“I'm glad nothing's changed.” He laughed as he lay on his back, thinking of her. He wondered if he'd been too hard on her when he talked about her at lunch. She still excited him in some ways, and that night he missed her. “Want to meet me in San Francisco?”

“When?” she sounded noncommittal.

“I'm going tomorrow. I should be through in a couple of days. When do you finish in Denver?”

“Tomorrow. We go to Los Angeles. San Francisco canceled.”

“I'll meet you in L.A.”

“I don't think you should.” There was a long silence, and he frowned.

“What's up?”

“It might upset some of the other dancers,” she said vaguely and he sat up slowly in bed. He was no fool, and he had played this game before. But it was not a game he liked playing.

“Would it upset anyone in particular, Sasha?”

“Oh I don't know. It's too late to talk about it tonight.” And as she said it, he heard a male voice in the background.

“Is that Dominique, or Pierre, or Petrov?”

“It's Ivan,” she said petulantly. “He pulled a hamstring tonight, and he was very upset.”

“Tell him I'm sorry. But tell him after you explain to me what the hell's going on. Sash, I'm too old for this kind of bullshit.”

“You don't understand the pressures of being a dancer,” she whined into the phone, and he sank back against his pillows.

“Well, I've tried for chrissake. What is it that I don't understand exactly?”

“Dancers need other dancers.”

“Ah … now we get to the root of the problem. You mean like Ivan?”

“No, no … well … yes … but it's not what you think.”

“How the hell do you know what I think, Sasha? You're so busy worrying about yourself and your feet and your ass and your tendons you wouldn't notice what anyone thought if they wrote it out in neon.”

“That's not fair!” She was suddenly crying, and for the first time in months he found he didn't care. Suddenly, in the space of one phone call, it was over. He had had it.

“It may not be fair, baby,” he spoke in his deep, gentle voice, “but it happens to be true. I think maybe you and I had better take our bows, and step back gracefully while the curtain comes down. If I read the program correctly, the fourth act just ended.”

“Why don't we talk when I get back?”

“About what? Your feet … or about how dancers need other dancers? I'm not a dancer, Sash. I'm a man. I have a very demanding job, I have a full life I want to share with a woman I love and who loves me. I even want to have children. Can you see yourself doing that?”

“No.” At least she was honest. The thought of it horrified her. She had no intention of giving up dancing for a year at any point in her life, and then fighting to get back all her muscles. “Why is that so important?”

“Because it just is, and I'm forty-two years old. I can't waste my time with games like this anymore. I gave to the artistic community once. I made my contribution. Now I want something different.”

“That's what I mean … you don't understand the pressures of being a dancer. John, babies aren't important.”

“They are to me, little one. And so are a lot of other things you don't have room for. You don't need me. You don't need anyone. Be honest with yourself.” There was a long empty silence as she listened, and suddenly he wanted to get off the phone. There was nothing left to say. They had said it all, and run out of words a long time since. They just hadn't noticed. “Good-bye, Sash … take it easy. I'll see you when you get back. Maybe well have lunch or a drink.” He knew she'd want the things she'd left in his apartment, but the truth was that he wasn't even anxious to see her.

“Are you really telling me it's over?” She sounded shocked and he could hear the male voice in the background again. He wondered if they were sharing a room, not that it really mattered.

“I guess I am.”

“Is that why you called me?”

“No. I guess it just happened. It was time.”

“Is there someone else?” He smiled at the question.

“Not really.” In a funny way there were three of them, the three women he was searching for day and night who filled his thoughts and his heart now, but not in the way Sasha had meant it.

“No one important … take it easy, Sash.” And with that, he quietly hung up and turned out the light. And he smiled to himself as he went back to sleep. He felt free for the first time in months, and he was glad he had called her. It was finally over.

PART FOUR

Megan





Chapter 24




The flight to San Francisco was easy and he arrived at two in the afternoon, local time, which gave him plenty of time to get to Rebecca's office at four o'clock. When he got there, it was an old Victorian in a rundown neighborhood. But he was surprised when he stepped inside, to find the house well maintained, pleasantly decorated, and filled with plants, and Rebecca Abrams herself was an attractive woman. She was in her early sixties and wore her gray hair in a single braid down her back. She wore clean blue jeans and a starched white shirt, red espadrilles and a red flower in her hair, and she looked like a very attractive, very intelligent, well-kept elderly hippie. She smiled warmly at John, and ushered him into her office. She had no idea what he wanted, and didn't look perturbed when he left his suitcase in her outer office.

“You don't look like most of our clients, Mr. Chapman.” She smiled warmly at him and pointed to a sunny little kitchen off her office. “Would you like some coffee or tea? We have about a dozen different kinds of herb tea.” She smiled at him again and he shook his head. He hated to upset her, but he suspected that he was going to.

“I'm here on a personal matter, Mrs. Abrams. I've been looking for you and your husband for quite some time, and I had a little trouble finding you. My last address for you was in New York, in 1957.”

Rebecca Abrams smiled again, and sat back peacefully in her chair. She had been doing yoga for years, and it showed in her tranquil manner. “We've moved around quite a bit over the years. We spent a lot of time in the South, and then we came back here when my husband got ill. He had a quadruple bypass six and a half years ago, and we both decided that it was time for him to take it easy and enjoy life. So now I'm practicing solo, or rather with a group of women I enjoy very much. But it's a different kind of practice than I had with David, although some of the concepts aren't so different. We deal with a lot of cases that involve discrimination and civil rights. We've been doing this for many years.”

“And your husband?”

“He teaches twice a week, at Boalt. He gardens. He's busy doing a thousand things he enjoys.”

“And your daughter?” Chapman held his breath.

“She's fine. She's still in Kentucky. How do you know our family, Mr. Chapman?” She frowned slightly but the smile still didn't leave her eyes.

“I don't. I'm afraid I come to you rather indirectly. I'm an attorney too, and I run a firm called Chapman Associates in New York. Unlike you, I've never been terribly in love with the law, and I got hooked on investigations years ago, so that's what I do. And my client, in this case, is Arthur Patterson. I don't know if the name rings a bell, but he was instrumental in bringing Megan to you in 1958. I'm sure that now you remember.”

She nodded, the smile had faded now in earnest. “Is something wrong? Why would Mr. Patterson wish to contact us now?” She looked frightened, as though he could still take her away from them. That was what she had always been afraid of.

“Simply put, Mrs. Abrams, he's dying. And he wants to know that the girls are all right, that they're happy and well, and not in any kind of need. And he hopes to bring them together once before he dies, so that they have the benefit of knowing their sisters.”

“Now?” She looked horrified. “After thirty years? Why would they possibly want to meet their sisters?” She looked as though she were about to throw him out of her office.

“He felt it might mean something to them, and I can appreciate your feelings. Thirty years is a long time to wait before having any contact.”

She shook her head as though in disbelief. “We told him at the time of the adoption that we wanted no continued contact with him or the other girls. That was the main reason why we left New York and went to L.A. I don't think it would be fair to Megan to drag her past out now.”

“Maybe she should make that choice. You mentioned that she is still in Kentucky.”

“She's finishing her residency there, in Appalachia. She's a doctor. She's specialized in obstetrics.” Rebecca said it with deep pride, but she looked at John with open hostility.

“May I contact her there?” To him it was a formality, but to her it was an offense and she half rose in her seat as she answered.

“No, you may not, Mr. Chapman.” She sat back down again and glared at him in outrage. “I can't believe you'd come to us after all these years and expect us to expose Megan to that pain and confusion. Are you aware of the cause of her parents' death?”

“I am. Is Megan?”

“Of course not. In fact, I will tell you very bluntly, Mr. Chapman, this whole thing is totally out of the question. My daughter doesn't know she's adopted.” She looked him straight in the eye and he felt his heart stop. How could they not tell her? As liberal as they were, and as freethinking, they had never told her she was adopted. It certainly complicated the matter for them.

“Do you have other children, Mrs. Abrams?”

“No we don't. And my husband and I felt she had no need to know. She is our only child, and she came to us when she was a baby. There was absolutely no reason to tell her as she got older.”