'Of course,' Dr. Loomis answered. 'This way, please.' He led the way back to the elevators and on the ride upstairs explained Anna's condition. 'Apparently, Mrs. Hale should never have tried to have the child. It seems that long ago her uterus suffered rather severe damage. It's a miracle that she wasn't forced to check in long ago. Or perhaps she did have to, but was afraid for her child. We would have had to abort the pregnancy and maybe she knew that.'
'Will she pull through?' Elizabeth-Anne asked quietly.
The doctor was silent a moment, then said, 'Of course, there is always the possibility of recovery. The human body is most remarkable. One never knows its capabilities completely. They change from person to person.'
Elizabeth-Anne met his eyes. 'But you think she won't. Survive.'
The doctor met her gaze fully. 'In this case, I would say the chances are slim,' he said gently. 'Very slim indeed. I'm sorry.'
Elizabeth-Anne took a deep breath and nodded once, tightly holding onto Henry's arm. Even as all the life seemed to drain out of her, she realized she was supporting him.
Outside the recovery room, Dr. Loomis stopped once again. 'I know this is very difficult for you,' he said softly, 'but please try to be brief. And if she doesn't recognize you, or she's still under . . . Well, bear in mind that she's heavily sedated. And very low.' He opened the door for them. The two doctors waited outside while Henry and Elizabeth-Anne went in.
The nurse on duty avoided their gaze. Elizabeth-Anne held tightly to Henry as they approached the bed. There he fell to his knees, seeking Anna's hand and holding it in his. It felt icy to the touch.
He stared at her in disbelief. He'd last seen her only a few short days before. She had been so healthy, so alive and glowing with the happiness of carrying their child. Now she looked pale and gaunt; for a moment he was afraid she was already dead. But watching closely, he saw the faint movement of her breast as she took in weak breaths. No, not yet. She wasn't gone yet.
He felt dull and empty. How could this still, helpless thing be Anna. Anna, who had always been so exuberant, so bursting with energy. Now, lying in the recovery room with tubes taped to her arms and another coursing out of her nostril, she looked shrunken.
'Anna,' he whispered. 'Can you hear me, my love?'
He watched her unmoving face desperately, silently, until Elizabeth-Anne came up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder. He turned and looked up at her. He saw what was in Elizabeth-Anne's eyes, but he couldn't face it and almost frantically turned back to stare into Anna's still face. But it was there, too. This wasn't Anna, his wife. It couldn't be. It was only a shadow of her.
'Anna.' He reached out with one hand, trembling as he touched her soft face with his fingertips. The tears were stinging in his eyes. 'Anna,' he whispered again.
He did not know how long he knelt at her bedside. Only after the nurse came over and gently pried his hands loose did he realize Anna had slipped away from him.
She was gone. She had never regained consciousness. He hadn't even been able to say goodbye.
Henry collapsed, his sobs shaking his strong body. Elizabeth-Anne took him in her arms and rocked him gently. She too was weeping. 'I know, Henry,' she whispered, her voice unsteady with pain,, her aquamarine eyes glittering. 'I know. Don't hurt, baby. Please don't hurt.'
Elizabeth-Anne walked stiffly into the seedy, dark bar on the lower level of Penn Station. She made her way through the bar to the tiny booth in the back. Henry was hunched over, both his hands clutching his glass. After the funeral, three days before, he had stalked off, white-faced and grim. It had taken her as many days to find him. She had finally done so only by luck. One of the Hale Hotels executives, who commuted daily between New Yore and Port Washington, had spied him in that same bar twice in the same day. It was he who had told Elizabeth-Anne where Henry was.
'Henry,' she said softly. 'Come home, Henry.'
He looked up at her, his eyes glassy. When he spoke his voice was slurred, but he managed his simple sentence. 'Leave me alone.'
'Henry.' She took the seat opposite him and reached for his hands. He yanked them back, spilling some of his drink in the process. She fought her revulsion as she smelled the rancid odor of bourbon emanating from him.
'You can't go on like this, Henry. Come home.'
'Home?' He gave an ugly laugh and stared at her. 'What home? Yours or mine?'
'It doesn't matter. They're both your homes.'
He just shook his head and took another pull at his drink.
'Please, don't make this so difficult,' she pleaded. 'It's hard enough as it is.'
'She's everywhere.' His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. 'She's everywhere. I can smell her perfume. I see her clothes. The pictures she bought. She's everywhere.'
'She's in our hearts. She'll always be there. Come home with me. To the Madison Squire.'
'No.'
She leaned across the table. 'Look, Henry. We're all entitled to mourn, you especially. But drowning your sorrows in drink isn't the way to do it.'
'No?' He scowled at her glassily. 'Then what is?'
'You can have a good cry,' she suggested.
'I've cried.' He took another drink.
'Henry, please listen to me,' she urged desperately. 'Anna is dead!. Nothing will bring her back. You can't just drown yourself in alcohol. Please.'
'Why not, grandmother? It's my life.' He drained his glass, then set it down with a bang.
'Because of the child, Henry,' she said gently. 'Your child and Anna's. That's why you've got to pull yourself together.'
'I told you before. Don't want that kid.'
'Henry, she's your daughter,' Elizabeth-Anne said in despair.
'So?' He met Elizabeth-Anne's gaze with hard, glittering eyes.
Elizabeth-Anne sighed. 'Come on Henry. I've got the car waiting upstairs. Let's go.' She pushed her chair back, paused, and added softly, 'Today's the day your daughter is being released from the hospital. Let's go fetch her, Henry. Let's bring her home. Together, you and I.'
'Nope.'
She sighed wearily. 'But don't you see? She's Anna's too! I thought you loved Anna.'
'Yes, I loved her,' he said, suddenly ferocious. 'I loved her more than my own life. And that baby killed her.'
'The child did not kill her.' Elizabeth-Anne hissed harshly. 'Anna knew the consequences, but she wanted a child. She wanted your child. She wanted it so badly that she was willing to risk her life to give you one.' She paused. 'Do you want to throw away everything?'
He narrowed his eyes. 'You want the baby? You're welcome to her. I never want to see her.' He signaled the waiter for another drink, then turned back to Elizabeth- Anne. 'Now, leave me alone.'
Elizabeth-Anne rose to her feet and went out, passing the waiter who was carrying an oily glass of bourbon over to the booth.
On the escalator on her way to the street level, she wondered why everyone was staring at her. She didn't even realize it until she got into the Rolls.
She was weeping.
8
The white-uniformed nurse smiled as she handed the squalling bundle to Elizabeth-Anne. The baby was clothed in a christening frock of off-white cotton sprinkled with eyelets and trimmed lavishly with Belgian lace. Elizabeth-Anne had bought it especially for her, and was now touched at how it emphasized the child's angelic sweetness.
Elizabeth-Anne cradled her great-granddaughter in her arms, careful to support the tiny, down-covered head with one hand. The child seemed to sense safety and warmth and love, and instantly stopped crying. It was as though they were communicating in a secret language. The miniscule doll's mouth broke out into gurgling, toothless laughter.
'I think you two will get along just fine,' the nurse said, laughing and patting Elizabeth-Anne's arm.
Elizabeth-Anne nodded and smiled. She rocked the baby soothingly back and forth in her arms as she studied the tiny face closely. The baby looked so familiar, an eerie image of all four of her children a few days after thei
r birth. But this child seemed even more precious, if that was at all possible.
A hint of tears glistened in Elizabeth-Anne's eyes. The child was so tiny, so blonde, so blue-eyed. The familiar features were all there. She was a true Hale.
Just holding the infant pushed Elizabeth-Anne's depression to the back of her mind. Only once she got downstairs, and sank into the supple leather backseat of the yellow and black Rolls-Royce, did she again feel weighted down with despair.
This child. Anna's child.
She was holding more than just her first great-granddaughter. She held in her arms a most precious, living part of Charlotte-Anne, the daughter she'd lost, as well as the child's mother, Anna, her own granddaughter. The agony she had felt over Charlotte-Anne's death and Anna's loss, old pains that had never healed and new ones that had not had time to, now, finally, felt salved. Even Anna's untimely, tragic death, painful though it was, seemed somehow more bearable. She could start to come to terms with it. Because of the child.
She stared thoughtfully out of the side window as her car headed downtown along Riverside Drive. Between the rich foliage of the trees and shrubbery, she caught occasional flashes of the wide, silver Hudson.
By all rights I should be taking her in the opposite direction, she was thinking, up the Henry Hudson Parkway to Tarrytown, to her own home. But instead, she's coming downtown, home with me. Not that I won't want her. How I do! But she should be with her father now, not me, no matter how temporary it might be.
Elizabeth-Anne sighed and shook her head morosely. Strangely enough, she felt saddened and hurt rather than depressed and angry. A father didn't just declare that he never wanted to set eyes on his daughter, and then run off, no matter what the reason. Surely once Henry got over his mourning, he would come to his senses and accept his loss and understand his gain. His daughter was, after all, his own flesh and blood. Wounds took time to heal, but eventually they did.
No one knows that better than I.
But if he didn't, what then?
Her aquamarine eyes narrowed and she thrust out her chin. In that case, she would take care of this radiant child for as long as she had to. She would hire a nanny and juggle her own busy schedule. Somehow, she would find the time to lavish love upon this darling baby until Henry pulled himself together and fought his way out of his depression.
Yes, in the meantime, she would take the baby under her wing. Eventually Henry would accept her. He had to, Elizabeth-Anne told herself grimly. The poor child had lost her mother; she needed her father twice as much.
Who knew what the future might bring? she reflected morosely. To date, she'd put all her hopes into Henry, counting upon him to become her successor and head Hale Hotels after her. But she'd never known until now that he was this flawed . . . this weak. That's what his reaction to Anna's death showed her. Not just grief, but weakness in blaming the infant. It wasn't the baby's fault that her mother had died in childbirth. Couldn't he understand that? Couldn't he comprehend that Anna was still alive - in his daughter?
Elizabeth-Anne cooed softly and rocked the baby in her lap. 'Don't worry, little darling,' she whispered down at her. 'I'll love you and look after you, even if no one else will. Everything that's mine will eventually be yours.' She leaned down and rubbed the baby's nose with her own. 'You are, after all, a Hale.'
The child stared up at her through solemn, wide blue eyes. A look of intelligent understanding seemed to glow in the tiny face - or was it only her imagination?
'And of course, we'll have to come up with a name for you,' Elizabeth-Anne continued. 'I suppose that's up to me now, too, since your Daddy won't have any part of it. Let me see . . . ' She sighed thoughtfully. 'Adele . . . no, somehow you just don't look like an Adele . . . Alice? Barbara? No, no. Carla? Dorothy? Yes! Dorothy. We'll name you Dorothy-Anne Hale. Somehow it just sounds right:
The child broke out into happy, spontaneous laughter, her fingers reaching up as though trying to grasp the name out of the air.
It was at that very moment that the special bond they would share for the rest of their lives was cemented. And both of them seemed to sense it. The years would only strengthen it. 'Your Daddy will have a change of heart, Dorothy-Anne,' Elizabeth-Anne promised. 'You mark my words. This won't last long. He's just hurt, but he'll get over it.'
But she was wrong.
Henry would never get over the loathing he felt toward his daughter. Not even when she moved in with him in the big house in Tarrytown. To him, she would be a constant reminder of everything he hated. Of pain and loss. Of death.
For him, Dorothy-Anne would always be his beloved Anna's murderer.
GENERATIONS
FOUR
Dorothy-Anne
Quebeck, Texas
August 14, 1985
1
The wind howled outside in the rain-lashed orchards and the dim light of the single candle left the room steeped in deep shadow. Freddie leaned over Dorothy-Anne as she lay on the bed, struggling for breath and sobbing deeply, her body drenched in sweat, her cheeks wet with tears.
Freddie had been as stunned by her declaration as he was now anxious to comfort her. 'Dorothy-Anne, my darling, how could you say such a thing? Your mother died in childbirth. You're not to blame for her death.'
'No, Freddie, I am,' she answered, struggling to get the words out. 'They told me . . . I heard them say it.'
'What do you mean?'
'Oh, Freddie - ' Suddenly her face contorted with pain and she squeezed his hand tightly as a fresh contraction seized her. Her body tensed, her back arched and for a long minute they did not speak. When it finally passed, she felt her muscles relaxing like melting butter. Freddie saw that she would not be able to fight sleep, and, as the contractions would soon be coming closer and closer together, she would need her strength. But her obvious panic had alarmed him and he had to ask 'Dorothy-Anne, what do you mean, 'they told' you?'
She shook her head weakly, her eyes already closed. 'My father . . . my father said it. . . he said he hated me . . . On my tenth birthday . . . ' But she couldn't go on. She was swimming in a black, warm pool, far from the Hale Tourist Court. She was receding in time, everything spinning faster and faster until she reached Tarry town and she was ten years old. Then the spinning abruptly stopped and it was the day of her birthday and she was back in the big house overlooking the river.
She was standing alone in the sitting room. The clock on the mantel ticked noisily. She half-turned toward it and saw it was nearly one o'clock in the afternoon.
She tightened her lips and turned back to stare out through the high French window. The river below was wide, unusually blue-gray and placid. Overhead, the sun shone brightly in a powder-blue sky. Across the river, the hills were blanketed in oranges and yellows. Indian summer, and Mother Nature had decked herself out in all the finery she could summon. But Dorothy-Anne was not enthralled. She felt more miserable than she had ever felt in her life.
She turned away from the view and plopped down onto the couch in front of the fireplace. She avoided looking around. She didn't like the sitting room. Like much of the rest of the house, it was filled with large, stately furniture. She felt inconsequential and uncomfortable, out of place in the only place she could call home.
She sat unmoving for several minutes until her governess came into the room.
'Your father couldn't take the day off',' Nanny said gently as she marched into the room with her stately walk. She held an enormous, beautifully wrapped present out in front of her. She smiled at Dorothy-Anne. 'But he's left you something very nice.'
Dorothy-Anne didn't look up. The empty despair that had been feeding on her for the past two days sat in her stomach like lead. For once, she wasn't even looking forward to seeing her great-grandmother. She didn't want to see anyone or anything. All she wanted was for the pain and loneliness to stop. She wanted her head to be empty, she wanted to wake up and be someone else. She wished . . . she wished she were dead.
'Daddy do
esn't like me,' she said. 'He never has.'
Nanny made a sympathetic clucking sound with her tongue. 'Now, now, child. Don't be silly. Your Daddy loves you.'
'He doesn't. He's never around, especially not on my birthdays.' Dorothy-Anne continued to sit with a stillness unnatural for a child her age. 'Why does Great-Granny always celebrate my birthday with me instead of my Daddy?'
'I told you, child, he's a very busy man.'
Dorothy-Anne turned to look Nanny in the eye. 'Great- Granny's even busier than Daddy,' she said flatly. 'She owns Hale Hotels and runs them. Daddy only works for her.'
'Your father is president of Hale Hotels,' Nanny said severely.
Dorothy-Anne still held the older woman's gaze. 'And Great-Granny's chairman of the board.'
Nanny wasn't a governess for nothing. She knew when she'd lost an argument. Sighing, she set the wrapped box down on a rose silk-covered footstool. 'Aren't you going to open your father's present?'
Dorothy-Anne stared at it. 'No,' she said with a sudden flash of insight. 'Daddy didn't buy it for me. He had somebody else pick it out. I overheard him talking on the telephone to his secretary. He told her to call F.A.O. Schwarz.' She paused and closed her eyes. 'And he's not at work either. He's in La Jolla. With a woman.'
'Now how would you know that?' Nanny sat down in exasperation and folded her plump white hands in her lap. She looked at Dorothy-Anne. 'You've been overhearing a lot of things lately, it seems.'
Dorothy-Anne sat in silence, hunched over.
'Ladies,' Nanny said succinctly, 'do not listen at doors or keyholes.'
Dorothy-Anne didn't look up. She knew from experience what expression Nanny would be wearing. Her pointed features would be severe, her eyes pinched with disappointment.
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