Vanessa sat up with a jerk, feeling disoriented, blinking as she looked around the library. Dimly, in the distance, the thudding noise that had awakened her continued.
She pushed herself to her feet, hurried across the room and out into the hall. Instantly the thudding sounded louder, and she realized that someone was hammering on the front door of the cottage.
She ran across the hall, shouting, “I’m coming,” and flung open the door. Much to her surprise and consternation she found herself staring into the face of Bill’s mother.
“Dru!” she exclaimed, completely taken aback. “Hello! Have you been knocking long?”
When his mother did not answer, but simply stared at her blankly, Vanessa went on, “Why have you come to see me? What are you doing here?” Her brows knitted together in a frown when suddenly she became aware of Dru Fitzgerald’s troubled face and bloodshot eyes. She also noticed that she looked painfully thin. “Dru, what’s the matter?” she asked, urgency echoing in her voice.
Dru leaned against the doorjamb, unexpectedly breathing hard, as if she was experiencing some sort of difficulty. She managed to say, “May I come inside, Vanessa?”
“How rude of me to keep you standing here. Of course, please come in. Can I get you anything?”
“A glass of water, please. I must take a pill.”
Vanessa took hold of Drucilla’s arm and escorted her into the cottage. After leading her to the sitting room, and settling her in a chair, she went to the kitchen for the water.
A moment later Vanessa returned. She handed the glass to Dru, waited for her to take the pill, then said, “I can tell you’re distressed about something. What’s the matter?”
Drucilla Fitzgerald, staring intently at her, realized with a small jolt that Vanessa did not know what had happened to Bill. How that was possible she wasn’t sure, but, nonetheless, she was quite certain it was true. Dru wondered how to tell her. Tears flooded her eyes, and she clasped her hands together to stop them from trembling.
Vanessa was about to ask her again what was causing her upset when Dru cleared her throat, reached out, and took hold of Vanessa’s hand.
Dru said slowly, almost in a whisper, “I’ve been trying to reach you on the phone for days.” No longer able to control herself, she began to weep. She groped in her wool jacket for her handkerchief.
“I’ve had my phone turned off,” Vanessa explained, and as she said these words she had a terrible sense of foreboding. “It’s Bill! Something’s happened to Bill, hasn’t it?”
Dru continued to cry, her sobs almost uncontrollable, her pain even more apparent now.
Vanessa went and sat next to her on the sofa, put her arm around Dru’s shoulders. “I’m totally in the dark, Dru. I’ve had not only the phone turned off but the television as well. I’ve cut myself off from the world for the past two weeks.”
Dru turned to look at her, the tears streaming down her pale face. Her mouth began to tremble. “He’s dead,” she said in a voice that was barely audible. “My son is dead. My only child has been taken from me in the most cruel way. Oh Vanessa . . . Vanessa . . . Why did they kill him? They shot him. He’s never coming back. He’s gone. Oh, whatever shall we do without him?” She continued to weep, gasping, holding her arms around her body. Her sorrow was unendurable.
Vanessa was gaping at Dru. She had gone cold all over, and she was stunned, reeling from shock, unable to respond for a moment. Her eyes welled, and she began to shake. At last, she said, “I don’t understand . . . who killed Bill?” Choking on these words, she was unable to continue, just held on to Dru tightly. The two women clung together, sobbing.
Eventually, through her tears, Dru said, “It was Hezbollah. The Islamic Jihad. They kidnapped Bill, Vanessa. I realize now that you didn’t know, otherwise you would have come to Helena and me, to be with us.”
“When?” Vanessa gasped. “When was he taken?” Her voice shook and fresh tears flowed; she knew the answer even before Dru spoke.
“March the twenty-eighth,” Dru answered. “It was a Thursday. They took him that morning in Beirut. He was out with the crew, Joe and Mike—”
“Oh, my God! My God!” Vanessa cried out, pressing both of her hands to her face, trying to stem the tears. They slid through her fingers, fell down onto her cotton shirt, leaving damp splotches. “I was waiting for him in Venice, and he didn’t come! I thought he’d lost interest in me, that it was over between us. But he couldn’t come, could he? Oh, Dru, Dru . . .”
“No, he couldn’t. He loved you, Vanessa, he wanted to marry you. He told me that. He also told me that you were married, that you were getting a divorce.”
Vanessa swallowed hard. “Bill was mine and I was his and that was the way it was. How could I have forgotten that?”
Drucilla sighed and looked into Vanessa’s face sadly. “When we’re in love, things are always very extreme, intense . . .”
“I love him with all my heart. I shouldn’t ever have doubted him in Venice. I should have known something terrible had happened, something beyond his control.”
Dru was silent for a second, and then she said softly, “You were feeling hurt.”
Vanessa suddenly lost control again and started to weep bitterly. “When was he shot?” she asked through her tears.
“We’re not sure.” Dru found it hard to continue. She brought her hand to her trembling mouth, and took a few moments to regain her composure.
Slowly, she went on, “Andrew Bryce, the president of CNS, and Jack Clayton, Bill’s news editor, came to see me yesterday.” Pausing, she took a deep breath before saying, “To tell me themselves that the Islamic Jihad had just announced they had executed Bill. They left his body at the French Embassy in Beirut, who have given it to the American Hospital to send home.”
“But why did they kill him?” Vanessa cried. “Why, Dru?”
“Andrew and Jack don’t know. No one knows. The Islamic Jihad haven’t said anything. They’ve given no explanation.”
The two women who loved Bill Fitzgerald sat together on the sofa, not speaking, lost in their own troubled thoughts, silently sharing their heartbreak and sorrow.
After a while, Vanessa spoke. Looking at Dru, she said, “Where is Helena?”
Dru covered her mouth with her hand once more, the tears starting afresh. After a moment she said, “I brought her with me. I hadn’t the heart to leave her. She’s walking the dunes with Alice, the nanny. The child’s heartbroken, she worshiped him so.”
Vanessa nodded. Rising, she walked across the room to the window, stood looking out at the dunes, her mind full of Bill and the love they had shared. She thought of his child. And she came to a sudden decision.
Turning to look at Bill’s mother, Vanessa said, “I think you and Helena should stay here with me for a few days, Dru. Bill would want us to be together.”
Much later that night, when she was alone in her bedroom, Vanessa wept for Bill once more. She wept for the loss of the man she loved, the life they would never share, and the children they would never have.
It was a long night of tears and anguish. There was a moment when guilt reared up, but she crushed it before it took hold. It was a ridiculous waste of time to feel guilty because she had doubted him briefly. He would be the first to say that, just as his mother had.
As dawn broke over the dunes, Vanessa came to understand that her grief would last for a long time, and that she must let it run its course. Bill Fitzgerald had been the love of her life, and she had lost him in the blink of an eye. Lost him because of some insanity on the other side of the world. It was wrong, all wrong. He had been far too young a man to die.
It should not have happened, but it had, and she was alone. Just as his child and his mother were alone, bereft and lost without him. They were her main concern now. She would do what Bill would want her to do . . . console and comfort them.
They needed her. And she needed them.