The secretary stopped at the doorway and knocked. A discreet brass and leather sign on the door said ARTHUR PATTERSON, and then she heard his voice. It was still familiar to her. She could still remember him lying to her eight years before … I'm just going to take them away for a little while, Hilary … I'll come back for you. He never did, and she didn't care, she hated him anyway. She could remember kneeling in the street after he drove off, calling her sisters' names and she had to fight back tears again, but it was almost over now … almost. It was almost exactly eight years since she had last seen them.

“You may come in.” The secretary smiled and stepped aside as she opened the door, and Hilary walked in quietly. She didn't see the desk at first, and then she saw it, a simple slab of glass and chrome, in front of a window offering a full view of New York, and there he sat, incongruous in the modern decor. He was fifty years old and he looked at least ten years older than that, tall, thin, balding, with sad eyes and a pale face. But he was even paler than usual now as he stood up and looked at her. It was as though he had seen a ghost, as she stood in front of him. She was beautiful and tall, with Sam's shiny black hair, but there the resemblance to him stopped … she had Solange's eyes … and the same way of moving her head … and she stood in front of him just as proudly now as Solange had once walked on the rue d'Arcole in Paris twenty-one years before. It was like seeing a ghost … if you changed the black hair to red … it was Solange again … but with angry, bitter eyes, with something fierce in her face that Solange had never had, something that said if you come near me I will kill you before I let you lay a hand on me, and Arthur instantly feared what might have happened to her, what could possibly have made her look like that? And yet she was safe and sound, obviously, and standing in front of him in his office, fully grown and very beautiful. It was a miracle, and he walked slowly toward her, holding out a hand, with dreams of recapturing the past. It was a way of having Sam and Solange back, of sharing once more in their magic. Hilary was going to bring it all back to him. But as he approached, he could sense the wall built around the girl, and she began to back away when he got close to her, and instinctively he stopped approaching.

“Hilary, are you all right?” It was a little late to ask, and she hated the weakness she saw in his eyes. She never understood till then how totally without courage he was. He had no balls, she realized now, that was why he had abandoned her, after betraying them … no guts … it was something Solange had accused him of a lifetime ago, although Hilary didn't know it.

“I'm fine.” She wasted no time with him. She had not come for a warm reunion with a family friend, she had come to ask him the only thing she cared about, the only thing she had cared about for eight years. “I want to know where my sisters are.” Her eyes were icy hard and neither of them moved as she watched his face, not sure of what she saw, terror or grief, and she waited with bated breath for what he would say next.

But whereas he was pale before, he looked ghostly now. He realized that he could not fob her off, that she wanted nothing to do with him. She only wanted them, and he could not give them to her, no matter how much he would have wanted to do so. “Hilary … why don't we sit down …” He waved toward a chair and she shook her head, her eyes riveted to his.

“I'm not interested in sitting down with you. You killed my parents, you destroyed my family. I have nothing to say to you. But I want to know where Alexandra and Megan are. That's all I want. When you tell me that, I'll go.” She waited patiently, the same proud tilt of her head that had made Solange so unique … so extraordinary … he stared at her, seeing someone else, but there was no escaping Hilary. She was a force to be reckoned with, and he understood that fully now. He also sensed that she knew more than he had thought so long ago, but he didn't question her now. He told her the truth, his eyes filled with regret, and damp with tears for what had been and was no more. A family had died at his hands. She was right. And he had never gotten over it. He had started, no family of his own, and Marjorie had left him years before. The woman he loved was gone, her children cast to the winds. And he held himself responsible for what had happened to all of them, even Sam. But there was no way to explain that to this girl, or to excuse himself, least of all to her. God only knew what she had been through in the past eight years.

“I don't know where they are, Hilary. I don't even know where you've been. When I went to Boston to see you seven years ago, you were all gone … the Joneses had left no forwarding address with anyone. I was unable to find you …” His voice trailed off, filled with regret, because his own guilt had been so great, he had been secretly relieved not to have to face her again, and he suspected now that she knew that about him. She had all-seeing eyes, and she looked as though she had an unforgiving heart. There was nothing warm about this girl, nothing gentle, or kind. She was entirely made of granite and barbed wire, shafts of steel and broken glass. There were ugly things inside this girl, he could see it in her eyes, and for an instant he was afraid of her, as though, given the opportunity, she might harm him. And under the circumstances, he wasn't sure that he blamed her.

“You couldn't have tried very hard to find me.” Her voice sounded hard. She wasn't interested in his explanations or apologies. “We went to Florida.”

“And then?” He needed to know what had happened to her, why she looked like that. He had to know … had to … he felt a sob catch in his throat and prayed he wouldn't cry in front of her. “What happened to you?” He wished she would sit down … that they could talk … that she would listen to him … he could talk to her now. He could explain about Marjorie, who was now a Superior Court judge. He could tell her why he couldn't take them to live with him … why nobody wanted all three of them … why he had done what he did. “Are Jack and Eileen still … were they good to you?”

She laughed bitterly, sounding very old, and her eyes looked very green. She was thinking of Jack and that night … and the pathetic wraith Eileen had become before she died. “Eileen died, and I've been a ward of the Jacksonville juvenile courts for the last four years. I've been in foster homes, and juvenile hall, and now I'm free, Mr. Patterson. I don't owe anyone anything, and most of all not you. All I want now are my sisters.” Her heart was pounding as she realized he had lost them.

“Why didn't you call me when she died?” He sounded horrified. “Surely you didn't have to go to foster homes … juvenile hall …” Those were places he never thought about, couldn't bear to think of now. “Hilary, I'm so sorry …”

But her eyes flashed green fire again, and she waved a hand at him. “Don't give me that shit. You never gave a damn about us, and you don't now. It's easy for you to sound pious and tell me how sorry you are. To tell you the truth, I don't give a damn. It doesn't change anything that happened to me. All I want from you are the addresses of where my sisters live, and don't tell me you don't know. You have to know. You took them there.” It had never occurred to her that he would lose track of them as he had of her. That was impossible. He had to know, and she searched his eyes now, but what she saw there was frightening. She saw remorse and guilt, and a man who was actually frightened of her.

He sat down in a chair and shook his head in despair, and then he looked up at her with sad, empty eyes. “Alexandra went to one of my partners here in the firm. He had a lovely young wife, from a good family. And she was much younger than he. They didn't have children, and they were desperate to adopt Alexandra when I told them about her. And they did … they worshiped her.” He looked at Hilary as though hoping to mollify her somewhat but it was no use, her eyes were like green ice, and her hands trembled as she silently sat down in a chair and listened to what he had to say. “They took her to Europe, they went everywhere with her … but six months later, George died of a heart attack. Margaret was in shock and she took Alexandra away with her. The last I heard was that they were in the south of France … we sent papers on the estate to her in Paris years ago … and I don't know anything after that. I think she stayed over there, but I'm really not sure. We've had no reason to stay in touch with her, and …” His voice trailed away, as two tears rolled down his cheeks.

“So you don't know where Alexandra is.” Hilary sounded numb. “And the woman's name?”

“Gorham. Margaret Gorham. But she could have remarried by now … any number of things could have happened. She could be back in the States somewhere. I don't think she's back in New York, I think I'd have heard of it if she were.” He looked lamely at her.

“And Megan?”

“She was adopted by David and Rebecca Abrams, right after I … after she …” He could barely control himself, and Hilary was trembling from head to foot. “… after I brought her back to New York. He was not a partner of the firm, he merely worked for us, and several months later they left. She was an attorney too, and they had had an offer from a law firm in Los Angeles that wanted both of them. They were anxious to start a new life anyway, and they made a point of telling me that they did not want to stay in touch. They wanted to give Megan a new life, far away from all that had happened to her. I haven't heard from them since they left. If he's a member of the California bar, I could possibly locate him, if he's still there … I don't know …”

“You son of a bitch.” She glared at him with hatred on her face. “You let us all drift away. You set us adrift, as though getting rid of us would rid you of your own guilt, but it didn't, did it?” She had read him perfectly. “It destroyed your life too, and you deserve that. You deserve everything that's happened to you. May you rot in hell, Arthur Patterson. You'll live with this for the rest of your life. You killed two people, and destroyed three more lives. That's five people on your soul. Can you live with that?” She walked to where he sat and looked down on him with contempt far beyond her years. “Can you sleep at night? I don't think you can … and God only knows what happened to the other two. God only knows what lives you've condemned them to. I know what mine was like. But it's not over yet. I won't let you spoil my life. I'm going to make something of myself … and maybe one day I'll find my sisters … maybe … But in the meantime”—she walked slowly to the door, with tears pouring slowly down her face, she had expected so much from him, and her disappointment was so great now—“I never want to see you again, Arthur Patterson. Never. You won't soothe your conscience with me. We won't be 'friends' again, dear godfather.” She stood and looked at him for a long long time, before her final words, and she spoke them in a whisper that haunted him for the rest of his life. “I will never forgive what you did to us … never … and I will hate you for the rest of my life. Remember that … remember what you did and how much I hate you.” And then, like the ghost of Christmas past, she closed its office door, and slipped away, and he did not have the courage to follow her. He sat slumped in his chair, like an old man, remembering Solange, and crying for what he had done to her. Hilary was right, he would never be absolved of what he had done to them all. He couldn't forgive himself, and like Hilary, he wondered now where the other two girls were.

But there were no answers to that. Hilary went from the office on Park Avenue to the public library and did the only thing she knew how to do. She opened the Manhattan phone book and found no George or Margaret Gorham there. She found only five in all, and when she called, none of them knew anything about Margaret or Alexandra, and it was obvious they had never heard of them. And a listing of the attorneys of the California bar was equally discouraging. There was no David Abrams listed there, which meant he had left California long before, and God only knew where he had gone. She didn't have the resources to do more than that, she couldn't hunt them down. She couldn't do anything. She had counted on Arthur to know, and he knew nothing at all. Her sisters were gone. Forever this time. And the dream that had kept her alive slipped quietly from her heart, like a rock falling to her feet. She walked slowly back to her hotel, tears streaming down her cheeks. It was as though they had died finally, as she remembered the white roses at her mother's funeral. They no longer existed in her life, hadn't for years … and seeing him again reminded her of that terrible day when they'd been taken from her … Axie, I love you! … she could still remember screaming the words as the car drove away, and falling to her knees in the dirt. It seemed as though she had never gotten up since. But she would now … she had to … she would make it alone, as she had for all these years … but she would always remember them. Always.