“That sounds awful,” Maddy said with a look of embarrassment about her addiction to abuse, but she knew there was some truth in it. It sounded right to her, and hit a familiar chord.

“Don't be ashamed of it. Many of us have been there. The brave ones admit it. It's difficult for other people to believe that you would love a man who would do that to you. But it goes back a long way, a long time, to what people told you about yourself in your childhood. If they told you you were worthless and wrong and terrible and unlovable, it's a powerful message for the dark side. What we have to do now is fill you with light, and convince you that you're a wonderful person. And I can tell you one thing, not only are you going to find another job in the first five minutes you're free, there are going to be men, good men with healthy attitudes, flocking at your feet as soon as they know the door is open. But it doesn't matter until you believe it.” Maddy laughed at the vision she conjured. It was certainly an appealing picture, and very comforting to hear. She felt better already. She felt utterly confident in Dr. Flowers s ability to get her out of the mess she was in. And she was grateful that she was willing to help her. Maddy knew just how busy the doctor was.

“I'd like you to come back and talk to me in a few days, about how you're feeling. About yourself, about him. And I'm going to give you a special number where you can call me, night and day. If anything happens that scares you, Maddy, or if you believe yourself in danger, or even if you're just upset, call me. I carry my cell phone everywhere, you can always reach me.” She was a one-woman wife-abuse hotline. And Maddy was relieved to know that, and grateful for her help.

“I want you to know, Maddy, that you're not alone. There are a lot of people out there who want to help you, and you can do this, if you want to.”

“I want to.” She said it in barely more than a whisper, and she said it with less certainty than her supporters might have liked. But as always with Maddy, it was honest. “That's why I came here. I just don't know how to do it. I don't know how to get free of him. Part of me believes I'll never make it without him.”

“That's what he wants you to believe. Then you'll need him, and he can do anything he wants to you. People in healthy relationships don't make decisions for each other, don't conceal information, don't tell each other they're worthless or that they're poor white trash and will wind up back in the gutter if the other one leaves. That's abuse, Maddy. He doesn't need to throw bleach in your face, or hit you with a hot iron to prove that. He doesn't have to. He does enough damage with his mouth and his mind, he doesn't need to use his hands to hurt you. What he does is very effective.” Maddy nodded in silence.

Half an hour later she left and went back to her office. And as she walked into the building, she didn't see the girl with the long black hair standing near the entrance again, watching her. And she was still there at eight o'clock that night, across the street this time, when Maddy got into the car to go home. She seemed to be waiting for something. But Maddy never saw her. And when Jack came out a little while later and hailed a cab, the girl scurried away, concealing her face from him so he wouldn't see her. They had already said everything they had to say, and she knew she'd get nowhere with him.





Chapter 12




THE NEXT DAY, WHILE MADDY WAS working on some research on a story about the Senate Ethics Committee with Brad, the phone rang, and someone listened for a long time and said nothing when Maddy answered. For a moment, she was frightened. She wondered if it was another stalker, or a crank call of some kind, but then they hung up, and when she went back to work again, Maddy forgot about it.

The same thing happened that night at home, and this time she told Jack, and he shrugged it off, and told her it was probably just a wrong number. He teased her about being afraid of her own shadow, just because one nutcase had stalked her. Given her high visibility on the air, it wasn't surprising that she'd had a stalker as far as he was concerned. Most celebrities had them. “It goes with the territory, Mad,” he said calmly. “You read the news. You should know that.” Things had calmed down again between them, but she was still annoyed that he hadn't warned her about the stalker. He said that she had better things to think about, and security issues involving talent on the air were his problem. But she continued to believe he should have told her.

She was talking to the First Lady's private secretary on the phone Monday about changing the date of the next commission meeting. The First Lady had to join the President for a state dinner at Buckingham Palace. And she was trying to mesh schedules with Maddy and the other eleven people on the commission, and Maddy was frowning distractedly as she went over dates, when a young woman walked into her office. She had long straight black hair, and she was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. She looked neat and clean, but inexpensively dressed, and very nervous, as Maddy glanced up and wondered what she wanted and who she was. She had never seen her before, and thought she'd been sent by another department at the network, or maybe she just wanted an autograph. Maddy noticed that she didn't have a badge, and was carrying a bag of doughnuts. And suddenly, she wondered if that was how the girl had gotten into the building.

“No thanks.” Maddy smiled at her and waved her out, but the girl didn't move, she just stared at her, and for an instant, Maddy panicked. What if this was yet another stalker? Maybe she had a gun, or a knife, or was mentally ill. She realized now that anything was possible, and she thought about hitting the panic button under her desk, but didn't. “What is it?” She put her hand over the phone and asked her.

“I need to talk to you,” the girl said, and Maddy eyed her with suspicion. There was something about her that made Maddy extremely nervous.

“Would you mind waiting outside?” Maddy asked firmly, and the girl reluctantly left her office, carrying the bag of doughnuts.

Maddy gave Phyllis Armstrongs secretary three possible dates and the secretary promised to get back to her, and as soon as she'd hung up, Maddy picked up her intercom and spoke to a receptionist at a desk in the hallway.

“There's someone waiting for me outside. I don't know what she wants. Would you talk to her and find out, and then call me?” Maybe she was a celebrity hound or an autograph seeker, or wanted a job. But Maddy was annoyed that she had walked in on her with such ease. Given what had happened recently, it was unnerving.

The intercom rang a few minutes later, and Maddy picked it up quickly. “She says she needs to speak to you. It's a personal matter.”

“Like what? She wants to kill me? She has to tell you what it is, or I'm not seeing her.” But as she said the words, she looked up, and the girl was standing in her office doorway with a look of determination. “Look, this isn't how we do things here. I don't know what you want, but you have to talk to someone before you can talk to me.” She said it firmly and calmly, with her fingers resting lightly on the panic button, and her heart pounding. “What do you want from me?”

“I just want to talk to you for a few minutes,” she said, and Maddy realized the girl was about to cry, and the doughnuts had vanished.

“I don't know if I can help you,” Maddy said hesitantly, and then suddenly wondered if this had to do with her being on the commission about violence against women, or one of her stories. Maybe this girl knew she'd be sympathetic. “What's this about?” Maddy asked, mellowing a little.

“It's about you,” she said in a trembling voice, and when Maddy looked at her more closely she saw that the girl's hands were shaking.

“What about me?” Maddy asked cautiously. What had this girl come to tell her? But as she looked at her, she had a very odd feeling.

“I think you're my mother,” she said in a whisper, so no one else could hear them if they were walking by, and Maddy looked as though she'd slapped her as she recoiled in her chair.

“Your what? What are you talking about?” Maddy s face had gone white, and now her hands were shaking, as they continued to rest on the panic button. She had an instant concern that this girl was some kind of nutcase. “I don't have any children.”

“Did you ever?” The girl's lips were trembling and her eyes were already beginning to fill with disappointment. For her, this had been a three-year search for her mother, and she sensed that she was about to hit a dead end again. She had already had several. “Did you ever have a baby? My name is Elizabeth Turner, I'm nineteen years old, my birthday is May fifteenth, and I was born in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, in the Smoky Mountains. I think my mother was from Chattanooga. I've talked to everyone I can, and all I know is that she was fifteen when I was born. I think her name was Madeleine Beaumont, but I'm not sure of that. And one person I talked to said I look a lot like her.” Maddy was staring at her in disbelief, as her hand moved slowly off the panic button and onto her desk.

“What makes you think I'm that person?” Her tone gave away nothing.

“I don't know, I know you're from Tennessee. I read that in an interview one time, and your name is Maddy and … I don't know … I sort of think I look like you a little bit, and … I know this sounds crazy.” There were tears running down her cheeks now from the sheer stress of approaching her, and the fear of yet another disappointment. “Maybe I just wanted you to be the right person. I've watched you a lot on TV, and I really like you.” There was a long, deafening silence in the room, while Maddy weighed the situation, and tried to figure out what to do about it. Her eyes never left the girl's, and as she looked at her, she slowly felt walls dissolving within her, surrounding places she hadn't touched in years, and thought she would never allow herself to feel again. She didn't want this to be happening, but it was, and there was nothing she could do now to change it. She could end it easily. She could tell her that she wasn't the same Madeleine Beaumont, that Tennessee was full of them, even though Beaumont was her maiden name. She could say she had never been to Gatlinburg, and that she was sorry, and wish her luck. She could say everything she needed to, to get rid of her, and never see her again, but as she looked at her, she knew she couldn't do that to this girl.

Without a word, she got up and closed the door to her office, and then stood looking at the girl, who claimed to be the baby she had given up at fifteen, and thought she'd never see again. The baby she had cried for and mourned for years, and whom she no longer allowed herself to think of. The child she had never told Jack about. All he knew about were the abortions.

“How do I know that's who you are?” Maddy asked in a voice that was rough with grief and fear and the remembered pain of giving up her baby. She had never seen her after the delivery, and only held her once. But this girl could have been anyone, the child of a nurse who'd been there, a neighbor's child who wanted to blackmail her and make some money. There were damn few people who knew, and Maddy had been grateful that none of them had ever surfaced. She had worried about it for years.

“I have my birth certificate,” the girl said awkwardly, pulling a folded piece of paper from her purse. It was dog-eared and folded into a tiny wad, as she handed it to Maddy. And she handed her a tiny baby picture with it, as Maddy stared at it in silent agony. It was the same one they had given her, taken at the hospital, red-faced and brand new, wrapped in a pink blanket. Maddy had kept it in her wallet for years, and finally threw it away, for fear that Jack would find it. Bobby Joe knew, but he had never cared much about it. Lots of girls they knew got pregnant and gave up babies for adoption. Some girls had them a lot younger than she had. But in the years since, it had become her darkest secret.

“This could be any baby,” Maddy said coldly, “or you could have gotten this picture from someone else, from the hospital even. It doesn't prove anything.”

“We could have blood tests, if you thought maybe I could be your daughter,” the girl said sensibly, and Maddy's heart went out to her. She had done a brave thing, and Maddy wasn't making it easy for her. But what this girl was volunteering to do was destroy her life, and make her face something that she had finally put away, and didn't dare touch now. And how could she tell Jack?