I'll Be Seeing You Read online

  He drove through the second patch of woods and reached the intersection where they’d turned off onto the dirt road. Headlights snapped on. A loudspeaker said, “Police, Bernie. You know what to do. Get out of the car with your hands in the air.”

  Bernie began to cry. “Mama, Mama,” he sobbed as he opened the door and lifted his arms.

  The car was on its side. The driver’s door was pressing against her. Meghan felt for the button to release the seat belt but could not find it. She was disoriented.

  She smelled smoke. It began pouring through the vent. Oh God, Meghan thought. I’m trapped. The car was resting on the passenger door.

  Waves of heat began to attack her. Smoke filled her lungs. She tried to scream but no sound came.

  Mac led the frantic race from the helicopter to Meg’s car. Flames from the engine shot up higher just as they reached it. He could see Meg inside, struggling to free herself, her body illuminated by the flames that were spreading across the hood. “We’ve got to get her out through the passenger door,” he shouted.

  As one, he, the pilot, the reporter and cameraman put their hands on the superheated roof of the Mustang. As one they pushed, rocked, pushed again.

  “Now,” Mac shouted. With a groan they threw their weight against the car, held while tortured palms blistered.

  And then the car began to move, slowly, resistantly, then finally in rapid surrender it slammed onto its tires, once more upright.

  The heat was becoming unbearable. As in a dream, Meghan saw Mac’s face and somehow managed to reach over and release the door lock before she passed out.

  62

  T he helicopter landed at the Danbury Medical Center. Dazed and blinded with pain, Meghan was aware of being taken from Mac’s arms, lifted onto a stretcher.

  Another stretcher. Annie being rushed into Emergency. No, she thought, no. “Mac.”

  “I’m here, Meggie.”

  Blinding lights. An operating room. A mask over her face. The mask being removed from Annie’s face in Roosevelt Hospital. “Mac.”

  A hand over hers. “I’m here, Meggie.”

  She awoke in the recovery room, aware of a thick bandage on her shoulder, a nurse looking down at her. “You’re fine.”

  Later they wheeled her to a room. Her mother. Mac. Kyle. Waiting for her.

  Her mother’s face, miraculously peaceful when their eyes met. Seeming to read her thoughts. “Meg, they recovered Dad’s body.”

  Mac’s arm around her mother. His bandaged hands. Mac, her tower of strength. Mac, her love.

  Kyle’s tearstained face next to hers. “It’s all right if you want to kiss me in front of people, Meg.”

  On Sunday night, the body of Dr. Henry Williams was found in his car on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the quiet neighborhood where he and his wife had grown up and met as teenagers. He had taken a lethal dose of sleeping pills. Letters to his son and daughter contained messages of love and pleas for forgiveness.

  Meghan was able to leave the hospital on Monday morning. Her arm was in a sling, her shoulder a vague, constant ache. Otherwise she was recovering rapidly.

  When she arrived home, she went upstairs to her room to change to a comfortable robe. As she started to undress, she hesitated, then went to the windows and closed the blinds firmly. I hope I get over doing that, she thought. She knew it would be a long time before she would be able to banish the image of Bernie shadowing her.

  Catherine was getting off the phone. “I’ve just cancelled the sale of the inn,” she said. “The death certificate has been issued, and that means all the joint assets Dad and I held are unfrozen. The insurance adjustors are processing payment of all Dad’s personal policies as well as the one from the business. It’s a lot of money, Meg. Remember, the personal policies have a double indemnity clause.”

  Meg kissed her mother. “I’m so glad about the inn. You’d be lost without Drumdoe.” Over coffee and juice she scanned the morning papers. In the hospital, she’d seen the early morning television news reports about the Williams suicide. “They’re combing the Franklin Center records to try to find out who received the embryos Petrovic stole from Manning.”

  “Meg, what a terrible thing it must be for people who had cryopreserved embryos there to wonder if their biological child was born to a stranger,” Catherine Collins said. “Is there enough money in the world for anyone to do something like that?”

  “Apparently there is. Phillip Carter told me he needed money. But Mom, when I asked him if that was what Petrovic was doing, stealing embryos for the donor program, he told me I wasn’t as smart as he’d thought. There was more to it. I only hope they find out what in the records at the center.”

  Meghan sipped the coffee. “What could he have meant by that? And what happened to Stephanie Petrovic? Did Phillip kill that poor girl? Mom, her baby was due around this time.”

  That night when Mac came, she said, “Dad will be buried day after tomorrow. Frances Grolier should be notified about that and told the circumstances of Dad’s death, but I dread calling her.”

  Mac’s arms around her. All the years she’d waited for them.

  “Why not let me take care of it, Meggie?” Mac asked.

  And then they’d talked. “Mac, we don’t know everything yet. Dr. Williams was the last hope for understanding what Phillip meant.”

  On Tuesday morning, at nine o’clock, Tom Weicker phoned. This time he did not ask the teasing-but-serious question he’d asked yesterday: “Ready to come back to work, Meg?”

  Nor did he ask how she was feeling. Even before he said, “Meg, we’ve got a breaking story,” she sensed the difference in his tone.

  “What is it, Tom?”

  “There’s an envelope marked ‘Personal and Confidential’ for you from Dr. Williams.”

  “Dr. Williams! Open it. Read it to me.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Tom, open it.”

  There was a pause. She visualized him slitting the envelope, pulling out the contents.

  “Tom?”

  “Meg, this is Williams’ confession.”

  “Read it to me.”

  “No. You have the fax machine you took home from the office?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give me the number again. I’ll fax it to you. We’ll read it together.”

  Meghan gave the number to him and rushed downstairs. She got to the study in time to hear the high-pitched squeal of the fax. The first page of the statement from Dr. Henry Williams slowly began to emerge on the thin, slick paper.

  It was five pages long. Meghan read and reread it. Finally the reporter in her began to pick out specific paragraphs and isolated sentences.

  The phone rang. She knew it was Tom Weicker. “What do you think, Meghan?”

  “It’s all there. He needed money because of the bills from his wife’s long illness. Petrovic was a naturally gifted person who should have been a doctor. She hated seeing cryopreserved embryos destroyed. She saw them as children who could fill the lives of childless couples. Williams saw them as children people would pay a fortune to adopt. He sounded out Carter, who was more than willing to place Petrovic at Manning, using my father’s signature.”

  “They had everything covered,” Weicker said, “a secluded house where they brought illegal aliens willing to be host mothers in exchange for ten thousand dollars and a bogus green card. Not a high price when you think Williams and Carter were selling the babies for a minimum of one hundred thousand dollars each.

  “In the past six years,” Weicker went on, “they’ve placed more than two hundred babies and were planning to open other facilities.”

  “And then Helene quit,” Meghan said, “claiming she’d made a mistake that was going to become public.

  “The first thing Dr. Manning did after Petrovic quit was to call Dr. Williams and tell him about it. Manning trusted Williams and needed to talk to someone. He was horrified at the prospect of the clinic losing its reputation. He to
ld Williams how upset Petrovic was and that she thought she’d lost the Anderson baby’s identical twin when she slipped in the lab.

  “Williams called Carter, who immediately panicked. Carter had a key to Helene’s apartment in Connecticut. They weren’t romantically involved. Sometimes he’d need to transport embryos she’d brought from the clinic immediately after they were fertilized and before they were cryopreserved. He’d rushed them to Pennsylvania to be transferred to a host womb.”

  “Carter panicked and killed her,” Weicker agreed. “Meg, Dr. Williams gave you the address of the place where he and Carter kept those pregnant girls. We’re obliged to give that information to the authorities, but we want to be there when they arrive. Are you up to it?”

  “You bet I am. Tom, can you send a helicopter for me? Make it one of the big ones. You’re missing something important in the Williams statement. He was the person Stephanie Petrovic contacted when she needed help. He was the one who had transferred an embryo into her womb. She’s due to give birth now. If there’s one redeeming feature about Henry Williams, it’s that he didn’t tell Phillip Carter that he’d hidden Stephanie Petrovic. If he had, her life wouldn’t have been worth a plugged nickel.”

  Tom promised to have a helicopter at the Drumdoe Inn within the hour. Meghan made two phone calls. One to Mac. “Can you get away, Mac? I want you with me for this.” The second call was to a new mother. “Can you and your husband meet me in an hour?”

  The residence Dr. Williams described in his confession was forty miles from Philadelphia. Tom Weicker and the crew from Channel 3 were waiting when the helicopter carrying Meghan, Mac and the Andersons touched down in a nearby field.

  A half-dozen official cars were parked nearby.

  “I struck a deal that we’ll go in with the authorities,” Tom told them.

  “Why are we here, Meghan?” Dina Anderson asked as they got into a waiting Channel 3 car.

  “If I was sure, I would tell you,” Meghan said. Every instinct told her she was right. In his confession, Williams had written, “I had no idea when Helene brought Stephanie to me and asked me to transfer an embryo into her womb that if a pregnancy resulted, Helene intended to raise the baby as her own.”

  The young women in the old house were in various stages of pregnancy. Meghan saw the heartsick fear on their faces when they were confronted by the authorities. “You will not send me home, please?” a teenager begged. “I did just what I promised. When the baby is born, you will pay me, please?”

  “Host mothers,” Mac whispered to Meghan. “Did Williams indicate if they kept any records of whose babies these girls are carrying?”

  “His confession said they’re all the babies of women who have embryos cryopreserved at Manning,” Meghan said. “Helene Petrovic came here regularly to be sure these girls were well cared for. She wanted all the cryopreserved embryos to have a chance to be born.”

  Stephanie Petrovic was not there. A weeping practical nurse said, “She’s at the local hospital. That’s where all our girls give birth. She’s in labor.”

  “Why are we here?” Dina Anderson asked again an hour later, when Meghan returned to the hospital lobby.

  Meghan had been allowed to be with Stephanie in the last moments of her labor.

  “We’re going to see Stephanie’s baby in a few minutes,” she said. “She had it for Helene. That was their bargain.”

  Mac pulled Meghan aside. “Is it what I think?”

  She did not answer. Twenty minutes later the obstetrician who had delivered Stephanie’s baby stepped off the elevator and beckoned to them. “You can come up now,” he said.

  Dina Anderson reached for her husband’s hand. Too overwhelmed to speak, she wondered, Is it possible?

  Tom Weicker and the cameraman accompanied them and began taping as a smiling nurse brought the blanket-wrapped infant to the window of the nursery and held it up.

  “It’s Ryan!” Dina Anderson shrieked. “It’s Ryan!”

  The next day, at a private funeral mass at St. Paul’s, the mortal remains of Edwin Richard Collins were consigned to the earth. Mac was at the grave with Catherine and Meg.

  I’ve shed so many tears for you, Dad, Meg thought. I don’t think I have any left in me. And then she whispered so silently that no one could hear, “I love you, Daddy.”

  Catherine thought of the day when her door bell had rung and there stood Edwin Collins, handsome, with the quick smile she’d so loved, a dozen roses in his hands. I’m courting you, Catherine.

  After a while I’ll remember only the good times, she promised herself.

  Hand in hand the three walked to the waiting car.