Amazing Grace

by Danielle Steel

  Melanie was exhausted when she went back to her own building that night. It had been her third day of hard work at the field hospital, and although she loved the work she was doing there, on her way back to the hall where she was staying, she had to admit to herself for a minute that it would have been great to have a hot bath, and settle into her comfortable bed with the TV on and fall asleep. Instead she was sharing an enormous room with several hundred people. It was noisy, crowded, smelled bad, and her cot was hard. And she knew they'd be there for at least several more days. The city was still completely shut down, and there was no way to leave. They had to make the best of it, as she told Jake every time he complained. She was disappointed by how whiny he had been, and a lot of the time he took it out on her. And Ashley was no better. She cried a lot, said she was suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and wanted to go home. Janet didn't like it there either, but at least she was making friends, and talked about her daughter constantly, in order to let everyone know how important and special she was. Melanie didn't care. She was used to it. Her mother did that everywhere they went. And the guys in her band, and roadies, had made a lot of friends. They hung out and played poker a lot. She and Pam were the only ones in the group who were working, so Melanie hardly saw the others now.

  She helped herself to a cherry soda on the way in. The hall was dimly lit with the battery-operated torches that lit up the edges of the room at night. It was just dark enough to stumble over people, or fall if you weren't careful. There were people in sleeping bags in the aisles, others on cots, and all night long there seemed to be children crying. It was like being on a ship in steerage, or a refugee camp, which was in fact what it was. Melanie made her way to where her group was sleeping. They had more than a dozen cots all grouped together, with some of the roadies on the floor in sleeping bags. Jake's cot was right next to hers.

  She sat down on the edge of it, and patted his bare shoulder, which was poking out of the sleeping bag. He had his back to her.

  “Hi, baby,” she whispered in the semidarkness. The hall had already quieted down for the night. People went to bed early. They were upset, frightened, depressed over what they'd lost, and there was nothing to do at night, so they went to bed. He didn't move at first, so she assumed he was asleep, and was about to move to her own cot. Her mother wasn't there, and had wandered off somewhere. As Melanie was about to shift to her own cot, there was sudden movement in Jake's sleeping bag, and two heads popped out at once, looking startled and embarrassed. The first face staring at her was Ashley's, the second one was Jake's.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, sounding angry and surprised.

  “I sleep here, I think,” Melanie said, unable to understand what she was seeing at first, and then suddenly she realized only too well. “That's nice,” she said to Ashley, who had been her friend almost all her life. “Really nice. What a shit thing for the two of you to do,” she said, keeping her voice down so the others didn't hear. Ashley and Jake were sitting up by then. She could see they had no clothes on. Ashley did some minor gymnastics, and crawled out of the bag in a T-shirt and thong. Melanie recognized it as hers. “You're a prick,” Melanie said to Jake and started to walk away. He grabbed her arm, and struggled out of the bag, wearing only his underwear.

  “For chrissake, babe. We were just fooling around. It was no big deal.” People were starting to stare by then. Worse yet, they knew who she was. Her mother had seen to that.

  “It looks like a big deal to me,” Melanie said as she turned around to stare at them again, and spoke to Ashley first. “I don't mind you stealing my underwear, Ash, but I think stealing my boyfriend is a little much, don't you?”

  “I'm sorry, Mel,” Ashley said, and hung her head, as tears rolled down her cheeks. “I don't know, it's so scary here … I'm so freaked out…I had an anxiety attack today. Jake was just trying to make me feel better …I…it wasn't …” She was crying harder, and Melanie felt sick looking at her.

  “Spare me. I wouldn't have done it to you. And maybe if both of you got off your dead asses and did something useful around here, you wouldn't have to fuck each other for entertainment. You both make me sick,” Melanie said, her voice shaking as she spoke.

  “Don't be such a righteous bitch!” Jake spat at her, deciding that the best defense was a great offense. It didn't fly with her.

  “Fuck you!” she shot at him, as her mother arrived, looking confused by what was happening. She could see they were having a heated argument, but had no idea why. She'd been playing cards with some new friends, and a couple of really good-looking men.

  “Oh fuck you, you're not as hot as you think you are!” Jake threw back at her, as Melanie walked away and her mother ran after her, looking worried.

  “What happened?”

  “I don't want to talk about it,” Melanie said, heading out for some fresh air.

  “Melanie! Where are you going?” her mother called after her, as people on their path woke up and stared.

  “Out. Don't worry. I'm not going back to L.A.” She ran out the door then, and Janet went back to find Ashley sobbing, and Jake having a tantrum of some kind. He was throwing things, and people on neighboring cots were telling him to knock it off, or they'd kick his ass. He wasn't popular in the area where they slept. He had been rude to everyone around them, and they didn't find him charming, even if he was a TV star. Janet was looking deeply concerned, and asked one of the band members to talk to him and tell him to stop.

  “I hate this place!” Jake shouted, and went outside, with Ashley running behind him. It had been a stupid thing to do, and she knew it. She knew how Melanie was, loyalty and honesty meant everything to her. She was afraid Melanie would never forgive her and said as much to Jake, as they sat outside wrapped in blankets, with bare feet. Ashley glanced around and didn't see Melanie anywhere. “Oh, fuck her,” Jake added. “When the fuck are they going to get us out of here?” He had asked one of the helicopter pilots about airlifting them out, and taking them back to L.A. He had looked at Jake like he was insane. They were flying for the government and were not for hire.

  “She'll never forgive me,” Ashley whimpered.

  “So what? What do you care?” He took a deep breath of the cool night air. It had just been a little fun with Ashley, they had had nothing else to do, and Melanie was so goddamn busy playing Florence Nightingale. He told himself and Ashley that if she'd stuck around, this would never have happened. It was her fault, not theirs. “You're twice the woman she is,” he told Ashley, who lapped it up as she cuddled up to him.

  “Do you really think so?” she asked, looking hopeful and a lot less guilty than she had a few minutes before.

  “Sure, baby, sure,” he said, and a few minutes later they went back inside. She slept in his sleeping bag with him, since Melanie wasn't there anyway. Janet pretended not to see it, but understood fully what had happened. She had never liked Jake anyway. In her opinion, he wasn't a big enough star for her daughter, and Janet took a dim view of his history with drugs.

  Melanie had gone back to the field hospital, and slept on one of the empty cots they kept waiting for new patients. The nurse in charge said she could sleep there, when Melanie explained that there had been a problem in her own hall. She promised to get up if they needed the bed for a patient.

  “Don't worry about it,” the nurse told her kindly. “Get some sleep. You look beat.”

  “I am,” Melanie said, and then lay awake for hours, thinking about Ashley and Jake's faces coming out of his sleeping bag. It didn't totally surprise her that Jake had done it, although she hated him for it, and thought he was a pig for cheating on her with her best friend. But it was Ashley's betrayal that hurt her most. They were both weak and selfish, users, and shameless about exploiting her. She knew it came with the territory, and she had lived through other betrayals. But she was sick of all the disappointments that came with stardom. Whatever happened to love, honesty, decency, loyalty, and real friends?

/>   Melanie was sound asleep on the hospital cot when Maggie found her there the next morning, and covered her gently with a blanket. She had no idea what had happened, but whatever it was, she knew instinctively that nothing good had brought her there. Maggie left her to sleep as long as she could. Melanie looked like a sleeping child, as Maggie left her, and started her day. There was so much to do.

  Chapter 8

  The tension at Seth and Sarah's house on Divisadero on Monday morning was palpable and overwhelming. As he had since the earthquake, Seth tried all their house phones, their cell phones, their car phones, even his BlackBerry, to no avail. San Francisco was still completely cut off from the world. Helicopters were still buzzing overhead, flying low to check on people and report back to Emergency Services. They could still hear sirens throughout the city. And if they were able to, people stayed in their homes. The streets looked like a ghost town. And inside their home, there was a sense of impending doom. Sarah stayed away from Seth and kept busy with her babies. They still had their usual routines. But she and Seth hardly spoke to each other. What he had confessed to her had shocked her into silence.

  She fed the children breakfast, although their food supplies were dwindling. She played with them in the garden afterward and pushed them on the swingset they had there. Molly thought it was funny that the tree had fallen down. And Oliver's cough and earache were better, from the antibiotics he'd taken. Both children were in good spirits; the same could not be said about their parents. She and Parmani made them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, with sliced bananas, and then put them down for their naps. The house was quiet when she finally went to see Seth in his study. He look ravaged, and was staring blindly at the wall, lost in thought.

  “Are you okay?” He didn't even bother to answer. He just turned to look at her with broken eyes. Everything he had built for them was about to come tumbling down. He looked devastated and gray. “Do you want lunch?” she asked him, and he shook his head, and then looked at her with a sigh.

  “You understand what's going to happen, don't you?”

  “Not really,” she said softly, and sat down. “I know what you told me, that they're going to audit Sully's books, and find the investors’ money gone, and then they'll trace it to your accounts.”

  “It's called theft and securities fraud. Those are federal felonies. Not to mention the lawsuits that will set off among Sully's investors, and even mine. It's going to be a hell of a mess, Sarah. Probably for a long, long time.” He had thought of nothing else since Thursday night and she since Friday morning.

  “What does that mean? Define mess,” she said sadly, thinking that she might as well know what was coming. It was going to be happening to her too.

  “Prosecution probably. A grand jury indictment. A trial. I'll probably be convicted and go to prison.” He glanced at his watch. It was four o'clock in New York, four hours past the time when he had to have the money back to Sully in time for his investors’ audit. It was shit luck that their respective audits had been so close together, and even worse luck that the San Francisco earthquake had shut down all communications and the city's banks. They were dead in the water, and sitting ducks with no way to cover their tracks. “By now, Sully has been caught red-handed, and sometime this week the SEC will start an investigation of his books, and mine when this city opens up again. He's in the same boat I am. The investors will start suing in civil suits, for misappropriation of their funds, theft, and fraud.” And then as though to make matters worse, he added, “I'm pretty sure we'll lose the house, and everything else we have.”

  “And then what?” Sarah asked in a hoarse voice. She wasn't as horrified about losing their property and possessions as she was about discovering that Seth was a dishonest man. A crook and a fraud. She had known and loved him for six years, only to find out that she didn't know him. She couldn't have looked more shocked if he had turned into a werewolf in front of her eyes. “What'll happen to me and the kids?”

  “I don't know, Sarah,” he told her honestly. “You may have to get a job.” She nodded. There were worse fates. She was more than willing to work if it would help them, but if he was convicted, what was going to happen to their life, their marriage? If he went to prison, then what, and for how long? She couldn't even get the words out to ask him, and he just sat there, shaking his head, as tears rolled slowly down his cheeks. What scared her too was that he seemed to be thinking of himself in all this, and not of them. What was going to happen to her and the children if he went to jail?

  “Do you suppose as soon as the city opens up again, the police are going to show up?” She had no idea what lay ahead. In her worst nightmares, she could never have conceived of anything like this.

  “I don't know. I guess they would start with an SEC investigation first. But it could get very bad very quickly. As soon as the banks open, the money is going to be sitting there, and I'm screwed.” She nodded, trying to absorb it, remembering what he had said.

  “You said you and Sully did this before. A lot of times?” Her eyes were bleak, and her voice was hoarse. Seth had been dishonest not just once, but maybe for several years.

  “A few.” He sounded tense as he answered.

  “How many is a few?” She wanted to know.

  “Does it matter?” She saw a muscle in his jaw go taut. “Three … maybe four. He helped me set it up. The first time I did it was right after we started, to give us a little push and get investors interested in the fund. Kind of like window dressing, to make us look good. It worked … so I did it again. It brought the big investors in, thinking we had that kind of money in the bank.” He had lied to them, cheated, committed outright fraud. It was inconceivable to her, and accounted now for his rapid and astonishing success. The wonder boy everyone talked about was a liar and a thief, a con man. And even more horrifying was the fact that she was married to him. He had fooled her too. She had never wanted all the extravagant luxuries he had provided. She didn't need them. They had even worried her at first. And Seth had insisted that he was making money hand over fist, and they deserved all the toys and the fabulous lifestyle he was providing for her. Houses, jewelry, fancy cars, his plane. And he had built all of it on ill-gotten means. Now he was about to get caught, and everything he had worked for would disappear, out of her life too.

  “Are we in trouble with the IRS too?” she asked, looking panicked. If so, it might implicate her as well since they filed joint returns. What would happen to their children if she went to prison? The mere thought of it terrified her.

  “No, we're not,” he reassured her. “Our tax returns are clean as a whistle. I wouldn't do that to you.”

  “Why not?” she said, with tears bulging in her eyes, and then spilling slowly down her cheeks. She was overwhelmed. The earthquake that had just hit the city was peanuts compared to what was about to happen to them. “You've done everything else. You put yourself at risk, and you're going to take all of us down with you.” She couldn't even imagine what she was going to tell her parents. They were going to be horrified, and deeply ashamed once this hit the press. There would be no way to keep it quiet. She could easily see the story being a major item on the news, even more so if he was convicted and went to prison. The newspapers were going to have a field day with it. The higher he had climbed, the harder he would hit when he fell. It was easily predictable, she realized as she stood up and walked around the room. “We need a lawyer, Seth, a really good one.”

  “I'll take care of it,” he said, watching her stand staring out the window. The neighbor's window boxes had fallen, and were still lying all over the sidewalk, with dirt and flowers everywhere. They had gone to the shelter in the Presidio when their chimney fell through their roof, and no one had cleaned up any of the mess. There was going to be a lot of cleaning up to do in the city. But it would be nothing compared to the mess that Seth was going to have to deal with. “I'm sorry, Sarah,” he whispered.

  “So am I,” she said, turning to look at h
im. “I don't know if it means anything to you, but I love you, Seth. I did from the minute we met. I still do, even after this. I just don't know where we go from here. Or even if we do.” She didn't say it to him, but she didn't know if she could ever forgive him for being so dishonest and having so little integrity. It had been a horrifying revelation about the man she loved. If he was in fact so different than she had believed him to be, who in fact did she love? He looked like a stranger to her now, and in fact, he was.

  “I love you too,” he said miserably. “I'm so sorry. I never thought it would come to this. I didn't think we'd get caught.” He said it as though he had stolen an apple from a cart, or failed to return a book to a library. She was beginning to wonder if he fully realized how major this was.

  “That's not the point. It's not just about your getting caught. It's about who you were and what you were thinking when you set it up. The risk you took. The lie you were living. The people you were willing to hurt and lie to, not just your investors, but me and the kids. They're going to be damaged by this too. If you go to prison, they'll have to live with that for the rest of their lives, knowing what you did. How are they going to look up to you when they grow up? What does this tell them about you?”

  “It tells them that I'm human and I made a mistake,” he said sorrowfully. “If they love me, they'll forgive me, and so will you.”

  “Maybe it's not as simple as that. I don't know how you come back from something like this, any of us. How do you forget that someone you completely trusted turned out to be a liar and a fake, a thief …a fraud … how do I ever trust you again?” He said nothing, and sat staring at her. He hadn't come near her in three days. He couldn't. She had put a wall between them ten feet high. Even in their bed at night, each of them had huddled toward their respective sides, with a vast expanse of empty space between them. He didn't touch her, and she couldn't bring herself to reach out to him. She was too wounded and in too much pain, too disillusioned and disappointed. He wanted her to forgive him, and understand, and be supportive of him, but she had no idea if she ever would, or could. It was just too huge.