Sidney Sheldon - The sands of time

"Milo?"

"Yes?" He was not really listening.

"It's fate."

The fervor in her voice made him turn. "What?"

"Scott Industries—it belongs to you now."

"I don't—"

"Milo, God left it to you." Her voice was filled with a burning intensity. "All your life you've lived in the shadow of your big brother." She was thinking clearly now,

coherently, and she forgot her headache and the pain. The words were tumbling out in a spate that shook her whole body.

"You worked for Byron for twenty years, building up the company. You're as responsible for its success as he is, but did he—did he ever give you credit for it? No. It was always his company, his success, his profits. Well, now you—you finally have a chance to come into your own."

He looked at her, horrified. "Ellen—their bodies are— how can you even think about—?"

"I know. But we didn't kill them. It's our turn, Milo.

We've finally come into our own. There's no one alive to claim the company but us. It's ours! Yours!"

And at that moment they heard the cry of a baby. Ellen and

Milo Scott stared at each other unbelievingly.

"It's Patricia! She's alive. Oh, my God!"

They found the baby near a clump of bushes. By some miracle she was unhurt.

Milo picked her up gently and held her close. "Shh! It's all right, darling," he whispered. "Everything's going to be all right."

Ellen was standing at his side, a look of shock on her face. "You—you said she was dead."

"She must have been knocked unconscious."

Ellen stared at the baby a long time. "She should have been killed with the others," she said in a strangled voice.

Milo looked up at her, shocked. "What are you saying?"

"Byron's will leaves everything to Patricia. You can look forward to spending the next twenty years being her caretaker so that when she grows up she can treat you as shabbily as her father did. Is that what you want?"

He was silent.

"We'll never have a chance like this again." She was staring at the baby, and there was a wild look in her eyes that Milo had never seen before. It was almost as though she wanted to—

She's not herself. She's suffering from a concussion. "For

God's sake, Ellen, what are you thinking?"

She looked at her husband for a long moment, and the wild light faded from her eyes. "I don't know," she said calmly.

After a pause she said, "There's something we can do. We can leave her somewhere, Milo. The pilot said we were near Ávila.

There should be plenty of tourists there. There's no reason for anyone to connect the baby with the plane crash."

He shook his head. "Their friends know that Byron and

Susan took Patricia with them."

Ellen looked at the burning plane. "That's no problem.

They all burned up in the crash. We'll have a private memorial service here."

"Ellen," he protested. "We can't do this. We'd never get away with it."

"God did it for us. We have gotten away with it."

Milo looked at the baby. "But she's so—"

"She'll be fine," Ellen said soothingly. "We'll drop her off at a nice farmhouse outside of town. Someone will adopt her and she'll grow up to have a lovely life here."

He shook his head. "I can't do it. No."

"If you love me you'll do this for us. You have to choose,

Milo. You can either have me, or you can spend the rest of your life working for your brother's child."

"Please, I—"

"Do you love me?"

"More than my life," he said simply.

"Then prove it."

They made their way carefully down the mountainside in the dark, whipped by the wind. Because the plane had crashed in a high wooded area, the sound was muffled, so the townspeople were unaware as yet of what had happened.

Three hours later, in the outskirts of Ávila, Ellen and

Milo reached a small farmhouse. It was not yet dawn.

"We'll leave her here," Ellen whispered.

Mild made one last try. "Ellen, couldn't we—?"

"Do it!" she said fiercely.

Without another word he turned and carried the baby to the door of the farmhouse. She was wearing only a torn pink nightgown and had a blanket wrapped around her.

Milo looked at Patricia for a long moment, his eyes filled with tears, then laid her gently down.

He whispered, "Have a good life, darling."

The crying awakened Asunciуn Moras. For a sleepy moment she thought it was the bleating of a goat or a lamb. How had it gotten out of its pen?

Grumbling, she rose from her warm bed, put on an old faded robe, and walked to the door.

When she saw the infant lying on the ground screaming and kicking, she said, "Madre de Dios!" and yelled for her husband.

They brought the child inside and stared at it. It would not stop crying, and it seemed to be turning blue.

"We've got to get her to the hospital."

They hurriedly wrapped another blanket around the baby,

carried her to their pickup truck, and drove her to the hospital. They sat on a bench in the long corridor waiting for someone to attend to them, and thirty minutes later a doctor came and took the baby away to examine her.

When he returned, he said, "She's got pneumonia."

"Is she going to live?" The doctor shrugged.

Milo and Ellen Scott stumbled into the police station at

Ávila.

The desk sergeant looked up at the two bedraggled tourists. "Buenos dias. Can I help you?"

"There's been a terrible accident," Milo said. "Our plane crashed up in the mountains and…"

One hour later a rescue party was on its way to the mountainside. When they arrived, there was nothing to see but the smoldering, charred remains of an aircraft and its passengers.

The investigation of the airplane accident conducted by the Spanish authorities was cursory.

"The pilot should not have attempted to fly into such a bad storm. We must attribute the accident to pilot error."

There was no reason for anyone in Ávila to associate the airplane crash with a small child left on the doorstep of a farmhouse.

It was over.

It was just beginning.

Milo and Ellen held a private memorial service for Byron,

his wife, Susan, and their daughter, Patricia. When they returned to New York, they held a second memorial service,

attended by the shocked friends of the Scotts. "What a terrible tragedy. And poor little Patricia."

"Yes," Ellen said sadly. "The only blessing is that it happened so quickly, none of them suffered."

The financial community was shaken by the news. It was almost unanimously agreed that with Byron Scott's death,

Scott Industries had suffered an irreparable loss.

"Don't listen to what any of them say," Ellen Scott told her husband, "you're better than Byron ever was. The company is going to be bigger than ever."

Milo took her in his arms. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

She smiled. "You'll never have to. From now on we're going to have everything in the world we've ever dreamed of."

She held him close and thought: Who would have believed that Ellen Dudash, from a poor Polish family in Gary,

Indiana, would have one day said, "From now on, we're going to have everything in the world we ever dreamed of."

And meant it.

For ten days the baby remained in the hospital, fighting for her life, and when the crisis was past, Father Berrendo went to see the farmer and his wife.

"I have joyous news for you," he said happily. "The child is going to be all right."

The Morases exchanged an uncomfortable look.

"I'm glad for her sake," the farmer said evasively.

Father Berrendo beamed. "She is a gift from God."

"Certainly, Father. But my wife and I have talked it over and decided that God is too generous to us. His gift requires feeding. We can't afford to keep it."

"But she's such a beautiful baby," Father Berrendo pointed out. "And—"