“What are you doing, Dad?” Andy looked confused, and this wasn't the way Page had wanted him to find out. Brad looked around the room, then at her, and they both knew they had no choice. “Are you going away again?” He looked deeply worried.

“Sort of, champ.” He sat down on the bed and pulled Andy onto his lap, as Page watched them, feeling a lump rise in her throat. Her life seemed to be full of good-byes these days, and painful moments. “I'm going to move to the city.”

“Me too?” Andy looked stunned. No one had told him they were moving.

“No, you're going to stay here with Mom.” He had wanted to say “…and Allie …” but he stopped himself in time. Who knew if she'd ever come home again?

“Are we getting divorced?” Andy asked as tears sprang to his eyes and his father hugged him.

“Maybe. We don't know yet. But it seemed like a good idea for me to move out. Your Mom and I have been doing an awful lot of fighting.”

“Is it because I ran away that night, Dad? Is that why you're leaving?”

“No, it's because it's something I've wanted to do for a while. And things have gotten pretty difficult lately. Sometimes that's the way things happen.”

“Is it because of the accident?” Andy needed a reason. But maybe there was none.

“Could be. I don't know. Sometimes things just get rough …but that doesn't mean I don't love you. I love you a whole bunch, and so does Mom. We're both going to be here for you, and you'll come and visit me sometimes, and on weekends.” Listening to him, Page suddenly realized that there were going to have to be visitation schedules, and lawyers. It was all so complicated, and so official. She hated it to get that way, but this was what would happen now. They would have to divide up everything they had, the furniture, what was left of the wedding gifts after sixteen years …the linens …the silverware …the towels …What a miserable thing their life had become, and all in a matter of moments.

“Where will you be, Dad? Do you have a house?”

“I'm going to stay in an apartment. I'm going to get my own phone number, and you can call me. And you can call me at the office.” Andy listened to him and then started to cry as Brad held him.

“I don't want you to go,” he said miserably as Page cried while she watched them. It was awful.

“I don't want to go either, Son, but I have to.”

“Why?” He didn't understand it, and watching them, neither did Page. How had it come to this? How could they have been so stupid?

“It's hard to explain. Things just worked out that way.”

“Why can't you fix them?” It was a reasonable suggestion and Brad smiled at Page through his own tears.

“I wish I could.” But the truth was he didn't wish he could. He was happy to move on. He wanted his own life, his own apartment, and Stephanie. He was actually excited about moving. And she was thrilled. She wanted to move in with him right away, but Brad thought they should wait a month or two.

It was only when he came back here, when he saw how painful it was for all of them, that he didn't want to leave them. But he was smart enough by now to know that if he didn't move out, he'd be slipping away whenever he could in a matter of moments. He was ready to go, no matter how sorry he was, or how much he loved Andy.

“Don't do it, Daddy,” Andy begged, and Page felt nauseous.

“Son, don't. It's the right thing for all of us. I know it.”

“What'll Allie say when she comes back?” He was clutching at straws and they all knew it.

“We'll have to explain it to her.” Andy ran to his mother then and sobbed as she held him.

It was a terrible night for all of them. Brad decided to spend the night there and he worked through the night going through his papers. And by morning, they all looked as though they were in mourning.

Page made pancakes and sausages for all of them, normally their favorite, but no one could eat them. Andy had had a baseball game scheduled that day, but with his broken arm, he couldn't play. And he wanted Brad to stay and play with him, but by late morning, Brad said he needed to get to the city. He knew that Stephanie was waiting.

“When will I see you, Dad?” Andy asked, panicky, as Brad loaded his bags and boxes into the car, and prepared to leave them.

“Next Saturday, I promise. Just pretend I'm on a trip. You can call me every day at the office.” But Andy was beyond words and promises by then, he just stood there and cried and so did Page, as he backed out of the driveway and left them. Other than Allie's accident, four weeks before, it was the worst day she could remember. All that hope, all those years, those two shining people, the family they had built, gone forever.

Andy stood outside crying in her arms for a long time, and then finally they went inside, and sat together. It felt as though someone had died. They had lost two people they loved. And Page could hardly believe it when her mother called at lunchtime and thanked her for the lovely visit.

“Alexis and I had such a good time. And it was so good to see Allyson. I'm sure by now she's much better.” The glib words left her speechless, and she was in no mood to talk to her. Page told her mother she'd call her back sometime, hung up, and went back to Andy. He was lying on her bed, crying into the pillow. He felt terrible, and she had to admit, she didn't feel much better. Somehow, seeing Brad leave made it all so real, and so painful.

“I know you feel rotten, sweetheart. But we have to make the best of it,” she said through her own tears. And then Andy rolled over to see her.

“Did you want him to leave?” Was it her fault? His? Andy's? Allie's? …whose? …Andy didn't understand it.

“No. I didn't want him to leave, sweetheart. But I know he had to. Things had gotten pretty bad.”

“Why? Why were you fighting?”

“I don't know. We just were.” It was so hard to explain to him. She didn't completely understand it herself, how could she explain it to a child of seven?

Trygve called them late that afternoon, and she told him what had happened. He invited them over for one of his stews, but at first Andy didn't even want to see Bjorn, and then finally he relented. He got in the car halfheartedly, and took the teddy bear he slept with.

“Bjorn has one too,” he explained to Page. “He calls him Charlie.”

And when they got there, Bjorn could see that his friend was in bad shape. They sat outside and talked for a long time, while Andy told him what had happened.

“How is he?” Trygve asked, worried about them both.

“Upset. It was worse than I thought when the actual moment came. It was awful.”

“I remember only too well.” It still hurt to think about the day Dana had left. Everyone had cried for hours, even Dana. “God, you've all been through the wringer.”

“Who hasn't?” She looked over at him, exhausted again. It was a permanent state these days. “How's Chloe?”

“Raising hell at the hospital. She's supposed to come home next week, if we can rig up ramps for her, and she'll have to sleep downstairs in Nick's bedroom.” But listening to him, Page thought about how lucky he was that she was coming home at all. In four weeks, there had been no change in Allie's condition. It was not beyond hope yet, but soon it would be.

They had a nice dinner together that night, and talked about the menu for his Memorial Day barbecue. He gave her his latest article to read, it was part of a series for The New York Times he'd been working on for a while. They had a good time, but he didn't press her about anything. He knew she was hurting over Brad, and the last thing he wanted to do was upset her.

“I didn't expect to feel so awful when he left,” she explained after dinner, as they sat outside in deck chairs, fighting the mosquitoes.

“Why not? After sixteen years, you'd have to be numb not to. I was pretty numb actually by the time Dana left, but it still knocked the hell out of me. I grieved for a long time. You may too.”

“I don't know what's happening to me anymore. My life is such a mess.”

“No it's not. It just feels that way right now. You have a lot on your plate. What's happening with Allie? What does Hammerman say?”

“That a lot is still possible, but if she doesn't come out of the coma in a month or two, eventually it won't be. I'm beginning to worry that she's going to stay this way, Trygve.” He didn't say anything for a moment as she thought about it, and looked at the stars in silence.

“I hope not.” And then he remembered something he'd forgotten to tell her. “I heard something interesting last week, but I knew you had your hands full and I didn't want to upset you.”

“What was that?”

“Someone saw Laura Hutchinson drunk at a party. I mean really drunk. She had to be taken away, and it was all done very quietly. Very hush-hush. Things like that make me wonder how often that's happened before and what really happened that night. If the rest of us get drunk, we fall on our faces and make asses of ourselves, and it doesn't matter if we don't do it very often. Someone with a problem … in a delicate situation … it would be handled very differently, wouldn't it? It would all be whisked away like a bad smell so no one would know it.

“I've always wondered if she was drunk that night. She was so apologetic to everyone, so distraught, so attentive to the Chapmans, from what I heard.” She had made an enormous donation to Redwood High School in Phillip's name, and everyone knew it. “I always thought it sounded like she felt guilty.”

“Maybe. Or maybe she just felt terrible about Phillip's death, whether she was responsible for it or not. She wrote to me, and told me how sorry she was about Allie,” Page said without suspicion. She had wanted to blame Laura Hutchinson at first, but she had gotten over that.

“We heard from her too, but I never answered. What can you say? Oh, no problem …it's fine, you almost killed my daughter, and may have turned her into a wheelchair case, but we really appreciate the letter.” He looked angry, as he said it, and then he looked at Page pensively.

“You know … I had this crazy idea. I don't even know what I'm searching for, but I have an old friend who's an investigative reporter. He works for one of those disgusting tabloids, but he might have some interesting sources.”

“What are you looking for?” she asked with interest.

“I'm not sure. Something. Maybe I'm like you …maybe we're both looking for a needle in the haystack. But looking back at it, I think there was more than we knew that night. Maybe he can find out something. Maybe Laura Hutchinson still has a drinking problem, and if so we have a right to know it.”

“Why don't you ask him,” she said softly, as Trygve nodded, and then he looked at her and smiled. “The Chapmans would be interested in the information too.” They had just filed suit against both of the local papers.

“We're a couple of troublemakers, you and I,” Trygve said quietly.

“Maybe she deserves it,” Page whispered sadly.

Without saying more, he nodded.





CHAPTER 15

The next two weeks whizzed by, painfully at times, but pleasantly too. The first week that Brad was gone was incredibly painful. Andy cried every night, twice he had to be picked up from school, too upset to stay, once she was afraid he'd run away again, but she found him sitting alone with his teddy bear in the garden. And it was hard on her too. He wanted something she didn't have to give him anymore, a Daddy.