The Right Time

by Danielle Steel

  She spent the last few days in Boston, seeing everyone she loved there. She had dinner with Bert and hugged him. She spent several evenings with the nuns, and days with Brigid. And she flew to London from Boston on January 10. Miles was waiting for her at Heathrow and took her home to the apartment. Neither of them could believe how lucky they had been, how blessed to find each other, and how happy they were going to be together. Everything had worked out perfectly. More so than either of them could have dreamed.

  —

  She had a big bestseller that spring, a huge hit. So her work was going well and her publishers were pleased. And Miles’s project went smoothly and ended in April, and he decided to take three months off so he and Alex could do some traveling and spend time on the farm. His production company believed that he had fallen in love with Alexander Green’s assistant, and stolen her from him, which amused them. And they all liked Alex.

  Brigid had the twins a month early, and they each weighed eight pounds, so it was a mercy she had had them early, a boy and a girl. She said she was done now. She had two boys and two girls, had just turned thirty-nine, and said she couldn’t handle any more but loved the family she had. They had christened Steven without her, but one of their friends stood in for Alex as godmother.

  Alex finished her new book that summer. It took her longer than usual, after spending plenty of time in bed with Miles when he came home from work. And Bert worked with her on the editing as he always did. They sent the material back and forth between Boston and London. Bert said the book was her best, and Rose agreed. And Miles loved it too. So happiness was not destroying her career after all, she reminded Bert, and he growled.

  The series was on the air in the fall, and had solid ratings and was becoming popular. They had been signed for a second season, and were shooting it with the same actors. Alex was still consulting but the screenwriter was doing most of the work, with scripts being sent by fax and email to Alexander Green.

  Time continued to rush by. Alex wrote more than ever, always working with Bert to learn more, write better each time, and tighten her plots. She drove herself hard, as always.

  They spent time at the farm whenever they could, and luckily Madeleine and Duncan, Miles’s children, liked her, and his ex-wife calmed down once she remarried and didn’t hound Miles for money all the time, which was a relief, although maintaining the farm cost a fortune. At one point Miles was considering selling it, and Alex helped him with an important amount that made it possible for them to keep it after all. He was embarrassed that she had to do it, but it was either that or sell the home that they loved.

  Miles came to visit the nuns with Alex after they’d lived together for six months. They all thought him handsome and charming and Mother MaryMeg approved, although she had reminded him pointedly that they could get married in the chapel any time, and he had politely agreed, but they had no plans to marry.

  He thought Bert was a character, and they liked each other and got drunk together one night without Alex. They drank tequila and rum and suffered fiercely the next day, which Alex said served them right. And she took Miles to meet Pat and Brigid, which was like going to the zoo. The kids were crying, the babies had to be nursed at the same time, Pat was looking frazzled, you couldn’t hear yourself talk in their living room. It was like being inside a tornado, but Brigid looked blissful surrounded by her babies, and Miles looked shaken when they left.

  “Wow, if one ever needed a reminder why having children will drive you insane, she would be it.” He was glad that Alex didn’t want any, and felt that his two were enough. She hadn’t changed her mind about it, and he hoped she never would. She loved his children, enjoyed them when they saw them, and didn’t seem to want her own.

  It was hard to imagine where the years went, as Alex wrote novels and Miles produced TV shows. The series based on her book was on the air for three seasons, and then two of the main stars wanted out to do a Broadway play and a movie, and the show had to end without them, which was the fate of most shows like it. The best thing about it was that she and Miles had met and fallen in love as a result.

  Miles gave Alex a thirtieth birthday party, and all their London friends came, including Fiona and Clive, who had three small children by then. Alex still had lunch with her when she was in London and Fiona had time.

  The next year passed quickly, and there wasn’t a single thing about their life that either of them would have changed.

  Alex continued to help him with the expenses of the farm. She turned in a book a year and they were published every Christmas and went straight to number one every time. The nuns still prayed they would get married one day, but there was no sign of it. And Mother MaryMeg never entirely gave up hoping.

  They had been together for six years when Alex was thirty-one, and much to their amazement, Miles was forty-seven, which seemed hard for both of them to believe.

  They had a particularly busy spring. Duncan graduated from Oxford, and Madeleine announced the previous Christmas that she was getting married that summer, at twenty-three. Miles thought she was too young and Alex agreed with him, but she was engaged to someone from an important family in South Africa, and her mother was pushing hard for it. They owned diamond mines and her fiancé gave her a fifteen-carat engagement ring, which Miles disapproved of and thought was vulgar, and Madeleine’s mother thought was fabulous.

  Plans went ahead for the wedding, and just before they left for Johannesburg, Miles got sick. He came down with a particularly bad flu and high fever and still felt rotten afterward. He was barely well enough to travel, and Alex was worried about the long trip. She insisted he go to the doctor again and they ran some tests. His physician didn’t like the results, but there was no time to do more, and they promised to come again when they got home. Miles kept saying it was ridiculous and he was fine, but he didn’t look it.

  He barely got through the wedding and nearly collapsed before he walked his daughter down the aisle. Alex sat with him in the rectory until she was sure he was all right, and she talked to him about it later. She was scared.

  “Don’t be silly. It was a very emotional moment, any father would have nearly fainted, especially when I got the bill.” The wedding had cost a fortune, money Miles didn’t have. He was mortally embarrassed, and Alex told him not to worry about it. She gave him a check for what he owed his ex-wife. Alex was still carrying a lot of the expenses at the farm. Miles had been low on money for a while. His production company hadn’t been doing well, three of his best TV shows had folded, and he wasn’t getting as much work as before. There were new faces on the scene. It was a business for young lions and wolves, younger men were putting shows on the air more aggressively, and with subjects that had shock value and were more controversial. Miles remained locked into a previous style of TV which was less popular now.

  As a result, Miles’s income suffered and the farm became increasingly expensive to run. Alex always shored things up for him, and she didn’t mind. She made enough money for both of them, and invested quite a bit of her money, so she could afford to help him and was happy to do it. She had been luckier than most, and was willing to share the wealth with him. And it was her home now too. He was so good to her, and they loved each other so much.

  They went back to the doctor when they got home to London after the wedding and he ran more tests, PET scans, MRIs and other scans, and extensive blood work. Miles insisted it was unnecessary but he did it to humor Alex. Miles didn’t look well, and Alex was desperately afraid that something serious was wrong.

  They went to his doctor together when his physician had the results. He asked them to come in, and neither of them expected the kind of news they got. Miles had stage 4 pancreatic cancer. It had snuck right by them, and when Alex spoke to the doctor alone the next day, he told her honestly that the prognosis wasn’t good.

  “He only has a few months,” he said regretfully, while she felt like someone was choking her. “Six months, maybe three. You can’t predict
these things, it could be less, or he could surprise us and hang on for a year.” Surprise us? A year? Alex wanted him to live forever, not three months to a year. She could no longer conceive of a life without him. It was unimaginable that Miles was dying. That wasn’t possible. The doctors couldn’t let that happen. They had to be wrong.

  Miles agreed to try an aggressive program of radiation first to shrink whatever tumors there were on his pancreas, and then chemotherapy to kill the cancer cells. It was in his liver too. They started immediately and he was desperately sick. He was exhausted from the radiation, and then throwing up all the time from the chemo. His hair fell out, he lost a shocking amount of weight, and some days he couldn’t get out of bed. He was doing it for Alex, hoping to get more time with her, and his children, and maybe even to cure the disease, which the doctor said would not happen. The cancer was too advanced. He lay in bed sometimes, just holding Alex’s hand, too weak to say anything to her except that he loved her. They were the worst six months of his life, but he was still alive at the end of them, and they gave him a brief respite from the chemo. Then a spot appeared on his kidneys in a PET scan, and they started all over again, and gave him transfusions to improve his blood count.

  Alex had told the sisters at St. Dominic’s and asked them to pray for him, which they were doing ardently. When they finally told Madeleine and Duncan, they visited him as often as they could. Madeleine lived in South Africa with her new husband, but she spent two weeks in London with them. And Duncan was working in London, so he came to see Miles almost every night. There was nothing any of them could do for him except pray and love him. And Alex did a lot of both. She never left him for a moment. She stayed at the hospital on a cot in his room when he had to spend the night or was too sick to leave after a treatment. She was grateful now that she didn’t have children. All her strength and force and energy and time and love went into Miles, willing him to get better. If love could extend his life, he would live forever. She loved him so much and fought so hard alongside him to make him well again.

  She had been halfway through writing a book when they got the diagnosis, and she called Bert immediately to tell him that she had to put the edit on hold. She couldn’t work and take care of Miles. They were ahead of schedule, so she wasn’t worried. Bert was sorry to hear the bad news, and wished Miles the best. Miles was a good guy and Bert liked him. Bert had stayed with them several times at the horse farm in the past six years, when he had to do work with Alex, and he loved the place. And Bert had finally agreed that Miles was the Right Man at the Right Time. It had taken Bert years to admit it, because he saw himself as the champion and protector of Alex’s career. He was aware that Miles knew the truth about her pseudonym and had for several years, and Bert trusted him. Miles had never divulged her secret or even hinted at it, and he won Bert’s respect forever.

  She had also warned Rose that she might be late with the book, but she had to focus on Miles, and Rose understood completely. Everyone who knew them admired Alex for what she was doing. She devoted herself selflessly and a thousand percent to her man and his recovery from the cancer. Rose notified the publisher that there was a delay, and they were understanding about it. And then as the doctors started more aggressive treatment again, Alex got sick, and suddenly they were both throwing up after his treatments. The stress had finally gotten to her. But she didn’t want him to know how ill she felt, and she couldn’t give in now. She had to keep on going. His doctor saw Alex at the hospital one day while Miles was getting a transfusion, and she was green and sweating profusely, with perspiration running down her face as she fought not to faint or throw up.

  “How are you doing, Alex?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, as her eyes rolled back in her head and she fainted. Miles was at the lab and unaware of it, as his doctor took Alex into a room and examined her. Christmas had come and gone by then, and all they focused on were his treatments. Alex had no time for herself and didn’t want any.

  “What’s going on with you?” the doctor asked her.

  “I’m fine. It’s just stress. It’s nothing.”

  “You’re under the worst stress that someone can be under. The man you love is dying.”

  “He’s not dying, he’s sick,” she said with a steely look.

  “You’re going to have to face it.” He wondered if that was why she was sick, because she was refusing to accept it. “May I run some blood tests on you, Alex? Even a simple blood test might tell us a lot. You’re probably anemic.” She was thirty-two years old, and otherwise healthy, but she looked terrible and she knew it, and she didn’t sleep at night, watching him. She was afraid he would slip away or need her so she barely slept.

  “You can do a blood test, but I’m fine,” she said stubbornly. “And don’t say anything to Miles about it.” The doctor nodded, ran a blood panel on her, and had the results the next day. He called Alex into his office while Miles was being checked, and she left him with the nurses. The doctor looked at her seriously and asked her to sit down.

  “I think we have a situation here, and I’m not sure how you’ll feel about it. I’ll do whatever I can to help you. The blood test tells me that you’re anemic, but there’s an underlying issue.” He gazed straight at her. “You’re pregnant.”

  “I’m what? I can’t be.” Knowing how sick her husband was, the doctor wondered if it was somebody else’s baby. People did strange things in stressful situations, and he knew they weren’t married, although he could see how much she loved him. “That’s not possible,” she said, looking vague.

  “When was your last period?” he asked her, and she thought backward.

  “I don’t know, it was after the diagnosis, or right before. I don’t think I’ve had one since. And that was four and a half months ago, but I’ve always been irregular.”

  “Were you and Miles sexually active then?”

  “For the first couple of months, but not in the last three or four, he’s been too sick.”

  “So if you’re pregnant with Miles’s baby, you could be four or five months pregnant. Is your abdomen enlarged?”

  “I thought I was bloated from stress,” she said with tears in her eyes. How could she have a baby now, if Miles was dying? How could she bring up a child without him?

  “You need to see your gynecologist as soon as possible to figure out how pregnant you are. I won’t say anything to Miles about it.”

  “Please don’t, he’ll worry about me.” She went back to Miles then and said nothing about the test. The only questions were how pregnant she was and what she was going to do about it. She couldn’t have a baby now. She’d never even wanted one before.

  She called her gynecologist the next day and asked for an emergency appointment. When she went in, her doctor had no trouble feeling the pregnancy. They did a sonogram in her office and Alex cried as the doctor watched the screen.

  “You are pregnant, Alex. The computer says you’re four and a half months pregnant, the baby is due in late May, early June, and the heartbeat is strong.” Alex could hear the rhythmic beep of the monitor, as the doctor turned the screen so she could see it. The baby looked fully formed, and she could see its heart beating. “It’s too late for a normal abortion. Given your situation now, if you want one, I’ll apply to the hospital board for a psychiatric justification, that you are not mentally strong enough to have the baby. I’ll do that if you want.” Alex thanked her as tears poured down her cheeks. “Do you want to know the baby’s sex?” Before she could stop herself, Alex nodded and the doctor told her. “It’s a little girl.” It only made Alex cry more. If she had an abortion now, she would know she had killed a baby girl. And she didn’t want Miles to know about it. He was dealing with enough, fighting to stay alive. If he were to see this baby born, he would have to live till June. Four and a half more months of agony and treatment for him. And she had nothing to give a baby now, she was giving every ounce of love and energy she had to him.

  She left the doctor’s office
and went home to drive Miles to get another transfusion. He felt better afterward, as he sometimes did. She took him out to lunch in a wheelchair, and he picked at a salad while she ate nothing. She was feeling sick, and all he wanted to do was go back to bed. While he slept that afternoon, she thought about their baby, trying to decide whether or not to have the abortion. It was a living, moving being inside her. How could she kill it? It looked like a baby on the screen.

  By sheer bad luck, Rose called her that afternoon and asked if she had any news about when she would finish the book she had been working on when Miles got sick. Alex explained to her that there was no way she could work on the book. Miles was in no condition for her to leave him for a second, she couldn’t concentrate or write, and now she was having health problems herself.

  “Nothing serious, I hope,” Rose said, sounding concerned.

  “No, just stress. This is very hard.” Alex knew she wouldn’t get any money if she didn’t deliver the book.

  “I think if this goes on much longer,” Rose said regretfully, “your publisher is going to want some money back, until you have time to finish the book, and it doesn’t sound like you have time for that right now.”

  “How much will they want?”

  “A million dollars,” the first payment of the advance on her last contract. The truth was that she had no idea when she could work again. Her priority was Miles. Alex had the money in the bank, but it was going to eat most of her savings. She had invested some money in the stock market, and it hadn’t done well and she’d lost half of it. She still got royalties periodically, but the big money was always the advance. And the farm continued to chip away at her savings too.