Blessing in Disguise

by Danielle Steel

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I couldn’t keep my job and take care of you adequately when your mother died. I was never home, that’s why I gave up my job at the museum, and we came here. And what are you going to do, take in washing at home?” His words sliced through her like a knife.

  “No, Dad, I’m going to work like everyone else. What do widows do? Or other women who have babies and aren’t married? I’m going to get a job in New York, and he’s going to help provide what I can’t for the child. I don’t want to be dependent on him, but I’ll need some help. We’ll make it work. I’m not getting rid of this baby. Besides, I love him, and he’s a good man.”

  “Not in my book, he’s not. If he were, he’d marry you. And too bad if he doesn’t want a wife and a child. He sounds like a selfish SOB to me.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be married if that’s not what he wants,” she said quietly, “and I respect who he is.” There was no way to explain to her father how damaged Putnam was. He was a tortured soul.

  “You’re making a terrible mistake having his baby,” Jeremy McAvoy said fervently. She had heard it all five years before. “You’re too young to saddle yourself with a baby without a man.”

  “I’ll be twenty-one when the baby is born. That’s old enough.” He left the house then, and only came back in time to sit down to their Thanksgiving dinner, which Isabelle had prepared, as she always did. He didn’t say a word to her during the meal.

  She hardly saw him the next day while he worked around the property. He sat stone-faced through the dinner of leftovers from the day before. It was usually a jovial meal. Saturday was no better, worse in fact. He tried to interrogate her about the baby’s father, and she refused to answer his questions, knowing he wouldn’t understand anything about Putnam. And she felt protective of him. On Sunday, as she was about to catch the bus to Providence and from there the train back to New York, her father turned to her.

  “I’m sorry, Isabelle. I need some time to adjust. This wasn’t what I hoped for you. I wanted you to have a better life one day, with a man who loves you enough to marry you before you have a baby.”

  “I didn’t want this either, Dad. But it’s what happened, and I’m going to make the best of it. He won’t abandon us completely.”

  “He already has,” her father said, “whether you see that or not.”

  “I guess I do. He’s different, Dad. He can’t handle it.” There were tears in her eyes as she said it. “And I’m sorry to disappoint you again.” She hugged him then, and he drove her to the bus. It broke her heart to see how crushed he looked as the bus drove away. She thought about him all the way to New York, and about Putnam, and everything that had happened five years before. All she knew was that she couldn’t go through that again.

  Chapter Three

  Isabelle graduated in mid-May, eight and a half months pregnant. She’d had a job at the university bookstore at night for the last six months, and had saved up for things she needed for the baby, a crib, a bassinet, a car seat, and a stroller. Putnam had set up a bank account for her days after she’d told him she was pregnant, but she hadn’t touched it. She knew she’d need his help with an apartment in a decent neighborhood, and childcare when she started working. She didn’t want to take advantage of his generosity before that, and even then she would only use his money to the degree she had to. He kept encouraging her to buy whatever she needed. But if he didn’t want to share a life with her and their child, she was uncomfortable taking money from him. She had sent him pictures from the sonogram, but you couldn’t see much except the outline of the baby. They hadn’t been able to determine the baby’s sex, and they had discussed names for both sexes in their letters. She could tell that he wanted to participate, but always from a distance. He was becoming more like a benevolent uncle or friend, watching over her, and less like a lover.

  Her father had finally made his peace with it, and he was proud of her at graduation. She stayed in New York for a week afterward to interview for gallery jobs that would start in September. There were two at well-known galleries she liked particularly. All they’d said was that they’d get back to her. She knew she’d have to start as the lowliest assistant. Her only gallery experience was as an intern at the Verbier Gallery in Paris the previous summer. The owner of the Acker Johnson gallery was impressed that she had worked there. He asked if her husband worked in New York, and she said he did, since she had bought a plain gold wedding band and had been wearing it since Christmas. She told people she knew at school that she’d married a French law student during junior year in Paris and claimed to potential employers that her fictional husband worked on Wall Street. No one questioned it, or suspected she was an unwed mother.

  She went back to Newport a week before her due date and got things ready for the baby. She had sent everything home that she’d bought so far, and her father smiled when he saw her turning her bedroom into a nursery.

  “It looks like we’re expecting a little guest here.” She had put decals of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet holding red balloons on the wall, and she had squeezed in a chest of drawers filled with tiny little T-shirts and pajamas. It reminded Jeremy of when she was born, and what a happy time it had been for them. He still couldn’t understand the man who claimed to love his daughter but wanted no responsibility for her or their baby. Isabelle was far more compassionate and forgiving than he was, and he got angry every time he thought about him.

  The day after Isabelle finished setting up the nursery, her water broke while she took a walk in the garden. She didn’t understand what it was at first, she hadn’t met the doctor who would deliver the baby. She’d been getting all her prenatal care at the university and had an appointment with the obstetrician in Newport the next day. Her father was talking to the architect about the extension to the stables they were building when she went to get him, and informed him that labor had started. He looked panicked when she told him. Her bag was packed, and he drove her to the hospital twenty minutes later, after she called the doctor she was supposed to see the following day.

  Nothing much was happening when they got to the hospital and a nurse checked her. Isabelle wanted to go home, but her father insisted that she stay there. If things speeded up, he didn’t want her giving birth at home, or for anything to happen to her. He left and said he’d come back in a few hours, and to call him when things got going.

  She had a semi-private labor room with no one else in it, and a nurse suggested she walk up and down the halls to get labor going. She thought of calling Putnam, but she knew she’d just make him nervous and there was nothing to tell him. The nurse who checked her predicted that the baby wouldn’t come until after midnight, and it was only two in the afternoon by then.

  The doctor wasn’t planning to come until labor got started in earnest. She’d walked up and down the hall outside her room half a dozen times, stopped to look in the nursery window, and smiled at the sleeping infants. Some looked only hours old, and a few were crying. It was hard to believe that sometime that night, she would have one of her own. She was thinking about it dreamily when the first hard pains hit, and by the time she got back to her room at the other end of the hall, she was doubled over and could hardly walk. A nurse saw her, and came running.

  “Did your husband leave?” she asked Isabelle as she helped her onto the bed during another pain.

  “He’s my father, and he went home to do some things. The baby’s…my husband is in France,” she managed to choke out during a long contraction.

  “We have a little Frenchy coming, do we?” She smiled at Isabelle. “Well, it looks like we’re going to be saying bonjour pretty soon.” She encouraged her as Isabelle tried to smile but couldn’t. She was suddenly in too much pain to make conversation. Another nurse came in to check her, and said she was making good progress, as the doctor walked in. She was a young, pleasant-looking woman, and she assured Isabelle tha
t everything was fine. Things were starting to move quickly, and labor was harder and more painful than Isabelle had expected. An hour later, she was in the delivery room, and the doctor and two nurses were telling her to push. It was only four o’clock by then, and she wished that Putnam was there with her.

  “It won’t be long,” the doctor said between contractions, as Isabelle asked for something for the pain, and the doctor said they had missed their window of opportunity. It was too late for a spinal to take effect. “We’ll have your baby in your arms very quickly,” one of the nurses promised, as another contraction ripped through her, and for the next hour, Isabelle continued to push and had the sensation that she was drowning each time she did. They put an oxygen mask on her, and Isabelle felt like she’d been swallowed by a wave of pain and couldn’t even hear their voices anymore. Then she heard a wail from a great distance. She wasn’t even sure what the sound was at first, and then someone told her she had a little girl, and they put a different mask on her face to put her to sleep for a few minutes while they sewed her up. When she woke up, a nurse handed Isabelle her daughter, and there was a tiny rosebud face in a pink blanket staring right at her.

  “She’s so beautiful,” Isabelle said in awe of the perfect features in the serious little face. What struck her instantly was how much she looked like Putnam. She had the ethereal appearance of someone freshly arrived from another planet. Her eyes were a deep blue, and she had Isabelle’s white blond hair, but everything else about her was pure Putnam. She didn’t cry or wail, and her mouth was a tiny perfect circle.

  They took the baby to the nursery then, and wheeled Isabelle to her room an hour later. It was six o’clock, which was midnight in France, and she called Putnam from the phone in her room. He answered on the first ring, and had had a sixth sense that it was Isabelle.

  “I’m sorry to call you so late,” she said in a voice still weak from the exertion of giving birth, and she was still shaking, with warm blankets tucked in around her.

  “Do I have a son or a daughter?” he asked, sounding hesitant, still not sure which he wanted, and feeling guilty for not being with her for the birth.

  “We have a beautiful little girl,” she said, exhausted but proud as tears slid down her cheeks when she told him. “And she looks just like you, Put.”

  “How unfortunate for her,” he said politely but sounded pleased.

  “She’s very little, just under six pounds.”

  “Did it go all right?” He’d been worried about her for weeks, and how she would get through the delivery.

  “It was hard, but she’s worth it,” Isabelle said, smiling as she held the phone. He surprised her then.

  “I want you to bring her here this summer. I want to see her.”

  “You do?” She hadn’t expected that, and he hadn’t mentioned it until that moment. He had wanted to see how he felt first, and now all he wanted was to meet his daughter and see Isabelle again. A new bond to them had suddenly formed in him.

  “I want to see you both. Why don’t you come in August, and stay the month the way you did last year? You’ll be recovered by then, and she should be old enough to travel at two months, or is that still too early?” He wasn’t sure, and knew nothing about babies or children.

  “She’ll be fine, and I’d love it.” Isabelle was beaming at the thought, and couldn’t wait to show her to him. “What’ll we call her?” They had decided on Maximilian for a boy, but hadn’t settled on a girl’s name.

  “I’ve always liked Theodora. I had a great-aunt by that name. It seemed very elegant to me. She was a terrific woman, full of spunk and spirit. How does it sound to you?” he asked her.

  “I like the name, and I want to give her my mother’s name as a middle name. Theodora Jane,” Isabelle said softly.

  “Armstrong,” he added, sounding very definite about it. She hadn’t broached the last name with him, and assumed it would be McAvoy like her, since they weren’t married. “Theodora Jane Armstrong.”

  “Are you sure, Put?” Tears slid out of her eyes and down her cheeks.

  “Of course. I may be a recluse, but I’m not a complete son of a bitch. I have every intention of recognizing my daughter. She’s the only living relative I care about now, and probably the only child I’ll ever have. Thank you, Isabelle,” he said softly, “for having the courage to go through with it. I won’t let you down, I promise.” Although he already had, and they both knew it.

  But Theodora was hers now, and made up for everything she had missed. The mother who had died when she was three, the child she could have had at fifteen, and the husband Putnam could have been and chose not to be. Now she had her daughter.

  “I think I’ll call her Theo. It suits her. She looks like a Theo. Theodora Armstrong. I’ll send you pictures,” she promised and a few minutes later they hung up. She called her father and told him the good news. He thought it had gone remarkably quickly, four hours from start to finish, but it had seemed interminable to Isabelle.

  He came by that night for a few minutes and declared her beautiful, and then left Isabelle to sleep. They brought the baby to nurse and she held her and said her name, and Theo looked at her seriously, and then closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep and a nurse took her back to the nursery as Isabelle fell asleep too. And the next day, Isabelle supplied the information for the birth certificate, and gave them the last name of Armstrong, as Putnam had told her to.

  Theo was three days old when they took her home to the nursery Isabelle had prepared for her. That night she told her father she was taking the baby to France in August to see her father.

  “Putnam wants to see her,” she said simply and Jeremy looked relieved. He knew Putnam’s name by then, but no details about him.

  “I hope he comes to his senses when he does,” he said with a determined look, as Isabelle shook her head and picked the baby up to feed her.

  “I’m not expecting that, Dad. This is the best he can do.” He left the nursery so he didn’t say anything he’d regret about his granddaughter’s father, but he thought his behavior was deplorable. How could any decent man let a young girl like Isabelle bring up a child on her own? Clearly he had no heart, no matter what Isabelle said about him.

  By the following week, Isabelle had heard from Putnam’s lawyers in Boston, informing her that Mr. Armstrong was setting up a trust for his daughter, with Isabelle as trustee. He had complete faith in her to make the right decisions, with the assistance of his lawyers and bankers. The attorney who had called her said that Mr. Armstrong would explain it all to her when he saw her, which sounded complicated and mysterious. But all she needed to know was that Theo would be taken care of.

  In July, she went to New York and took the baby with her, to interview with the galleries again, and look for an apartment. She found one she liked in a solid-looking pre-war building with a doorman, on a quiet street in the East Seventies near the river. The apartment had two bedrooms. The building wasn’t luxurious, but looked safe, and she noticed several children and their mothers coming in and out. Overnight, she had stopped feeling like a young girl. She was suddenly a grown woman. She interviewed three babysitters and hired Maeve, who was leaving her current job in September when the children started school. She was a middle-aged Irishwoman, who looked serious and responsible. And as soon as Isabelle got back to Newport, the gallery she wanted most called to offer her the job as an assistant. The pay was barely enough for her to live on, but with what Putnam was providing monthly for his daughter, Isabelle could pay the rest, and the babysitter. She had everything she needed, a home, a job, and a babysitter to take care of Theo while she was working. Maeve had made a comment that Isabelle was barely more than a child herself. She had inquired about Mr. McAvoy, and wanted to know when she’d meet him. Isabelle said simply that they were no longer together, and he lived in France so he wouldn’t be visiting. Maeve looked startled and
then sorry for her, to be left by a man with a baby so young.

  “Men,” she said with a disapproving look, “we can never count on them, can we? Well, we’ll do fine without him, won’t we,” she said to Theo, who stared at her with interest and then drifted off to sleep. Isabelle liked the fact that she had glowing references, had come through a good agency, and had six children of her own. She was a widow and had brought up her children alone too, in a one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx. Maeve said they were all grown up now, one was a doctor, both her daughters were nurses and had put themselves through nursing school, another son was a cook in a restaurant, and two were priests. Isabelle knew she’d feel safe leaving Theo with her when she went to work. She was going to start at the gallery as soon as they got back from France.

  By the time she flew to Paris on the last day of July, her life was organized. Theo was two months old and discovering the world. She was an easy baby, but you had to work hard to get a smile out of her. She appeared to be pondering life and deciding if the person talking to her was worthy of a smile. She reminded Isabelle of Putnam. She was bright and alert, but even at two months, she appeared to be a serious child.

  Isabelle saw Marcel waiting for them as soon as she came through customs. He was in awe of the beautiful infant the moment he laid eyes on her, and he gave Isabelle a warm hug.

  “She looks just like her father, doesn’t she?” He had noticed it too, and Isabelle was impressed when she saw that Putnam had bought an infant car seat, and Marcel had put it in the back seat of the Rolls. It made her smile as she got in next to the baby, and they drove from the airport to Normandy. Putnam hated going to airports, and wanted to meet Theo at home.

  He was standing on the front steps when they drove up. Marcel had buzzed the intercom at the gate to let him know they’d arrived, and he ran down the steps and put his arms around Isabelle and kissed her, and poked his head into the car to see his daughter for the first time. She had just woken up and stared at him in amazement but didn’t cry. Marcel had actually made her smile when he’d put her in her seat and tickled her face with a fluffy pink toy he had bought for her himself.