I'll Be Seeing You (16 page)

When he left the room, Meghan clasped her hands on her knees. Her legs felt weak and wobbly, as though if she stood up they would not support her.
Annie,
she thought. A vivid memory sprang into her mind of discussing names with her father. “How did you pick Meghan Anne for me?”

“My two favorite names in the world are Meghan and Annie. And that's how you became Meghan Anne.”

You got to use your two favorite names, after all, Dad, Meghan thought bitterly. When Cyrus Graham returned, followed by the maid carrying a luncheon tray, Meghan accepted a cup of tea and a finger sandwich.

“I can't tell you how shocked I am,” she said, and was glad she was able to at least sound calm. “Now tell me about
him.
Suddenly my father has become a total stranger to me.”

It was not a pretty story. Richard Collins, her grandfather, had married seventeen-year-old Aurelia Crowley when she became pregnant. “He felt it was the honorable thing,” Graham said. “He was much older and divorced her almost immediately, but he did support her and the baby with reasonable generosity. A year later, when I was fourteen, Richard and my mother married. My own father was dead. This was the Graham family home. Richard Collins moved in, and it was a good marriage. He and my mother were both rather rigid, joyless people, and as the old saying goes, God made them and matched them.”

“And my father was raised by his mother?”

“Until he was three years old, at which point Aurelia fell madly in love with someone from California who did not want to be saddled with a child. One morning she arrived here and deposited Edwin with his suitcases and toys. My mother was furious. Richard was even more furious, and little Edwin was devastated. He worshiped his mother.”

“She abandoned him to a family where he wasn't wanted?” Meghan asked incredulously.

“Yes. Mother and Richard took him in out of duty, but
certainly not out of desire. I'm afraid he was a difficult little boy. I can remember him standing every day with his nose pressed to the window, so positive was he that his mother would come back.”

“And did she?”

“Yes. A year later. The great love affair went sour, and she came back and collected Edwin. He was overjoyed and so were my parents.”

“And then . . .”

“When he was eight, Aurelia met someone else and the scenario was repeated.”

“Dear God!” Meghan said.

“This time Edwin was really impossible. He apparently thought that if he behaved very badly they'd find a way to send him back to his mother. It was an interesting morning around here when he put the garden hose in the gas tank of Mother's new sedan.”

“Did they send him home?”

“Aurelia had left Philadelphia again. He was sent to boarding school and then to camp during the summer. I was away at college and then in law school and only saw him occasionally. I did visit him at school once and was astonished to see that he was very popular with his schoolmates. Even then he was telling people that his mother was dead.”

“Did he ever see her again?”

“She came back to Philadelphia when he was sixteen. This time she stayed. She had finally matured and taken a job in a law office. I understand she tried to see Edwin, but it was too late. He wanted nothing to do with her. The pain was too deep. From time to time over the years she contacted me to ask if I ever heard from Edwin. A friend had sent me a clipping reporting his marriage to your mother. It gave the name and address of his firm. I gave the clipping to Aurelia. From what she told me, she wrote to him around his birthday and at Christmas every year but never heard back. In one of our conversations I told her about the meeting in Scottsdale. Perhaps I had no business sending the obituary notice to him.”

“He was a wonderful father to me and a wonderful husband to my mother,” Meghan said. She tried to blink back the tears that she felt welling in her eyes. “He traveled a great deal in his job. I can't believe he could have had another life, another woman he may have called his wife, perhaps another daughter he must have loved too. But I'm beginning to think it must be true. How else do you explain Annie and Frances? How can anybody expect my mother and me to forgive that deception?”

It was a question she was asking of herself, not of Cyrus Graham, but he answered it. “Meghan, turn around.” He pointed to the prim row of windows behind the couch. “That center window is the one where a little boy stood watch every afternoon, looking for his mother. That kind of abandonment does something to the soul and the psyche.”

A
t four o'clock, Mac phoned Catherine at home to see how she was feeling. When he did not get an answer he tried her at the inn. Just as the operator was about to put him through to Catherine's office, the intercom on his desk began to buzz. “No, that's all right,” he said hurriedly. “I'll try her later.”

The next hour was busy, and he did not get to phone again. He was just at the outskirts of Newtown when he dialed her at the house from the car phone. “I thought if you were home I'd stop by for a few minutes, Catherine,” he said.

“I'd be glad for the moral support, Mac.” Catherine
quickly told him about the psychic and that she and the investigator were on their way.

“I'll be there in five minutes.” Mac replaced the receiver and frowned. He didn't believe in psychics. God knows what Meg is hearing about Edwin in Chestnut Hill today, he thought. Catherine's just about at the end of her rope, and they don't need some charlatan creating any more trouble for them.

He pulled into the Collins driveway as a man and a woman were getting out of a car in front of the house. The investigator and the psychic, Mac thought.

He caught up with them on the porch. Bob Marron introduced first himself and then Mrs. Fiona Black, saying only that she was someone who hoped to assist in locating Edwin Collins.

Mac was prepared to see a real display of hocus-pocus and calculated fakery. Instead he found himself in grudging admiration of the contained and poised woman who greeted Catherine with compassion. “You've had a very bad time,” she said. “I don't know if I can help you, but I know I have to try.”

Catherine's face was drawn, but Mac saw the flicker of hope that came into it. “I believe in my heart that my husband is dead,” she told Fiona Black. “I know the police don't believe that. It would be so much easier if there were some way of being certain, some way of proving it, of finding out once and for all.”

“Perhaps there is.” Fiona Black pressed Catherine's hands in hers. She walked slowly into the living room, her manner observant. Catherine stood next to Mac and Investigator Marron, watching her.

She turned to Catherine. “Mrs. Collins, do you still have your husband's clothes and personal items here?”

“Yes. Come upstairs,” she said, leading the way.

Mac felt his heart beating faster as they followed her. There was something about Fiona Black. She was not a fraud.

Catherine brought them to the master bedroom. On the dresser there was a twin frame. One picture was of
Meghan. The other of Catherine and Edwin in formal dress. Last New Year's Eve at the inn, Mac thought. It had been a festive night.

Fiona Black studied the picture, then said, “Where is his clothing?”

Catherine opened the door to a walk-in closet. Mac remembered that years ago she and Edwin had broken through the wall to the small adjoining bedroom and made two walk-in closets for themselves. This one was Edwin's. Rows of jackets and slacks and suits. Floor-to-ceiling shelves with sport shirts and sweaters. A shoe rack.

Catherine was looking at the contents of the closet. “Edwin had wonderful taste in clothes. I always had to pick out my father's ties,” she said. It was as though she was reminiscing to herself.

Fiona Black walked into the closet, her fingers lightly touching the lapel of one coat, the shoulder of another. “Do you have favorite cuff links or a ring of his?”

Catherine opened a dresser drawer. “This was the wedding ring I gave him. He mislaid it one day. We thought it was lost. He was so upset I replaced it, then found this one where it had slipped behind the dresser. It had gotten a bit tight, so he kept wearing the new one.”

Fiona Black took the thin band of gold. “May I take this for a few days? I promise not to lose it.”

Catherine hesitated, then said, “If you think it will be useful to you.”

The cameraman from the PCD Philadelphia affiliate met Meghan at quarter of four outside the Franklin Center. “Sorry this is such a rush job,” she apologized.

The lanky cameraman, who introduced himself as Len, shrugged. “We're used to it.”

Meghan was glad that it was necessary to concentrate on this interview. The hour she had spent with Cyrus Graham, her father's stepbrother, was so painful that she had to put thoughts of it aside until, bit by bit, she could
accept it. She had promised her mother she would hold nothing back from her. It would be difficult, but she would keep that promise. Tonight they would talk it out.

She said, “Len, at the opening, I'd like to get a wide shot of the block. These cobbled streets aren't the way people think about Philadelphia.”

“You should have seen this area before the renovation,” Len said as he began to roll tape.

Inside the Center they were greeted by the receptionist. Three women sat in the waiting room. All looked well groomed and were carefully made up. Meghan was sure these were the clients whom Dr. Williams had contacted to be interviewed.

She was right. The receptionist introduced her to them. One was pregnant. On-camera she explained that this would be her third child to be born by in vitro fertilization. The other two each had one child and were planning to attempt another pregnancy with their cryopreserved embryos.

“I have eight frozen embryos,” one of them said happily as she smiled into the lens. “They'll transfer three of them, hoping one will take. If not, I'll wait a few months, then I'll have others thawed and try again.”

“If you succeed immediately in achieving a pregnancy, will you be back next year?” Meghan asked.

“Oh no. My husband and I only want two children.”

“But you'll still have cryopreserved embryos stored in the lab here, won't you?”

The woman agreed. “Yes, I will,” she said. “We'll pay to have them stored. Who knows? I'm only twenty-eight. I might change my mind. In a few years I may be back, and it's nice to know I have other embryos already available to me.”

“Provided any of them survive the thawing process?” Meghan asked.

“Of course.”

Next they went into Dr. Williams' office. Meg took a seat opposite him for the interview. “Doctor, again thank you for having us,” she said. “What I wish you would do
at the outset is explain in vitro fertilization as simply as you did to me earlier. Then, if you'll allow us to have some footage of the lab, and show us how cryopreserved embryos are kept, we won't take up any more of your time.”

Dr. Williams was an excellent interview. Admirably succinct, he quickly explained the reasons why women might have trouble conceiving and the procedure of in vitro fertilization. “The patient is given fertility drugs to stimulate the production of eggs; the eggs are retrieved from her ovaries; in the lab they are fertilized, and the desired result is that we achieve viable embryos. Early embryos are transferred to the mother's womb, usually two or three at a time, in hopes that at least one will result in a successful pregnancy. The others are cryopreserved, or in layman's language, frozen, for eventual later use.”

“Doctor, in a few days, as soon as it is born, we are going to see a baby whose identical twin was born three years ago,” Meghan said. “Will you explain to our viewers how it is possible for identical twins to be born three years apart?”

“It is possible, but very rare, that the embryo divides into two identical parts in the Petri dish just as it could in the womb. In this case, apparently the mother chose to have one embryo transferred immediately, the other cryopreserved for transfer later. Fortunately, despite great odds, both procedures were successful.”

Before they left Dr. Williams' office, Len panned the camera across the wall with the pictures of children born through assisted reproduction at the Center. Next they shot footage of the lab, paying particular attention to the long-term storage containers where cryopreserved embryos, submerged in liquid nitrogen, were kept.

It was nearly five-thirty when Meghan said, “Okay, it's a wrap. Thanks everyone. Doctor, I'm so grateful.”

“I am too,” he assured her. “I can guarantee you that this kind of publicity will generate many inquiries from childless couples.”

Outside, Len put his camera in the van and walked with Meghan to her car. “Kind of gets you, doesn't it?” he asked. “I mean, I have three kids and I'd hate to think they started life in a freezer like those embryos.”

“On the other hand, those embryos represent lives that wouldn't have come into existence at all without this process,” Meghan said.