Finding Ashley

by Danielle Steel

  Michaela was so overwrought that she slept for most of the flight, and only woke up for the last hour. She washed her face and brushed her hair, changed to a black blouse and a blazer, and her looks made Melissa think of Jackie Kennedy’s return from Dallas after JFK was shot. Michaela looked a little like her, minus the pink bloodstained suit.

  * * *

  —

  When they landed, police were standing on the runway, and escorted Michaela into a waiting black van, and spirited her away with Melissa beside her. The casket was removed separately into another unmarked van, and it proved to be complicated to get it to the funeral home, but they managed it with the help of the Los Angeles police.

  David was waiting for them at home, and Michaela nearly collapsed in his arms, and then they sat in the living room and talked for a while. Michaela thanked Melissa for everything she’d done in the last twenty-four hours.

  “The city has gone insane,” David told Michaela. “Streets are closed, people are crying in the street, they estimate a hundred thousand at the vigil tonight. You can’t get within five blocks of her house. To tell you the truth, I think she would have loved it,” he said, and Michaela laughed and thought about it.

  “I think she would have too.”

  “This is like mourning royalty. The queen of England or something. The funeral is going to be complicated,” he said. “We had three hundred people on the list. Her assistants called and sent emails and texts, requesting an immediate response. They all accepted. We can accommodate them in the church, and they’re closing the highway to the cemetery so the paparazzi can’t get to us.” David put Michaela to bed then. The kids were sound asleep and hadn’t been able to go out all day. He took Melissa to the guest room after she said good night to her daughter. Michaela was still looking dazed but a little better than before.

  In the morning when Melissa woke up, feeling like someone had battered her body with a lead pipe, after all the stress and travel of the day before, Andrew was standing next to her bed in the guest room, staring down at her, and Alexandra was next to him.

  “Our Gigi Marla died,” he told her solemnly. “She was our grandma, but we weren’t supposed to say it. She didn’t like that word. Now we have you,” Andy said practically, summing up the situation, to explain it to Melissa. “You’re our grandma too,” Alexandra informed her. “She fell down in an airplane. It fell down in a storm. It was a helipopter. And God took her out of the helipopter and took her straight up to Heaven. She’s there now,” she said. “I miss her. Can we play Barbies now on my iPad?”

  “Sure,” Melissa said, and Alexandra climbed into bed with her in her nightgown. Andrew was wearing his Superman pajamas. Alexandra had brought the iPad with her and turned it on. They were supposed to dress Barbie dolls on the screen in a multitude of costumes. Being a grandmother, especially to a little girl, was new to Melissa, but she’d had fun with them when they’d visited her in the Berkshires.

  “You know, your snowman was still there yesterday. He’s a little lopsided, but he’s still there,” Melissa told them.

  “I want to visit you again,” Andrew said, climbing onto the bed too, and he made a face when he saw the Barbies. Michaela found the three of them there, intent over the iPad, when she came to look for the children a few minutes later. She looked much better, and more human.

  “Did they wake you up?” she asked Melissa.

  “No, I was awake,” Melissa said, grinning.

  “We’re dressing Barbie,” Alexandra told her mother.

  “Barbie is stupid,” Andrew said.

  “So is Superman,” Alexandra shot back at him.

  “That’s enough. Go eat your breakfast,” Michaela told them, and they scampered off.

  “Sorry if they woke you,” Michaela apologized.

  “They’re adorable.”

  Michaela had explained about her mother, but she didn’t want them at the funeral. They were too young and it would be too upsetting.

  There was supposed to be a rosary that night, but the police said it would be too difficult to contain, so they were having Marla’s closest friends to Michaela and David’s house instead, about fifty of them, for champagne. She would have liked that better. And the number had grown to a hundred by noon.

  The funeral was going to be the next day, and the burial immediately following, with a reception for Marla’s friends and colleagues at her home afterward. It was a major production. Her three assistants were handling it. They were camped out in Michaela’s dining room, and checked with her every five minutes about some detail, wanting her approval.

  “I didn’t think it would be like this,” Michaela said as they sat in the kitchen, and David joined them.

  “Of course it was going to be like this. She was the biggest, most glamorous star in the world. She was a legend. This is Old Hollywood, and she would have loved every minute of it. I’m sure she’s watching and beaming from ear to ear,” he said, and Michaela laughed.

  “If you need to get away, you can come and stay with me,” Melissa offered.

  “I think it will die down pretty fast,” Michaela said.

  “It may take a while,” David said more realistically.

  “Thank you for letting me stay here,” Melissa said. She didn’t want to be intrusive, or let Michaela down either, but she was looking better, with her kids and David around, which added an element of normalcy and comfort for her. With all the intense media attention, they were trying to keep it under control, as small as possible, and on a tight schedule so it didn’t turn into a circus. They wanted it to be as quiet and dignified as possible in the circumstances.

  Melissa wore a somber black dress that night for the reception of Marla’s hundred closest friends. Every famous face in Hollywood was there, and Melissa recognized every one of them. Michaela introduced her to the first arrivals, and after that their living room was jammed. They arrived at seven and left at midnight, and drank rivers of champagne.

  The next day looked like a Cecil B. DeMille production, with three hundred invited guests at the funeral, and thousands of fans outside behind police lines, with a police officer every few feet to keep them behind the barricades.

  The ceremony was touching, but Melissa felt like she was in a movie, not at the funeral of anyone’s mother. It was pure Marla with the flowers Michaela had wanted. Michaela wore a black Chanel suit, and a small black hat, and looked like Jackie Kennedy again. Marla would have approved. Melissa stood behind Michaela and no one had any idea who she was. She thought she looked like a nanny, and Norm laughed when she said it to him later on the phone.

  There were thousands of people outside the church. And the highway was closed for them so the funeral procession could get to the cemetery, and back again. Marla got as much fanfare and respect as any president.

  And then finally, it was over. Melissa had cold chicken in the kitchen that night with David, Michaela, and the children, and she sent them back to school the next day.

  It was so different from Robbie’s funeral, and her parents’, that it was hard to relate to it, and yet it had seemed so perfect for the huge star Melissa had met only once. It made Melissa realize again how different Michaela’s life had been with Marla than it would have been as the illegitimate child of a sixteen-year-old girl from a much simpler background. In the end, maybe the nuns at Saint Blaise’s hadn’t been so wrong.

  “She would have loved it,” Michaela said again after the children left for school. David had gone to his office, and life seemed almost normal, although Marla’s assistants and housekeeper had reported that there were still about a thousand people standing outside Marla’s house. The crowd had dispersed outside Michaela’s.

  “It must have been exciting growing up with all that,” Melissa said, still overwhelmed by it.

  “Sometimes. But I didn’t really like it. I dreamed of
having someone like you as my mother. It’s not easy being a star or the daughter of one, and Marla loved to feed the frenzy. She said it was good for the box office. She never lost sight of that. But she had a good heart.”

  “I really liked her when I met her,” Melissa said, smiling at the memory.

  “She liked you too.”

  They sat there quietly, thinking about her for a few minutes. Melissa had said goodbye to the children at breakfast. She was flying back to Boston that afternoon, and Norm had offered to pick her up. She had tried to describe the whole scene to him, and he had watched some of it on TV, the crowds in the streets, and outside the church, many of them crying.

  When she left, she promised to come and visit again soon. She hadn’t planned to intrude on them too often, but with Marla gone, Michaela was hungry to see more of Melissa, and might need her for a while. She was going back to work herself that afternoon.

  Melissa hugged her tight when she left her, and told her she loved her. Then she got into the Uber, and waved as they drove away. It had been an extraordinary experience being there. It was an odd feeling knowing that she had handed her baby over to this woman moments after she was born, and Marla had taken care of her for thirty-three years. And now, when the helicopter crashed in Scotland, Marla had handed their daughter back to her. It was Melissa’s turn now. She had waited years for this, and Melissa smiled as they drove away. She had the odd feeling that Marla was smiling at her, and wished her well. She could imagine her saying “Take good care of our girl.” And Melissa promised her silently she would.

  Chapter 17

  Norm picked Melissa up at the Boston airport and drove her home. She tried to describe all of the past few days to him in the car on the way back. It sounded more like a movie now than real life. Marla had been larger than life, and she had left behind a daughter who loved her, and had all the right values and was a good mother herself. It was the only legacy that mattered in Melissa’s eyes. More than all her movies and the fact that she was a star. Michaela was her best legacy. And it was Melissa who had given her the gift in the beginning. And now Marla had given her back.

  She said something to Norm about it the next day when he got home from work. She’d been thinking about it all day.

  “It’s funny how people come and go, isn’t it? Michaela disappeared out of my life. Then Robbie came, and he left, and now Michaela is back again. Marla left, and now I’m here for Michaela and her kids. Carson walked out, and now here you are. Your wife left, and I came along. One person leaves and another one shows up. It’s as though we always have what we need, in different forms, at the right time, and not the way we expected.

  “Life takes people away, so cruelly at times, and then gives someone else back. And nothing happens the way we plan it. Robbie should have lived a long life, but he didn’t. My marriage to Carson seemed so solid, but it wasn’t. It collapsed like a house of cards. And then Jane came along, and seemed like such a bore, but she’s perfect for him. And you were completely unexpected in my life. You thought you were married forever, but you weren’t. I finally accepted that Hattie would be a nun forever, and now she’s not. Michaela was gone forever, and now she’s back. We actually have no idea what’s going to happen, or how it’s going to turn out.” He thought about it and agreed with her, and he liked the way she put it.

  “We’re not supposed to know,” he said, thinking about it. “It would take all the fun out of living. Which reminds me, I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” he said, looking nervous. “Now that you’re a respectable grandmother and a mother again, and they’ll come to visit, do we need to get married?” He was hoping she’d say yes, but didn’t know how else to put it without scaring her off.

  “ ‘Need to’? No, I don’t think so. It’s not a guarantee of anything, and we’ve both learned that it won’t protect us. If one of us goes rogue, the whole thing falls apart.”

  “I’m not planning to go rogue, are you?” he asked her, and she shook her head.

  “I kind of like it like this,” she admitted. “A little naughty, a lot of fun. It’s very sexy. I don’t want more kids. I’m almost too old anyway, and you don’t want them either. I kind of love it the way it is.” He was a little disappointed, but didn’t want to sound weak, or “wet,” and admit it to her. “You could move in though. That would be nice.” She smiled and moved closer to him, and he liked the sound of that.

  “I like that idea. It sounds manly, ‘she’s the woman I live with,’ ” he said, deepening his voice, and she laughed.

  “Just sinful enough, but not too much so,” she teased him, and got the desired result. He couldn’t keep his hands off her, and didn’t want to.

  “And if we live together, we can make love anytime we want,” he said happily.

  “Sounds like a plan,” she said, and followed him up to bed.

  * * *

  —

  He moved in that weekend. Hattie drove up for the day to tell Melissa about her plans for Africa, working with the UN team. They were sending her reams of information, and she was leaving in five weeks. She had just signed her papers for the Vatican and the archdiocese, requesting to be released from her vows. Her hand shook as she signed them, but she still knew it was right.

  Hattie and Norm finally met, and had lunch in the kitchen. And afterward Hattie noticed Norm carrying his boxes up the stairs, and she whispered to Melissa. “Is he moving in?”

  “Looks like it,” Melissa said, with a gleam in her eye.

  “Are you two getting married?”

  “Not that I know of. Not right now anyway.”

  “Do you think you would, if he asked you?” She was curious about them. They seemed to get along so well. Hattie liked him a lot. He was someone you could count on. She had always liked Carson, but Norm and Melissa seemed like the perfect match.

  “I’ve learned not to predict the future,” Melissa said wisely. “I’d be wrong every time. Like you. I never thought you’d leave the convent.”

  “Neither did I,” Hattie said, looking pensive. She smiled at Norm as he headed up the stairs with a suitcase.

  He had finished moving in by the time she left. She was driving back to New York. And she was going to come and spend a few days with them before she left for Africa.

  Melissa and Norm talked about it over dinner that night. He made her one of his perfect cheese soufflés. “I realized today that everyone ends up in their right place,” Melissa said. “Michaela with David and her children, with me in the background. You and I. Carson with Jane and her daughters. Hattie in Africa. It’s like a kaleidoscope, all the bright pieces get shaken up and form a new design periodically. I like the way things are now. It all happens the way it’s meant to, even if we don’t like it at times. But there’s always a new chapter,” she said, looking thoughtful.

  “Is there?” he asked her, raising an eyebrow, intrigued by what she said.

  “I think there is. It’ll give me something to write about.” She had never said that to him before.

  “Will it?”

  “I think so. I have an idea for a book,” she announced. She hadn’t said that in years. But so much had happened. She looked excited when she said it, and he leaned over and kissed her. She smiled, thinking of Marla and her advice to keep writing. Maybe she was right. Her old books had been fueled by anger. But all of that had changed. Finding Michaela had changed everything. She wasn’t angry anymore. The next book would be different. About the mysteries of life.

  They finished the soufflé. And Melissa was still smiling when he followed her upstairs, and she started telling him about the book.

  To my Wonderful Children,

  Beatie, Trevor, Todd, Nick,

  Sam, Victoria, Vanessa,

  Maxx, and Zara,

  You are the greatest gift in my life!

  I thank God for yo
u every minute

  of every day

  in my life.

  The greatest blessing,

  the greatest joy!

  I love you

  with all my heart forever,

  Mom / ds.

  By Danielle Steel

  FINDING ASHLEY • NINE LIVES • THE AFFAIR • NEIGHBORS • ALL THAT GLITTERS • ROYAL • DADDY’S GIRLS • THE WEDDING DRESS • THE NUMBERS GAME • MORAL COMPASS • SPY • CHILD’S PLAY • THE DARK SIDE • LOST AND FOUND • BLESSING IN DISGUISE • SILENT NIGHT • TURNING POINT • BEAUCHAMP HALL • IN HIS FATHER’S FOOTSTEPS • THE GOOD FIGHT • THE CAST • ACCIDENTAL HEROES • FALL FROM GRACE • PAST PERFECT • FAIRYTALE • THE RIGHT TIME • THE DUCHESS • AGAINST ALL ODDS • DANGEROUS GAMES • THE MISTRESS • THE AWARD • RUSHING WATERS • MAGIC • THE APARTMENT • PROPERTY OF A NOBLEWOMAN • BLUE • PRECIOUS GIFTS • UNDERCOVER • COUNTRY • PRODIGAL SON • PEGASUS • A PERFECT LIFE • POWER PLAY • WINNERS • FIRST SIGHT • UNTIL THE END OF TIME • THE SINS OF THE MOTHER • FRIENDS FOREVER • BETRAYAL • HOTEL VENDÔME • HAPPY BIRTHDAY • 44 CHARLES STREET • LEGACY • FAMILY TIES • BIG GIRL • SOUTHERN LIGHTS • MATTERS OF THE HEART • ONE DAY AT A TIME • A GOOD WOMAN • ROGUE • HONOR THYSELF • AMAZING GRACE • BUNGALOW 2 • SISTERS • H.R.H. • COMING OUT • THE HOUSE • TOXIC BACHELORS • MIRACLE • IMPOSSIBLE • ECHOES • SECOND CHANCE • RANSOM • SAFE HARBOUR • JOHNNY ANGEL • DATING GAME • ANSWERED PRAYERS • SUNSET IN ST. TROPEZ • THE COTTAGE • THE KISS • LEAP OF FAITH • LONE EAGLE • JOURNEY • THE HOUSE ON HOPE STREET • THE WEDDING • IRRESISTIBLE FORCES • GRANNY DAN • BITTERSWEET • MIRROR IMAGE • THE KLONE AND I • THE LONG ROAD HOME • THE GHOST • SPECIAL DELIVERY • THE RANCH • SILENT HONOR • MALICE • FIVE DAYS IN PARIS • LIGHTNING • WINGS • THE GIFT • ACCIDENT • VANISHED • MIXED BLESSINGS • JEWELS • NO GREATER LOVE • HEARTBEAT • MESSAGE FROM NAM • DADDY • STAR • ZOYA • KALEIDOSCOPE • FINE THINGS • WANDERLUST • SECRETS • FAMILY ALBUM • FULL CIRCLE • CHANGES • THURSTON HOUSE • CROSSINGS • ONCE IN A LIFETIME • A PERFECT STRANGER • REMEMBRANCE • PALOMINO • LOVE: POEMS • THE RING • LOVING • TO LOVE AGAIN • SUMMER’S END • SEASON OF PASSION • THE PROMISE • NOW AND FOREVER • PASSION’S PROMISE • GOING HOME