The Sands of Time (16 page)

Ellen looked over at Sam Norton with a straight face and said, “I thought, ‘I must save Mr. Scott. I’d never forgive myself if I let him be killed.’”

The press conference proceeded smoothly, and when Sam Norton saw that Ellen was beginning to tire, he said, “That’s it, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much.”

“Did I do all right?”

“You were great. Now get some sleep.”

She slept fitfully. She had a dream that she was in the lobby of the Empire State Building, but the guards would not let her go up to the top because she did not have enough money to buy a ticket.

Milo Scott came to visit Ellen that afternoon. She was surprised to see him. She had heard that his home was in New York.

“I heard the press conference went very well. You’re quite a heroine.”

“Mr. Scott—I have to tell you something. I’m not a heroine. I didn’t stop to think about saving you. I—I just did it.”

“I know. Sam Norton told me.”

“Well, then—”

“Ellen, there are all kinds of heroism. You didn’t think about saving me, but you did it instinctively, instead of saving yourself.”

“I—I just wanted you to know.”

“Sam also told me that you’re worried about the hospital bills.”

“Well—”

“They’re all taken care of. And as for your losing some wages”—he smiled—“Miss Dudash, I—I don’t think you know how much I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“The doctor told me that you’ll be leaving the hospital tomorrow. Will you let me buy you dinner?”

He doesn’t understand,
Ellen thought.
I don’t want his charity. Or his pity.
“I meant it when I said you don’t owe me anything. Thanks for taking care of the hospital bills. We’re even.”

“Good. Now may I buy you dinner?”

That was how it began. Milo Scott stayed in Gary for a week, and he saw Ellen every night.

Ellen’s mother and father warned, “Be careful. Big bosses don’t go out with factory girls unless they want something.”

That had been Ellen’s attitude at the beginning, but Milo changed her mind. He was a perfect gentleman at all times, and the truth finally dawned on Ellen:
He really enjoys being with me.

Where Milo was shy and reserved, Ellen was forthright and open. All his life, Milo had been surrounded by women whose burning ambition was to become a part of the powerful Scott dynasty. They had played their calculating games. Ellen Dudash was the first totally honest woman Milo had ever met. She said exactly what was on her mind. She was bright, she was attractive, and, most of all, she was fun to be with. By the end of the week, they were both falling in love.

“I want to marry you,” Milo said. “I can’t think about anything else. Will you marry me?”

“No.”

Nor had Ellen been able to think about anything else. The truth was that she was terrified. The Scotts were as close as America could come to royalty. They were famous, rich, and powerful.
I don’t belong in their circle. I would only make a fool of myself. And of Milo.
But she knew she was fighting a losing battle.

They were married by a justice of the peace in Greenwich, Connecticut, and then took a trip to Manhattan so that Ellen Dudash could meet her in-laws.

Byron Scott greeted his brother with, “What the fuck have you done—marry a Polish hooker? Are you out of your mind?”

Susan Scott was just as ungiving. “Of course she married Milo for his money. When she finds out he doesn’t have any, we’ll arrange an annulment. This marriage will never last.”

They badly underestimated Ellen Dudash.

“Your brother and sister-in-law hate me, but I didn’t marry them. I married you. I don’t want to come between you and Byron. If this is making you too unhappy, Milo, say so, and I’ll leave.”

He took his bride in his arms and whispered, “I adore you, and when Byron and Susan really get to know you, they’ll adore you too.”

She held him closely and thought:
How naive he is. And how I love him.

Byron and Susan were not unpleasant to their new sister-in-law. They were patronizing. To them, she would always be the little Polish girl who worked in one of the Scott factories.

Ellen studied, and read, and learned. She watched how the wives of Milo’s friends dressed, and copied them. She was determined to become a fit wife to Milo Scott, and in time she succeeded. But not in the eyes of her in-laws. And slowly her naïveté turned to cynicism.
The rich and powerful aren’t all that wonderful,
she thought.
All they want is to be richer and more powerful

Ellen was fiercely protective of Milo, but there was little she could do to help him. Scott Industries was one of the few privately held conglomerates in the world, and all the stock belonged to Byron. Byron’s younger brother was a salaried employee, and he never let Milo forget it. He treated his brother shabbily. Milo was given all the dirty jobs to do, and was never given any credit.

“Why do you put up with it, Milo? You don’t need him. We could move away from here. You could start your own business.”

“I couldn’t leave Scott Industries. Byron needs me.”

But in time, Ellen came to understand the real reason. Milo was weak. He needed someone strong to lean on. She knew then that he would never have the courage to leave the company.

All right,
she thought fiercely.
One day the company will be his. Byron can’t live forever. Milo is his only heir.

When Susan Scott announced that she was pregnant, it was a blow to Ellen.
The baby’s going to inherit everything.

When the baby was born, Byron said, “It’s a girl, but I’ll teach her how to run the company.”

The bastard,
Ellen thought. Her heart ached for Milo.

All Milo said was, “Isn’t she a beautiful baby?”

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

T
he pilot of the Lockheed Lodestar was worried.

“A front is closing in. I don’t like the look of it.” He nodded to the co-pilot. “Take over.” Then he left the cockpit to go back to the cabin.

There were five passengers on board besides the pilot and co-pilot: Byron Scott, the brilliant, dynamic founder and chief executive officer of Scott Industries; his attractive wife, Susan; their year-old daughter, Patricia; Milo Scott, Byron’s younger brother; and Milo’s wife, Ellen. They were flying in one of the company planes from Paris to Madrid. Bringing the baby had been a last-minute impulse on Susan’s part.

“I hate to be away from her for so long,” she had told her husband.

“Afraid she’ll forget us?” he had teased. “All right. We’ll take her with us.”

Now that World War II was over, Scott Industries was rapidly expanding into the European market. In Madrid, Byron Scott would investigate the possibilities of opening a new steel mill.

The pilot approached him.

“Excuse me, sir. We’re heading into some thunder clouds. It doesn’t look very good ahead. Do you want to turn back?”

Byron looked out the small window. They were flying through a gray mass of cumulus clouds, and every few seconds distant lightning illuminated them. “I have a meeting in Madrid tonight. Can you go around the storm?”

“I’ll try. If I can’t, then I’m going to have to turn us around.”

Byron nodded. “All right.”

“Would you all fasten your seat belts, please?”

The pilot hurried back to the cockpit.

Susan had heard the conversation. She picked up the baby and held her in her arms, suddenly wishing she had not brought her along.
I’ve got to tell Byron to have the pilot turn back,
she thought.

“Byron—”

They were suddenly in the eye of the storm and the plane began to buck up and down, caught in the gusting winds. The motion began to grow more violent. Rain was smashing against the windows. The storm had closed off all visibility. The passengers felt as though they were riding on a rolling cotton sea.

Byron flicked down the intercom switch. “Where are we, Blake?”

“We’re fifty-five miles northwest of Madrid, over the town of Ávila.”

Byron looked out the window again. “We’ll forget Madrid tonight. Let’s turn around and get the hell out of here.”

“Roger.”

The decision was a fraction of a second too late. As the pilot started to bank the plane, a mountain peak loomed suddenly in front of him. There was no time to avoid the crash. There was a rending tear, and the sky exploded as the plane tore into the side of the mountain, ripping apart, scattering chunks of fuselage and wings along a high plateau.

After the crash there was an unnatural silence that lasted for what seemed an eternity. It was broken by the crackle of flames starting to lick at the undercarriage of the plane.

“Ellen—”

Ellen Scott opened her eyes. She was lying under a tree. Her husband was bending over her, lightly slapping her face. When he saw that she was alive, he said, “Thank God.”

Ellen sat up, dizzy, her head throbbing, every muscle in her body aching. She looked around at the obscene pieces of wreckage that had once been an airplane filled with human bodies, and shuddered.

“The others?” she asked hoarsely.

“They’re dead.”

She stared at her husband. “Oh, my God! No!”

He nodded, his face tight with grief. “Byron, Susan, the baby, the pilots, everyone.”

Ellen Scott closed her eyes again and said a silent prayer.
Why were Milo and I spared?
she wondered. It was hard to think clearly.
We have to go down and get help. But it’s too late. They’re all dead.
It was impossible to believe. They had been so full of life just a few minutes before.

“Can you stand up?”

“I—I think so.”

Milo helped his wife to her feet. There was a surge of sickening dizziness, and she stood there, waiting for it to pass.

Milo turned to look at the plane. Flames were beginning to get higher. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “The damned thing is going to blow up any second.”

They quietly moved away and watched it burn. A moment later, there was an explosion as the gas tanks blew apart and the plane was engulfed in flames.

“It’s a miracle we’re alive,” Milo said.

Ellen looked at the burning plane. Something was nagging at the edges of her mind, but she was having trouble thinking clearly. Something about Scott Industries. And then suddenly she knew.

“Milo?”

“Yes?” He was not really listening.

“It’s fate.”

The fervor in her voice made him turn. “What?”

“Scott Industries—it belongs to you now.”

“I don’t—”

“Milo, God left it to you.” Her voice was filled with a burning intensity. “All your life you’ve lived in the shadow of your big brother.” She was thinking clearly now, coherently, and she forgot her headache and the pain. The words were tumbling out in a spate that shook her whole body. “You worked for Byron for twenty years, building up the company. You’re as responsible for its success as he is, but did he—did he ever give you credit for it? No. It was always
his
company, his success, his profits. Well, now you—you finally have a chance to come into your own.”

He looked at her, horrified. “Ellen—their bodies are—how can you even think about—?”

“I know. But we didn’t kill them. It’s our turn, Milo. We’ve finally come into our own. There’s no one alive to claim the company but us. It’s ours! Yours!”

And at that moment they heard the cry of a baby. Ellen and Milo Scott stared at each other unbelievingly.

“It’s Patricia! She’s
alive.
Oh, my God!”

They found the baby near a clump of bushes. By some miracle she was unhurt.

Milo picked her up gently and held her close. “Shh! It’s all right, darling,” he whispered. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

Ellen was standing at his side, a look of shock on her face. “You—you said she was dead.”

“She must have been knocked unconscious.”

Ellen stared at the baby a long time. “She should have been killed with the others,” she said in a strangled voice.

Milo looked up at her, shocked. “What are you saying?”

“Byron’s will leaves everything to Patricia. You can look forward to spending the next twenty years being her caretaker so that when she grows up she can treat you as shabbily as her father did. Is that what you want?”

He was silent.

“We’ll never have a chance like this again.” She was staring at the baby, and there was a wild look in her eyes that Milo had never seen before. It was almost as though she wanted to—

She’s not herself. She’s suffering from a concussion.
“For God’s sake, Ellen, what are you thinking?”

She looked at her husband for a long moment, and the wild light faded from her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said calmly. After a pause she said, “There’s something we can do. We can leave her somewhere, Milo. The pilot said we were near Ávila. There should be plenty of tourists there. There’s no reason for anyone to connect the baby with the plane crash.”

He shook his head. “Their friends know that Byron and Susan took Patricia with them.”

Ellen looked at the burning plane. “That’s no problem. They all burned up in the crash. We’ll have a private memorial service here.”

“Ellen,” he protested. “We can’t do this. We’d never get away with it.”

“God did it for us. We
have
gotten away with it.”

Milo looked at the baby. “But she’s so—”

“She’ll be fine,” Ellen said soothingly. “We’ll drop her off at a nice farmhouse outside of town. Someone will adopt her and she’ll grow up to have a lovely life here.”

He shook his head. “I can’t do it. No.”

“If you love me you’ll do this for us. You have to choose, Milo. You can either have me, or you can spend the rest of your life working for your brother’s child.”

“Please, I—”

“Do you love me?”

“More than my life,” he said simply.

“Then prove it.”

They made their way carefully down the mountainside in the dark, whipped by the wind. Because the plane had crashed in a high wooded area, the sound was muffled, so the townspeople were unaware as yet of what had happened.

Three hours later, in the outskirts of Ávila, Ellen and Milo reached a small farmhouse. It was not yet dawn.

“We’ll leave her here,” Ellen whispered.

Milo made one last try. “Ellen, couldn’t we—?”

“Do it!” she said fiercely.

Without another word he turned and carried the baby to the door of the farmhouse. She was wearing only a torn pink nightgown and had a blanket wrapped around her.

Milo looked at Patricia for a long moment, his eyes filled with tears, then laid her gently down.

He whispered, “Have a good life, darling.”

The crying awakened Asunción Moras. For a sleepy moment she thought it was the bleating of a goat or a lamb.
How had it gotten out of its pen?

Grumbling, she rose from her warm bed, put on an old faded robe, and walked to the door.

When she saw the infant lying on the ground screaming and kicking, she said,
“¡Madre de Dios!”
and yelled for her husband.

They brought the child inside and stared at it. It would not stop crying, and it seemed to be turning blue.

“We’ve got to get her to the hospital.”

They hurriedly wrapped another blanket around the baby, carried her to their pickup truck, and drove her to the hospital. They sat on a bench in the long corridor waiting for someone to attend to them, and thirty minutes later a doctor came and took the baby away to examine her.

When he returned, he said, “She’s got pneumonia.”

“Is she going to live?”

The doctor shrugged.

Milo and Ellen Scott stumbled into the police station at Ávila.

The desk sergeant looked up at the two bedraggled tourists. “
Buenos días.
Can I help you?”

“There’s been a terrible accident,” Milo said. “Our plane crashed up in the mountains and…”

One hour later a rescue party was on its way to the mountainside. When they arrived, there was nothing to see but the smoldering, charred remains of an aircraft and its passengers.

The investigation of the airplane accident conducted by the Spanish authorities was cursory.

“The pilot should not have attempted to fly into such a bad storm. We must attribute the accident to pilot error.”

There was no reason for anyone in Ávila to associate the airplane crash with a small child left on the doorstep of a farmhouse.

It was over.

It was just beginning.

Milo and Ellen held a private memorial service for Byron, his wife, Susan, and their daughter, Patricia. When they returned to New York, they held a second memorial service, attended by the shocked friends of the Scotts.

“What a terrible tragedy. And poor little Patricia.”

“Yes,” Ellen said sadly. “The only blessing is that it happened so quickly, none of them suffered.”

The financial community was shaken by the news. It was almost unanimously agreed that with Byron Scott’s death, Scott Industries had suffered an irreparable loss.

“Don’t listen to what any of them say,” Ellen Scott told her husband. “You’re better than Byron ever was. The company is going to be bigger than ever.”

Milo took her in his arms. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

She smiled. “You’ll never have to. From now on we’re going to have everything in the world we’ve ever dreamed of.”

She held him close and thought:
Who would have believed that Ellen Dudash, from a poor Polish family in Gary, Indiana, would have one day said, “From now on, we’re going to have everything in the world we ever dreamed of”?

And meant it.

For ten days the baby remained in the hospital, fighting for her life, and when the crisis was past, Father Berrendo went to see the farmer and his wife.

“I have joyous news for you,” he said happily. “The child is going to be all right.”

The Morases exchanged an uncomfortable look.

“I’m glad for her sake,” the farmer said evasively.

Father Berrendo beamed. “She is a gift from God.”

“Certainly, Father. But my wife and I have talked it over and decided that God is too generous to us. His gift requires feeding. We can’t afford to keep it.”

“But she’s such a beautiful baby,” Father Berrendo pointed out. “And—”

“Agreed. But my wife and I are old and sick, and we can’t take on the responsibility of bringing up a baby. God will have to take back his gift.”

And so it was that with nowhere else to go the baby was sent to the orphanage in Ávila.

Milo and Ellen were seated in the office of Byron Scott’s attorney for the reading of the will. The three of them were the only ones present. Ellen was filled with a sense of almost unbearable excitement. A few words on a piece of paper were going to make her and Milo rich beyond imagining.

We’ll buy old masters and an estate in Southhampton, and a castle in France. And that’s only the beginning.

The lawyer started to speak, and Ellen turned her attention to him. Months earlier she had seen a copy of Byron’s will and knew exactly what it said:

“In the event that my wife and I should both be deceased, I bequeath all my stock in Scott Industries to my only child, Patricia, and I appoint my brother, Milo, as executor of my estate until she reaches the legal age and is able to take over…”

Well, all that is changed now,
Ellen thought excitedly.

The lawyer, Lawrence Gray, said solemnly, “This has been a terrible shock to all of us. I know how much you loved your brother, Milo, and as for that darling little baby…” He shook his head. “Well, life must go on. You may not be aware that your brother had changed his will. I won’t bother you with the legalese. I will just read you the gist of it.” He thumbed through the will and came to the paragraph he was looking for. “I amend this will so that my daughter, Patricia, will receive the sum of five million dollars plus a distribution of one million dollars a year for the rest of her life. All the stock in Scott Industries held in my name will go to my brother, Milo, as a reward for the faithful and valuable services he has provided the company through the years.”