Danielle Steel - Echoes

Two days later, knowing that their long alliance was about to end, Antoine suggested to Gérard that they go out to try two new stallions. Antoine had just bought them for him at auction. They were highly spirited and spectacularly beautiful. Amadea watched them as they left the barn, and complained that her father wouldn't allow her to go with them. Instead, she went back to the house to play with her baby sister. She was playing with her in her bedroom later that afternoon, when she heard the doorbell ring, and her mother let someone in. She didn't think about it as she played dolls with Daphne, and after a while, she went downstairs to get Daphne a cookie. She saw Gérard and one of her father's chief trainers sitting in the living room, speaking to her mother, and Beata was wearing a glazed expression. She looked dazed, as she turned and saw Amadea.

“Go back upstairs,” she said tersely, which was unlike her. Amadea was so startled by her tone that she turned and did as she was told, but as she sat in her room with Daphne, she was frightened. She knew even before they told her that something terrible had happened.

It seemed like hours before her mother came upstairs, and when she did, she was crying. She could hardly speak as she held Amadea in her arms, and told her that her father had been thrown by the new stallion.

“Is he hurt?” Amadea asked, looking terrified. Even with only one good arm, he was a faultless rider. And all Beata could do was sob and shake her head. It was an eternity before she could bring herself to say the words. Neither of them could believe it.

“Papa's dead, Amadea…Papa…” She choked on the words, as Amadea sobbed in her mother's arms. Véronique came a little while later to sit with the girls, and Beata went to see him at the stables. He had broken his neck and had been killed instantly. He was dead, the man she would have given her life for. It was almost beyond bearing.

The funeral was an endless agony, and the church was filled to bursting. Everyone who had ever known and worked with him had loved him. Gérard spoke at his funeral eloquently, and Véronique sat beside Beata with an arm around her shoulders. Afterward there was a reception at the Schloss , and the main hall was filled with mourning horsemen. Beata looked like a ghost as she drifted through the room, in widow's weeds, clinging to her daughters.

And afterward, there was so much to think of. This man she had loved so much, had given up her family for, who had loved and never betrayed or disappointed her, was suddenly gone. She had no idea where to go, what to do, or who to turn to. Gérard helped her as much as he could, and Véronique never left her. There was endless red tape to cut through, and Gérard offered his own attorneys in France to help her. The fortune that had been left to him by his father only weeks before was hers now. He had already agreed to share it equally with his brother Nicolas. But the half of the inheritance that Antoine had kept would be more than enough for Beata and the girls to live on. She would not live in grand luxury, but her future was secure. She could buy a house and support herself and the girls for as long as she lived. She no longer had to worry about petty economies, nor could she indulge frivolous excesses. But in essence, from a financial standpoint at least, she had few worries. The worst of it was that he was gone, and at thirty-two she was a widow. Amadea knew she would never forget the day her father died. And as quickly as was reasonable, they had to leave the house she had grown up in. Their life was about to undergo radical changes. Only Daphne was far too young to understand them. Amadea and her mother understood them all too well. Beata felt and looked as though her own life had ended.

The title passed to Nicolas, and the lands that went with them. The château was his now. Comte Nicolas de Vallerand was a rich man, just as Antoine would have been finally, if he had lived long enough to enjoy it. He had survived his father by less than two weeks. None of this was what Beata had expected. She didn't mind losing what she'd never had, and cared nothing for. All she cared about was that she had lost Antoine.

In time, a man Antoine had known and liked took over his job at the stables. Gérard and Véronique helped Beata find a house in Cologne. Beata and the girls moved into it that summer. She received a polite letter from her brother-in-law, extending his condolences, but he said nothing about wanting to meet her, or seeing Antoine's children. The letter was stiff, polite, and formal. Beata hated him for hurting Antoine. Just as her own family had been, his had been cruel to them as well. Beata and Antoine had been outcasts for their entire marriage. Their only close friends had been the Daubignys and each other. It was too late for Beata to want to meet her brother-in-law and he didn't suggest it. He seemed content to let things lie, especially now that Antoine was gone. And she had the distinct impression that Antoine's brother still blamed her for their estrangement, although he had had the grace and good manners to address her as Madame la Comtesse, which she still was now. As far as she was concerned, a title was a poor substitute for a husband. She never answered her brother-in-law's letter, nor did she explain the reasons for her anger at him to Amadea. She saw no point.

Beata moved around her new home like a ghost for the next year, and she was grateful that Amadea took full charge of her younger sister. She bathed her, dressed her, played with her, spent every waking hour with her when she wasn't in school. She was the mother to Daphne that Beata no longer could be. It was as though when Antoine died, he had taken her with him. She no longer wanted to live without him, and it frightened Amadea sometimes to see that her mother had become deeply religious. She spent most of her time in church. Often when Amadea came home from school, she found her mother gone, and Daphne being watched by the housekeeper, who just shook her head whenever Amadea asked for her mother. She was only eleven, but overnight she had become the only responsible member of the family. Not knowing what else to do, she sometimes spent hours in church, sitting silently beside her mother, just to be with her. It was the only place where Beata felt at peace and wanted to be. And rather than developing a horror of it, Amadea embraced it. She loved being in church with her. Amadea's best friend was from a large Catholic family, and when Amadea was thirteen, the girl's older sister became a nun, which Amadea found somewhat mysterious and intriguing. They talked a lot about Amadea's friend's sister's vocation, and Amadea wondered how you got one. It sounded like a good thing.

But just at that time, her mother began to confuse her. Not only did her mother go to church every day, sometimes more than once, but she went to a synagogue occasionally, too. It was a large imposing one filled with what looked like substantial people. She took Amadea with her once on a day she referred to as Yom Kippur. Amadea found it fascinating, but a little scary. Her mother had sat looking riveted, as she stared at an older woman. The woman appeared not to see her. And that night, in their living room, Amadea found her mother staring at a lap full of framed, faded old pictures.

“Who are those people, Mama?” Amadea asked softly. She loved her mother so much, and for three years now, she felt as though she had lost her. In a way, the mother she had known and loved had vanished with her father. There had been no laughter in the house since he died, except when Amadea played with Daphne.

“They're my parents and sister and brothers,” Beata said simply. Until that day, Amadea had never heard a word about them. Her father had once told her that he and her mother were orphans when they met each other. She loved hearing about the day they met, and how they had fallen in love, how beautiful her mother had looked on the day they were married. She knew they had met in Switzerland, and lived there with cousins of his until she was two, and then came to the house she knew and had grown up in. She still went to ride at the stables sometimes, but it made her sad now and miss her father. Her mother had long since sold her pony. Gérard and Véronique said she was always welcome, but she knew her mother didn't like it when she went there. She was afraid that something would happen, as it had to her father. Amadea stopped going so as not to upset her mother, although she missed it.