Danielle Steel: The Promise

“You can't, Nancy. But I can. You do know who I am, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“You do understand that you've already lost Michael? That he could never survive the pressure and tragedy of what has happened to you, if he survives at all. You understand that, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“And you know that it would be a vicious thing to do, to try to put him through it, to make him prove his loyalty to you?” She wouldn't say the word “love.” The girl wasn't worthy of it. Marion had to believe that “Do you understand that, Nancy?” There was a silent pause. “Do you?”

This time it was a very tired little word. She was sounding spent. “Yes.”

“Then you've already lost everything you can lose, haven't you?”

“Yes.” The word had no tone, no life to it. It was as though life itself were seeping away from the girl.

“Nancy, I'd like to propose a little deal to you.” It was Marion Hillyard at her best. If her son had heard her, he would have wanted to kill her. “I'd like you to think about that new face. About a new life, a new Nancy. Think about it. About what it would mean. You'd be beautiful again, you could have friends again, you could go places—to restaurants, to movies, to stores—you could wear pretty clothes and go out with men. The other way … people would shriek when you walked near them. You couldn't go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. Children would cry if they saw you. Can you imagine what that would be like? But you have a choice.” She let the words sink in.

“No, I don't.”

“Yes, you do. I want to give you that choice. I will give you that new life. A new face, a new world. An apartment in another city while the work is being done—anything you need, anything you want to do. There'll be no struggle, Nancy, and in a year or so, the nightmare will be over.”

“And then?”

“You're free. The new life is yours.” There was an endless pause as Marion prepared to lower the boom Nancy was waiting for. “As long as you never contact Michael again. The new face is yours only if you give up Michael. But if you don't accept my … my gift, you know that you've already lost him, anyway. So why live the rest of your life as a freak if you don't have to?”

“What if Michael doesn't honor the agreement? What if I stay away from him, but he doesn't stay away from me?”

“All I want from you is the promise that you'll stay away from him. What Michael does is up to him.”

“And you'll honor that? If he wants me … anyway … if he comes after me, then it's up to him?”

“I'll honor that.”

Nancy felt victorious as she lay there. She knew Michael infinitely better than his mother did. Michael would never give up on her. He'd find her, and want to help her through the ordeal, but by then she'd already be on her way to becoming herself again. His mother couldn't win this one, no matter how hard she tried. Accepting the deal would make Nancy a cheat, because she knew what the outcome would be. But she had to do it She to. There was no other way.

“Will you do it?” Marion almost held her breath as she waited for the one word she prayed for, the word that would free Michael, and at last it came.

But it would be a word of victory, not of defeat. It would be filled with all Nancy's faith in Michael. She remembered the words he had said to her at the rode where they'd hidden the beads the morning before. “I promise never to say good-bye to you.” She knew he never would.

“Your answer, Nancy?” Marion couldn't wait any longer. Her heart wouldn't bear it.

“Yes.”

Chapter 5

Marion Hillyard stood in the doorway of the hospital in a black wool dress and black Cardin coat watching them load the girl into an ambulance. It was six o'clock in the morning, and she had never spoken to her again. They had made their agreement the night before, and Marion had immediately asked Wicky to call the man he knew in San Francisco. Wickfield had been overjoyed. He had kissed Marion on the cheek and gotten hold of Peter Gregson at his home. Gregson would do it. He wanted Nancy out west immediately, and Marion had arranged for a special compartment and two nurses in first class on a jet heading for San Francisco at eight o'clock that morning. She was sparing no expense. “She's a lucky girl, Marion.” Wickfield looked at her in admiration as she crushed out another cigarette.

“I think so . And I don't want Michael to know, Wicky. Is that clear?” It was, and so was the “or else” in her voice. “If someone does tell him, I cancel her treatment.”

“But why? He has a right to know what you've done for the girl.”

“It's between the two of us. The four of us, including you and Gregson. Michael doesn't need to know anything. When he comes out of the coma, you're not to mention the girl to him at all. It will only agitate him.”

If he ever came out of the coma. Marion had dozed in the chair at his side all night long despite Wicky's protests. But she had felt strangely revived after her talk with the girl. She had freed Michael at last. Now he could live. In a way, she had given them both life. She knew she had been right to do what she'd done. “You won't say anything then, will you, Robert?” She never called him that, except to remind him what the Hillyard money had done for his hospital.

“Of course not, if that's what you want.”

“It is.”

There was the dull clank of the ambulance door closing, and the last of the blue blankets swathing the girl disappeared with the two nurses' backs. The nurses would be with her for the first six or eight months in San Francisco. After that, Gregson had said, she wouldn't need them. But for those six or eight months, she would spend much of her time with her eyes bandaged, as he worked on her lids and her nose, her brow and her cheekbones. He had a whole face to reconstruct. There would be other expenses involved, too. Nancy would need almost constant care by a psychiatrist as she underwent the emotional shock of becoming a new person. There was no way Gregson could give her back the self she had been. He had to create a whole new woman. And Marion liked that idea just fine: the girl would be that much more removed from Michael. It took away the possibility of an accident, a chance meeting in an airport five years later. Marion didn't want that to happen. Her mind ran over the list of arrangements she had made with Gregson on the phone at four o'clock that morning, one o'clock San Francisco time. He had sounded bright and alive and dynamic, a man in his forties with an extraordinary international reputation in his field. She was a damn lucky girl. He said he'd have his secretary work it all out. The apartment, the clothes. They had quickly run over the cost of eighteen months of surgery, and the additional expense of psychiatric help, constant nurses for a while, and even general support. They had settled on four hundred thousand dollars as a reasonable figure. Marion would call the bank at nine and have it transferred to Gregson's account on the coast. It would be there when his own bank opened at nine. Not that he was worried. He knew who Marion Hillyard was. Who didn't?

“Why don't you come inside and have some breakfast, Marion?” Wickfield was losing hope of having any influence on her at all, and Calloway had said that he couldn't leave New York until that morning. Wickfield didn't know that Marion had told him not to. She had wanted to be alone to work out her “business” arrangements. And everything had worked out just perfectly. “Marion?”

“Hm?”

“Breakfast?”

“Later, Wicky. Later. I want to see Michael.”

“I'll go up and take a look at him now.”

Marion stopped in the ladies' room for a moment, while Wickfield went ahead to see Michael. But he didn't expect any immediate change; he had checked him only an hour before.