The Mulberry Tree

As Bailey looked down at the closed coffin, tears of gratitude and love flowed down her cheeks. Martha had sacrificed herself to preserve Bailey’s anonymity. Martha had sacrificed so Bailey could keep the happiness she’d found. She had explained that she owed Luke for keeping him to herself for so many years, and the best way to repay him was to give to the woman he loved.

So Martha had done everything. She oversaw the lawyers and presented the evidence she held.

Martha hired private detectives, and they found a woman who said she’d seen and talked with Dolores the day after Alex had returned to Virginia. And half a dozen girls in Calburn could testify as to exactly where they’d seen Alex Yates and when. The charges against him were dropped for lack of evidence.

Bailey had stayed up all night talking with Matt; then she got on the telephone with Martha, and an agreement was made. If Bailey stepped forward and showed the court—and the world—that she had indeed been legally married to James Manville, she would probably be awarded what was left of his billions. But if Bailey got the money, she’d lose her privacy.

“Do you mind?” Bailey had asked Matt tentatively.

“Mind losing billions?” Matt asked, eyes twinkling. He smiled. “No. I don’t want the money. I’ve seen what money takes from a person. And, besides, I have everything I want right here.”

She smiled at him, but she couldn’t keep the tears out of her eyes. She’d come to love him so very much. Through everything, he’d helped her, and he’d stood by her. Not once had he tried to hold her back from what she’d needed to do.

Her hands had been in her lap, and once again she twirled the engagement ring he’d given her the night before.

“Could I have a big wedding?” she’d asked, and even to herself she sounded like a child.

“The biggest Calburn has ever seen. But—” Matt hesitated.

“But what?”

“If you don’t let Patsy make your dress, our lives won’t be worth living.”

Laughing, Bailey had agreed readily.

It was the next day that they’d spent discussing the money and what to do about it. How did one manage billions but remain anonymous?

In the end, it was Arleen who helped them the most. For many years she’d supported herself by being, as she said, “a parasite.” “But a good one, dear, a very, very good parasite.” She went on to explain that she’d had to become a keen observer of people. “When your dinner depends on getting along with someone, you must quickly learn to like what they like and say what they want to hear.”

To Bailey’s astonishment, Arleen made a list of the people James had trusted the most. “If you want people to run your company, use these men,” Arleen said as she handed the paper to Bailey.

“Not my company. Not my money,” Bailey had whispered. “I don’t want it.”

It was Martha who agreed to inherit James Manville’s fortune. She had a birth certificate showing that Frank was her son, and Frank’s name was on Luke McCallum’s birth certificate. With DNA testing and hair samples, it hadn’t been difficult to show that Lucas McCallum and James Manville were the same person.

Martha had done it all, and she’d had to do it alone. Old, frail, and weak, she’d somehow gathered her strength to deal with lawyers and detectives and the press. No one who was near Bailey could help for fear of exposing Bailey, so Martha had had only the support of a woman she’d befriended in the nursing home, and a couple of nurses to monitor her health.

While the highly publicized trial of Atlanta and Ray was going on, Matt had flown around the United States to meet with the men on the list Arleen had given him. It had taken him all three months of the trial to pull it together, but by the time the guilty verdict came in, Matt had set up a board of trustees to oversee the industries that James Manville had once owned.

Through days and nights of work, Matt, Bailey, and the men on the list had set up a ten-year plan whereby the companies would eventually become autonomous. By the end of the ten years the companies would either have been sold and all the profits split among the employees, or would be run on a profit-sharing basis. The ultimate plan was that at the end of ten years, James Manville’s empire would no longer exist.

By the time the trial was over, Martha had aged dramatically. It was as though she’d kept herself alive and healthy to accomplish this deed, and now that it was over, she wanted to rest—forever.

After Atlanta’s and Ray’s life imprisonment sentences were handed down, two nurses helped Martha sit down on the padded chair outside the courtroom. With shaking hands, Martha read a prepared statement about the future plans for James Manville’s wealth.

In back of the reporters and outside the courthouse, people began cheering when they heard that they would still have their jobs. But the journalists were visibly disappointed. They’d wanted Martha to leave all the money to one person. The antics of heirs and heiresses made great copy.

“What about Lillian Manville?” someone shouted as soon as Martha had finished reading her statement.

Martha had smiled at the man. “She has been taken care of,” Martha said, then before anyone could fire another question at her, she put her hand to her head and fell back against the chair as though in a faint. Immediately, the nurses hovered over her and a doctor came running from the wings. After a quick examination the doctor announced that Mrs. McCallum had had too much excitement and they had to leave.

“But what about Manville’s widow?” someone shouted, but the doctor didn’t turn around. He motioned for Martha to be put on a gurney and carried out of the courthouse.

For three days the news media swarmed outside the hospital where Martha McCallum lay in bed. The prognosis for her recovery had been good, but the doctors didn’t take into consideration that Martha didn’t want to recover. She had had enough of life, and she wanted to be with her son and Luke.

On the morning of the fourth day, Martha passed on, and the nurses said that there had been a smile on her face.

Bailey cried from the time Martha’s death was announced until the time of the funeral. “I can’t even go to the funeral,” Bailey had said. “And there were all t