The Happiest Day (27 page)

“Rachel, please
forgive me for being obtuse but it is the middle of the night.  Are you saying
that he was lying?”

“Yes, I’m saying
he was lying.”

“Do you know who
killed her?”

“Of course I do. 
It was Norris.  That’s why I testified for him.  He needed an alibi.”  She
turned, anger surging anew.  “Damn it, Peter, how could you believe him?”

He sat up, rubbing
his hands over his face.  “I confronted him the night I came out to the estate
after you returned from Europe.  I told him I knew he was lying because you had
been with me until five in the morning.  I accused him of killing my mother and
Stern.  That’s when he told me that you had killed them and he was doing all of
this to protect you from going to jail.  He said you had killed Helen and Stern
and he had helped you stage the scene.”

“So, all of these
years, you thought I killed your mother?”

“I didn’t blame
you for it.  I knew how much she had hated you…I figured it was probably
self-defense and you were too scared to come forward with the truth.”  He
looked up at her.  “Blanche found out and blackmailed me into staying with
her.  She knew I’d do anything to protect you.  The day I asked her for a
divorce so I could be with you, she told me that she had stolen Norris’ journal
and everything was in there.  There was nothing I could do.  I had to break it
off with you.”

“Norris’ journal?”
Rachel asked, the blood draining from her face.  “She had it all along?  I
wondered what happened to it.”  Then she laughed, almost incredulously. 
“Norris’ journal didn’t say that I killed them, though.  I’m sure of that. 
Blanche played a bluff and you fell for it.”

“How do you know
that he didn’t lie in his journal?”

“Because Geoff
found it the day he died.  He confronted Norris with the truth and told him
that he was going public with it.  Norris shot and killed him.”

Tears filled
Peter’s eyes.  “Damn,” he whispered.  “Damn it.  Poor Geoff…just trying to do
what was right.”

“I know.  So how
did Blanche even know there was a journal?”

“She slept with
Leonard.  She said that Leonard told her that you had killed Helen and Stern. 
Then she overheard talk at Geoff’s wake about a journal and went looking for
it.  She said that it confirmed what Leonard had told her.”

“Well, I don’t
doubt that Leonard believed I had killed them, but I know that the journal held
Norris’ confession.  No doubt, he wrote about how he had told Leonard and you
that I was the true murderer.  Blanche knew exactly what to say to you, didn’t
she?”

Peter nodded. 
“She would have known that I already believed that you did it.  All she had to
do was confirm it and I fell for it.  Rachel, I’m sorry.  I should have come to
you.  I just thought…I though if that journal became public, you would be
destroyed.”

Rachel wondered if
Norris’ revealed any other secrets in the journal.  “Did she tell you anything
else about what she read?”  Her stomach clenched at what Peter would think of
her if he knew that there was a chance that Norris was her father.

Peter looked away,
not sure what to say.  “Well…”  He looked back to her and their eyes met.  Able
to read each other’s thoughts, they realized that the other one knew the truth. 
He exhaled, relieved to finally have it out in the open.  “When did you find
out?” he asked softly.

“Right before he
committed suicide.  We fought…and he was so emotionally overwrought that the
truth slipped.  Oh Peter, if I had known, I would have never-”

He held up his
hand.  “Of course you wouldn’t have.  I know it.  I have a confession to make,
Rachel.”  He heaved a sigh.  “This is hard but I don’t want there to be any
secrets between us any longer.  I found out the day you lost Ruby.”

Her mouth fell
open.  “And you let me…oh, Peter…”

“No, listen to
me.”  He stood but didn’t approach her.  “I was furious and demanded that he
divorce you but he refused.  I did make him promise that he wouldn’t touch you
anymore.”

“Oh my God,” she
breathed.  “That’s why he refused to be with me after that.”

“That’s why I
started coming out every day.  I wanted to make sure that he kept his word. 
Rachel, I swear to you, I would have told you the truth if I had thought that
he was breaking his promise.”

“He never touched
me after that.  He offered once but I could tell that he didn’t really want me.” 
She sat on the ottoman, feeling completely deflated.  “There’s one more thing. 
One more lie he was living.”

“Tell me,” he
ordered gently.  “It’s best to get it all out now.”

She looked up at
him, thinking of her words carefully.  “He admitted to hiring somebody to kill
my father.  The man panicked and killed my mother, too.  The man he hired was
Frederick Stern.”

Peter made a
hissing sound as he sucked air in.  “That God-damned son of a bitch,” he bit
out.

“I found my
mother’s locket in his desk and when I showed it to him, he spilled his guts. 
He had loved my mother and wanted her to leave my father so we could all be a
family.  My mother refused, telling him that the affair had been a mistake.  So
Norris hired Stern to kill my father so my mother would have no choice but to
turn to him.  My mother interfered and Stern killed her, too.  You know the
rest of the story.”

“If I had known
any of the truth, how different our lives would be right now.”

She drew in a
tremulous breath.  All of the hurt from sixteen years ago seemed to be dissipating
like dry leaves in the wind.  “We’ve been caught in a massive web of lies for
so many years…my whole life, I guess.”

“It’s over now. 
There are no more secrets.”

It was an
incredible feeling.  She felt so free.  She turned her head to look at him.  “So
what happens now?”

“What do you want
to happen?” he countered.  “I don’t think I’ve made any secret of my feelings.”

“Even after all of
this?”

“Nothing is going
to change my feelings for you, Spider.  I have been in love with you for at
least seventeen years.  It seems like you’re stuck with me.”  His face darkened
suddenly.  “Speaking of, damn it, what were you doing with Brighton tonight?”

She laughed,
surprised at his question.  Then a blush worked its way up her cheeks.  “Trying
to make you jealous.”

“Well, that
certainly backfired on you, didn’t it?”

“Yes!  I expected
you to sweep me into your arms and tell me that I belonged to you, and only
you.  Instead, you turn into a caveman, yanking my arm and spouting off with
your filthy mouth.  It made me angry.”

“Next time, give
me the script before the show starts, all right?”

She lifted one
shoulder shyly.  “I hope there won’t be a next time.”

His face
softened.  “Let’s start over, all right?”  He walked over to her and pulled her
up to stand in front of him.  He held out his hand.  “Hello, my name is Peter
MacGregor.  I saw you from across the room.  Do you believe in love at first
sight?”

She placed her
hand in his.  “Hi, I’m Rachel…Warner,” she said definitively.  “This seems
crazy, but I think I do.”

He smiled and
surprisingly dropped to one knee.  “Rachel Warner,” he said, keeping her hand
tightly in his, “will you marry me?”

She damned the
tears that temporarily prevented her from answering him.  She had married once
out of obligation and once out of the fear of being alone.  She finally was
marrying for the right reason.  “I would be overjoyed to become your wife,” she
whispered through her tears.

“Within a week?”
he pushed.  “I’m too old to do anymore waiting.”

She saw the silver
threaded liberally through his dark hair and realized with a tiny shock that he
was forty-four years old.  He had waited long enough to be happy.

“The happiest
day,” she reminded him, her voice shaking with emotion.

His eyes lit in
remembrance.  “We said that day on the beach that it was the happiest day
ever.  We’re going to change that.  Next Saturday, our children and Bert and
his family are going to join us at the estate and Laurie is going to marry us. 
Then,” he stood and drew her into his arms, “you and I are going to spend the
next fifty years just enjoying each other and our children.”  He kissed her
gently.  “Grandchildren, great-grandchildren…”

She stroked his
cheeks, rough with stubble, and said, “I left the children alone to come see
you.  We should go back.”

“I’ll pack a bag,”
he said.  “I don’t intend on spending another night away from you ever again.”

She helped him
pack and they locked his home, driving in his car back to the estate.  They
slept together in each other’s arms and rose the next morning to four
surprised, then very happy children.  The next Saturday, Laurie married them in
the small chapel with all four children gathered around them.

In early May,
1940, Rachel received a letter with a French postmark.  It was delivered to her
at the newspaper and the handwriting was feminine.  It was addressed to Mrs.
Theodore Bressler.  Without opening it, she knew that it was from Martine
DuPont.  She held it between her fingers and debated whether or not to open
it.  The hurt she had suffered two years earlier could still be called to the
surface with little effort and Rachel had no desire to fall into that emotional
abyss again.

It sat on her desk
for the afternoon and her eyes continued to be drawn to it.  She was finding it
hard to concentrate on anything else.  As the rest of the country, she followed
the news in Europe closely and had thought of Martine and her children as the
news of the invasion of France had made headlines.  She had prayed that the
family Theo had created was safe.

At five p.m.,
Peter strolled into her office, his shirt sleeves rolled up, his tie loosened. 
“Let’s hit the road,” he ordered with a smile.  “I’m starving.”

“All right,”
Rachel said quietly, standing and smoothing her skirt.

Peter’s eyes
narrowed.  “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she
said automatically.

“Bullshit,” he
retorted bluntly.  “What’s happened?”

She picked up the
still unopened letter and handed it to him.  “It’s from Martine DuPont.”

He turned it
over.  “No return address.  How do you know it’s from her?”

“I just know.” 
She sat back down in her chair.  “Go ahead, open it.”

He picked up the
letter opener on her desk and slit open the envelope.  He unfolded the single
sheet of stationary and scanned the lines.  When he looked up, he had a serious
look in his eyes.  “She wants to send the children to you.”

Rachel fell back
in her chair, her hand covering her mouth in shock.  “How can she ask such a
thing?”

“She fears for
their lives.  Especially the girl.  She said she wouldn’t trust anyone else to
take care of them.  Only you.”

A pain squeezed
Rachel’s heart.  She had done nothing to earn this woman’s trust.  “Why just
the children?” she asked in a quiet voice, looking down at her hands which were
now crossed in her lap.  “Why won’t she come?”

“She’s ill, dying
from the sound of it.”

Rachel was silent
for long moments.  Peter waited patiently, knowing that his wife would make the
right choice.  “Does she need help getting them out?”

“No.  She just
needs word that it’s all right to send them here.  We can meet them in New
York.”

Rachel stood,
pulling her pocketbook out of her desk and squaring her shoulders.  Finally she
looked up at Peter.  “We can stop on the way home and send a telegram.”  She
came around the desk and he stopped her by placing hands on her shoulders.

“It’s the right
thing to do,” he said gently.

“I know.  Almost
thirty years ago, your family took in two orphaned children.  It would be
unbearably cruel of me to not return the favor.”

He nodded and
placed a soft kiss on her lips.  “I love you.”  He placed his arm around her
shoulder.  “What will we tell the children?”

“We’ll just tell
them that they are the children of friend of Theo’s from his travels.  They
don’t need to know the truth.”  She looked up at him.  “Do you agree?”

He shook his
head.  “No.  For decades, this family was ruled by secrets.  I swore we
wouldn’t allow any more lies.”

“I don’t want the
children to hate their father.”

“When they find
out, and they will, they will hate you for the lie.” He hugged her tightly to
his side.  “We’ll tell them together.”

They sent a
telegram to Martine giving her the go-ahead to send the children then drove
home in silence.  Before they entered the house, Peter asked, “Are you all
right?”

“I’m scared,” she
admitted ruefully.  “As scared as I was the night I had to tell David about
you.”

“Look how that
turned out,” he teased.

She laughed a
little and they entered their home.  They greeted the children and ate dinner
with them before telling them that they needed to speak with them on a serious
subject.  Sixteen year old David looked immediately apprehensive.  Lily
shrieked, “Are you going to have a baby?”  At nine, Lily was obsessed with
babies.

“No,” Peter
answered, reaching out to ruffle his step-daughter’s hair.  “Well, I mean, I’m
not sure.  Are you?” he asked Rachel, his eyes hopeful.

“Gross,” Steven
muttered.  Matthew laughed at his brother.

“Could we stay
focused?” Rachel asked firmly.  “We’re going to have guests come to live with
us.”

“Live with us?”
David asked, his eyebrows coming together.  “What do you mean?”

Rachel took a deep
breath and plunged ahead.  “I have something to tell all of you.  Fourteen
years ago, your father…Theo,” she amended so David wouldn’t misunderstand, “was
travelling in France and met a woman.”  Anxiety welled up in her and she
couldn’t speak for a moment.  She looked to Peter for help.

“This is not easy
to tell you but Theo had a relationship with this woman.  You mustn’t think
less of him, and certainly not of her.”

“I don’t believe
you,” Steven said, a flush staining his cheeks.  At twelve, he was
uncomfortable with his new-found knowledge of sexual relations.

“Shut up, Steve,”
Matthew said.  Older than his brother by just two years, he displayed a
maturity Steven had not yet developed.  “Who was she?”

“Her name is Martine
DuPont.”

“Why did he do
it?” Matthew asked.

“I’ll never know,”
Rachel finally found her voice again.  “I didn’t know until he died and Peter
and I went to France to claim his body.”

Lily’s lower lip
trembled.  “Was he in love with her?”

“I think so,” Rachel
said.  “It didn’t stop his love for all of us, but for whatever reason he felt
the need to have a family there as well.”

“A family?” David
asked.  “He had kids with her?”

“Yes.  They had
two sons and a daughter.”

It was as if she
had dropped a bomb in the middle of the table.  Finally Matthew said, “Dad died
two years ago.  Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I didn’t want to
hurt you and frankly, I didn’t think you ever needed to know.  They lived in
France.”

“So, why now?  Why
are they coming here?” Steven asked.  He looked angry.

“Because of the
war and because Martine is ill.”

“She’s going to
die,” Peter said bluntly.  “She’s afraid for the children’s safety, their lives
even.  She’s asked if she can send them to us to live.”

“I don’t want them
to,” Steven said.

“Steven, when I
was just eight years old, my parents died.  If Norris Thornton had not taken
Uncle Laurie and me in, who knows what would have happened to us?  We can’t
turn these children away.  They are your brothers and sister.”

Lily sat up
straighter.  “They are?”

“Your
half-brothers and sister,” Peter explained.  “You all share a father.”

“I have a sister?”
she asked, a smile lighting her face.  “How old is she?”

“About thirteen, I
think,” Rachel answered.  “The boys are a little younger.  Maybe around ten or
eleven.”

“So I’m still the
baby?” she asked and even Steven had to laugh.

They decided to
meet the children as a family.  They travelled to New York together and spent a
few days taking in shows and experiencing the city life.  The night before they
were to meet Martine’s children, she checked on the boys who were sharing the
hotel room next to the one she, Peter, and Lily shared.

Matthew and Steven
were already sleeping in one bed, but David was sitting against the headboard
in his bed, reading a book.  He looked up as she entered quietly and smiled. 
As always, she marveled at how much he looked like his father.  She wondered if
things had been different, if Peter had never seen David that day and everyone
had continued to believe that Theo was his real father, how would she have felt
looking at her son growing every day into a replica of his real father?

“Big day
tomorrow,” she commented, sitting on the bed next to him.  “Are you feeling all
right about this?”

“I guess.  We’re
not exactly a traditional family, are we?”  He closed the book and leaned
against the pillow.  “I worry about it, though.  What if they look like Matt
and Steve?  They both look like Dad, especially Steve.  What will people say?”

Rachel scooted
back and leaned against the pillow with him and sighed.  “Can I tell you a
story?”

“Sure.”

“You know that
Norris Thornton took Uncle Laurie and me in when our parents were murdered.”

“Yes.”

“I was young, just
eight, and Laurie was four.  I was too young to notice that my brother looked
just like Norris’ son, Geoff.  It wasn’t until I was grown that I saw it and
realized that it meant something that I had never thought could be true.”

David’s jaw
dropped.  “Uncle Laurie is Norris’ son?”

“Yes.  It broke my
heart to think that my mother had been unfaithful.  She was gone, though, and
I’ll never know how she could have done what she did.”

“Does Uncle Laurie
know?”

“Yes.  He figured
it out, as well.  He was very accepting of it, like he is about everything, but
it was harder for me because I remembered my parents so well.  I don’t
understand what happened any more than I understand what Theo did.  As strange
as we may be, though, we are a family.”  She picked up his hand.  “It’s like
history is repeating itself.  Promise me you won’t fall in love with the girl.”

David laughed. 
“Well, first of all, she’s just a kid.  Secondly, she’s my siblings’ sister. 
It’s all just a little too strange for me.”

Rachel laughed
with him but didn’t remind him that she had just been a kid when she met his
father and their own connection had been “a little too strange.”

The next day, the
met a bedraggled and sad looking trio of children who had been watched over by
an older widowed woman who had taken pity on them, but were essentially already
orphaned.  Peter stepped forward immediately extending his hands to them. 
“Hello, children,” he said in French.  “Do you remember me?  My wife and I
visited with your mother a few years ago.  My name is Peter MacGregor.  Do you
speak any English?”

“Yes,” the girl
answered softly.  “We all speak English quite well.  Our mother taught us.” 
Tears came unbidden to her large brown eyes.  “My name is Lorraine, this is
Adrian, and this is Edmond, but we call him Teddy.”

The boys had the
chestnut hair and hazel eyes of their father, but Lorraine reminded Rachel of
her mother, with her light brown hair and brown eyes.  More than that, though,
the young teenager had a strength of character that was evident.  She felt an
immediate surge of protectiveness for this young girl whose entire life had
been turned upside down.  That had been her at one time.

“I’m Rachel
MacGregor,” she said, extending her hand.  The girl shook it politely.  “I’m
sorry for what has happened, but I want you to know that you will be safe with
us.”  She remembered Norris’ words to her over thirty years ago: 
Everything’s
going to be all right.  I’ve come to rescue you.

“
Merci
,
thank you,” Lorraine answered.  Her eyes warily took in the rest of the group.

“These are our
children,” Rachel continued.  “This is David, Matthew, Steven, and Lily.”

The boys politely
greeted the children but Lily couldn’t contain her enthusiasm.  She leapt
forward and grabbed the startled Lorraine’s hand.  “You’re my big sister now,”
she informed her.  “I always wanted a big sister.  I’m the baby and the only
girl and it’s been dreadful.”

Lorraine laughed
then, breaking the tension.  “I have always wanted a sister, too,” she informed
Lily.  “We’ll be the best of friends, I’m sure.”

Rachel turned her
attention to Adrian and Teddy and her heart melted.  They looked like Theo, but
more than that they looked like heart broken young boys.  She moved so that she
stood behind them, laying a hand on each boy’s back.  “Now how old are you?”

“I’m eleven and
Teddy is ten,” Adrian answered, his voice trembling with fatigue and fear.

Matthew stepped
up.  “I’m fourteen and Steven is twelve.”  The four boys who resembled each
other so much examined the others closely.  “We live in a big house so you can
each have your own room if you want, but if you want to share a room, you can
do that, too.  We have horses.  Do you ride?”

The younger of the
two, Teddy, inhaled sharply.  “Horses?  Our grandparents had horses on their
farm, but they were work horses.  When they died, we had to sell them.”

“Well, our horses
are just for fun,” Steven said in a boastful voice.  “We can teach you to
ride.”  He stole a look at his step-father, and then amended, “Well, Peter can
teach you, too.”

“We can talk on
the train,” Peter intervened.  “We have a long trip home but we must get to the
station if we hope to catch the last train of the day.”

“Are you hungry?”
Rachel asked the children as Peter hailed two taxis.

The affirmed that
they were and Rachel promised them a meal as soon as they settled on the
train.  She rode in one taxi with Lily, Lorraine, and David while Peter took
the remaining four boys with him in the next taxi.  Lily couldn’t sit still and
twisted around, waving frantically.

“I see Peter!” she
exclaimed.  “He’s right behind us.”

“Dad will give you
an earful if you don’t turn around and sit down,” David warned her.

“Why do you call
him Dad but Lily calls him Peter?” Lorraine asked curiously.

“He’s my real
dad,” David explained to her.  “Theo was my step-father, and Peter is Lily’s
step-father.”

“Oh, I see,”
Lorraine said but the frown between her eyes belied the fact.