The consultant had explained, kindly but clearly, that “stable” meant nothing more than that his heart was not expected to stop again imminently. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t have another attack in the future. And it didn’t mean he would ever regain consciousness. He might. But as of today, no one could say for sure which way things would go. Nor could they tell her how long it would be before his condition changed, for better or worse.
For the next week, Claire made the daily trip to Cedars alone. She longed to bring Siena with her, but Dr. Davis had warned her not to rush things.
“Give her time,” he’d said. “She’ll be fine, but she needs to regain her strength.”
About ten days after their return home, Siena was finally well enough to make it downstairs for breakfast. She still looked terrible, although she insisted she had slept well, and Claire was greatly encouraged to see her smiling for the first time in weeks when a totally hyperactive Zulu, Claire’s beloved bichon frise, launched himself into Siena’s lap like a rocket-propelled pom-pom and began frenziedly licking her face.
“Nice to see someone still appreciates me,” she laughed. Claire clucked around her like a mother hen in her old white dressing gown—she’d had the same one since Siena was little—making toast and coffee and signaling for Siena to sit still and be waited on.
“It feels funny, being here. In this kitchen,” said Siena. “Sitting at this table. This is where Grandpa died, right here.” She stretched out her fingers and swept them in an arc across the worn wood of the table, lost in the awful memory. Whatever his failings as a father, as a husband, as a man, Siena had loved her grandfather with the pure, uncomplicated adoration of a child. Duke’s death had marked the end of her childhood and the beginning of a long and painful journey. But the irony was that the journey had ultimately led her back to Hancock Park, to this same table. She had come full circle.
“I know, honey.” Claire placed a steaming mug of milky coffee in front of her daughter. “But we had a lot of good times at this table as well.” When Siena didn’t say anything, she went on. “I think your grandfather would be pleased to see you back home.”
That made Siena smile. While she petted Zulu and nibbled at the peanut-butter toast that Claire had piled high in front of her, she found herself starting to talk about Randall. It was the first time she had admitted to anyone, perhaps even herself, just how controlling and abusive he had been. The first time she had said the words out loud, anyway.
Claire let her finish without interruption. She wasn’t about to pass judgment, or even offer advice. It was up to Siena what she wanted to do now. And whether she decided to risk going after him through the courts or the press, or just walked away and let it go, this time Claire was going to be there for her daughter 100 percent.
“Well,” she said at last, once Siena’s stream of consciousness had come to a natural end. “That’s all in the past now, my angel. I’m just glad you’re here.”
“Me too.” Siena smiled at her, pushing all thoughts of Randall from her mind for the time being.
“So,” said Claire, kissing the top of her head and clearing away her empty plate. “I guess we should think about heading for the hospital.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Mom.” Siena frowned nervously. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”
“What do you mean?” asked Claire. “You want to see your father, don’t you?”
Siena felt torn. The truth was, she was terrified of seeing Pete and had no idea how she was going to react once she got into that hospital room. On the other hand, she knew how desperate her mother was to be at his bedside, and to have her support. It was almost obscene to sit here worrying about herself when her dad might be dying, whatever she did or didn’t feel for him. But she couldn’t seem to help it.
“What if the press see me?” she heard herself saying, knowing how selfish she must sound and cursing herself inside. “They’ll go berserk.”
“No they won’t,” said Claire reasonably. “No one recognized you on the plane from Boston, did they? Besides, so what if they do see you? It’s hardly a crime to visit your own father when he’s d—” She only just stopped herself from saying it. “When he’s seriously ill.”
Siena thought about it. “Did you speak to his doctor today?” she asked. Claire nodded. She looked terribly anxious. She must have aged years in the last few days. “Is he conscious?”
“He hasn’t been. Not for the last forty-eight hours.”
“All right then,” said Siena. She was scared shitless, but so what? It was time to put her mother first for once. “In that case, I’ll come with you.”
Kenneth Sams was starting to get pissed.
He’d been over the moon when he heard that he was going to get the bulk of the shifts taking care of Pete McMahon. All the other nurses had been sooo jealous.
“You’re bound to meet loads of celebrities coming to visit,” they said.
“Hunter, ‘world’s most beautiful man’ McMahon is sure to come see his brother,” they said.
That was over a week ago. And how many famous movie stars had he met? How many gorgeous, tight-assed TV hunks had stopped by to patch things up with their only brother before he croaked?
None.
Nothing. Nada. Zip.
Only the old boy’s wife, who was a nice enough lady and all, and occasionally his blubbering lump of a sister had come to visit. For a guy who had practically ruled Hollywood for the last fifteen years, Pete McMahon sure didn’t seem to have a lot of friends.
This morning Kenny had checked on his patient as usual—still no change—and was heading back to the staff room for a slug of coffee when he saw Mrs. McMahon arriving. Only this time, she wasn’t alone.
All he could make out of her companion as they approached was that she was small and female, but he noticed she was wearing big dark glasses and a scarf—the classic celeb disguise!
“Hello, Mrs. McMahon.” He minced over to them excitedly, staring without restraint at Siena’s scar and collapsed cheek. “He’s still sleeping, I’m afraid. And are you, er, another friend of the family?” He cocked his head curiously at her.
“No,” said Siena rudely. She was in no mood to pander to some nosy queen of a nurse. “Did you mean asleep, or is he unconscious?”
Kenny paused. She didn’t look much like her, but then they could do incredible retouches these days on some of those magazine pictures. And he was sure he recognized the voice.
“Unconscious,” he said. “He’s still unconscious.”
“Fine,” said Siena. “We’d like to see him now, please.”
She swept into the private room regally, with Claire following anxiously behind.
“Did you really have to be so rude to him?” she said once the door was safely closed behind them. “Kenny’s your father’s nurse, and he’s always been really helpful and supportive.”
“Sorry,” said Siena, although privately, she thought Kenny looked like a classic star-fucker and could imagine exactly what had inspired his “support” toward her mom. “I just don’t want people asking too many questions, you know?”
Down the hall, Kenny pumped three quarters into the nurses’ pay phone and tried to stop his heart from pounding.
“Hello?” he stammered breathlessly. “L.A. Times? Yeah, put me through to the news desk, please. Uh-huh. Yeah, my name’s Kenneth. Kenneth Sams.”
Staring at her father, Siena tried to feel something, anything. But it was as if she had no emotion left at all.
He was naked from the waist up and fatter than she remembered, with his sandy red chest hair shaved to allow six round pads trailing wires to be stuck to his chest, as though somebody might be planning to electrocute him. His face looked unusually placid—he didn’t appear to be in any pain—and his breathing was deep and regular.
Claire pulled up a chair and positioned herself beside him, taking his limp hand in hers and stroking it as she spoke to him. “Siena is here, honey,” she said.
“She’s come to visit you. She’s come back home.”
Pete made not the slightest flicker of recognition, and Siena relaxed slightly. At least he wasn’t going to wake up and start screaming at her. Unfortunately, she did not share her mother’s belief that he would feel anything other than anger should he come to and find the prodigal daughter returned.
The room was cold and clinical and smelled sterilized. It made Siena shudder. She’d seen more than her fair share of hospitals recently. The only noise was a dull, constant hum from the high-tech-looking machine next to Pete’s bed, which she assumed was some sort of heart monitor, although it didn’t have one of those blippy green screens with a squiggly line like they had in all the TV shows.
The thought occurred to her that if Pete had had his way, she would have gone to Oxford and become a fully fledged doctor by now, and would no doubt understand the significance of every blip and whirr.
On the table next to the machine, two huge vases of pale yellow roses, Claire’s favorite flowers, defiantly attempted to inject some color and natural beauty into the sterile room. But even they, Siena noticed, had started to brown and fray at the tips of the petals, as if contaminated by the artificial atmosphere.
“Are you okay, Mom?” she asked, trying to smile for Claire’s sake. “You want me to get you anything from the cafeteria? Some coffee or something?”
Claire shook her head. “No, darling. I have everything I ever wanted right here.”
She took hold of Siena’s hand and placed it on top of Pete’s and between her own. Siena closed her eyes and tried with all her might to feel something.
It was no good. She was still numb. What kind of heartless monster was she?
As if reading her mind, Claire said gently, “It’s all right, darling, it’s not your fault. You haven’t seen him in a long time.”
“I’m sorry,” Siena whispered in reply. Then she blurted it out. “I don’t think I love him, Mom. I really don’t.”
“Shhh,” said Claire, placing two fingers gently over Siena’s lips to silence her. “It doesn’t matter. You’re here, darling. That’s all that matters. Why don’t you try talking to him? Tell him how you feel.”
Tell him how she felt? Siena very much doubted whether he or her mother would be ready to hear the truth, even if she knew what to say, where to begin. But she could tell from Claire’s anxious, desperately hopeful face that she was longing for her to make some sort of gesture of reconciliation.
She knew she couldn’t forgive him in her heart. It was too late for that. But she could do this one small thing for her mother. She had to do it.
Taking Pete’s hand in hers, she cleared her throat awkwardly.
“Hello, Dad,” she said, blushing self-consciously as she spoke. “It’s me, Siena. I . . .” She stumbled, unsure of what her mother would want her to say. In the end, she decided to keep it simple. “I want you to know that I love you and I forgive you. For everything.”
Suddenly, she let out a little scream of shock and jumped back from the bed, as if a snake had bitten her.
“What is it?” asked Claire in panic. “What’s the matter?”
“Holy shit,” said Siena, whose heart was beating like a rapid-fire machine gun. “He squeezed my hand. Jesus, Mom. I think he heard me.”
They stayed for almost two more hours, Claire talking almost constantly to Pete, and Siena doing her best to make some further show of affection for her mother’s sake, holding his hand and at one point wiping the sweat from his forehead with a washcloth. But to Claire’s dismay, he made no further noise or movement whatsoever.
She started to wonder whether Siena had imagined the squeeze he gave her. But Siena knew for certain it had happened. It had scared the hell out of her.
During the long, awkward silences, Siena was ashamed to find her mind wandering to other things. She thought about her sight and whether it would ever fully recover. She’d seen the eye specialist yesterday for an initial consultation, and he’d been guardedly encouraging but by no means certain he could make things right.
She thought a lot about Hunter too, and everything that had happened between them. She longed to go and see him, to tell him how sorry she was for everything. But when she pictured herself walking up to his door and pressing the buzzer, she found she was frozen with terror. What if he didn’t forgive her? What if Tiffany refused to give her the time of day, refused to let her in? Siena didn’t think she could bear it if Hunter were to reject her now.
Most of all, though, she thought about Max.
It was funny how, after ruthlessly blocking out all her feelings for him for over a year, she now seemed incapable of going a minute without images of his face popping up unbidden in her mind. After he cheated on her, she’d been so hurt, so blinded with misery, that it had seemed easy, cathartic even, to blame him for everything. She’d nursed her anger like a mother nursing a child, egged on of course by Randall, until it had hardened into a safe protective shell around her heart. She had remembered nothing good about him.
But now she felt as if the dam were breaking, and all those good and happy memories were flooding out, assaulting her senses, cracking what was left of her weakened self-defenses. And for the first time, she realized that perhaps it wasn’t all his fault. That maybe, in the months they were together, she might have said or done things to push him away.
She missed him so much. She wanted to say sorry, for the way she’d treated him when he crashed the party at Malibu and tried to help her. She wanted to say sorry for everything.
The thought of never seeing him again was infinitely more painful to her than any of her injuries, but she didn’t even know where he lived anymore. Besides, even if she tracked him down, she could hardly expect him to want her now, with her shattered face and her scars. She was practically a cripple. The whole thing was utterly hopeless.
Finally, Claire agreed that they should take a break and go to get some lunch.
“Do you mind if we get out of the hospital?” Siena asked her. “I really need some air. We could grab a bite up on Melrose or something, sit inside at Le Pain. No one will recognize us there.”
“Sure, honey,” said Claire. She could tell Siena felt ill at ease and had been itching to escape ever since they got there. She had also noticed her scratching and worrying at her right eye, constantly taking off her dark glasses to touch the still-red scars. She prayed that the new specialist would be able to help her. God only knew what a hatchet job Randall’s doctors might have done on her.
Mother and daughter walked hand in hand to the elevator and shot down the seventeen floors to the lobby in just a few seconds. Scarf and shades firmly in place and with her head down, Siena walked across the polished marble floor to the electric double doors, which opened as they approached to let them out into the December sunshine.
She winced as a flashbulb erupted in her face.
The noise was deafening.
“Siena! Is it true that you had a breakdown?”
“Siena, what does Randall Stein think about your reconciliation with your family?”
“How do you feel? Can you tell us anything about your father’s condition?”
“Mrs. McMahon, what’s it like to be reunited with your daughter after all these years?”
Siena tried in vain to shield her face with her hands, but the cameras kept rolling, their flashes blinding her sensitive eyes so she had to cling to her mother helplessly for support.
“Leave us alone!” shouted Claire, but she was barely audible over the frenzied pushing and shouting of the press pack that now surrounded them. “We have nothing to say.”
She looked back longingly over her shoulder at the hospital doors, but at least two TV crews stood between her and safety. She was conscious of Siena shivering like a frightened fawn beside her, clinging to her sleeve for dear life. How on earth were they going to get out of here?
Suddenly, she heard a male voice piercing through the racket. She couldn’t quite plac
e it at first, although she was sure she recognized it from somewhere.
“Excuse me. Out of my way, please. Coming through.”
The voice was calm but forceful, and the scrum of reporters audibly quietened and backed away slightly to allow its owner to move forward. When he appeared beside her, Claire didn’t think she had ever been so pleased to see anyone in her life.
“Come on,” said Hunter. “Let’s get you two inside.”
He scooped Siena up into his arms—Jesus Christ, she was thin, she weighed almost nothing—and ushered Claire toward the hospital doors, elbowing aside journalists and cameramen effortlessly as he strode forward.
“Hunter!” came the yells from behind them.
“Are you here to see your brother?”
“Can you tell us about Siena’s breakdown? When did you two last see each other?”
“Has your brother’s heart attack brought the family back together? Hunter!”
As they approached the doors, hospital security surged forward to let them through and keep the cameras back. Claire glanced back to see a crowd of faces pressed up against the glass at the sides, and where the doors stood open in the middle hundreds of arms were blindly thrusting tape recorders and cameras into the lobby, desperate for one last comment or shot.
How could Siena, or anyone, ever have chosen to live like this?
Hunter carried Siena, who was still shaking, into the elevator, and she let out a loud sigh of relief as the doors closed behind them.
“What floor?” he asked.
He looked enormous in the confined space of the elevator, and Siena seemed little more than a limp rag doll pressed against the broad white-shirted expanse of his chest.
Claire hadn’t seen him since he was a teenager, although she’d seen pictures. He’d grown into quite a man. He looked frighteningly like a young Duke. She stood there, gazing at him blankly, and said nothing.
“What button should I press?” he asked again.