Everyone was doing well, and after eleven years abroad, at the age of sixty-four, Faye quietly died in her sleep one night. They were in Cap Ferrat for the fall, in a beautiful villa they had bought there, which they wanted to leave to their children one day. It would make a perfect place for them to come, all of them.
And now she came home to them, with Ward looking stunned. He was sixty-seven, and she had been his whole life since he was twenty-five years old … forty-two years…. He brought her home to Hollywood, the place she had loved, which she had conquered so many times, as an actress, a director, a woman … as his wife … he remembered those desperate years when he had lost everything, when she had pulled them all together so valiantly, and started a new career, with all of them in tow, when she had helped him get back on his feet … and he remembered the years before … and the years long afterward, as they made film after film for MGM … and the big break she had given Val … what he could not remember anymore were the years without her. That wasn't possible. It couldn't be true … it hadn't been true … and yet it was true now. He was alone now, she was gone. Anne and Bill met him at the plane, and mercifully, they had left the children home. They watched the casket being lowered from the belly of the plane, as the wind whipped Anne's hair, and in the twilight she looked so much like Faye. She was thirty-one years old, and her mother was gone,. s. Her eyes rose toward Ward's, and she quietly took his hand. She and Bill had talked about it the night before, and they could at least offer him that. They had built a guesthouse behind their house in Beverly Hills, and it would be nice if he came to live there. Ward and Faye had long since sold their old house in Beverly Hills. They hadn't lived there in years. And Anne looked up at him now, as Bill watched.
“Come on, Daddy, let's go home.”
For the first time, he looked suddenly old. He couldn't believe she was gone. And Anne wanted him to rest. There was a lot they had to do, and the funeral would be in two days at the church where they'd been married, and then Forest Lawn. And everyone would be there of course … everyone who had ever been anyone … everyone except Faye Thayer … but her family would be there. All of them. And Ward … it was difficult to imagine a world without her. He couldn't imagine it at all, as tears slid quietly down his cheeks, as they drove into the night, with Faye in the hearse behind … he could imagine her everywhere, if he just closed his eyes … she was still there with him, as she would be with all of them … always, for the rest of time. Her movies would live on … the memories … the love and above all the family, each one of them, touched by her, a part of her, just as she had been a part of them.
a cognizant original v5 release october 14 2010
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Copyright © 1985 by Benitreto Publications, Ltd.
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eISBN: 978-0-307-56643-0
August 1989
v3.0
Table of Contents
CRITICAL RAVES FOR DANIELLE STEEL
Also by Danielle Steel
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44