The long road home

“I can't think about that now, Steve. Besides, I can't just leave Ian on the spur of the moment. And the professor wanted me to use the money so I can write. I can't just throw it around, that wouldn't be fair to him.” She didn't even know why she was wasting her breath on him, but she had to say something. She had to buy time until she could figure out what she was doing. But just looking at him now was painful, particularly if in some way he had been responsible for the professor's “accident,” or his death, as she now suspected.

“Let me tell you something,” he said, looking amused by her pangs of conscience, “the professor is never going to know what you do with it. It's yours now.” She nodded, unable to think of anything to say to him. Even now, his true colors were showing.

They slept in her room, as usual, that night. He used his as an office and a closet. And she told him again how ill she felt. She knew that if he tried to touch her, she would hit him. His was an abuse of a kind she had never known, but it was nonetheless clear to her now. It was no prettier than what her mother had done to her, it wasn't physical, but in its own way, it was just as ugly.

And in the morning, she pretended to go to work, just to get away from him, but she called Ian from a pay phone down the street, and told him she was ill. She went to the park then, and sat on a bench, trying to figure out what she was doing.

She knew that Steve was going out that day, to meet friends for lunch, and that morning he had talked to her again about going to Europe, but she had pretended to be too busy getting dressed to answer, and he had no reason to suspect anything.

Mrs. Boslicki was going out that day too, she said she had to buy a new bed, one of the mattresses had been burned by one of her last boarders. And Mrs. Rosenstein had an appointment with her doctor. And the others all worked. She knew that if she waited till lunchtime, she could be alone in the house to go through the professor's room. She wanted to see if there were any more incriminating documents about Steve, and then she wanted to talk to the lawyer, to see what he thought she should do. But the one thing she knew was that she wanted Steve out of her life as soon as possible. She never wanted to spend another night with him, or have him touch her again. She wanted to ask Mrs. Boslicki to evict him. He hadn't paid his rent in months, and she knew that if she didn't pay it for him, he couldn't. But even that would take time, weeks at least. And she didn't know how to handle the situation in the meantime. There was no one for her to talk to.

She went back to the house at noon, and knew she had waited long enough. The house was silent when she let herself in. Everyone was gone, as she hurried up the stairs to the professor's room, and left the door wide open. There was no one there to see what she was doing. She unlocked the desk, took out the stack of letters again, and they were even more horrifying this time when she read them. She pored over every detail, the aliases, the crimes, the list of women he had used all over the country. Considering his age, he had been very busy. And she was still engrossed in reading when she suddenly heard a sound behind her. She turned and saw Steve, smiling at her from the doorway.

“Counting your money so soon, Gabbie? Or hoping to find more? Now don't be greedy, baby.” There was a strange smile on his face, and she jumped when she saw him. Her face went instantly pale, and she didn't smile at him. She just couldn't.

“I just wanted to go through some of his things. Ian gave me a long lunch break.” Steve said nothing as he sauntered slowly toward her. She wondered if he had canceled his lunch, or if that had been a lie too, or if this was all a trap, and he knew exactly what she'd been reading. Maybe he knew all along. She didn't know what to think now.

“Interesting reading, isn't it?” He pointed at the neat stack of letters, and she knew from the look in his eyes he'd seen them before. He didn't care what she knew now. He was in the money.

“I don't know what you mean,” she said, sounding vague, turning over one of the letters to conceal the others.

“Yes, you do. Did he manage to tell you before he died? Or did you just find them?” He had returned to the house to look for any copies of the letters that might still be around. The old bastard was just the kind of person who would protect himself.

“What is it you think I found?” She was playing cat and mouse with him, and they both knew it.

“My little history. The professor did some very thorough research. There's more, of course, but I think he managed to hit all the high spots.” He sounded proud of it, and he looked so sure of himself, it made her feel sick as she watched him. Who was this man? He was nothing to her. A total stranger. “We had a conversation about it the day he… uh… fell.” He said it with careful emphasis and her eyes blazed as she stood up to face him.

“You did it, didn't you? You bastard.” She had never called anyone that before, but he deserved it. “Did you hit him? Or just push him? What did you do to him, Steve?” She wanted to know now.

“Absolutely nothing. He made it easy for me. The old fool got in such a state he did most of it to himself. I just helped a little. He was very worried about you. But I can see why now. I didn't realize you were his heiress, That was a lucky break, wasn't it? For both of us. Or did you know, and was all that surprise in front of the others just bullshit?”

“Of course I didn't know. How could I?”

“Maybe he told you.”

“I'm going to tell the others what you did,” she said boldly, convinced as she always was that justice could always prevail over evil. All you had to do was stand your ground and know the truth, and the devil would flee before you. But not this one. And not her mother before him either. “And after I tell them, we're going to call the police. You'd better get the hell out of town, and fast, or you'll be very sorry.” She was shaking with rage as she faced him. One way or the other, even indirectly, she knew he had killed the professor.

“I don't think so, Gabbie.” He looked at her calmly. “I don't think we're going to be telling anyone anything. Or at least you won't. I might. I could tell the police that you knew exactly what he was leaving you, that you talked to me about it many times and wanted me to kill him. I refused, of course, and talked you out of it. You even offered me money if I'd do it. Half the take. Three hundred thousand dollars. Pretty impressive. And all I did was talk to him, and he had a stroke. You can't go to jail for that, but you can for conspiring to have someone killed, someone you stood to inherit a great deal from. In fact, if I offer state's evidence, and turn you in, they'll offer me protection, and you about ten to fifteen in jail. How does that sound?” It sounded horrifying and she couldn't believe what she was hearing. She was momentarily stunned into silence. “In fact, I promise you that's what I'll do, unless you agree to give me five hundred thousand dollars right now. This is the Big Time, Gabbie. It's a small price to pay for your freedom. Think about it. Ten to fifteen. And jail is a pretty ugly place for a kid like you. I know. I've been there.”

“How can you do this to me?” she asked, her eyes suddenly swimming in tears. “How could you?” He had told her that he loved her. He had pretended so many things, and now he was blackmailing her, threatening to destroy her life, for half a million dollars.

“This is easy, sweetheart. That's what this world is all about. Money. It's great stuff, when you got it. And I'm leaving you a hundred grand. You can't complain. You don't need much. You'd better make your mind up fast. If you drag this out, I'll take all of it. I think right now would be a fine time to call the bank and the lawyer.”

“How will you explain that I'm giving it all to you? Aren't you afraid of what it'll look like?”

“We'll work it out. Women do a lot of crazy things for love, Gabbie. I'm sure you know that.” After all, she had fallen in love with a priest and gotten pregnant by him. That was pretty crazy.

“I can't believe you'd do this.”

“Well, believe it, Gabbie. Five hundred thousand dollars, six if you don't hurry up, and I'm out of your life forever. The Big Bad Wolf will be gone, and you can cry about me and lie in a ball at the bottom of your bed for the rest of your life, and have nightmares, and whine about Joe and your mama.” He had used all her confidences against her.

“You bastard!” she said for the second time, and instinctively moved forward to slap him. He had killed the professor and now he was destroying her life, tearing it to shreds, and he had absolutely no conscience about it. He had killed a man, a man she loved and respected deeply, a good person who had been her only salvation for the past year, and now he was threatening to put her in jail and accuse her of trying to arrange his murder. The sheer horror of it overwhelmed her, and suddenly she knew she could not do this.

“Kill me if you want, tell the police anything, I'm not giving you a dime, Steve Porter, or whoever the hell you are. You took everything I had to give for the past seven months. You conned me into believing that you loved me, you used me, you lied to me… you're not getting one thing more out of me. Ever!” And he could see in her eyes that she meant it, but he knew with total certainty that he was far more powerful than she was. And without saying a word to her, he walked over, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and yanked her head back.

“Don't ever talk to me like that again, Gabbie. Don't tell me what you will or won't do. You'll do exactly what I tell you, or I'll kill you.” Her eyes grew wide as she stared at him, and listening to him was like hearing an echo. “I want the money. Now. Do you get that? Or are you even dumber than I thought? I'm not going to fuck around with this. Now call the lawyer.” He pointed to the phone and waited for her to come to her senses.

“I'm not calling anyone,” she said calmly, although her knees were shaking. “The game is over.”

“No, it's not,” he said, releasing her again, wondering just how much roughing up it was going to take to make her understand that he meant it. Not much probably. She was scared of her own shadow. “The game is just beginning. The romance is over. The bullshit. The pretense. I don't even have to tell you I love you now to get what I want. All I have to do is tell you what I'm going to do to you if I don't. Is that clear yet?” She didn't answer him, but stood facing him from a few feet away, wrestling with her own silent demons. “Call the bank, Gabbie. Or I'm calling the police. The man is dead. You have his money. You had everything to gain from it. They'll believe me.” She wanted to kill him with her own hands, and the white rage he lit in her nearly overwhelmed her. She grabbed the phone off the desk and dialed the operator, and he saw it. “What are you doing?” He looked instantly worried.

“I'm calling the police for you. Let's get it over with.” He yanked the phone out of her hands immediately and hung up, and then with a single gesture, he ripped it out of the wall, and handed it to her.

“Let's be sensible about this, or do we have to discuss it all afternoon? Why don't we just go to the bank and get it? That's nice and simple. Then I catch an airplane to Europe, and it's all over. For you. For me, it's just beginning.”

“How do I know you won't tell the police anyway that I paid you the money to kill him?” It was just the evidence he needed, and she could see now that he would stop at nothing.

“You don't know that, and actually it's not a bad idea. But you'll have to trust me. You have no choice now. If you don't give it to me, I might kill you. It might be worth it to me for all the aggravation you've caused me.” It was suddenly her fault again… she was the one… he had to do this because she'd been such a bad girl… it wasn't his fault… he didn't want to do it… she made him…

“Kill me,” she said bluntly. It didn't matter anymore. There was always someone, something, trying to hurt her, blaming her for everything. It was always her fault, and there was always going to be another one, hurting her, leaving her, lying to her, threatening to kill her in body and spirit. In their own way, they had already killed her, and she knew it.

“You're a fool,” he said, approaching her menacingly. He was not going to be beaten by this woman, this fool he had been living with, sharing the pittance she made, having to steal five-dollar bills from hidden envelopes she kept under her mattress. He had lived on crumbs for long enough. He wanted the whole pie now. “Don't fuck with me, Gabbie.” But he could see in her eyes that he was getting nowhere with her, and he had no more time to waste. The others would be back soon, and he wanted his money. His money. It was his now. He had earned it.

Without saying a word, he put his hands around her neck and started to shake her, and she just stood there. She was letting him do it… just as she always had… she just stood there. She was the good little girl she always had been.

“I'm going to kill you, you fucking bitch,” he shouted at her. “Don't you understand that?” But there was a force in her he couldn't contend with, a bottomless place he could not reach and no one else had. He would have to kill her to do it, and he knew it. But he wanted the money from her more than he had ever wanted anything in his life, and he was not going to let her stop him.

“I hate you,” she said quietly, speaking not only to him, but to a chorus of others… “I hate you, Steve Porter.” He slapped her hard across the face then, and the familiarity of it was terrifying. She knew the sound and the feel of it, the force of it as she reeled from the blow and struck her back against the corner of the desk just behind her. And seeing her begin to fall, he grabbed her arm and yanked her toward him, striking her again, with his fist this time. He landed a crashing blow on the side of her head, and she could hear a sound like sandbags hitting the pavement, but she had no eardrum for him to damage, there was nothing he could do to her that hadn't been done before. She had lived the same nightmare for the first ten years of her life and he couldn't touch her, as he sent her flying. He struck blow after blow, pummeling her face and her body. And then he beat her head into the floor and she could only hear him vaguely in the distance, saying something about the money. He had completely lost control by then, she was an animal that had to be destroyed, a beast who wanted to keep him from everything he deserved and had dreamed of.

He pulled her to her feet again then, and when he threw her against the wall, she knew her arm was broken. But she no longer cared, about any of it. He would get nothing from her, and the life he sought to take from her now meant nothing to her. There had been too many lies, too many heartbreaks, too much pain, too many losses, and he was just one more. She saw a white light around her finally as she lay on the floor and he kicked her, screaming at her, to call the bank, to give him what he wanted, and telling her how hateful she was, how rotten, how he had never loved her. His words raged at her with as much venom as his fists did, and as she looked at him, she thought she saw Joe, and then the professor, and finally her mother, all saying something to her… Joe was telling her that he loved her and couldn't be with her… The professor was begging her not to let Steve do this to her, and her mother was telling her that it was all her fault, that she was as rotten as he said and she deserved it. But as she listened to all of them she knew the truth of what they were saying. That it was not her, but them… it was all their fault, not her own… it was Steve who was the villain… it was Steve who had killed the professor, and now her… and with a strength she never thought she could muster again, she staggered to her feet to face him. She was bleeding all over and her face was completely distorted. There was no way he could take her to the bank now, no way he could call the police, no way he could do anything but run, without the money. And with a final burst of rage, he lunged at her and tried to squeeze the last breath from her. He shook her until the room spun around her, and still she held on, still she clung to him, clawing his face and fighting back now. She would not let him do this to her, no one would ever do it to her again. She refused to let go of life as he tried to strangle her, and then finally he dropped her to the floor, kicked her one last time, and left her.

She didn't know if she'd won or lost as she lay there. And it didn't matter. They had all tried in their own way to kill her… Joe… her mother… Steve… her father… they had tried and failed. They had reached down as far inside of her as they could get and tried to destroy her spirit, tried to extinguish it like a small flame but it was always out of reach, just beyond them, and for that they hated her more than ever. Gabbie rolled over on her back, and looked up at the ceiling with eyes filled with blood and pain, and she saw Joe standing there, looking down at her, telling her he was sorry. And this time, when he held a hand out to her, and beckoned her, she turned away, and walked slowly alone into the darkness.

Chapter 23

MRS. ROSENSTEIN SAW Gabriella lying there as she walked past the professors room late that afternoon, on the way to her own room. There was blood everywhere, the furniture was overturned, and at first she didn't even see her. Gabriella looked like a limp rag doll. Her face was unrecognizable, her hair was matted with blood, there were bruises on her neck, and she lay so awkwardly, it seemed obvious to Mrs. Rosenstein that Gabriella was dead. She had to be, she appeared not to be breathing. And everyone in the house came when they heard Mrs. Rosenstein screaming.

One of the boarders called the operator immediately and saw that the phone had been torn out of the wall in the professors room. He was one of the few guests with his own phone line.

Everyone in the house stood huddled and crying as they waited for the ambulance to come. One of the new boarders had searched for a pulse and said that she still had one, but barely. And it was impossible to know how much damage had been done, given the obvious blows to her head. It was entirely possible, one of the boarders whispered, that she'd be brain-damaged forever… so young… so beautiful… So terrible… they all whispered as Mrs. Boslicki sobbed, as they all asked each other who could have done this. For a moment Mrs. Boslicki wondered if Steve had done this and run away, but when someone looked in his room his things were all there. They were dreading telling him what had happened.

They were all standing around her like mourners at a wake as the ambulance attendants came running into the house. After one look at her, they moved her to the ambulance with lightning speed, and were gone in less than two minutes, with sirens screaming.

But Gabriella heard nothing this time as they drove. She saw no visions. Heard no voices. She had been in a coma since shortly after Steve had left her. She was in a faraway place free from all pain now.

The entire trauma unit team worked on her all afternoon, the arm was set, the wounds were sewn, the bruises were staggering, and this time nearly all her ribs were broken, but it was the head injuries that worried them. They did several EEGs, but the real test would be if her brain survived the swelling. Eventually a plastic surgeon came to work on her face. She had a long open wound on her chin, and another over her left eyebrow. But he was satisfied, when he was finished, with the repair work. He couldn't help noticing the bruises on her neck as well, and shook his head when he left her. He stopped to talk to the head of the trauma team, a young doctor he'd worked with before, he was the head of the department, Peter Mason.

“Nice job they did on her,” the plastic surgeon said, adding his notes to the chart. She'd already been in surgery twice that evening. Once with him, and the other time with the orthopedic man to put a pin in her elbow. “She must have really pissed someone off.” It was nothing short of amazing that they hadn't killed her.

“Maybe it's her cooking,” Peter said without smiling. It was the kind of humor that kept them going. They saw too much of this, car accidents, people who jumped out of windows and survived despite their best efforts not to, and near-fatal beatings. What Peter hated most was seeing the children. The trauma unit was not a place that left you many illusions.

“Have the cops seen her yet?” the plastic surgeon asked casually, handing the chart back.

“They took a lot of pictures of her after we got the arm set. It wasn't pretty.” And it still wasn't. Neither of them had any way of gauging what she had once looked like.

“Think she'll make it?”

Peter Mason whistled before he answered. His whites were still covered with her blood, the list of her injuries seemed endless, and their X rays showed a fair amount of earlier damage, maybe a car accident, it was hard to say. But what had been done to her this time had been damn near fatal. Her liver and kidneys were in bad shape too from being kicked, it seems like there wasn't any part of her that wasn't damaged. “I'd like to think she'll make it,” Peter Mason said optimistically, but he really didn't think she would. The head injuries just added one more complication. The rest would have been enough to kill her. Even one of her eyes had been affected.

“I hope they get the son of a bitch who did it,” the plastic surgeon said amiably, and went home to dinner.

“Probably her husband,” Peter muttered to himself. He had seen that before too. Husbands or boyfriends who were jealous or drunk or came unhinged for some minor reason that made sense to them and seemed to justify taking another life in order to soothe their egos. He'd seen too much of this in the past ten years. He was thirty-five years old, divorced, and afraid he was getting bitter. His wife had left him because she said she couldn't stand it anymore. He was never home, always on call, and even when he was with her, he wasn't. He was always thinking about his patients, or running out the door to save the victims of a car crash. She stuck it out for five years and left him for a plastic surgeon who only did face-lifts. And he wasn't sure he blamed her.

He checked on Gabbie himself several times that night, and everything seemed stable. She was in the trauma ICU along with a woman who had jumped out of a third-story window and landed on two children and killed them. There was a drug overdose in the bed next to hers who had fallen onto the tracks of the IRT subway, and wasn't going to make it. But Gabbie was still a question. She could survive, if she fought hard enough, and wanted to, and if she came out of the coma.

The nurses said several people had called about her from the boardinghouse where she lived, but there was no next of kin, and no husband. Only a boyfriend apparently, and he hadn't been heard from. Peter wondered if he had done this to her, and figured it was more than likely. Intruders didn't put that much energy into it. This guy had pulled out all the stops and hit all the bases. The only thing he hadn't done was set fire to her.

“Any change?” he asked the nurse in the ICU, and she shook her head.

“She's just hanging in there.”

“Let's hope it stays that way,” he said. It was midnight by then, and he decided to take a nap while it was quiet. You never knew what was coming. They worked twenty-four-hour shifts in the trauma ICU, and his was just beginning. “Call me if anything happens.” They exchanged a smile, and whenever she worked with him, she really enjoyed it. He was a nice guy and better-looking than she would ever have admitted to her husband. He had shaggy good looks, with rumpled brown hair and dark brown eyes the color of chocolate. But he was tough, too, not always easy to work for, but a hell of a good doctor.

He disappeared into the room he used when he needed some sleep. It was a supply room where they kept chemicals and a spare gurney, but it was useful.

And for the rest of the night, the nurses watched Gabriella. She never stirred, never moved, and she seemed to be barely breathing, but the monitors showed her vital signs were constant. They did another EEG in the morning, and it seemed normal, but she still hadn't come out of the coma.

And at the boardinghouse, the mood was heavy. Mrs. Boslicki gave everyone bulletins as they left for work, and promised to call them if anything happened. It was the worst thing that had ever happened in her house other than the death of the professor. They were all aware of the fact that Steve hadn't come home that night, and he hadn't called her. Mrs. Boslicki reported his disappearance to the police that morning. The police had talked to everyone the night before, and asked a lot of questions about Steve. And it was interesting to realize how little they all knew about him. They knew he'd gone to Stanford and Yale, lived there for eight months, was unemployed, and was Gabriella's boyfriend. Beyond that, they knew nothing. But the police had taken a stack of messages from his phone calls, which Mrs. Boslicki was holding for him in her kitchen. But when she talked to the police that morning, even they knew nothing.

And by that afternoon, the reports from the hospital were depressing. There was no change in Gabriella's condition, and when Mrs. Rosenstein spoke to Dr. Mason, he didn't sound optimistic. He said the outlook for her was “guarded,” whatever that meant. She was still listed in critical condition, and still in a coma. There was nothing more to say, but he promised to call if anything happened.

Peter was supposed to be off duty that afternoon, but the doctor supposed to be on this shift had called in, his wife had gone into labor, and he was upstairs in labor and delivery helping to deliver his first baby. So Peter agreed to cover for him, which meant he was stuck here for another twenty-four hours. He was used to it and he had nothing else to do these days, but it was exactly the kind of thing that had cost him his marriage.

“Anything new?” Peter checked in at the desk when he came back from the cafeteria, and was told that two new cases had come in, a ten-year-old boy they'd transferred to the burn unit after a bad fire in Harlem, and an eighty-six-year-old woman who'd fallen down a marble staircase. In other words, nothing exciting.

And more out of routine than because anything was happening, he decided to check on Gabbie. He watched the monitors for a minute or two, and then examined her gently. But when he did, he saw an expression of pain flit across her face, and stopped to watch her. He touched her again, and saw the same thing happen, and it was hard to tell if she was coming out of it, or if it was just a reflex. He looked at the chart and read her name again, and moved a little closer to her.

“Gabriella?… Gabriella… open your eyes if you can hear me.” There was nothing. He put a finger into her hand then, and curled her own fingers around it, and spoke to her. “Squeeze my finger, Gabriella, if you can hear me.” He waited an instant and was about to take his finger away, when the smallest movement of her fingers touched him. She had heard him, and he couldn't help smiling at her. These were the victories he lived for, that he had given up a marriage and most of his life for. It wasn't much, but it was what made his life worth living. He tried it again, and this time her touch seemed stronger, “Can you open your eyes for me?” he asked softly. “Or blink a little. Squeeze your eyes shut, or open them… I'd like to see you.” There was nothing for a long time, and then slowly the lashes fluttered, but her eyes never opened. But it meant that she heard him and her brain had stopped swelling. And it also meant their work was just beginning. He signaled to one of the nurses from where he was standing, and when she joined him, he told her what had happened.

“We're heading for first base. Why don't you talk to her for a while and see what happens. I'll come back and check her later.”

He then went to check on the woman who had fallen down the marble staircase, and found her in remarkably good condition. She was mad as hell to be there at all, had broken her pelvis and a hip, and she demanded to be sent home immediately. She said she had an appointment at the hairdresser the next morning. And Peter was still smiling when he left her. She was outrageously crotchety and aristocratic, and he could just imagine her hitting him with a cane, if she'd had one at her disposal. He had promised to send her home as soon as she could manage with a walker. But she had to have surgery on the hip in the morning.

And after doing some paperwork, it was nearly midnight when he got back to Gabriella. “What's new on Sleeping Beauty?” he asked the nurse easily, and she shrugged. There had been no further response from her all evening. Maybe it had been a reflex, or maybe she was just so beaten up, she wanted no part of the world anymore. She had withdrawn into a place where no one could touch her. Sometimes that happened.

He sat down in the chair next to her, and the nurse left, and he put his finger in her hand again, but nothing happened. And she looked more than ever as though she were in a deep coma. He was just about to give up on her when he saw her move her arm in his direction, and stretch out two fingers toward him. Her eyes were closed, but he knew that she had heard him.

“Are you talking to me?” he asked gently. “How about saying something to me?” They needed to know if she could speak, and eventually if she could reason. But right now a word, a look, a sound would have been enough for him. “How about singing me a little song or something?” He had a funny, easy way with patients in the most devastating circumstances, which made both his patients and his nurses love him. And his remarkable skill in bringing people back from the dead, or damn close to it, had won him the respect of his colleagues.

“Come on, Gabriella, how about it? The ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ maybe? Or what about Twinkle, Twinkle’?” He sang it to her, softly, and very off-key, and a nurse wandering by grinned at him. He was a little crazy, but they loved him. “What about ‘ABC? It's the same tune, you know. I'll do ‘ABC,’ you do Twinkle, Twinkle?” And as he chattered on to her, suddenly there was a soft moan and a sound that was anything but human.

“Which one was that?” he asked, sensing victory beckoning him, and wanting to snatch it quickly. “Was that ‘ABC’ or Twinkle, Twinkle’? I recognized the tune, but I didn't quite catch the lyrics.” She groaned again, louder this time, and he knew she was coming back to them. This was no reflex. And this time, her eyelids fluttered, and he could see that she was trying to open them, but her eyes were still very swollen. And very gently, he reached down and tried to help her. And just as he touched her, her eyes opened slowly. All she saw was a blur, but she could see the outline of someone standing there. She couldn't see the tears in his eyes as he watched her. He wanted to shout, “Gotcha!” By sheer will, if nothing else, they had snatched her back from the dark recesses of death. And maybe, just maybe, she was going to make it.

“Hello, Gabriella. Welcome back, we missed you.” She groaned again. Her lips were still too swollen to speak clearly but he could see she was trying. There were a lot of questions they wanted to ask her, about what had happened and who had done this to her, but it was much too soon now. “How do you feel, or is that a really stupid question?” This time she nodded, and then closed her eyes. Moving her head was excruciatingly painful. She moaned at him again, and opened her eyes a minute later. “I bet you do.” He could give her something for the pain eventually, but having just come out of the coma, he didn't want to get her all doped up yet. She was going to have to live with it for a while longer. “Do you think you can say anything to me yet?… I mean other than sing Twinkle, Twinkle.’ “ He could see she was trying to smile at him, but the grimace she made instead was much too painful.

“Hurts,” was the one word she finally came up with. It was a cross between a groan and a whisper.

“I'll bet it does.” He couldn't begin to imagine where, there were so many possibilities to choose from. “Your head?”

“Yes…” she whispered, and sounded a little less croaky. “Arm… face…” There weren't too many places on her body that hadn't been battered. But she was also coherent enough now that he knew there were other questions he had to ask her. The police were due back in the morning. They had been keeping close tabs on her. It was the worst assault they'd seen in years, and they wanted to catch the guy who did it.

“Do you know who did this to you?” he asked cautiously, and she didn't answer. She closed her eyes then, but he was persistent. “If you know, I'd like you to tell me. You don't want him to do this to someone else, do you? I'd like you to think about it.” He sat very quietly and she opened her eyes and looked at him, she seemed to be thinking about it. She had always protected them, all of them, but even in the dark recesses of where she had been, she knew that this was different. “Do you know who it was?” If it had been an intruder, she may not have known. But Peter suspected it wasn't. And she didn't answer his question. “We can talk about it later.” She blinked agreement, and then tried to speak again.

“Name…”

“The name of the person who beat you up?” He was confused now, but she frowned and looked annoyed that he hadn't understood her. She pointed a finger at him then, barely lifting it off the covers. She wanted to know who he was. “Peter… Peter Mason. I'm a doctor. And you're in the hospital. And we're going to get you all put back together and send you home, but we want you to be safe there. That's why we want to know who did it.” She only moaned again then, and closed her eyes, exhausted. She drifted off to sleep, and he watched her for a minute and then left her. She was definitely thinking clearly. She had responded to everything he said, and she wanted to know who he was. It was a great beginning, and he was encouraged.

He slept for a short time that night, and came back to see her in the morning. She was looking brighter than she had the night before, and she was able to speak more clearly in a whisper, and she remembered that his name was Peter. The EEG looked good and so did all the other monitors. She was definitely up and running, by his standards at least, which didn't take much. And he was still with her when the police came to see her. They were pleased to hear she was no longer in a coma, and what they wanted now was information.

Peter warned them, as they approached her bed, to go easy. She had only been conscious since the previous evening. They asked her the same questions he had, although less gently. They told her they wanted to do everything they could to help and protect her, but they couldn't do it unless she told them who had attacked her, and she looked very pensive when they said it. She seemed to be weighing it all out, thinking about it, and she almost looked as though she were listening to something.

“You can't let this happen to you again,” Peter said quietly, standing next to her bed, and looking down at her with compassion. “Next time you might not be as lucky. Whoever did this to you wanted to hurt you, Gabriella. He did everything he could to injure you and kill you.” He had kicked her, broken her, bruised her, tried to strangle her. This was not an accident, or even a crime of passion, in his mind. It was a vicious attempt to destroy her, and he had very nearly been successful and she knew it.

“He wanted to do this to you. Now you have to help us catch him, so it doesn't happen again. You won't be safe until he's put away in jail where he belongs. Think about it.” She was, obviously, and she looked up at them, moving her eyes from one to the other. Her whole life had been spent protecting other people, hiding their crimes, making excuses for them, telling herself she deserved it, but suddenly she no longer believed that. She didn't deserve this. He did. She opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it again, unsure of herself. And the suspense was killing them. And then finally, when Peter was certain she wouldn't tell them, she looked directly at him, and nodded. Something he had said had gotten to her, and opened the door for her, and he knew it.

“Come on, Gabriella… tell us… you've got to. You don't deserve this.” She didn't, and she knew it. Just as she had known when he did it to her that he had no right to do it, no right to do what her mother had done, any more than she had. And it was exactly what she had said to Steve. It was over. She was never going to let this happen again. No one would ever again touch her, not like this, not to hurt her. She wouldn't let them.

“Steve,” she whispered almost inaudibly at first, “Steve Porter.” But she knew she had to explain other things as well, and she barely had the strength to do it, but they were listening closely and one of the inspectors was scribbling. They knew Porter was her boyfriend and lived at the boardinghouse, from what the other boarders had told him. “Other names… letters in the professor's desk… different names… he's been in prison.” Both inspectors looked up simultaneously. This was going to be easy. Bingo.

“Do you remember what his aliases are, Miss Harrison?”

“Steve Johnson… John Stevens… Michael Houston.” She remembered them all with surprisingly little effort. And now she wanted to do this. She owed it to herself, after all these years, and she knew it. No one would ever hurt her again. Or break her. And Steve deserved everything that happened to him. “He's been in prison in Kentucky… Texas… California…”

“Do you know where he is now?” they asked her, and she told them she didn't. “He hasn't been here, has he?” They looked up at the doctor and he shook his head. That crazy he wasn't. “Do you know why he did this to you? Was he angry at you? Jealous? Were you trying to break off with him, or seeing another man?” Those were all the usual reasons.

“He wanted money from me… I've been giving him money for months,” she whispered, and he'd been taking it, but she didn't have the strength to say that. She could tell them the rest later. “And a friend just left me some money… He wanted me to give him all of it, or most of it… or he'd say I tried to have him kill the professor… He left me the money. Steve wanted it all… wanted to go to Europe… said he'd kill me if I didn't give it to him.” And he had very nearly delivered on the promise. And then she added the final blow to what she had told them. “I think he killed the professor… tried to… hurt him… then he had a stroke… he left me the money.” It was a little garbled, but they thought they could get the rest from the landlady and the other boarders at the boardinghouse, and there was plenty of time to ask Gabriella more questions later, when she felt better.

“Did he use any weapons on you?” they asked her then, and she was surprised by the question.

“Just hit me.”

“Nice guy.” They flipped their notebooks shut and thanked her and told her they'd come back when she felt better. They told her they hoped to have good news for her shortly, and she was surprised to realize as she lay back and closed her eyes that she wasn't sorry. She had done the right thing, and she knew it. It was time to stop the people who hurt her. Some of them couldn't help it, like Joe, and Mother Gregoria… but her mother… and maybe even her father… they didn't have to do it… and Steve… all she could do now was stop him. It was too late for the others.

She opened her eyes again after they left and was surprised to see Peter still standing there, watching her. He was trying to guess what she was thinking, if she had really loved the guy, and was heartbroken over what had happened. She didn't look it. She looked happy, relieved in a way. And he could almost guess that underneath all the wounds and bruises and bandages, she might be pretty. He would have liked her anyway, he realized. There was something incredibly powerful about her. She had come through hell, and she was smiling at him.

“Good work,” he said.

“Bad person… terrible… he killed my friend.”

“He nearly killed you,” which was more important to Peter. She was his patient. “I hope they catch him.”

“Me too.”

Both their wishes were granted. The police came back at six o'clock that night just before Peter finally went off duty.

They had found Steve at four o'clock that afternoon, gambling in Atlantic City. The FBI had a file on him, and Texas and California had been very helpful. He had denied everything, of course, told them they were crazy, said Gabbie was psychotic and had threatened him. But with the condition she was in, he didn't have a prayer of anyone believing his story. It was all over for him. He had violated parole in three states, and even if he'd never laid a hand on her, he was going to be serving time all around the country. It was only miraculous that they hadn't caught him sooner. And if they had, maybe he wouldn't have hurt her. But after what he had done to her, he was going to be put away for a long time. They read him his rights and arrested him on the spot. They were charging him with attempted murder, and they were going to see if they could make manslaughter charges stick in the death of the professor. Steve had been right in the end. This was the Big Time. Gabbie listened to them in amazement.

“Will he go to jail?” she asked, still whispering. She didn't have the strength, and it still hurt too much to speak louder. Her ribs shrieked every time she moved or spoke, or even whispered.

“For a long time,” they reassured her, and she nodded. She was sorry all of it had happened. It was all so ugly, and so terrible, and she was still sick about the professor. She would much rather have had him than his money. Before the police left, they told her the boardinghouse was in an uproar that night, and everyone sent her their best wishes. But so far, no one had been allowed to visit. They would come as soon as the doctors let them.

“That's me. I'm the bad guy. You need to rest,” Peter said to her after the police left. “How do you feel?” he asked her, looking concerned. She'd been through a lot of emotion since that morning. Deciding to turn the guy in couldn't have been easy for her, and now hearing the consequences of it. It was a hard thing knowing you had sent someone to prison, even if he deserved it. And for her, there had to be added conflict, since Peter assumed she had loved him. She had, in a way, but it had been more of an entanglement and an addiction. She hadn't known how to get out of it, how to stop giving money to him, particularly once he started pressing her for it. He had been a con man and he had manipulated her, and she had been easy prey for him. But she knew now that she had never really loved him,

“Are you okay?” Peter asked again, and she nodded.

“I think so.” She still wasn't sure what she felt, it was all so confusing.

“It must be difficult, thinking he was your friend.” He could only imagine that her sense of betrayal was beyond measure.

“I don't think I ever knew him. I don't know who he was,” she said quietly, and he saw something in her eyes that touched him. She looked up at him then with a question. “How long will I be here?” She reminded him suddenly of the old lady who had fallen down the marble staircase the night before, and wanted to get to the hairdresser in the morning.

“Do you have a hair appointment?” he asked, smiling at her.

“Not exactly.” Her hair was lost in the bandages somewhere. He could hardly guess what color it was, and hadn't really noticed. “I just wondered.” She spoke very softly.

“A few weeks. Long enough to get you tap-dancing again, or whatever it is you do. What do you do?” He knew from her chart that she was twenty-three years old, single, had no apparent family, lived in a boarding-house, and worked in a bookshop, and nothing much beyond that.

“I'm trying to be a writer,” she said shyly.

“Ever publish anything?” he asked with interest.

“Once. The New Yorker in March.” It was very prestigious and he was impressed to hear it.

“You must be pretty good.”

“Not yet,” she said modestly. “I'm working on it.”

“Well, don't write about this one yet. Let's get you healthy first before you go back to work. Where did you meet this guy anyway? At a convention for ex-convicts?”

She smiled at him, she liked him. He'd been good to her, and she could see that he cared about what had happened to her. Everyone had been nice to her here, even the nurses. “He lived in my boardinghouse.”

“Maybe you should think about getting an apartment. Speaking of which,” he said, glancing at his watch, “I'm about to turn into a pumpkin. Try not to get into too much trouble. I'm off for two days.” And then he patted her leg gently under the covers. “Take care, Gabriella.”

“Gabbie,” she corrected him. She had meant to do it earlier, but she kept forgetting. Gabriella sounded so formal after all they'd been through together. She was sorry to see him go, he was her only friend here. He waved as he left the room.

And when he came back two days later, she was the first patient he saw on his rounds, and he was impressed by her progress. She spoke almost in a normal voice, but it still hurt to laugh, and she didn't attempt it often. They had sat her up on the edge of her bed twice each day, and she could manage it now without fainting, which she had done the first time. And they were promising to get her out of bed by the end of the week, which seemed like an impossible goal to Gabbie. Mrs. Rosenstein and Mrs. Boslicki had come to see her by then, and all the others had sent cards and little gifts, and the two ladies had brought her roses.

Everyone was still upset about Steve, and there had been a big article in the paper about him, and the crimes he was accused of.

“Imagine, he was living with us!” Mrs. Rosenstein said with horror. And they were all upset about the possibility that he might have hurt the professor. It was hard to imagine.

Gabriella had heard nothing from Steve, and hoped she never would again. The thought that she had slept with him, lived with him, supported him, still turned her stomach. She would have to face him in court one day, and that would be difficult, and she was sure he would tell lies about her, but by then she would be stronger and better able to face him.

Ian Jones had called her from the bookstore and told her to take as long as she needed to to come back to work. She was going to keep her job, in spite of the money she had inherited. She loved working in the bookshop, and she still had plenty of time for her writing. And she had no plans to move out of Mrs. Boslicki's house. Now that Steve was gone, she felt safe there.

“So what have you been up to while I was gone?” Peter asked her after examining her. “Dinner? Dancing? The usual?”

“Very usual. Someone came to wash my hair, and they still won't let me go to the bathroom.” She laughed, her victories were still very small here, but she was happy to see him.

“We might be able to change that.” He made a note on the chart, and looked at her arm, and how the plastic surgeon's work was repairing. She was doing nicely. And then he asked her something he had wondered about when he saw her X rays. “Were you ever in a car accident, Gabbie? You look like you've had a few broken bones before. Your ribs look like they've been through the wars.” And he'd seen scars in her scalp when he was checking her head for swelling.

“More or less,” she answered vaguely, with an odd look in her eyes. He noticed her withdrawal immediately. She was a woman with a lot of secrets.

“That's an interesting answer. Well have to talk about it sometime.” But he had other patients to see.

He came back later that night with a ginger ale for her and a cup of coffee.

“I thought I'd check on you. I just had dinner. They keep a stomach pump in the cafeteria in case they poison anyone. We use it at least four times every evening.” He sat down in the chair and she laughed at him. She noticed that he looked tired tonight, and could see how hard he worked there.

He asked her about her writing, and where she went to school. He was from the Southwest, and in a way, she thought he had the look of a cowboy. He had a long, easy lope as he crossed the halls, and she'd noticed that he wore cowboy boots with his whites. He had noticed how blue her eyes were, and that as the swelling in her face went down, as he had suspected, she was very pretty. And very young. And very old at the same time. She was a woman of many contrasts. There was something very wise and sad about her eyes, which fascinated him, but then again, being beaten within an inch of her life by the man she'd lived with couldn't have been easy. He asked about him a little bit and she didn't seem anxious to talk about him. One of the nurses had shown him the article in the paper, but he didn't mention it to Gabbie.

“So where did you grow up?” he asked easily, curious about her, as he sipped his coffee. She was nice to talk to.

“Here. In New York.” But she didn't mention the convent. They discovered that they were both only children, and he had gone to Columbia Medical School, which was what had brought him to New York originally, and something they had in common. But in many ways, they seemed very different. He was very easy and open, and had seen a lot of cruelty in his life, but he had never lived it. There was something about her that suggested to him that she had seen more than most people her age, or many far older. There were doors that he knew were closed to him, but he didn't know how to find the key to unlock them. She seemed to do a lot of thinking.

And then, purely by coincidence, he mentioned that one of his friends from school had become a priest, and they had stayed close. He seemed very fond of him, and Gabriella smiled as she listened. He thought she was making fun of him, and he tried convincing her that even priests were people. She couldn't resist telling him then that she'd been a postulant, and grew up in a convent. But she didn't tell him about Joe or any of what had happened the year before.

He was fascinated by her history, and the fact that she'd almost been a nun, and eventually he asked her what had changed her mind about it.

“That's a long story,” she said with a sigh, ignoring the question.

He had to go back to work and promised to see her the next day. But he came back later that night, and was sure she'd be asleep by then, it was after midnight, and he was surprised to find she wasn't. She was lying in bed quietly, with her eyes open. There was something very quiet and peaceful about her.

“Can I come in?” He'd been thinking about her all evening, and felt drawn toward her room when he was passing it, when he finished with his patients.

“Sure.” She smiled and propped herself up on her good elbow. There was a small light on in the corner of the room, but it was mostly dark and cozy. She'd been lying there, reflecting about her parents. She had been doing that a lot lately, particularly her father.

“You looked pretty serious for a minute there. Are you okay?”

She nodded. She was, actually, considering everything that had happened. Steve had disappeared from her life like a dream. It was almost as if he had never existed. In one way or another, all the people she had ever cared about had vanished, except lately she seemed to feel more peaceful about it.

“I was thinking about my parents,” she admitted, and he was sympathetic. Her chart said she had no next of kin, and he assumed they had died at some point, and he asked her when it happened. She hesitated before she answered. “They didn't. I think my father is in Boston, and my mother lives in California. I haven't seen him in fourteen years, and my mother in thirteen.” He looked startled.

“Were you a bad girl? Did you run away to join the circus?” he asked, and she laughed at the image.

“No, I ran away to join the convent,” but he already knew that. “It's a long story, but my father left when I was a kid, and then my mother dropped me off at the convent and never came back.” It sounded like a fairly simple story, but he suspected it wasn't.

“That's a little unusual. Why couldn't they keep you? Had you done anything to seriously annoy them?”

“They thought so. They weren't too keen on children.”

“They sound like lovely people,” he said, watching her, wishing he could move closer to her, but he was on duty, and she was his patient. He was already spending a lot of time with her, and he didn't want to cause any comment.

“They weren't,” Gabriella said softly, and then decided she had nothing to hide from him. She felt strangely safe talking to him. And it was their dark secret as much as her own. She had always felt so ashamed about it, but now she didn't. “They were the car accident you asked me about. Or actually, she was. He was just the casual observer.”

“I'm not sure I understand.” He looked troubled as he said it. He didn't want to understand, couldn't conceive of what she was saying.

“The broken ribs. A Christmas present from my mother, several years in a row. It was her favorite gift, actually. She gave it to me often.” She tried to put a little levity into it, but it was a tough subject to lighten.

“She beat you?” He looked stunned. “That's what I saw on the X rays?”

“Probably. I never broke anything any other way. She spent ten years beating me up constantly before she left me.” Her eyes were big and sad and he reached out and touched her. He held her hand in his own, as his heart went out to her. He couldn't imagine what she'd been through.

“Gabbie… how awful… didn't anybody help you, or stop her?” That was even more inconceivable to him, that she had been a child with no allies.

“No, my father used to watch, but he never said anything. He was afraid of her, I think. And finally, he just couldn't take it anymore, so he left her.”

“Why didn't he take you with him?” It was a question she had never dared ask herself, but she wondered now, and shrugged as she looked up at Peter.

“I don't know the answer to that. There are a lot of answers I don't have about them. I've been thinking about it since all this happened. I know why Steve did it. It was right out front. I made him angry. He wanted money and I wouldn't give it to him. At least it was direct. But I never knew why they hated me, what made them hate me so much, I never understood it. They always said I was so bad… so terrible… that if I hadn't been so bad they wouldn't have had to do it. But how bad can a kid be?” It was a question that had begun to haunt her lately.

“Not bad enough to break bones about. I don't understand it either. Have you ever asked them?”

“I've never seen either of them again. I called my father once, a year ago, or tried to. But I couldn't find any listing for him in Boston.”

“What about your mother? She sounds like a good person to stay away from.”

“She was then,” Gabbie said honestly, the chords of memory still trembling deep within her. Steve's nearly killing her had awakened a lot of old feelings, and they were hard to still now. “I keep wondering if she'd be different now, if she changed, if she could explain it to me, if she's sorry now that so many years have passed. It nearly ruined my life, it must have nearly ruined hers too.” Her eyes met his so squarely that it took his breath way, she was so open and so honest and so fearless. “I keep wanting to know why she hated me so much. What was it about me that made her hate me?” It was important to her to know that.

“Some sickness in her own soul, I would guess,” he said thoughtfully. “It couldn't have been you, Gabbie.” He had seen victims of child abuse in the trauma unit before, and they always broke his heart, those terrified eyes and broken little bodies, telling you it was no one's fault, no one had done it, and protecting their parents. They were so helpless and such victims of vicious, sick people. He had lost a child on the unit only two months ago, beaten until she was brain-dead, by her mother. It was not something he could ever accept, and all he wanted to do the night the child died was run out of the room and kill the mother. She was currently in jail, awaiting trial, and her lawyers were asking for probation.

“I don't know how you survived it,” he said gently. “Did no one help you?”

“Never. Not till I got to the convent.”

“Were they good to you there?” He hoped so, he couldn't bear the thought of what her life must have been like before that. Although he scarcely knew her, it made him want to protect her. But all he could do now was listen.

“They were very good to me. I loved it, and I was very happy.”

“Then why did you leave?” There was so much to learn about her. And he wanted to know so much more about her.

“I had to leave. I did a terrible thing, and they couldn't let me stay.” In the past year, she had come to accept that, although she knew she would never be able to forgive herself completely.

“How terrible could it have been?” he said lightly. “What did you do? Steal another nun's habit?”

“A man died because of me. I cost him his life. It's something I will have to live with. Always.”

He didn't know what to say to her for a moment. “Was it an accident?” It must have been. She would never have killed anyone. As little as he knew her, he knew she couldn't. But she was looking long and hard at him, wondering just how much she could trust him. And for some odd reason, she knew she could trust him completely. She could feel it in him, and see it in his eyes as he watched her.

“He committed suicide because of me. He was a priest, and we were in love with each other. I was having his baby.” Peter looked at her in silent amazement. She had been to hell and back, and then some.

“How long ago was that?” Although he was not sure it really mattered.

“A year ago. Eleven months, actually. I don't know how it happened. I'd never looked at a man before. I don't think either of us understood what we were doing, until too late. It went on for three months. We were going to leave together. But he couldn't. He couldn't leave. It was the only life he'd ever known, and he had his own demons to live with. He couldn't bring himself to leave, and he couldn't leave me. So he killed himself, and left me a letter to explain it.”

“And the baby?” he asked, holding her hand tightly in his own, and desperately wanting to put his arms around her.

“I lost it.” It was all a blur now, a surrealistic impression of tragedy that always made her heart feel as though someone had just squeezed it. “It was last September.”

“And now this. This hasn't been much of a year for you, Gabbie, has it?” It hadn't been much of a life for her before that either, parents who beat her, abandoned her in a convent, and a man who committed suicide rather than stand by her and her baby. It was a lot to live with. He was amazed that she had survived it.

“This was different,” she said about Steve. “In a funny way, it was more straightforward. I felt used by him, and betrayed, and it hurt terribly when I first found out, but I don't think I ever really loved him. I was just in a very awkward situation. Looking back, I realize he set me up right from the beginning.”

“You were easy prey for him,” Peter said sensibly, looking at her, appreciating who she was and what she had been through. “I hope he gets a hell of a long sentence.” He was relieved to know that the police seemed to think that was more than likely. “What are you going to do now?” he asked her, thinking about her.

“I don't know… write… work… start over… be smarter… I had a lot to learn when I came out of the convent. I had never been out in the world before, it's such an unreal life in there, so sheltered and protected. I think that's what frightened Joe. He didn't know how to survive without that.” But as far as Peter was concerned, suicide was not an option. Joe had left her alone to face the music herself, and be blamed for his death. It was only a solution for a weak, selfish man, and Peter didn't admire him for it, though he said nothing to Gabbie.

“You need time to heal,” he said quietly, “not just from this. But from all of it. You've already been through ten lifetimes,” and none of them had been easy.

“Writing does that for me. It's been wonderful for me. The professor I told you about really helped me, he opened doors for me I never knew were there, into my heart and my mind, into the places I need to speak from, especially for my writing.”

“I'm not sure someone else can do that for you. I think it's within you, Gabbie, and probably always was. Maybe he just showed you where the key was.”

“Maybe,” she said, and a few minutes later one of the nurses came in. A four-year-old had been in a car accident without a seat belt.

“Oh God, I hate these,” he said, looking at her longingly. He would have liked to talk to her forever. He left her and told her he would see her in the morning.

And after he left, she lay in bed, thinking about him, surprised at the things she had told him. He knew it all now. And he had been so easy to talk to.

He came by later that night, and glanced into her room, and she was fast asleep. He stood looking at her for a long time, and then went back to the supply room to lie on the gurney. But the things she had told him kept him from sleeping. He wondered how any one human being could endure so much pain and disappointment, and why they would ever have to. It was a question she had often asked herself, and to which neither of them had an answer.

Chapter 24

THE WEEKS OF her recovery seemed long to both of them, but both Gabbie and Peter enjoyed the time they spent talking to each other. She needed therapy for her arm, and the ribs took a long time to heal, as did some of her head wounds, but at the end of four weeks, he could no longer find an excuse to keep her. She was almost healthy. And on her last morning in the hospital, Peter came to see her, and brought her flowers and told her how much he was going to miss her. In fact, there was something he had been meaning to ask her, but it had taken him a long time to get up his courage. He had never done anything like this before, and it was awkward for him while she was there, because she was one of his patients. But once she left, he was no longer under any restrictions about seeing her.

“I was wondering,” he said awkwardly, feeling very young suddenly and more than a little stupid, “how would you feel about… if you… if we could have dinner sometime… or lunch… or coffee…” His own apartment was not very far from her in the East Eighties.

“I'd like that,” she said cautiously, but she had been thinking a great deal, and there was something she knew she needed to do first, for her own sake. And when she saw he was bothered by her hesitation, she tried to tell him about it. “I'm going to try to find my parents.”

“Why?” After all she'd told him, he didn't want her seeing them, and he had an overwhelming urge to protect her from them. She was much more beautiful than he had imagined she would be at first, but also far more delicate, and in some ways very fragile. There was a strength about her that carried her on, but a vulnerability at the same time that had come to frighten him for her. “Are you sure that's a good idea?” he asked, looking worried.

“Maybe not.” She smiled at him, braver than most, and much more so than he thought she should be. But that was part of what he loved about her. She was willing to stand up and be counted, to stick her chin out for everything she stood for. But so far, it had cost her a lot of blows that had nearly killed her. And Peter knew better than anyone that she needed someone to protect her. He suspected he knew it even better than she did. He was twelve years older than she was, and wise in the ways of the world, and he understood now what she needed, and wanted to see if he could give it to her. He had made mistakes of his own in his life, and he had failed in his own marriage, but he had learned a lot from it, and he wanted to be someone better than he had been, to Gabbie. “I just know I have to do this, Peter,” she explained to him, wanting to see her parents. “If I don't, if I never get the answers from them, there will always be a piece of me missing.”

“Maybe it's already there, Gabbie. Maybe it's already a part of you. It could be that the answers are within you, and not from them.” He wasn't certain either, but he didn't want them hurting her, not again. All of that was behind her now, and she had so much to live for. But she knew that. He had come to mean a great deal to her too. And part of wanting him was wanting to be whole for him, and not a half person living in the past, and wondering why they had never loved her.

“I have to do it.” She had already decided to call Mother Gregoria and see what information she was willing to give her. But Gabbie knew even that would be painful. If the nun refused to speak to her it would remind her again of how much she had lost when she left the convent. They had never spoken since the day the door had closed behind her, and Gabriella knew she wasn't supposed to call her. But now she felt she had to, and she thought Mother Gregoria would understand that.

Peter was planning to be on duty for the next two days, and he was worried about her. He told her he'd call her that evening. And when he did, she was happy to hear from him. She admitted that she was tired, and getting up the stairs to her room had been difficult, and she realized when she saw it again, that the room itself seemed filled with memories of Steve, and she didn't want to be there. A few things had changed in the last month. The professor's room had been rented and the books he had left Gabbie were in boxes in the basement. Steve's room had also been rented.

She said that Mrs. Boslicki had been very good to her, and had brought her dinner. He hated thinking of her there, and now suddenly all he wanted was to be with her. After the ease of seeing her in the hospital every day, it seemed so odd now to be away from her But she was still keeping a little distance between them. She wanted to pursue her past now, and she was not yet ready for her future.

She slept fitfully that night, thinking of the calls she had to make, and worrying about them. And as soon as she woke up, the next day, she called Mother Gregoria, and when she asked for her and gave her name, she was afraid they would tell her she couldn't speak to her. There was a long wait and the voice of the nun who answered the phone wasn't one Gabbie remembered. And then finally, she said she'd put the call through. There was a brief ring, and then suddenly Gabriella heard her. And it brought tears to her eyes the moment she heard the voice she had loved and missed for so many months.

“Are you all right, Gabbie?” Mother Gregoria had read the article in the newspaper, and it had taken all her strength to follow her own vows of obedience and not call her. But she had called the hospital until she was reassured that Gabbie had come out of the coma.

“I'm fine, Mother. A little battered and bruised, but no worse than “I'm used to,” she said softly, but they both knew it had been a lot worse. And then Gabriella explained why she was calling. She wanted to know the last addresses Mother Gregoria had had for her parents. The Mother Superior hesitated for a long time, she knew she was not supposed to give them to her, it had been her mother's request. But they hadn't heard from her mother in five years now, and in truth Mother Gregoria saw no real harm in it. If anything, it might be helpful to Gabbie to contact her. She understood perfectly why Gabbie wanted it. And she gave her her mother's last San Francisco address from five years before, and an address in the East Seventies for her father.

“In New York?” Gabbie sounded startled when she heard it. “He's here? I never knew that.”

“He only stayed in Boston a few months, Gabbie. He's always been here.”

“Then why didn't he come to see me?”

“I don't know the answer to that question,” the old nun said softly, although she had her own suspicions.

“Did he ever call you?”

“Never. But your mother gave me his address in case I ever needed it, if something ever happened to her. But we never needed to call him.”

“He must have never known where I was.” Now in retrospect that seemed so awful. He had only been a few blocks away from her, and she had always thought he was in Boston.

“You can tell him yourself now.” Mother Gregoria had given her both an office and a home address, and his phone numbers, though they were more than a dozen years old. But it was a start at least, and she was going to call him as soon as possible, and hopefully, someone at those numbers would know where he was now.

“Thank you, Mother,” Gabbie said softly, and then added cautiously, “I've missed you so much.” So much had happened to her.

“We've prayed for you so often,” and then she smiled proudly. “I read your story in The New Yorker. It was wonderful.” Gabbie told her about the professor then, and the money he had left her, how kind he had been to her, and the Mother Superior closed her eyes as she listened, reveling in the voice she had so loved, and the child she had cherished, grateful that at least one person had been kind to her since she left them. It was still forbidden to speak her name in the convent.

“May I write to you and tell you what happened with my parents?” Gabbie asked hesitantly, and there was a sad pause as she waited.

“No, my child. Neither of us can do that. God bless you, Gabbie.”

“I love you, Mother… I always will…” she said, choking on a sob.

“Take care of yourself,” Mother Gregoria whispered, unable to say more as tears streamed down her cheeks. She looked older than she had a year before. The loss had cost her dearly.

Gabbie had wanted to tell her about Peter, but she hadn't dared. There was so little to say yet. And perhaps he would forget her when she left the hospital, or think better of it, or maybe he only talked to her because she was there and it was easy. She had learned that she couldn't trust any man not to hurt her or leave her.

“God bless you, my child,” Mother Gregoria said again, and they were both crying when they hung up. Gabbie had no idea if she would ever speak to her again. It was nearly unbearable to think she wouldn't hear the Mother Superior's voice for the rest of her life, but she knew that, more than likely, she wouldn't.

She waited for a few minutes to catch her breath, and dialed the office number Mother Gregoria had given her. She didn't want to wait until he got home that night to call him. She knew that the number was old. It was from thirteen or fourteen years before, and he might no longer work there, but when she asked for John Harrison they seemed to know who she was asking about. They put her on hold and he came on the line very quickly.

“Gabriella?” he said in a single breath, sounding extremely surprised. But his voice was so precisely as she remembered it that all she could think of was the vision she still had of him as a child, when, to her, he looked like Prince Charming.

“Daddy?” She felt nine years old again, or much, much younger.

“Where are you?” He sounded worried.

“Here in New York. I just got your number for the first time in all these years. I thought you were in Boston.

“I moved back thirteen years ago,” he said matter-of-factly, and she couldn't even begin to imagine what he was feeling. Probably the same things that she was. It was inconceivable to her that he wouldn't.

“Mommy left me in a convent,” she blurted out, still feeling like a child, and wanting to explain to him where she'd been, while he'd been missing.

“I know,” he said, sounding very quiet. “She told me. She wrote me a letter from San Francisco.”

“When?” Gabriella was confused now. He'd known? Why hadn't he called or come to see her? What could possibly have kept him from calling?

“She wrote to me right after she got there. I never heard from her again. But she wanted to let me know where she'd left you. I believe she remarried,” he said calmly.

“You've known for thirteen years?” Gabriella sounded puzzled, and his response didn't give her the answer she wanted.

“Lives move on, Gabriella. Things change. People change. That was a hard time for me,” he said, as though expecting her to understand that. But it had been harder still for his daughter. Harder than he knew, or cared, or wanted to consider.

“When can I see you?” she asked bluntly.

“I…” He hadn't expected her to ask that, and wondered if she wanted money from him. His career hadn't been brilliant, but moderately successful, in investment banking. “Are you sure that's a good idea?” He sounded uncertain.

“I'd like that very much,” she said, feeling very nervous. He hadn't sounded as excited to hear from her as she'd hoped he would. But fourteen years was a long time not to see someone, and she hadn't warned him she'd be calling. She wondered if she should have just walked into his office and surprised him. “Could I come today?” She still had some of the exuberance of her childhood, and hearing him made her feel the same age she had been when she last saw him. It was hard to remember suddenly that she was a grown-up.

Again, he hesitated, and at his end, he was looking pained. He had no idea what to say to her. And then finally, she got what she wanted from him. “Why don't you come and see me in the office this afternoon?” He wanted to get it over with. It was going to be painful for both of them. There was no point postponing it any longer. “Three o'clock?”

“I'll be there.” She was beaming as she set the phone down.

She was a nervous wreck all afternoon, thinking about him, wondering how he would look, what he would say, how he would explain all that had happened. She needed to ask him. She knew it was her mothers fault, but she wanted to hear from him now why it had happened, and why he had let it.

She put on her best navy blue linen suit, which she wore to work sometimes, and treated herself to a taxi to go to Park Avenue and Fifty-third to his office. It was a distinguished-looking office building, and when she got upstairs, an impressive-looking office. He worked for a small firm, with an excellent reputation.

His secretary said he was expecting her, and at exactly 3:01, Gabriella was led down a long hall to a corner office, grinning broadly. She was so happy to see him she could hardly stand it, and as nervous as she was, she knew that her terrors would be dispelled the moment she saw him.

The door was opened very deliberately by the secretary, who then stood aside as Gabriella stepped into a room with a view, and standing there, behind the desk, she saw him. At first she thought he had hardly changed, he was as handsome as ever, and when she looked more carefully, she saw that there were a few lines in his face, and gray in his hair now. She could calculate easily that he had just turned fifty.

“Hello, Gabriella,” he said, watching her intently, surprised by how beautiful she was, and how graceful. She looked nothing like her mother though, but much more like him. She had his blond good looks, and his eyes were exactly the same color hers were. And as he looked at her, he made no move to come toward her. “Sit down,” he said uneasily, pointing to a chair on the other side of his desk. She was desperate to come around the desk and hug him, and kiss him and touch him, but the surroundings seemed suddenly very daunting. She sat down in the chair then, and assumed he would come around to kiss her later, after they had caught up with each other and he knew her a little better.

She saw that there were photographs of several children on the desk, four of them, all in silver frames, two girls about her age, or perhaps a little older, and two boys who were much younger, and were obviously still children. The photographs looked recent. And there was a large photograph of a woman in a red dress, she looked a little stern, and not terribly happy. And Gabriella noticed immediately that there were no photographs of her from her childhood, but that was understandable, from what she could remember, there had been none.

“How have you been?” he asked formally, looking slightly pained, and she imagined that he must have felt guilty. He had left them, after all. It had to have been hard for him, or at least she imagined it was, and then she couldn't resist asking him a question,

“Are those your children, Daddy?” He nodded in answer.

“The two girls are Barbara's, the boys are our sons. Jeffrey and Winston. They're twelve and nine now.” And then he looked at her, anxious to get it over with, and get to the point of her visit. “Why have you come to see me?”

“I wanted to find you. I never knew you were here in New York.” He had been so close by, with a family, leading his life entirely without her. Without further explanation, that was painful.

“Barbara didn't like Boston,” he said, as though that explained it. But in fact, for Gabbie, it explained nothing.

“If you knew I was there, why didn't you come to see me at the convent?” As she asked him the question, she saw a look that she remembered from her childhood, a helpless, cornered look that said he wasn't equal to the situation. He had worn the same look, watching her being beaten, from the doorway.

“What was the point of seeing you?” he asked painfully. “We all had such terrible memories of my marriage to your mother. I'm sure that you do too. I thought it was better if we all closed the door on it and tried to forget it.” But how could he forget his daughter? “She was a very sick woman.” And then he added something that truly shocked her. “I always thought she would kill you,” he said in a choked voice, and before she could stop herself, Gabbie asked him one of the questions that had waited her entire lifetime for an answer.

“Why didn't you stop her?” She held her breath as she listened. It was important for her to know that.

“I couldn't have stopped her. How could I?” Force, threats, removal, divorce, the police, there had been a lot of options. “What could I do? If I criticized her for what she did to you, she was worse to both of us, to you particularly. All I could do was leave, and start a new life somewhere else. It was the only answer for me.” And what about me, she wanted to scream at him. What new life did I have? “I thought you were better off with the Sisters. And your mother would never have let me take you.”

“Did you ever ask her, after she left me there?” She wanted to know it all. These were the answers she needed from him. They were the key to her life now.

“No, I didn't,” he said honestly. “Barbara would have objected to it. You were part of another life, Gabriella. You didn't belong with us.” And then he delivered the final blow. “You still don't. Our lives have gone separate ways for years, it's too late to recapture it now. And if Barbara knew I was seeing you today, she'd be furious with me. She'd feel it was a betrayal of our children.”

Gabriella was horrified at what he was saying. He didn't want her, never had, and had simply walked away and left her to her own devices.

“But what about her daughters? Didn't they live with you?”

“Of course, but that was different.”

“What was different about it?”

“They're her children. All you were to me then was a bad memory, a relic of a nightmare I wanted to walk away from. I couldn't bring you with me. Just as I can't now. Gabriella, our lives have been separate for years. We no longer belong to each other.” But he had two sons and two stepchildren, and a wife. She had no one.

“How can you say something like that?” There were tears in her eyes, but she refused to allow them to overwhelm her.

“Because it's true. For both of us. Every time you saw me you'd remember the pain we inflicted on you, the times I was unable to help you. In time, you'd hate me for it.” She was already beginning to. He was none of the things she had dreamed about. He had been helpless then, and he still was. He didn't have the courage to be her father.

“How could you not call me for all these years?” she asked now, close to tears, but she no longer cared what he thought about her. He was indifferent and cruel and he had failed her completely. He had no love for her at all, and nothing to give anyone. He was selfish, and weak, and just as he had been ruled by her mother years before, he was now being ruled by a woman named Barbara.

“What was there to say to you, Gabriella?” He looked across his desk at her with exasperation. And it was clear to her that he didn't want her to be here. “I didn't want to see you.” It was that simple. He had had nothing in his heart to give her, or possibly anyone, not even the pretty children in the pictures. She pitied all of them, and most of all him, for everything he wasn't. He wasn't even a person. He was a cardboard figure.

“Did you ever love me? Either of you?” she asked, choking on a sob now, and he found her demonstration of emotions distasteful. He looked agonized by it, and Gabriella knew he wished she would disappear. But she didn't care. This was for her, not for him. This was everything she needed to take with her to her future. He didn't answer her, and she looked at him with eyes that would not release him. “I asked you a question.”

“I don't know what I felt then. Of course I must have loved you. You were a child.”

“But not enough to take me into the rest of your life. All I got was nine years. Why?”

“Because it was a failure. It was more than that, it was a disaster. And you were a symbol of that disaster.”

“I was a casualty of it.”

“That's unfortunate,” he said sadly, acknowledging it tacitly. “We all were.”

“But you never wound up in the hospital. I did.” She was relentless now, in her pursuit of the truth, but painful as it was, she was glad she had come here.

“I knew you'd hate us for that. I told her so. She had no control over herself whatsoever.”

“Why did she hate me so much?” And why did you love me so little, was the question she didn't ask him. But she knew now that he wasn't capable of it, and probably never had been.

He sighed and sank back into his leather chair, looking exhausted. “She was jealous of you. She always was. Right from the moment you were born. I don't think she had it in her to be a mother. I never realized that when I married her. I suppose I should have.” And he didn't have it in him to be a father, no matter how many pictures he had on his desk now. And then he looked at her, anxious to end the meeting. “Is that it, Gabriella? Have I answered all your questions?”

“Most of them,” she said sadly, although she realized now that some of them would never be answered. He just didn't have what it took to be a father. He was less of a person than she had ever imagined. But maybe, in some secret part of her, she had always known that, and never wanted to face it. Maybe, as Peter said, the answers were within her.

Her father stood up then, and looked at her. He did not come around the desk as she had thought he would. He did hot reach out and hug her, or try to touch her. He stayed as far away from her as possible, and even armed with what she knew now, it still hurt her.

“Thank you for your visit,” he said, indicating that the meeting was over. He pressed a button on his desk, and the secretary reappeared and stood holding the door open for Gabbie.

“Thank you,” Gabriella said. She did not call him “Daddy” this time, or try to kiss him. There was no point. The man she remembered had been bad enough, this one was worse. And whatever he was, whoever he had been to her once, he was no longer her father. He had given up the job fourteen years before, and abdicated completely. That was entirely clear now. The father she had known, such as he was, had died the day he left them.

She stood in the doorway for one last minute and looked at him, wanting to remember him, and then she turned around and walked away without saying another word to him. There was nothing left to say now. It was truly over.

And as soon as the secretary closed the door again, he came around his desk, looking pained. It was like looking through a window into the past for him, and remembering all that sorrow. She was a pretty girl, but he felt nothing for her. He had closed that door a long time before, and there was no opening it again. He had always known that. And trying not to think of her, and the look in her eyes that bore into him like hot coals, he opened a cabinet, mixed himself a stiff martini, and stood staring out the window as he drank it.

Chapter 25

WHEN GABRIELLA LEFT her father that afternoon, she went straight to the ticket office on Fifth Avenue and bought a ticket to San Francisco. And as she purchased it, she was still thinking of the meeting with her father. Nothing about it had gone as she had expected. She felt sad in a way, and relieved too. She realized now that what had happened wasn't because of her, because in fact she had been so terrible, but because they were flawed. It was not because of who she was at the time, but who they weren't. And she had only just begun to understand that.

He was such an empty man, so cold, so frightened, so unable to cope with reality or honest emotions. It still stunned her that during the entire time in his office, he had never touched her, and would have shrunk from it if she tried to. He didn't want her in his life, and hadn't for years. In his mind, she was still too closely linked with her mother. But at least she understood something about him now. It was not that he had withheld something from her at the time, he had never had it to give her, or maybe even to give her mother. And he was right about one thing. It was too late now. As much as she had longed for him for all those years, and dreamed of him, and told herself that he would he there for her, if only he knew where she was, she now knew that he had known where she was all along, and didn't even care enough to see her. He didn't love or want her, there was no hiding from that fact now. It hurt to know that, but in its own way, it freed her. It was almost as though he had died fourteen years before, and she could lay the body to rest now. All these years, he had only been missing in action, and now she had a body to bury. She could still see him watching her as she left his office.

And when she got back to the boardinghouse, she found that Peter had called her from the hospital. She called and had him paged, and told him about the meeting.

“Do you feel better now?” he asked, sounding worried.

“Sort of,” she said honestly. It still hurt her that her father hadn't even wanted to hold her, or kiss her. But that was who he had always been. He had never held her then either, she now remembered. Seeing him had brought back a lot of memories, none of which were pleasant. The only time she remembered him being tender with her, or even something close to it, was the night before he left them. And knowing what he was about to do, he probably felt guilty. “You were right about one thing,” she told Peter, “I think some of the answers are within me. I just didn't know it.” He was relieved to hear it. He was nervous about this odyssey of the past she had embarked on. He suspected that it was going to be very painful for her, and not the homecoming she wanted.

“What are you going to do now?” he asked. They had just paged him again, and he knew he couldn't talk much longer.

“I'm flying to San Francisco tomorrow.” He didn't know why, but he felt as though he should go with her. But he knew she'd never let him. She was determined to slay her dragons single-handed, no matter how dangerous, or how painful. And he admired her for it.

“Will you be all right out there all alone?”

“I think so,” she said honestly. It still frightened her to think of seeing her mother. But she knew she had to. She was the one with the real answers. And especially the one to the final question: Why didn't you ever love me? She felt like a child in a fairy tale, looking for answers under mushrooms. Alice in Wonderland, or Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and she said as much to Peter.

“If you wait a few days, I'll go out there with you. I've got some time off later this week, and it might be easier for you.”

“I need to do this,” she explained, and promised to call him from San Francisco.

“Take care of yourself, Gabbie.” And then unexpectedly, “I miss you.”

“I miss you too,” she said softly. It was a prelude of better things to come between them, but not until she had resolved her past completely. She knew now, that without the answers, she had nothing to offer him, and he could never reach her. The pain of her childhood and knowing that she hadn't been loved would always stand between them. She would never believe him. And she would always believe that ultimately he would abandon her, just as they had. And the terror of waiting for it to happen would destroy them, or her, in the meantime.

“Call me when you get there,” he told her anxiously, and then he had to leave her to see patients.

She was very pensive as she walked upstairs to pack her suitcase, and as she had the night before, she found the room depressing. It was too full of Steve, and bad dreams, and ugly nightmares. She couldn't sleep all night thinking of the trip to San Francisco, but it was too far to go down four flights of stairs to call Peter, so she just lay there waiting for morning.

Everyone in the house was still asleep when she left, and she left a note for Mrs. Boslicki, telling her where she was going. “I've gone to San Francisco to see my mother.” It would have had a nice ring to it, she thought, if it had been a different mother.

The flight to San Francisco passed uneventfully, and she took a bus into the city, with her small overnight bag. She was surprised by how cold it was, although it was August. There was a brisk wind, it was a foggy day, and it was decidedly chilly, which everyone said was typical of a San Francisco summer.

She stopped and had a bite to eat, and then called the telephone number she'd been given, and then realized instantly how foolish she'd been not to call first. What if they were away on vacation? But instead of that, there was a recording saying that the phone had been disconnected. She didn't know what to do then. She got a cab and drove by the address, but when she rang the bell they said that no one by that name lived there. She was almost in tears by then, and the cabdriver suggested they stop at a phone booth and call Information. All she knew was that the name of the man her mother had married years before was Frank Waterford. She remembered him vaguely as a nice-looking man who never talked to her. But surely he would now. And she followed the cabbie's suggestion, and it proved fruitful. Frank Waterford was listed on Twenty-eighth Avenue, in an area the driver said was called Seacliff.

She dialed the number she'd gotten from Information. A woman answered, but it did not sound like her mother. She asked for Mrs. Waterford and was told they were out, and would be back at four-thirty. She only had an hour to kill then, and debated between calling and showing up, and she finally decided to just go there. They drove up in front of the house at exactly four-thirty, and there was a silver Bentley parked in the driveway.

Gabriella held her suitcase in one hand, and rang the doorbell with the other. It was the same battered cardboard bag she'd been given when she left the convent. But although her wardrobe had improved in the last year, her luggage hadn't. This was the first trip she'd ever taken.

“Yes?” A woman in a yellow cashmere sweater opened the door. She was wearing a string of pearls, and had blond hair that had been “assisted” in keeping its color, and she looked as though she was in her mid fifties. But she looked pleasantly at Gabriella. “May I help you?” Gabriella looked like a runaway with her blond hair tousled by the wind, her big blue eyes, and her suitcase, and she looked younger than her twenty-three years. The woman who opened the door had no idea who she was, as Gabriella asked politely for “Mrs. Waterford” and then looked stunned when the woman said she was. She had come to the wrong house after all, obviously a different Mr. and Mrs. Frank Waterford lived here. “I'm sorry,” the woman said pleasantly, when Gabriella said she was looking for her mother, as a tall, well-built man with graying hair came up behind her. But he was the Frank Waterford she remembered, only thirteen years older than when she'd last seen him.

“Something wrong?” He looked concerned, and then saw the girl with the suitcase in the doorway. She looked lost but harmless.

“This young lady is looking for her mother,” his wife explained pleasantly, “and she's come to the wrong address. I was trying to help her figure out what to do now.”

“Gabriella?” he asked, frowning at her in confusion. He had heard her say her name, and still remembered it, although he had hardly ever seen her, and she looked very different. She was all grown up now.

“Yes.” She nodded. “Mr. Waterford?” He smiled at her then, more than a little surprised to see her. “I'm looking for my mother.” A glance was exchanged between the two Waterfords, who understood now. “I take it she doesn't live here.”

“No, she doesn't,” he said carefully. “Why don't you come in for a minute?” He looked much happier to see her than her father had, and seemed much kinder. They invited her to set down her bag, and come into the living room with them. He offered her a drink, and she said she'd be happy with a glass of water, and the woman with the blond hair went to get it for her.

“Are you and my mother divorced?” she asked, looking a little nervous, and he hesitated, but there was no way to keep the truth from her, and no reason to do it.

“No, Gabriella, we're not divorced. Your mother died four years ago. I'm very sorry.” For a moment, Gabriella was stunned into silence. She was gone, taking all her secrets with her. Gabriella knew instantly that she would never be free now.

“I felt sure your father would tell you.” He had a soft Southern drawl, which she remembered now, and thought she had heard her mother say he was originally from Texas. “I sent him a copy of the obituary, just so he'd know, and I assumed he'd tell you.” The whole situation was puzzling to him until Gabriella explained it.

“I saw my father for the first time in fourteen years yesterday. He didn't say anything to me. But I didn't tell him I was going to come here.”

“But didn't you live with him?” Frank Waterford looked baffled. “She told me she had given up full custody of you to him in order to marry me, and he never let her see you again. She never even put any pictures of you anywhere, because she said it was too painful.” They were interesting people, her parents. What they had done to her was no accident, it had taken considerable effort.

She sighed as she answered him, amazed at the lies they had told their spouses, all in order to desert her. “There were no pictures of me, Mr. Waterford, they never took any. And she left me at St. Matthew's convent in New York when she went to Reno. She never came back. I never heard from her again, she just sent a check every month to pay for my board there, and it stopped when I turned eighteen. And that was the end of it.”

“She died a year later,” he explained, putting the pieces of the story together finally. “She always told me that was a charitable donation, that the nuns there had been good to her once. I never had any idea that you lived there.” He felt suddenly as though he should apologize to her, as though he had been part of the perfidy, but Gabriella knew he wasn't. It had all been her mother, and it was very like her.

“How did she die?”

“Of breast cancer,” he said, looking at Gabriella. There was something so sad in her eyes that he wanted to hug her. “She wasn't a very happy woman,” he said diplomatically, not wanting to offend her daughter, or destroy her illusions about her. “Maybe she missed you. I'm sure she must have.”

“That's why I came here,” Gabriella explained quietly, setting her glass down. “There were some questions I wanted to ask her.”

“Maybe I can help you,” he offered, as his wife listened with compassion and interest.

“I don't think so. I wanted to ask her why she left me, and why,” she found herself struggling with tears in front of these people who were strangers to her, and it embarrassed her, but they were land to her, and it was a difficult moment. “I wanted to ask her why she did a lot of things before she left me.” He could see easily that her questions were painful, and he began to suspect that there was more to the story than he had ever dreamed of, and he decided to be honest with her. It was too late now to be otherwise. And he felt that Gabriella deserved at least that from him. It was all he had to give her.

“Gabriella, I'm going to level with you. You may not like it, but maybe it will help you. I was married to your mother for the worst nine years of my life. We were talking about getting a divorce when she got sick, but I didn't feel right about it under the circumstances. I thought I should stick by her, and I did. But she was a cold, difficult, angry, vicious, vengeful woman, and I don't think she had a kind bone in her body. I don't know what kind of a mother she was to you, but I'd venture to say that she was no nicer to you than she was to me, and maybe the nicest thing she ever did for you was leave you at St. Matthew's. She was a hateful woman.” He said it dispassionately, and his new wife patted his hand as he said it. “I'm sorry she left you,” he went on, “but I can't imagine you'd ever have been happy with her, even with me around. When I was going out with her in New York, she forbade me to speak to you, and I never understood it. You were the cutest little thing I'd ever seen, and I love kids. I have five of my own in Texas, but they wouldn't even come here to visit when I was married to her. She hated them, and they hated her right up until the day she died, and I'm not sure I blame them. By the time she died, I wasn't too fond of her either. She was a woman without many redeeming features. Her obituary was the shortest one I've ever seen, because no one could think of anything nice to say about her.” And then, looking back into the past, he remembered something else he had forgotten. “You know, back in New York, she tried to tell me that you had destroyed her marriage to your father. I never figured that one out, but I always got the feeling then that she was jealous of you, and that's why she gave up custody to your father. She didn't want you around, sweetheart. But I never figured for a minute she'd desert you. I wouldn't have married her if I knew that. Any woman who can do a thing like that… well, it tells you something about ‘em… But knowing what she was, I believe it of her now. Amazing that for all those years, I never knew anything about it. I just figured it was painful for her talking about giving you up, so we never talked about you.”

It was indeed an amazing story. They had all forgotten her, buried her with the past, both her mother and her father. She truly had been abandoned by them.

And then she began telling the Waterfords what it had been like, what her mother had done to her, and how her father had let it happen, the beatings, the hospitals, the bruises, the hatred, the accusations. Her story went on for a long time and took a long time to tell, but when it was over, all three of them were crying, and Frank Waterford was holding her hand, and his wife, Jane, had an arm around her shoulders. They were the nicest people she'd ever met, and she knew for a fact that her mother had never deserved him. She'd just been lucky, and he'd paid a high price for the pleasure of her company. He still looked grim when he talked about her, but so did Gabbie.

“I wanted to ask her,” Gabbie said tearfully, as she sat with them, “why she never loved me.” It was the key to everything for her. The final answer. And now she would never know it. What was it about her that they couldn't love? Was it her or them? It was as though she had expected her mother to apologize, to beg her forgiveness, to tell her she had loved her but never knew how to show it. Anything would have been better than the raw hatred she had met at her hands and seen in her eyes for the ten years she had endured before her mother left her. But now she could not ask her.

“There's a very simple answer to that, Gabbie,” Frank said, wiping his eyes. “She couldn't love anyone. She had nothing to give. I'm sorry to speak ill of the dead, but she was rotten to the core, mean as a snake. There was something wrong with her. No single human being can be that hateful. I always thought it was my fault. For the first five years of our marriage I thought it was me, that I had disappointed her somehow, or wasn't good enough, or had failed her. And then I realized it had nothing to do with me. It was her. It was a lot easier after that. I just felt sorry for her, but she still wasn't easy to live with.

“What she did to you is unforgivable, and you'll have to live with the scars of it for the rest of your life. You'll have to decide if you have it in your heart to forgive her, or if you just want to turn your back on her, as she did you, and forget her. But whatever you decide, you have to know that it had nothing to do with you. Any other human being in the world, except those two you were related to, would have loved you. It was just bad luck. You wound up with rotten parents. Maybe that answer's too easy for you, but I think that's what it was. She was a terrible person. There was something very important missing in her, and always would be. If she were here today, she wouldn't be able to give you the answer either. She never had any love in her heart from the first day I met her. She was very beautiful, and a lot of fun sometimes in the beginning, but not for long. The meanness came out real quick, as soon as we were married. And that was it, until she died. It had nothing to do with you, Gabbie. You were in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in the wrong line up in heaven, when they handed out the parents.”

That was it, then? she wondered. As simple as that? But as she listened to him, she knew it was true, it had nothing to do with her, and never had. She had her answer. It was all an accident of fate, a freak of nature, a collision of two planets that had never been meant to coexist side by side, and she had gotten caught in the resulting explosion. There was no answer to the question of why she had never loved her. Eloise Harrison Waterford had never loved anyone. She had no love to give, not even to her own daughter. And Gabbie felt oddly peaceful now as she listened. She knew that she had come to the end of the road finally, and she could go home now. It had been an odyssey that had taken her twenty-three years to accomplish. Other people's took longer. But she had been brave enough to face hers. She had wanted the answers. And she had the courage to go through the ordeals it had taken to get there. They had been right all along, all of them. She was strong. And she knew that now too. They couldn't hurt her with it now. She had survived them.

They asked her to stay for dinner that night, and she enjoyed being with them. The idea that Frank had been her stepfather for thirteen years and she'd never known him somehow touched her. And Jane was a lovely woman. She was a widow too, and they'd been married for three years and obviously loved each other. She said that Frank was a mess when she found him, and thanks to Eloise, was beginning to hate women, and she'd fixed that. And he laughed at her version of the story.

“Don't believe a word of that, Gabbie. She was a lonely widow and I rescued her, right from under the nose of some rich old fool from Palm Beach. I married her before he knew what hit him.” He smiled broadly as he said it.

They invited her to stay with them that night, but she didn't want to impose on them. She said she was going to get a hotel room at the airport and go home in the morning. But they wanted her to stay there, Frank said he owed her at least that after never having her around for all those years. And she couldn't help thinking about how different her life would have been if he had been. But her mother would have spoiled it for her anyway, and she had decided he was probably right. The best thing her mother had done for her was leave her. It had saved her ultimately, she couldn't have survived the beatings forever.

They gave her a lovely guest room with a view of the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge, and in the morning a maid served her breakfast in bed. She felt like a princess. And she decided to call Peter before she left for the airport. He was off duty for a change, and thrilled to hear her.

She told him about the Waterfords, and he was happy it had gone so well, and he was also happy that her mother hadn't been there to see her. Like Frank Waterford, he was sure that nothing would have changed, and she would have found some way to hurt Gabbie. He wasn't surprised by anything Frank had said, and he was so relieved that her search was over. She sounded very peaceful. She said she was coming home that night, but as he listened to her, he had a better idea. He had four days off for once, and he said he loved San Francisco.

“Why don't you stay there?” he suggested. “I'll meet you.” She hesitated for a long moment, not sure what to say to him. This was only the very beginning for them. But at least she felt as though she had finally left all the ghosts behind her. She had made peace with them at last. Joe, Steve, even her parents. She understood better now what had happened to her. Frank was right in a way. She hadn't been very lucky when they'd been handing out parents. It was like being struck by lightning. And for all those years, she had believed everything was her fault. The beatings, the cruelty, their abandoning her, even the fact that they hadn't loved her. She had been willing to accept the blame for everything. And she realized now that even what had happened to Joe hadn't been entirely her fault. Ultimately, he had made his own decision. “What do you think?” Peter asked her about his coming out again, and slowly she smiled as she looked at the view from the Waterfords’ guest room window.

“I'd like that,” she said, willing to let herself have it, able to let him in now. She didn't know what would happen between them, but if it was good, and right for them, it seemed possible now that she deserved it. She no longer felt as though she was eternally damned, or destined to be punished. That was why she had come here, to be relieved of the burdens they had doomed her to live with, and she had finally done it. Her life sentence had been lifted.

“I'll fly out this afternoon. I can meet you somewhere. I'll get a hotel room,” Peter said enthusiastically, but when she told the Waterfords he was coming out and she was moving to a hotel, they insisted she stay there with him. They were the kindest, most hospitable people she had ever met, and they seemed to genuinely want her to be there with them.

“I want to check out this new son-in-law of mine, before you make a mistake,” he teased Gabbie. She had told them how they had met, and what had happened with Steve Porter, or whatever his name was. They were horrified by the story, but anxious to meet Peter.

And after she left in a cab to go to the airport, Frank told his wife how sorry he felt about her, what hell her life must have been as a child. And he blamed himself for not seeing it, or Eloise for the monster she had been. It made him feel good now to do what he could to make it up to Gabbie. And he was pleased to see that she had a good head on her shoulders. He thought it remarkable that she had survived all she'd been through.

“She's a nice girl,” he said to Jane, and she agreed with him, and as they walked out in their garden to look at the view they enjoyed so much, Peter was landing at the airport.

Chapter 26

HIS PLANE TOUCHED down easily on the runway as Gabriella watched it. She was excited to see him, but still a little nervous. They had talked so much in the hospital, but she hadn't seen him since, or out in the real world. It seemed hard to believe that she'd only been out of the hospital for three days. So much had happened, so many ghosts had been put to rest. And she was so glad she had come here. She and Peter had agreed to stay with the Waterfords for the weekend, and then he had to go back to the hospital, and she wanted to go back to the bookstore.

She was standing slightly to one side when he came off the plane, and he almost didn't see her. He was looking straight ahead, and he smiled broadly when she suddenly stepped forward and surprised him. And as he looked at her, with her blue eyes, and her shining blond hair, he had an overwhelming urge to kiss her. But instead, he put an arm around her shoulders and they began walking slowly through the airport. She was talking easily about the time she had spent here, and the discoveries she had made, and her eyes looked happier than he'd ever seen them. There was still the depth to them that he loved, and that had first drawn him to her, but she no longer looked so anguished. And then, as he listened to her, he stopped walking, and just looked down at her, smiling, and happy to see her.

“I've missed you. The trauma unit isn't the same without you.” Nothing had been. And he'd been worried sick about her ever since she came to California.

“I've missed you too, Peter.” She smiled up at him, with the eyes of a woman. They were wise eyes, strong eyes, brave eyes, eyes that were no longer afraid to see him. ‘Thank you for coming out here.”

“Thank you for coming to the trauma unit,” for surviving it, for surviving her whole damn ugly life to get there. He had been waiting for her, for years, he just didn't know it. For all these years there had never been anyone he really cared about, no one who was right for him, no one who had the guts to stick by him, but somehow he knew she would. She wasn't afraid of anything, and if she was, he would be there for her, he would help her through it. Just as he knew she'd be there for him. They were both the kind of people who had the courage to do what they had to, to go after what they wanted, to be there for each other. They had both learned that the hard way. The road hadn't been easy for them, especially for Gabbie. She was the real hero in the piece, she had been to hell and back and survived, and now she was smiling up at him with all the courage she'd looked for all her life. The shadows were gone now.

He took her hand in his then, and held it firmly, and slowly they began walking toward the exit. He had his bag over his shoulder, and she had her freedom. They had nowhere special to go, and they were in no rush to get there. They had time, and a full life ahead of them, and there were no ghosts left to haunt them. All they needed now was each other, and the time to enjoy it. And she had no more answers to look for. She was free now.

And as they walked out into the August sunshine, hand in hand, he looked down at her, and she laughed up at him. It all seemed so easy. The road to get there had been tortuous and at times it had seemed endless. But now, looking down at the view from the mountain-top, the road didn't seem as rocky as it had been. It had been hard enough. And long enough. But wherever she was, she knew she was home now.

a cognizant original v5 release october 06 2010

WATCH FOR THE NEW NOVEL

FROM

DANIELLE STEEL

On Sale in Hardcover

June 27, 2006

COMING OUT

Olympia Crawford Rubinstein has a way of managing her thriving family with grace and humor. With twin daughters finishing high school, a son at Dartmouth, and a kindergartener from her second marriage, there seems to be nothing Olympia can't handle… until one sunny day in May, when she opens an invitation for her daughters to attend the most exclusive coming out ball in New York—and chaos erupts all around her…

From a son's crisis to a daughter's heartbreak, from a case of the chickenpox to a political debate raging in her household, Olympia is on the verge of surrender… until a series of startling choices and changes of heart, family and friends turn a night of calamity into an evening of magic. As old wounds are healed, barriers are shattered and new traditions are born, and a debutante ball becomes a catalyst for change, revelation, acceptance, and love.

COMING OUT

on sale June 27, 2006

Chapter 1

Olympia Crawford Rubinstein was whizzing around her kitchen on a sunny May morning, in the brownstone she shared with her family on Jane Street in New York, near the old meat-packing district of the West Village. It had long since become a fashionable neighborhood of mostly modern apartment buildings with doormen, and old renovated brownstones. Olympia was fixing lunch for her five-year-old son, Max. The school bus was due to drop him off in a few minutes. He was in kindergarten at Dalton, and Friday was a half day for him. She always took Fridays off to spend them with him. Although Olympia had three older children from her first marriage, Max was Olympia and Harry's only child.

Olympia and Harry had restored the house six years before, when she was pregnant with Max. Before that, they has lived in her Park Avenue apartment, which she had previously shared with her three children after her divorce. And then Harry joined them. She had met Harry Rubinstein a year after her divorce. And now, she and Harry had been married for thirteen years. They had waited eight years to have Max, and his parents and siblings adored him. He was a loving, funny, happy child.

Olympia was a partner in a booming law practice, specializing in civil rights issues and class action lawsuits. Her favorite cases, and what she specialized in, were those that involved discrimination against or some form of abuse of children. She had made a name for herself in her field. She had gone to law school after her divorce, fifteen years before, and married Harry two years later. He had been one of her law professors at Columbia Law School, and was now a judge on the federal court of appeals. He had recently been considered for a seat on the Supreme Court. In the end, they hadn't appointed him, but he'd come close, and she and Harry both hoped that the next time a vacancy came up, he would get it.

She and Harry shared all the same beliefs, values, and passions—even though they came from very different background. He came from an Orthodox Jewish home, and both his parents had been Holocaust survivors as children. His mother had gone to Dachau from Munich at ten, and lost her entire family. His father had been one of the few survivors of Auschwitz, and they met in Israel later. They had married as teenagers, moved to London, and from there to the States. Both had lost their entire families, and their only son had become the focus of all their energies, dreams, and hopes. They had worked like slaves all their lives to give him an education, his father as a tailor and his mother as a seamstress, working in the sweatshops of the Lower East Side, and eventually on Seventh Avenue in what was later referred to as the garment district. His father had died just after Harry and Olympia married. Harry's greatest regret was that his father hadn't known Max. Harry's mother, Frieda, was a strong, intelligent, loving woman of seventy-six, who thought her son was a genius, and her grandson a prodigy.

Olympia had converted from her staunch Episcopalian background to Judaism when she married Harry. They attended a Reform synagogue, and Olympia said the prayers for Shabbat every Friday night, and lit the candles, which never failed to touch Harry. There was no doubt in Harry's mind, or even his mother's, that Olympia was a fantastic woman, a great mother to all her children, a terrific attorney, and a wonderful wife. Like Olympia, Harry had been married before, but he had no other children. Olympia was turning forty-five in July, and Harry was fifty-three. They were well matched in all ways, though their backgrounds couldn't have been more different. Even physically, they were an interesting and complementary combination. Her hair was blond, her eyes were blue; he was dark, with dark brown eyes; she was tiny; he was a huge teddy bear of a man, with a quick smile and an easygoing disposition. Olympia was shy and serious, though prone to easy laughter, especially when it was provoked by Harry or her children. She was a remarkably dutiful and loving daughter-in-law to Harry's mother, Frieda.

Olympia's background was entirely different from Harry's. The Crawfords were an illustrious and extremely social New York family, whose blue-blooded ancestors had intermarried with Astors and Vanderbilts for generations. Buildings and academic institutions were named after them, and theirs had been one of the largest “cottages” in Newport, Rhode Island, where they spent the summers. The family fortune had dwindled to next to nothing by the time her parents died when she was in college, and she had been forced to sell the “cottage” and surrounding estate to pay their debts and taxes. Her father had never really worked, and as one of her distant relatives had said after he died, “he had a small fortune, he had made it from a large one,” By the time she cleaned up all their debts and sold their property, there was simply no money, just rivers of blue blood and aristocratic connections. She had just enough left to pay for her education, and put a small nest egg away, which later paid for law school.

She married her college sweetheart, Chauncey Bedham Walker IV, six months after she graduated from Vassar, and he from Princeton. He had been charming, handsome, and fun-loving, the captain of the crew team, an expert horseman, played polo, and when they met, Olympia was understandably dazzled by him. Olympia was head over heels in love with him, and didn't give a damn about his family's enormous fortune. She was totally in love with Chauncey, enough so as not to notice that he drank too much, played constantly, had a roving eye, and spent far too much money. He went to work in his family's investment bank, and did anything he wanted, which eventually included going to work as seldom as possible, spending literally no time with her, and having random affairs with a multitude of women. By the time she knew what was happening, she and Chauncey had three children. Charlie came along two years after they were married, and his identical twin sisters, Virginia and Veronica, three years later. When she and Chauncey split up seven years after they married, Charlie was five, the twins two, and Olympia was twenty-nine years old. As soon as they separated, he quit his job at the bank, and went to live in Newport with his grandmother, the doyenne of Newport and Palm Beach society, and devoted himself to playing polo and chasing women.

A year later Chauncey married Felicia Weatherton, who was the perfect mate for him. They built a house on his grandmother's estate, which he ultimately inherited, filled her stables with new horses, and had three daughters in four years. A year after Chauncey married Felicia, Olympia married Harry Rubinstein, which Chauncey found not only ridiculous but appalling. He was rendered speechless when their son, Charlie, told him his mother had converted to the Jewish faith. He had been equally shocked earlier when Olympia enrolled in law school, all of which proved to him, as Olympia had figured out long before, that despite the similarity of their ancestry, she and Chauncey had absolutely nothing in common, and never would. As she grew older, the ideas that had seemed normal to her in her youth appalled her. Almost all of Chauncey's values, or lack of them, were anathema to her.

The fifteen years since their divorce had been years of erratic truce, and occasional minor warfare, usually over money. He supported their three children decently, though not generously. Despite what he had inherited from his family, Chauncey was stingy with his first family, and far more generous with his second wife and their children. To add insult to injury, he had forced Olympia to agree that she would never urge their children to become Jewish. It wasn't an issue anyway. She had no intention of doing so. Olympia's conversion was a private, personal decision between her and Harry. Chauncey was unabashedly anti-Semitic. Harry thought Olympia's first husband was pompous, arrogant, and useless. Other than the fact that he was her children's father and she had loved him when she married him, for the past fifteen years, Olympia found it impossible to defend him. Prejudice was Chauncey's middle name. There was absolutely nothing politically correct about him or Felicia, and Harry loathed him. They represented everything he detested, and he could never understand how Olympia had tolerated him for ten minutes, let alone seven years of marriage. People like Chauncey and Felicia, and the whole hierarchy of Newport society, and all it stood for, were a mystery to Harry. He wanted to know nothing about it, and Olympia's occasional explanations were wasted on him.

Harry adored Olympia, her three children, and their son, Max. And in some ways, her daughter Veronica seemed more like Harry's daughter than Chauncey's. They shared all of the same extremely liberal, socially responsible ideas. Virginia, her twin, was much more of a throwback to their Newport ancestry, and was far more frivolous than her twin sister. Charlie, their older brother, was at Dartmouth, studying theology and threatening to become a minister. Max was a being unto himself, a wise old soul, who his grandmother swore was just like her own father, who had been a rabbi in Germany before being sent to Dachau, where he had helped as many people as he could before he was exterminated along with the rest of her family.

The stories of Frieda's childhood and lost loved ones always made Olympia weep. Frieda Rubinstein had a number tattooed on the inside of her left wrist, which was a sobering reminder of the childhood the Nazis had stolen from her. Because of it, she had worn long sleeves all her life, and still did. Olympia frequently bought beautiful silk blouses and long-sleeved sweaters for her. There was a powerful bond of love and respect between the two women, which continued to deepen over the years.

Olympia heard the mail being pushed through the slot in the front door, went to get it, and tossed it on the kitchen table as she finished making Max's lunch. With perfect timing, she heard the doorbell ring at almost precisely the same instant. Max was home from school, and she was looking forward to spending the afternoon with him. Their Fridays together were always special. Olympia knew she had the best of both worlds, a career she loved and that satisfied her, and a family that was the hub and core of her emotional existence. Each seemed to enhance and complement the other.

COMING THIS FALL

H.R.H.

BY

DANIELLE STEEL

On Sale in Hardcover

October 31, 2006

In a novel where ancient traditions conflict with reality and the pressures of modern life, a young European princess proves that simplicity, courage, and dignity win the day and forever alter her world.

THE LONG ROAD HOME

A Dell Book

Dell mass market reissue / May 2006

Published by Bantam Dell

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved

Copyright © 1998 by Danielle Steel

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97037444

Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-307-56695-9

www.bantamdell.com

v3.0

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

a cognizant original v5 release october 06 2010

WATCH FOR THE NEW NOVEL

FROM DANIELLE STEEL

COMING OUT on sale June 27, 2006

COMING THIS FALL H.R.H. BY