I smiled to myself. We had waited all summer long for the blue heron to pay us a visit. It had been sadly absent, but here it was this morning, looking as if it had never been away.
After finishing my coffee, I sat back, closed my eyes, and let myself sink down into my thoughts. Hardly a few minutes had passed when I knew what I must do, knew what my answer to Richard must be.
No.
I would tell him no and send him away.
Besides, what use to him was a woman who could not love again? A woman in love with her dead husband?
“Life is for the living,” I heard Diana’s voice saying, somewhere in the back of my mind.
I pushed that voice to one side, trampled on the thought. I would send Richard Markson away, as I had always known I would.
But perhaps he had already gone away of his own accord. I had not heard a word from him for well over a week now. In fact, he had stopped calling me on a regular basis once he’d quit Bosnia.
He had stayed in that war-torn country for ten days, as he had always intended to do. And then he had moved on, had flown to Paris. It was his favorite city, he had told me when he had phoned. He had worked there once, as Paris correspondent for The New York Times, and he had loved every minute of his four-year stay in France. Four years was a long time. He undoubtedly had many friends there.
Maybe Bosnia and Paris had cured him of me.
Maybe I wouldn’t have to reject him after all.
That would certainly be a relief, if I didn’t have to tell him no to his face, if he just stayed away and never came back, or if he let our relationship peter out.
Maybe he had picked up with an old flame. That would be a relief, too. Wouldn’t it?
“Hello, Mal.”
I sat up with a jerk, so startled I dropped the coffee mug I was holding. It rolled across the grass and disappeared over the edge of the hill.
Speechlessly I gaped at him.
“I’m sorry if I took you by surprise,” Richard said, towering over me.
“You made me jump, scared me!” I exclaimed. Taking a deep breath, I asked, “And where did you spring from?”
“My car. I parked over by the house.”
“No, I meant when did you get back from Paris?”
“Last night. I drove straight up here from Kennedy. I was going to call you, but it was late. So I decided to come and see you in person this morning.” He paused, looked at me closely. “How are you, Mal?”
“I’m fine,” I replied. “And you?”
“Great,” he said. “But I could use a cup of coffee. Shall we go to the café?”
I dangled the bunch of keys in front of his nose. “Not open yet. It’s only eight-thirty. I was just on my way to unlock the doors.”
“Oh, God, I’m on Paris time . . . for me it’s already the afternoon.”
“Come on,” I said, “Walk me to the shops. I’ll open up, and then we can come back to the house for that cup of coffee.”
“It’s a deal,” he said, and stretched out his hand.
I took it, and he pulled me to my feet.
We walked down the hill in silence. Once we were at the bottom, I opened up the café, the Indian Meadows Boutique, and the Kilgram Chase Gallery, and pocketed the keys.
“That’s it,” I said. “Let’s head for the kitchen. I’ll make you some breakfast, if you like. How do scrambled eggs and English muffins sound?”
“Terrific!”
I smiled at him and then moved away from the cluster of barns, heading for the house.
“Mal.”
I stopped and turned around.
Richard was still standing near the gallery door.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
Shaking his head, he hurried over to me. “Nothing’s the matter. I just wondered . . .” He stopped. “Do you have an answer for me, Mal?”
I didn’t say anything at first, having no wish to hurt him. Then I murmured slowly, quietly, “No, Richard, I don’t.”
He stood staring at me.
“That’s not true. I do,” I corrected myself. “I can’t marry you, Richard. I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“And you won’t live with me? Try that?”
I shook my head, biting my lip. He looked so crestfallen I could hardly bear it.
Richard said, “You know, Mal, I fell in love with you the first moment I saw you. And I don’t mean the night ten months ago when I came to dinner, that day I helped Sarah change her tire. I mean when I first saw you, the first time I came to Indian Meadows. You were unaware of me; we never met. You just bowled me over. I wanted to be introduced to you, but one of my friends in Sharon said you were . . . off limits.”
“Oh,” I said, surprised.
“Finally meeting you, getting to know you, being with you all these months has been the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I love you, Mal.”
I stood there looking at him. I was silent.
“Don’t you care for me at all?” he asked in a low voice.
“Of course I care about you, Richard, and I worried about you when you were in Bosnia. I worried about stray bullets and air raids and bombs and you getting killed.”
“Then why won’t you take a chance with me?”
“I . . . just . . . can’t. I’m sorry.” I turned away. “Let’s go up to the house and have coffee,” I mumbled.
He made no response. He just walked along by the side of me, saying not one word.
We went up the hill slowly.
I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, saw the tight set of his clenched jaw, the muscle beating on his temple, and something inside me crumbled. My resistance to him fell away. My heart went out to him in his misery. I felt his pain as acutely as if it were my own. And I knew then that I did truly care for him. I had missed him. I had worried about him. I was relieved he was here, unhurt and in one piece. Yes, I cared.
“Andrew wouldn’t want me to be alone,” I muttered, thinking out loud.
Richard made no comment.
We walked on.
Again I spoke. I said, “Andrew wouldn’t want me to be alone, would he?”
“No, I don’t think he would,” Richard said.
I took a deep breath. “I’m not sure about marriage, not yet. It scares me. But, well . . . maybe we could try living together.” I slipped my hand into his. “Here at Indian Meadows.”
He stopped dead in his tracks. And so did I.
Taking hold of my shoulders, he turned me to face him. “Mal, do you really mean it?”
“Yes,” I said in a voice so low it was almost inaudible. Then more firmly, “Yes, I do. But you’ll have to be patient with me, give me time.”
“I’ve got all the time in the world for you, Mal, all the time you want.”
He leaned into me, kissed me lightly on the lips. Then he said, “I know you’re very fragile, that pieces of you are breakable. I promise to be careful.”
I nodded.
“And there’s something else,” he began and stopped.
“Yes?”
“I understand that you’ve had a terrible loss. But you have everything to gain with me—”
“I know that,” I said, and remembering Diana’s words, I added, “My life. The future—if I have the courage to take it.”
“You’re the bravest person I know, Mal.”
We went on walking up the hill, passed the old apple tree and the wrought-iron bench, heading for the front door. Richard put his arm around my shoulders as we crossed the wide green lawn.
I looked up at him.
He returned my gaze with one equally as steady and smiled at me.
As we went into the house together he drew me closer to him, his hand firm on my shoulder.
For the first time since Andrew’s death I felt safe. And I knew that everything was going to be all right.
PRAISE FOR
EVERYTHING TO GAIN
“This is potent stuff . . We genuinely root for Mal during her grueli
ng struggle to live on.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“Bradford’s . . . a master at keeping up [the] suspense . . . A good storyteller . . . Everything to Gain has a touch of Bonfire of the Vanities and a touch of Cosmopolitan. . . . It’s a good one to take for a long airplane flight.”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“You may fall in love with Mallory Keswick . . . cry real tears . . . cheer for her.”
Chicago Tribune
A Secret Affair
DEDICATION
As always, for Bob,
with all my love
CHAPTER
ONE
Sarajevo, August 1995
He was closing the small padlock on his duffle bag when a deafening explosion brought his head up swiftly. He listened acutely, with accustomed practice, fully expecting to hear another bomb exploding. But there was nothing. Only silence.
Bill Fitzgerald, chief foreign correspondent for CNS, the American cable news network, put on his flak jacket and rushed out of the room.
Tearing down the stairs and into the large atrium, he crossed it and left the Holiday Inn through a back door. The front entrance, which faced Sniper Alley, as it was called, had not been used since the beginning of the war. It was too dangerous.
Glancing up, Bill’s eyes scanned the sky. It was a soft, cerulean blue, filled with recumbent white clouds but otherwise empty. There were no warplanes in sight.
An armored Land Rover came barreling down the street where he was standing and skidded to a stop next to him.
The driver was a British journalist, Geoffrey Jackson, an old friend, who worked for the Daily Mail. “The explosion came from over there,” Geoffrey said. “That direction.” He gestured ahead, and asked, “Want a lift?”
“Sure do, thanks, Geoff,” Bill replied and hopped into the Land Rover.
As they raced along the street, Bill wondered what had caused the explosion, then said aloud to Geoffrey, “It was more than likely a bomb lobbed into Sarajevo by the Serbs in the hills, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely,” Geoffrey agreed. “They’re well entrenched up there, and let’s face it, they never stop attacking the city. The way they are sniping at civilians is getting to me. I don’t want to die from a stray rifle shot covering this bloody war.”
“Me neither.”
“Where’s your crew?” Geoffrey asked as he drove on, peering through the windscreen intently, looking for signs of trouble, praying to avoid it.
“They went out earlier, to reconnoiter, while I was packing my bags. We’re supposed to leave Sarajevo today. For a week’s relaxation and rest in Italy.”
“Lucky sods!” Geoffrey laughed. “Can I carry your bags?”
Bill laughed with him. “Sure, come with us, why don’t you?”
“If only, mate, if only.”
A few minutes later Geoffrey was pulling up near an open marketplace. “This is where the damn thing fell,” the British journalist said, his jolly face suddenly turning grim. “Bleeding Serbs, won’t they ever stop killing Bosnian civilians? They’re fucking gangsters, that’s all they are.”
“You know. I know. Every journalist in the Balkans knows. But does the Western alliance know?”
“Bunch of idiots, if you ask me,” Geoffrey answered and parked the Land Rover. He and Bill jumped out.
“Thanks for the ride,” Bill said. “See you later. I’ve got to find my crew.”
“Yeah. See you, Bill.” Geoffrey disappeared into the mêlée.
Bill followed him.
Chaos reigned.
Women and children were running amok; fires burned everywhere. He was assaulted by a cacophony of sounds . . . loud rumblings as several buildings disintegrated into piles of rubble; the screams of terrified women and children; the moans of the wounded and the dying; the keening of mothers hunched over their children, who lay dead in the marketplace.
Bill clambered over the half-demolished wall of a house and jumped down into another area of the marketplace. Glancing around, his heart tightened at the human carnage. It was horrific.
He had covered the war in the Balkans for a long time, on and off for almost three years now; it was brutal, a savage war, and still he did not understand why America turned the other cheek, behaved as if it were not happening. That was something quite incomprehensible to him.
A cold chill swept through him, and his step faltered for a moment as he walked past a young woman sobbing and cradling her lifeless child in her arms, the child’s blood spilling onto the dark earth.
He closed his eyes for a split second, steadied himself before walking on. He was a foreign correspondent and a war correspondent, and it was his job to bring the news to the people. He could not permit emotion to get in the way of his reporting or his judgment; he could never become involved with the events he was covering. He had to be impartial. But sometimes, goddamnit, he couldn’t help getting involved. It got to him occasionally . . . the pain, the human suffering. And it was always the innocent who were the most hurt.
As he moved around the perimeter of the marketplace, his eyes took in everything . . . the burning buildings, the destruction, the weary, defeated people, the wounded. He shuddered, then coughed. The air was foul, filled with thick black smoke, the smell of burning rubber, the stench of death. He drew to a halt, and his eyes swept the area yet again, looking for his crew. He was certain they had heard the explosion and were now here. They had to be somewhere in the crowd.
Finally, he spotted them.
His cameraman, Mike Williams, and Joe Alonzo, his soundman, were right in the thick of it, feverishly filming, along with other television crews and photographers who must have arrived on the scene immediately.
Running over to join the CNS crew, Bill shouted above the din, “What the hell happened here? Another bomb?”
“A mortar shell,” Joe answered, swinging his eyes to meet Bill’s. “There must be twenty or thirty dead.”
“Probably more,” Mike added without turning, zooming his lens toward two dazed-looking young children covered in blood and clinging to each other in terror. “The marketplace was real busy . . .” Mike stopped the camera, grimaced as he looked over at Bill. “A lot of women and children were here. They got caught. This is a real pisser.”
Oh, Jesus,” Bill said.
Joe said, “The mortar shell made one helluva crater.”
Bill looked over at it, and said softly, in a hard voice, “The Serbs had to know the marketplace would be busy. This is an atrocity.”
“Yes. Another one,” Mike remarked dryly. “But we’ve come to expect that, haven’t we?”
Bill nodded, and he and Mike exchanged knowing looks.
“Wholesale slaughter of civilians—” Bill began and stopped abruptly, biting his lip. Mike and Joe had heard it all before, so why bother to repeat himself? Still, he knew he would do so later, when he did his telecast to the States. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself.
There was a sudden flurry of additional activity at the far side of the marketplace. Ambulances were driving into the area, followed by armored personnel carriers manned by UN troops, and several official UN cars, all trying to find places to park.
“Here they come, better late than never,” Joe muttered in an acerbic tone. “There’s not much they can do. Except cart off the wounded. Bury the dead.”
Bill made no response. His brain was whirling, words and phrases racing through his head as he prepared his story in his mind. He wanted his telecast to be graphic, moving, vivid, and hard-hitting.
“I guess we’re not going to get our R & R after all,” Mike said, a brow lifting. “We won’t be leaving today, will we, Bill?”
Bill roused himself from his concentration. “No, we can’t leave, Mike. We have to cover the aftermath of this, and there’s bound to be one . . . of some kind. If Clinton and the other Western leaders don’t do something drastic, something especially meaningful, there’s bound to be a public outcry.”
“They’ll do nothing,” Joe grumbled. “They’ve all been derelict in their duty. They’ve let the Serbs get away with murder, and right from the beginning.”
Bill nodded in agreement. Joe was only voicing what every journalist and television newsman in Bosnia knew only too well. Turning to Mike, he asked, “How much footage do we have so far?”
“A lot. Joe and I were practically the first in the marketplace, seconds after the mortar shell went off. We were in the jeep, just around the corner when it happened. I started filming at once. It’s pretty bloody, gory stuff, Bill.”
“Gruesome,” Joe added emphatically.
Bill said, “It must be shown.” Then, looking at Mike, he went on quickly, “I’d like you to find a place where we can film my spot, if possible one that’s highly dramatic.”
“You got it, Bill. When do you want to start rolling the tape?”
“In about ten minutes. I’m going to go over there first, talk to some of those UN people clustered near the ambulances, see what else I can find out.”
“Okay, and I’ll do a rekky, look for a good spot,” Mike assured him.
William Patrick Fitzgerald was a renowned newsman, the undoubted star at Cable News Systems, noted for his measured, accurate, but hard-hitting reports from the world’s battlefields and troublespots.
His fair coloring and clean-cut, boyish good looks belied his thirty-three years, and his tough demeanor stood him in great stead in front of the television camera.
He had earnest blue eyes and a warm smile that bespoke his sincerity, and integrity was implicit in his nature. These qualities underscored his genuine believability, were part of his huge success on television. Because he had this enormous credibility, people trusted him, had confidence in him. They paid attention to his words, listened to everything he had to say, and took him very seriously.
Everything to Gain and a Secret Affair Page 35
