* * *
Mary died at dawn. In one of her few lucid moments during the long night, she asked for Katherine.
"A piece of paper," she whispered.
"Paper?" Katherine repeated stupidly. Didn't Mary realize this was their farewell?
"Yes, please, Katherine. Hurry." She could barely form the words.
Katherine searched the hospital room desperately looking for a piece of paper, and finally found a paper towel in the small bathroom.
"Pen." Mary croaked.
Katherine supplied that out of her purse and watched in wonder as her weakened sister managed to write several lines, on the towel with a shaking hand. She signed her usual signature at the bottom when she was finished.
Mary fell against the pillows, totally exhausted. The exertion left her face white and beaded with perspiration. Her lips were blue. Dark circles ringed her eyes, but they were brighter, more alive and vivid than they had been since her marriage. Katherine caught a shadowy glimpse of the former Mary in this wasted shell and wanted to weep copiously for her loss.
Mary was blond and blue-eyed. Her skin had always been clear and rosy. Her eyes had laughed whenever her cherub mouth had curled into the slightest suggestion of a smile. She was shorter and plumper than her svelte sister and agonized over every calorie, until recently when all appetite vanished. The cheerful voice that was now subdued to a gasping whisper brought Katherine back from her reveries.
"Katherine, name her Allison. Don't let them have her. They mustn't have her." The white, clawlike hands gripped Katherine's forearm. "Take her away from here. Tell her I loved her very much." She closed her eyes and breathed a few shallow breaths. When her eyes opened again, they had taken on a dreamlike quality.
They were peaceful. "Allison's such a pretty name. Don't you think so, Katherine?"
* * *
The double funeral took place two days later. It was a circus. The public's voracious appetite for scandal was fed by the eager reporters competitively trying to write the most sensational story. The girl who had been killed with Peter was a seventeen-year-old high- school cheerleader. Her body had been only partially clothed when the accident occurred. Allison's premature birth and Mary's subsequent death only added more spice to the tantalizing story.
Katherine was saturated with grief over Mary's death. Peter had died instantly from a broken neck without a mark on him. Sadistically, Katherine thought that to be unjust, especially when she remem- bered Mary's ravaged face, her innocent beauty marred by months of physical abuse and verbal attacks. It wasn't fair.
Katherine had barely been able to cope with the ostentation of the society wedding a year earlier, but the funeral was even more of an ordeal.
Eleanor Manning, managing to look lovely in her black designer dress and well-coiffed blond hair, was inconsolable. One minute she was clinging to Peter Manning, Sr., who was a tall, distinguished, gray- haired man, weeping uncontrollably. The next moment she berated poor dead Mary for not loving Peter, her darling son, enough. Then she would curse Jason, Peter's younger brother, for not being in attendance.
"It wasn't enough that he humiliated us by not attending the wedding. He had to further our shame by not coming home for his brother's funeral. Africa! My God, he's as barbaric as those heathens who live there. First it was Indians. Now it's pagans in Africa!" At that point she would lapse into another bout of hysterical tears.
Katherine knew very little about the brother, Jason Manning. Peter had always referred to him vaguely, as if his existence was of no consequence. Mary, however, had been excited when she received a letter from him.
During a visit with Katherine she exhibited the letter with timid pride. It had never taken much to make Mary happy.
"I got a letter from Peter's bro- ther, Katherine. He's in Africa, you know. He works with oil or something. Anyway, he apologized about not being able to get away for the wedding and congratulated me on the baby. Listen." She read from the plain white stationery which was slashed with a bold, black scrawl.
"I look forward to returning home and greeting you as a proper brother should. If you're as pretty as the pictures Mother sent me, I wish I had seen you first. Damn Peter. He's got all the luck!' Of course, he's only teasing me," said Mary blushing. "Doesn't he sound nice? He says, 'Take care of that new niece or nephew of mine. It'll be great to have a baby around, won't it? Just think. I'll be Uncle Jace."
Katherine nodded enthusiastically, though it was really out of politeness. She was alarmed by how thin Mary was growing despite her expanding abdomen. On that particular day, she had been much more interested in her sister's declining health and obvious unhappiness than in a long-lost brother. She shelved her impressions of him along with those she had formed about the other Mannings.
After the funeral the days fell into a dull, grinding, and exhausting routine. Katherine went to work every day at the electric company and continued writing the research papers and press releases that she had been hired to do five years ago. Was it really that long since she had graduated from college? Had she been doing this same tedious job that long? She made a respectable salary, but she saw the job only as practice for better things to come. She was a more gifted writer than her job demanded and she longed to have her creativity challenged. Maybe with the new responsibility of a baby, she would be compelled to go looking for a higher-paying job.
Allison! Katherine delighted in her. Every night she visited the hospital and gazed at her niece through the glass wall of the premature-baby nursery. She longed for the day she could hold her. Allison was gaining weight every day, and the pediatrician told the anxious aunt when the baby maintained five pounds for five days he would release her into Katherine's care.
She made arrangements to take two weeks' vacation at the time she could bring Allison home and started scouting out the best day-care center for working mothers. It would have to be the best before she would entrust Allison into its care. It never occurred to her that her guardianship of the baby would be jeopardized.
She was bolted out of her placidity when the Mannings' lawyer called upon her at work. Inundating her desk with official-looking papers, he told her in his prissy, arrogant voice that his clients "...intend to take sole respon- sibility for the child."
"My clients are prepared to take the child and rear her as their own. Of course, for your time, trouble, and expense these past few weeks that she's been in the hospital, you will be compensated."
"You mean bought off, don't you?"
"Please, Miss Adams, I think you are misinterpreting the purpose of my clients. They are financially able to rear the child in an opulent environment. Surely you want what's in the best interest of the child?"
"The mother felt it in her child's best interest that I rear her." Wisely she refrained from telling him of the handwritten instructions.
"I'm sure the father's wishes would have differed greatly." Katherine hated his condescending attitude. "Besides, this discussion is academic. I'm sure no court would award guardianship of a child to a single working-girl with indeterminate morals, when such an illustrious couple as the Mannings are more than willing to take responsibility for their only grandchild, the heir and offspring of their eldest son."
The insult to her character was so unethical that Katherine didn't honor it with a comment, but she knew that he was threatening her. She could well imagine him saying words to that effect in a courtroom, and it chilled her to the bone to predict what the outcome of such a custody hearing would be.
Katherine stifled her initial panic and tried to reason through her predicament. Uppermost in her mind was the determination that Allison would not grow up under Eleanor Manning's tutelage. She didn't underesti- mate the Mannings' influence and power. They must have many friends in high places. She and Allison had to get away from them. Plans were made and she carried them out with dispatch.
The pediatrician agreed to release Allison from the hospital a few days earlier than he had originally planned with the condition that Katherine bring the infant to his office the following week. Katherine hated lying, but solemnly promised she would have the baby there.
She called a realtor and discussed the sale of her house. Whatever monies were made were to be put into a savings account in Allison's name. That could be collected later along with any interest accrued. All the furnishings in the house were to be sold, except what Katherine would take with her. The realtor could keep that money in payment for her trouble.
Katherine rented a safety deposit box and, after making a copy of the pitiful paper-towel document, lovingly fol- ded it into the metal box.
She didn't answer her telephone and covered her movements well. Her car was parked away from the house, and she sacrificed the use of lights after dark. Fearful of being presented with a subpoena, she strove for invisibility.
She packed everything she possibly could in the small compact car. Her emotions were running high as she picked up Allison from the hospital.
Katherine gently lay her in the car bed that was strapped by the safety belt onto the front seat of the car. She leaned over and placed a soft kiss on the velvet forehead.
"I don't know much about being a mother," she whispered to the sleeping child. "But then you don't know a lot about being a baby either."
Gazing down into Allison's sweet face that so reminded her of Mary, she felt at ease for the first time since hearing of Peter's death.
As she left Denver, she allowed herself no poignant backward glances toward the mountains or thoughts about selling the house that had been the only home she remembered. She thought of the future, hers and Allison's. From now on, they had no past.