“Does she know?”
“Yes. She’s asked to see you and Mike. She wants to talk to you.”
“Yes,” Samantha said, “I need to know about Granddad Cal.” It suddenly seemed important to her to
know that the man she’d loved so much had been loved by his wife, that Maxie hadn’t just loved Michael Ransome.
Samantha didn’t have to force herself to smile when she saw her grandmother lying on the bed covered with pretty pink sheets. Blair had had her moved to Jubilee’s Place early in the day so she could watch everything, but after Samantha as Maxie had walked out the back door, Blair had moved her patient to a private room—the room that had once been Michael Ransome’s dressing room.
As she always did, Samantha climbed in bed with her grandmother, but now Maxie was too weak to clutch her in return.
“Tell me what happened,” Samantha said, smoothing Maxie’s hair from her forehead, feeling that her body was already growing cooler. Both she and Mike had to lean forward to hear her.
“I walked out,” Maxie whispered, her voice raspy. “I had no luggage, just what I had on, my purse, and the cloth bag Joe had given me. I went to the train station and bought a ticket, using all the money I had in my purse. I could go to Louisville, Kentucky, and no further. When I got to the depot in Louisville, I sat down on a bench. I was hungry—I hadn’t eaten in two days—the man I loved was dead, I had wounded, possibly mortally, a man who would want revenge, I was three months’ pregnant, and I had no home, nothing. All I thought I had was ten thousand dollars in a cloth bag, marked money, money that would cost me my life if I spent a penny of it, and some jewelry that could be traced if I pawned it.”
As she took a breath, Sam and Mike waited for her to continue, knowing that she had to tell what she knew. “It was in Louisville, when I went to the restroom to try to wash the blood out of my dress, that I looked in the bag and saw a little pouch in the bottom of it. It was a pouch full of large diamonds, three million dollars’ worth to be exact, all of Doc’s take. Half Hand must have converted the money to diamonds to make it portable. After I saw those stones I knew for sure that if Doc or any of his men found me my life would be over. I went back to the waiting room to debate whether to end my life or not.”
A smile came over Maxie’s face. “A young man sat beside me and said, ‘You look like I feel. You want to get something to eat and talk about it?’ I looked into his kind brown eyes and said, ‘Yes,’ and that was how I met Calvin Elliot. He took me to a cafe, we drank coffee and ate, and I told him everything, while he listened completely, listened without judging me. When I’d finished he told me about himself. He’d just been discharged from the army and two years before both his parents had died of heart failure, and four months ago the girl he’d loved since elementary school had eloped with a man she’d known for six days. And three days ago the army had told him that a bout of mumps two years before had left him sterile.”
For a moment Maxie had to fight for breath, while Samantha resisted the urge to tell her to rest, to be quiet, but both of them knew that now no amount of rest was going to save Maxie.
When she continued, Maxie’s voice was just a whisper. “Cal and I sat there and looked at each other, neither of us knowing what to say next, when Cal said we ought to get married. He said it made sense, that he was never going to have kids of his own and it would be a shame if I had a child who had to grow up without a father. He said we didn’t love each other now and we might never love each other, but we’d love the child and that would be enough.”
“And you said yes,” Samantha said, holding Maxie’s rapidly weakening body.
“Not right away. I told him how dangerous it would be if Doc’s men found me. But Cal said we’d create a new identity for me, and they’d never find me. I tried to talk him out of it. I told him there was nothing in it for him, but Cal laughed and said I hadn’t looked in a mirror lately.”
“So you married him.”
“Three days later,” Maxie said, closing her eyes for a moment. “And Doc didn’t find me until he saw the photo in the paper, so I left, but even that didn’t save your mother.”
“And you did come to love him.” Samantha’s words were too loud as she changed the subject, as though her grandmother’s closed eyes frightened her. She wanted to pray for God not to take her, but Samantha wasn’t that selfish. Maxie had never said a word, but Sam knew that she was in constant pain that intensified daily; the doctor said that since Samantha had come into her life Maxie wouldn’t take her pain pills because she didn’t want to be groggy and miss a moment with her dear granddaughter.
“Yes,” Maxie continued, her eyes fluttering open. “Loving Cal was very easy. He wasn’t exciting like Michael, and he was never one for surprises, but he was always there when I needed him.”
She looked up at her granddaughter with love in her eyes. “Cal always loved me, just as I loved him.”
And that’s how Maxie died, with a look of love on her face.
37
“I’m worried about her,” Blair said to Kane. They were in Mike’s town house, sitting beside each other on stools at the little counter in the kitchen, listening to the sounds coming from behind Samantha’s apartment door. From inside they could hear Samantha crying—crying as Blair had never heard anyone cry before—and, what’s more, it had been going on for hours. Maxie had died at about two in the morning. Afterward Mike had carried Sam from the room and taken her back to the town house, Blair and Kane following them. Mike’s parents had taken Kane’s boys and were spending the night at Blair’s apartment.
As soon as the four of them had entered the house, Mike had taken Samantha upstairs. Through the door, Blair and Kane had heard Mike shouting, “Cry! Goddamn you, cry! Your grandmother is at least worth giving away some of those precious tears of yours!”
“Of all the—” Blair began and started for the stairs, horrified by what she’d heard Mike say. How dare he treat someone like that after what Samantha had been through?
Stopping her, Kane looked hard into her eyes. As children Mike and Kane had been more than brothers, they were like clones of each other, and she doubted if either of them had ever considered keeping a secret from the other. She could tell from the look in Kane’s eyes that there were things going on that she didn’t know about but Kane did, and he was asking her to trust Mike.
There were more shouted words from Mike. Then suddenly, abruptly, they could hear Samantha crying, great, wrenching sobs of misery that seemed to echo through the house like a ghost that had died in agony.
Sitting downstairs, Blair and Kane listened in silence, neither of them speaking. What could they say while hearing the despondency and despair that was coming from Samantha?
After two hours, Blair said she couldn’t stand it anymore, then opening her bag, she got out a hypodermic. “I’m going to give her something to make her sleep.”
Kane put his hand on hers. “Samantha has years of tears inside her,” was his cryptic answer.
Reluctantly, Blair put the hypodermic away and, instead, filled a pitcher with water. “She’s going to be dehydrated,” she said and went up the stairs. When she returned, Kane looked at her in question.