But Olivia surprised Andy when the hospital told her they were willing to release her at the end of the week, she said she wasn't going home with him. She had already spoken to her mother about it. She was going home to her parents. They needed her. And she was going to the Douglas house in Boston.

“That's ridiculous, Olivia,” Andy complained when she told him over the phone what she was doing, “you're not a little girl, you belong in Virginia with me.”

”Why?' she asked him bluntly, “so you can let reporters into my room every morning? My family has been through a terrible ordeal, and I want to be with them.” She didn't blame him for the accident. The storm hadn't been his fault, but the way it had all been handled since certainly lacked dignity or compassion, or even decency, and she knew she would never forgive him. He had exploited all of them. And he did it again, when she found a fleet of reporters waiting for her in the hospital lobby when she left Addison Gilbert. Andy was the only one who knew when she was getting out, he was the only one who could have told them. And they appeared at her parents' house too, and this time her father put his foot down.

”We need some privacy here,” he explained, and as the governor, people listened. He gave a few select interviews, but he explained that neither his wife, nor his daughter, and certainly not his son, were in any condition to entertain members of the press at the moment. “I'm sure you understand,” he said graciously, posing for a single picture. And he said he had no further explanation for Mrs. Thatcher's presence in his home, except that she wanted to be with her mother, and brother, who was also staying with them. Edwin Douglas couldn't bring himself to stay at his own house yet, let alone begin to sort through it.

“Have the Thatchers been estranged since the accident?” One of the reporters shouted at him and he looked surprised by the question. It hadn't even occurred to him, and he asked his wife the same thing that night, wondering if she knew something he didn't.

“I don't think so.” Janet Douglas frowned at him. “Olivia hasn't said anything,” but they both knew she kept a lot to herself. She had been through a great deal in the past few years, and she liked to keep her own counsel.

But Andy was quick to complain to her when he heard about the question. He told her that if she didn't come home soon, she would start rumors.

“I'll come home when I'm well enough to leave here,” she said coldly.

“When will that be?” He was going back to California in two weeks, and he wanted her with him.

She was actually planning to go back to Virginia in a few days, but his pushing her only made her want to stay away longer, and after she'd been there a week, her mother finally questioned her about it.

”What's happening?” she asked gently, as Olivia sat in her mother's bedroom. Her mother got migraines regularly, and she was just recovering from one, while wearing an ice pack. “Is everything all right with you and Andy?”

“That depends on your definition of 'all right.“ Olivia said coolly. “Nothing's any worse than usual. He's just annoyed that I'm not letting the press beat me to death, or reenacting the accident for them on tabloid TV. But give him a day or two, Mom, I'm sure hell arrange it.”

“Politics does strange things to men,” her mother said wisely. She knew better than anyone what it was like, and how much it had cost them. Even her recent mastectomy had been announced on TV, with diagrams and an interview with her doctor. But she was the governor's wife, and she knew she had to expect it. She had been in the public eye for most of her adult life, and it had taken a lot from her. And she could see now that it had already taken something from her daughter. One paid dearly for winning, or even losing, elections.

And then Olivia looked at her quietly, and wondered what her mother would say if she told her the truth. She had been thinking for days. And she knew what she had to do now. “I'm leaving him, Mom. I can't do this. I tried to leave him in June, but he wanted the presidency so badly, I agreed to do the campaign with him, and stay for the first four years if he won.” She looked at her mother unhappily. The crassness of what she'd done sounded awful in the telling. “He's paying me a million dollars a year to do it. And the funny thing is I didn't even care. It sounded like play money when he offered it to me. I did it for him because I used to love him. But I guess I didn't love him enough, even way back in the beginning. I really know now I can't do it.” She didn't owe this to anyone, not even Andy.

“Then don't,” Janet Douglas said bluntly. “Even a million dollars a year wouldn't be enough. Ten wouldn't either. No amount is worth ruining your life for. Get out while you can, Olivia. I should have done it years ago. It's too late now. It drove me to drink, it ruined my health, it destroyed our marriage, it kept me from doing everything I wanted to do, it hurt our family and made life hard for all of you. Olivia, if this isn't what you want, if you yourself don't want this desperately, get out now, while you still can. Please honey,” her eyes filled with tears as she squeezed her daughter's hand, “I beg you. And no matter what your father says, I'm one hundred percent behind you.” And then she looked at her even more seriously. It was one thing to abandon politics, another to abandon a marriage that might still be worth saving. “What about him? What about Andy?”

“It's been over for a long time, Mom.”

Janet nodded again. It didn't really surprise her. “I thought so. But I wasn't sure.” And then she smiled slowly. “Your father is going to think I lied to him the other day. He asked me if everything was all right with you, and I said it was. But I wasn't sure then.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Olivia said, putting her arms around her. “I love you.” Her mother had just given her the greatest gift of all, her blessing.

“I love you too, sweetheart,” she said as she held her daughter. “Do whatever you have to do, and don't worry about what your father says. He'll be fine. He and Andy will make some noise for a while, but they'll get over it. And Andy's young. He can always get remarried and do it next time. They haven't seen the last of him in Washington. Don't let him bully you into coming back, Olivia, unless you want to.” What she really wanted for her daughter was to be far from here. She wanted her freedom.

“I don't want to go back, Mom. I never will. I should have left him years ago …before Alex was born, or at least after he died.”

“You're young, you'll make a life for yourself,” she said wistfully. She never had. She had given up her own life, her career, her friends, her dreams. Every ounce of energy she'd had had gone into her husband's political career, and she wanted something very different for her daughter. “What are you going to do now?”

“I want to write.” She smiled shyly and her mother laughed.

“It all comes full circle, doesn't it? Do it then, and don't let anyone stop you.”

They sat and talked all afternoon, and they made lunch together in the kitchen. Olivia even thought of telling her about Peter, but in the end she didn't. She did say that she thought she'd probably go back to France, to the fishing village she loved so much. It was a good place to write, a good place to hide, but her mother warned her about that too.

“You cannot hide forever.'

“Why not?” She smiled sadly. There was nothing else for her to do now, except disappear, legitimately this time. But she wanted nothing more to do with the press or the public.

Her brother joined them for dinner that night. He was grief stricken and subdued, but at least she made him laugh once or twice, and he kept up with what was happening in Washington by phone and fax every day. It was incredible to Olivia that he could even think about that now, but even in the face of such a major loss, he was still very much like their father. It was obvious that he was consumed by politics in very much the same way as her father and her husband. And late that night she called Andy and told him that she had made an important decision.

“I'm not coming back,” she said simply.

“Not that again.” He sounded annoyed this time. “Have you forgotten our contract?”

“There's nothing in it that says I have to stay with you, or follow you to the presidency. It only says that if I do, you'll pay me a million dollars a year. Well, I've just saved you a bunch of money.”

“You can't do that,” he said, sounding angrier than she'd ever heard him. She was interfering with the one thing he wanted.

“Yes, I can. And I am. I'm leaving for Europe tomorrow morning.”

She wasn't actually leaving for a few days, but she wanted to be sure he knew it was all over. He showed up in Boston the next day anyway, and as her mother had predicted, her father entered the fray with them. But she was thirty-four years old, she knew her own mind, and she was a grown woman. And she knew that nothing would sway her.

“Do you realize what you're giving up?” her father shouted at her from across the room, as Andy looked gratefully at him. To Olivia, it looked almost like a lynch mob.

“Yes,” she said quietly, looking straight at them, “heartbreak and lies. I've experienced both of them for quite a while now, and I think I'll manage fine without them. Oh, and I forgot, exploitation.”

“Don't be so grand,” her father said in disgust, he was a politician of the old school, and not quite as lofty as Andy. “It's a great life, a great opportunity, and you know it.”

“For you maybe,” she said, looking at her father with undisguised sorrow. “For the rest of us it's a life of loneliness and disappointment, of broken promises along the campaign trail. I want a real life with a real man, or alone if it has to be that way. I don't even care anymore. I just want to get as far from politics as I can, and never hear the word again.” She cast a sidelong look at her mother, and saw that she was smiling.

“You're a fool,” her father raged at her, but when Andy left their house that night, he was truly venomous, and promised her she'd pay for what she'd just done to him. And he wasn't lying. On the day she left for France, three days later, there was a story in the Boston papers that she knew only he would have planted. It said that after her recent, tragic accident, in which three members of her family had died, she had suffered severe traumatic stress, and she had just been admitted to a hospital with a nervous breakdown. It said that her husband was deeply worried about her, and although the article didn't actually come out and say it, there was the hint of an estrangement, because of her mental state. And the article was entirely slanted to sympathize with Andy for being saddled with a nutcase. He was covering his tracks nicely. If he said she was crazy, then it would be okay to dump her. Round one for Andy … or was it round two … or ten? Had he knocked her out, or had she simply run away and saved her own life while he wasn't looking? She was no longer sure now.

Peter saw the story too, and suspected that it had been planted by Andy. It didn't sound like Olivia, even after the short time he knew her. But he couldn't check this time, since it didn't say what hospital she was in. There was no way to find out the truth and it drove him crazy with worry.

Her mother took her to the airport on a Thursday afternoon a few days after she'd told Andy she was leaving. It was late August by then, and Peter and his family were still at the Vineyard. Janet Douglas put her daughter on the plane, and stood there until the plane took off. She wanted to be sure that she was safe, and truly gone. Olivia had escaped a fate worse than death as far as her mother was concerned, and she was relieved as she saw the plane swoop slowly overhead, on its way to Paris.

“Godspeed, Olivia,” she said softly, hoping she wouldn't come back to the States for a long time. There was too much pain waiting for her here, too many memories, too many rotten, selfish men waiting to hurt her. Her mother was happy knowing she had gone back to France. And as the plane flew out of sight, Janet signalled to her bodyguards, and walked slowly out of the airport with a sigh. Olivia was safe now.





Chapter Ten

As the month of August wore on, and faxes continued to roll in about the research on Vicotec, the tension between Peter and his father-in-law seemed to heighten. By Labor Day weekend, it was almost palpable, and even the boys had begun to feel it.

”What's happening between Granddaddy and Dad?” Paul asked on Saturday afternoon, and Kate frowned at him as she answered.