Deeply fond of Kate, despite his grumbling, Sterling knew how concerned she was about her oldest son. In his opinion, she had good reason to feel as she did. “What about Jake?” he asked. “Will getting through the mess he’s in without you help strengthen his character, too?”
Like clouds scudding across the sky in advance of a stiff breeze, sadness and worry flitted across her expressive face. Jake was in the most jeopardy, and might seem to need her intervention the most. Yet she sensed that its absence might benefit him most, as well. “Without even knowing who his real father was, he always felt at a disadvantage in the family, and he leaned on me psychologically,” she pointed out. “Now he can’t. He’ll have to sink or swim on his own. I’m betting it’ll be the latter.”
Sterling regarded her with admiration. “You’re a strong old broad, did you know that, Kate?” he asked.
“So I’ve been told,” she answered with a grin.
Her longtime friend and attorney wasn’t finished speaking his piece. “What you need is a man to settle you down…and shake you up once in a while,” he allowed. “One of these days, I might take on the task myself.”
Kate’s grin broadened. Though she remained in her chair, separate from him and fully in charge of her own space, she wasn’t totally unavailable. At the right time and place, she admitted to herself, I might be open to what he’s proposing.
“Who knows? One of these days I might let you…if you’re sure you’ve still got the kind of fire it takes to please a woman under that snowcapped chimney of yours,” she shot back before returning her gaze to the telescope’s eyepiece.
Back at the party, Lindsay frowned slightly as she spoke to Natalie and her new husband. A tiny flash of reflected sunlight from one of the dining room windows in the empty house next door had caused her to squint. It’s as if someone’s in there, training a pair of binoculars in our direction…watching us, she thought. Yet I know for a fact that Bernice McDermott’s still in Europe. We got a postcard from her just last week.
It occurred to her that a supermarket tabloid might have invaded their privacy from a distance to augment an exposé its editors were planning on the Fortune family because of Jake’s involvement in the Monica Malone murder case. Maybe they’d dispatched a photographer to take pictures of her daughter’s birthday party with a telephoto lens. If so, whether or not they had permission to use her neighbor’s house, their paparazzilike behavior wouldn’t go unchallenged!
Excusing herself, she cut across the yard without pausing to tell Frank where she was going and brushed through a hedge to emerge in Bernice McDermott’s drive. To her amazement, Sterling’s Lincoln was parked there. She recognized the license plate.
A few more determined steps brought her to the front door, where she leaned on the buzzer, completely unaware of the fright she was giving her supposedly deceased parent.
Following a brief delay, the family attorney appeared.
“What’s up, Sterling?” she demanded with a skeptical edge to her voice. “Did you go to the wrong house by mistake? The party’s next door!”
Thinking on his feet with his customary agility, the silver-haired attorney explained that his client, her neighbor, was weighing a sale of the property. He’d agreed to show it to an extremely private potential purchaser on her behalf.
Forcing herself to remain hidden in the dining room, Kate was overcome with a second, more powerful wave of nostalgia for her old life as she listened to Lindsay’s sweet voice. Still, she remained steadfast in her agreement that it wasn’t yet time to show herself. Some of her children and grandchildren still had a lot to learn. Her attempted murder—and the murder of her archrival, which had been laid at Jake’s door—needed to be resolved, as well.
Still convinced something fishy was in the works, as Bernice McDermott hadn’t mentioned anything about putting the house on the market and Sterling had seemed so determined to block her entry, Lindsay quizzed him a little further. Citing attorney-client privilege, he was anything but forthcoming. Eventually, she had to return to the party. She was the hostess, after all. Plus, Chelsea would soon be opening her presents. Yet she continued to keep an eye on the house, curious about her potential neighbor and the need for so much secrecy. When Kate came out, heavily veiled, something hauntingly familiar about her carriage resonated, causing the brown-haired pediatrician to stare.
I wonder what faded but fabled movie star might be moving in next door to us, she thought, wishing she could button down the sense of déjà vu she felt. At least it wouldn’t be the evil Monica Malone. On balance, she decided to be grateful.
The night before Annie was scheduled to return to the hospital for her radiation and chemotherapy, Jess and Stephen took her to see a popular children’s movie about a klutzy dog’s misadventures. Despite the hilarity it evoked, as they laughed together over popcorn and sodas, an underlying edge of tension haunted them.
Carefully, in tandem, they’d explained to Annie what the treatment would entail. The rest of her hair would fall out and she’d be very sick—maybe even sicker than she’d been during her original treatment. Afterward, of course, she’d get better. Once she was well, she probably wouldn’t have to return to the hospital as an inpatient again.
“Will Chelsea and I get to share a room?” she’d asked doubtfully, aware that her friend would be going to the hospital too, though Jess wasn’t sure she fully comprehended the connection.
“Because of the danger of infection before your new immune system takes hold,” Stephen had explained, “you’ll have to stay under a laminar-flow hood in one of the ‘clean rooms,’ the way you did last time. Despite its role in keeping you free of germs, visitors have to be limited, because they can bring infection with them. Though Chelsea will be on the same floor, you and she won’t be able to see each other.”
The memory of her first hospital stay still vivid in her mind, Annie had begun to weep. “I’m fine, Mummy,” she’d pleaded. “Tell him. My head hasn’t been hot for a long, long time. I don’t need to take any more of the nasty medicine!”
When morning came, it was as they’d feared. Tears streaming down her cheeks, Annie balked. She tried to pull away and run back to the cottage when Jess attempted to fasten her into Stephen’s Mercedes for the trip to the hospital. Stephen watched helplessly as she corraled and calmed her daughter, having been through a similar incident with David.
Ultimately, because she was such a well-behaved child, they didn’t have to drag her in kicking and screaming. Yet the ache of reproach in her eyes nearly killed Jess as she helped her precious daughter don a hospital gown preparatory to being wheeled downstairs to radiology for her first total-body irradiation treatment.
Her anguish only increased when, late that afternoon, the IV nurse arrived in Annie’s room to insert a catheter needle in one of the large veins in her chest. The catheter would function like an access road for the chemotherapy that would kill off diseased cells, antibiotic treatment, the ongoing administration of needed blood products and the infusion of her donated marrow. Because her immune system had to be a blank slate for the new marrow to engraft and give her a healthy, fresh start in life, no diseased cells could remain to reinfect it. This time, her dose of chemotherapy would be a heavy one.
Already placed on electronic heart-monitoring equipment because chemotherapy sometimes weakened the heart muscle, Annie lay mostly still, though she whimpered softly when the needle bit into her vein. Her protests used up, she was behaving like a model victim.
As the toxic but ultimately healing chemicals began dripping into her body, causing her usually bright eyes to glaze over with lassitude and her fuzzy blond head to loll weakly on her pillow, Jess thought her heart would break. If only I could go through this in her place, she thought, scrambling to retrieve a kidney-shaped metal basin from Annie’s bedside table as her vomiting started. I’d change places with her in a hot second.
Stephen’s reaction to the situation was, naturally, somewhat different from
Jess’s. As a physician, he’d learned to keep his fears and worries locked up inside. However, he loved Annie, too. Her misery cut him deeply, even as it recalled his own little boy’s suffering and sparked his fear of sustaining another devastating loss.
Coupled with his fears for Annie was his soul-deep anxiety that he’d fail Jess emotionally when the chips were down. Each time she let herself lean on him, after first glancing toward the hall to make sure none of his colleagues would catch her in the act, his terror renewed itself. He’d failed his ex-wife, hadn’t he? Where was the guarantee that, on the second go-round, he’d behave any differently?
Frightful as it was, Annie’s nausea had subsided somewhat by the third day following her chemotherapy, when Lindsay dropped by to check on her and relay a report from Rebecca.
It seemed that Detective Harbing was a bit skeptical about Kate’s spirit giving them clues. However, his department had begun investigating the leads she’d provided. It was just possible that Tracey Ducet and her odious boyfriend would soon find themselves answering investigators’ questions.
In a related development that had cheered Jake and given Aaron Silberman additional ammunition for his defense, several hairs found at the murder scene and analyzed by the crime lab didn’t fit Jake’s DNA pattern, or Monica’s. Neither did they match any belonging to other persons known to have lawfully spent time at her house. At least one of them, a natural strawberry-blond color, had been dyed a medium-to-dark-brown shade that closely matched Lindsay’s—and the Ducet woman’s—tresses.
“Jake’s immensely heartened by the news,” Lindsay reported. “According to Rebecca, he would have taken the trouble to be tested if he’d thought there was even a remote chance he could provide a match. But you know, the most incredible thing is the way he phoned Nate from jail to apologize for his part in past conflicts. He even admitted that he can see the wisdom of Nate taking his place at the helm of Fortune Industries for the time being! He’s promised to do whatever he can to cooperate!”
Having hung out with the Fortunes for the better part of two and a half months, Jess knew of the rivalry between the brothers, and the fact that it caused their sisters a good deal of distress, in addition to being detrimental for business. “That’s great, Lin,” she answered with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. “I know how much their cooperation and friendship means to you. Now, if only we can get through the next couple of weeks in one piece…”
As if it had been waiting for just such an opening to emerge, the anxiety Lindsay felt over the donor procedure Chelsea would have to undergo showed its face.
“Stephen mentioned at lunch that it would probably be appropriate to harvest Chelsea’s bone marrow the day after tomorrow,” she said. “As you know, we’ve been able to wait this long because, with an incredible five out of six antigens matching, Stephen didn’t have to check her marrow before giving the procedure the green light. Though at first I was relieved about that, the waiting has made things fairly intense for us. I know you have far greater fears than mine wrapped up in this, Jess. And I feel for you…more than words can express. But I can’t deny that I’m a little apprehensive over what my baby will have to go through.”
Twelve
Taking some time off from their busy his-and-hers careers, Chelsea’s parents brought her to the hospital as arranged. Sedated and wheeled into the operating room so that the donor process could get under way, she was prepped and on the table when Stephen entered from the scrub area in pale blue surgical garments and sterile gloves. The operating room crew waited in readiness as he gazed down at his eight-year-old neighbor for a moment.
It wasn’t often that the bone-marrow donor for a leukemia patient was a child of such tender years. Because of Chelsea’s courage and generosity, Annie would have a chance to grow up and marry someday, though her chemotherapy had already made it likely that she’d never have children of her own. He vowed to do what he could to make her procedure go as smoothly as possible—for her sake and that of her parents.
You’re a brave girl, Chelsea, he told the unconscious child silently as he held out his hand for the proper instrument to make four or five minute incisions in her pelvic area. Your parents are raising a magnificent little person.
Having harvested bone marrow for transplanting too many times to count, Stephen was able to draw out the necessary pint of precious marrow in less than forty minutes. Giving Chelsea a pat on the shoulder that she might or might not register in her unconscious state, he sent her to recovery, with orders for an infusion of antibiotics, plus a pint of blood she’d had drawn and stored in the hospital blood bank the day after her decision was made.
A minute later, still in his scrubs, though he’d peeled off his surgical gloves, he was reassuring Frank and Lindsay in the family waiting room. “Your daughter’s quite a trooper,” he told them. “I stopped to see her before the nurse sedated her, and she didn’t seem particularly awed by the hospital. Maybe she’ll grow up to be a doctor, poor kid.”
Relieved though she was that Chelsea’s part in the effort to save Annie was over, Lindsay was still slightly tremulous. “At the moment, she’s thinking of becoming a ballerina,” she said with a shaky smile. “She asked me to ask you…how soon can she return to her ballet classes?”
Before Annie’s transplant could take place, Chelsea’s bone marrow had to be strained repeatedly through a series of fine screens to remove blood and bone fragments. It was thoroughly purified by the time an IV nurse brought it to her bedside in a sterile plastic pouch and hooked it up to her catheter while Stephen watched.
Jess couldn’t stop tears of worry and jubilation from flowing as she observed in the mask, gown and gloves she’d be required to wear whenever she spent time with Annie in the special “clean room” that was designed to keep her free of infection. It was finally happening! And it seemed so simple, after all the begging and pleading she’d done to bring it about. The plastic pouch containing Chelsea’s priceless gift seemed just one more addition to the metal IV stand that was already hung with similar pouches like some high-tech Christmas tree.
The fact that Annie would never make her a grandmother without adopting, and the possibility that, at some point in the future, she might need cataract surgery, seemed like a small price to pay for the opportunity to grow up, choose a career, fall in love and marry. Of course, Jess knew they weren’t out of the woods yet. Despite all Stephen’s precautions, an infection could crop up and ravage her body before her new immune system was ready to deal with it.
The specter of graft-versus-host disease also lingered to worry them. Because of the single antigen in Chelsea’s marrow that hadn’t matched Annie’s, there was always the possibility that the girl’s borrowed immune system would recognize certain of her tissues as “an invader” and launch an attack. If that happened, Stephen had warned, it would be regarded as a serious, possibly life-threatening complication. Hugging herself, she prayed that their trip through the valley of the shadows would result in her beloved child’s survival.
Chelsea was discharged in the morning. Though she couldn’t enter Annie’s room, she was allowed to wave to her from the hall. As the day after that dawned, and the next, ushering in the end of Annie’s first week in the hospital, it looked as if her transplant would be successful. Her appetite spoiled by the chemotherapy, which had made her mouth sore and caused extensive gastrointestinal upset, she willingly took small sips of water and gave her mother an occasional wan smile before drifting into another of the naps Stephen said would prove restorative. No fever or chills developed.
Strung out as a result of her inability to snatch much restful sleep in the reclining lounger beside Annie’s bed, Jess noticed Stephen had dark circles beneath his eyes. Perhaps he was suffering from a similar problem. She was also aware that he’d begun staying later at the hospital, as if he were determined to be on hand if any problems arose. Despite Annie’s progress, he continued to list her condition as “guarded.”
So
cautious and ambivalent, the word seemed an apt description of his emotional commitment to them. He’s just worried, as I am, Jess told herself, attempting to explain his somehow tentative manner whenever they had a moment to embrace.
Nine days after the infusion of Annie’s new bone marrow, Stephen did an aspiration test, and informed Jess that it was beginning to function. Exhausted and relieved, though he’d cautioned that this was the point in her treatment where graft-versus-host disease would be mostly likely to rear its ugly head, Jess let herself fall into a relatively sound sleep that night in her imitation-leather lounger beside Annie’s bed. A slight sound shortly after 3:00 a.m. awakened her. Two nurses with a flashlight were bending over her daughter.
“Her temperature’s gone up,” the older of the two women whispered with a frown. “And she has a skin rash. We’d better call Dr. Hunter.”
No amount of terrified pleading could get them to say anything further. Jess would have to speak to her daughter’s physician if she wanted more information.
It was like being thrown a lifeline when she learned that Stephen would come in to the hospital in person instead of issuing orders by phone. Her relief soon sagged, however, when she saw the look on his face as he entered her daughter’s room.
“Stephen…” she cried, a universe of hope and fear contained in the single word.
“Give me a moment to look her over, Jess,” he requested, holding her at arm’s length.
Retreating with difficulty until he’d finished examining Annie and scanning the chart her nurses were keeping on her, she suppressed the question that lay like a weight against her chest until he’d issued orders for Annie’s treatment.
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