"I'm sorry we're meeting like this, April," Ali said kindly. "I'm sorry for your loss."
Ali's words seemed to sap all of the young woman's strength. April staggered over to a nearby table, where she sank onto a chair and made a halfhearted attempt to smooth her hair.
"No one told me you'd be coming," she said accusingly.
"Ted Grantham is the one who set up the meeting," Ali returned. "He should have told you."
"He didn't." April seemed close to tears.
"I'm sorry," Ali said.
April probably could have handled a fight, but she was unable to cope with kindness. Her lips trembled, her face crumpled. Burying her head in her hands, she began to sob.
"I can't believe any of this is happening," she said despondently. "This was supposed to be my wedding day. I can't believe Paul is gone, just like thatwith no warning at all. Instead of our wedding guests, the house is full of lawyers who are here about his will. Paul's will, for God's sake! What am I going to do without him? How will I manage? What'll happen to me? What'll happen to my baby?"
April's unbridled grief over losing Paul struck Ali as utterly raw and realand refreshingly different from her own conflicted emotions. Learning about Paul's deathseeing him deadhad left Ali more empty than sad. Having him dead made her own life far less complicated. She hadn't cried. In fact, she hadn't shed a single tear, not even in the coroner's office. For that she felt guilty. In a way, being a party to April Gaddis's uncompromising despair made Ali feel better. She was relieved to know that Paul's sudden death meant something to someoneeven if that person was the one who had unceremoniously booted Ali out of her home and out of her marriage.
And where were April's friends? Why was she all alone? Without thinking about it, Ali sat down next to the grieving woman, laying a compassionate hand on her shoulder. What this very pregnant twenty-five-year-old was facing now was territory Ali Reynolds knew all too well. She had been there once, too, only she had been a few years younger than April when it had happened to her.
Ali had been a happily married twenty-two-year-old and pregnant with Chris when her first husband, Dean Reynolds, had been diagnosed with glioblastoma and died within months. Ali knew what it meant to be expecting a baby who would most likely be and indeed was a fatherless child on the day he was born. She remembered lying awake at night, pregnant, with her back hurting, and with the baby hurtling around inside her womb, and asking those very same questions over and over: What will become of us? How can I raise this baby on my own? Why is this happening to me?
During those dark, sleepless nights she hadn't known that she would be able to make it; that despite being a single mother she'd somehow manage to go back to school to finish her education and then go on to have a life and career that most people would have thought of as charmed. Back in that terrible time, there had been no easy answers for her, and she didn't try to pass along any easy answers to April Gaddis, either.
"You'll manage," Ali said, patting the weeping woman on the shoulder. "Being a single mother is tough. There are times when the baby is crying and the responsibility is all on your shoulders and you'll think you won't be able to live through one more day, but you will. There are times you'll question God and times when you'll rail at Him. But some day, on a bright fall afternoon, you'll be standing on the sidelines of a soccer field cheering like mad when that baby of yours kicks his first goal. That's when you'll know God was right; that's when you'll know everything you went through was worth it."
April raised her head. Her bleak eyes met Ali's. "But the divorce didn't go through," she said. "Paul and I weren't even married. What if he left me out of his will? He said he was going to rewrite it. He told me he had, but what if he didn't? Where will the baby and I live? What am I going to do? What?"
Ali could see that April's grief had her operating on a very short loop. "That's why we both have attorneys," Ali counseled gently. "I'm sure that's what they're doing right nowthey're inside sorting things out."
"But I don't even have an attorney," April said. "I never thought I needed one."
Oh, honey lamb, Ali thought, if you were messing around with Paul Grayson, how wrong you were!
"It's going to be okay," Ali said with more conviction than she felt.
"Are you sure?" April asked.
Ali nodded. "Now what about you? You look a little queasy. You said you were looking for something to eat?"
Faced with a crisis, Ali automatically reverted to the coping skills she had learned at her mother's knee. In the Edie Larson school of crisis management there was nothing so bad that it couldn't be improved by the application of some well-prepared food served with equal amounts of tender loving care and judicious advice.
April nodded. "I called down to the kitchen, but no one answered. The cook's probably out overseeing the caterers for the film crew."
Ali stood up. "Someone in your condition shouldn't be running on empty. Let me go ask Elvira to fix you something. An omelet, maybe? Elvira's huevos rancheros are wonderful, but probably not for someone as pregnant as you are."
"Elvira doesn't work here anymore," April said. "She quit, or else Paul fired her. I'm not sure which."
Ali was surprised to hear Elvira was gonesurprised and sorry, both. "But you do have a cook," Ali confirmed.
April nodded.
"Why don't I go find her," Ali offered. "What's her name?"
"We've gone through half a dozen cooks since that first one left," April said. "Sorry. I don't know her name."
"What would you like then?"
"Toast," April said uncertainly. "And maybe some orange juice."
"How about some bacon?"
"Oh, no. I don't eat anything that had a face. I'm a vegan."
That was, of course, utterly predictable. "Whole wheat?" Ali asked.
"Yes, please. With marmalade. And coffee. Have her make me a lattea vanilla latte."
Ali wasn't sure a dose of caffeine was in the baby's best interests, but she set off for the kitchen without saying anything. On the way she caught a glimpse of Ted Grantham, Victor Angeleri, and Helga Myerhoff still huddled in the library, still conferring. In the spacious kitchen, Ali found a heavyset black woman standing in front of the stainless steel sinks and working her way through a mountain of dirty dishes.
"The breakfast buffet's out by the pool house," she said impatiently. "That's where the film crew is. There's food and coffee out there. Help yourself."
She sounded exasperated, overworked, and underappreciated if not underpaid. Having another stranger wander into her kitchen was more than she could handle.
"This is for Aprilfor Ms. Gaddis," Ali explained. "She asked me if you could make her some toastwhole wheat toast with marmalade, orange juice, and a vanilla latte."
The woman shook excess water off her hands and then dried them on a tea towel. "Very well," she said with a curt nod. "Do you want to wait here for it or should I bring it to her?"
"It might be best if you brought it," Ali said. "We're out on the terrace."
"You want some coffee, too?"
"Yes, thank you," Ali said. "That would be nice."
Ali returned to the terrace to find April sitting exactly where Ali had left her. She seemed to be absorbed in watching the ongoing rock-hauling and arranging process down below, but when Ali sat down next to her, she realized April was really staring off into space, seeing nothing.
"Breakfast's on its way," Ali said.
April nodded without answering.
"So when's the baby due?" Ali asked. She hoped that drawing April into a conversation might help her out of her solitary reverie and back into the present.