It was indeed an amazing story. They had all forgotten her, buried her with the past, both her mother and her father. She truly had been abandoned by them.

And then she began telling the Waterfords what it had been like, what her mother had done to her, and how her father had let it happen, the beatings, the hospitals, the bruises, the hatred, the accusations. Her story went on for a long time and took a long time to tell, but when it was over, all three of them were crying, and Frank Waterford was holding her hand, and his wife, Jane, had an arm around her shoulders. They were the nicest people she'd ever met, and she knew for a fact that her mother had never deserved him. She'd just been lucky, and he'd paid a high price for the pleasure of her company. He still looked grim when he talked about her, but so did Gabbie.

“I wanted to ask her,” Gabbie said tearfully, as she sat with them, “why she never loved me.” It was the key to everything for her. The final answer. And now she would never know it. What was it about her that they couldn't love? Was it her or them? It was as though she had expected her mother to apologize, to beg her forgiveness, to tell her she had loved her but never knew how to show it. Anything would have been better than the raw hatred she had met at her hands and seen in her eyes for the ten years she had endured before her mother left her. But now she could not ask her.

“There's a very simple answer to that, Gabbie,” Frank said, wiping his eyes. “She couldn't love anyone. She had nothing to give. I'm sorry to speak ill of the dead, but she was rotten to the core, mean as a snake. There was something wrong with her. No single human being can be that hateful. I always thought it was my fault. For the first five years of our marriage I thought it was me, that I had disappointed her somehow, or wasn't good enough, or had failed her. And then I realized it had nothing to do with me. It was her. It was a lot easier after that. I just felt sorry for her, but she still wasn't easy to live with.

“What she did to you is unforgivable, and you'll have to live with the scars of it for the rest of your life. You'll have to decide if you have it in your heart to forgive her, or if you just want to turn your back on her, as she did you, and forget her. But whatever you decide, you have to know that it had nothing to do with you. Any other human being in the world, except those two you were related to, would have loved you. It was just bad luck. You wound up with rotten parents. Maybe that answer's too easy for you, but I think that's what it was. She was a terrible person. There was something very important missing in her, and always would be. If she were here today, she wouldn't be able to give you the answer either. She never had any love in her heart from the first day I met her. She was very beautiful, and a lot of fun sometimes in the beginning, but not for long. The meanness came out real quick, as soon as we were married. And that was it, until she died. It had nothing to do with you, Gabbie. You were in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in the wrong line up in heaven, when they handed out the parents.”

That was it, then? she wondered. As simple as that? But as she listened to him, she knew it was true, it had nothing to do with her, and never had. She had her answer. It was all an accident of fate, a freak of nature, a collision of two planets that had never been meant to coexist side by side, and she had gotten caught in the resulting explosion. There was no answer to the question of why she had never loved her. Eloise Harrison Waterford had never loved anyone. She had no love to give, not even to her own daughter. And Gabbie felt oddly peaceful now as she listened. She knew that she had come to the end of the road finally, and she could go home now. It had been an odyssey that had taken her twenty-three years to accomplish. Other people's took longer. But she had been brave enough to face hers. She had wanted the answers. And she had the courage to go through the ordeals it had taken to get there. They had been right all along, all of them. She was strong. And she knew that now too. They couldn't hurt her with it now. She had survived them.

They asked her to stay for dinner that night, and she enjoyed being with them. The idea that Frank had been her stepfather for thirteen years and she'd never known him somehow touched her. And Jane was a lovely woman. She was a widow too, and they'd been married for three years and obviously loved each other. She said that Frank was a mess when she found him, and thanks to Eloise, was beginning to hate women, and she'd fixed that. And he laughed at her version of the story.

“Don't believe a word of that, Gabbie. She was a lonely widow and I rescued her, right from under the nose of some rich old fool from Palm Beach. I married her before he knew what hit him.” He smiled broadly as he said it.

They invited her to stay with them that night, but she didn't want to impose on them. She said she was going to get a hotel room at the airport and go home in the morning. But they wanted her to stay there, Frank said he owed her at least that after never having her around for all those years. And she couldn't help thinking about how different her life would have been if he had been. But her mother would have spoiled it for her anyway, and she had decided he was probably right. The best thing her mother had done for her was leave her. It had saved her ultimately, she couldn't have survived the beatings forever.

They gave her a lovely guest room with a view of the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge, and in the morning a maid served her breakfast in bed. She felt like a princess. And she decided to call Peter before she left for the airport. He was off duty for a change, and thrilled to hear her.

She told him about the Waterfords, and he was happy it had gone so well, and he was also happy that her mother hadn't been there to see her. Like Frank Waterford, he was sure that nothing would have changed, and she would have found some way to hurt Gabbie. He wasn't surprised by anything Frank had said, and he was so relieved that her search was over. She sounded very peaceful. She said she was coming home that night, but as he listened to her, he had a better idea. He had four days off for once, and he said he loved San Francisco.

“Why don't you stay there?” he suggested. “I'll meet you.” She hesitated for a long moment, not sure what to say to him. This was only the very beginning for them. But at least she felt as though she had finally left all the ghosts behind her. She had made peace with them at last. Joe, Steve, even her parents. She understood better now what had happened to her. Frank was right in a way. She hadn't been very lucky when they'd been handing out parents. It was like being struck by lightning. And for all those years, she had believed everything was her fault. The beatings, the cruelty, their abandoning her, even the fact that they hadn't loved her. She had been willing to accept the blame for everything. And she realized now that even what had happened to Joe hadn't been entirely her fault. Ultimately, he had made his own decision. “What do you think?” Peter asked her about his coming out again, and slowly she smiled as she looked at the view from the Waterfords’ guest room window.

“I'd like that,” she said, willing to let herself have it, able to let him in now. She didn't know what would happen between them, but if it was good, and right for them, it seemed possible now that she deserved it. She no longer felt as though she was eternally damned, or destined to be punished. That was why she had come here, to be relieved of the burdens they had doomed her to live with, and she had finally done it. Her life sentence had been lifted.

“I'll fly out this afternoon. I can meet you somewhere. I'll get a hotel room,” Peter said enthusiastically, but when she told the Waterfords he was coming out and she was moving to a hotel, they insisted she stay there with him. They were the kindest, most hospitable people she had ever met, and they seemed to genuinely want her to be there with them.

“I want to check out this new son-in-law of mine, before you make a mistake,” he teased Gabbie. She had told them how they had met, and what had happened with Steve Porter, or whatever his name was. They were horrified by the story, but anxious to meet Peter.

And after she left in a cab to go to the airport, Frank told his wife how sorry he felt about her, what hell her life must have been as a child. And he blamed himself for not seeing it, or Eloise for the monster she had been. It made him feel good now to do what he could to make it up to Gabbie. And he was pleased to see that she had a good head on her shoulders. He thought it remarkable that she had survived all she'd been through.

“She's a nice girl,” he said to Jane, and she agreed with him, and as they walked out in their garden to look at the view they enjoyed so much, Peter was landing at the airport.





Chapter 26




HIS PLANE TOUCHED down easily on the runway as Gabriella watched it. She was excited to see him, but still a little nervous. They had talked so much in the hospital, but she hadn't seen him since, or out in the real world. It seemed hard to believe that she'd only been out of the hospital for three days. So much had happened, so many ghosts had been put to rest. And she was so glad she had come here. She and Peter had agreed to stay with the Waterfords for the weekend, and then he had to go back to the hospital, and she wanted to go back to the bookstore.

She was standing slightly to one side when he came off the plane, and he almost didn't see her. He was looking straight ahead, and he smiled broadly when she suddenly stepped forward and surprised him. And as he looked at her, with her blue eyes, and her shining blond hair, he had an overwhelming urge to kiss her. But instead, he put an arm around her shoulders and they began walking slowly through the airport. She was talking easily about the time she had spent here, and the discoveries she had made, and her eyes looked happier than he'd ever seen them. There was still the depth to them that he loved, and that had first drawn him to her, but she no longer looked so anguished. And then, as he listened to her, he stopped walking, and just looked down at her, smiling, and happy to see her.