He nodded again, looking from one woman to the other. There was no bitterness there, no anger, they had led good lives and it showed. He had chosen well for them … but not for poor Hilary. After Chapman's warning, he was afraid of what she would say to him if she came, but nonetheless he wanted to see her.
They waited until almost eight o'clock, alternately silent and then speaking all at once, nervous and uncomfortable and strange, with Arthur telling them stories of the past, and Megan and Alexandra trying to share their lives with him and each other. Alexandra had brought photographs of the girls, and Henri, and her parents. Megan had done the same, bringing photographs of Rebecca and David, the house in Tiburon, and the hospital where she worked in Kentucky. It was as though they wanted to bring each other up to date as quickly as possible. They had thirty years to account for. And it was obvious how different their lives were. The hospital in Kentucky stood out next to the photographs of the girls in front of the villa in Cap-Ferrat. And Henri looked every inch the seigneur in front of his chateau in Dordogne, as the photographs of Margaret and Rebecca stood side by side for a moment, the one in jeans with a flower in her hair, the other in an evening dress going to a ball in Monte Carlo the year before. And Megan mentioned it with a shy smile as they walked in to dinner with Arthur walking slowly behind them with John's assistance.
“It's funny how different our lives have been, isn't it? And yet we're still sisters … we still look alike … we still come from the same parents, and probably have similar likes and dislikes and habits we've inherited without even knowing it. And yet look at us, you grew up in all that pomp and circumstance in France, and I spent half my childhood living with friends, while my parents went to jail for causes they believed in.” And yet she didn't sound unhappy. She sounded proud of them, and she was. It was all amazing to think about, and it silenced both of them as they took their seats on either side of Arthur. John's place was next to Megan, and there was an empty chair next to Alexandra, and it was becoming obvious now that Hilary was not going to join them. Alexandra felt her heart sink, and made idle chitchat for a while, as Arthur seemed to doze, and then suddenly there was the sound of a car outside. John left the table quietly. There were angry voices outside, and then suddenly the front door flew open, as the two women watched, mesmerized, and Arthur woke up, as though he sensed that someone else was coming to see him.
“Did something happen?” He asked Alexandra, confused for an instant as he woke up and she patted his hand, never taking her eyes from the door, and then she saw her. Tall and thin and lanky as their father had been, with a long stride, and jet-black hair, and green eyes that she suddenly turned on them. She was wearing a wrinkled navy linen business suit. She had had every intention of not coming, and then suddenly after work she had decided to rent a car and come up and tell Arthur once and for all what she thought of him. And then maybe she would be free of him for the rest of her life. She didn't even care if she saw the others. They were strangers to her now. It was Arthur who interested her as she strode into the room and stood facing him, but it was impossible to ignore the two women with red hair who flanked him, and her eyes were drawn first to Megan, and then to Alexandra, as John stood carefully just behind her. He could sense the tension in the room, the anguish of the woman who stood so close to him. He wanted to put his arms around her but she looked as though she might explode, and then suddenly she stopped, as her eyes met Alexandra's, and Alexandra came slowly to her feet and crossed the room like a sleepwalker and the words escaped her without rhyme or reason.
“H … Hillie …” She could see the face of a little girl with long black hair, and yet here was this woman … with the same black hair … the same green eyes … without knowing why, she started to cry, and without wanting to, Hilary's arms went around her.
“Axie … little Axie …” It was the first time she'd held her since the day they'd torn her from her, and left her alone with Eileen and Jack in Charlestown, crying for the sisters she had so dearly loved, and she could barely stand the pain now of remembering it, as she held the tall, perfumed, beautifully coiffed woman from Paris … except all she saw there was the face of the child she had once loved, and she whispered the same words over and over again as she cried … “I love you, Axie …” They held each other like that for a long time, as Megan watched silently, and then suddenly Arthur began to cough, and John hurried to give him a glass of water. The housekeeper who was serving them dinner brought the pills the nurse had given her, and Megan checked the dose and gave them to John, as Hilary slowly turned toward them. “You must be Megan.” She smiled through her tears, and held Alexandra's hand as they pulled apart from their embrace. “You've changed quite a bit since the last time I saw you.” The three women laughed, but Hilary's eyes clouded as she saw the old man, and she held tight to Alexandra's hand as she spoke to him. “I said I wouldn't come, and I meant it, Arthur.” He nodded, meeting her eyes with fear and pain, and he saw everything there that he had dreaded seeing. She hated him, and one could see it there like black poison. But he also knew he deserved it. He knew better than anyone. “I never wanted to see you again.”
“I'm glad you did come, Hillie,” Alexandra said in her gentle voice. “I wanted so much to see you … both,” she added, smiling at Megan, but Hilary wasn't smiling now, and she dropped her sister's hand as she advanced on Arthur.
“Why did you do this to us? Bring us here after all these years, to taunt us with what we didn't have, what we missed, who we might have been if we'd stayed together?”
He choked on his own words, and clutched the table with both hands as he faced her. “I felt I owed it to you to make up to you for what I'd done.” He could barely breathe as he spoke to her, but it didn't faze her.
“And do you think you can make it up?” She laughed bitterly and they all ached for her, but John was frightened of what she would do now. She had waited thirty years for this, and he had always sensed the full measure of her hatred for Arthur. “Do you really think you can wipe out thirty years of loneliness and pain with one dinner?”
“Your sisters have been luckier than you, Hilary.” He spoke honestly. “And they don't hate me as much as you do.”
“They don't know as much as I do … do they, Arthur … do they?” She shouted into the silent room, the words echoing off the walls as he trembled.
“That's all in the past, Hilary.” It was a conversation between only the two of them. Only they knew of what they were speaking, as the others wondered.
“Is it? How about you? Have you been able to live with yourself for all these years, after killing my parents?” Her green eyes blazed and Alexandra advanced to gently touch her arm, but Hilary shook her off.
“Hillie, don't … it doesn't matter now …”
“Doesn't it?” She wheeled on her sister. “How do you know that? How could you possibly know, living the good life in France, while I sat on my ass in juvenile hall, after getting raped, trying to figure out how to find you. And that son of a bitch didn't even know where you were, he didn't know where any of us were. He didn't even care enough to keep track of us after he ripped you out of my arms that day, crying and sobbing … you don't remember that now, but I do. I've remembered it … I've remembered both of you …” She looked from Alexandra to Megan, “… every day of my life and I've cried for you because I never found you. And now you tell me it doesn't matter? That I shouldn't hate him for killing our parents? How can you say that?” The tears were pouring down her cheeks unashamedly.
“But he didn't kill them.” Alexandra spoke for herself and Megan. “His only failing was in not keeping us together, or keeping track of us over the years, but perhaps he couldn't help it.” She looked benevolently at the old man, and Megan silently nodded, unable to understand why Hilary hated him so much. He had failed them, but he had not betrayed them the way Hilary said. But she was shaking her head and laughing at them through her tears.
“You don't know anything. You were babies.
I was standing there the night Mama died … the night Daddy killed her … I was listening … I heard what they said …” She began to sob and John stood nearby, ready to help her if she collapsed or needed him. He was near her, as he had been for months, although she didn't know it. “I heard her screams …” Hilary went on, “when he hit her and hit her and hit her, and then strangled her into silence until she died. …” She was gulping down the sobs and she stood right in front of Arthur now. “And do you know why he did that?” Her eyes never left Arthur's face, she had waited a lifetime for this. “He did it because she was having an affair with him, and she told father so….” She was listening to the voices of the past as she spoke, and she almost looked as though she were in another world, remembering back to the night her father had killed her mother. “He had been cheating on her, she said, with lots of different women for years … all his leading ladies, she said … and he said it wasn't true … he said she was crazy … and she said she had proof … she knew who he'd just taken to California … who he'd been with the night before … and she said it didn't make any difference to her anymore … that she had someone of her own, and that if he wasn't careful, she'd leave him and take us with her. And he said he'd kill her if she did, and she laughed … she kept laughing at him … and he said she could never take away his baby girls … and she laughed … and then she told him who it was….” She was crying so hard she could hardly speak, but she went on, as Arthur shook more and more violently in his seat and she stood inches from him, shouting down at him and crying. “She told him, didn't she, Arthur … didn't she?” Hilary shouted. And then she looked at her sisters, and told them what she had always known, and they hadn't. “She was having an affair with Arthur, Daddy's best friend … and he said he would kill her for it, and she only laughed, and when he told her she couldn't take us away, she told him that only two of us were his anyway….” There was a stunned silence in the room, and Arthur sat back in his chair as though he'd been struck by lightning. And Hilary's voice was quiet when she spoke this time. She had done what she had come for. “She told him that Megan was Arthur's child,” she said in a dull voice, staring down at him with contempt. “And then Daddy killed her.” She sank into the chair next to him, crying softly, as Alexandra put an arm around her shoulders and the old man whimpered softly in his chair.
“I never knew … she never told me…” He looked at Megan pathetically. “You must believe me. … I never knew … I always thought you were his, like the others….” He was crying openly, and Megan looked even more shocked than she had at the rest of the recital. And Arthur seemed to be making his excuses to the room in general. “If I had known. …” But Hilary only looked at him and shook her head.
“What would you have done differently? Kept her with you, and left the rest of us to rot? You wouldn't have done anything. You didn't stand by my mother, or your own child, you betrayed your best friend, and what you did killed them both. You have their blood on your hands … and ours, without you, our lives would have been very different. How could you live with yourself all these years, knowing what you'd done? How could you defend him after betraying him?”
“He begged me to, Hilary. … I didn't want to. I begged him to let me find him another attorney. But he didn't want me to. And in truth, he didn't want to live after your mother died.” His voice dropped down to a whisper. “Neither did I. It ended both our lives … I loved her deeply from the first moment I saw her.” The tears rolled down his cheeks as Megan stared at him. He was no longer just a family friend. This was her father.
And Hilary stared at him emptily, as though seeing him for the first time. He was an old, dying man, and there was no undoing what he had done. For him, it was all over, no matter whose blood was on his hands. The blood was long since dry … the people all but forgotten. She stood up then, and looked down at him. “I came here to tell you how much I hated you. And do you know something strange, Arthur, after all these years, I'm not really sure it still matters.” She felt Alexandra's hand on her shoulder and turned to look into her eyes. She was exhausted from the emotions of the evening and turned to look at both the girls. “I loved you both a great deal a long time ago … but maybe that's too far in the past too …” She felt drained, spent, she had nothing left to give or take, but Alexandra wouldn't let her go, and Megan was watching her too. She was the one to speak first.
“It's a long time ago for all of us, but we still came. I didn't remember any of you. And I didn't know Mr. Patterson was my father. We came to honor the past, but also to go on from here. We all have other parents now, other lives, other people we care about. We haven't lived in a void for thirty years, none of us, not even you with your anger and your hatred.” It was a quiet reproach but it was powerful and it struck home. “You can't just come here and drop a bomb like this in our laps, and then go. You owe it to us to repair the wounds, just as we owe it to you to do the same. And that's why we all came here.” There were tears slowly running down her cheeks, as she looked at Hilary, and John Chapman silently wanted to cheer her. It would ruin everything if Hilary left now. It would destroy her life once and for all. She had to stay, in spite of Arthur, and face them.
Hilary looked at Alexandra, as though seeking confirmation and she nodded and spoke in her quiet voice. “Please stay Hillie … I've waited so long for this.” They had all taken such risks, paid such a high price. She had defied Henri, possibly at great expense, all for the pleasure of seeing her sisters. “It took a lot of courage to come here. For all of us. My husband forbade me to come here … I don't even know if he will take me back now. And my mother … the woman I know as my mother has come with me, and she is very frightened of what all this will mean. She is afraid that after all this time she will lose me.” There were tears in her eyes as she spoke to Hilary, and Megan was nodding with tears in her own eyes. Rebecca was terrified of what seeing her sisters would mean to her. They had talked for an hour on the phone the night before, and she had promised she would call as soon as possible to reassure her. “You have lost more than any of us, Hilary … but you are not alone … we love you, even now. You cannot turn your back on us.” And then putting her arms around her again, she cried softly. “I won't let you.” Hilary stood tall and straight for a long moment, and then her arms went around Alexandra … how could she know what her life had been like? But it wasn't her fault … or Megan's … or maybe even Arthur's. She hated to admit that now, but it was possible. He had been a fool and he had paid a high price for it. He looked at Hilary sorrowfully over Alexandra's shoulder.
“Can you ever forgive me, all of you?” But he was looking at the oldest of the three and she took a long time to answer.
“I don't know … I don't know what I feel….” But she held tight to Alexandra and her eyes reached out to Megan.
“I'm glad you came anyway. The three of you had a right to be together. And if I had been a different kind of man, I would have defied my wife and kept you all myself. I wanted to, but she had such strong feelings about it that I didn't dare go against her. I'm sorry now, but it's too late to make any difference.” He looked mournfully at Hilary, and then at the child he had turned away, who was his own daughter. “I made a terrible mistake. But I've paid for it. I've been a lonely man all my life … ever since your mother died….” He couldn't go on. He only shook his head and then stood up shakily, as John Chapman and one of the nurses came to help him. “I'm going upstairs now. We all have a lot to think about.” Hilary's revelation had shocked them all, particularly Megan and Arthur. In a strange way, she now wondered if she was responsible for her mother's death … if she hadn't been born, would Sam have killed her? But it was too late to think about that, too late to cry over what had happened thirty years before. It was time to move on, as best they could. And he turned to them again before he left the room. “I want you all to stay for as long as you can … for as long as you want to. This will be your home one day; I am leaving it to all of you, so you have a place to
come, a home together finally, and a place to bring your families and your children. I'll stay out of your way while you're here, but I want you to stay here and get to know each other.” Alexandra and Megan thanked him quietly, and Megan rose quickly to help him upstairs, as Hilary watched, saying nothing. And when he was gone, she turned to Alexandra and shook her head.
“I don't know if I'll ever stop hating him, Axie.” It was still so easy to call her that, even after all these years, and the younger of the two smiled.
“You will. You have to. There's nothing left to hate anymore. He's almost gone.” Hilary nodded. It was clear that the man wouldn't live much longer. “I'm only grateful that he brought us together in time. That he still cared enough to do that.” They walked slowly upstairs arm in arm, and Hilary walked into Alexandra's bedroom, thinking suddenly of the room they had shared in Jack and Eileen's house, the three of them in one bed, as she tried to keep the baby from crying so Eileen wouldn't beat them.
“What are your children like?” She sat down in the rocking chair. It was a comfortable room, but she hadn't decided yet to spend the night. She just wanted to sit and talk for a while with Axie.
Alexandra smiled at the question. “Marie-Louise looks a lot like you. She has your eyes … and Axelle looks a lot like photographs of me as a little girl. She's six … and Marie-Louise is twelve. I lost a little boy in between them.” And with a slice of pain, Hilary remembered her own abortion for the first time in years. She had been so careful after that to avoid any contact with children, and now she suddenly had two nieces. “Do you still remember your French?”
“Some.” Hilary smiled. “Not much, I guess.”
“Marie-Louise and Axelle speak English anyway, thanks to my mother.”
“What's your husband like?” Hilary was curious about so many things about her … her husband … her parents … her life … her children … her habits … She wanted to know if they were alike. If after all these years, they had anything in common. And marriage was certainly not one of them. Hilary had assiduously avoided it.
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