'Goodbye, Bernie.'
Bernie sighed wistfully. 'Sure would love to come along.'
'At least two of us here would hate it,' Henry quipped, and halfway around the world, Bernie gazed at his white telephone receiver in puzzled astonishment.
He had never before known Henry Hale to crack a joke.
'If any place is heaven, this is it,' Anna breathed the moment the canopied jeep pulled up in front of the villa.
Far from the big hotels along the beach, the ocean front estate was made up of multi-level terraces leading down to the sea. The house was sumptuous, but not ostentatiously furnished. Made of rough stone, the villa boasted a proliferation of arches, no two of which were the same, giving the house a unique charm as well as plentiful access to cooling ocean breezes. There were twenty rooms in all, and two swimming pools, one saltwater and one fresh. Both pools were made up of craggy rock formations, which had been carefully blasted hollow in order to leave boulders jutting up out of the water. The grounds were tended by a gardener whose job it was to maintain the jungle-like patches of palms, eucalyptus, sea grapes, bougainvillea, and passion flowers without making them appear at all manicured. Two other full-time servants staffed the house, while the gardener doubled as the driver and so picked Henry and Anna up at the airport.
The estate was a paradise of utter privacy. Each day, Henry and Anna swam, went boating, ate on the loggia, and made love. After a week, they both had even, fruitwood tans.
Lulled by the fragrant flowers and tropical breezes, neither Henry nor Anna noticed as their two weeks rushed past in a blur. But as the time approached for them to fly to New York, Anna became increasingly filled with misgivings.
On their last afternoon, they were lying on the chaises under the sun when she said, 'Henry, what if your family does not like me?'
He gazed at her pinched expression and smiled. 'They will.'
'But they don't even know we're married yet. We told no one.'
'It isn't such a big family. Two minutes, and they'll all know.'
She nodded, but her lips were twisted in a frown. 'But still . . . your grandmother . . . ' She slipped off her chaise and knelt at the side of his.
'My grandmother.' He was silent for a moment, thinking of Elizabeth-Anne. 'I wouldn't worry about her if I were you. She'll like you just fine.' He took her face in his hands. 'Don't be such a worry wart. Nobody's going to bite you. Now finish your pina colada, and then we'll take a swim and cool off.'
'In the fresh-water pool. Salt burns my eyes.'
'It burns mine, too,' he agreed with a laugh.
They both turned and glanced at the villa at the same time. Somewhere inside it, the telephone had started ringing. It stopped on the third ring.
'At least it's not for us,' Henry said, shaking his head. 'I still can't believe how wonderful it is not to be tied to a phone. Still, every time I hear one ring, I feel the compunction to answer it. I'm like Pavlov's dog, I suppose. Conditioned.'
'Excuse me, Senor.'
They turned around, finding the maid had carried out a long-corded telephone.
'What is it?' Henry asked, feeling almost shocked.
'Is for you, Senior' She held out the telephone.
'Knowing Bernie, he wants me to do him another favor,' Henry told Anna with a smile, despite his own bewilderment. 'Trust good old Bernie.'
The maid shook her head. 'No, Senor. Is not Senor Schulkin.'
'But no one knows we're here.' Now he was truly alarmed.
'Someone does,' the maid said gently. 'Is Senora Hale.'
Anna turned sharply to Henry, who rose to take the phone. For a long moment he stared at the receiver. Then he lifted it to his ear. 'Grandmother?'
'Henry, dear!' Elizabeth-Anne's voice floated crisply across the wires, only slightly marred by the static. 'How's the sun?' She sounded bright-eyed and chipper enough to bring Henry to his senses.
'How did you know where to find me?' he asked sternly.
Elizabeth-Anne laughed. 'You left a trail a mile wide. Don't forget, the Roma Hale made the reservations for Ischia, and the hotel there made the reservations for your flight to Cozumel.'
'That backstabbing Schulkin,' Henry growled under his breath.
'Bernie? Why, it wasn't him at all. In fact, it took my secretary four hours to track you down to the house, but track you down she did.'
'What did you do? Offer her a bounty?'
She laughed. 'Perhaps I should do that in the future. Anyway, I'm glad you finally took a vacation.'
'Don't I deserve it?'
'Of course you do,' she said soothingly. 'However, you could have let me know where you were.' There was no reproach in her voice; it was merely a statement of fact.
'Yes, perhaps I should have.'
'Are you enjoying yourself?'
He looked over at Anna and met her gaze. He couldn't help but smile. 'That I am,' he said into the phone, wondering what Elizabeth-Anne would say if she knew just how happy he truly was.
'Good. Enjoy your last day, then.'
'How did you know about - oh, I get it. The reservations for the return trip.'
'The reservations,' she agreed. She paused. 'I'll see you tomorrow. Do drop by the Madison Squire after you get in. I'll be home all evening.'
'Will do.'
'And Henry?'
'Yes, grandmother?'
'Be sure to give my best to your bride.'
Before he could say anything, the connection was broken. Thoughtfully he replaced the receiver.
'What is it?' Anna asked.
He looked at her with a dumbfounded expression. 'She already knows. It's incredible. I don't know how she does it, but she already the hell knows.' He smiled wryly and shook his head. 'She said to tell you hello.'
4
It was close to ten o'clock at night when they arrived at the Madison Squire. Henry didn't announce himself at the front desk; there was no need. Most of the Squire's employees had bounced him on their knees as a child and they greeted him with genuine warmth.
Entering the lobby, he was filled with a sense of warm nostalgia. Nothing about the Squire had changed; it never did. Half the staff had spent the better part of their lives with the hotel. Paula Kelley, the head switchboard operator, had been on the staff forty-nine years, and hers was not an unusual case. Many worked well past retirement age. The Squire was their life and joy, and they intended to keep working until the day they died. There was a pride, an esprit de corps, a feeling of being part of the family at the Squire that was sadly lacking in most hotels.
In the same way, Elizabeth-Anne had never allowed the hotel to become ostentatious. She emphasized warm personal service, and rather dowdy luxury, which was kept just this side of frayed so the atmosphere remained nice and cozy. As a result, the Madison Squire had developed a loyal following. More repeat guests stayed here than at any of the Hale hotels, and the Squire employees prided themselves upon remembering a client's name after his very first visit.
'Everyone seems to know you,' Anna observed as they got off the elevator on the penthouse floor.
He nodded, a wistful expression on his face. 'I practically grew up in this hotel.'
'I like it. It's so . . . so warm.'
'Personally, I think it could use a little sprucing up. It's beginning to show just a little more seediness than it should.'
'But that would spoil it,' Anna cried.
'My sentiments exactly,' a crisp voice seconded from the end of the hall.
They turned and found Elizabeth-Anne, bathed in the glow of the wall sconces, looking very stately and beautifully groomed, as always every inch the lady.
For a long, drawn-out moment time seemed to freeze as the two women's gazes locked. They sized each other up frankly in a split second, the way only two women meeting for the first time, and sharing the love of the same man, can do.
But for Elizabeth-Anne, this meeting was far more than it seemed. Outwardly, she appeared to be a composed, handsomely elegan
t sixty-six year old, with her warm smile and perfectly tailored, oyster wool Chanel suit. But her mind was a blur with conflicting emotions and anxious thoughts.
Looking at the lanky, poised young woman with blue-blue eyes who stood before her, Elizabeth-Anne felt like a teenager on her first date. She searched Anna's face for the tiniest hints of recognition, and as she peered closely into those clear blue eyes so much like Henry's own, she shivered.
Could it be? she asked herself.
Tears sprang to Elizabeth-Anne's eyes. At first she hadn't wanted to believe it. The startling news of Henry's marriage had shocked her deeply, tearing open the old wounds that had never properly healed. It had started when she had tried to call Henry in Rome, and she had been informed that he and the Signorina Vigano had left for Ischia.
Vigano.
The name had frozen her tongue, had sent memories of defeat and a thousand dead hopes spinning wildly through her mind. When she had finally managed to find her voice, she had haltingly asked for Signorina Vigano's first name.
Anna.
It could not be! she had told herself over and over. It was some sort of cruel trick. It had to be! Anna had been given away, and disappeared. This sudden resurrection was nothing short of miraculous - and Elizabeth-Anne didn't believe in miracles. No, it must be money this bogus Anna was after. She must be a sly, insidious fortune hunter who had somehow found out about Anna and decided to impersonate her. That wouldn't be very difficult to do. After all, no one had ever seen Anna.
Oh, but how devious she must be to manage to worm her way into Henry's affections so swiftly! Henry, who had never looked at a woman twice. Henry, who had never heard the story of Anna, who never even knew such a cousin existed. She, Janet, and Zaccheus had all found the subject of Charlotte-Anne's lost child too painful to discuss, ever; it was taboo.
After Elizabeth-Anne had made the initial discovery about this Anna, she had expected Henry to call at any moment with the news that he had found his cousin. After all, the woman posing as Anna would expose herself to him, wouldn't she? Since it was part of the Hale fortune she was obviously after, that would be the next obvious step in her plan. And Henry, not knowing anything about her, would in confusion call his grandmother.
But the woman obviously wasn't ready to lay her cards on the table, at least not yet. Henry's silence only increased Elizabeth-Anne's inner turmoil. Finally, she had been unable to wait any longer, and had placed some calls.
It was then that she found out about the marriage.
The news left her dumbfounded. Henry married. Without even calling to tell her? But this was no time for hurt. She had to come to grips with this bogus Anna Vigano, now.
What bothered Elizabeth-Anne was that the marriage didn't make sense. Unless, of course, the fortune huntress had found it an unexpected but easier route to the family coffers. Yes, that could be it. Or . . .
Elizabeth-Anne had groaned aloud, not at all wanting to face the other possibility. It was because of the marriage that the new nagging doubt began to form in her mind.
If it was really Anna, then she might not even know it herself.
Could she, after all, really be Anna Vigano? Miracles did happen occasionally, didn't they?
Suddenly nothing made sense anymore. Elizabeth-Anne knew only one thing. She had to find out who Anna Vigano really was.
So she had had her checked out through a private investigator while the honeymooning couple had been soaking up the sun in Cozumel.
'I want to know her past,' Elizabeth-Anne instructed the detective. 'Specifically, who she is. I don't want her personal life dissected. I don't want to have any of the so- called 'goods' on her. I only want to know where she was born, and who her family is. Whether or not she was adopted. Nothing else. Is that clear?'
The investigator had been quick and thorough. The news he had returned with had been enough to strengthen Elizabeth-Anne's feeble hopes.
Anna Vigano, she was told, was a nineteen-year-old resident of Rome, who had moved to that city from Umbria when she was three. Her father, a laborer, was now deceased; her brother, Dario, was a priest; and her mother had just moved out of the family's ghetto apartment to one in a considerably more fashionable neighborhood. Her new, more comfortable lifestyle was apparently financed by her daughter, who had recently married quite well. The mother, it seemed, knew her daughter to be nothing but her own flesh and blood, though she admitted to having been ill at the time of her birth, so that her memory of the event is not clear.
It was enough to make the impossible suddenly seem very possible. But Elizabeth-Anne knew the true and final test remained. She had to see this Anna Vigano herself, for only by meeting her face to face could she decide whether there was anything in the girl's visage of her beloved Charlotte-Anne.
And now, her heart pounding wildly, she saw before her in the young girl's gaze eyes that were heart-wrenchingly familiar . If they weren't Charlotte-Anne's, then they were very, very close. And the regal di Fontanesi nose . . . yes, she saw the girl's father there, too. But what was most important to Elizabeth-Anne was that seeing the girl now, she knew. This was Anna.
Her Anna.
These thoughts flashed through her mind in the first seconds of their meeting. Both she and Anna had been momentarily paralyzed as they stood facing one another in the warmly lit hallway. Then, at the same moment, Elizabeth-Anne and Anna found their feet. They hurried into each other's arms and embraced. And it was then that Elizabeth-Anne knew it. Hanging from a delicate silver chain around Anna's neck was the pansy charm that had once been Elizabeth-Anne's own.
'Welcome, Anna,' Elizabeth-Anne said softly, the tears slipping down her cheeks. She reached up with her fingertips and gently touched Anna's face. 'Welcome. Welcome . . . to your home.'
'Thank you,' Anna whispered. Tears filled her own eyes as she was overcome with the strange feeling that, in this strong woman's embrace, she truly was at home.
Elizabeth-Anne then turned to Henry. He was smiling broadly with the light in his eye that told her he was happier than she had ever before seen him. And it was at that moment that she realized the horrible dilemma that faced her. Henry had married his cousin. He and Anna didn't know - and when they found out it could destroy their love. And that, Elizabeth-Anne now saw, would destroy Henry.
For now, Elizabeth-Anne forced the radiant smile to remain on her face and turned to embrace her grandson. She would savor this moment, and face its repercussions later.
Henry was overwhelmed; he had never seen his grandmother like this. He held her tightly and kissed her cheek, all the while thinking that although he had hoped that she would like and accept Anna, he had never expected the intense, warm reception she had just given his new bride.
5
Elizabeth-Anne sat stiffly on the apricot couch, wrestling with her conscience. She had been perfectly still for hours, ever since Henry and Anna had left. The silk-shaded lamps cast warm, yellow pools of light in the otherwise dark living room of the Madison Square duplex. Elizabeth- Anne's eyes were locked on the sterling framed photograph she held in her hand.
The most recent snapshot of Henry, it captured his face in three-quartered profile. His handsome features were unsmiling, almost stern. She stared at it, remembering the joy she had seen in his eyes earlier that evening, and felt as if her soul were torn in two.
How could she not tell Henry and Anna that they were cousins? Marrying a first cousin was illegal in many states of the Union. Was it illegal in New York? It would be easy enough to find out, but Elizabeth-Anne wasn't sure she wanted to know.
What, then, about the morality of the marriage? As a Catholic, Anna would see her marriage as incest, the most heinous of mortal sins. How could she live - much less love - with such knowledge?
The power to tell her and Henry the truth lay solely in Elizabeth-Anne's hands. And her mind was tormented by the question of what to do. Should she accept Anna as a daughter-in-law or as a grand-daughter? Her longing to embrace Char
lotte-Anne's child, to find again a little of all that she had lost, was almost overpowering. To do so would be the fulfillment of a hundred buried dreams . . . but they were her dreams, old dreams. What would such an act of selfishness do to Henry and Anna's hopes for the future?
What, then, was her responsibility as matriarch of the family. Could she make a moral and legal choice for Henry and Anna? Telling them the truth would be the 'right' thing to do, but it would end their marriage.
And all the happiness they had found together. Henry had always been so serious, so soberly determined to play his part in the Hale empire, to prove himself one of the youngest and most brilliant businessmen in the world. Now, suddenly, he seemed to have learned life was for other things as well, for joy and spontaneity, for knowing and loving a woman.
Elizabeth-Anne had lost Zaccheus's love so long ago . . . then lived through that impossible pain again when Larry died. Hadn't the Hales had their share of suffering?
Could she really in the name of truth, take this delicate, exquisite flower that was Henry and Anna's love and poison it, crush it with the knowledge of their incest? Could she be so cruel? So heartless? So righteous?
Suddenly, she knew that they must never, never know. It was a secret which must be kept from them at all costs, one which she would take to her grave. They loved each other too much. She could see that just by the way they looked at one another, by the warmth bridging their gaze.
Her frustration and indecisiveness melted away.
Leave well enough alone, she told herself. Leave them be.
Besides, she thought with a sudden light-hearted smile, how many grandmothers were there who could love their grandson's wife as deeply as she could?
No, they must never find out. And it was up to her to make sure they didn't.
She sat there for a while longer, then she went upstairs to bed, little suspecting she had just planted the seed that would destroy so much happiness for her great grandchild, yet unborn.
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