Danielle Steel - Zoya

His eyes reached into hers, and she was suddenly reminded of her father when Nicolai had been killed. “We've lost everything, Zoya … everything … I was a fool….” He attempted to explain everything to her as she listened with wide eyes, and she put her arms around him and held him as he cried. “My God … how could I have been so stupid … what will we do now?”

Her heart almost stopped, it was like the revolution again. But she had survived it before, and this time they had each other. “We'll sell everything … we'll work … we'll survive, Clayton. It doesn't matter.” But he wrenched himself from her arms and paced the room, frantic at the full realization that they were ruined, and his world had come crashing down around him.

“Are you crazy? I'm fifty-seven years old … what do you think I can do? Drive a taxi like Prince Vladimir? And you'll go back to the ballet? Don't be a fool, Zoya … we're ruined! Ruined! The children will starve….” He was crying as she took his hands in her own, and his were icy.

“They will not starve. I can work, so can you. If we sell what we have, we can live on it for years.” The diamond necklaces alone would keep them fed and housed for a long time, but he shook his head miserably, he understood the situation far better than she. He had already seen a man he knew leap from his office window. And she knew nothing of the enormous debts he had allowed to accrue, knowing he had the money to pay them whenever he wanted.

“And who will you sell it all to? All the others who've lost their shirts? It's all worthless, Zoya….”

“No, it's not,” she said quietly. “We have each other and the children. When I left Russia, we left on a troika with nothing, with rags, with two of Uncle Nicky's horses and what jewelry we could sew into the linings of our clothes, and we survived.” They both thought at the same time of the misery of her Paris apartment, but they had lived through it, and now she had him and the children. “Think of what the others lost … think of Nicky and Aunt Alix … don't cry, Clayton … if they could be brave in the face of that, there is nothing we can't face … is there, my love….” But he only cried in her arms unable to face it.

That night they went down to dinner, and he barely spoke. She was trying to think, to make plans, to decide what to sell and who to sell it to. They had two houses, all the antiques Elsie de Wolfe, now Lady Mendl, had helped them find, her jewelry, paintings, objects … it was endless. It was like planning an escape, as she made suggestions and tried to reassure him, but he walked upstairs with a heavy step, and as she talked to him from her dressing room while she undressed, she couldn't elicit an answer from him. She was desperately worried about him. It had been a terrible blow, but after surviving everything else that had happened in her life, she refused to be beaten now. She would help him fight, help him survive, she would scrub floors if she had to. She didn't care, and then as she listened, she wondered if he'd left the next room. He hadn't answered her in several minutes.

“Clayton?” She walked into the room in one of the lace nightgowns he'd bought her the year before in Paris. She gave a gasp as she saw him, slumped on the floor, as though he had fallen, and she ran to his side, and gently rolled him onto his back. But he stared at her with unseeing eyes. “Clayton! Clayton! …” She began to sob as she shouted his name, she slapped his face, she tried to pull him across the floor, as though anything she did might revive him. But he didn't move, he didn't see, and he could no longer hear her. Clayton Andrews had died of a heart attack, the shock of the crash too much, the prospect of losing everything more than he could bear, and as she sank to her knees and cried as she held his head on her lap, she looked down at him in disbelief. The man that she had loved was dead. He had left her. Desolate, and alone, and poor again, the dream that had become her life was suddenly a nightmare.

CHAPTER

31

“Mama, why did Papa die?” Sasha looked up at Zoya with her huge blue eyes, as they rode back from the cemetery in the Hispano-Suiza. Everyone in New York had come, but Zoya had scarcely seen them. She felt as though she were in a daze as she stared down at the child, her heavy black veil concealing her face, her hands in black gloves, with her children sitting in mute anguish beside her.

Nicholas had stood beside her at the funeral, a tiny man holding her arm, his own eyes filled with tears as the choir sang the agonizingly sweet “Ave Maria.” But there were others like him who had died in the past week, most by their own hand, but a few, like him, felled by the blow they couldn't endure. It wasn't fear, it was grief, but whatever it was, she had lost him.

“I don't know, sweetheart … I don't know why … he had a terrible shock, and … he went to be in heaven with God.” She choked on the words, as Nicholas watched her.

“Will he be with Uncle Nicky and Aunt Alix?” Nicholas asked quietly, and she looked at him. She had kept them alive for him, but to what end? What did it matter now? Everyone she had ever loved was gone … except her children. She pulled them close to her as she left the car, and hurried into the house ahead of the chauffeur. She had invited no one to the house, she didn't want to see anyone, didn't want to have to explain, to tell them anything. It was going to be bad enough to have to tell the children. She had decided to wait a few days, she had already told most of the servants that they were free to go. She was keeping only one maid and the nurse, she could cook for them herself. And the chauffeur was going to leave as soon as she sold the cars. He had promised to do everything he could to help her. He knew several people who had liked Clayton's Alfa Romeo and the Mercedes she used, and the Hispano-Suiza had been coveted by all. She only wondered if there was anyone left to buy them.

Old Sava came to her and licked her hand as though she knew, as Zoya sat next to the fire in their bedroom, staring at the spot where he had died only days before. It seemed incredible that he was gone … that Clayton was no more … and now there was so much for her to do. She had called their lawyers the day after he died, and they had promised to explain everything to her.

When they did, it was grim. It was as bad as Clayton had feared, and perhaps worse. His debts were absolutely enormous and there was no money left at all. The lawyers advised her to try to sell the house on Long Island at any price, with everything in it. She took their advice, and they put it on the market for her. She didn't even go back to get her things. She knew she couldn't have faced it. Everyone was doing much the same thing, the ones who weren't committing suicide, or abandoning their homes in the middle of the night, to avoid bills and mortgage payments.

And it was Saturday before she could bring herself to face the children. She had been taking her meals with them, but she had been moving like a machine, moving from room to room, and speaking only when she had to. But she could hardly think. There was so much to do, so much to pack, so much to sell, and nowhere to go once they sold it. She knew she had to get a job but she couldn't even think of that yet. She couldn't think at all as she looked at them with anguished eyes. She knew Sasha was still too young to understand, but she had to tell Nicholas and she could hardly face the pain in his eyes as she tried. In the end all she could do was hold him close to her as they both cried for the husband and father they had loved. But she knew she had to be strong, as strong as her grandmother had been for her, their circumstances had been even worse. She even thought of going back to Paris with them, life might have been cheaper there, but people had their own troubles there too, and Serge Obolensky had told her that there were now four thousand Russians driving taxis in Paris. And it would all be too foreign to them. They had to stay in New York, Zoya decided.