Silent Night

by Danielle Steel

  They sat there for a long time, as though expecting someone to come and meet them, or Paige to show up and not be dead after all. And then Emma got up and tried to look in the windows. With an aching heart, Whitney held her up, so she could see that the inside of the house was empty. She looked at Whitney with desperation. She was wondering where everything had gone but didn’t know how to ask it, or even sign it. Whitney shook her head again, and Emma was sobbing as her aunt led her back to the car and they got in. They were going home now, but not to the one Emma remembered. That home was gone forever. But at least Emma had remembered it, which Whitney thought was a good sign. The doors of the past were unlocking slowly, even if facing the memories was painful for Emma.

  Brett saw them as soon as they drove up, she had been pacing on the front lawn waiting for them, and threw her arms around Emma as soon as she saw her. She looked at Whitney. “Where was she?”

  “She was trying to get to her old house. She was heading in the right direction, but she had a long way to go.” Emma walked into the house looking dejected and still holding her mother’s photograph. She went up to her room and set it on the night table with the others, and then sat there, staring into space for a long time. She already knew her mother wasn’t coming back, or Whitney assumed she did, but she looked as though she had lost her all over again after seeing the house.

  Whitney called Bailey and Amy and told them about it that afternoon after Emma had settled down. They both got on the phone.

  “That’s pretty amazing,” Bailey said, impressed. “She remembered the house and tried to find it. Maybe she thought she’d find her mother there. But either way, that’s very enterprising, and she even recalled which direction to go. I think we’re having another breakthrough.” And she had retrieved one of her lost words when she said “Home,” but it was a small consolation, seeing how unhappy she was.

  “It’s going to be hard for her when she remembers things,” Amy reminded both of them. “This isn’t an easy process for her. She lost her mother, their home, her job on the TV show, all her friends on the show. She’s going to have a lot to face as her memory comes back. There’s no good news in it for her, and when she remembers the accident that’s going to be the toughest memory of all. But she can’t heal fully until she remembers everything, and faces it, and after that she can go forward. For now, she’s still digging in the past for the answers. She tried to find one of them today.” They all agreed that it was an important step, even if not a happy one, and Bailey promised to come and see Emma later. She was uncommunicative when he did, and Whitney looked troubled too.

  “Do you think I’m wrong to try and keep her at home?” she asked him honestly. “Is it too dangerous for her? It never occurred to me that she might try to run away. What if someone had found her and kidnapped her today? Maybe I’m being crazy since I can’t protect her here.” She’d been thinking about it all day, ever since Brett called her at the office and said Emma was lost.

  “You mean institutionalize her?” Whitney hesitated and then nodded, and Bailey was shocked. He didn’t think Whitney would have been open to that idea even though many people would have preferred that option rather than trying to bring Emma back, inch by inch, themselves. “She didn’t run away today,” he reminded her. “She was trying to find something, the house she lived in with her mother. That’s a very ambitious project for her. I’d say that’s more of a positive than a negative and it shows she’s fighting to come back, not run away.”

  “What if I don’t know enough to do this safely for her?” Whitney asked, worried. “I’m just groping around, trying to find answers for her, but maybe she’d be better off with professionals taking care of her, full-time. She could have gotten hurt today, kidnapped or injured, or run over by a car while crossing the street. She’s just a little kid, and now she’s brain injured and vulnerable.”

  “She’s a very resourceful little kid, if you ask me,” he said with a tone of admiration. “And to answer your question, no, I don’t think she’d be better off in an institution of some kind. She wouldn’t make as much progress there and they wouldn’t try as hard as you do. She might not even make any progress there at all.”

  “She might not make progress here either. Maybe I have to face that.” It was something she had been avoiding since the accident, the fact that Emma might stay the way she was. Whitney hadn’t wanted to confront that or accept it, but she wondered if maybe now she had to.

  “She already is progressing.” Bailey pled Emma’s case. “She still has a long way to go, and she hasn’t gotten language back yet, but her memory is obviously waking up. We saw evidence of that today. So, if you’re asking for my opinion, I don’t think she belongs in an institution, at least not yet. We can always reassess that later, but for now, I think there’s still hope, even if she hasn’t unlocked all the doors yet. I think she will.” It was easy for him to say, he didn’t live with her, and he hadn’t almost lost her today when she ran away, whatever her reason for doing it. What if she had gotten hurt as a result? It had been a sobering experience for Emma and for all of them.

  Bailey could tell how badly Whitney was shaken by it. He came by that afternoon to check on them and reassured Brett too. And after that he stopped by every day without fail.

  It was several days before Whitney had calmed down again, and Brett as well. By the weekend, when Whitney was alone with Emma, she felt more confident again.

  Bailey dropped by to see them on his way to play tennis with a friend and Whitney was calmer than she had been earlier in the week.

  “Feeling better?” he asked her, concerned. It had been a hard week. Every week was hard. There were no easy gains.

  “A little.” She smiled at him. “She scared the hell out of me when she disappeared. I think she understands the house is gone now, but that’s another loss for her, and there have been so many.”

  “And positives too,” he reminded her.

  “Like what?” Whitney couldn’t imagine them.

  “You. She lost her mother, but you’ve stepped into her shoes. It’s not the same, but you haven’t let her down for a minute in the last four months. And from what you’ve said to me, I’m not even sure her mother would have been as dedicated. This is not an easy path you’re on. Not everyone could do it.”

  “I was beginning to think I couldn’t either,” she said. “I don’t want to make things worse for her, or slow down her progress by trying to keep her here.”

  “You aren’t. How’s she doing with her signing lessons?” He thought it was a brilliant idea.

  It was an interesting experiment, and Belinda and Sam were still coming twice a week. “It depends on the day. Sometimes she signs perfectly, and at other times she can’t remember any of it. That’s what’s happening with her reading too. Sometimes you can see that she’s not interested and it makes no sense to her, and then the next time, she’s fascinated and reads simple things for a while. None of it happens in a straight line or goes smoothly every day.”

  “That’s how brain injuries are,” Bailey explained again. “People make significant advances, and then regress and lose ground. Eventually, she’ll get there, but it’s going to take time. How’s the aggression?”

  “That depends on the day too. When she’s frustrated, she takes it out on me, but at least she feels bad now when she hurts me. She can’t stop herself when she gets upset.” He nodded, and then she thought of something she’d been meaning to ask him. She wasn’t sure how appropriate it was. She knew Bailey had no family and he didn’t seem to have a big social life. He was always happy to visit them, and had free time at night. Amy seemed busier and had a serious boyfriend from what she said, and family she visited in Colorado. Bailey appeared to be more solitary. “What are you doing for Thanksgiving? If you have nothing to do, we’re having a turkey here. I’ve always done it. My sister wasn’t much of a cook, and since my
father died, it’s just been the three of us. Brett’s having Thanksgiving with us, she doesn’t want to go home to Salt Lake.” She knew Bailey had no family to be with either, since he had no siblings and his parents were dead, but she wasn’t sure he’d want to spend the holiday with her and Emma. They were patients, but slowly becoming friends. She knew Amy was going to her future in-laws’ in San Francisco, but Whitney wondered if Bailey was going to be alone, or maybe going to friends. She decided to ask him anyway.

  “I’d love sharing it with you. I’m not big on holidays which are family events, since my parents are gone. I usually volunteer at a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter, which at least turns it into a useful event, but I’d love to spend it with you and Emma.” He knew it would be a hard holiday for both of them this year. He looked touched to be asked, and really pleased.

  “We just do a simple lunch, nothing elaborate.”

  “That sounds just right. Holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas always make one feel like such a loser if you’re not married and don’t have kids,” he admitted. Whitney laughed and nodded her head.

  “Actually, they’ve always made me feel grateful I wasn’t married and didn’t have kids.” She laughed. “And now I’ve kind of backed into it. I want to make it as nice as I can for Emma. She’s going to miss her mother now that she remembers her. It’ll be nice having you here,” she said warmly. “I never figured I’d have a child of my own, and never felt ready to take that on, and now I’ve got Emma.” It made her think of Chad briefly. She hadn’t heard from him in two months, and knew she wouldn’t again. She missed the fun trips with him, but not who he turned out to be when Emma got hurt. He was a cold, selfish man, and she saw that now. She no longer had time to travel with him anyway. Her whole life had changed.

  “Thank you for inviting me,” Bailey said again, and then left to play tennis, and he offered to come by with some Thai food the next day. Whitney was planning to spend a quiet weekend with Emma, and do some things around the house. She was trying to teach her to play chess again, but she hadn’t mastered her old skills, and was better at Monopoly and Clue, which they played loosely, ignoring the rules so they were easier for her. And Belinda had left her some new games on the iPad, which kept Emma busy for hours as she struggled to master them. She played several of them with Bailey when he came back with dinner on Sunday night, and then beat him at a game of gin, which impressed him. Her abilities were spotty and irregular, and some were better than others.

  “What did she do? Deal blackjack in Vegas in a past life?” he said after she beat him at gin several times. “I think she may have been cheating, but either way she beat me. You have to be smart to cheat too.” He laughed. “She is one very bright little girl.” Whitney laughed too, and Emma looked pleased. Bailey had been a good addition to their life, as a doctor and a friend. They had medicine as their common ground. He told Whitney about the brain injury conference he would be chairing in a few weeks. He still wanted her to speak there, and Whitney wasn’t sure, although the meetings sounded interesting.

  “I don’t know enough about it to sound intelligent,” she said modestly. “Brain injuries are new to me.”

  “They’re new to a lot of neurologists in the field too. New information is published every year. Think about it. I want you as a guest speaker. You can talk about what you’ve been through with Emma. She’s taught me several things too, and every case is different. Her IQ must have been incredible before the accident.” Whitney had lent him some of the DVDs of the episodes of The Clan, and he was impressed by Emma’s performance, and her strength in delivering her lines on a very emotional dramatic show. Whitney had played a few of them for Emma, but she seemed to have no interest in them, and no recollection that the actress on the screen was her. Her role on the series hadn’t emerged from her dormant memory bank yet, and there was no way of knowing if it ever would. There were other things they thought she needed to remember first, like the accident that had killed her mother. That was the real nucleus of the trauma and was the memory most likely to open up the rest. But there had been no recent breakthroughs since she went to find her old house, and she was content to play games and try new apps on the iPad.

  Belinda and Sam joined them on Thanksgiving too, since neither had local family to be with, and they were a congenial group. Whitney prepared a delicious meal. Bailey helped carve the turkey, and Brett and Emma had made all the pies from recipes Brett had gotten from her mother in Salt Lake. Whitney had learned by then that Brett was the youngest of nine children and had twenty-nine nieces and nephews, which explained why she was so good with kids, along with her nursing skills.

  Emma signed several times during lunch, and joined the conversation, and as soon as the meal was over, she went upstairs to her room and lay down on the bed. Whitney was sure she was thinking about her mother, and it saddened Whitney too that her sister wasn’t there with them. It was hard to believe that she was gone forever, and that it had only been four months since the accident.

  “Is she okay?” Bailey asked Whitney when she came back downstairs after checking on Emma, and she nodded.

  “I think she misses her mother. I think the things she does remember are hard for her. Maybe all that she’s forgotten is a mercy for her. At least she doesn’t need to feel sad about it. You can’t miss what you don’t remember,” she said with a sigh.

  “Are you doing okay?” Bailey asked her gently and she smiled.

  “I guess I’m like Emma that way. It depends on the day.”

  “Have you given any more thought to the conference?” She hesitated, not sure what to say. “You’ve still got time to decide. You have a lot of good firsthand information to share, about living with a brain injured child, and the psychiatric aspects of it.”

  “Maybe.” She wasn’t convinced yet, although medically she readily admitted the subject was fascinating. But her personal experiences were too close to home, and she didn’t want to violate Emma’s privacy.

  All in all, it was a surprisingly nice Thanksgiving, better than she had expected. She was startled when Emma’s agent, Robert Jones, called the next day.

  “How’s our girl doing?” he asked with interest. Whitney didn’t particularly like him, although she knew her sister had, and thought he was great for Emma’s career. “I’ve been getting a lot of calls recently, asking when she’ll be ready to go back to work. I’ve had some inquiries for other series, and a Disney movie, and some product endorsements. Whenever you think she’s ready, the work is there. She’s still a hot property, more so than ever with the sympathy factor. No one has forgotten her yet.”

  “She’s not ready,” Whitney said firmly without going into detail. His comments smacked of exploitation to Whitney and made her angry.

  “Don’t let it sit too long,” he warned her, “we don’t want producers to lose interest. She’s still a valuable commodity.” That wasn’t how Whitney viewed her, although she knew her sister had.

  “She’s a little girl, Robert. She’s got a lifetime in show business ahead of her, if that’s what she wants.”

  “She must miss the show,” he said in a wheedling tone that made Whitney’s skin crawl. He was the epitome of everything she hated about Hollywood. Her father had been a cut above him, and of a much higher caliber as an agent, but the theories were all the same, as far as she was concerned, and she wasn’t going to let him take advantage of Emma. He couldn’t anyway, since she couldn’t even talk, which he didn’t know and Whitney wasn’t about to tell him. He had a big mouth. “Well, keep in touch. I’ll send you some scripts after the holidays,” he said hopefully, and Whitney couldn’t wait to hang up. She wanted to keep people like him as far away from Emma as she could. Whatever Paige’s views had been on the subject, Whitney was never going to let anyone exploit Emma again. Paige had given her a career as a child star, and Whitney wanted to give her the life of a child. What Emma would
want one day when she recovered remained to be seen. As long as Whitney was in charge, those decisions would be up to Emma, and no one else.

  Chapter 9

  Despite their different interests and philosophies about life, the one thing that Paige and Whitney had always agreed on was their love of the holidays. Christmas had always been a big event in their family, with elaborate decorations and lots of presents, an enormous tree lit up on the front lawn, and another one in the living room. When they were children, their family had celebrated on Christmas Eve with a black tie dinner, and their mother had always worn a glamorous evening gown, with a new piece of jewelry their father had given her. Even after she was gone, the girls had helped their father maintain their family traditions. After his death, Whitney put up a tree every year and Paige and Emma had come to dinner, wearing pretty dresses, and they had exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve after dinner, and met again for lunch the next day. Their celebrations were less formal once their parents were gone, but the sisters had spent Christmas together every year.

  Whitney had always spent several days decorating a tree she could barely get into the house, with an elaborate angel sitting on top, and beautiful ornaments Whitney had collected for years. She was determined that this year should be no different. She wanted Emma to have a wonderful Christmas, even if they were going to be alone. Their family had shrunk dramatically, and the memories would be overwhelming for Whitney, remembering her parents and her childhood and now her sister, but she was planning to decorate a tree in her living room, as she always did. And she bought a new red velvet dress for Emma to wear on Christmas Eve. She clapped her hands when she saw it and Whitney tried it on her. It fit perfectly. Four days before Christmas, she took Emma with her to pick out a tree and had it delivered to the house.

  Whitney had brought several boxes of decorations from Paige’s house, and planned to use them, so they’d look familiar to Emma. She had also brought a collection of music boxes that Paige had put on her mantel every year. Her favorite had been an antique one with an angel in it, and a crèche with baby Jesus. It played “Silent Night.” Whitney set them all on the mantel carefully, and Emma paid no attention to them. They didn’t seem to be familiar to her, and she watched with fascination as Whitney stood on a ladder hanging ornaments on the tree. Brett even got Emma to hang a few on the lower branches, and she smiled and chattered in gibberish as she did it. Whether she remembered their earlier Christmases or not, she enjoyed the process and how pretty the house looked once the decorating was complete. The night she finished the tree, Whitney turned all the lights off, plugged in the tree, and the effect was magical. She and Emma sat on the couch and admired the result.