Judith McNaught - Remember When

"Of course," Jessica said and backed out of the doorway.

"Certainly, my dear," Charles said, stopping the tape then laying the remote control on the coffee table. He looked at her in expectant silence, his face devoid of any of the cruel satisfaction she'd seen when he watched the television screen.

Diana felt her way forward very carefully. "Charles," she began quietly, "after my father died, it was you I always turned to for advice."

He nodded as if pleased by that.

"And when I decided to start the company, you were one of the people who loaned me money to do it."

"I invested in a promising venture," he said tactfully. It was what he'd always said whenever she tried to thank him.

"Now I need help again. Only this time it's much more important. It's about Cole."

His face turned as cold as his eyes. "In that case, I will give you the best advice I have ever given you. Get rid of him!"

"I won't do that."

He surged to his feet, towering over her until Diana stood up, too. "Right now, I'm trying to think of you as an innocent victim, Diana. But if you don't get rid of him and get out of the way, you're going to be covered with the same dirt he is. Congress has control over the SEC, and we have enough on Cole Harrison to hang him."

" 'We'?" Diana burst out. " ' We'? You've not involved with Congress, Doug is."

"We are going to hang him, and then we're going to bury him," Charles lashed back.

"Why are you doing this?" Diana cried. "What has Cole done to you to make you hate him so?" With an effort she forced herself to sound willing instead of combative. "Help me understand—then I can decide whether to do as you say."

The control Charles had been exerting over his temper suddenly snapped. "You want to know what he did to me?" he jeered in an awful voice. "I'll tell you what he did—He destroyed my family! That filthy son of a bitch was the real stud in my stable. God knows how many other of Barbara's little friends he molested—"

" 'Molested,' " Diana said weakly.

He grabbed her shoulders. "You wanted to know and now you're going to know all of it. Do you remember my beautiful little daughter? Do you?" he demanded with a shake.

Diana jerked free and stepped back, but she couldn't make herself leave without hearing it all. "Of—of course I remember," she said shakily.

"That animal got my little girl pregnant. I almost walked in on them at the stable one night, and I ran him off, but I never dreamed he'd actually had sex with that child."

Diana shook her head. "Oh, no, Charles, you're wrong—"

"I'm not wrong!" he shouted. "I'm the one who has been wronged. When Barbara realized she was pregnant—almost five months pregnant— she told her mother and Jessica took her to have an abortion. I'd have never known anything about it except for three things. Do you know what they are?" he bit out.

Diana swallowed and shook her head.

"I found out because Barbara almost died, and because she had to have a hysterectomy to prevent it, and because my little girl has spent the rest of her life in the care of one shrink after another because of it! And do you know what reminds me of it every day?"

"No."

"Grandchildren! I don't have any. That fucking son of a bitch you married deprived me of a daughter and my daughter of children and me of grandchildren."

He pointed to the door and his voice shook with wrath. "Now, you get the hell out of my house and don't ever come back!"

Diana drove home without any conscious effort or any awareness of doing so. At eleven, she was still sitting in the same chair, her legs tucked beneath her, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and spread over her lap to ward off a chill that had turned her hands to ice and made her shiver convulsively.

Corey was calling every fifteen minutes. Diana let the answering machine pick up because she could not move.

Cole was not calling at all.

She was incapable of shedding a single tear or of throwing up another time. She was completely empty.

Cole was not calling at all.

At eleven-fifteen, Corey called again, and this time she wasn't worried, she was frantic and angry. "Diana, if you don't pick up the phone right now, I'm coming over."

Diana actually made an effort to answer it, but Corey had already hung up. She arrived with Spence in record time and used her key to get into Diana's apartment.

"Diana?" Corey said soothingly, approaching her with great caution, Diana noticed—as if they both thought Diana had gone insane. Spence crouched down in front of her, handsome and caring. "Diana," he said gently.

"What did Charles Hayward say to you, honey?"

Corey crouched beside him, clutching his shoulder tightly, a brace against whatever hideous thing they were about to hear that had reduced Diana to such a mindless state.

Diana looked at both of them. "Oh," she said thoughtfully, "he said Cole molested Barbara and got her pregnant and Barbara had an abortion. Now she can't have any more children and that's why she's always been so unstable."

"Whaat!" Corey exploded, shooting to her feet.

Diana's gaze automatically followed her motion, and she tipped her head back. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Isn't that amazing ?"

"—'Amazing'?" Corey said, shooting a hesitant look at Spence as he slowly stood up beside her. "Is that what you think it is?"

It happened then, the thing that Diana had subconsciously feared for hours—she started to laugh and she couldn't stop. "Cole wouldn't have laid a hand on Barbara! He lived in daily fear of us coming on to him. Remember how hard we all worked to get him to notice us?"

"I remember," Corey admitted, but her brows remained pulled together in a watchful frown.

"It's so funny, so hideously funny."

"Is it? Funny?" Corey said cautiously, but she was beginning to believe Diana was thinking far more clearly than she'd first imagined when she saw her curled up in that chair.

"Yes, it is!" Diana said, nodding emphatically. "It's hilarious. I know, because I was the one who kept the bets."

"What bets?"

"The bets!" she laughed. "Everyone, including Barbara, put money into a box, and the first one to get Cole to kiss her was the winner." Diana laughed harder. "I was the treasurer. And no one won!" Suddenly she turned her face into the chair and the laughter turned to wrenching sobs.

"No one won!" she sobbed. "They're destroying him... and no one ever won !"

Diana tried to call Cole at home the next morning, but the man who answered his phone said that Mr. Harrison was at work. At his office Mr. Harrison's secretary said he wasn't in. Diana arrived at the obvious conclusion that she was a very dispensable commodity to men, and that Cole had just been amusing himself when they were together with Cal, playing with marriage. When other matters in his life became pressing, either he didn't want to be bothered with her or he forgot that she existed! Her brain accepted that, but her heart rejected it and went on aching.

Somehow she made it through the day at work. In keeping with her resolution to delegate more responsibility, she spent most of the afternoon working closely with two of her executives, to be certain they were all thinking alike. No matter where she went or whom she saw in the building, she maintained a cheerful and pleasant face. Cole's name and his current predicament actually came up several times in her presence, but it was simply a thoughtful effort by the people who worked for her to avoid acting as if he had either done something wrong or else died.

In retrospect, it was comical that she'd thought Dan's defection such a disaster. This was a disaster.