“And do you think you can make it up?” She laughed bitterly and they all ached for her, but John was frightened of what she would do now. She had waited thirty years for this, and he had always sensed the full measure of her hatred for Arthur. “Do you really think you can wipe out thirty years of loneliness and pain with one dinner?”

“Your sisters have been luckier than you, Hilary.” He spoke honestly. “And they don't hate me as much as you do.”

“They don't know as much as I do … do they, Arthur … do they?” She shouted into the silent room, the words echoing off the walls as he trembled.

“That's all in the past, Hilary.” It was a conversation between only the two of them. Only they knew of what they were speaking, as the others wondered.

“Is it? How about you? Have you been able to live with yourself for all these years, after killing my parents?” Her green eyes blazed and Alexandra advanced to gently touch her arm, but Hilary shook her off.

“Hillie, don't … it doesn't matter now …”

“Doesn't it?” She wheeled on her sister. “How do you know that? How could you possibly know, living the good life in France, while I sat on my ass in juvenile hall, after getting raped, trying to figure out how to find you. And that son of a bitch didn't even know where you were, he didn't know where any of us were. He didn't even care enough to keep track of us after he ripped you out of my arms that day, crying and sobbing … you don't remember that now, but I do. I've remembered it … I've remembered both of you …” She looked from Alexandra to Megan, “… every day of my life and I've cried for you because I never found you. And now you tell me it doesn't matter? That I shouldn't hate him for killing our parents? How can you say that?” The tears were pouring down her cheeks unashamedly.

“But he didn't kill them.” Alexandra spoke for herself and Megan. “His only failing was in not keeping us together, or keeping track of us over the years, but perhaps he couldn't help it.” She looked benevolently at the old man, and Megan silently nodded, unable to understand why Hilary hated him so much. He had failed them, but he had not betrayed them the way Hilary said. But she was shaking her head and laughing at them through her tears.

“You don't know anything. You were babies. I was standing there the night Mama died … the night Daddy killed her … I was listening … I heard what they said …” She began to sob and John stood nearby, ready to help her if she collapsed or needed him. He was near her, as he had been for months, although she didn't know it. “I heard her screams …” Hilary went on, “when he hit her and hit her and hit her, and then strangled her into silence until she died. …” She was gulping down the sobs and she stood right in front of Arthur now. “And do you know why he did that?” Her eyes never left Arthur's face, she had waited a lifetime for this. “He did it because she was having an affair with him, and she told father so….” She was listening to the voices of the past as she spoke, and she almost looked as though she were in another world, remembering back to the night her father had killed her mother. “He had been cheating on her, she said, with lots of different women for years … all his leading ladies, she said … and he said it wasn't true … he said she was crazy … and she said she had proof … she knew who he'd just taken to California … who he'd been with the night before … and she said it didn't make any difference to her anymore … that she had someone of her own, and that if he wasn't careful, she'd leave him and take us with her. And he said he'd kill her if she did, and she laughed … she kept laughing at him … and he said she could never take away his baby girls … and she laughed … and then she told him who it was….” She was crying so hard she could hardly speak, but she went on, as Arthur shook more and more violently in his seat and she stood inches from him, shouting down at him and crying. “She told him, didn't she, Arthur … didn't she?” Hilary shouted. And then she looked at her sisters, and told them what she had always known, and they hadn't. “She was having an affair with Arthur, Daddy's best friend … and he said he would kill her for it, and she only laughed, and when he told her she couldn't take us away, she told him that only two of us were his anyway….” There was a stunned silence in the room, and Arthur sat back in his chair as though he'd been struck by lightning. And Hilary's voice was quiet when she spoke this time. She had done what she had come for. “She told him that Megan was Arthur's child,” she said in a dull voice, staring down at him with contempt. “And then Daddy killed her.” She sank into the chair next to him, crying softly, as Alexandra put an arm around her shoulders and the old man whimpered softly in his chair.

“I never knew … she never told me…” He looked at Megan pathetically. “You must believe me. … I never knew … I always thought you were his, like the others….” He was crying openly, and Megan looked even more shocked than she had at the rest of the recital. And Arthur seemed to be making his excuses to the room in general. “If I had known. …” But Hilary only looked at him and shook her head.

“What would you have done differently? Kept her with you, and left the rest of us to rot? You wouldn't have done anything. You didn't stand by my mother, or your own child, you betrayed your best friend, and what you did killed them both. You have their blood on your hands … and ours, without you, our lives would have been very different. How could you live with yourself all these years, knowing what you'd done? How could you defend him after betraying him?”

“He begged me to, Hilary. … I didn't want to. I begged him to let me find him another attorney. But he didn't want me to. And in truth, he didn't want to live after your mother died.” His voice dropped down to a whisper. “Neither did I. It ended both our lives … I loved her deeply from the first moment I saw her.” The tears rolled down his cheeks as Megan stared at him. He was no longer just a family friend. This was her father.

And Hilary stared at him emptily, as though seeing him for the first time. He was an old, dying man, and there was no undoing what he had done. For him, it was all over, no matter whose blood was on his hands. The blood was long since dry … the people all but forgotten. She stood up then, and looked down at him. “I came here to tell you how much I hated you. And do you know something strange, Arthur, after all these years, I'm not really sure it still matters.” She felt Alexandra's hand on her shoulder and turned to look into her eyes. She was exhausted from the emotions of the evening and turned to look at both the girls. “I loved you both a great deal a long time ago … but maybe that's too far in the past too …” She felt drained, spent, she had nothing left to give or take, but Alexandra wouldn't let her go, and Megan was watching her too. She was the one to speak first.

“It's a long time ago for all of us, but we still came. I didn't remember any of you. And I didn't know Mr. Patterson was my father. We came to honor the past, but also to go on from here. We all have other parents now, other lives, other people we care about. We haven't lived in a void for thirty years, none of us, not even you with your anger and your hatred.” It was a quiet reproach but it was powerful and it struck home. “You can't just come here and drop a bomb like this in our laps, and then go. You owe it to us to repair the wounds, just as we owe it to you to do the same. And that's why we all came here.” There were tears slowly running down her cheeks, as she looked at Hilary, and John Chapman silently wanted to cheer her. It would ruin everything if Hilary left now. It would destroy her life once and for all. She had to stay, in spite of Arthur, and face them.

Hilary looked at Alexandra, as though seeking confirmation and she nodded and spoke in her quiet voice. “Please stay Hillie … I've waited so long for this.” They had all taken such risks, paid such a high price. She had defied Henri, possibly at great expense, all for the pleasure of seeing her sisters. “It took a lot of courage to come here. For all of us. My husband forbade me to come here … I don't even know if he will take me back now. And my mother … the woman I know as my mother has come with me, and she is very frightened of what all this will mean. She is afraid that after all this time she will lose me.” There were tears in her eyes as she spoke to Hilary, and Megan was nodding with tears in her own eyes. Rebecca was terrified of what seeing her sisters would mean to her. They had talked for an hour on the phone the night before, and she had promised she would call as soon as possible to reassure her. “You have lost more than any of us, Hilary … but you are not alone … we love you, even now. You cannot turn your back on us.” And then putting her arms around her again, she cried softly. “I won't let you.” Hilary stood tall and straight for a long moment, and then her arms went around Alexandra … how could she know what her life had been like? But it wasn't her fault … or Megan's … or maybe even Arthur's. She hated to admit that now, but it was possible. He had been a fool and he had paid a high price for it. He looked at Hilary sorrowfully over Alexandra's shoulder.

“Can you ever forgive me, all of you?” But he was looking at the oldest of the three and she took a long time to answer.

“I don't know … I don't know what I feel….” But she held tight to Alexandra and her eyes reached out to Megan.

“I'm glad you came anyway. The three of you had a right to be together. And if I had been a different kind of man, I would have defied my wife and kept you all myself. I wanted to, but she had such strong feelings about it that I didn't dare go against her. I'm sorry now, but it's too late to make any difference.” He looked mournfully at Hilary, and then at the child he had turned away, who was his own daughter. “I made a terrible mistake. But I've paid for it. I've been a lonely man all my life … ever since your mother died….” He couldn't go on. He only shook his head and then stood up shakily, as John Chapman and one of the nurses came to help him. “I'm going upstairs now. We all have a lot to think about.” Hilary's revelation had shocked them all, particularly Megan and Arthur. In a strange way, she now wondered if she was responsible for her mother's death … if she hadn't been born, would Sam have killed her? But it was too late to think about that, too late to cry over what had happened thirty years before. It was time to move on, as best they could. And he turned to them again before he left the room. “I want you all to stay for as long as you can … for as long as you want to. This will be your home one day; I am leaving it to all of you, so you have a place to come, a home together finally, and a place to bring your families and your children. I'll stay out of your way while you're here, but I want you to stay here and get to know each other.” Alexandra and Megan thanked him quietly, and Megan rose quickly to help him upstairs, as Hilary watched, saying nothing. And when he was gone, she turned to Alexandra and shook her head.