“Don't you mind that?” She looked intrigued, her green eyes watching Alexandra as she shrugged and smiled.

“Not really. I'm used to it. And underneath his gruff exterior, I know he loves us … or he did.” She sighed. “I don't know what's going to happen now. He was shocked when I told him our story … I mean about our parents….”

“It's not very pretty, is it?”

“Especially for Megan,” Alexandra added softly, just as she came down the hall. Megan had put Arthur to bed. He had been in terrible pain, and he was crying. And she had given him an injection to sedate him.

“He's not going to live much longer.” She spoke quietly as she walked into the room, and Hilary noticed as John had, how much she sounded like Alexandra. “I suspect he's got metastases everywhere. But he's still very alert.”

“The old bastard.” Hilary spoke in an undertone and Megan turned on her with flashing eyes.

“Don't talk about him like that. He's repented for his sins … he brought us here. What more do you want from him?”

“Something he can't give us,” Hilary shot back at her. “The past … something decent we could have shared, instead of the heartbreak of tearing us apart.”

“We survived in spite of that … even you, Hilary. Look at you, you're a big success. You have a fantastic job, a nice life.” But it was an empty one, as only she knew, and Alexandra suspected. There was no one she cared about, and no one who cared about her, no one she was aware of anyway. And as they talked, John Chapman appeared in the doorway. He had disappeared discreetly for a while, and he suspected they would be talking late into the night. They had a lot of things to resolve, and a lot to learn about each other. And his job was finally over.

“Will we see you. again, John?” Alexandra was the first to ask, and he shook his head, with a bittersweet smile.

“Not unless you want to look for someone else sometime, and I hope you never have to. My job's all done.” And then in a soft voice, he added, “I'm going to miss you.” He had been living with each of them for months, hunting them down, seeking them out, getting to know them. And it suddenly came to him that he would miss Hilary most of all. He had ached so much for her past, and he had been too late to help her. “Good luck to all of you.”

“Thank you.” They each stood up and shook hands with him, and Megan kissed him gently on the cheek with a shy smile. She had really liked him.

“If you ever get to Kentucky, call me.”

“Will you be there long?” he asked, hating to leave them, and she smiled at him, with the red hair that was exactly her mother's, and Alexandra's.

“I'll be through with my residency in December, but I'm pretty sure I'll stay on. I haven't told my parents yet,” she shrugged with an easy laugh and she looked very young again, “but I think they already kind of expect it. My Dad does anyway. He knows how crazy I am.” They exchanged a long warm smile, and then Alexandra hugged him.

“Take care of yourself.” She mothered everyone, and it touched him as she patted his shoulder afterward. “Thank you for everything.”

“Don't let anyone talk you into dying your hair again … you look beautiful….”

“Thank you,” she blushed and he smiled and Hilary held out a hand and gruffly thanked him.

“I'm sorry I gave you such a hard time in my office … I was fighting all this.…” And then with great effort in a low voice, “But I'm glad I came.” She looked at both of her sisters, and her eyes filled with tears again, and then she looked back at him and without invitation he gently pulled her into his arms and she nestled there as he held her, wishing he could keep her there forever. There was still so much life owed her.

“You're going to be all right now, Hilary … it's going to be just fine….” His voice touched a place in her that had been closed for a long time, and she was sorry when she pulled away and looked up into his eyes with a shy smile.

“Come and see me sometime at the network.”

“I'll do that. Maybe we can have lunch sometime.”

She nodded, unable to say anything, she had to turn away as the tears coursed down her face. After so many years of isolation, she was surrounded by people she cared about deeply, and who seemed to love her.

It was Alexandra who put her arms around her this time, and smoothed back her hair as they walked John Chapman downstairs and waved as he drove away. And she and Hilary walked back upstairs again to Hilary's room. She had been given a room adjoining Alexandra's and Hilary changed into her nightgown and came back to chat, as Megan and Alexandra talked about Paris and Kentucky and the south of France, and whether or not Megan ever wanted to have children. She wasn't sure if it would interfere with her career or not, but Alexandra was telling her it was her greatest joy, as Hilary sat down in the rocking chair and shook her head in amazement. It was extraordinary being back together after all these years, and talking as though they had always been there.

“I never wanted kids, and I never regretted it,” Hilary lied, thinking back for a flash of a moment to the abortion. “Well, I don't know … maybe I did when I was younger. It's too late now anyway.”

“How old are you?” Megan frowned. She had momentarily forgotten. She was thirty-one, and Hilary was … eight years older.

“Thirty-nine.”

“These days most women don't even have their first child till then. In this part of the world at least.” She smiled. “Where I work, I see them having their first babies at twelve and thirteen, younger than that even sometimes. It's amazing.” It was a whole other world from this comfortable old house in Connecticut, and the lives her sisters led in the places where they lived. And then suddenly she laughed. “Isn't it amazing how different we all are, and yet how similar? I live in the hills of Kentucky,” she said, looking at Alexandra then, “… and you live in a fancy house in Paris, and a chateau somewhere else, and a villa in the south of France in the summer,” and then she turned to Hilary, “and you practically run a television network. Isn't it amazing?”

“It would have been more so,” Hilary said quietly, “if we could have seen each other twenty-five years ago. My life wasn't so pleasant then.”

“What was it like?” Megan finally asked what they both wanted to know, and little by little, over the next two hours, with tears streaming down her face, she told them. All of it. The uglier and the ugliest, and the tragic and the brutal. But it helped to share it with them, and whereas she had once been the one who protected them, they comforted her now, and Alexandra held her hand, as Megan told her story, of sit-ins in Mississippi, and the time her father had been shot on a rainy night in east Georgia, of what decent people they were, and how totally they believed in their causes, and how much she loved them. And then Alexandra told them about Margaret, and Pierre before he died, and her life with Henri, and how she was afraid that now he would divorce her.

“He'd be a damn fool if he did.” Hilary spoke up, as she flung her long black hair over her shoulder, in a gesture that struck a chord of memory for Alexandra as she watched her.

“He is so obsessed with his lineage, and you have to admit, ours is a bit exotic for someone like my husband.” The three of them laughed and the sun came up as they talked. They went to bed amid yawns and kisses and hugs and promises to meet again in the morning. They all slept until noon, and Alexandra was the first one to get up. She called her mother and the children at the hotel, but they were out, and she left a message that all was well and she would be home on Sunday night. And then she thought about calling Henri, but she didn't know what to say, so she went back upstairs and showered and dressed, and when she came back downstairs again, Megan was wearing a clean pair of jeans and a white blouse with a ribbon in her hair. And she looked more like a little girl than a doctor, and Alexandra said so. The two of them chatted over coffee and hot biscuits, and one of Arthur's nurses informed them that he had had a difficult night, so Megan went upstairs to check on him, just as Hilary came downstairs in shorts and a silk shirt, her black hair pulled severely into a bun, and her feet bare as she came to breakfast. She looked somehow much younger than she had the night before, and Alexandra realized that they all did. They were traveling back in time, and burdens that had aged them were falling from their shoulders. In her case it was the fear of what Henri would do to her, and that no one would love her anymore if he divorced her. If he did, she still had Margaret, and the girls, and now she had these two women to support her. It didn't seem so terrifying anymore. In fact, she felt good, and for the first time in a long time, she didn't feel frightened.

“Late night, last night, wasn't it?” Hilary smiled lazily over her coffee. “What'll we do today? We could talk ourselves to death by tomorrow night, if we don't watch out.” She and Alexandra both laughed, and Alexandra looked at her thoughtfully. “You're going back tomorrow night too?” The message she had left at the hotel said she would. She didn't want to abandon her mother and the girls for too long. She had promised to spend a week with them in New York, and she knew her daughters would wear her mother out eventually.

“I have to,” Hilary answered. “I have some important meetings scheduled for Monday morning.” So what else was new? When didn't she? She grinned. “When are you going back?”

“To New York, tomorrow night. I left my mother at the Pierre with Axelle and Marie-Louise. I think by tomorrow night she'll have reached her breaking point, even though she's very good with them. But they're a handful.” Alexandra paused, thinking of Margaret and how worried she had been about this meeting. “I also feel like I should get back to reassure her. I think she was afraid I would stop loving her when I met my sisters, as though she wouldn't really be my family anymore. I owe her a little reassurance.”

Hilary nodded and smiled. “I could drive you in, if you like. We could go out to dinner this week … or lunch …” She looked at her hopefully, like a shy child with a new best friend, and Alexandra's eyes lit up in answer.

“I would love it. And you could meet the girls! We're going to be here for a week. And then,” she said triumphantly, Henri de Morigny be damned, “you could come to visit us in Paris!”

“That's a great idea!” Hilary laughed, as Megan joined them.

“What are you two cooking up today?” She was smiling but her eyes were serious.

“Just a little mischief in New York,” Hilary smiled at her. She still thought of her as “the baby.” “Care to join us? You could stay at my place with me.”

“Or at the Pierre with us,” Alexandra offered, but Megan had already made another decision.

“I'd love to, and I'll come and visit both of you as soon as I can. But I'm going to stay here for a few days. He seems much worse today,” her eyes indicated Arthur upstairs. “I'd like to be here if anything happens.” And it was obvious that it was going to very soon. It was the only thing she could do for him now, her first and last gift to him as his daughter, to be with him when he died. She tried to explain her feelings about it later to Alexandra, as they strolled in the garden. “He seems so pathetic … and so frail … as though he's already gone. I know Hilary hates his guts, but I have no ax to grind with him. I had a good life. I love the only parents I've known … he's kind of like a late gift in life. Someone who might have meant something to me once, but it's too late now. It's too late to do anything but say good-bye and help him go. And if I can help him do that, it would make me happy.”

“Then that's what you should do, Megan.” Alexandra smiled at her. In an odd way, she reminded her of her daughters.

They had a quiet dinner that night. The housekeeper was extremely discreet and left them alone most of the time, and eventually they began talking about John Chapman.

“I thought he was going to attack me when he forced his way into my office.” Hilary laughed, and Alexandra smiled, and blushed as she often did.

“The first time I saw him I thought he was very handsome.”

“So did I,” Megan confessed, and the three women laughed like three young girls and speculated about his wife.

“I think he said he was divorced.” Alexandra frowned, trying to remember, but Hilary shrugged. She hadn't opened her heart to anyone in years, and it was enough to have done so to two sisters. It had been an exhausting twenty-four hours. But it was like coming home, to the warm, comfortable country house, their ship finally safe in the harbor.