Kaleidoscope (42 page)

“Can you ever forgive me, all of you?” But he was looking at the oldest of the three and she took a long time to answer.

“I don't know … I don't know what I feel….” But she held tight to Alexandra and her eyes reached out to Megan.

“I'm glad you came anyway. The three of you had a right to be together. And if I had been a different kind of man, I would have defied my wife and kept you all myself. I wanted to, but she had such strong feelings about it that I didn't dare go against her. I'm sorry now, but it's too late to make any difference.” He looked mournfully at Hilary, and then at the child he had turned away, who was his own daughter. “I made a terrible mistake. But I've paid for it. I've been a lonely man all my life … ever since your mother died….” He couldn't go on. He only shook his head and then stood up shakily, as John Chapman and one of the nurses came to help him. “I'm going upstairs now. We all have a lot to think about.” Hilary's revelation had shocked them all, particularly Megan and Arthur. In a strange way, she now wondered if she was responsible for her mother's death … if she hadn't been born, would Sam have killed her? But it was too late to think about that, too late to cry over what had happened thirty years before. It was time to move on, as best they could. And he turned to them again before he left the room. “I want you all to stay for as long as you can … for as long as you want to. This will be your home one day; I am leaving it to all of you, so you have a place to come, a home together finally, and a place to bring your families and your children. I'll stay out of your way while you're here, but I want you to stay here and get to know each other.” Alexandra and Megan thanked him quietly, and Megan rose quickly to help him upstairs, as Hilary
watched, saying nothing. And when he was gone, she turned to Alexandra and shook her head.

“I don't know if I'll ever stop hating him, Axie.” It was still so easy to call her that, even after all these years, and the younger of the two smiled.

“You will. You have to. There's nothing left to hate anymore. He's almost gone.” Hilary nodded. It was clear that the man wouldn't live much longer. “I'm only grateful that he brought us together in time. That he still cared enough to do that.” They walked slowly upstairs arm in arm, and Hilary walked into Alexandra's bedroom, thinking suddenly of the room they had shared in Jack and Eileen's house, the three of them in one bed, as she tried to keep the baby from crying so Eileen wouldn't beat them.

“What are your children like?” She sat down in the rocking chair. It was a comfortable room, but she hadn't decided yet to spend the night. She just wanted to sit and talk for a while with Axie.

Alexandra smiled at the question. “Marie-Louise looks a lot like you. She has your eyes … and Axelle looks a lot like photographs of me as a little girl. She's six … and Marie-Louise is twelve. I lost a little boy in between them.” And with a slice of pain, Hilary remembered her own abortion for the first time in years. She had been so careful after that to avoid any contact with children, and now she suddenly had two nieces. “Do you still remember your French?”

“Some.” Hilary smiled. “Not much, I guess.”

“Marie-Louise and Axelle speak English anyway, thanks to my mother.”

“What's your husband like?” Hilary was curious about so many things about her … her husband … her parents … her life … her children …
her habits … She wanted to know if they were alike. If after all these years, they had anything in common. And marriage was certainly not one of them. Hilary had assiduously avoided it.

Alexandra sighed, feeling very honest. “He's difficult. And intelligent. And demanding. He wants to run everything, from the house to the office and back again. And he expects nothing less than perfection.”

“Don't you mind that?” She looked intrigued, her green eyes watching Alexandra as she shrugged and smiled.

“Not really. I'm used to it. And underneath his gruff exterior, I know he loves us … or he did.” She sighed. “I don't know what's going to happen now. He was shocked when I told him our story … I mean about our parents….”

“It's not very pretty, is it?”

“Especially for Megan,” Alexandra added softly, just as she came down the hall. Megan had put Arthur to bed. He had been in terrible pain, and he was crying. And she had given him an injection to sedate him.

“He's not going to live much longer.” She spoke quietly as she walked into the room, and Hilary noticed as John had, how much she sounded like Alexandra. “I suspect he's got metastases everywhere. But he's still very alert.”

“The old bastard.” Hilary spoke in an undertone and Megan turned on her with flashing eyes.

“Don't talk about him like that. He's repented for his sins … he brought us here. What more do you want from him?”

“Something he can't give us,” Hilary shot back at her. “The past … something decent we could have shared, instead of the heartbreak of tearing us apart.”

“We survived in spite of that … even you, Hilary. Look at you, you're a big success. You have a fantastic job, a nice life.” But it was an empty one, as only she knew, and Alexandra suspected. There was no one she cared about, and no one who cared about her, no one she was aware of anyway. And as they talked, John Chapman appeared in the doorway. He had disappeared discreetly for a while, and he suspected they would be talking late into the night. They had a lot of things to resolve, and a lot to learn about each other. And his job was finally over.

“Will we see you. again, John?” Alexandra was the first to ask, and he shook his head, with a bittersweet smile.

“Not unless you want to look for someone else sometime, and I hope you never have to. My job's all done.” And then in a soft voice, he added, “I'm going to miss you.” He had been living with each of them for months, hunting them down, seeking them out, getting to know them. And it suddenly came to him that he would miss Hilary most of all. He had ached so much for her past, and he had been too late to help her. “Good luck to all of you.”

“Thank you.” They each stood up and shook hands with him, and Megan kissed him gently on the cheek with a shy smile. She had really liked him.

“If you ever get to Kentucky, call me.”

“Will you be there long?” he asked, hating to leave them, and she smiled at him, with the red hair that was exactly her mother's, and Alexandra's.

“I'll be through with my residency in December, but I'm pretty sure I'll stay on. I haven't told my parents yet,” she shrugged with an easy laugh and she looked very young again, “but I think they already kind of
expect it. My Dad does anyway. He knows how crazy I am.” They exchanged a long warm smile, and then Alexandra hugged him.

“Take care of yourself.” She mothered everyone, and it touched him as she patted his shoulder afterward. “Thank you for everything.”

“Don't let anyone talk you into dying your hair again … you look beautiful….”

“Thank you,” she blushed and he smiled and Hilary held out a hand and gruffly thanked him.

“I'm sorry I gave you such a hard time in my office … I was fighting all this.…” And then with great effort in a low voice, “But I'm glad I came.” She looked at both of her sisters, and her eyes filled with tears again, and then she looked back at him and without invitation he gently pulled her into his arms and she nestled there as he held her, wishing he could keep her there forever. There was still so much life owed her.

“You're going to be all right now, Hilary … it's going to be just fine….” His voice touched a place in her that had been closed for a long time, and she was sorry when she pulled away and looked up into his eyes with a shy smile.

“Come and see me sometime at the network.”

“I'll do that. Maybe we can have lunch sometime.”

She nodded, unable to say anything, she had to turn away as the tears coursed down her face. After so many years of isolation, she was surrounded by people she cared about deeply, and who seemed to love her.

It was Alexandra who put her arms around her this time, and smoothed back her hair as they walked John Chapman downstairs and waved as he drove away. And she and Hilary walked back upstairs again to Hilary's
room. She had been given a room adjoining Alexandra's and Hilary changed into her nightgown and came back to chat, as Megan and Alexandra talked about Paris and Kentucky and the south of France, and whether or not Megan ever wanted to have children. She wasn't sure if it would interfere with her career or not, but Alexandra was telling her it was her greatest joy, as Hilary sat down in the rocking chair and shook her head in amazement. It was extraordinary being back together after all these years, and talking as though they had always been there.

“I never wanted kids, and I never regretted it,” Hilary lied, thinking back for a flash of a moment to the abortion. “Well, I don't know … maybe I did when I was younger. It's too late now anyway.”

“How old are you?” Megan frowned. She had momentarily forgotten. She was thirty-one, and Hilary was … eight years older.

“Thirty-nine.”

“These days most women don't even have their first child till then. In this part of the world at least.” She smiled. “Where I work, I see them having their first babies at twelve and thirteen, younger than that even sometimes. It's amazing.” It was a whole other world from this comfortable old house in Connecticut, and the lives her sisters led in the places where they lived. And then suddenly she laughed. “Isn't it amazing how different we all are, and yet how similar? I live in the hills of Kentucky,” she said, looking at Alexandra then, “… and you live in a fancy house in Paris, and a chateau somewhere else, and a villa in the south of France in the summer,” and then she turned to Hilary, “and you practically run a television network. Isn't it amazing?”

“It would have been more so,” Hilary said quietly, “if we could have seen each other twenty-five years ago. My life wasn't so pleasant then.”

“What was it like?” Megan finally asked what they both wanted to know, and little by little, over the next two hours, with tears streaming down her face, she told them. All of it. The uglier and the ugliest, and the tragic and the brutal. But it helped to share it with them, and whereas she had once been the one who protected them, they comforted her now, and Alexandra held her hand, as Megan told her story, of sit-ins in Mississippi, and the time her father had been shot on a rainy night in east Georgia, of what decent people they were, and how totally they believed in their causes, and how much she loved them. And then Alexandra told them about Margaret, and Pierre before he died, and her life with Henri, and how she was afraid that now he would divorce her.

“He'd be a damn fool if he did.” Hilary spoke up, as she flung her long black hair over her shoulder, in a gesture that struck a chord of memory for Alexandra as she watched her.

“He is so obsessed with his lineage, and you have to admit, ours is a bit exotic for someone like my husband.” The three of them laughed and the sun came up as they talked. They went to bed amid yawns and kisses and hugs and promises to meet again in the morning. They all slept until noon, and Alexandra was the first one to get up. She called her mother and the children at the hotel, but they were out, and she left a message that all was well and she would be home on Sunday night. And then she thought about calling Henri, but she didn't know what to say, so she went back upstairs and showered and dressed, and when
she came back downstairs again, Megan was wearing a clean pair of jeans and a white blouse with a ribbon in her hair. And she looked more like a little girl than a doctor, and Alexandra said so. The two of them chatted over coffee and hot biscuits, and one of Arthur's nurses informed them that he had had a difficult night, so Megan went upstairs to check on him, just as Hilary came downstairs in shorts and a silk shirt, her black hair pulled severely into a bun, and her feet bare as she came to breakfast. She looked somehow much younger than she had the night before, and Alexandra realized that they all did. They were traveling back in time, and burdens that had aged them were falling from their shoulders. In her case it was the fear of what Henri would do to her, and that no one would love her anymore if he divorced her. If he did, she still had Margaret, and the girls, and now she had these two women to support her. It didn't seem so terrifying anymore. In fact, she felt good, and for the first time in a long time, she didn't feel frightened.

“Late night, last night, wasn't it?” Hilary smiled lazily over her coffee. “What'll we do today? We could talk ourselves to death by tomorrow night, if we don't watch out.” She and Alexandra both laughed, and Alexandra looked at her thoughtfully. “You're going back tomorrow night too?” The message she had left at the hotel said she would. She didn't want to abandon her mother and the girls for too long. She had promised to spend a week with them in New York, and she knew her daughters would wear her mother out eventually.

“I have to,” Hilary answered. “I have some important meetings scheduled for Monday morning.” So
what else was new? When didn't she? She grinned. “When are you going back?”

“To New York, tomorrow night. I left my mother at the Pierre with Axelle and Marie-Louise. I think by tomorrow night she'll have reached her breaking point, even though she's very good with them. But they're a handful.” Alexandra paused, thinking of Margaret and how worried she had been about this meeting. “I also feel like I should get back to reassure her. I think she was afraid I would stop loving her when I met my sisters, as though she wouldn't really be my family anymore. I owe her a little reassurance.”

Hilary nodded and smiled. “I could drive you in, if you like. We could go out to dinner this week … or lunch …” She looked at her hopefully, like a shy child with a new best friend, and Alexandra's eyes lit up in answer.

“I would love it. And you could meet the girls! We're going to be here for a week. And then,” she said triumphantly, Henri de Morigny be damned, “you could come to visit us in Paris!”

“That's a great idea!” Hilary laughed, as Megan joined them.

“What are you two cooking up today?” She was smiling but her eyes were serious.