleeding, so maybe she's all right. But Christ, Ted, I'd swear she'd been crying all morning.” The conversation was cut short as Serena emerged from the bathroom, looking radically different than she had half an hour before. Her hair was combed, her face washed, her eyes were bright, and she was smiling at Teddy, with her pink satin robe wrapped around her, and little fluffs of pink slippers peeking beneath the hem.

“My God, Serena, you look gorgeous.” He kissed both her cheeks, took her hands, and sat down next to her on the foot of the bed. “Brad said you weren't feeling so hot, but you look terrific to me.” And then with an almost professional air that made his brother smile, remembering when he had been a nine-year-old terror breaking windows, “Are you feeling all right, Serena? You have us both worried.”

“I'm fine.” She shook her head emphatically, but as she did so her eyes filled with tears, and a moment later, as though she couldn't stop herself, she reached out to Brad and sobbed in his arms. She was mortified at the scene she was creating, but she was unable to stop, and he looked at his brother over her shoulder in desperation, until at last the sobs subsided and she blew her nose in the handkerchief Teddy handed her. He patted her hand gently with a smile and looked into her eyes when she turned toward him.

“It happens to everyone sometimes, you know, Serena. You've had a lot of new experiences in the past few days, a lot of new people, it's a lot to handle. Even if you weren't pregnant, I think it might wear you out.”

“I'm sorry.” She shook her head and dried her tears again. “I feel so stupid.”

“You shouldn't.” He handed her the cup of tea, then Teddy looked up at his older brother, cocked his head to one side, and gave him a boyish grin. “If I promise not to play doctor with her, do you think you could leave us alone for a minute, Big Brother?” But he had such a disarming way of asking that there was no way Brad could resist. He nodded after a moment, and slipped out the bedroom door, promising to be back in a few minutes with two more cups of tea. Teddy waited until he knew his brother would have reached the stairs and then he turned toward Serena again. He took her hand in his own and looked into her eyes. “I want to ask you something, Serena, and I'd like to know the truth. I swear I won't tell Brad.” He had already guessed that if what he suspected was true she wasn't going to tell him. “Will you tell me the truth?”

She nodded slowly. She felt no need to be on her guard with Teddy. Even more so than with Brad, whom she wanted to protect.

“Does my mother have anything to do with your being upset?”

She hesitated and bumbled, and blushed furiously as she pulled her hand away from his and began to walk around the room. All of her actions gave her away at once as he watched her.

“Did she come to see you today, Serena?”

“Yes.” She turned to him quickly. “But just to see how I felt before she went out to lunch.”

She was playing the same game as his mother and he knew it, but he decided to call Serena's bluff. “She didn't go out to lunch today, Serena. And she told me that she hadn't seen you at all. So both of you are lying.” He looked at her pointedly, but without accusation. “Why?” It was a simple open question, and when she saw the look in his eyes, she began to cry again.

“I can't tell you.”

“I already told you that I wouldn't tell Brad.”

“But I can't … it would—” She sat down on the bed and began to sob again and this time it was Teddy who took her in his arms. She felt so soft and warm and delicate against him that it almost took his breath away as he held her. For a mad moment he wanted to tell her that he loved her, but he remembered all too quickly that this wasn't why he was holding her in his arms.

“Serena … tell me … I swear I'll help you. But I have to know.”

“There's nothing you can do. It's just that—” She paused and then blurted it out. “She hates me.”

“That's ridiculous.” He smiled into her hair. “What makes you think that?”

And then suddenly, for no reason except that she trusted him, she decided to tell him about the confrontation the night before, the awful contract, and finally the paper she had signed.

“You signed it?”

She nodded. “Yes. What difference does it make? If he leaves me, I don't want his money anyway. I'll take care of the baby myself.”

“Oh, Serena.” He gave her a hug. “But that's crazy. You'd have a right to support for you and the child. And if he dies—” Serena stopped him with her eyes. She wouldn't even hear about it.

Teddy wanted only to ease her pain. “He'd never leave you and the baby unprovided for. But what a stinking thing to do.” He stared miserably at Serena, “Welcome to the family, love. Sweet, isn't it? Christ.” He looked at her again and then put his arms around her. “Poor baby.” And then with a serious look in his eyes he looked down at her gently with an odd smile. “If anything ever does happen to him, Serena, and he doesn't have a will, I'll take care of you and your children, I promise.”

“Don't be silly …” And then with a little shudder, “Don't talk about that.” She looked at him gently then. “But thank you.”

“I do think you should tell Brad though.”

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

“It would make him furious with his mother.”

“As well he should be.”

She shook her head again. “I can't do that, to either of them.”

“You're crazy, Serena. She deserves it. That was a stinking, sick, rotten thing to do.” But he didn't have a chance to go any further, Brad had just opened the door and came in carrying a tray with three fresh cups of tea.

“How's my wife? Any better?”

“Much.” She answered before Teddy could. “And your brother is going to make an excellent doctor. He took my pulse and just from that, he told me I was pregnant.”

“What's the prognosis?”

“At least twins. Possibly triplets.”

But Brad could still see that his brother was worried, and despite the bravado and the gaiety it was obvious that Serena was still troubled. A moment later, when she went to the bathroom, he looked at Teddy. “Well? Do you think I should call the doctor?”

“You want to know what I think? I think that the minute Greg marries that little bitch tomorrow, you two should get the hell out of New York and go somewhere healthy and pretty and just take it easy. She's been through a lot just getting here, from what you've said, and from what I gather from her. Just get her out of New York, away from the family, and go relax with her somewhere before you settle down in San Francisco.”

Brad looked thoughtful. “That might be good advice. I'll think about it, Teddy.”

“Don't think about it. Do it. And my other advice is not to leave her alone here for a second.”

“You mean in New York?” Brad looked surprised.

“I mean even in this apartment. She needs you every minute. She's in a strange country, with strange people, and she's more scared than she lets on. Besides which, she's pregnant, which is emotionally difficult for some women in the beginning. Just be there with her, Brad. All the time. I think that's what happened today. She just got upset, and you weren't around to turn to.”

It sounded unusual for Serena, but Brad was willing to buy it. She had certainly fallen apart radically that morning in his absence, and there was no other way to explain it.

“What are you two plotting?” Serena emerged again with a suspicious look directed at Teddy, but from the look in his eyes and the obvious calm on Brad's face she knew that he hadn't betrayed her.

“I was telling your husband to take you on a honeymoon right away, like tomorrow.”

“I don't think I'm eligible anymore.” She looked at her stomach and pretended to pout and her husband pulled her toward him and sat her on his lap.

“You're going to be eligible for a honeymoon with me for the next ninety years, lady. Would you like that? I thought Teddy had a good idea.” She nodded slowly.

“Don't you want to stay here?” She looked thoughtful as she asked him and he shook his head.

“I think we'll both have had enough by the wedding.”

“Why don't you think about it before you decide.” But Teddy burst into the conversation with a direct look at Serena.

“I think it's bad for you to be here, Serena. You need fresh air and rest, and you won't get that in New York. How about it? Are you going?” He looked at them both and Brad laughed.

“Christ, one would think you're trying to get us out of here.”

“I am. I have friends coming to town next week, and I need the guest room.” He grinned impishly.

“Where shall we go, Serena? Canada? The Grand Canyon? Denver on our way west?” None of it was familiar to Serena, but Teddy looked at Brad thoughtfully.

“What about Aspen? I spent a few weeks there, visiting a friend last summer, and it's fabulous. You could drive there from Denver.”

“I'll check it out.” Brad nodded, and then looked at his wife. “Now, let's settle something else. I want you to stay in bed tonight for the rehearsal dinner.”

“No.” She shook her head quietly. “I'll come with you.”

“Shouldn't she stay in bed?” Once again the elder brother turned to the younger, and both were amused.

“I'm not a doctor yet, B.J., but I don't think she has to.” He looked quietly at Serena then. “But it might be a lot smarter.” He knew that she would know what he meant. But suddenly Serena knew that she would not give up another battle to that woman. She had got at least one of her papers signed and she was assured that Serena would not leave Brad and attempt to run off with the family fortune, but as for the rest of it, she would not be beaten yet again. If they hated her, she had to learn to live with it. But she wouldn't be shunned and forced to stay in her room like some dismal little mouse whom everyone had rejected. They thought that she was a tramp and a harlot and a maid and Lord knew what else, and if she didn't show up, everyone would think that Brad was ashamed of her. Instead she would go, and stand at his side, and make everyone look at him with envy. Her eyes danced as she thought about it, and she looked at her husband and her brother-in-law with a look that managed to combine both mischief and hauteur.

“Gentlemen, I'm coming.”

23

When Serena came down the stairs of the apartment before the rehearsal dinner, it was easy to believe that she was a principessa. For the glimmer of an eye, even her mother-in-law looked slightly awed. She was wearing a shimmering white silk dress, woven with threads of gold, draped over one shoulder and falling in a gently draped cascade of shimmering folds. The dress fell straight from her shoulder to her feet, and didn't show her slowly enlarging waistline. She looked like a goddess, as she stood beside her husband, with a white flower in her hair, gold sandals on her feet, and her lovely face made up to perfection.

Teddy whistled and even Greg looked more than a little stunned.

The group left together a few minutes after they had assembled in the front hall, the three brothers, their parents, and Serena. Pattie and her parents were meeting them at the club, where a private room for the rehearsal dinner had been arranged.

The groom's mother was wearing a floor-length red satin dress with a little cape in the same fabric, which she had ordered from Dior, and her white hair looked startling in contrast, as she swept into the car, with Greg and Teddy on either side. Her husband chose to sit on one of the jumpseats in the limousine, and Brad and Serena sat in front, which at least kept Serena away from Margaret, a fact for which Teddy was thankful, as he attempted to maneuver things that way from the first. He had promised himself that he would do all he could to make Serena's evening bearable. Since her husband didn't know what agony his mother had caused, the least Teddy could do was be there for her. Serena was deeply grateful to him once again, as their eyes met, and she knew he understood and would not betray her. It was extraordinary to realize that she had only finally met him the day before and they were already fast friends. It was as though he were her brother too, and always had been, as she glanced into the backseat and caught his eye and he grinned at her.

“Flirting with my brother?” Brad whispered it in her ear in the front seat and she shook her head with a little grin.

“No. But it's like I have a real brother.”

“He's a good kid.”

“So are you.” She beamed up at him, and he kissed her gently on the tip of her nose, as she wondered if his mother was watching. It was odd, and unpleasant, to think of oneself always observed, always hated, always resented, even now that she had signed one of those papers. It was incredible to think that that woman had actually tried to get her to sign a paper giving up not only her husband but her child as well. She grew quiet again as she thought of it.

“Are you feeling all right?” Brad was quick to ask her.

“I'm fine. You don't need to worry. I'll be fine tonight.”

“How do you know?” He was only half teasing.

“Because you're here.”

“Then I'll see to it that I am every minute.”

But later in the evening, that was less easily arranged. His mother had placed him at a table with the rest of the wedding party, and since he was the best man, he was sitting on Pattie's left, and Teddy was also at the same table. Serena was put at a table with several older couples and a number of very homely girls, all of whom had known each other for years and spoke almost not at all to Serena. And she couldn't even see Brad or Teddy directly from where she was sitting. She felt as though she were stranded in the midst of strangers, and where he was sitting, Brad felt exactly the same way. He was particularly annoyed at the seating, which had been arranged by his mother. Sitting him next to Pattie seemed a tactless thing to do, but traditionally, as he was the best man, no one could really find fault with his sitting next to the bride. The maid of honor was seated next to Greg, and all of the other bridesmaids and ushers were seated down the sides of the table. On the whole it was a very convivial evening, and Brad managed to talk a great deal to the girl on his left, a tall girl with red hair who had gone to school with Pattie at Vassar, and she had just returned from a long stay with friends in Paris, so at least they had something in common and something to say. She had also spent several years in San Francisco as a child, so she knew that city, and she told him some of the things she thought he needed to know before moving out there, about parts of town that were more or less foggy in case he didn't want a house on the base, ideal spots to spend a day on the beach, places to fish, favorite parks, wonderful places to go with children. None of it was very serious conversation, but it gave them something to talk about and it relieved him at least of having to talk to Pattie, until he suddenly found himself alone with her right after the dancing started, the redheaded girl having been claimed by the usher on her left, and Greg having gone off with the matron of honor. It left Brad, next to Pattie, with almost all of the others on the dance floor, and it suddenly seemed very uncomfortable to be seated next to her alone.

He glanced to his right, and found that she was looking at him, and somewhat ruefully he smiled at her, trying not to think of what had happened in Rome. “Looks like we've been deserted.” It was a dumb thing to say, but he couldn't imagine what to say to her. She turned her little heart-shaped face toward him, her mouth in a familiar pout.

“Does that bother you, Brad?”

“No.” Which was a blatant lie. He was finding it damn awkward.

She sat there as though expecting something from him, like a kiss or an arm around her shoulders. Everyone knew that they had been engaged the year before, and now suddenly here she was, about to marry his brother, and they were sitting alone at the main table, side by side. Everyone must have been wondering what they were saying.

“Don't you want to dance, Brad?” She looked at him petulantly and he blushed and nodded quickly.

“Sure, Pattie. Why not?” At least she wasn't making a scene, or reminding him of what had happened between them. He stood up next to her chair, took her hand, and they went directly to the dance floor to dance a merengue. She was an expert dancer, and he was suddenly reminded of their nights at the Stork Club, when he'd been on leave after the war, and a little drunk on the excitement of Pattie. She was a damn pretty girl, but in a whole other style from Serena. Serena had elegance and grace, a face that people turned around to look at, and a kind of perfect beauty that took one's breath away. Pattie had something very warm blooded and sexy about her, until one knew her well, and then one knew that beneath the cuddly mannerisms lay a heart of ice. But at any rate she was a good dancer, and she was about to become his sister-in-law, so he was making the best of their moments on the floor. The merengue led into a samba, which became a fox trot and eventually a waltz, and no one seemed to change partners, so neither did Brad. He kept her out there, much to her delight, and when the waltz became a tango, they stuck with it, until finally Pattie looked at him with her Kewpie-doll smile, fanning her face with her hand.

“Aren't you ready to die from the heat?”

“I'm getting there.”

“Want to get some air?”

He hesitated for only a fraction of a second, and then felt that he was being unnecessarily ungracious. What was wrong with going out for some air, after all? “Sure.” He glanced over the dance floor, looking for Serena, but he couldn't find her. So he followed Pattie out of the private dining room and down the stairs to the street, where the June air was almost as hot and heavy as the hall.

“I'd forgotten how well you dance.” He looked at her as he took a cigarette from his gold case, Pattie glanced at it, and then at his face quickly.

“There's a lot you've forgotten about me, Brad.” He said nothing to her in answer, and she reached for the cigarette he had lit, took a long drag, and then put it back between his lips with traces of her deep cherry lipstick on it. “I still don't understand what you did. I mean why?” She looked straight at him and he was sorry they had come out for air. “Did you do it just to get at me? Was that it? I mean, why her? She may be pretty, but she's nothing. And how long will you want that, Brad? A year? Two? And then what, you've ruined your life for that little harlot?”

He was about to go back inside, but he stopped dead in his tracks at her words, and his voice was like ice when he spoke to her. “Don't ever say anything like that to me again, you little bitch. From tomorrow on, for better or worse, you and I will be related. You'll be my brother's wife, and I'm still not sure what that means to you, but from where I sit that means that I'll do my damnedest to respect you.” He exhaled his cigarette slowly, and looked down at her with displeasure. “That, however, is going to be quite a challenge.”

“You didn't answer my question.” She looked suddenly angry, and the pout had become more of a sneer. “Why did you marry her, Brad?”

“Because I love her. Because she is a remarkable woman. Because she's special. And dammit, what business is it of yours?” He didn't have to explain anything to Partie. “Speaking of which, I might ask you the same thing. Or more to the point, do you love Greg, Partie?”

“Would I marry him if I didn't?”

“That's an interesting question. You might try answering that one too. Or is it just the family name you wanted, and one Fullerton is as good as another. Was Teddy next in line?” Suddenly, as he stood there, he realized that he hated her. She was spoiled, strident, and vicious, and he wondered now how he had ever even considered marrying her.

“You're a son of a bitch, do you know that?” She narrowed her eyes and stood glaring at him as though she would have liked to slap him.

“That's all you deserve, Partie. You sure as hell don't deserve my brother.”

“That's where you're wrong. I'm going to make something of him. Right now he's nothing.” For a horrifying instant she sounded like his mother.

“Why don't you just leave him the hell alone?” Brad's eyes blazed into hers. “He's a decent guy. And he's happy as he is.” Or was he? Would he be drunk all the time if he was happy?

“Greg needs direction.”

“Toward what? A political career he doesn't want? Why don't you just stay home and have kids, instead of pushing him?” But at his words something ghastly happened to Pattie's face and she grew pale.

“That's not in the cards.”

“Why not?” Brad watched her eyes, there was something strange there that he didn't understand.

“Your brother can't have children, Brad. He had syphilis when he was in college, and now he's sterile.” For a long moment Brad was shocked into silence.

“Do you mean that?”

“Yes.” There was something deeply unhappy in her eyes. “But he didn't bother to tell me, until last month, when everyone knew we were engaged. And he knew that I wouldn't go through another broken engagement. Christ.” She laughed a brittle little laugh. “Everyone in town would laugh till their sides split, poor little Pattie Atherton, dumped by another Fullerton.”

“That's not the same thing.…” Brad reached out and touched her arm. “I'm sorry, Pattie. He should have told you before. That was a lousy thing to do.”

“I thought so too.” And then in a soft distant voice. “He'll pay for that in the end.”

“What the hell do you mean?” Brad looked shocked.

Shr shrugged. “I don't know.” And then she looked up at Brad, with a grim little smile. “I wanted to marry him to get back at you. I guess you could say I used him. But the funny thing is that he used me. He got the last laugh. He got me to say I'd marry him, and then he tells me he's sterile a month before the wedding.”

“Would you have married him if you'd known?”

She shook her head. “No. I guess he knew that. That's why he didn't tell me.”

Brad looked thoughtful as he looked down at this woman he had once thought that he knew, but he realized now that he didn't know her at all. She was manipulative and vengeful, and yet she had her vulnerabilities too—needs that spurred her to hurt others. He was deeply sorry for his brother. In her own way she was actually much worse than their mother. “It was wrong of Greg to hide that from you.” It startled him to see that side of his younger brother. “Maybe in the end this will be for the best. You'll be able to devote yourselves to each other.”

She didn't answer at first. “Wouldn't it matter to you if your wife couldn't have children, Brad?”

“Not if I really loved her.”

“But she can, can't she?”

He hesitated for a long moment and then decided that he had better tell her. She'd find out soon enough, and he wanted to be honest. “Serena is pregnant, Partie.” But as soon as he said the words, he knew he'd made a mistake, there was a look of viciousness in her eyes that was almost frightening.

“Knocked her up quick, didn't you? Is that why you married her?” If it were, maybe she'd feel better. Maybe he'd had to marry her.… But her hope was stillborn.

“No, it's not.” His eyes met hers squarely, and after a long silence she turned on her heel and walked away. And a moment later Brad went back inside, and immediately ran right into Greg.

“Where's Pattie?” There was a look of nervous suspicion in his eyes and it was obvious that he was drunk again as he lurched slightly toward his brother.

“She's here somewhere. We went out for some air, and she just came back in. Maybe she's in the ladies' room.”

Greg stared at Brad. “She hates your guts.”

Brad nodded slowly, watching Greg's eyes, and for the first time he realized how little he knew him. “She wasn't right for me, Greg. I would have broken it off when I got back anyway, even if I hadn't met Serena.” He was sure of that now. “We'd have made each other miserable.” But he wasn't sure that she and Greg would do better. “Are you happy, Greg?” He wanted to tell him that it wasn't too late to change his mind, that he'd be better off, but he wasn't sure if he should tell him.

“Hell, yes, why not?” But he didn't look like a happy man. “She'll keep me on my toes.” For a moment he looked malevolently at his brother. There was jealousy there too, even more than he had seen in Pattie's eyes. “She's a firebrand in bed, but you know that. Or have you forgotten?”

“I never knew.” It seemed the only thing to say as he cringed at his brother's remark.

“Bullshit. She told me.”

“Did she? Maybe she just said that to make you jealous.”

Greg shrugged as though he didn't really care, but it was plain he did. All his life he had come in second best to his brothers. He knew what he was, and what he wasn't. “I don't really care. Virgins are the shits. I didn't even like them when I was in college.”

“Apparently.” Brad wanted to bite out his tongue for what he had just said, and his eyes instantly met Greg's.

“She told you, didn't she? The bitch. Why the hell did she have to tell you?”

“You should have told her before.” It was an almost fatherly reproach.

“And maybe you should mind your own goddamn business. I don't see you running your life so smoothly either, Brad, marrying your little Italian piece of ass. Christ, I'd expect you to have the brains to leave that where you found it.”

“Stop it, Greg!” Brad's voice was low and gruff.

“The hell I will. If you'd done what Mother expected you to, she wouldn't be on my back. You'd be in politics where you belong and I could do what I want. But no, Big Brother has to play independent, leaving me holding the bag. And me, what do I get out of all that? I get a royal pain in the ass and a gun to my head. Now I'm the hope of their hearts and I get stuck with all their expectations. Looks to me like you got off easy, as usual.” He sounded more drunk than he had before, and infinitely more bitter.

“You don't have to do what they want. You can please yourself, for chrissake.” Brad was actually sorry for him. And at the same time he knew that Greg didn't have the guts, not to face up to their mother, or Pattie.

“The hell I can. And now there's Pattie. She expects me to go to work for her father.”

“If you don't want to, don't.”

Greg looked at him with bitter amusement, and his face broke into a wintry smile. “Brave words, Brad. There's only one problem.”

“What's that?”

“I'm not a brave man.” And with that, he drifted off, leaving Brad feeling desperately sorry for him.

24

The next morning Serena tiptoed downstairs to make herself a cup of tea and get a cup of coffee for Brad, when she ran into her mother-in-law in a blue satin dressing gown in the kitchen.

“Good morning, Serena.” She said it so icily, it was worse than if she had snubbed her totally, and Serena felt instantly both rejected and subdued.

“Good morning, Mrs. Fullerton, Did you sleep well?”

“Relatively.” She gazed at Serena, and did not ask her the same question. Her eyes were calculating and very, very cold. “I've been thinking that it might be wiser if you declared yourself ill today, rather than go to the wedding. You have the perfect excuse at your disposal.” She was referring of course to the baby. But Serena looked shocked. She had no desire whatsoever to go to the wedding, but she knew it would cause talk if she didn't go.

“I don't know if Brad—”

“Of course it's up to you. But in your shoes, I would think that you'd be grateful to spare yourself the embarrassment. This is Pattie's day after all, you might think of that, and not cause her more pain than you already have.” Serena wanted to give in to her urge to cry but instead she nodded in silence.

“I'll think about it.”

“See that you do that.” And with those final words, she left the kitchen. The servants were bustling about somewhere else, and Serena let herself down into a chair and blew her nose softly. After she'd pulled herself together, she poured Brad his coffee, made her cup of tea, put both on a tray, and walked slowly upstairs, trying to decide what to do, and when she reached their room, she knew that she had no choice. If her mother-in-law wanted her to stay away from the wedding, then she wouldn't be there. Ana perhaps it was better that way.

As she let herself into their room with the tray, she heaved a small sigh, and Brad looked up as he heard her.

“Something wrong, love?”

“No … I—I have a terrible headache.”

“Do you?” He looked instantly worried. “Why don't you lie down? It must have been all the dancing last night.”

Serena smiled at him. “It's not that. I'm just tired.” And then, as she lay down on the bed, she looked up at him. “You know, I feel awful saying it, Brad, but … I don't think I should go.”

“Do you feel that ill?” He looked surprised, this morning she wasn't even pale, and she had drunk her tea very quickly, something she didn't do, he had noticed, when she wasn't feeling well. “Do you want me to call the doctor?”

“No.” She sat up in bed and kissed him. “Do you think your brother will forgive me?”

“Yes. If you want to stay home, I won't push you.”

“Thank you.” She watched him get ready a little while later, and her heart felt heavy, not because of what she was missing, but because of the reason she was. Margaret Fullerton was ashamed of her and wanted to do everything possible to keep her away. It made Serena feel shut out and unwanted. No matter how much Brad loved her, it hurt not to have his family accept her too.

“You okay, love?” He glanced at her on the bed as he put his top hat in place and pulled on his gloves. He looked very dashing in the cutaway and striped trousers, the gray top hat, and gray gloves. It was going to be a very elegant wedding, and Serena was suddenly sorry to miss it. Teddy knocked on the door a moment later, wearing the same costume and holding a sprig of lily of the valley for Brad to put in his lapel.

“They'll think I'm the groom, I can't wear that.” He made a face.

“No, they won't, his is bigger.” And then he looked startled as he looked from Serena to Brad and then back to the bed again. “What's the matter, aren't you going?”

“I don't feel well.”

“You didn't feel well last night either and you went. What's up today?” He was instantly suspicious. It was as though he had fine antennae for the subtlest of lies, especially those that related to his mother.

“I feel worse.” But she said it a little too easily, as she sat up in bed and crossed her arms.

“I don't believe you.” He looked at Brad. “You two have a fight?”

“Hell no. Serena just said she didn't feel well enough to go, and I didn't want to force her.”

“Why not?” Teddy smiled as he sat down on the bed beside her. “Do you really feel sick, Serena?”

“She nodded. “I really do.”

“I'm sorry. We'll miss you.” But as he said the words two huge tears sprang from her eyes. She felt left out again, and now she wanted to go with them. If only Mrs. Fullerton hadn't put it to her so harshly. She felt as though she really couldn't go. It was as though she shouldn't go, if she had any decorum, or respect for her mother-in-law at all. “What's wrong?” Teddy was looking at her searchingly and she shook her head, trying unsuccessfully not to cry.

“Oh, I hate being pregnant, all I ever do is cry!” She laughed at herself, and Brad came over to stroke the soft blond hair that fell past her shoulders and onto the pillow.

“You just take it easy today, and I'll be back as soon as I can.” He left the room then, to go check on Greg. He was nervously getting ready in his own room down the hall. He had had his own apartment for years, but for his last night as a bachelor he had come home and slept in his old room. He knew that way, no matter how drunk he got the night before, he wouldn't be allowed to oversleep on his wedding day.

But as soon as Brad had left the room, Teddy narrowed his eyes and looked at her. “What really happened?”

“Nothing.” But she didn't look directly at him and he knew something was wrong.

“Don't lie to me, Serena. Why won't you go?”

It was uncanny the way this man could make her talk, and how much she trusted him. She told him things she wouldn't even tell Brad. But she also knew that he had kept her confidence the day before, and so now she let go, as the tears filled her eyes once again. “Your mother thinks I shouldn't go. But don't tell Brad. I don't want him to know.”

“She told you that?”

“She said that it would be unkind to Pattie, and if I had any decency, I wouldn't go, that I had done enough to Pattie already.” Serena looked woeful, and Teddy almost jumped off the bed.

“What a lot of crap. God damn it, Serena. If you don't stand up for yourself, my mother is going to push you around for the rest of your life. You can't let her!”

“It doesn't matter. She doesn't want me there. I think she's afraid I'll disgrace all of you.”

“Serena.” Teddy looked at her pointedly. “Everyone last night wanted to know who you were, I mean who you really were. There was talk all over the restaurant about your being a principessa, and it probably annoyed the hell out of Mother. All that garbage about your being a nobody, and somebody's maid, nobody will buy any of that crap after last night. You look every bit what you are: a beautiful, aristocratic lady. I don't know what the hell is eating my mother, except that Brad did something he wanted and made the decision for himself. But if what she wanted was Pattie Atherton as a daughter-in-law, then she's getting that too. One of these days she's going to get over her feelings about you, Serena, and you can't give in to her all the time before she does. What she did to you yesterday is not only outrageous but immoral, and the truth is that Brad should know, but if you insist, then I won't tell him. But what she's doing today is the last straw, dammit, it's indecent.” It crossed his mind for only a moment that his mother was jealous. Perhaps she couldn't bear all that Serena was, and that Brad had found her for himself, won her, and planned to keep her. Maybe she had wanted to lose him to someone she could manipulate, some girl she could push around, which she seemed to think she was going to do with Pattie. “But you can't let her keep doing this to you, dammit. It's not right.”

“What's not right?” Brad stood in the doorway, looking at them both, and there was sudden tension in his face as he searched their eyes. “There's something I'm not being told, and I don't take kindly to secrets in my own family.” He looked at his wife. “What is it, Serena?” Serena looked down, away from his gaze. He held up a hand. “No tears this time. Just tell me.” But she couldn't and she wasn't going to. It was Teddy who spoke first.

“She doesn't want to tell you, Brad, but I think you ought to know.”

Serena almost leaped off the bed at him, her arms outstretched as though she could stop him, but he had just said something to her with his eyes. Instinctively she almost shouted “No!”

“I'm going to tell him, Serena.” Teddy spoke quietly and Serena burst into tears.

“For chrissake, what is it?” Their little melodrama was making him extremely nervous, and he was already unnerved. He had just come from Greg's room, he had got so drunk the night before that the butler was still trying to revive him. “What the hell is going on?”

Teddy stood up and faced him. “Mother doesn't want Serena to go to the wedding.” Serena looked as though she had been given an electric shock, and her husband looked as though he had been at the other end of the electric current.

“Mother what! Are you crazy?”

“No. She had the unmitigated gall to tell Serena that she owes it to Pattie not to be there. Serena ran into her in the kitchen, and she suggested that Serena develop a diplomatic illness and stay home.”

“Is that true?” He looked at his wife in unadulterated outrage, as she nodded. He walked toward the bed then and she could see that he was trembling. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“I didn't want you to be angry at your mother.” Her voice shook and she was obviously fighting back tears.

“Don't you ever do that again! If anyone ever says anything like that to you again, I want to know it! Is that clear?”

Brad looked both pained and thoughtful. He stood for a long moment then, and finally pointed to his brother. “Get out of here, Teddy.” And he pointed at his wife. “And you get out of bed. I don't give a damn what you wear, but I want you dressed in ten minutes.”

“But, Brad … I can't … your—”

“Not a word!” This time he roared it. “I'm the best man at my brother's wedding, and you're my wife. Is that clear? Do you understand that? You're my wife, that means you go everywhere I do, and you are accepted by the same people who love and accept me, whether that means my friends, or my family, or the people I work with. And if anyone does not accept you, and does not accord you the appropriate courtesy due you, I want to know it. Immediately next time. Not through the kind offices of my brother. Is that clear, Serena?”

“Yes.” She murmured softly.

“Good. Because I want that to be clear to you, and to my mother, and to Pattie and Greg, and anyone else who seems not to understand it. I'll explain it to my mother next, and while I'm doing that, you are to get your ass out of that bed and into whatever you were supposed to wear to this bloody farce of a wedding. And don't you ever do this again. Don't ever pretend to be sick, or hide something from me. You tell me. Is that clear?” She nodded, and he walked over and pulled her roughly into his arms and kissed her. “I love you so much, dammit. I don't ever want anyone to hurt you. I promised to love, honor, and protect you as long as we both shall live, at least give me a chance to do that, baby. That's what I'm here for. And don't you ever, ever take shit from my mother again.” She was both touched and shocked at his rancor toward Margaret. He studied her. “Did something like this happen to upset you yesterday, Serena?” He watched her eyes as she answered, but she only shook her head. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, Brad, I am.” She couldn't tell him that his mother had made her sign a paper. He would never speak to his mother again, and she didn't want to be responsible for that. This was bad enough.

He walked rapidly toward the doorway, and stood there for a moment, smiling at her. “I love you, Mrs. Fullerton.”

“I love you, Colonel.” She blew a kiss at him and he disappeared, trying to steel himself for the confrontation about to occur.

He found Margaret in her boudoir, dressed in a beautiful beige silk dress she had ordered from Dior for the wedding. They had all of her measurements in Paris, and all she had had to do was select a sketch and approve the swatch of fabric. She was also wearing a hat they had designed for her, made of delicate feathers of exactly the same beige. It swept low over one eye, and then lifted in the back to make room for an elegant twist of her thick white hair.

“Mother, may I come in?”

“Of course, darling.” She smiled pleasantly at him. “This is an important day. Have you seen your brother yet?”

“In both cases, yes.”

“I meant Greg. How is he?”

“Almost comatose, Mother. The servants are trying to bring him around. He got very drunk last night.” He wanted to say “As usual,” but he didn't.

“Pattie will straighten him out.” Margaret exuded a confidence that Brad could not quite bring himself to feel.

“Maybe. But first, speaking of Pattie, I'd like to straighten you out about something.”

“I beg your pardon.” His mother looked shocked at his tone, and he did nothing to soften it as he continued.

“You should beg my pardon, Mother. Or rather, Serena's. And I want to make something clear to you once and for all. Serena is my wife, whether you like that fact or not. Apparently you asked her not to come to Greg's wedding. That you would dare do such a thing astounds me and hurts me. If you'd like us both not to come, that would be fine, but if you'd like me to be there, then you'd best know that I'm bringing Serena.” There were tears in his eyes now as he went on. They were tears of anger and fury and disappointment. “I love her with all my heart, Mother. She's a wonderful girl, and in a few months we'll have a baby. I can't make you accept her. But I won't let you hurt her. Don't ever do anything like this again.”

With a hesitant step his mother walked toward him. “I'm sorry, Brad. I—I misunderstood … I'm afraid this has all been very hard for me too. I just never expected you to marry someone … different. I thought you'd marry someone here, someone we knew.”

“But I didn't. And it's not fair to punish Serena for it.”

“Tell me.” His mother looked at him with interest. “Did she tell you this herself?”

“No, you see, Serena loves me too much to put herself between you and me. She confided in Teddy, and he told me.”

“I see. Did she say anything else?”

He looked at his mother strangely. “Is there more to tell?” Could his mother have done more? Had he been right to worry about Serena's obvious upset the day before? “Is there something I should know?”

“No, not at all.” With relief she realized that Serena hadn't told him, not that it would have changed anything. She wouldn't have given that paper up to anyone now. The paper Serena had signed was already in her vault. She was still convinced that Serena was after his money, and years later when she left him and tried to soak him, his mother would save the day with the paper she had had the foresight to force Serena to sign. One day he would thank her.

He had one more thing to tell her. “I think, under the circumstances, that it will be better if we leave today, after the wedding. I'll try to get a compartment on the night train to Chicago, and if I can't, we can stay in a hotel and leave in the morning.”

“You can't do that.” Suddenly her eyes blazed.

“Why not?”

“Because I want you here. You haven't been home for any decent amount of time in years.”

“You should have thought of that before you declared war on Serena.”

Her eyes were angry and cruel and bitter. “You're my son, and you'll do what I tell you.”

Brad's voice was oddly quiet. “I'm afraid you're wrong. I'm a grown man with a wife and family of my own. I am not your puppet. Father may be, and my poor weak brother, but I'm not, and don't you ever forget it.”

“How can you talk to me this way? How dare you!” Brad took a careful step toward her. “Mother, stay out of my life or you'll regret it.”

“Brad!”

But he said nothing as he turned and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

25

Serena was sedately led to her seat by her brother-in-law Teddy, in St. James Church on Madison Avenue, in New York, at exactly ten minutes before eleven. The church was filled with towering trees of white flowers and everywhere there were garlands of fragrant white blossoms, lily of the valley, fressia, white roses, tiny spicy white carnations, with mists of white baby's breath intertwined among the larger flowers. There were white satin ribbons threaded between the trees, and a long white satin runner down the aisle. But the atmosphere in the church was solemn more than festive, and on either side of the aisle were elegantly dressed women and men in dark suits or striped trousers, there were large flowered hats and bright colors, and old people and young faces, as the organ began to play softly. Serena had been placed in a pew by herself, and a few moments later two imposing-looking dowagers joined her. One wore an elaborate crepe dress in deep purple, with amethyst brooches, and a huge rope of pearls, and a lorgnette through which she frequently glanced at Serena. The lady with her was more somberly dressed, but her quiet gray silk suit was highlighted by several very large diamonds. Here and there Serena saw familiar faces from the rehearsal dinner, and at frequent intervals she found herself glancing at Teddy, as though for comfort. She had only known him for a few days, and yet she already thought of him as someone she loved and could depend on. He stopped near where she was sitting once, squeezed her shoulder gently, and went back to his duties.

And at exactly one minute to eleven the huge front doors were closed, the organ began to play more loudly, and there was a sudden hush in the church, unbroken even by whispers, and as though by magic the ushers and bridesmaids began to appear, in a solemn procession of cutaways and striped trousers and organdy dresses in palest peach. There were picture hats to match, and the dresses were so lovely that Serena gazed at them in fascination. They had enormous Victorian sleeves and high necks, tiny waists, and full skirts with elegant little trains. Each bridesmaid carried a bouquet of tiny roses in the same color, and when the last of the bridesmaids had passed by and the flower girl appeared, she was wearing a miniature version of the same dress, except that the sleeves were tiny round puffs and there was no train over which she could fall. She carried a silver basket filled with rose petals, and she had an angelic face, as she giggled at her brother who wore a short black velvet suit and solemnly carried a velvet cushion on which lay both rings. Serena smiled at the children with damp eyes, and then turned to see who came behind them, and as she did she caught her breath at the vision that stood there. It was a fairy princess in a dress of lace so magnificent that Serena thought she had never seen anything like it. It was obviously an heirloom. A gasp and a murmur ran through the church as Pattie stood there in the high-necked full-sleeved gown of her great-grandmother. The dress was well over a hundred years old. There was a short necklace of exquisite diamonds that she wore at her neck, a tiny tiara that had been made to match, and pearls and diamonds glittered in her ears, and all around her hung a cloud of veil that seemed to sweep behind her for miles, covering her train and most of the aisle as she marched regally by on her father's arm. It was impossible not to feel dwarfed beside her, her dark beauty in sharp contrast to the soft white, and Serena was absolutely certain that she was the most beautiful bride she had ever seen. It was impossible to associate, even for a moment, this totally perfect scene with all that Brad had told her about Partie. This couldn't be the same woman, Serena found herself thinking. This was a goddess, a fairy princess. It was she who looked like a principessa, Serena mused as she sat there. And then with a heavy heart she realized that it was she who could have been Brad's wife. He could have been the groom at this wedding, married to the striking little dark-haired beauty from his own world. Had he done that, there would have been no strife, no anger, no problem with his mother. And as she thought of it all she felt guilt pour over her for all that she had done to disrupt B.J.'s life. Her eyes wandered back to the altar, where she saw Greg standing stiffly beside his bride. And just behind them stood Brad and the maid of honor, and as Serena watched her, a distinguished-looking girl with red hair, which somehow blended well with the peach dress and large picture hat, she wondered if Brad was regretting what he had lost when he married her. He could have had the redhead, or any of the pretty blondes with their bright, freckled, American faces. He could have names that everyone recognized, whose aunts and grandmothers and fathers they had known. He could have lived the life his mother wanted for him, keeping his family intact. Instead he had married a stranger to this world, and he would become an outcast. As she thought of it the tears filled her eyes and ran slowly down her cheeks. She felt a grief beyond measure at what she had done to him. Oh, God, what would happen if he ended up hating her for it?

She sat solemnly through the rest of the wedding, and watched the procession file sedately past her on the way out, and when it was over, she went through the reception line like any other stranger, shaking hands with the twenty or so bridesmaids and ushers, until suddenly she reached Teddy, and he grabbed her by the arm.

“What are you doing here, silly?”

“I don't know.” She looked suddenly embarrassed. Had she done the wrong thing? She felt foolish and he put an arm around her with a grin.

“You don't have to be so formal. Want to stand here with us?” But Serena knew that their mother would undoubtedly have a fit.

“I'll just wait outside.” She stood there for a moment beside him, and suddenly Pattie saw her and stared angrily.

“This is my wedding, Serena, not yours, or had you forgotten?”

Serena flushed to the roots of her hair, stammered something, and began to back away. But Teddy was quick to grab her. He knew how much she had already been through, and he wanted to slap Pattie for what she had just said. “Can't you just shut your damn mouth for once, Pattie? If you don't watch it, you'll end up looking like a shrew, even in that dress.” With that, he left the line, his arm around Serena, and signaled to Brad to meet them outside. Margaret was looking daggers at them, and Pattie had gone white, but only one or two people had overheard them, and a moment later they were safely outside.

“Well, at least I have you to make things even.”

“Hmm?” She was still looking upset and distracted as they stood in the bright sunshine.

“I've got one wonderful sister-in-law and one bitch.” Serena laughed in spite of herself and saw Brad coming toward them.

“Something happen in there?” he was quick to ask, and Serena shook her head, but Teddy waved a finger and frowned.

“Don't lie to him, dammit.” He smiled at his brother. “Our brand-new sister-in-law is just being herself.”

“Was she rude to Serena?” Brad began to smolder.

“Of course. Is she ever anything but rude, except to those she is trying to impress? Christ, I don't know how Greg is going to stand her.” He said it sotto voce so only his brother heard him, but they both knew the answer to that one, and neither of them liked it. Most likely Greg was going to stay drunk for the rest of his life. That morning, in his still-besotted state, he had told his older brother that he was marrying her because she had been Brad's fiancée, and everyone knew that Brad was terrific so she had to be a terrific girl. In a moment of madness Brad had tried to dissuade him from getting married, but Greg was too frightened to alter his course only hours before the wedding, and all morning in church Brad had remembered Serena's question: “Are you going to be the one to stand up and object at the wedding?” He had wanted to, but he hadn't dared.

A few minutes later the entire wedding party disappeared into six limousines and moved on to The Plaza, where the Grand Ballroom had been reserved. Here again the flowers were lavish, and the orchestra struck up the moment they arrived.

Serena was once again seated with strangers at a table far from the others, and it seemed ages before Brad came to find her. She looked tired from the strain of making polite conversation, and she was a little overwhelmed by the crowds around her.

“Are you all right, love?” She smiled and nodded. “How's my daughter?”

“He's fine.” They chuckled at each other, and he led her onto the dance floor in a slow waltz a moment later. Teddy sat at the bridal table and watched them circling slowly together. They were truly the perfect couple. His tall, handsome blond brother, and the graceful golden-haired woman in his arms. Their faces met at precisely the right angle, their smiles would have lit the room, they looked so happy that they should have been the bride and groom, and not the nervous, high-strung little brunette drinking too much and talking too loudly, sitting beside the man she had just married, who sat staring straight ahead, as Teddy watched them. Greg had no sparkle in his eyes, instead there was a dull glaze as he finished his Scotch on the rocks and signaled the waiter for another.

It was only a few moments later that Brad and Serena came to find Teddy. Brad leaned down to his brother's ear and whispered that they were leaving.

“Already?”

He nodded. “We want to catch the train tonight, and I want Serena to rest for a while. We have to pack—” He faltered for a moment, and his younger brother laughed at them. Maybe he did want her to rest, and they did have some packing to do, but it was apparent that B.J. had other things on his mind as well. If they had been alone, Teddy would have teased him. “We'll see you in San Francisco, kiddo. When exactly are you coming?”

“I'm leaving New York on the twenty-ninth of August, so I should arrive in San Francisco on September first.”

“Give us the details when you write and we'll come to meet you.” Brad held his shoulder for a long moment and looked into his brother's eyes. “Thank you for everything. For making Serena feel so welcome.”

“She is welcome.” His eyes moved over to his new sister. “I'll see you out West, Serena.” And then he grinned. “By then you'll be as big as a whale.” The three of them chuckled.

“I will not!” She tried to look offended, but didn't. Instead she put her arms around him and kissed him on both cheeks. “I'll miss you, little brother.”

“Take care of each other “

The two men shook hands, Teddy kissed Serena again, and a moment later, after Serena had said a polite farewell to the bride, shaken her parents-in-law's hands, and congratulated the almost incoherent groom, they left the party. It was an enormous relief to have the wedding behind them. As they left The Plaza hand in hand Brad pulled off his tie, dropped it with his gloves into his top hat, and hailed a hansom cab to take them home to the apartment on Fifth Avenue.

Serena was enchanted as they clip-clopped into the park behind the horse, and he put an arm around her. It was a hot sunny day, the summer had begun, and by nightfall they would be on their way to their new life in California.

“Happy, darling?” He looked down at his wife, his pleasure at finally being alone with her shining in his eyes.

“How could I be anything but happy with you?” She reached up to kiss him and they held each other for a long moment, as they drove slowly down Fifth Avenue to the apartment.

26

They left the apartment before the others returned, and for a moment Brad stood in the front hall and looked around him with regret, and almost sorrow.

“You'll come back.” She said it softly, remembering how she had felt when she left Rome, but he shook his head as he looked down at her.

“That isn't what I was thinking. I was thinking that I wanted this to be so nice for you. I wanted you to have a wonderful time in New York … I wanted them to be wonderful to you. …” His eyes were bright with tears and she took his hand and kissed it.

“Non importa.” It doesn't matter.

“Yes, it does. To me.”

“We have our own lives, Brad. Soon we will have the baby. We have each other. The rest matters, but not so much.”

“It does to me. You deserve to have everyone be good to you.”

“You are good to me. I don't need more than that.” And then she smiled, remembering Teddy. “And your brother.”

“I think he's head over heels in love with you.” He smiled at his wife. “But I can't really blame him. So am I.”

“I think you're both silly.” She sighed as she thought of her brother-in-law. “I hope he finds a nice girl at Stanford. He has so much to give someone.”

Brad was quiet for a moment, thinking of how much he owed Teddy. Then he said, “Ready?” She nodded assent, and he closed the door behind them. Downstairs a cab was already waiting. Their luggage was piled up on the front seat and in the trunk, their smaller bags were tucked in around them.

The ride to Grand Central Station passed quickly. A few minutes later they got out, found a redcap, and threaded their way through the crowded station. Serena looked around her in fascination, there were armies of people shuffling around beneath the enormously tall ceilings. Everywhere around her were advertisements and posters and billboards and announcements. She looked like a little girl as she trundled along beside her husband, and he almost had to shoo her out of the main lobby to get her to the platform area where they would find their train.

“But it's wonderful, Brad!”

He grinned at her delight, and tipped the porter as he unloaded their bags onto the train.

“I'm glad you like it.”

But she liked the train even better. It was far more luxurious than any of the postwar trains in Europe. In Italy and France nothing had as yet been completely restored from the condition it had been left in by the armies of occupation. Here mahogany-skinned white-coated porters with stiff caps assisted them into their tiny but impeccable quarters. They had a velvet banquette, immaculate linens, thick rugs beneath their feet, and a tiny bathroom. In Serena's opinion it was the perfect honeymoon suite, and the prospect of spending three days there with Brad enchanted her.

Their actual plan was to spend two days on the train until they reached Denver, to leave the train there, rent a car, drive to Aspen, and then return to Denver, and take the train on to San Francisco. Brad had taken his brother's suggestion, and the young couple could hardly wait. But first they had to take the train to Chicago, where they would spend the day and change trains, then continue their journey.

Half an hour after they had boarded, the train inched out of the station and hurtled through New York. As Serena watched the city disappear behind them, Brad was silent beside her.

“You're so quiet. Is something wrong?” She looked at him inquiringly as they rolled along.

“I was just thinking.”

“What about?”

“My mother.”

For a moment Serena said nothing, and then she raised her eyes slowly to her husband's. “Perhaps she will come to accept me in time.” But the memory of what Margaret had tried to do told Serena that her mother-in-law would never come to love her. There was no trust, no understanding, no compassion, and no interest. There was nothing but bitterness and resentment and hatred. She had tried to buy Serena off in the most venal of ways. To think she had wanted her to abort her own grandchild. What kind of woman was Margaret Fullerton?

“It kills me that she was so unfair.” And he didn't even know the whole.

“She couldn't help it.” Serena found herself thinking back to the morning's wedding. How strange to think that it could have been Brad's wedding and that Pattie could have been sitting at that very moment on the train. The very thought sent a chill through her, and she reached for his hand and held it tightly.

“It doesn't matter, love. We have our life now. And you're going to love San Francisco.”

But before she loved San Francisco, she loved Denver, and she loved Aspen even more. They stayed in the town's only hotel, a quaint Victorian affair with high ceilings and lace curtains. The meadows were covered with wildflowers, the mountains were still capped with snow. It looked just like the Alps to Serena when she looked out the window every morning, and they went for long walks beside streams, and lay in the sunshine on the grass, talking about their respective childhoods and their hopes for their own children.

They spent almost two weeks in Aspen, and they hated to leave when the appointed day came for them to return to Denver and resume their journey on the train. But they once again boarded the train heading west from Chicago, and this time they only had to travel for a single day, and the Rockies were too soon left behind them. The day after they had boarded, they awoke to see hills in the distance and flat land around them, and a little while later Serena was enchanted to catch a glimpse of the bay. The train station was located in a singularly ugly part of the city, but as soon as they got a cab and made their way north into the heart of town, they saw how lovely a city it really was. To their right lay the bay, shining and flat, dotted with boats, and rimmed with hills. All around them were the steep hillsides, with Victorian houses built on them, there were tiny pastel-colored houses and handsome brick mansions, stucco Mediterranean villas, and delightful English gardens. It was a city that seemed to combine the charm of a dozen countries and cultures, with blue skies overhead and clouds that looked as though they had been painted. And as they approached the Presidio they could see the Golden Gate Bridge, leading majestically into Marin County.

“Oh, Brad, it's so lovely!”

“It is, isn't it?” He looked pleased, and in his heart he felt something stirring. He knew that they had come halfway around the world together, and that this would be their first real home. San Francisco. Their first child would be born here, and perhaps others. He looked at her as she gazed at the bay and the bridge, and gently he leaned over and kissed her.

“Welcome home, my darling.”

She nodded, with a tender smile, and looked around her, feeling the same things that he had.

The taxi drove in through the Presidio Avenue Gate in Pacific Heights, and followed the steep curving road down the hills beneath the huge trees growing in the Presidio, and a moment later they were parked in front of the Headquarters Building, where Brad hopped out, put on his hat, and saluted his wife smartly. He had worn his uniform for their arrival, since officially he would be reporting for duty, and he stepped into the main building with his hat under his arm, and disappeared while Serena waited and looked around her. The influence of the architecture seemed to be mostly Spanish, the view of the bay and the bridge were superb, and some of the houses on the base looked very handsome.

She was amazed at how quickly Brad emerged from the building, with a broad smile, and a set of keys in his hand, which he dangled at her. He gave the driver instructions, and they wound their way back up another hill, through the woods, and stopped when they reached a point that seemed to float above the entire setting. Here there was a cluster of four houses, all very large and quite solid, in the same Spanish style, and Brad pointed to the one at the end of the cluster.

“For us?” Serena looked stunned. The house was splendid.

“Yes, ma'am.” Serena was impressed at how well they treated a colonel, but he was grinning at her oddly as he opened the door and carried her inside. “Do you like it?”

“It's so lovely!”

They wandered around their house then. Someone had had the foresight to leave them some towels and sheets. Serena realized that they would have to go out and buy furniture, but the house itself was lovely. It had a big Spanish-style kitchen, which someone had redecorated in blue and white Mexican tile. There were overhead hooks for plants, huge windows that looked out over the bay, and a door that opened into the garden. There was also a handsome formal dining room, with a domed ceiling, a small chandelier, and a fireplace; a living room, which also had a splendid view of the Bay, and an even larger fireplace. Upstairs there was a cozy wood-paneled den, and three very pleasant bedrooms, all of them with views of the water.

It was perfect for them, the baby, and even gave them a room for Teddy. Serena was quick to point that out, and Brad looked at her, as though he had never been as happy.

“It's not your palazzo, my darling, but it is pretty.”

“It's better,” she said, smiling at him, “because it's ours.” At least for the duration. But she knew that they could be there for years, and the Presidio was considered a choice post in the American army.

They slept on the cots that had been provided for them for that night and went downtown the next day to buy some basics, a large double bed of their own, two small French nightstands, a Victorian dressing table for Serena, and a beautiful fruitwood dresser, chairs, tables, fabrics for curtains, a rug, and a wealth of kitchen equipment. And they began to live a married life together —waiting for their child.

And in late August the house really looked as though they had lived there for years. There was a warm, welcoming quality about it that delighted Brad every time he stepped into the front door, and the colors Serena had chosen always rested him and always made him happy that he was back. She had done the living room in rich woods and dull red, and a soft raspberry color. There were handsome English prints on the wall, always a profusion of flowers on all the tables, and she had made the curtains herself from a beautiful French fabric. The dining room was formal and a soft ivory white, filled with orchid plants and a view of the profusion of flowers she had planted in the garden. Their own bedroom was all done in soft blues, “like the bay,” she had teased him, Teddy's room, as she called it, was done in warm browns, and the baby's room was all done in bright yellows. She had worked hard all summer to get it ready, and the day Teddy arrived she looked around as they left to pick him up and decided that she was proud of what she had done.

“Forget something?” Brad questioned her from the doorway as he watched her waddle toward him. She was five months pregnant and he loved to see her shape as she lay in bed beside him or emerged from the shower in the morning. She looked full and ripe and wonderful to him, her whole body as graceful as it had been, and yet the full weight of their child swelling her belly. He loved to touch it and feel the baby kick, and now he smiled and patted her tummy gently as she stood before him. “How's our little friend?”

“Busy.” She smoothed the plaid overblouse over her navy blue skirt and smiled at her husband. “He's been kicking all morning.”

Brad looked concerned. “Maybe you did too much getting ready for Teddy.” But Serena shook her head.

“No, I didn't.” She looked over her shoulder as she closed the door. “The house looks nice, doesn't it?”

“No. It looks wonderful. You did a great job, darling.”

She blushed, but she looked pleased. For a girl of twenty, she had come a long way and done a great many things. Sometimes he had to remind himself of how young she was. He had just turned thirty-five that summer. “I'm glad that Teddy's coming.”

“So am I.” He started their dark blue Ford and looked at his watch. It seemed like only days before that they had arrived themselves, and when they found Teddy, just stepping off the train at the station, Brad felt as though they had only just left New York. The two brothers shook hands and clapped each other on the shoulder, as Serena hurtled herself into Teddy's arms, and they squeezed each other hard, and then laughing, he stepped back and patted her protruding stomach.

“Where'd you get the beachball, Serena?”

She looked at him primly. “Brad gave it to me as a present.” All three of them laughed, and Teddy followed them to the car. He only had one bag with him. The rest of his things had been sent directly to Stanford several weeks before.

“How do you like it out here, you two?”

“We love it. But wait till you see what she's done with the house.” Brad looked at his wife proudly. “You'll see why we love it.” And as soon as Teddy stepped inside, he knew what his brother had meant. Serena had created an atmosphere of well-being that touched everyone who entered. One wanted to unravel on the couch, stare at the bay in peaceful silence, and never leave again.

“You did a beautiful job, Serena.” She looked pleased, and then jumped up to bring him tea and sandwiches and little cookies. “Will you please sit down?” He went after her, but she shooed him back into the living room with his brother, who looked at them both, like two children, happy to be playmates again.

“How's Greg?” Braid didn't wait long to ask the question, and there was concern in his eyes as he asked.

“About the same.”

“Which means what?”

Teddy hesitated and then shrugged, with a small sigh. “I'll be honest with you, I don't think he's happy with Partie. He's drinking even more than he was before.”

“He couldn't possibly.” Brad looked upset.

“Well, he's sure as hell trying. I don't know.” He ran a hand through his hair, as he looked at his brother. “I think she pushes him all the time. She always wants him to do something different than he's doing. She wants a bigger house, a better life, wants him to have a better job. …”

“All in three months?”

“Sooner if possible. She bitched for two months about their honeymoon. She thought he should have taken her to Europe. But he wanted to go to Newport instead, which she didn't consider a honeymoon. The house he had rented for her for the summer wasn't as fancy as the one her brother-in-law had got her sister, and on and on it went.”

“No wonder he drinks.” Brad looked dismayed at what he was hearing. “Think he'll stick with it?”

“Probably. I don't think he even considers any other option.” Certainly no one in their family had ever got divorced, but in the face of what he was hearing from Teddy, Brad would certainly have considered it. And one thing was sure, and that was that he was glad he hadn't fallen into Pattie's trap. The tragedy was that Greg had.

But the strangest thing of all was hearing all of the news so distantly from his brother. When he had been in Europe, everyone had made a point of staying in touch. They had written as often as they could, especially his mother. And now, since he and Serena had come to California, there was a measurable difference. Greg no longer wrote at all, feeling uncomfortable toward Brad perhaps, about his sudden marriage to Pattie. Or maybe, in light of what Teddy had just said, he was just desperately unhappy. Brad had heard from his father only once, but from his mother never. He had called her a few times at first, but her voice had been so chill, her remarks about Serena so cutting, that he no longer called her, and she never called him. And he hated to admit it, but he missed hearing from them. It was as though, in an odd way, he and Serena had become outcasts from an old familiar life.

27

Teddy had expected to be totally devoured by his studies when he got to Stanford. But as things turned out, it wasn't quite as ferocious during the first semester as he had feared. And although he had a mountain of reading to do most of the time, he still managed to come into town to see them, particularly at the end of Serena's pregnancy. He wanted to be there if something momentous happened. He had already told Brad that when the time came he wanted to be around. Brad had promised to call him at Stanford in case she went into labor, and they both assumed that Teddy would have time to come into town on the train and walk the halls with his brother for as long as it took the baby to arrive.

On the third weekend in December, Teddy was on vacation from school and staying with them, and Serena's due date was still four days away. Brad was gone for the day on mock-war maneuvers in San Leandro, and Teddy was upstairs studying for exams. Serena was in the baby's room, folding tiny white nightgowns and checking things over for what Teddy accused her of being the four hundredth time. She was just putting the nightgowns back into the drawer when she heard a strange sound almost like a pop, and then suddenly felt a gush of warm water run down her legs, and splash onto the shiny wood floor. She stood there for a moment, looking startled, and then walked slowly into the baby's bathroom, to get some towels so that the fluid wouldn't stain the floor. She felt an odd sensation of cramping both in her back and low in her stomach and knew that she had to call the doctor, but first she wanted to take care of the floor. He had already explained to her that at the first sign of pains, or if the bag of waters ruptured, she was to call him, but she knew from that time it would still take many hours. She wasn't even worried about Brad being in San Leandro. He would be back in time for dinner, and there was nothing he could do after he drove her to the hospital anyway. They wouldn't let him see her while she was in labor, and at least this way he would be spared some of the pacing with Teddy. There was no reason at all why Teddy couldn't take her to the hospital and then come back later with Brad.

She felt a sudden surge of excitement as she realized that the time had come and in a few hours she would be holding her baby and she laughed to herself as she knelt on the floor with the towels, but the laughter caught in her throat and she had to clutch the chest of drawers to keep from screaming, a cramp had seized her so brutally that she could barely breathe. It seemed hours before it had ended, and there was a damp veil of sweat on her forehead when at last it had passed. It was definitely time to call the doctor, she realized, and she was a little startled to discover that the first contraction could be so painful. No one had warned her that it would start with such vehemence. In fact the doctor had told her that at first she probably wouldn't even know what the pains were. But there was no mistaking this, or the next one, as it brought her to her knees halfway back to the bathroom with the damp towels, and she suddenly felt a pressure so sharp and so heavy that she fell to all fours on the floor. She held her stomach and moaned both in pain and terror, and in his room Teddy thought he heard a strange sound like an animal moaning, but after a moment he decided it was the wind and went back to his studies, but a minute or so later he heard it again. He picked up his head and frowned, and then suddenly he realized that it was someone groaning and he heard the sound of his own name. Frightened, he stood up, not sure of where it had come from, and then realizing that it was Serena, he ran out into the hall.

“Serena? Where are you?” But as he stood only a few feet away around a bend in the hallway, she was in the grips of yet another pain so forceful that she was unable to breathe or speak his name again. “Serena? Serena? Where are you?” A terrible moan met his ears, and he hastened toward it, coming through the door of the baby's room and finding her in the bathroom doorway, crouched on the floor. “Oh, my God, what happened?” She was so pale and in such obvious pain that he felt his own knees tremble. “Serena, did you fall?” Instinctively he reached for her pulse and found it healthy, but as he held the delicate wrist in his fingers, he saw her face contort with a pain so terrible that he winced as he watched and tried to take her in his arms as she screamed. But she fought to keep him away from her, as though she needed every bit of air and each touch was painful, and it was fully two minutes before her face relaxed and she could speak to him rationally again.

“Oh, Teddy … it's coming … I don't understand … it just started …”

“When?” He was desperately trying to gather his wits about him. He had only seen one childbirth, although he had already carefully studied all the chapters in his textbook on the subject, but he didn't feel at all equal to the task of delivering his own niece or nephew and he knew that he had to get her to the hospital at once. “When did it start, Serena? I'll call the doctor.”

“I don't know … a few minutes ago … ten … fifteen …” She was still trying to catch her breath and was sitting propped against the wall, as though she no longer had the strength to move.

“Why didn't you call me?”

“I couldn't. My water broke, and then it just hit me so hard, I couldn't even”—her breath began to come more quickly—”speak … oh, God … oh, Teddy …” She clutched at his arm. “Another … pain … now … ohhh …”It was a terrible groan of pain, and he held her hands in his own and watched her helplessly. Instinctively he had glanced at his watch when it began, and he saw with utter amazement that the contraction was over three and a half minutes long. He recalled what the textbook had said, when he read it only a few days earlier, that in general, contractions lasted from ten to ninety seconds, and it was only in rare cases that they extended past that, and that when they did, it was frequently in unusual labors, with frequent, prolonged, and violent contractions, which generally shortened the labor process by several hours. The more brutal the pains, the quicker the baby would be born.

With a look at Serena he ran his handkerchief across her forehead as the pain ended. “Serena, I want you to lie here. I'm going to call the doctor right now.”

“Don't leave me.”

“I have to.” He was going to ask for an ambulance, he was sure that she was about to have the baby, and before he even left the room, he could see that she was having a contraction again. But he knew that he had to call the doctor, and he did so as quickly as he could. An ambulance was promised, and the doctor told him to stay with her. Teddy told him that he was a first-year med student, and the doctor explained how, if the ambulance came before he did, Teddy should hold and clamp the cord. He said that under the circumstances he wanted to ride to the hospital with her. He had a feeling, as Teddy did from watching her, that the baby was going to come in record time. And by the time Teddy returned to the bedroom, he found Serena hunched over on all fours and crying. She looked up at him miserably as he came in, and he wanted to cry with her. Why did it have to be so difficult this first time, and where was Brad, and why the hell was it all happening so fast?

“Serena, the doctor's coming, just take it easy.” And then he had a thought. “I'm going to put you on the bed.”

“No …” She looked terrified. “Don't move me.”

“I have to. You'll feel better if you lie down.”

“No, I won't.” She looked suddenly frightened and angry.

“Trust me.” But the conversation was interrupted by another roaring pain. And when it was over, without saying another word, he scooped her into his arms and deposited her gently on the canopied bed in the baby's room. He pulled back the pretty yellow quilt and the blanket, and let her lie on the soft cool sheets, her enormous belly thrust into the air, and her face pale and damp, her eyes huge and afraid. He had never seen anyone look so vulnerable, and for an instant he was terrified that she might die. As though from his very soul the words sprang from him. “You're going to be all right, my darling. I love you.”

It was as though he had to tell her, just this one time, to get her through. He had never seen anyone in so much pain. She smiled at him then and clung tightly to his hand, and he found himself praying for the ambulance to come. But his prayers were not answered. Almost at the same moment he saw the searing anguish leap across her face and in a single gesture she pulled herself up and grabbed his shoulders, clutching him as though in terror as she tried not to scream.

“Oh, God … oh, Teddy … it's coming …”

“No, it isn't.” Oh, please no.… Together, without knowing it, they began to cry. They were two children, lost on a desert island, and all they had was each other, and she was holding so tightly to his shoulders that the grip of her hands hurt him. “Lie down. Come on. That's it.” He lay her down again as the pain ended, and she seemed to be breathing even faster, and before her head had even touched the pillow she was writhing again, and this time when she grabbed for him, she could not restrain the scream.

“Teddy … the baby …” She was pushing at the bed, and then holding her belly, and as though in a single instant, Teddy found himself watching her not like a frightened schoolboy but a man. He knew just from his textbooks what was happening, and it would do her no good if he let himself be as frightened as she was. He knew that he had to help her. Without saying a word, he pulled gently at her skirt and quietly undressed her. He went to the bathroom and found stacks of clean towels. “Teddy!” She began to panic.

“I'm right here.” He stuck his head out and smiled at her. “It's going to be all right.”

“What are you doing?”

“I'm washing my hands.”

“Why?”

“Because we're going to have a baby.”

She started to say something, but another pain stopped her. He rushed through his scrubbing, grabbed his towels, and went back to the bed, where he draped her carefully with the towels, and then he took two extra pillows and propped her legs up, and she said nothing. She was too involved with the pains, and too grateful that he was with her. And then suddenly with the next pain she seemed to lift off her pillows again and instinctively he went to her shoulders and supported her as she began pushing. “It's okay, Serena, it's okay …”

“Oh, Teddy, the baby …”

“I know.” He lay her back on the pillows when it was over, and looked between the draped towels on her legs, and then suddenly, as she began to push through another pain, he gave a shout of excitement. “Serena, I can see it… come on … keep pushing … that's it …” She groaned and fell back on her pillows but only for a moment. She was panting and breathless and he held her hand as he watched, but there was nothing for him to do now except watch as the baby crowned and then he reached down gently and turned it, wiping the tiny face gently with a soft towel, and then suddenly as though it objected to having its face washed, the baby gave a gurgle and then began crying, and Teddy looked up into Serena's face and they began crying too. Her face was wet with tears as she heard the baby.

“It is all right?”

“It's just beautiful.” Teddy was laughing and crying and when another pain came, he freed the shoulders, and a minute later Serena gave a shout first of pain and then of exultation and the baby lay in her uncle's hands and he held her up to show her mother. “It's a girl, Serena! A girl!”

“Oh, Teddy.” Serena lay on her pillows with her eyes streaming, and she reached out to touch a tiny hand and at the same moment they heard the doorbell.

Teddy began to laugh as he set the baby down on the bed beside Serena. “It must be the doctor.”

“Tell him we already have one.” She smiled at him and reached for his hand before he could leave her. “Teddy … how can I ever thank you? I would have died without you.”

“No, you wouldn't.”

“You're terrific.” And then, remembering what she had heard him say earlier. “I love you too. Don't ever forget that.”

“How could I?” He kissed her gently on the forehead and went to answer the doorbell. It was indeed the doctor, and the ambulance arrived just as Teddy pulled open the door. Dr. Anderson hastened upstairs and marveled at the baby and Serena, congratulated Teddy on a fine job on his first delivery, soundly knotted the cord, and directed the ambulance drivers to put mother and child carefully on the stretcher. The cord would be cut at the hospital, and both of them would be carefully checked out. But it looked to the doctor as though everything had gone very smoothly. He looked at his patient with a grin and checked his watch.

“Just how long were you in labor, young lady?”

“What time is it?” She smiled at him. She was tired, but she had never been so happy.

“It is exactly two fifteen.” He glanced at Teddy. “What time did the baby come?”

“Two oh three.”

Serena chuckled. “It started at one thirty.”

“Thirty-three minutes on a first labor? Young lady, next time we're going to park you in the hospital lobby for the last two weeks.” The three of them laughed, and the men carried mother and daughter out on the stretcher, and Teddy looked at the room for a moment before he left it. He would never forget sharing this moment with her, and he was suddenly glad that they had been alone.

When Brad got back from maneuvers that evening, he found his brother sitting nonchalantly in the kitchen, eating a sandwich. “Hi, kid. Where's Serena?”

“Out.”

“Where?”

“Having dinner with your daughter.” It took a moment for it to sink in, as the younger brother grinned.

“What the hell does that mean?” Brad felt his heart begin to race. And then suddenly he understood. “Did she … did … today?” He looked stunned.

“Yup.” His brother answered coolly. “She did. And you have a beautiful baby girl.”

“Have you seen Serena? How is she?” He was instantly flustered and even looked a little afraid.

“She's fine. And so is the baby.”

“Did it take very long?”

Teddy grinned. “Thirty-three minutes.”

“Ase you kidding?” Brad looked shocked. “How the hell did you get her to the hospital in time?”

“I didn't.”

“What?”

Teddy laughed, and gave his brother a warm hug, but there was suddenly something more grown up about him, even Brad had noticed it when he came in. It was as though in a single afternoon there was something different about Teddy, as though in some subtle way he had changed. “Brad, I delivered the baby.”

“What? Are you crazy?” And then he grinned. “Crazy kid. For a minute I believed you. Big joke, very funny. Now tell me what happened.”

Teddy grew serious as he looked in his brother's eyes. “I mean it, Brad. I didn't have any choice. I found her on the floor of the baby's room, already in labor. The water had just broken, and she went right into labor at an incredible clip.” He sounded strangely official, and Brad's eyes almost fell out of his head. “She was having three-and three-and-a-half-minute contractions every thirty seconds, and by the time I came back from calling the doctor and the ambulance, she was starting to push. It was all over pretty quickly. And the doctor and the ambulance got here about ten minutes after the baby.”

“Oh, my God.” Brad let himself slowly down into a chair, and for an instant Teddy wondered if he was angry. Maybe it upset him that his own brother had delivered his wife's baby, but it wasn't that that Teddy saw in Brad's eyes as he looked at him. “Can you imagine what would have happened if I'd been alone with her? I'd have panicked.”

Teddy smiled and touched his arm. “I almost did for a while there. For a minute or two it was pretty scary, but I knew that I had to help her, Brad … there was no one else.” The brothers looked into each other's eyes for a long moment, and Brad put out his hand with tears in his eyes.

“Thank you, Teddy.” He wanted to tell him then that he loved him, but he didn't know how, and the tears were too thick in his throat.

Twenty minutes later he was standing beside Serena, and she looked almost exactly as she had that morning when he had left for San Leandro. She looked pretty and fresh, bright eyed and cheerful. The only difference was that the belly was gone. And no one would have suspected from her look of jubilation that only a few hours before she had been through so much pain. “How was it, baby? Was it really awful?”

“I don't know.” She looked faintly embarrassed to admit to him how much it had hurt her. “For a little while I thought I couldn't stand it… but Teddy … he was right there with me … and he was so good.… Brad”—her eyes filled with tears of joy and emotion—”I would have died without him.”

“Thank God he was there.”

The nurse put her in her wheelchair then so that they could go to see the baby, and Brad laughed at the tiny pink bundle with the screwed up-face and swollen eyes. “See, I told you! A girl!” They named her Vanessa Theodora. Vanessa was the name they had agreed on before, and Theodora for her uncle, the doctor.

And that night Brad called his mother to tell her. His voice was still vibrant with excitement when he placed the call, and it seemed to take forever for his mother to come on the line. He spoke to his father first, who offered his eldest son the appropriate congratulations. But there was no warmth in Margaret's voice when she spoke to him.

“It must have been a dreadful experience for Teddy.” Her voice hit Brad like a cold shower.

“Hardly, Mother. And I would think that if he's going to be a doctor he'd do well not to find that kind of experience ‘dreadful.’ ” But that wasn't the point and they both knew it. “He said it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.” There was an awkward silence as Brad fought with his own sense of disappointment at his mother's reaction. He was too happy for her to spoil it for him, but she dampened his spirits nonetheless.

“And your wife is well?”

“She's wonderful.” A smile began to grow on his face again. Maybe there was hope after all. At least she had asked after Serena. “And the baby is beautiful. We'll send you pictures as soon as we have some.”

“I don't think that's necessary, Brad.” Necessary? What did she mean “necessary”? Christ. “I don't really think you understand how your father and I feel.”

“As a matter of fact, I don't. And don't bring Father into this. This is your war with Serena, not his.” But they both knew that Margaret ran the show, and where she led, her husband followed. “And I think it stinks. This is the happiest day of my life and you're trying to spoil it for us.”

“Not at all. And I find it very touching to hear you sounding so paternal. But that doesn't change the fact mat your marriage to Serena is a tragedy in your life, Bradford, whether you acknowledge that yet or not. And the addition of a child to further embellish an already disastrous union is not something I can celebrate with you. The whole affair is a tragic mistake, and so is that baby.”

“That child is no mistake, Mother.” He was seething. “And she is my daughter and your first grandchild. She's part of our family, not just my family, but yours, whether you accept that or not.”

There was a long silence. “I do not. And I never shall.”

He bid his mother good-night then and there were tears in his eyes when he hung up the phone, but it only made him love Serena and the baby more. His mother would have been furious if she had known that.

28

The years in San Francisco were happy ones for Brad and Serena. They lived in their own happy little world, in the pretty brick house overlooking the bay. Brad loved his work at the Presidio, and Serena was never bored with Vanessa. She was an enchanting golden-haired child who seemed to combine the best of both her parents. In truth she looked a great deal like Brad, but she had the easy laughter and grace of her mother.

Teddy came as often as he could. He called Vanessa his fairy princess and read her endless stories. He could never see them as often as he wanted to anymore, because his studies at Stanford were so demanding. It was only during holidays that he could really relax and spend some time with them. Whenever Teddy could get over, he took Vanessa to the zoo, and on special outings, and by the time she was three, she would stand at the door when she knew he was coming, and watch every passing car, until she saw him, and then she would scream with delight and shout. “He's coming! He's coming! It's Uncle Teddy!”

Other than her parents, he was the only family she really knew. She had only met her other uncle twice, when Pattie and Greg had come through San Francisco on their way to the Orient. Pattie had stared hungrily at the child, and several times been rude to Serena. Greg seemed not to see her at all, as he sat in his usual stupor between drinks. And Pattie had made a point of telling Serena how much their mother-in-law hated the baby without ever having seen her.

It was Pattie's idea to go to Japan for a vacation. Traveling had become her latest passion. But other than that, Serena and Brad had had no contact with the family back East. Ever since his mother's candid rejection of Vanessa, Brad had had minimal contact with his mother, and when his mother had once come to San Francisco to visit Teddy, she had refused to see Brad with Serena, and Brad had refused to see his mother without her, so she had stubbornly left town in the end without seeing Brad, or Serena, or Vanessa. Teddy had been heartbroken about the family rift and had begged her to change her mind, but she wouldn't. If anything, she was more determined than ever.

Whatever her grandparents' feelings were about her, it mattered not at all to Vanessa. She was a constantly happy, sunny child, with an even disposition and almost no ill temper. And she was so passionately loved by both her parents and her uncle that the absence of others to adore her never mattered.

It was shortly after her third birthday that Serena and Brad told her that she was going to have a little brother or sister, and she clapped her hands with delight and hurried upstairs to draw the new baby a picture. She made a picture of an elephant, which looked more like a dog, and Serena framed it and hung it in the nursery. This time the baby was due in August. And Teddy was already teasing her about it. He was graduating from medical school in June, and by then she would be seven months pregnant.

“And if you think I'm going to run off the stage at commencement and deliver a baby, lady, you're crazy. Besides, my rates have gone up since last time.” It was a family joke now that he had delivered her first baby, and she was only a little nervous that this time the baby might come quickly. The doctor had warned her that it could happen, and she had promised to stay close to home, and the phone, in the last two weeks of July and into the beginning of August.

Teddy was going back to New York in July after a brief trip around the West, and in August he was beginning his internship at Columbia Presbyterian in New York.

But the graduation itself was causing a great deal of excitement in the family. Everyone was coming out, his mother, and Greg and Pattie. His father had suffered a stroke and was too ill to be moved now, but everyone else would be there to see him get his diploma.

“Well, Doctor, excited?” Brad looked at his brother in his cap and gown the morning of the graduation and Teddy beamed. He was twenty-six now, and Brad was thirty-eight, but they both looked almost the same age. Brad still had a boyish quality about him, and Teddy had matured immensely at Stanford.

“You know, I just can't believe it. I'm actually—finally—going to be a doctor!”

“I knew that almost four years ago.” Together they smiled at each other in a few private moments during the tense family gathering at the ceremony. Margaret Fullerton had actually refused to acknowledge Serena at all, and Pattie was delighted. The only one unaware of the obvious hostility was Vanessa, and Teddy looked at her now with a familiar glow of pleasure.

“I love that kid so much.”

Brad smiled. “This time maybe she'll have a little brother.”

“You sure like to call the shots, don't you?” His brother teased and then Brad remembered something.

“Yeah. By the way, I'd like you to do me a favor.”

“Sure. What's up?” Teddy looked casually at his brother. It was rare that Brad asked him anything at all.

“I'm going overseas in a few days, just for a little advisory mission in Korea. I'd like you to keep an eye on the girls for me. You know, after last time I'm always afraid that if I leave for work and forget to call home she'll have the baby in twenty minutes on her way in with the groceries.”

“Nah, give her half an hour.” Teddy grinned for a minute, and then looked at his brother more seriously. “Will this mission be dangerous?” He had a sudden odd feeling about it. Brad was being unusually offhand, but he could see that his eyes were worried.

“I doubt it. We've had advisers over there for a little while. I just want to see how they're handling it. We're not really getting involved. We're just watching.” But watching what?

“For how long, Brad?” Teddy looked worried.

“I'll just be gone a few days.”

“I didn't mean that. I meant how long will we just be watching over there?”

“Awhile.” Brad sounded noncommittal, and then looked at his brother. “I have to be honest with you, Teddy. I think we're going to find ourselves in a war there. A damn strange one, I have to tell you, but that's what I think. I'm going to be reporting to the Pentagon on my findings.”

Teddy nodded. “Just take care, Brad.” The two brothers exchanged a long glance, and Brad patted his arm before going to tell Serena. “Not to worry, kid. Not to worry.”

But when he told his wife, he was startled at her reaction. Unlike her usual acceptance of whatever he did, this time she begged him not to go to Korea.

“But why? It's only for a few days, and the baby's not due for another two months.”

“I don't care!” She had shouted at first and then cried. “I just don't want you to go.”

“Don't be silly.” fie had brushed it off as pregnancy nerves but that night he heard her crying in the bathroom, and she begged him over and over again not to go and clung to him near hysterics. “I've never seen you like this, Serena.” He was actually worried. Maybe something else was wrong and she hadn't told him. But she insisted that wasn't the case.

“I've never felt like this. I can't explain it.”

“Then forget about it. Teddy'll be here, and I'll be back before you know it.” But Serena was panicked. She had a premonition that filled her with terror.

29

The morning that Brad left for Seoul, Serena felt unusually nervous. She had funny little cramps in her left side, the baby's feet had jabbed her all night. Vanessa had cried repeatedly at breakfast, and just before Brad left, Serena had to fight an almost overwhelming urge to burst into tears again, as she had ever since he had told her he was leaving. Again she wanted to beg him not to go, but surrounded by orderlies and assistants, and sergeants and brass, and Vanessa and Teddy, she didn't feel she could do it. He knew how she felt, and he had insisted he was going.

“Well, Doctor.” He shook hands with his brother. “Take care of my girls for me. I'll be back in a few days.” He was playing it down, after all the hysterics with Serena.

“Yes, Colonel.” Teddy's eyes were teasing, but nonetheless he looked worried. There was something about Brad going to Korea that made him desperately uncomfortable too. But like Serena, he felt that this was neither the place nor the time to discuss it.

Serena kissed Brad longingly on the mouth, and he teased her about her big belly. She was wearing a big flared blue gingham dress and sandals, and her soft blond hair hung down her back. She looked more like Alice in Wonderland than an expectant mother. Vanessa waved to her daddy as he went up the ramp, and a moment later the plane was high in the sky, and Teddy ushered them to the gate and drove them home. Serena took Vanessa upstairs for her nap, and came down a few minutes later, her eyes worried, her face strained, as it had been for days now.

“You okay?” She nodded, but she was strangely quiet, and then she decided to confide in Teddy.

“I'm so nervous, Teddy.”

He looked at her for a minute, wondering if he should tell her that he was too, but he decided against it. “I think he'll be fine.”

“But what if something happens?” Tears sprang to her eyes again and Teddy took her hand with an air of quiet confidence.

“He'll be fine. I just know it.”

But when the phone rang the next morning, Teddy had an eerie premonition as he sprang to answer it. He moved almost by reflex, as he did whenever he was called to the wards in school, but now as he held the phone he had a sudden urge to slam it down before he could hear anyone speak.

“Hello?”

“Is Mrs. Fullerton there?”

“She's still sleeping. May I help you?”

“Who is this?”

There was a pause. “Mr.—Doctor”—he smiled'—”Fullerton. I'm Colonel Fullerton's brother.” But the smile had already faded. He had a terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Doctor.” The voice sounded grave. “I'm afraid we have bad news.” Teddy held his breath. Oh, God … no.… But the voice went relentlessly on, as Teddy felt nausea overwhelm him. “Your brother has been killed. He was shot down north of Seoul early this morning. He was in Korea in an advisory capacity, but there was a mistake—”

“A mistake?” Teddy suddenly shouted. “A mistake! He was killed by mistake?” And then in terror, he lowered his voice.

“I'm terribly sorry. Someone will be coming out to see Mrs. Fullerton later.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Tears were pouring down his face and he could no longer speak.

“I know. I'm very sorry. They'll be bringing his body home for burial in a few days. We'll bury him here, with full military honors, at the Presidio. I imagine his family will want to come from back East.” They had just come for Teddy's graduation, and now they would be coming back for Brad's funeral. As the realization hit him Teddy slowly hung up and the tears began to roll down his face. He dropped his face into his hands and sobbed silently, thinking of the big brother he had always looked up to, and of Vanessa and Serena. And then as though he sensed something, he looked up and saw her standing in the doorway.

“Teddy?” She looked terribly pale and she stood very still, as though her whole body were tense and straining.

For a moment he didn't know what to do or say. It was not unlike the moments before he had delivered her baby. And now, as he had then, he pulled himself together, and walked quickly to where she stood, put his arms around her, and told her, “Serena … it's Brad …” He began to sob. His big brother was gone. The brother he loved so much. And now he had to tell Serena. “He's been killed.” Her whole body was tense and then he felt her slump against him.

“Oh, no …” She stared at Teddy in total disbelief. “Oh, no … Teddy … no.” He led her slowly to a chair and eased her into it as she stared at him. “No!” And suddenly she put her hands to her face and began to whimper, as Teddy knelt before her, tears streaming down his face as he held her. When she looked up at him again, he had never seen eyes so bleak. “I knew it… before he left… I felt it … and he wouldn't listen.” Sobs wracked her as they cried, and then suddenly he saw her stiffen as her eyes went to the doorway. He turned to see what she saw, and there, watching them, in her nightgown, was Vanessa.

“Where's Daddy?”

“He's still away, sweetheart.” Serena wiped her tears with her hands and held her arms out to her daughter. But as the child climbed onto her lap with a look of concern, Serena was overcome and Teddy couldn't bear to watch them.

“Why are you and Uncle Teddy crying?”

Serena thought for a long moment, her eyes flowing freely, with the child in her arms, and then she gently kissed Vanessa on the soft golden curls and looked at her with wisdom and sorrow. “We are crying, my darling, because we have just had some very sad news.” The child watched her mother with wide, trusting eyes. “And you're a big girl so I'm going to tell you.” She took a deep breath, and Teddy watched her. “Daddy isn't coming back from his trip, my darling.”

“Why not?” She looked shocked, as though they had just told her that Santa Claus was gone forever. And for Serena and Vanessa, he was now.

Serena steeled herself and attempted to speak calmly. “Because God decided that he wanted Daddy with Him. He needed Daddy as one of his angels.”

“Is Daddy an angel now?” Vanessa looked amazed.

“Yes.”

“Does he have wings?”

Serena smiled, as fresh tears sprang to her eyes. “I don't think so. But he's up in heaven with God, and he is with us all the time now.”

“Can I see him?” The child's eyes were enormous as she asked and Serena shook her head.

“No, my darling. But we will always remember him and love him.”

“But I want to see him!” She began to cry and Serena held her tight, thinking the same words … and they would never see him again … never … he was gone forever.

Later that morning several officials came to see her. They gave her all the details she didn't want, made a formal little speech about how he had died in the service of his country. They explained about the funeral and told her that she could stay at the Presidio for another thirty days after that, as Serena tried to understand what they said and felt that she understood nothing.

“Thirty days?” She looked at Teddy blankly. And then it dawned on her. The Presidio owned their home, and now she no longer belonged to the army. She would get a small pension, but that was all, she had to go out into the big world and learn to live like a civilian. Gone the protected little dream world of the forests of the Presidio, hanging over the bay, and being protected by her husband. It was all over for her now. And the real world was waiting out there to devour her. She remembered also, as did Teddy, the paper that her mother-in-law had made her sign at the very beginning, and by the next morning Teddy had discovered that his brother had died intestate. He had left no will, so that everything he had reverted to his family. There would be nothing for Serena, or Vanessa, or the new baby. The implication of what lay before her was so overwhelming that Serena lay awake for two nights, staring at the ceiling. He was gone … he was never coming back … Brad was dead. She repeated it to herself over and over and over. She opened the closet doors and saw his clothes there, there were even shirts in the cupboard downstairs that needed ironing. But he was never coming back to wear them, and as the realization hit her again, she knelt on the laundry room floor, clutching his shirts and sobbing. Teddy found her there and led her slowly upstairs, where they discovered Vanessa looking tiny and stricken, hiding in Brad's closet. She had climbed into Teddy's lap and with big sad eyes had asked him, “Now will you be my daddy?” They were all aching with the strain and the misery, and by the third day Teddy noticed a total change in Serena. She moved as though she were in a daze, not understanding, barely thinking, and suddenly midmorning he heard her give a shout of pain. Almost as if he sensed what had happened, Teddy ran in to find her in her bedroom. Her water had broken. She was already doubled over on the floor in unbearable pain. But this time was different from when she had had Vanessa. This time there were no breaks in the pains at all, and by the time she reached the hospital, she was hysterical. The baby had not come in half an hour. Teddy had run Vanessa to a neighbor, and he had watched Serena closely before the ambulance came, and on the ride to the hospital. This time her pulse was thready, her breathing tortured, her eyes glazed. She went into shock in the hospital, and an hour later her son was stillborn. Teddy sat in the waiting room for several hours until he could see her, and when he did, he was overwhelmed by those once emerald eyes, now a deep sea filled with pain. She was so deep in her own misery that she didn't even hear him call her name.

“Serena.” He reached for her hand. “I'm here.”

“Brad?” She turned glazed eyes toward him.

“No, it's Teddy.” Her eyes filled with tears and she turned her face away.

She was still like that the next morning, and two days later when they discharged her. And that morning they had to bury her son in a tiny white coffin, which they lowered slowly into the ground as she fainted. The next day they brought home Brad's body, and she had to go to headquarters and sign papers. Teddy thought she would never make it. But somehow she did, as she signed the forms with a look of horror that almost overwhelmed him.

And through it all there was Margaret Fullerton to contend with too. Serena had insisted on calling her herself, and there had been no scream of anguish from Brad's mother. There had been only unbridled fury and a sense of revenge, as she blamed Serena for what had happened. If he hadn't married her, he wouldn't have stayed in the army, and he would never have gone to Korea. With a voice trembling with rage she vented her grief by attempting to destroy Serena, and at last she reminded her venomously of their contract.

“And don't think you'll get a dime from me, for you or your child. I hope you both rot in hell for what you did to Bradford.” She slammed down the phone, and Serena cried unconsolably for two hours. And it was then that Teddy felt the same hatred for his mother that he knew Brad had. All he wanted to do was protect Serena, but there was nothing he could do to change what had happened. Brad was gone, leaving no will, and even if he had left one, it would have been small comfort to Serena. She wanted her husband back. She didn't want the money.

When Margaret Fullerton arrived from New York, she brought Pattie and Greg with her. Brad's father was still too ill to make the trip, and in any case, under doctor's advice, they hadn't told him the awful news.

Teddy picked up the threesome at the airport. His mother looked rigid and grim, Greg seemed in a haze, and Pattie nervously chatted on the way in from the airport. The only thing his mother said on the drive into town was “I don't want to see that woman.” Teddy felt his guts seethe.

“You're going to have to. She's been through enough without you torturing her further.”

“She killed my son.” Her eyes were filled with hatred. “Your son was killed in Korea on a military mission, for God's sake, and Serena just lost a baby.”

“Just as well. She couldn't have afforded to support it now anyway.”

“You make me sick.”

“You'd do well to stay away from her, Teddy, unless you want trouble with me.”

“I won't do that.” Nothing more was said and he left them at the hotel and went back to Serena.

At the funeral the next day Margaret stood with Pattie and Greg, and Teddy stood between Vanessa and Serena. Vanessa seemed not to understand what was going on, and her mother kept a clawlike grip on Teddy's hand throughout the military honors. At the end they handed her the folded flag, and slowly Serena turned, walked to where Margaret stood, and held it out, with trembling hands, to Brad's mother. There was a moment's hesitation as their eyes met and held, and then the older woman took it from her, saying not a single word of thanks. She handed it to Greg and then turned and walked away, her face concealed by a black veil as Serena watched her.

Teddy drove Serena and Vanessa home after that and he glanced at his sister-in-law as she blew her nose.

“Why did you do that?” She knew he meant the flag. “You didn't have to.”

“She's his mother.” Her eyes filled with tears as they met his, and suddenly she put her head on his shoulder and she sobbed. “Oh, God, what am I going to do without him?” He stopped the car and then took her in his arms and held her as Vanessa watched them.

30

“Serena?” He came up softly behind her as she sat in the fog in the garden, listening to the foghorns. In the past week she had become a kind of ghost—a haunted person. It was painful to see, as if she were slipping away.

“Yes?”

“You've got to be all right, Serena. You have to.”

“Why?” She looked at him blankly.

“For me, for yourself, for Vanessa …” His own eyes filled with tears. “For Brad.”

“Why?”

“Because you have to, dammit.” He wanted to shake her. “If you fall apart, what will happen to that child?”

“You'll take care of her, won't you?” She looked suddenly desperate, and with a sigh he nodded.

“Yes, but that's not the point. She needs you.”

“But will you?” Her eyes searched his face and they both remembered the paper. “If I die, will you take care of her?”

“You won't die.”

“I want to.”

He shook her then. “You can't.” And with that, they both heard a little voice from the doorway.

“Mommy, I need you.” She had had a bad dream, and at the sound of her voice Serena began to awake from hers. The following week Teddy helped Serena find an apartment, and she packed up all of their beautiful things and moved to Pacific Heights. It was a two-bedroom flat with a view of the bay, which she could just manage on her pension, and if they wanted to eat too, she realized that she was going to have to get a job.

“Maybe I should go downtown and start selling my body?” She looked cynically at Teddy and he did not look amused. But the thought, however sarcastic, sparked an idea for Serena, and the next day she went downtown and inquired at all the large department stores. By noon the next day she had been hired, and she returned to tell Teddy that she was employed. “I got a job today.”

“Doing what?” He worried about her all the time. She had been through so much, the loss of her husband, her baby, her home. How much could she stand? He asked himself that question often.

“As a model for seventy-five dollars a week.”

“And who will take care of your daughter?”

“I'll find someone.” There was a look of determination on her face as she said it. She refused to be beaten by life, no matter how hard it tried to defeat her. She had survived the loss of her parents, and the war. Now Brad. But she was determined to get through it. For Vanessa.

He shook his head. “I don't want you to do that. I want you to let me help you.” But she wouldn't. She had found a job, and she was going to support them. If it killed her, she was going to make it. She owed that much to Brad. It had been only three weeks since he had been killed in Korea, and now the United States was at war —it was as if her private war was becoming public.

She looked at Teddy now in sudden fear. “How soon are you going back to New York?” She knew he was due to start his internship in August and it was almost July. But he was shaking his head slowly.

“I'm not.”

“You're staying?” For a moment she looked thrilled.

“No.” He took a deep breath. He had been dreading telling her. “I enlisted in the Navy. I want to go to Korea.”

“What?” She screamed the word at him and unconsciously grabbed his shirt. “You can't do that! Not you too …” She began to sob quietly as she clutched him and he pulled her into his arms with tears in his own eyes.

“I have to. For him.” And for her, he thought to himself. To get away from the feelings he had that threatened to spill over at any moment.

“When do you leave?”

“A few days. A few weeks. Whenever they call me.”

“And what about us?” She looked suddenly terrified.

“You'll be all right.” He smiled at her through his tears. “Hell, you have a job.”

“Oh, Teddy, don't go.” She held him close to her, and nothing more was said, as they stood there, holding on to the last shreds of what was no more, and would never be again. Just as her childhood had ended as Mussolini's bullets had ripped into her parents long ago, now another era was over. She would never again be Brad's wife, never feel his arms around her. And now there wouldn't even be Teddy. They had all grown up. In three short weeks. The early days were over.

31

At six o'clock in the morning, on a foggy day in late July, Serena stood at the pier in Oakland, hugging Teddy for the last time. The weeks had flown by so quickly, she couldn't believe that he was already leaving. She had begged him to change his mind at first, and then finally she had accepted his decision. And it was obvious from the way things were going in Korea that sooner or later he would have to go. He had got a commission in the Navy, and would get his training as an intern somewhere in Korea. It certainly wasn't what they had been planning. But then again, ever since Brad's death what was?

For Serena the whole world had turned upside down in less than two months. Now she was a widow, alone with Vanessa, working. And as she looked at Teddy in his uniform she realized that the last human being she could depend on was going to be gone. She clung to him for a long moment, fighting back tears as she closed her eyes.

“Oh, God, Teddy … I wish you weren't going.”

“So do I.”

And then, trying to be a brave sister she smiled gamely. “But be a good kid and wear your galoshes, write to me on Sundays.…” And then in a hoarse whisper, “Don't forget us.…”

“Oh, Serena … don't say that!” He pressed her tightly against him, and anyone watching would have thought that she was saying good-bye to her husband, not her husband's brother, as he wiped the tears from her cheeks, hugged her again, and then stood back to look at her for a last time.

“I'll be back. Soon too. So you take care of yourself and Vanessa for me.” She nodded, the tears streaming from her eyes, as others hurried past them to board the ship that was to sail in an hour. God, how he wanted to stay with her, he thought to himself as he looked at her. Yet he knew that he had to go. It was something that he had to do for himself and his brother, no matter what anyone said. His mother had flown out from New York in a fury, threatening to pull strings, use connections, and get him kicked out of the service. But he was so vehement about his decision that in the end even she capitulated. One had to respect his motives and his way of thinking. What was terrifying was the possibility that he might be killed.

Serena tried not to think about it as she reached out to touch him just one last time. They had an extraordinary bond between them, had had from the beginning, and it had strengthened when he had delivered Vanessa. But in the past two months there had been something more, being with Teddy was like holding on to a part of Brad. It allowed her to hold on to him in some distant, melancholy way. And now she was losing Teddy too. But hopefully not forever.

“Serena …” He started to say something, and then stopped as the boat horn sounded, blotting out everything else that anyone said. It bleated three more times, and a gong sounded. It was time to go, and Serena felt a rush of panic, as he grabbed her, pulled her toward him, and held her tight. “I'll be back. Just know that.”

“I love you.” Her eyes filled with tears and she shouted it in his ear as she clung to him. He nodded, picked up his bag, and moved onto the ship with the others. It was several minutes before she saw him again, standing high above her, on the deck, waving slowly, and she couldn't fight back the tears. They streamed down her face unrestrained, until at last the horns bleated again, in concert with the foghorns in the distance, and the ship began to pull out slowly. She felt as though it were pulling her heart with it, and when the ship was swallowed up entirely by the fog, she turned away slowly and went back to her car with her head down, and tears still pouring from her eyes.

When she returned to San Francisco, Vanessa was waiting with a baby-sitter and she wanted to know how soon Uncle Teddy was coming home. It took all of the strength that Serena could muster to explain to her again that Teddy would be gone for a long time, but he would come back to them as soon as he could. They had a lot of nice things to do together, Serena encouraged, like going to the zoo, and the rose gardens in the park, the Japanese tea garden, the circus when it came to town … but before she could finish, there were tears in her eyes again and she was holding her daughter and squeezing her tight.

“Will he be like Daddy and never come back?” Vanessa's eyes were huge in her grief-filled face and Serena shuddered at the thought.

“No! Uncle Teddy will be back! I told you that.” She wanted to shout at the child for voicing the terrors she was wrestling with herself. But Serena's voice trembled as she said it, and as she had a thousand times in the past weeks, she found herself longing to turn back the clock. If only she could close her eyes and go back to the days she had shared with Brad, of knowing that he would protect her, that he would be there for her… back to the golden days they had shared at the Presidio … or in Paris … or the first days in Rome. Weeks ago she had written to Marcella, to tell her the news. And the answer, dictated to one of the new maids who worked under her, had been desolate. She offered Serena her sympathy as well as her prayers. But she needed more than that now. She needed someone there to hold her hand, to reassure her that she would make it.

There were times in the ensuing months when she really wondered if she would survive. Months when she could barely pay the rent, when bills were overdue, when they ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or only eggs. She had never known this kind of poverty before. During the war the nuns had kept her safe, and at the palazzo in Rome after that, she and Marcella had been well provided for, but now there was no one to turn to, no one to help her, no one to lend her money when she only had two dollars left and wouldn't get paid for another three days. Time and again she thought of the agreement she had signed with Margaret Fullerton. If she had never been forced to sign that damned piece of paper, at least she and Vanessa would have been able to eat. Vanessa would have had pretty clothes to wear and more than just one beat-up pair of little shoes. Once, in desperation, she almost turned to them for help, but she couldn't, and in her heart of hearts she knew it wouldn't have done any good. Margaret Fullerton was so vehement and irrational in her hatred of Serena that there was nothing Serena could say or do to change her mind. It was a hatred so broad and deep that it even reached out to envelop Vanessa, her only grandchild. Margaret didn't give a damn if they did starve. Serena suspected that she probably hoped they would.

Only the joy of finding Vanessa at the end of a day kept her going. Only the letters from Teddy warmed her heart. Only the money from her modeling at the department store kept them alive. There were days when she thought she would drop from exhaustion and when she wanted to cry with despair. But day after day, six days a week, she went downtown to model, to wander around the floors in the latest creations, to hand out perfume samples, to stand near the front door in a striking fur coat, to model in the fashion shows when they had them. It wasn't until the second year that she was promoted to the designer salon. And then she modeled for special customers, or in the big shows. She wore only their finest designer dresses from New York or Paris, and she was rapidly learning the tricks of her trade, how to do her hair in half a dozen flattering styles, how to do her makeup to perfection, how to move, how to smile, how to sell the clothes just by weaving a kind of spell. And whereas she was beautiful before, with the new skills she was learning, she was even more remarkable looking than she had been before. People talked about her in the store, and often people stared at her. The women customers looked at her in envy, but more often with a kind of fascination, as though she were a work of art. Their husbands stared at Serena, utterly awed by her beauty, and it wasn't long before the store's advertising agency saw her, and they made her their main model for the store. Every week her photograph was in the papers, and by the end of her second year at the store people began to recognize her around town. Men asked her out. She got invited to parties by relative strangers, but her answer was always the same. Without exception she declined. Her only interest was in returning home to Vanessa, to play with the little golden-haired child who looked so much like B.J., to sing silly songs with her at the little piano Serena had bought at an auction, to read her stories, and to share their dreams. Serena told her that one day she would be a beautiful, famous lady.…

“Like you, Mommy?”

Serena smiled. “No, much prettier than I am, silly. Everyone will stop to stare at you in the street, and you will be successful and happy.” Serena would stare into space for a moment, thinking of her own dreams. Was that what she wanted? To be stared at? To be successful? For her, modeling had been the only answer, but it was a strange life, making her living by how she looked, and often she felt foolish and unimportant, like the mannequin she literally was. But none of that mattered—she couldn't afford to have doubts about it. She had to survive.

It was a painfully empty life. She had the child, and her work, and their apartment. But other than that, she had nothing at all. No man, no friends, no one to talk to or to turn to. There seemed to be no room in her life for anyone but the child. And at night she would sit and read, or write letters to Teddy. They took weeks to reach him in the distant outposts of Korea. He was a resident now, and wrote to her long sorrowful letters about what he thought of the war. To him, it all seemed a senseless carnage, a war they couldn't win and didn't belong in, and he longed to come home or be transferred to Japan. There were times when she would read his letters over and over, holding them in her hand, and then staring out at the bay, remembering his face the day she had met him … the way he had looked in his cutaway at Greg's wedding … the day he had delivered Vanessa … at his graduation at Stanford. It was odd how often now, in her mind, she confused his face with her husband's. It was as though over the past two and a half years they had got confused in her mind.

And on their third Christmas alone Serena and Vanessa went to church and prayed for his safety, as they did each Sunday, and that night Serena lay in her bed and cried. She was aching with loneliness and exhaustion, from the years alone, the endless hours of hard work at the store, and all that she poured out to Vanessa. It was as though she had to give it all, and there was no one to replenish her strength for her. Week after week she waited anxiously for Teddy's letters. They were what kept her going. It was in writing to him that she poured out her own soul. In a sense it was her only real contact with a grown-up, and her only contact with a man.

At work she spoke to almost no one. Word had got out at one point that she had been an Italian princess before her marriage to an American soldier, and everyone decided that she was arrogant and aloof, and they were frightened by her beauty. After a while no one even tried to make friends with her. They had no way of knowing how lonely she was behind the cool facade of the princess. Only Teddy knew when he read her letters, her pain and loneliness and the still-fresh grief for her husband were obvious between the lines.

“It's amazing to see,” she wrote to him after Christmas, “how they all misunderstand me. They think me cold and snobbish, I suppose, and I let them. It's easier, and safer perhaps, than allowing them to know how much I hurt inside.” She still missed Brad, but it was more than that now. She missed someone. Someone to talk to and to share with and to laugh with, and go for walks on the beach with. She couldn't bear to do the things she had done with Brad, or even with Teddy, they only made her feel more lonely, and reminded her of how alone she was. “I feel at times as though this will go on forever. I will always be alone, here, with Vanessa, night after night and year after year, in this apartment, working at the store, and no one will ever know me. It frightens me sometimes, Teddy. It is as though you are the only one left who has truly known me.…”

There was of course Marcella, but it had been years since she had seen her, and Marcella was part of another life now. The letters that she dictated to someone else to be sent to Serena were always stilted and awkward, and left an empty chasm there too. In effect there was only Teddy, thousands of miles away in Korea, and it was only in the last few months of the war that they both began to realize what had happened. After two and a half years of writing letters, baring their souls to each other, holding each other up across the miles, she finally understood why there had been no one in almost three years. She was waiting for him.

The morning that she heard the news that the war was over, she was working at the store, and wearing a black velvet evening suit with a stiff white organdy collar, and she stood in the middle of the designer salon with tears streaming down her face.

A saleswoman smiled at her, and others chattered excitedly among them. The war in Korea was over! And Serena wanted to give a whoop of joy. “He's coming home,” she whispered, but someone overheard her. “He's coming home!”

“Your husband?” someone asked.

“No.” She shook her head slowly, with a look of amazement on her face. “His brother.” The woman looked at her strangely and Serena suddenly knew that an important question was about to be answered. When the years of letters suddenly ended, what would Teddy be to her?

32

Teddy returned from the Far East on August 3, and as he set foot on land in San Francisco, he was officially discharged from the Navy. His residency had been completed in the heat of the war, he was trained as a surgeon, as few had been in the States, and he was on his way to New York to train for another year with a great surgeon. But none of that was on his mind as he stepped off the plane at the airport. His blond hair glinted in the sunlight, his face was tanned, and he squinted at the horde of people waiting. How different it was from the day he had left on the ship in Oakland. And how different he felt. He had been gone for three years, and he had just turned thirty.

And he felt as though in three years of war everything about him had changed. His interests, his needs, his priorities, his values. On the long flight over from Japan he had wondered again and again how he was going to fit in. For almost three years he hadn't seen his family. His mother's letters had been newsy, but he had always felt light-years away from home. Greg had only managed one or two letters a year. His father had died the year before. And most of his friends had eventually stopped writing, except Serena. His main contact with civilization had been with her, and now suddenly he was back, in the midst of a world no longer familiar, looking for a woman he hadn't seen in three years.

His eyes searched the crowd, and he wandered slowly toward where the visitors were gathered. Signs waved, bunches of flowers were held aloft, tears streamed down faces, frantic hands reached out to husbands and sons and lovers who had been gone for years. And then suddenly he saw her, so staggeringly beautiful that he felt his heart lurch. She stood very tall, and wide eyed and quiet, in a red silk dress that hung straight and narrow on her body, with her silky blond hair loose on her shoulders, and the emerald-green eyes looking straight at him. Like her, he was oddly silent, there were no wild gestures, no running, he just walked steadily toward her, and then as though they both knew, he pulled her into his arms and held her with all his might, as tears ran down both their cheeks, and then forgetting the years that had drifted between them, he kissed her full on the mouth, as though to ease away all the years of loneliness and pain. They held each other that way for long moments, and then at last pulled apart and looked at each other, but her eyes were full and sad as they reached up to his. Teddy had come to her, she knew now, but Brad never would. It was as though in the past three years, waiting for his return, she had fooled herself that it was Brad in Korea and not Teddy. But she understood now, almost like a physical blow, that her husband was lost forever. In all the years of letters it had been as though she were reaching out to Brad as well as Teddy. The two men had somehow merged as one in her mind. And now she had to face the truth again, as her heart plummeted within her and she tried not to let her grief show in her face.

“Hello, Serena.”

She smiled now, over the first shock, and then simultaneously they both looked down at the little girl beside her. It was here that they both saw the three lost years most clearly. Vanessa was almost seven, and she had been three and a half when Teddy left.

“Good Lord, princess!” He knelt down in the hubbub to talk to Vanessa. His eyes were a bright dancing blue, and his face lit up in a gentle smile. “I'll bet you don't remember your uncle Teddy.”

“Yes, I do.” She tilted her head to one side, and when she smiled, he saw that both her front teeth were missing. “Mommy showed me your picture every night. Yours and my daddy's, but he's not coming home too. Mommy told me. Just you.”

“That's right.” A little knife of pain cut through both Serena and Teddy at once, but he was still smiling at the little girl. “I sure have missed you.” She nodded seriously as she looked him over.

“Are you really a doctor?” She looked worried as he nodded. “Are you going to give me a shot?” He chuckled and shook his head as he lifted her up to his shoulder.

“I certainly am not. How about an ice cream cone instead?”

“Oh, boy!” They began drifting through the crowd toward the main terminal. He had to pick up his bag, and then they could be on their way, back to the apartment he had helped her find before he left, to the place he had remembered every night and day as he sat in the jungles of Korea, remembering Serena's face. And now, as he glanced at her, he saw that she had changed. He didn't say anything to her about it until they were back in the apartment on Washington Street, and they were sitting in the living room together, drinking coffee and looking out at the bay.

He eyed her for a long searching moment, seeing the sadness still there, and the seriousness, and at the same time something tender, and he reached gently for her hand as he set down his cup. “You've grown up, Serena.”

“I hope so.” She smiled at him. “I'm twenty-seven now.”

“That doesn't matter. Some people never make it.”

“I've had a lot of reason to grow up, Teddy.” She looked toward the other room, to where Vanessa was playing, and then back at him. “So have you.”

He nodded slowly, remembering things he didn't even want to. “Sometimes I didn't think any of us would survive it.” And then he forced a smile. “But we did. And I suppose the experience will be worth something.” And then, seeing all that was in her face, and unable to restrain himself from asking, “You still miss him, don't you?”

She nodded. “Yes, I missed you both.”

“And you only got one of us back.” He looked at her strangely as he said it. He had understood everything he had seen in her face when he first saw her at the gate. “Maybe it never sinks in that someone isn't coming home. I don't know.” He shook his head. “At times I'd wonder for a minute when I'd get a letter from you why there was no news of Brad, and then I'd remember.”

She nodded understanding. “He had only been dead for two months when you left. I don't think either of us had had time to absorb it.” And she knew now more than ever how true that was.

“I know.” He looked at her searchingly. “And now?” He was asking her a serious question and she knew it.

“I think maybe today I finally understood.” She sighed softly. “In a way I've hidden from the truth a lot. All I've done is work and take care of Vanessa.” He knew that from her letters.

“At twenty-seven, that isn't much of a life.” And then, with a gentle smile, “You know, you look different.”

She seemed surprised. “Were you disappointed?” But at this Teddy laughed and shook his head.

“Oh, Serena … haven't you looked in the mirror in the last three years?”

This time she laughed at him. “Too much! That's all I've done.”

“Well, whatever you've done, you're even more beautiful than you were when I left here.”

She squinted at him in amusement. “Has the war perhaps affected your eyesight, Lieutenant?” But they both laughed together.

“No, princess, it hasn't. You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. And I thought that was true when I first met you in New York.”

“Ah.” She waved a disparaging hand at him. “Now it's all fakery and makeup.”

“No.” It was something more. Something difficult to describe. Something in her face, in her eyes, in her soul. It was maturity and gentleness, wisdom and suffering, and all of the love that she had lavished on Vanessa. It was something more that she had become in addition to her physical beauty. It was something that made one want to stare at her, something one sensed as well as saw. He looked at her then and asked her a question. “Serena, are you serious about modeling?” He had never given it a thought in all the years in Korea. He just assumed that it was something she did to pay the rent. But now that he saw her, the way her bones had begun to stand out, the way she looked, the way she did her hair and her face, the way she moved now, he knew that if she wanted to she could have a tremendous career. It was the first time the thought struck him, as they sat on the couch. But Serena only shrugged.

“I don't know, Teddy. I don't really think so.” She smiled and looked like a very young girl again. “Why would I want to do that? Except maybe to pay the rent.” That was still a month-to-month struggle for her. Even now.

“Because you're so beautiful, and you could make a lot of money.” He looked pointedly at her. “And since you won't take anything from me, it might be a thought. Have you thought at all about going to New York to model?” She had said nothing about it in her letters, but now he wondered, and he began to like the idea more and more, not for entirely unselfish reasons.

“I don't know. The thought of New York scares me.” She looked worried. “I might not be able to find work in New York.” And yet it was an appealing prospect and maybe a way to make more money than she had in the last three years.

“Are you kidding, Serena?” He took her by the hand and walked her to the mirror. “Look at that, love.” She looked embarrassed and she blushed as she glanced at herself and the handsome blond man standing behind her. “That face would find work as a model anywhere in the world. Principessa Serena … The Princess …”As they stared at her together he suddenly realized that something magical was happening, as though they were seeing each other for the first time.

“Teddy, no … come on.…” She pulled from the mirror, embarrassed, and he turned her slowly to face him, and kissed her, and when he did, he was suddenly overwhelmed with desire for this woman he had secretly loved for seven years. But just as he was about. to touch the beautiful body, he felt her stiffen in his arms, and he made himself stop.

“Serena … I'm sorry …”He looked suddenly deathly pale, and he could feel his whole body tremble. “It's been a long time … and—” He faltered, and she took his face gently in her hands, her eyes filled with tears.

“Stop it, Teddy. You have nothing to be sorry about. I knew this was coming. We both did. We've been pouring our souls out to each other for three years.” And then she dropped her hands from his face, hugged him close, and nestled her face in his shoulder. “I love you as a brother, Teddy. I always have. I was wrong in thinking that there could be something more. For the last year I'd begun to wonder, without really admitting it to myself, but I was hoping that you could come home and”—she choked on her tears —”replace … him.” She felt guilty even saying it, and she pulled away from Teddy at last. “It's not fair to expect that of you. It's just not the same thing. It's funny.” She smiled through her tears. “You're so much like him, but you're you. And I love you, but I love you as a sister, not as a woman, or a lover, or a wife.” They were cruel words and they hit him like rocks. But they were words he needed to hear. He had deluded himself for too many years.

She was watching him closely and he took a deep breath and looked at her with gentle eyes. “It's all right, Serena. I understand.”

“Do you?” She was quiet and firm and more beautiful than he had ever seen her, as she stood before him in her narrow silk dress. “Do you hate me for not being able to give you more?”

“I could never hate you. I love you too much. And I respect you too much.”

“For what?” Her eyes were empty and sad. “What have I done to deserve that?”

“You've survived!—under rotten circumstances, thanks to my mother—you're a terrific mother to Vanessa, you've knocked yourself out working and supporting her. You're an amazing woman, Serena.”

“I don't feel amazing.” She gazed at him with enormous eyes. “I feel sad. Sad at what I can't be to you.”

“So do I. But maybe it's better this way.” He hugged her again, praying that his desire for her wouldn't betray him. He pulled away again after a minute. “Just promise me one thing, when you fall in love again one day, and you will, make sure he's a terrific

guy.”

“Teddy!” She laughed and the agony of the past half hour began to lighten a little. “What a thing to say!”

“I mean it.” And he looked as though he did. “You deserve the best there is. And you need a man in your life.” He knew from what she had told him in her letters of her celibate life just how long it had been.

“I don't need a man.” She was smiling now.

“Why not?”

“Because I have the best brother in the world.” She slipped an arm around his waist and kissed his cheek. “You.” And as he felt her next to him he felt his whole body tingle, but they had come a long way from the past in a few hours and now he knew where he stood.

33

The next day Serena had to go to work, and instead of leaving Vanessa with the sitter, she left her with Teddy, and after lunch they came to visit her at work. They found her on the second floor, in a magnificent lilac taffeta ballgown, and as they got off the elevator Teddy saw her, and he stopped for a moment just to watch her, as he caught his breath. What a magnificent woman she had become in his absence. She had grown into her full promise and more. Even Vanessa seemed to sense something remarkable in her mother and she looked at her with awe. Serena looked like someone in a priceless painting as she swept into a chair and held out her arms in opera-length white kid gloves.

“Hi, sweetheart. Oh, you look so pretty!” Teddy had dressed her in a blue organdy dress and black patent-leather shoes with white knee socks and a blue satin ribbon in her silky blond hair. And then Serena's eyes found Teddy. “Hello.” She smiled. “How are you managing?” “I'm loving it.” And then as Vanessa wandered away for a moment, his eyes held her close to him for just a fraction of a second, and then the brotherly look came back to his eyes. “What are you and Vanessa doing this afternoon?” “Going out for ice cream. I told her I'd take her to the zoo tomorrow.” “Don't you want some time for yourself?” She looked troubled. What would they do when he was gone? But perhaps he would come out and visit. They had talked about it this morning over breakfast, but everything but the present seemed very remote. “I'll be home at five thirty. I'll take over then.”

He chuckled softly. “Seeing you in that outfit, I can't imagine you doing anything except maybe going to the opera.”

“Not exactly, love.” She grinned at him. “I have to do the laundry tonight. This is all make-believe.”

“You could have fooled me.” He laughed softly, still somewhat in awe of her looks. And as he gazed at her Vanessa came scampering back to show her the lollipop one of the saleswomen had given her.

“And now we're going out for ice cream!” She looked happily at Teddy.

“I know all about it. Have a good time, you two.” It was an odd feeling, watching them leave hand in hand. She always felt so terribly responsible for Vanessa, as though there were no one who could ever take her place, but as she watched the child with her uncle, she suddenly felt as though she could relax. If something had happened to her at that very moment, Vanessa would have been safe and well cared for. Just knowing that took a thousand-pound weight off her back.

That night the three of them cooked spaghetti, and Teddy read Vanessa stories in bed, while Serena cleaned up. She wore slacks and a black turtleneck sweater, her hair wound high on her head, and she looked very different from the magical creature who had worn the lilac taffeta ballgown only that afternoon, as Teddy mentioned with a grin when she came in and told them that it was time to turn off the lights.

“You know, I was serious last night when I asked you about your modeling.” He looked at her intently as she finished up in the kitchen and he munched a handful of grapes. “You have the makings of a great model, Serena. I don't know a damn thing about the business, but I know what you look like, and there's nothing like it in this country. I bought some magazines when I was out with Vanessa today.” He pulled them out of a bag on one of the kitchen chairs and showed her, flipping through them. “Look at that … baby, there's no one like you.”

“Maybe they like it like that.” She refused to take him seriously. “Look, Teddy.” She looked almost amused at his faith in her. “I got lucky, I got a job here at the store, they use me a lot because they need me and I look all right in their clothes. But this is a small town, this is not like New York, or where there's a lot of competition. If I went to New York, they'd probably laugh in my face.”

“Do you want to try it?” He looked intrigued at the idea, and Serena shrugged.

“I don't know. I have to think about it.” But her eyes had begun to light up, and men she looked at Teddy seriously for a moment. “I don't want you to pay my way to New York though.”

“Why not?”

“I don't take charity.”

“How about justice?” He looked annoyed. “I'm living off your money, you know.”

“How do you figure that?”

“If my brother had had enough sense to make a will, you'd have got his money and none of this would even be an issue. Instead, thanks to my charming mother, it reverted to his brothers. I got half of Brad's money, Serena, and in truth it belongs to you.”

She shook her head firmly. “If it belongs to anyone, then maybe Vanessa.” Her eyes lifted to his. “So when you make a will, perhaps one day …”She hated to say the words, but he nodded.

“I did that before I went to Korea, because you were so damn stubborn you didn't take anything from me.”

“I'm not your responsibility, Teddy.”

He looked at her soberly. “I wish to hell you were.” But she didn't answer. There was no question of that. She would never have accepted anything from him.

She was independent now, and intent on taking care of herself and her own. “Why don't you ever let me help you?”

Her eyes were serious as she answered. “Because I have to take care of myself and Vanessa, there's no one else who's going to be there for us all the time, Teddy. You have your own life. You don't owe us anything. Nothing. The only person I ever counted on was Brad, and now that's over, he's gone.”

“And you don't think that anyone will ever take his place?” It hurt him to ask her the question, especially after what had happened between them the night before.

“I don't know.” And then she sighed softly. “But I do know one thing, and that is that no matter how much I may love you or need you, Teddy, I will never let myself be dependent on you.”

“But why? Brad would have wanted you to.”

“He knew me better than that, scrubbing floors in my parents' palazzo. Besides, I made a deal with your mother.”

Teddy's eyes were instantly angry. “A deal that cost her nothing and has cost you three years of hard work.”

“I don't mind that. It's been for Vanessa.”

“And what about you? Don't you have a right to more than that?”

“If I want more, I'll get it for myself.”

He sighed then. “You don't suppose you'll ever get smart and marry me, will you?”

“No.” She smiled gently at him. “Besides, I tore one Fullerton away from his family”—her eyes clouded as she said it—”I couldn't do that to you too.” And it was unlikely that Margaret Fullerton would ever let her. She'd see Serena dead first. And Serena knew it.

“You know, what my mother has done to you makes me sick, Serena.” His face was sad and serious as he spoke to her.

“It doesn't matter anymore.”

“Yes, it does, who are you kidding? And one day it could matter a lot to Vanessa.”

Neither of them spoke for a long moment. And then Serena looked at him with worried eyes. “If I go to New York, do you think she'll come after me?”

“What do you mean?” He looked shocked.

“I'm not sure. Drive me away somehow, hurt my career if she can … do you think she would?”

He wanted to say no, but as he thought of it he wasn't certain.

“I wouldn't let that happen.”

“You have your own life, and God only knows how she'd do it.”

“She's not that powerful, for chrissake.”

“Isn't she?” Serena looked at him pointedly, knowing full well just how vengeful his mother was.

And softly Teddy whispered. “I wish to hell she weren't.” But she was. They both knew she was.

34

“You'll write to me?” Her eyes were bright with tears, but she was smiling, and he kissed her for a last time.

“Better than that, I'll call you. And I'll come out to visit you both as soon as I can get away.”

Serena nodded, and Teddy reached out once more to Vanessa. “Take care of your mommy for me, princess.”

“I will, Uncle Teddy.” And then with a sad little wail, “Why can't we come too?” His eyes instantly sought Serena's, and she felt as though there were lead weights in her heart. For Vanessa it was like losing the past all over again. And more than that, Teddy had once again become an important part of her present.

They kissed him one last time, and a moment later he boarded the plane, and Serena and Vanessa stood at the airport, waving at the plane as it took off down the runway and then, hand in hand, they went home, feeling as though a part of their souls had left them.

He called them from New York a few days later, and reported that all was well. He was starting work at the hospital in a few days. He was going to be working with one of the country's leading surgeons, polishing up what he had learned in Korea. He mentioned in passing that he had contacted the wife of an old friend, because she worked in a modeling agency. He had hand-delivered Serena's photographs the previous morning, and he'd let her know what the response was as soon as he heard himself. But after the phone call Serena felt an ever greater void than she had before she spoke to him. It was almost a physical ache as she thought of how far away he was and how long it might be before she saw him again. And aside from Vanessa he was the only family she had.

But four days later he called her. He was laughing and excited and almost stammering into the phone as she tried to sift out what had happened. He sounded as though he had won the Irish Sweepstakes.

“They want you! They want you!”

“Who wants me?” She was still confused as she stared at the phone.

“The agency! Where I took your pictures!”

“What do you mean, they want me?” She suddenly felt a thrill of excitement race through her.

“I mean they want you to come to New York. They want to represent you. They already know of half a dozen potential jobs they would send you out for, just for a start.”

“But that's crazy!”

“No, it isn't, dammit. You are. Serena, you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and you're out there hiding in some damn department store. If you want to be a model, for chrissake, then come to New York and really be one! Will you come?”

“I don't know … I have to think … the apartment … Vanessa …” But she was laughing and smiling, and her head felt all in a whirl.

“School hasn't started yet, this is only August. We'll get Vanessa into a school here.”

“But I don't know if I can afford it.” She felt equal parts of excitement and terror. “I'll call you back. I have to think.” She sat staring in amazement at the bay outside her windows. Modeling in New York … “the big time,” she grinned to herself … why not? But then suddenly once again she grew frightened. She couldn't. It was crazy. But then again so was sitting in San Francisco, leading no life at all, going to work every day. But what if the Fullertons harassed her? Or was Teddy right? Maybe she should take a chance on going, no matter what. She was still mulling it over the next morning when he called again.

“All right. You've had all night. When are you coming?”

“Teddy, stop pushing!” But she was laughing as she looked at the phone. Still, deep inside she knew that she was resisting.

“If I don't push you, you'll never get off your ass to do it.”

He was right and they both knew it. “Why are you doing this to me?” The fear in her voice was easy to hear now.

He paused for a moment and then answered. “I'm doing it for two reasons. Because I want you here, and also because I think you could have a terrific career.”

“I don't know, Teddy. I have to think about it.”

“Serena, what in the hell is the problem?” And then as he waited he instinctively knew before she told him. It wasn't just San Francisco, it was Brad. “It's Brad, isn't it? You feel close to him there.”

That was exactly it. He had just delved to the heart of the problem. “Yes.” It was a single anguished word. “It's as though when I leave here I'll finally leave him.” Tears sprang to her eyes as she said the words, and at his end Teddy signed.

“Serena, he's already gone. You have to think of yourself.”

“I am.”

“No, you're not. You're hanging on to the city where you lived with him. I understand it. But it's a lousy reason to give up a career. What do you think he'd say?”

“To go.” She didn't hesitate for a second. “But that's not so easy to do.”

“I'm sure it isn't.” His heart went out to her again. “But maybe you have to force yourself to do it.”

“I'll think about it.” It was all he could get out of her that day, and late that night she lay in bed, thinking over every possible aspect of the decision. On the one hand she was dying to go, on the other it tore at her heart to leave San Francisco. She was safe there and she had lived there with him, but how long could she hold on to a ghost? She was well on her way to doing it for a lifetime and she knew it. There had been no men in her life for three years, and her entire existence centered around Vanessa. In New York she'd have a chance for a whole new life now. As she lay awake at 5 A.M., thinking it all out, she felt gripped by a surge of excitement, and suddenly she turned over in bed, reached for the phone, and called Teddy. It was 8 A.M. in New York, and he was standing in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee.

“Well?” He smiled when he heard her voice.

She closed her eyes tight in the darkness of her room, held her breath for an instant, and then let it out with a whoosh. “I'm coming.”

35

The apartment that Teddy found her in New York was tiny. She had given him the limit of what she could afford, and he had come as close to it as possible without finding something absolutely god-awful. He had found her a tiny one-bedroom walk-up on East Sixty-third Street between Lexington and Third. The neighborhood was halfway decent, the Third Avenue elevated train still trundled by at frequent intervals, but Lexington Avenue was fairly pleasant, and Park Avenue, only a block west, was lovely. The apartment itself faced south and was bright and sunny, the bedroom was very small, but the living room was pleasant.

When Serena saw the apartment, she was enchanted. The furniture was simple and unpretentious, freshly painted white wicker chairs, a bright hooked rug, bright prints on the walls, and a handsome quilt on Vanessa's bed, which she later discovered was a present from Teddy. It looked like a cozy guest apartment in someone's house, instead of an entire apartment. The kitchen was barely bigger than a closet, but it was furnished with just enough pots and pans to put a meal together for herself arid Vanessa, and as she closed the last cupboard and looked around, she looked at Teddy with a delighted smile and clapped her hands like a child. Vanessa was already busy with the dollhouse from Uncle Teddy.

“Teddy, it's wonderful! I like it even better than our apartment in San Francisco.”

He smiled at her apologetically. “I wouldn't exactly compare the view.” He peered out at the other narrow buildings crowded onto Sixty-third Street, and could well imagine it all with snow and slush and soot in a few months. He turned around to face her then, with a gentle look in his eyes. “Serena, I'm glad you're here.” He knew that for her it had been an act of enormous trust. What if she didn't find work here? What if he had been wrong? There was no certain knowing.

“I'm-glad too. Frightened out of my wits,” she said, smiling, “but happy.” The very tempo of the town had filled her with excitement on the way in from the airport.

He spent the rest of the evening explaining to her how to get around the city, what was where, where not to go, and what were the safest areas. And the more she listened, the more she liked it. She had to go to the agency for her first interview the next day, and she was so excited, she could barely stand it.

When Serena appeared at the Kerr Agency the next morning, she was startled at what she found there, gone were the easygoing, relaxed people she had run into modeling in San Francisco. Here everything was business, it was quick-fire, high pressure, rushed, and hurried, and there was no fooling around. No casual air surrounded this business, it was an office filled with well-dressed, well-made-up women sitting at desks, speaking on phones with stacks of composites piled up before them, file cards referring to jobs pinned up on boards in front of them, and telephones ringing every time one turned around. Serena was ushered to one of the desks in a businesslike way, and she found herself being looked over by an attractive dark-haired woman. The woman at the desk was wearing a crisp beige wool suit, a matching silk shirt, her hair was impeccably combed in a shoulder-length pageboy, and hanging over the silk blouse was a thick rope of pearls.

“I saw your photographs a few weeks ago,” she told Serena. “You're going to need new ones, probably a whole book, and a composite.” Serena nodded dumbly, feeling terribly stupid and almost too inarticulate to speak. “Have you got anyone who can do that?” With wide eyes she shook her head. She had worn a pale blue sweater, a gray skirt, a simple navy-blue cashmere blazer she had bought at the store in San Francisco, and her long graceful legs seemed endless as she crossed them and the woman noticed the black Dior pumps. Her hair was carefully knotted, and in each ear she had worn a simple pearl. She looked more like she was going to tea with a friend in San Francisco than going to a modeling interview in New York. But she was so nervous about what to wear that she had decided to dress simply. Whatever she had on they probably wouldn't like anyway, so what the hell. She had gone to the interview almost rigid with fear, and now she sat staring at this woman, wondering what she was thinking of her. Probably they would never use her, Teddy had been crazy. Whatever made her think that she could model in New York? But the woman in the beige suit was nodding, and wrote down a name on a card that she handed across the desk. “Make an appointment with this photographer, put the photographs of your past jobs in order, get your hair cut, have your nails done a deep red, and come back to see me in a week.” Serena sat there staring at her, wondering if there was really any point, and as though the woman could see what she was thinking, she smiled at her. “It'll be all right, you know. Everyone's nervous at first. It's not the same here as it was in San Francisco. You're from out there?” She suddenly looked kindly and interested, and Serena tried desperately not to seem so ill at ease.

“I've been living there for seven years.”

“That is a long time.” And then she cocked her head, as though hearing an accent. “Where were you from before that?”

“Oh,” Serena sighed, feeling uncomfortable, “that's a long story. My husband and I moved there from Paris. We were in Rome before that. I'm Italian.” The woman's eyebrows raised.

“Was he Italian too?”

“No, American.” She almost said facetiously that she was a war bride, but there was no reason to be nasty to this woman. She seemed genuinely interested in Serena.

“Is that why you speak such good English?”

Serena shook her head slowly. In two minutes this woman had got more out of her than anyone had in years. In the years she was married to Brad, she was so wrapped up in him and Vanessa and Teddy that she had made no close friends on the base, and afterward, when she was modeling, there was no room in her life for anyone but her child. And now suddenly this woman had extracted much of her life story. There was nothing left to tell her except the nightmare of losing her parents to Mussolini and how her husband had died. But she still had the woman's question to answer. “I was here during the war. My family sent me over.”

The woman seemed to be calculating something as she looked down at Serena's file card again. “What was your name again?”

“Serena Fullerton.”

The other woman smiled. “It sounds too English. Couldn't we make it more exotic? What was it before you got married?”

Serena looked at her hesitantly. “Serena di San Tibaldo.” She said it with the full lilt of the Italian.

“That's lovely.…” She grew pensive. “But it's so long…” She looked up at Serena hopefully. “Did you have a title?” It was an odd question to ask, but she was in the business of selling people, beautiful faces with exotic names. Tallulah. Zina. Zorra. Phaedra. This was not a business for Nancy or Mary or Jane. She looked at Serena expectantly, as Serena seemed to hold back.

“I … no … I …” And then she suddenly thought what the hell, what difference did it make? Who cared anymore? There was no one to be shocked or raise an eyebrow or object. Her whole family was dead, and if a title mattered so much, why not give them hers? If it meant that much more money for her and Vanessa, so what? “Yes.” The woman's eyes narrowed, wondering if Serena was telling the truth. “Principessa.”

“Princess?” The woman in beige looked genuinely shocked.

“Yes. You can check it out. I'll give you my birthdate and all that if you want.”

“My, my.” She looked very pleased. “That ought to look very pretty on your composite … Princess Serena …” She squinted, again looking at the paper on which she wrote it, and then Serena again. “Sit up straight for a minute.” Serena did. Then she pointed to the far comer, past some other desks. “Walk over there and come back.” Gracefully, her head held high, Serena did so, and as she returned, her green eyes flashed. “Nice, very nice. I've just thought of something. I'll be right back.” She disappeared into an inner office, and it was a full five minutes before she came back. When she came back, she brought someone with her.