“Thanks, but you needn’t bother,” she answered, without a crinkle of a smile in evidence. “One of the nurses offered me some yogurt from their unit kitchen. If I get hungry, I can take them up on it.”
Well versed in detecting when a woman was displeased with him, thanks to his troubles with Brenda, Stephen could feel the chill. It’s understandable, I suppose, he tried to tell himself. Her daughter’s very sick, and I’ve made her sicker in the course of her treatment. At times like this, a parent isn’t exactly rational. She’s bound to feel some resentment.
Instinct argued that her reaction went deeper than that.
Murmuring a low-key good-night, coupled with a promise to check on Annie “first thing in the morning,” he beat a strategic retreat. Yet he couldn’t help feeling somewhat crestfallen as he headed for the elevators. His “date” with Gloria Denham, if that was what it had been, had filled him with mounting eagerness to be with Jess. He’d wanted to see her, touch her, listen to the music of her voice, just bask in her presence. To tell the truth, throughout most of the evening, he’d been teetering on the verge of doing something rash—namely, falling for her.
Saved by the deep freeze, he congratulated himself as he strolled to the physician’s parking area and got into his Mercedes. Yet as he left the hospital campus behind and headed for his lonely Lake Travis residence, he couldn’t get the concept of a narrow escape to stick. The fact was, he was too far gone in his admiration and longing for her to beat an easy retreat.
About the time he pulled into his garage and got out of his sleek, expensive car to face an empty house, Erica was returning home from a night class at the junior college she attended. Unceremoniously dropping her notebook, woven leather purse and cashmere cardigan on one of the Roche-Bobois chairs in her off-white living room, she headed straight for the kitchen for two aspirin and a glass of skim milk.
Her attempt to pay attention as her world-history instructor lectured on the fall of the Roman Empire while simultaneously worrying about Jake had given her a monstrous headache. It was only after downing the aspirin and thoroughly massaging the bridge of her nose that she noticed that the little red light on her answering machine was blinking.
There were two messages—one from Jake, and another from his sister Lindsay. Astonished to hear from her estranged husband, who’d let her know by default that he wanted her to have no part in his troubles with the police, she rewound the tape and played it again, listening carefully to every nuance of meaning and expression in his husky, somewhat self-deprecating voice.
She didn’t glean much. Mumbling that he was sorry he’d missed her, he’d simply asked her to return his call and left an unfamiliar number, which she scrawled on the back of an envelope. Apparently he was still in jail. That meant phoning him in the men’s dayroom. She’d heard from Adam and Caroline how difficult it was to get through there.
Kicking off her shoes, she padded on stocking feet to the bedroom where she and Jake had slept together before their breakup and dialed the number he’d given her. To her amazement, she got through on the first ring.
“I’d like to speak to Jacob Fortune, please,” she told the somewhat gruff bailiff who answered. “This is his wife calling.”
“I didn’t know he had a wife,” the man said. “Hang on a moment.”
After what seemed an interminable delay, Jake came on the line. “Erica?” he asked.
“I’m here,” she told him.
She couldn’t know what it cost him to hear her voice. Lurking in its musical timbre were all the memories he’d tried to put from him—those of his courtship so many years ago of the leggy, gloriously good-looking model who, unaccountably, had preferred him to her other suitors; his treasured mental snapshot of the way she’d looked nursing Adam; the fragrant, heart-stopping sensation of holding her naked body in his arms.
It was a mistake to call her, he thought, his sudden longing for her intense. “I, uh, just phoned to see how you were,” he managed. “And the kids. I suppose you heard… I told them to stay away for a while.”
What would it have cost him to say he loved her, even if he didn’t mean it? To say he craved her help and support in making it through the dreadful calamity that had befallen him? Listening and hoping for those things, though recent experience had taught her not to expect them, Erica was disappointed.
“I’m fine…. Keeping busy with my classes,” she said without much expression. “The kids told me what you’d decided about their visits. I don’t agree with it.”
Jake’s shoulders sagged a little as he slouched by the prisoners’ pay phone. A couple of sentences exchanged, and already they were on opposite sides of the fence. “In my opinion, it’s for the best,” he asserted. “I don’t want them to remember me in this kind of setting.”
They’re going to remember it anyway, Erica thought. What does it matter? They love you, just as I do. They want to help you through it, instead of being shut out.
“So…what can I do for you?” she asked.
You could hold me, Jake told her silently, if only in your thoughts. Forget all the crap I’ve dished out and offer to go forward, if I manage to beat this thing.
He couldn’t bring himself to put his plea into words. “Just reassure the kids of my innocence, I guess,” he said at last.
Don’t you know I’ve done that already? she answered silently. “Of course I will,” she promised. “But you needn’t worry. They believe in you wholeheartedly. Anyone who knows you realizes you couldn’t have committed the kind of crime they’re accusing you of.”
If she was stating her own confidence in him, she was doing so at a remove. It would have to do, he supposed. “Thanks. I appreciate it,” he said. “I, uh, guess I’d better go. It’s after hours. The bailiff did me a favor by letting me take your call.”
There was no telling when she’d hear from him again. “If you must,” she answered. “Keep well, okay?”
Briefly his voice lost its self-pity and defensiveness. “You, too, babe,” he whispered. “Good night.”
Erica decided she’d imagined the momentary lapse as she put down the receiver. Deeply hurt by the acrimony and increasingly separate lives that had driven them apart, she yearned for their old closeness. God, how it would help in our current situation, she thought. Apparently he didn’t want it, though. Leaving Lindsay’s message until morning, she took off her jewelry and stripped off her outer clothing. A moment later, she was facedown on her bed in her slip and panty hose, her sudden rush of tears wetting the bedspread’s expensive moiré fabric.
The following morning, Annie was sick to her stomach again. Complaining that it made her want to throw up more, she began refusing to drink even a tiny sip of water. On Stephen’s order, a second IV bag was hung on her stand, to make sure she got the fluids she needed and the electrolytes in her blood stayed balanced. By the time he returned to check on her around 3:15 p.m., Jess was beside herself.
“I don’t know what to do for her,” she said desperately, hugging herself. “She’s my baby! And she’s so miserable!”
Watching her suffer was too much for him. Maybe she’d seemed cool, even standoffish, the night before. Well, who could blame her? With a child so sick, her emotions were bound to fluctuate. He knew from personal experience how that felt.
Without pausing to consider where it might lead, he put both arms around her and crushed her close. “It’ll be okay, Jess,” he promised, his voice muffled by the mask he’d donned for Annie’s sake as he spoke against her hair. “She’ll soon be through the worst of this. And feeling better. There’ll be time for candy apples and hopscotch and diving into piles of autumn leaves before she has to be readmitted so we can do her transplant.”
Swept away by the immediacy of his embrace and his seeming certainty that a donor would be found, Jess loosened her hold on making things happen by force of will. She let herself believe, just a little, in the magic notion that it would be as he said. Concurrently, her memories of the b
lond woman who’d picked him up in her little sports car faded to little more than static. Instead of a highly trained specialist whose interest in them was purely professional, he became just Stephen, the kindly stranger who’d helped them at the zoo, a man she was beginning love.
“I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t found us at Como Park and suggested we come here,” she confessed. “It almost seems as if our meeting was meant…”
If they hadn’t been wearing masks, Stephen would have kissed her on the mouth. From the depths of his soul, he wanted to—more than he’d wanted anything since David’s death.
“Ah, Jess…” he said helplessly.
Lindsay chose that moment to walk in the door. Sizing up the situation, she pretended not to notice when they sprang apart. Wait until I tell Frank, she thought, bending over Annie. Our good friend and neighbor is about to choose life again. Let’s hope he and I can help this darling little girl to make it.
By the end of the week, Annie had perked up more than Jess had dared hope. It would take a little time for her bone marrow to regenerate following her chemotherapy, but Jess realized they could look forward to a respite from the hospital, though they’d be paying frequent visits to Lindsay’s and Stephen’s respective offices.
Unfortunately, they still didn’t have a donor. Though Rebecca’s, Caroline’s and Adam’s tests had all come back, and the report from Stephen’s inquiry to the Australian bone-marrow bank was in, as well, no one seemed able to supply the three or more matching antigens Annie required. If they couldn’t find anyone, it would be just a matter of time until Annie was sick again. She’d need recurring doses of chemotherapy, which were bound to become less and less effective.
In Jess’s opinion, which Stephen shared, the other untested or unanalyzed Fortune family members offered her daughter’s best hope. Several of them, including Jake’s and Erica’s daughter Allie, a model and actress who made her home in southern California, and Allie’s twin, Rocky, who owned and operated a rescue and tracking business in Clear Springs, Wyoming, had agreed to follow Lindsay’s lead and have blood drawn at their local hospitals. The results would be forwarded to the lab at Minn-Gen.
The odds being what they were, however, Jess experienced hope like a shot of adrenaline one morning when, out of the blue, Natalie, the just-married daughter of Jacob and Erica, turned up in Annie’s hospital room.
“Hi… I’m Natalie Dalton, Lindsay Todd’s niece,” she announced. “You must be Jessica. And you’re Annie, of course. I understand we’re cousins or something. You called me from England before coming to the U.S. I’m…er, sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. So much was going on in my life just then. I was in the somewhat bumpy process of acquiring a husband and an eight-year-old stepson….”
Above the mask that covered her pretty face, Natalie’s eyes were smiling.
Jess had seen the brief wedding notice about her and architect Richard Dalton in the Minneapolis paper and guessed that, because of her father’s troubles, it had been a quiet ceremony. She smiled, too. “Congratulations,” she said. “It’s nice when people are happy together. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
Plopping down her slender frame in the Leatherette lounger while her dark-haired hostess leaned against the windowsill, Natalie went on to relate that she planned to have her blood tested on Annie’s behalf before leaving the hospital.
“Lindsay explained how critical it was,” she explained. “I’d be absolutely delighted if I could be the one to provide the bone marrow Annie needs. Plus, I have something else you might be interested in….”
Digging in her oversize shoulder bag, Natalie produced what appeared to be several letters, yellowed by the passage of time and faintly moldy, as if they’d been stored in a damp place.
“From what I can tell, your grandmother wrote these to my grandfather,” she said, offering them to Jess. “My stepson, Toby, found them beneath a loose board in our boathouse. I’d say that, even if the letter you showed Lindsay doesn’t do the trick, these should document your relationship to us.”
Lindsay then volunteered to contact Sterling in case any legal issues came up, and gave him a call.
Though the attorney was skeptical of yet another outsider claiming to be related to the Fortune family, he’d heard about Jessica and her sick daughter via the grapevine. He was well aware that she’d introduced herself as Ben Fortune’s granddaughter—the product of a brief affair between him and her grandmother during the Second World War—and of her insistence that she didn’t want a share in the Fortunes’ wealth, just their help in saving her child.
“If you think the letters are worth looking at, she’s free to bring them by my office on Friday around 11:00 a.m.,” he suggested with an all-but-audible shrug. “We’ll see if there’s any way to make things easier with the hospital, or perhaps insurance.”
Availing herself of the opportunity in Jess’s place, Lindsay made the appointment for her new friend and cousin on the spot.
Sterling was pensive as he put down the phone. He hadn’t mentioned anything about Jessica Holmes’s claim to Kate. Given the necessity of keeping her survival a secret for the time being, he doubted she’d learned of it from any other source.
She’d have to be told now, with the story spreading through the family like wildfire and likely to become public knowledge at some point. Still, with Jake in jail, accused of murder, and all her concern focused on him, he questioned how she’d take such a revelation. While Lindsay, Natalie and the others might be charmed by the idea of meeting a hitherto-unknown cousin, Jessica’s story was likely to reawaken bitter memories for Kate of her husband’s cheating.
Then again, she might not give a damn. You never knew with her. Picking up the phone again, he dialed her unlisted number.
She answered herself, on the second ring.
“Any objection to fixing an old man a drink?” he asked.
He could almost see her wide smile—feel her little surge of pleasure at the knowledge that, for an hour or so, she’d have him to spar and worry with.
“None whatever, provided you watch your language,” she retorted amicably. “The word old is strictly off-limits. I’ve stopped counting birthdays.”
Six
Kate poured Sterling’s Scotch—neat, the way he liked it, though she preferred hers with a little water. The lights of Minneapolis were beginning to wink on below her sweep of westward-facing windows as she handed it to him and waved him to a chair.
For a woman whose oldest son was in jail, accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and who had been forced by circumstances beyond her control to go into hiding from the family she loved, she looked smashing. In black cigarette pants and a heavy white silk shirt that she’d knotted casually at her still-supple waist, with several jeweled “geisha” pins securing her Gibson-girl upsweep, she reminded him of Katherine Hepburn at her most glowing and self-confident. Sure, a few little laugh and worry lines were there in her face; he was her junior by a couple of years, after all. But they were insignificant. She still had great skin—as dewy and fresh as a rose. In his view of things, she continued to be the amazing girl Ben Fortune had married and hadn’t always deserved.
“I have a story to tell you that you might not like very much,” he admitted.
She leaned forward slightly, causing their knees to brush. “Let’s have it, then.”
As usual, he gave it to her straight. She listened without interrupting him. When he’d finished, she shook her head, a regretful but not wounded smile tugging at her mouth. “Ben Fortune was a randy old son of a she-goat, wasn’t he?” she sighed. “You needn’t worry, dear. His peccadilloes are water under the bridge to me now. I’ve sailed on past them, and hope to continue doing so for a long time yet. What, if anything, do you plan to do about this Jessica and her bone-marrow quest?”
Sterling’s nod of approval for her élan was like a little salute. “Since a child’s life is at stake, I thought I’d take a look at
these letters of hers,” he said. “Natalie found three of them, you know, at the old boathouse Ben used to visit. If they’re genuine, I see no reason not to do what I can to help.”
“When and where do you plan to meet with her?”
“Friday morning, in my office, if she can make it.”
“Will anyone from the family be accompanying her?”
He guessed her plan at once. “Now, Kate…” he protested, foreseeing a raft of complications.
In a gesture she probably knew was death to his opposition, she covered his hands with hers. “Humor me in this,” she begged. “No damage will be done. I guarantee it. Though she may have seen pictures of me, she thinks I’m dead. She’s never seen your secretary. Besides, since getting mixed up with those kids from the St. Paul Laser Theater in my spare time, I’ve become adept at disguises. No one but you and I will ever be the wiser.”
He wasn’t the jocular sort. Yet it was all Sterling could do, on Friday, to keep from laughing in her face when Kate presented herself at his office in the flapper-era landmark Foushay Tower half an hour before Jess’s expected arrival. In a way he found difficult to define, but which was remarkably, even devastatingly, effective, she seemed to have altered the shape of her features. Her lips were pursed, and the bridge of her nose was bumpy. She wasn’t wearing any lipstick. Her smooth, silver-shot upsweep was hidden beneath a frumpy gray wig.
And that wasn’t all. For the first time in the years he’d known her, Kate was dowdy. Her ill-fitting skirt and top had probably come from a consignment shop or the Laser Theater’s costume department. Her shoes clumped.
“The glasses are a nice touch,” he told her, knowing how strongly she preferred colored contacts.
“I expected high marks for my efforts,” she answered complacently. “What do you say I take a letter, just to get in practice?”
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