She nodded, gripping his hand. “Oh, Ted!”
She was shaking; she had sworn she was done with crying, but tears streamed silently from beneath her lids. “How could they? How could somebody print a story like that? How could that horrible man have shouted that way? Oh, my God! Blake will never speak to me again. What is the matter with people? It was supposed to be a memorial service for my father—”
“Hush, hush, Tracy, it’s going to be all right,” Ted assured her. He wiped the tears from her cheeks, smiling. “Look around you now. We’ve left it all behind. It’s just a quiet Sunday afternoon and everything is going to be all right.”
“I don’t know if it will ever be all right. Blake—”
“Tracy, his aunt will find him. They’ll control that mess back there, and Leif will reassure him. He is only six, Tracy. He didn’t really understand any of it—only that they were nastily attacking you. And somehow threatening what he remembers of Celia. He’s young— he’ll be okay. He’ll spring back, and he won’t hate you.”
Oh, God, he hates me now! she thought wretchedly. “It’s all, all, all such a mess,” she murmured.
She gazed up at him—at the kind, steady face she had always known. Ted, always there in the background. She laughed suddenly. A bitter sound, a sad one. She gripped his hand and held it tight.
“Oh, Ted! How did you ever wind up stuck in this absurd family!”
He smiled back. “I was what your grandfather had in mind for your mother. A good, steady, boring businessman. And once I saw your mother, I was hooked. I still think she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
Tracy discovered herself looking quickly away from him. She couldn’t bear to look into his eyes with the thought that her mother had cheated on him for years and years and years. With her father.
He sighed softly. “You don’t have to look away, Tracy. I know that your mother saw Jesse until the day that he died.”
“Oh, Ted. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. I have your baby brother now. Anthony makes everything all right.”
She swallowed and nodded. Anthony was only two now, but when he was older, she wanted him to spend time with her and Leif and Blake.
If there was anything left. If Blake could forgive her, if Leif could love her. If they could create a family in the wake of all of this.
She shook her head, suddenly, violently, misery rising high within her once again. She looked out the window at the city, wishing desperately that she could just run, feel the breeze—feel free from the burdens of the heart that seemed to hang about her neck like heavy bricks.
“Stop!” she cried suddenly, leaning over to tap the cabby on the shoulder.
The taxi veered off the road. Ted, confused, gripped her arm. “Tracy! What are you doing? Let me get you back to the hotel. We’ll go to your mother’s and my suite. No one will be back for a bit. We’ll be all alone—”
Tracy smiled at him. “I know you think I’m crazy. I just have to get out. I have to walk for a while. You go on back.”
“Not on your life, young lady.”
“Ted, see the bridge? I’m going to take a walk over it.”
He inhaled impatiently. He was annoyed with her— she knew it. He’d wanted her to go to the hotel with him.
“Tracy, come on, now, just come back to the hotel with me!”
“Ted, really—go on. I’ll be all right. I just feel like walking. Ted, you’re a dear, but—”
“Do something!” the cabby interrupted them irritably.
“Maybe the bridge will do just as well,” Ted muttered. Tracy frowned. He smiled and urged her out of the taxi, following quickly behind her.
Ted paid the cabbie; they stepped out on the pavement. The bridge loomed before them in silent majesty.
“Come on!”
Ted took her arm. He seemed quite content now to walk over the bridge with her. They walked in silence then for the next fifteen minutes. The air was cool, the sun was out—New York was enjoying a fabulous blue sky that day. The breeze cooled Tracy’s cheeks. She noted moments later that she wasn’t shaking anymore, that her footsteps, hurried to keep up with Ted, were both exhausting and calming. She did feel better.
“Look at the old scow down there!” Ted told her, pausing. Tracy came beside him to stare down to the river—far, far below them now.
The sky was blue, but the water was greenish gray. Sunlight caught on it, and now and again it sparkled. Behind them, a group of cars whizzed by, creating a greater wind.
“It’s magnificent, isn’t it?” Ted said.
He took her elbow and they started walking again. “A sailboat—and that one looks like a merchant marine!”
They paused again. Tracy realized that they were high up and the boats below them were very, very small now. Not real at all.
“Toys!” she laughed again.
“It’s a long, long way down,” Ted murmured.
Tracy stepped back suddenly, wanting a distance from the rail. She was suddenly frightened, and she didn’t know why. Heights didn’t bother her. It was broad daylight, and though the Sunday traffic was slower than usual, the bridge was still busy with spurts of cars whizzing by them every few seconds.
“Very few people have survived a fall from this height, Tracy,” Ted told her gravely. “And I believe that those who have came out of it were terribly mangled. Death would be the better option.”
She smiled at him, weakly, feeling the shivery sensation of an unknown fear once again.
“Ted—” she murmured uneasily, backing further away to start walking again.
He reached for her hand, holding it tightly with his own, leaning comfortably against that railing that suddenly seemed so small a barrier between life and death. “I know that you know, Tracy.”
“What?” she gasped. “Ted, I don’t know anything—”
“Surely, you do.” He smiled. “That cop’s partner is telling Leif right now that your mother, Arthur, and I are the ones that he saw his partner talking to the week before dear Jesse departed. We just met him in the street, you know, and your mother can’t resist flirting with anyone. But I saw something about him. I saw his lust for money, the way he seemed awed when he realized that he was talking to Arthur Kingsley. So I went back. I saw him alone—and I paid him to see that a criminal was killed. Easy. My benefit for years of being the neglected husband—Arthur Kingsley’s money. Two hundred thousand dollars a year in personal allowance. I wanted it— but I discovered no amount of money was enough to watch your mother yearn for your father—year after year after year.”
“Ted, no. I don’t know anything of this! Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want to—”
“Tracy, Tracy, tsk, tsk. You and Leif decided that someone had paid Martin Smith to kill Jesse. I knew it as soon as Leif called about his get-together for a memorial service. Flush them all out. That was his plan. But you see, he’s still going to think that Arthur did it. After all, Arthur did everything else. Arthur and your mother.”
His fingers tightened around her wrist. Tracy was still so stunned that nothing escaped her but a faint protest.
“Tracy, you were a sweet child. But you were his child. God, the years I spent hating him! You should have hated him, too. He didn’t bother much with you—he was too busy sleeping with your mother.”
“Ted!” she protested suddenly, vehemently. Was he mad—he was so calm! And never, never in her wildest imagination had she thought that it was Ted!
Ted—telling her flatly that he had conspired to kill her father. He would only tell her such a thing if…
“Look down, Tracy. A long, long fall. I was so upset with you, I planted that story in the paper just to create havoc, my dear. Just to get you alone. I meant to get you up to the suite—forty stories above the ground—and watch you jump from the window. I thought the whole thing would be blown. But this is really much, much better. You casting yourself over the bridge. And, of course, I’ll tell them you did it
because you finally cracked. You came from such a messed-up situation, Tracy!” His smile deepened. “Jesse’s bastard bears a bastard! I loved the story idea—such poetic justice, you know? Of course, I don’t know the whole story, Tracy, or I could have told that smutty reporter more. Is Johnston really in love with you? Or does he hate you? Did he think that you gave your baby away? Jesse did know, by the way. I think that he planned on telling Leif—and you. Which makes it look all the worse for your grandfather. So few people knew! But then maybe it wasn’t so odd that after a certain amount of time Jesse was able to recognize his own grandchild. And he knew Arthur. He knew that Arthur would stoop to almost anything.”
Ted started to laugh. Tracy looked anxiously over her shoulder. Where were the cars? It was a sunny day. Ted couldn’t possibly be planning…
“It’s so easy, Tracy. Leif will believe forever that Arthur killed Jesse. And anyone in the world would believe that you went insane and suicidal! Look at the pressure, Tracy!”
The pressure—the only pressure she knew was that of his grip about her wrist. She didn’t know whether to scream in pure panic or to still the rampaging beat of her heart and try to rationalize with him. She still couldn’t believe it. Ted! Of all people! Of all people, sweet, harmless Ted.
He wasn’t harmless now. She realized that as she looked at him. At the grim, implacable smile in place on his lips.
She tried very hard to wrench her arm away. His grip tightened. She screamed, with all her heart, with all her breath, as long and loud as she could.
The cars just kept whizzing by, and there wasn’t another soul on the walkway.
Ted’s smile deepened.
“Tracy, it’s perfect. Bless you for that stubborn streak of yours. The bridge is really far superior to a window! It’s—perfect!”
She gasped for more breath. “As perfect as giving a petty crook a fortune to kill my father. Then having that petty crook killed. Then killing the policeman who had killed him! Who did you pay to do that for you, Ted?”
“Not a soul, Tracy. I did that one myself. It was easy— he had been blackmailing me. I picked a time for him to meet me on the roof, and the poor fellow went right over. I heard him tell his partner that there was a mugger up there. Some things do fall right in place. And you know what, Tracy? He was a pretty hefty fellow. And you’re just a little, little girl. You’ll go over easily.”
“Why?” she gasped out. “Why—”
“Why did I kill Jesse? Tracy, what a question! The bastard kept sleeping with my wife!”
She moistened her lips. Her head was spinning. He meant to cast her over. Over the rail. And she would fall. Fall and fall and fall into the grayish green depths so very far below her.
“Why me, Ted! What did I ever do to you?”
He shook his head. If she could keep him talking, maybe he would ease his hold. She could run. Pray God she could outrun him!
“Tracy,” he said very softly. “I thought that you already knew. And then again, well—”
“Well?”
“You’re Jesse’s girl.” He chuckled softly. “I can’t tell you how much I hated Jesse. How much—or how long. Tracy, it was like worms eating away at my stomach, at my heart, day after endless damn day. Eating, festering. My God! How I hated that man.”
Staring at him, Tracy realized with horror that there would be no reasoning with Ted—none at all. His hate had been so deep that he had come to an awful madness because of it.
With a violent wrench, Tracy tore her hand from his grasp. She shoved against him with all her strength and started to run, screaming for help. Someone had to have their windows down. Someone had to hear her…
She knew that she could be faster than Ted. But somehow he caught her. His fingers twined into her hair, jerking her backward and sending her flying down to the pavement hard, the breath knocked from her. She gasped; he was trying to pick her up. Wildly, she thrashed against him, tearing long grooves into his face with her nails. Oh, good God! Someone had to see the struggle!
“Ted!”
He jerked, releasing her. Tracy recognized the voice just as he did, and she spun around to see her mother standing twenty yards in back of them, with Arthur Kingsley beyond her, stepping from the driver’s seat of a sedan pulled haphazardly against the curve.
“Ted!” Audrey cried again. “Stop! I see you, my father sees you. There are witnesses!”
He stared at her, then shook his head slowly. “No. No, I can’t! Don’t you see—she is Jesse’s seed. And—yours.”
“My daughter, Ted! Jesse is dead. I love Tracy! If you touch her—”
Ted let out the most horrible cry that Tracy had ever heard. Like a bellow, like a bull’s roar of rage. Then he was up and running again, running toward her mother.
“No!” Tracy was on her feet, screaming.
“Audrey!” Ted shouted. “We’ll do something together! We’ll go out of this world as one!”
Tracy started running, too, but something whizzed by her. A man.
Leif.
And just seconds before Ted reached Audrey, Leif reached Ted, pitting himself against the man’s back like a tackle, smacking them both flat against the cement.
“Audrey, damn you, run!” Leif shouted. Tracy heard the sickening sound of fists flying against flesh and bone. Arthur Kingsley reached his daughter and wrenched her wooden body back toward the car.
Arms swooped around Tracy’s shoulder. She turned. It was Jamie, grim and tense, holding her.
She stared ahead of herself. The two men were up. Ted swiped at Leif; Leif ducked.
Ted didn’t strike out again. He very simply caught hold of the rail—and catapulted over it.
Tracy heard a long scream. She didn’t even know that it was she that was making the sound until Leif, tattered and mussed, and gasping, staggered back over to them and took her from Jamie, gently sliding a hand over her mouth.
“Shh, Tracy. Shush!” He held her as she broke into a spasm of tears. He tried to ease the shaking in her body.
“Look at me, Tracy!” he commanded her. “Look at me!” And he raised her chin so that her eyes met his. Gray and level and tender and caring.
“It’s over, Tracy. It’s going to be all right. It’s really going to be all right.”
He kissed her forehead and hugged her to him again. “I love you, Tracy. I love you. It will be all right.”
And suddenly she stopped shaking. She believed him. She pulled away from him and stared searchingly into the handsome lines of his face, and she felt again the silver caress of his eyes.
“Leif?”
“I love you, Tracy. I love you,” he whispered again. He caught her hand and brought their fingers between them, entwining them. “We can make it all right,” he told her, firmly.
And by then, the police were there. Someone called his name, and he handed her back to Jamie’s care.
Jamie hugged her tightly. “We’ve made it, Tracy. We’ve made it, and we can go on from here.”
* * *
It wasn’t to be quite that simple. Tracy had to give a statement to the police, and although Leif tried to handle most of it, she did have to speak with them.
Audrey was so hysterical that she had to be taken to the hospital, sedated, and kept overnight. But before she was parted from Tracy, she begged to talk to her. Tracy had to know, she said, that her baby brother, Anthony, was—was Jesse’s child, too.
Audrey was so remorseful, so hysterical. Tracy tried to tell her that it didn’t matter; Audrey said that it did. She hadn’t wanted Tracy to believe that her little brother could be mad—like Ted. Tracy had kissed and hugged her mother again, and tried to assure her that everything would be okay.
And Arthur Kingsley was so shaky, pensive and morose that Tracy began to fear that her grandfather wouldn’t make it either. She knew that he couldn’t help but think that he had caused it all by his interference all those years ago. And he had been wrong; so terribly wrong. But Tracy believed with all he
r heart that he had never meant to hurt any of them, and she tried to tell him that she loved him, wondering if it would do any good. Arthur went to stay at Audrey’s side in the hospital, and Tracy knew, too, that for all his interference, he loved his daughter very, very much, and that he was praying, too, that he might make several things up to her.
Through it all, Jamie was there. Pale but steady and totally supportive. He told Tracy that, just when she had left with Ted, Leif had learned from the deceased officer’s partner that the two of them had met Arthur, Audrey, and Ted over a year ago. And that, once Leif knew Tracy was off with her stepfather, instinct had warned him that Ted had ordered Jesse’s murder. For several seconds he had soared into an explosive panic, but he had sobered quickly, aware that he must find her.
Someone had noted the cab company and Leif had reached the dispatcher and contacted the cabbie who had remembered letting the two of them out by the river.
“I’ve never seen Leif like that, Tracy,” Jamie told her with his wonderful, easy smile that was so like their father’s. “He must love you very, very much.”
“I hope so,” she whispered. And she’d leaned against him, waiting for Leif to finish with the police, too worn to cry.
When Leif finished at last, he took her hand and suggested that they go to the hotel. Tiger and Sam would be there—and Lauren and Carol deserved explanations.
And most importantly, Liz would be there, waiting with Blake.
“What am I going to tell him?” Tracy whispered hopelessly to Leif.
He hesitated, and she had never been so glad of his arm around her, or the unwavering strength he offered her.
“Tracy, it might take time. But we’ve got time now. Years ahead of us.” He paused again, heedless of Jamie, staring deeply into her eyes.
“That is, if you love me. I—I only forced you to marry me because—”
“Because you’re both stubborn idiots!” Jamie chimed in. “Tracy, face it, you married him because you love him. Let the poor guy off the hook.”
She discovered that she could still smile after all. She gazed up into eyes that were silver and charcoal and tense and fascinating and demanding and tender and smiled.
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