Malice

by Danielle Steel

  “The doctor.” She grinned.

  “How's the pelvis?”

  “Fine. It's healed beautifully.” She was grinning from ear to ear by then, and he was laughing at her. She looked so cute when she had a secret. “There's something else though.”

  Charles's face grew serious. “Something wrong?”

  “No.” She grinned and kissed him on the lips as she unzipped his trousers. Considering how cautiously they had begun, they had certainly made up for it since their engagement. “We're having a baby,” she whispered as he grew passionate and was about to lay her down on their bed, and he looked at her with complete amazement.

  “We are? Now?”

  “Not now, silly. In June. I think I got pregnant in Saint Bart's.”

  “Wow!” He was going to be a father for the first time, at forty-three, and it completely bowled him over. He had never been as happy in his life, and he could hardly wait to tell the entire world. “Is it still all right if we make love?”

  “Are you kidding?” she laughed at him. “We can make love till June.”

  “Are you sure we won't hurt anything?”

  “Promise.” They made love, as they always did, instead of lunch, and then he grabbed a hot dog from a stand on the street, and dashed back to his office. It was the best life had ever been for him, far better than being married to a movie star, far better than any romance he'd had as a kid. She was perfect for him, and he adored her.

  They spent Christmas in St. Moritz, and at Easter he wanted to take her to Hawaii, but took her to Palm Beach instead because it was closer, and she was almost seven months pregnant.

  She had an easy pregnancy, and everything had gone smoothly. The doctor was only mildly concerned about what would happen to her pelvis when she delivered. And if there was any sign of strain at all, he had warned her that he would do a cesarean section. But failing that, Charles had promised to be there, and in May they went to their Lamaze class at Lenox Hill. She had already decorated the nursery by then, and they went for long walks at night, up Madison Avenue, or down Park, and talked about their life, their good fortune, and their baby. It still startled them both, and they were both still amazed that, in bed at least, her past had never come back to haunt them.

  He had asked her once how she would feel if the story ever came out, about her father, and going to prison, and she had said honestly that she would hate it.

  “Why?” She wondered why he had even asked her.

  “Because those things come out some times,” he said philosophically. He had learned that with his last wife, and her constant exposure in the tabloids. Their divorce had made a huge stink and they had said everything from the rumor that she was on drugs, to the one that she was gay, to the one that he was. And finally, they had just left them alone, and they had gone their separate ways. But Grace's would undoubtedly be a much bigger story if it ever came out. But fortunately, for both of them, they were not in the public eye, and not important. He was just an ordinary citizen now, since he was no longer married to a star, and Grace was just his wife. It was perfect.

  She went into labor one night as they walked home. They had been window shopping on Madison Avenue, and she scarcely noticed the first pains. It was only after a while that she realized what had happened. They called the doctor and he told them to take their time, first babies were usually in no hurry.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her a thousand times, and she lay on their bed, watching TV, and eating Jell-O. “Are you sure that's what you're supposed to do?” he asked nervously. He felt a thousand years old as he watched her, fearing that she might have a hard time, or have the baby before they left the house. Lately, her belly had looked enormous. But she seemed unconcerned as she watched her favorite shows, drank ginger ale and ate ice cream. It was almost midnight when she finally started to look seriously uncomfortable and could no longer talk through the pains, which he knew was his sign to take her to the hospital and call the doctor.

  He called him again, and the doctor told them to come in. And as Charles helped her down the stairs, she snapped at him several times, and he smiled at her. This was the real thing. Pretty soon, they'd have a baby. It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him, and to her. And by the time they settled her in a labor room, she had calmed down again, but Grace was surprised by how much the contractions hurt, and how strong they were. Finally, by two a.m. she was panting and said she couldn't stand them any longer.

  Charles was doing everything he'd been taught to do, but none of it was helping, and he was starting to worry that they'd have to do a cesarean section. But as the pains got worse, she started to scream, and clutch at him, and he would have done anything to make it end. He kept asking the nurses to give her some medication.

  “Everything is fine, Mr. Mackenzie. Your wife is doing beautifully.” His wife looked like she was ready to die as she screamed again, and then finally they took her to the delivery room, and she started pushing. Charles thought he had never seen anything so painful, and he was sorry they'd ever done it. All he wanted to do was take her in his arms again, and make the pain stop for her. But nothing helped her now, and the doctor didn't want to give her medication. He said he really preferred natural childbirth, for mother and child. Charles wanted to kill him, as he watched what Grace was going through.

  She pushed for an hour, and it was five in the morning by then, Grace was beside herself with pain, and incoherent with the agony of each contraction. And as he watched her, he vowed they'd never do this again. He wanted to apologize to Grace for putting her through it. And he swore to himself that if she and the baby both came out of it alive, he'd never let this happen again. And just as he was about to promise never to lay a hand on her again, there was a terrifying scream from her, and a long, thin howl, and suddenly he found himself looking into the face of the son they had decided to call Andrew Charles Mackenzie. He had huge blue eyes like Grace, and dark red hair, but everything else about him was Charles, right down to his tiny fingers. For his father, it was exactly like looking into the mirror. He laughed and cried all at once as he looked at him.

  “Oh my God … he's so beautiful,” Charles said in awe of the baby, and bent to kiss his wife. She was lying flat now, after so much hard work, and looking suddenly ecstatic as she laughed and smiled at her husband.

  “Is the baby all right?” she asked over and over again, and as soon as they had cleaned him off and checked his lungs again, they handed him to his mother, and he lay at her breast, and immediately nuzzled close to her, while Charles watched them.

  “Grace … how can I ever thank you?” Charles said, wondering how he had managed to live so long without this baby. And how brave she was to go through all that for him. He had never been as touched or as much in love with anyone as he was with Grace at that moment.

  They went back to her room after that, and little Andrew lay by her side, and much to Charles's astonishment, they all went home the next morning. She was healthy and young, the baby was fine, and weighed just under nine pounds. They had had natural childbirth. There was no reason for them not to go home, her obstetrician explained. And Charles realized that he had a whole new world to discover. It was terrifying taking a baby home so soon, but Grace acted as though it was completely natural, and seemed totally at ease with her son from the very first moment he was born. It took Charles a few days, but within a week, he seemed like a practiced hand, and he bragged to everyone constantly about the baby. The only thing his friends didn't envy him was the sleepless nights he was having to live with. He left for the office every day feeling as though he'd been running on the wheel of a hamster cage all night. Master Andrew was waking up every two hours to be nursed, and it took him roughly an hour to go back to sleep again, and Charles only slighdy longer. He figured out that he was sleeping in fifteen-minute increments, and getting approximately two and a half hours sleep a night, which was roughly five and a half less than he needed. But it was fun anyway, and he was cra
zy about his wife and the baby.

  They rented a house in East Hampton for the month of July, and spent Grace's birthday there. Charles commuted two or three times a week, and she came back and forth with the baby to be with him. And in August he took two weeks off and they went to Martha's Vineyard to his old house. Grace thought she'd never been happier, and in October she found out she was pregnant again, and Charles was as delighted as she was.

  “Why don't we just have twins this time, and get it over with?” he said good-naturedly. He was really enjoying their son. And he was only getting four or five hours sleep a night which seemed like a lot now. It amused him that life could change so quickly.

  Their second baby took longer to come, and once again Charles found himself ready to promise to the gods that he would never touch his wife again, but this time the doctor finally gave in, and gave her some medication. It didn't help much, but it was something. And nineteen hours after labor began, Abigail Mackenzie pushed her way into the world and looked up at her father with an expression of amazement. He melted on the spot when he saw her. She was a miniature version of her mother, 6nly with her father's dark hair. She was a real beauty. And she managed to make a complete spectacle of herself by arriving on her mother's twenty-fifth birthday. Charles was almost forty-five, and those were the happy years.

  Grace was constantly busy with her children. She went to playgrounds and play groups and kindergyms, and music classes for toddlers. She was totally involved in doing everything with them. She worried a lot about being boring to Charles, but he seemed to love their life. It was all so new to him, and he was the envy of all who knew him, with a young, beautiful wife and a young family, he seemed to have the world by the tail.

  Grace had never gotten back to her charity work again, although she still talked about it. But just after Andrew was born, she gave a gift, in his name, to St. Andrew's Shelter. She gave them every penny she had left from Frank Wills. It seemed the best use for it she could think of. In some ways, it was blood money to her, and a relic of a life that had brought her nothing but grief. She was sure that Father Tim would find a happier use for it. And they gave another, smaller gift, when Abigail was born. But she hadn't been there to visit for a long time. She was too involved with her husband and children.

  For three years after Abigail was born, Grace spent every daytime moment with them, and her evenings with Charles, going to partners’ dinners and dinner parties. They went to the theater, and he introduced her to the opera, and she found that she liked it. Her entire life was opening up, and at times she felt guilty, knowing that in other places, other lives, people were less fortunate, and were suffering as she once had. She was so lucky and so free now.

  She wondered what had happened to Luana and Sally sometimes, and the women she had tried to help at St. Andrew's. But there didn't seem to be time for things like that anymore. She thought about David in California sometimes too, and wondered where he was now. Her life seemed so far removed from those troubled years. Sometimes even she had a hard time remembering that she had had any other life before marrying Charles. It was as though she had been born again the day she met him.

  She wanted to have another baby once Abigail started nursery school, but this time it didn't seem to happen. She was only twenty-eight by then, and her doctor said it was hard to know why sometimes it was easier to get pregnant than others. But she also knew that with all she'd been through before, she'd been lucky to get pregnant at all, and she was grateful to have the two children she had. She would stand there and just smile at them sometimes, watching them. And then she and Andrew would go to the kitchen and make cupcakes, or she and Abigail would cut out paper dolls, or string beads, or make pictures with spaghetti. She loved being with them, and she never got bored, or tired of them.

  And then one morning, as she was waiting to pick them up from nursery school, she sat in her kitchen reading the paper and having a cup of coffee. And as she read the headline of the New York Times, she felt her stomach turn over. A New York psychiatrist had killed his adopted child, a six-year-old girl, and his battered, hysterical wife had stood by helplessly and watched him do it. It brought tears to her eyes as she read about it. It was inconceivable, he was an educated man, with an important practice, and a teaching position with a major medical school. And still he had killed their little girl. They had had her since birth, and their natural child had died in an accident two years before, which was now considered suspect. Grace started to cry as she read about it, wanting to comfort the little girl, imagining her cries as her father beat her. It was so vivid that even after she left for school, she was still crying. And she was quiet as she and the children walked home for lunch. Andrew asked his mother what was the matter.

  “Nothing,” she started to say, and then thought better of it. She wanted to be honest with him. “I'm sad.”

  “Why, Mommy?” He was four years old and the cutest little boy she'd ever seen. He looked just like Charles except for his dark red hair and blue eyes, but all his features and expressions were his father's. It always made her smile just looking at him, but today, even seeing her own children made her grieve for the little girl who had been killed. “Why are you sad?” Andrew persisted, and her eyes filled with tears as she tried to answer.

  “Somebody hurt a little girl, and it made me sad when I heard about it.”

  “Did she go to the hospital?” he asked solemnly. He loved ambulances and police cars and sirens, even though they scared him a little too. But mostly they fascinated him. He was a lively child.

  Grace wasn't sure what to say to him then, whether or not to tell him that she was dead. But that was just too much to tell a four-year-old child. “I think so, Andrew. I think she's very sick.”

  “Let's make her a picture.” Grace nodded, and turned her head away so he wouldn't see her cry. There would be no more pictures for that little girl … no loving hands … no one to save her.

  There was a huge outcry in New York over the next few days. People were shocked and outraged. Teachers at the private school where she had been in first grade defended themselves, claiming that they had suspected nothing. She had been a frail child and bruised easily, and she had never said anything about what was happening at home. But hearing that infuriated Grace. Children never told of abuse at home, they always defended their abusers. And teachers knew that, and had to be especially alert these days.

  For days people left flowers and bouquets outside the Park Avenue building where she'd lived, and when Grace and Charles drove by it the next day, on their way to dinner with friends, Grace felt a sob catch in her throat as she caught sight of a big pink heart, made of tiny roses, with the little girl's name written on a pink ribbon across it.

  “I can't bear it,” she cried into a handkerchief he handed her. “I know what it's like,” she whispered … why don't people understand? Why don't they see? Why can't they stop it? Why did no one suspect what went on behind closed doors when atrocities were happening there? The real tragedy was that sometimes people did know and did nothing about it. It was that indifference that she wanted to stop. She wanted to shake people to wake them.

  Charles put an arm around her shoulders then. It hurt him to think of what she must have gone through, it made him want to be good to her every day, to make up for all of it, and he had been.

  “I want to go back to work,” she said as they drove along in the cab, and he looked at her, startled.

  “In an office?” He couldn't imagine why she would want to do that again. She was so happy at home with their children.

  But she smiled at him as she shook her head and blew her nose again. “Of course not … unless you need a new secretary,” she teased, and he grinned.

  “Not that I know of. So what did you have in mind?”

  “I was thinking of that little girl … I'd like to go back to working with battered women and kids again.” Her death had reminded Grace again of her debt, to help those who were living the same hell th
at she had. She had escaped, and she had come to a better place in her life, but she could not forget them. She knew that, in some way, she would always have a need to reach a hand back to them, to offer to help them.

  “Not at St. Andrew's,” he said firmly. He had never let her go back there to work again, only to visit, once they were married. And Father Tim had been transferred to Boston the year before, to start a similar shelter there. They had had a Christmas card from him. But Grace had something else in mind. Something more complicated, and far-reaching.

  “What about starting some kind of organization,” she had been thinking about it for two days, trying to figure out how she could help, and really make a difference, “that would reach out to people, not only in ghettos but middle-class neighborhoods, where the abuse is more of a surprise and better hidden. What about reaching out toward education, to teach educators and parents and clergymen and day-care workers, and everyone who works with kids, what to look for and how to deal with it when they see it … and reaching out to the public, people like you and me, and our neighbors and all the people who see abused kids every day and don't know it.”

  “That sounds like a big bite,” he said gendy, “but it's a great idea. Isn't there some existing program you could latch on to?”

  “There might be.” But five years ago there hadn't been, there was only the occasional shelter like St. Andrew's. And the various committees set up to help victims of abuse she heard of seemed to be badly run and ineffective. “I don't really know where to start. Maybe I need to do some research.”

  “Maybe you need to stop worrying so much,” he said, smiling at her in the cab, as he leaned over and kissed her. “The last time you let your big heart run away with you, you got pretty badly beaten up. Maybe it's time for you to let other people take care of it. I don't want you getting hurt again.”

  “If I hadn't, you'd never have married me,” she said smugly, and he laughed.