"I didn't think he would die. Not ever. He always seemed like God."
Angela led her to the living room sofa. She rubbed her arms and held her hands, but Susannah couldn't be comforted. "I loved him. I always loved him. He just didn't love me back."
Angela stroked her hair. "That's not true, honey. He loved you. He told me so."
Several seconds passed as her words penetrated Susannah's deepest misery. She looked up and saw Angela's face wavery through her tears. "He told you?"
Angela brushed Susannah's hair back from her wet cheeks, freeing the strands that were stuck there with the lightest scrape of her fingernail. "We were together at the end. Your father went with me to Graceland for Elvis's funeral."
"Graceland? My father?" Susannah stared at her without comprehension.
"I don't think he meant to come with me. But it just sort of happened."
Gradually, Angela unfolded the story of the trip. Susannah listened, stunned by what she was hearing.
"The day he died, he talked about you," Angela said.
Susannah went cold all over. "What did he say?"
"He didn't hate you, Susannah. I think he hated himself."
The horrid words Cal had assaulted her with kept punching at Susannah's brain. "I think I killed him," she whispered. "I did a terrible thing to him. If I hadn't run away, he would be alive today."
"Don't say that! Don't say that, honey. You weren't responsible." Angela spoke in quick, breathless tones. "Those last few hours, we were sitting on these camp stools across from the music gate, waiting for the hearse to come out. We started talking about both of you-about you and about Sammy. Just before the hearse came out, he looked me straight in the eye and he said, 'Angela, I've been wrong to cut Susannah out like I've done. She had to get away. I understand that now. I love her, and as soon as I get back to California, I'm going to tell her so.'"
Susannah held herself rigidly. "He told you that? He told you he loved me?"
"As God is my witness. He told me he was going to call you that very day."
Susannah pressed her eyes shut and tears slithered from beneath her lids. "Oh, Angela."
Angela took her in her arms once again. She was much smaller than Susannah, but she sheltered her. "I-I couldn't bear the idea that he went to his grave hating me."
"He loved you, honey. He went on and on about how much you meant to him."
Susannah pulled away, her forehead crumpling. "You're not making this up so I'll feel better, are you, Angela? Please. I have to know the truth."
Angela squeezed her hands tightly. "It's true. I'm Catholic, Susannah. If I didn't tell the truth about somebody's last moments on earth, it would be a mortal sin. He loved you so much. He told me again and again."
Angela's eyes were wide and earnest, and Susannah wanted desperately to believe her. But although grief had dulled some of her senses, it had sharpened others. As she gazed at her mother-in-law, she knew with absolute certainty that Angela was lying from the bottom of her loving, generous heart.
Sam came home that evening with an expensive hand-woven shawl she had admired in a boutique a few weeks earlier. He made no mention of his disappearance, and she was too drained to ask him about it. As she tucked the shawl away in a bottom dresser drawer, she told herself that no one was perfect and she had to learn to accept Sam's faults. But a fissure had been ripped in the fabric of their marriage.
Several weeks passed before she learned that she had been cut from her father's will and that he had left everything to Paige. Millions of dollars were involved as well as a huge block of FBT stock. But it wasn't the financial loss that devastated her. It was the additional evidence of her father's lack of forgiveness.
Sam argued with her for weeks because she refused to challenge the will. Even in death he hated for Joel to get the best of her. But she didn't want money. She wanted her father alive. She wanted another chance.
Sometimes Susannah thought it was only the overwhelming work load that kept her going through the next few months. She had little time to wallow in either grief or guilt, no time at all to try to decide how she would live the rest of her life, knowing that she could never be reconciled with her father. All of the hours that would have been devoted to introspection were occupied with keeping their small company alive; ironically, success was proving to be even more dangerous to SysVal than failure.
"Will you relax, for chrissake," Sam said, glaring at her as he paced the carpeted reception area of Hoffman Enterprises, one of San Francisco's most prestigious venture capital firms. "If they see how nervous you are, you're going to blow this whole deal. I mean it, Susannah, you could personally screw us up-"
Mitch slapped down the magazine he had been pretend-ing to read. "Leave her alone! Susannah, why do you put up with his nonsense? If I were you, Sam, I'd worry about what I was going to say instead of giving her a hard time."
"Why don't you go fuck yourself?"
"Why don't you-"
Susannah whirled around. "Stop it, both of you! We're all nervous. Let's not take it out on each other." Mitch and Sam had always argued, but in the four months since her father's death, it had grown worse. While their relationship had deteriorated, her own relationship with Mitch had grown closer. She would never forget the way he had stood beside her when she had most needed it.
These past months had been unusually difficult. Not only had she been faced with a searing personal crisis, but SysVal was in deep trouble. Despite the fact that stacks of new orders were coming in every week for the Blaze, the company had run out of money.
Sam glared at her and resumed his pacing. Mitch continued to brood. She wandered over to the windows, where she stared at the view of the ocean, the Golden Gate, and the distant hazy outline of Marin beyond. The chill December rain that splashed against the skyscraper's windows matched her mood.
It bothered her that Sam always seemed to be at his worst when she most needed his support. Today, for example. This meeting meant everything to them. If they couldn't get the financing they needed, they simply wouldn't be able to survive. As orders poured in for the Blaze, they had been feverishly adding new staff, expanding their facilities, and searching out additional subcontractors to assemble the machines-all within the space of a few months. Now they simply couldn't pay their bills. The money was there on paper in future orders, but it wasn't in hand where they needed it.
They had known from the beginning that they were dangerously undercapitalized, but now she and Mitch estimated that their precarious financial balancing act was within thirty days of collapsing. They could no longer put off going after venture capital.
Mitch studied the straight line of Susannah's back as she stood at the windows. He had grown to care very much for her in the past year, and he was worried. The strain of her father's death had taken an enormous toll, and the business of running SysVal grew more complicated by the day. God knew, Sam wasn't any help. The more Mitch watched them together, the more he saw that Sam was a user. He took everything Susannah had, but he gave very little back.
All of them knew how important this meeting was. Granted, there were firms other than Hoffman Enterprises they could have gone to for financing, but Mitch had both his heart and his head set on making this deal. Leland T. Hoffman was a wily old fox who had written the textbook on venture capital and financed some of the biggest success stories in American business. If Hoffman put his money behind SysVal, it would legitimize them in a way that nothing else could.
The general public was gradually becoming aware of the microcomputer. Commodore had introduced the PET. The TRS-80 was on display at Radio Shack stores all across the country, and both SysVal and the little Apple Computer Company had begun to find a small, but loyal following. But was that enough to convince a man of Hoffman's reputation to make a substantial investment in SysVal?