“Stay away from her. You've done enough. You damn near got her killed with you. What did you think you were doing, out at that hour? Didn't you have any idea how it would look? You got yourselves photographed by the paparazzi, made fools of yourselves, and of me. I suppose you thought you'd get away with it. Well, you didn't obviously. And now the best thing you can do is stay the hell out of her room, and our lives. We don't need a scandal, involving you.”
“You don't have a scandal involving me,” Bill said, sounding fierce.
“I'm not so sure of that. And whether I do or not, I forbid you to enter her room. Have I made myself clear?”
“Why do you hate her so much?” Bill asked as Gordon reached the door, and then froze and slowly turned at his words.
“Are you insane? I don't hate her. She's my wife. Why do you think I'm here?”
“What other choice do you have? Could you actually not be here and still pretend that you care about her to anyone? Hardly. We both know why you're here. You're here for appearances, and because you have no choice. You're responsible for her. You don't give a damn about her, Forrester, and I doubt if you ever did.”
“You're a son of a bitch,” Gordon spat at him, and then walked out the door. But he couldn't help wondering as he did if that was what Isabelle had said to him, that her husband hated her, and he wondered how much Bill knew about their domestic life. It sounded to Gordon as though he knew far too much.
Bill was still thinking about their exchange when Cynthia and the girls came back to see him that afternoon. The girls had been to the flea market and bought a pile of silly things they loved, and Cynthia had gone for a long, thoughtful walk, thinking of everything he'd said. But neither of them mentioned any of it, or their legal plans, in front of the girls. It was too soon. They stayed until dinnertime, and Olivia fed him with a spoon. He tried to feed himself, but with the cumbersome neck brace on, he spilled his food everywhere, especially the soup.
“What did the doctor say?” Cynthia asked him quietly before they left.
“That you'll be better off,” he whispered to her, and she looked weepy again. “I'm just kidding. He said I could regain some of the use of my legs, with a lot of hard work. It's an interesting challenge. Who knows?
Maybe they'll manage a miracle, and get me walking.” He still wanted to believe that, although according to the doctor, it was by no means sure. “I start therapy and rehab in earnest in three weeks. They want to give everything a little more time to heal before they start.”
“You can come home for that,” she said softly. She was still feeling overwhelmed by his decision, and hoped he would relent in time.
“Maybe. We'll see,” he said noncommittally. He didn't want to say too much in front of the girls. “What about you? When are you going home? Have you thought about it?” Bill asked her, looking subdued. It had been a tough afternoon for him.
“The girls want to stay for the week. I thought I might take them to Paris in a few days, if you're okay, and then I can come back to see you.” She was still hoping he'd change his mind after everything he'd said, but his voice was firm. He had no regrets. He knew he was doing the right thing, for both of them.
“Don't,” he said gently. “I'll be fine. You should go back with the girls. I know you have plans to go to see your parents in Maine.” She had already decided not to come back to Europe again, and after Maine, she was going straight to the Hamptons. “I'll be back in the States soon.” There was a lot he had to do. If he went back, he had to find a rehab facility where he could stay for a while, and then he needed to find an apartment and move out of their house. But it was early days for all that yet. And first, they'd have to tell the girls what they'd decided. He wasn't looking forward to that, and he wanted to tell them with her, so the girls would understand that he and Cynthia would still be friends. That mattered a lot to him, and would to them eventually too. He was sure of it.
Cynthia and the girls went back to the hotel to have dinner, and he lay in his room quietly all night. He would have liked to see Isabelle again, but he didn't want to push his luck, in case Gordon was still in town, and he was tired anyway. It had been a big day. He had been told he would most probably never walk again, “might” have sex again eventually although not certainly, had seen Isabelle, locked horns with her husband, and told Cynthia he wanted a divorce. Except for the accident that had changed all their lives irreversibly, that was about as big as it got.
Chapter 7
Gordon Forrester left London for Paris early Monday morning. He called the hospital before he left, was told nothing had changed, and left for the airport. He was carrying with him all of Isabelle's belongings that she'd left in her hotel room. There was no point leaving her anything at the hospital, he decided. In the state she was in, she didn't need it. And as he flew over the English Channel, he knew nothing more than he had when he'd come. The doctors still had no idea if she'd live, or recover. Her internal organs seemed to be mending slowly, but there was considerable concern over her heart and lungs, and her liver would take a long time to heal. And the blow to her head, although less severe than the rest of the damage, was keeping her in a deep coma. They were sedating her to allow all her injuries to heal. But whether or not she would wake up, or die, or remain in a coma interminably, was a story yet to be told. There were still too many questions, to which no one had any answers. It was a hopeful sign that she was still alive five days after the accident, and certainly each day counted. But she was still in extremely critical condition. And Gordon knew, as he landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Roissy, that he could not put off telling the children any longer. He had waited from one day to the next, hoping for some improvement, but there had been none. And it seemed dangerous to him to wait any longer. Sophie was old enough to know the truth, that she might lose her mother, and whether he was ill or not, Teddy simply had to face it. Gordon was sure that Sophie would be of some comfort to him. He was going to wait until she returned from Portugal to tell Teddy, so that she could deal with her brother. It was not a scene Gordon was looking forward to, or the kind of situation he was good at. And particularly in this case, he had almost no relationship with his son.
As he put his bag and Isabelle's into a cab at Roissy, he thought of Bill Robinson again and their unpleasant encounter. He was still infuriated by the audacity and arrogance of Bill's question, about why he hated Isabelle. It was an outrageous suggestion, and he couldn't help wondering if that was what Isabelle had said. He didn't hate his wife. He had simply lost her in the chaos and abysmal years after Teddy's birth. He could no longer separate her in his mind from the horrors of the sickroom, and all that represented to him. In his eyes, she was no longer his wife, she was Teddy's nurse, and nothing more.
He wondered if perhaps in her mind, thinking that Gordon hated her justified the affair he suspected she'd had with Bill, or at the very least, the flirtation. If they had been to Annabel's together as the papers said, and the photograph indicated, clearly their alliance was not as innocent as Bill Robinson suggested.