Olivia (Logan 5)

"That's nonsense. I won't permit it," I told her.

"I can't help it!" she cried, grimacing.

I walked into the room and seized her by the shoulders.

"You will help it. You will do exactly what I want you to do. For once, you will bear some responsibility for your actions, Belinda. Do you hear me?" I shook her hard and she just started to cry. "Do you!"

"Yes," she said, nodding.

"Good," I muttered. I released her. "Good. Get some sleep. You're going to live an exemplary life for the next few months and you're going to give birth to a healthy child."

I paused in the doorway. She looked at me with terror in her eyes.

"This you will do," I said slowly. "This you will definitely do."

Early one evening three weeks later, the doorbell rang.

We had just finished dinner. Belinda was upstairs and Samuel was down at the dock working on the yacht. I had gone to the den and had begun to look at some papers I had brought home when Effie came to my door. "There's someone here to see you, Mrs. Logan."

"Who?"

"Mrs. Childs," she said.

It was as if my heart fell to my stomach. I hadn't seen Louise for some time and we had never really been close. She had certainly never visited me by herself.

Louise Childs was one of those women who just seem to grow more beautiful, more elegant and statuesque with time. Having children hadn't taken away from her svelte figure. She still looked like she had just come to life off a magazine cover.

"Hello, Olivia," she said. "I hope I'm not intruding by making this unannounced visit."

"No, not at all," I said. "Please come in, Louise."

She entered the den, gazed around and then sat on the leather settee. I had taken many of Daddy's things from his den right after the house sale and moved them into my own home office.

"Is Samuel fond of guns?" she asked looking at the collection displayed in the case.

"No, those were my father's antiques," I said.

"Oh."

I sat in the leather chair across from her.

"Can I get you something to drink, Louise?"

"No, I'm fine," she said. She fumbled with the snap on her purse for a few moments. "I suppose you know why I've come to see' you, Olivia."

"No," I said. "I'm afraid this is a total surprise."

"It's about . . . Nelson and what he has done," she said, holding her gaze on me. I st

ared at her without changing expression. "He told me

everything," she continued.

"I see," I said, feeling as if my body had deflated like a balloon and no longer had enough air in my lungs to utter any sound, much less sentences. I seized control of myself as quickly as I could and sat with my back steel firm. "What exactly did he tell you?"

Surely, he hadn't confessed to our sexual episode on the yacht as well, I thought.

"He told me about . . . the baby," she said, "and about Belinda and what you want to do about it," she replied, her eyes steady, her voice strong. I waited. That was apparently all he had confessed. Even so, I was amazed she had come. I had certainly