In His Father's Footsteps

by Danielle Steel

  “I’m pregnant, Max, and I want an abortion,” she said in a monotone. He thought he hadn’t heard her right at first, and he looked up, surprised and confused.

  “What did you just say?” She thought the children had gone to bed, but the door was open, and Hélène’s room was right next door.

  “You heard me.” She could barely remember the last time they’d made love, except it had been after a talk when he’d promised her things would be different and he’d try to stay home more. She had believed him, and nothing had changed.

  The doctor had just told her she was three months pregnant, and if she wanted to have an abortion, it would have to be very soon. She wanted to do it right after Christmas.

  “Is it mine?” he asked her with an icy expression, which was the ultimate low blow, and the meanest thing he’d ever said to her.

  “Obviously,” Julie said just as coldly. “I don’t know what you do while you’re flying around the country, but I don’t screw around at home. I’m three months pregnant and it’s yours.” She had been planning to tell him about the baby on their anniversary, but his not coming home had made the decision to abort easier for her, and she knew it was the right one. She looked at him with an iron resolve. “We already have three children you never bother to spend time with, and to be honest, I don’t see enough of them either. Your mother said that to me once or twice and she was right. The last thing we need is a fourth. We hardly have a marriage anymore, we don’t need another child we can both ignore. Having Daisy was a mistake. This one would be a joke.”

  “Julie, please.” He stood up from his desk when he realized she was serious. “You can’t do something like that. If you’re pregnant, it was meant to be. I just lost both my parents, and I’ve been half crazy over it, with regret and guilt, your mother is very sick, we can’t kill our baby. We have wonderful children, and I know I’m a shit husband right now, but I love you.” He tried to put his arms around her, and she pushed him away.

  “I can’t handle another child,” she said, being honest with him for the first time. “I don’t think I even had postpartum depression last time, I just didn’t want another kid. We should have stopped at Hélène, or at most Kendra, when you decided you wanted to be the richest man on the planet and forget about us.”

  “I’ll slow down. I’ll stop traveling as much. I promise. Hire another nanny, hire ten of them if you want. I don’t care. But you can’t have an abortion. Don’t kill our baby. That’s a life inside you that’s part of both of us.”

  “There is no ‘us,’ Max. I don’t even know who you are anymore. What’s worse, I don’t know who I am. But I know who I’m not. I’m not the young girl you married who wanted to do anything you wanted me to, just to keep you happy, and have six kids. I’ll go crazy if we have another child. I’m not cut out for this. I’m a lousy mother. I hate everything about my life, and I’m tired of being married to a man who’s never here.”

  “Are you telling me you want a divorce?” He looked shocked as he stood across the room from her, afraid to move near her again. She was on the verge of hysteria, something inside her had snapped, and she knew it too. When she found out she was pregnant again, it felt like a death sentence to her.

  “I don’t know what I’m telling you, except that I’m not having another baby, and I’m going to have an abortion this week. I don’t have time to wait. I could have done it without telling you, but I thought you had a right to know.” She also wanted to punish him for all the times he was never there, and she knew this would hurt. It was the ultimate rejection, worse than a divorce. She didn’t want to have his child. “I’m not going through all that again for a baby that neither of us want.”

  “I want it! I want you! I love our daughters, and I’m sorry I’m not here enough. One day, we’ll all be glad I did this. Our children and their children will be secure forever.”

  “I don’t care, and maybe you won’t either. Maybe they’d rather have a father who shows up once in a while and remembers their birthdays. Hélène cried for hours when you didn’t come home for hers after you said you would.”

  “I forgot,” he said, looking morbidly remorseful.

  “I know you did, just like you forgot Kendra’s and your own and our anniversary. You don’t care about any of us. I looked like a complete idiot when you didn’t show up for your birthday dinner, which wasn’t even a surprise. Several people asked me if you’d left me. This baby is just another problem we don’t need.”

  “It’s a baby, it’s a human being, it looks like one. It’s sucking its thumb right now. You’ve seen the sonograms. How can you kill a child?”

  “Because you’re killing all of us, and you don’t even know it. All you care about is making more money and your goddamn business deals. It’s an addiction, like gambling or drugs. Work is your drug of choice.” And as she said it, he remembered he was going to London, leaving on Christmas night, and he hadn’t told her yet, but how could he leave her now? He really did care about her and their children, he just had too much on his plate to balance it all to everyone’s satisfaction, even his own. It reminded him of what his father had said at lunch. As usual, he was right. And now he was about to lose something he cared about much more than a business deal, his baby, and maybe his wife. She didn’t look far from walking out, and maybe after the abortion, she would. She looked capable of it now.

  “You should have stayed single, Max. You could have had a girl in every city all across the United States, and wouldn’t have had to bother coming home to us at all.”

  “I want to come home to you, all of you, even our unborn child.” He said it with feeling, but she no longer believed anything he said. He hadn’t kept a promise to her in years.

  “No, you don’t. This is just another baby who’ll turn into a child you’ll ignore, unless it’s a boy.”

  “Is it?” he asked with a gleam in his eye, and she shrugged.

  “I have no idea. I didn’t try to find out. I don’t want to know what sex it is when they kill it,” she said harshly, but she felt like she was fighting for her sanity and her life. She couldn’t do it again.

  “I’m begging you,” he said with real feeling in his eyes, “don’t do this. At least think about it.”

  “I have. I was going to tell you about it on our anniversary. But as usual, you didn’t show up. That made the decision easier for me. But even if you had shown up, having this baby would be a huge mistake for both of us, and definitely for me.”

  “I’ll do anything you want if you have it. If it were in me, I couldn’t kill a part of you. I love you, Julie. And I’m sorry things haven’t worked out the way we wanted. My work life turned out to be a lot more demanding and complicated than I thought. But I still want you and our family. You mean everything to me.” She didn’t answer him and just looked at him with despair from across the room.

  “I’m not the wife I thought I would be either,” she said sadly. “I didn’t know it when we got married, but I’m not cut out to have all these kids. They like the nannies better than they do me and they’re probably right. I’m not a good mother to them. I’m a better wife to you, or I would be if you came home more often.”

  “Please think about it,” he pleaded with her again. “I have to go to London for two days and I can’t get out of it, it’s too big a deal and there are too many people involved. Just think about it while I’m gone. Give me another chance. I’ll do everything I can not to disappoint you. I may slip once in a while, but I’ll spend all the time I can at home. I give you my word.”

  “Your word is worth nothing around here,” she said quietly and walked out of the room. He sat in his study alone for an hour thinking of everything she had said, and poured himself a stiff drink. He wanted to do everything he could to convince her not to have an abortion. And finally he turned off the lights and went to their bedroom, and the door was locked. It w
as the first time she had ever done that to him, and he walked quietly down the hall and upstairs to one of their guest rooms, and slept there that night thinking about the baby growing inside her, and praying he could convince her to keep it.

  Neither of them knew it, but Hélène had heard everything they said to each other. And she wanted her mother to keep the baby too. It wasn’t right to kill it. She wanted to tell her that she would help take care of the baby. She helped the nannies with Daisy all the time. But she knew she wasn’t supposed to be listening, and she was nine years old and they wouldn’t pay attention to what she said. She didn’t know why they were so angry at each other. Maybe that was why he was always away and she was always out, because they thought they had too many kids. But at least she knew her father loved her mother if he wanted her to have the baby. She would just have to see what would happen next, but she couldn’t kill a baby. That would be terrible. And maybe the police would take her away and put her in jail if she did.

  Hélène closed her door very softly and slipped back into bed and said a prayer that God, or her dad, or someone would make her mom stop being so angry and do the right thing.

  Chapter 16

  Max tried to talk to Julie before he left for London on Christmas night, but she refused to discuss the pregnancy with him. They had spent Christmas with the children, and put a good face on it for them, but she avoided him whenever they weren’t around. He continued to sleep in the guest room until he left. He didn’t want to push her, and she made it clear that she wanted to be left alone. She was still furious about the anniversary he hadn’t come home for and the birthday dinner she’d given for him that he’d missed, and there was nothing he could say or do to make up for it right now.

  As he rode to the airport from Greenwich, he felt as though his whole life was coming apart. His parents had died, his wife wanted to abort his baby, and their marriage was hanging by a thread. He knew that none of the things she’d said to him were wrong. He’d been neglecting his children and his wife, and his mother had told him that Julie was never around. She clearly felt overwhelmed by the family he had wanted, and she hadn’t bargained for a husband who would be gone most of the time and didn’t share the responsibility of three children with her. It was too much for her alone. Her own support system had fallen apart. The father who had indulged and protected her was gone, her mother was dying, and her sisters were three thousand miles away now. And she had a husband she never saw, and children she had no idea how to take care of.

  Max was planning to look up his old friend Steve in London and was thinking of talking to him about it. Steve had moved to London years ago and was working for an investment bank there, and he’d had troubles of his own. He had married an English girl and gotten divorced a few years before. And he’d written recently that he was getting married again. Maybe he’d have some insights about how to calm things down. But Max already knew he was failing as a husband and father, and he wasn’t even sure he’d been adequate as a son. Everything in his life was going wrong. He didn’t even know if Julie would have the abortion before he got back. And as much as he wanted to, he had no right to stop her. As she had pointed out to him that morning in the five minutes they had spent in the kitchen alone, her body was her own, even if the child she was carrying was his.

  * * *

  —

  He had dinner with Steve the night before he left London and he didn’t have any magical solutions to share. His first wife had been a model, and she’d cheated on him with his best friend. The divorce had been expensive but simple, and easier because they had no kids and had only been married for three years. The woman he was about to marry was forty, a barrister, and had two children of her own. And he was hoping to have a child with her. It was a marriage that made sense. He’d already lived with her for three years so there were no surprises there. He was sorry to hear that Max and Julie were having trouble, but he wasn’t too surprised given the way Max worked.

  “You’re going to have to spend more time at home if you want it to work,” Steve said simply. He told him that Jared had gotten divorced too, and Andy was married to a doctor he’d gone to school with. They lived in Texas and had four kids. Max had lost touch with the other two, but he and Steve called each other from time to time. It was nice spending an evening with him before he went home. He was still his closest friend although they hardly ever saw each other.

  His flight was delayed at Heathrow and he got in late. The house was quiet when Max got there, and their bedroom door was unlocked, which he took as a good sign. It was two in the morning, and Julie was sound asleep. He showered and changed into pajamas and slipped in quietly beside her, and she was already up when he woke up in the morning, and he couldn’t find her anywhere. The nanny feeding the children in the kitchen said she had gone to see her mother, who wasn’t doing well. And she didn’t come back until late afternoon.

  He spent the afternoon playing with the children, and helped Hélène assemble the dollhouse she’d gotten for Christmas. She seemed unusually subdued and she agreed with everything he wanted to do. He wondered if she sensed what was going on. Kendra was her usual exuberant self. She was always full of bright ideas and announced at breakfast that she was going to write a book, and Daisy was pounding on a cooking pot with a spoon that someone had handed her. Julie looked serious when she walked in.

  “How’s your mother?” he asked her in a subdued tone after he left Hélène with her dollhouse and went to find his wife.

  “Not well,” she said tersely and left the room again. She was dying a slow painful death and since Julie’s sisters no longer lived nearby all the difficult decisions and painful tasks fell to her, although she spent hours on the phone with them. It was a hard time for her. Her mother was in the final stages of cancer now, and he was relieved his own mother had gone quickly, and hadn’t had to live through that.

  Julie left for the city early the next morning and he wondered if she was going to the doctor to have the abortion. She hadn’t said a word to him the night before. She went to bed and turned her back to him, and in the morning she was gone. Waiting to hear her decision was killing him, and he’d heard nothing from her while he was in London, which didn’t seem like a good sign.

  He spent the morning returning calls, and had lunch with the girls in the kitchen, and at two o’clock he saw Julie drive up. He heard her come in, and go straight to their bedroom. He joined her there a few minutes later with a worried look.

  “Are you all right?” he asked her, wondering if she’d had the procedure, but she was standing in her dressing room and looked at him.

  “I’m keeping the baby,” she said in a flat voice. “I had a sonogram this morning. The baby’s fine.” He felt a wave of relief wash over him as she said it, and he walked over and tried to put his arms around her and she turned away. “I saw it on the sonogram. It was too hard to do anything about it after that,” she said matter-of-factly. “You were right. I’m having another sonogram in four weeks, and we can find out the sex then, if you want.” She said it as though they were ordering furniture or drapes. She wasn’t happy about it, but she knew she was doing the right thing, and they had enough nannies to take care of another baby. There were two on duty at all times. She had turned into a baby machine for him. But all she had to do was carry them and give birth to them, she didn’t have to take care of them. It made him sad to see how unhappy she was, and he hoped she’d warm up to the idea if things got better between the two of them.

  “Thank you,” he said quietly, and she nodded and walked past him. She had put on jeans and a sweatshirt, and he saw then that the baby was already growing and she couldn’t close her jeans. It made it seem that much more real.

  She only spoke to him when she had to for the rest of the week, but he stuck around. And they stayed home on New Year’s Eve. He vaguely remembered that she had wanted to have friends over, but apparently hadn’t
done anything about it, or canceled it after the birthday dinner fiasco. He didn’t dare ask which. They had dinner together in the kitchen, after the children went to bed and the nannies to their rooms.

  “I saw Steve in London,” he said to make conversation with her, and she looked interested for a minute. It was the first time she’d actually let him talk to her in a week.

  “How is he?”

  “He’s fine. He’s marrying that woman he’s been living with for years. I haven’t met her, but she sounds nice and he’s crazy about her. They’re going to try to have a baby, which may not be so easy since she’s forty. He seems happy.” He spared her the news of Jared’s divorce and Andy’s four kids, both of which seemed like dangerous subjects at the moment in the situation they were in. But he was grateful that she was having his baby. He noticed that she hadn’t bothered to dress for dinner, even though it was New Year’s Eve. The cook had left food in the refrigerator for them, and he saw that she was barely eating and wondered if she was sick from the pregnancy. “How are you feeling?” he asked her cautiously.

  “Fine,” she said dully. “I haven’t been sick at all this time, which is how I missed it until now. The doctor said that might not be a good sign, but everything looked fine on the sonogram. At least it’s not twins,” she said and he smiled. He would have loved that but didn’t dare say it to her. And it wasn’t his body that was going to be occupied by another human being for the next six months, and go through surgery again in the end, since after two Caesarean sections, she’d have to have one for sure this time, which was another reason why she didn’t want another child. It had taken her a long time to recover from the last one.

  “I’m glad you feel okay at least.” Their conversation was awkward and stilted, but it was hard to come back from where they’d been before he left for London. “I put Hélène’s dollhouse together for her yesterday, and she was very quiet. Do you think she heard us the other night?”