Immediate Family (11 page)

After the commericial break, Lauren was shown working with her physical therapists at the rehab center where she’d been holed up for the past six months. It was the first time Stevie, or anyone, had seen anything more than old photos and footage, and she was struck by how altered Lauren was, almost unrecognizable from the pretty, vivacious young actress she’d been. Twelve years in a coma had left her wasted, the muscles in her legs so atrophied she was able to take only a few, wobbly steps at a time. Yet her face was oddly unlined, that of a very old baby. Had it not been for her once lustrous chestnut mane gone gray and cut short in a utilitarian bob, it might have seemed that time had passed her by while she slept. Only her pale aqua eyes were the same; they gazed with disturbing intensity from the hollows of her face.

The camera moved in for a close-up, and Stevie felt herself tense. What secrets lay behind those eyes? What revelations about to unfold? As Lauren sat facing Diane in the rehab center’s lounge, Diane gently led her down that path, Lauren answering each question slowly and haltingly, like someone learning to talk again after a stroke, her speech slurred. Then, at last, it came: the money question.

“There’s been a lot of talk about what really happened that night.” Diane spoke in a hushed, confidential voice, leaning forward slightly in her chair. “Many people have a hard time believing it was an accident, as Grant claims. They seem pretty convinced he tried to kill you. What would you say to those people?”

A tight shot of Lauren showed her frowning, as if she was trying to recollect, or was perhaps haunted by the memory. Stevie was sweating now, almost as if it were
her
in the hot seat. Then, in her halting voice, Lauren began, “What I remember about that night…”

T
here’s a lot of interest in this one, Myron.” Franny, in her office on the twenty-eighth floor of the William Morris agency, paced back and forth in front of her desk, the phone to her ear. “I’m only giving you first crack because I think you guys would do the best job with it.”

Myron Lefkowitz, her favorite editor at Random House, chuckled at the other end of the line. “What, you think I don’t know you’d drop me like a hot potato if you got a better offer?”

“So make me an offer I can’t refuse.”

“First novels don’t sell,” said Myron.

“It could be the next
Da Vinci Code.”

“From your lips to God’s ear.”

“When was the last time a manuscript kept you up half the night?”

“It’s good. I’m not saying it’s not good. But a first-time author? You and I both know it’s a crap shoot.” Myron wanted it; she could smell it. But he was being canny.

“There’s always room for that one breakout book,” she reminded him.

“I don’t like to put all my money on one horse.”

“Myron, I’m telling you, if you pass this up, you’ll regret it.”

“Okay, here’s what I’ll do. Three-fifty, and that includes foreign. Believe me, you won’t get a better offer.”

“Four hundred,” she countered. “We keep foreign, you take book club and audio.”

They went back and forth for a while longer, hammering out a deal that would be weeks in contract negotiations before it was finalized. As soon as she got off the phone, she called the author to give him the good news. An art history professor at William and Mary, Terry Lockhart probably made less in one year than what it would cost just to print the book. He was speechless when she told him she had an offer on the table for a two-book deal, for close to a million dollars.

Her stomach was rumbling by the time she wrapped up the morning’s business. These days she felt as if she were eating, not just for two, but for an entire regiment. Yet it didn’t bother her a bit that she’d outgrown even her roomiest clothes. Never in a lifetime of despairing over every extra pound would she have thought she’d revel in being fat.

Franny realized that for the first time in her life she was truly happy. Oh, there had been moments here and there when she’d known a kind of contentment, but it never lasted very long. There was always some crisis at work or a bad breakup or a deal that fell through. But these days when she got up in the morning, she actually found herself looking forward to the day. She sang in the shower and walked with a bounce in her step.

Keith, of course, had more than a little to do with it. Her L.A. hottie, as Emerson liked to call him, had become a fixture in her life, if only a long-distance one. She picked up the phone now to give him a call. It had been a couple of days, and she found herself missing him.

“Hey, you,” she said, when he picked up. “This is your agent calling.”

He chuckled. “So is this work-related?”

“Did you have something else in mind?”

“Hmmm…let’s see. Depends on how kinky you want to get at the office.”

“The last woman here to get propositioned filed a sexual harassment suit,” she informed him.

“Uh-oh. Then I better keep my hands to myself.”

“You’d need pretty long arms otherwise.”

He heaved a mock sigh, as if bemoaning the miles between them. “Which reminds me, have you booked your flight yet?”

“I was going to do it today.” She was flying out to visit him next month, but she’d been so busy at work and preoccupied with the baby the rest of the time, she hadn’t had a free moment to call her travel agent. “I just hope you’ll still recognize me when you see me.”

“It’s only been a few weeks.” He’d flown out for a long weekend in June. “How much bigger could you be?” She pictured Keith at the other end, with his bare feet propped on his cluttered desk, wearing jeans and his faded Black Sabbath T-shirt.

“Let’s just say pantyhose is no longer an option.”

“That just means there’ll be more of you to love.”

They bantered back and forth a few minutes longer before a glance at her watch reminded her of the weekly staff meeting she’d be late for if she didn’t hurry. “Gotta run,” she told him. “I’ll call you tonight. Are you going to be around?”

“Where else would I be? I have a slave-driver for an agent.”

She grinned. “I’ll tell her to cut you some slack.”

“Miss you, babe.”

“Me, too.”

“It won’t always be like this. One of these days, we won’t have to take out second home loans to pay our phone bills.” He spoke teasingly, but she caught an undercurrent of seriousness.

For several moments after she hung up, she sat lost in thought, the meeting forgotten. More and more lately their talk had been straying into the future tense. There was only one problem: If she and Keith were to get married, she’d have to be the one to relocate. His elderly parents, who lived nearby, depended on him too much for him to consider moving. Career-wise, she could swing it; she could transfer to the agency’s Beverly Hills branch. But that still left Jay. He’d made it clear he wanted to be an active part of their child’s life. How could she deprive him of that?

She hated, too, the thought of being so far away from him. It was bad enough that she’d hardly seen him since he’d taken on the Uruchima Motors account. If he wasn’t working, he was rushing home to Vivienne or to a Lamaze class. Franny understood, of course. His wife and child
should
be his top priority, especially with Vivienne due any day. Still…Each milestone—the first time she heard the baby’s heartbeat and felt it kick, her elation when she’d gotten the results of her amnio showing everything to be normal—she’d found herself wishing Jay were around so she could share it with him.

Franny shook off those thoughts and gathered up her notes for the meeting. She was heading out of her office when the phone rang. Her assistant, Robin, called after her, “Franny! It’s Jay.” From her tone it sounded urgent.

Franny raced back to her desk and snatched up the phone.

“I’m at the hospital. They just took Viv into surgery.” Jay sounded as if he were trying not to panic. The baby’s heart rate had dropped suddenly, he explained, so they’d been forced to do a C-section.

“Hold tight. I’m on my way,” she told him, slamming down the phone.

She was hurrying down the hall when she bumped into Hannah Moreland. Hannah was carrying a stack of bound galleys for one of her authors’ books. “Hot off the press. Isn’t it gorgeous?” she said, thrusting out the topmost one for Franny to see. Her smile faded as she took in Franny’s expression. “Something wrong?”

“I won’t know until later. Right now I have to get to the hospital,” Franny told her, continuing on toward the elevator.

Hannah fell into step with her. “Isn’t it a little soon for that?” She was Franny’s closest friend at work, and had been the first in the office to know about Franny’s pregnancy. Ever since, she’d played mother hen, sharing everything from tips on combating morning sickness to maternity clothes.

“It’s Jay. His wife’s in labor.”

Hannah’s heart-shaped face creased with concern. “Everything okay?”

Franny shook her head. “Apparently there’s some sort of problem with the baby.”

“I’m sure it’ll turn out okay. It usually does,” Hannah assured her, a touch too heartily. “Mattie came out feet first and we thought we were going lose him, but look at him now. Keep the faith.” She patted Franny’s arm as she took her leave, giving her a sympathetic look.

Franny could only pray Hannah was right, that she’d arrive at the hospital to find everything okay, little Stephan safe and sound in his mother’s arms.

Jay had never been so scared in all his life. Throughout Vivienne’s pregnancy he’d joked about being an old hand at this. Growing up on a farm, he’d helped deliver calves on more than one occasion when an extra hand was required. But this was entirely different. This was his child. His son. Who at this very moment might be taking his first breath…or last. While Jay could do nothing but sit and fret.

Thank God Franny was on her way. She’d calm his fears and make this tightness in his chest go away, so he could breathe normally again.

Jay rose from his chair in the visitors’ lounge and headed over to the vending machine for a cup of coffee he didn’t want or need. Once more seated, he let the steaming Styrofoam cup warm his chilled fingers as he stared sightlessly ahead.

His thoughts strayed to his own father, who’d been a mostly silent presence in his life, simply treading the groove worn through the years from house to barn. Up each morning while it was still dark to feed and milk the cows, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year. Everett Gunderson was most often described as a man of few words, as if that were a virtue, but to Jay, growing up, his father’s silences were a kind of torment. He could never guess what was behind that stern visage, and so he was forever filling in the blanks. Was he a disappointment to his dad? A son who’d preferred books to farming and who’d sought to escape at the earliest opportunity. His mother had told him that they’d wanted more children. If he’d had brothers or sisters, there would have been someone to inherit the farm. Someone with whom his father could talk about herd size and milk prices and rumen pH.

All Jay knew was that he didn’t want to be the kind of dad his father had been. He wanted his son to grow up knowing he was loved. All he needed was to be given that chance….

The first part of the labor had gone smoothly. How could things have gone so badly awry so quickly? One minute he was coaching Vivienne with her breathing and massaging her lower back, and the next she was being whisked off to the OR. The doctors and nurses had done little to assauge his fears, they’d been too busy seeing to Vivienne. But from the concerned looks on their faces he knew it was serious.

Now he glanced up at the clock on the wall over the nurse’s station, surprised to see that it was almost noon. Any moment now, he told himself, Dr. Leavitt would emerge from the OR to inform him that everything had gone well, and mother and son were both fine. He kept his mind focused on that thought as he stared vacantly ahead, the minutes ticking by.

Please, Franny, get here soon,
he mouthed silently. If ever he’d needed his best friend, it was now.

Franny emerged from the elevator on the fifth floor and quickly located the visitors’ lounge, where she found Jay hunched over a steaming Styrofoam cup, staring into space.

“Jay.”

He jerked a little at the sound of her voice, as if startled, then he looked up at her, his face flooding with relief. He lowered the cup onto the floor and rose to greet her. Wordlessly, she put her arms around him. He clung to her for a long moment before drawing back. “She’s still in surgery,” he informed her in a voice scratchy with exhaustion.

“The baby?”

He shook his head. “No news yet.” His shirt was creased, and his hair rumpled, as if from his nervously running his fingers through it. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.

“What went wrong?” Franny asked gently.

Jay sank back down in his chair and she settled into the one beside it. “I wish I knew. She was doing great,” he said, absently scrubbing his stubbled jaw with an open hand. “We got to the hospital around nine. The doctor said she still had a ways to go, but everything looked fine. Then all of a sudden it wasn’t fine.” He looked up at Franny with red-rimmed eyes, as if seeking reassurance.

“She’ll be okay, you’ll see. Don’t forget what great shape she’s in,” she reminded him. “All that health food and yoga, the kid’s going to come out doing handsprings.”

Jay gave a hollow laugh. They’d teased Vivienne often enough about the extremes to which she’d gone. Though at the moment it seemed more ironic than amusing.

They sat in silence, Jay gripping Franny’s hand tightly, until the doctor appeared, a heavyset, gray-haired man in scrubs. His expression was grim as he took Jay aside. From where she sat, Franny couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she could tell from Jay’s expression that the news wasn’t good.

When Jay returned to her side, his face was drained of color and his eyes wore a strange, unfocused look. “Jay, what’s wrong? Is Viv all right?” Franny cried, jumping to her feet.

“She’s fine,” he said, in an odd, flat voice.

She let out a breath. “Thank God.”

He met her gaze then, and she saw a terrible anguish dawning in his face. “The baby…” His voice cracked. “He didn’t make it.”

It was as if the floor had dropped from underneath her: Franny felt as if she were plummeting downward in midair. “Oh, God. Oh, Jay.” She didn’t know what to say. How did you console someone after such a loss?

He didn’t rail or cry out. He just stood there, his chest rising and falling rapidly, as if he were having trouble getting enough oxygen. “I should go to her,” he said at last, in that same dead voice.

Franny placed a hand on his arm. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

He gave her a small, grim smile, and with obvious effort straightened his shoulders and set off down the corridor.