“It's funny how different our lives have been, isn't it? And yet we're still sisters … we still look alike … we still come from the same parents, and probably have similar likes and dislikes and habits we've inherited without even knowing it. And yet look at us, you grew up in all that pomp and circumstance in France, and I spent half my childhood living with friends, while my parents went to jail for causes they believed in.” And yet she didn't sound unhappy. She sounded proud of them, and she was. It was all amazing to think about, and it silenced both of them as they took their seats on either side of Arthur. John's place was next to Megan, and there was an empty chair next to Alexandra, and it was becoming obvious now that Hilary was not going to join them. Alexandra felt her heart sink, and made idle chitchat for a while, as Arthur seemed to doze, and then suddenly there was the sound of a car outside. John left the table quietly. There were angry voices outside, and then suddenly the front door flew open, as the two women watched, mesmerized, and Arthur woke up, as though he sensed that someone else was coming to see him.
“Did something happen?” He asked Alexandra, confused for an instant as he woke up and she patted his hand, never taking her eyes from the door, and then she saw her. Tall and thin and lanky as their father had been, with a long stride, and jet-black hair, and green eyes that she suddenly turned on them. She was wearing a wrinkled navy linen business suit. She had had every intention of not coming, and then suddenly after work she had decided to rent a car and come up and tell Arthur once and for all what she thought of him. And then maybe she would be free of him for the rest of her life. She didn't even care if she saw the others. They were strangers to her now. It was Arthur who interested her as she strode into the room and stood facing him, but it was impossible to ignore the two women with red hair who flanked him, and her eyes were drawn first to Megan, and then to Alexandra, as John stood carefully just behind her. He could sense the tension in the room, the anguish of the woman who stood so close to him. He wanted to put his arms around her but she looked as though she might explode, and then suddenly she stopped, as her eyes met Alexandra's, and Alexandra came slowly to her feet and crossed the room like a sleepwalker and the words escaped her without rhyme or reason.
“H … Hillie …” She could see the face of a little girl with long black hair, and yet here was this woman … with the same black hair … the same green eyes … without knowing why, she started to cry, and without wanting to, Hilary's arms went around her.
“Axie … little Axie …” It was the first time she'd held her since the day they'd torn her from her, and left her alone with Eileen and Jack in Charlestown, crying for the sisters she had so dearly loved, and she could barely stand the pain now of remembering it, as she held the tall, perfumed, beautifully coiffed woman from Paris … except all she saw there was the face of the child she had once loved, and she whispered the same words over and over again as she cried … “I love you, Axie …” They held each other like that for a long time, as Megan watched silently, and then suddenly Arthur began to cough, and John hurried to give him a glass of water. The housekeeper who was serving them dinner brought the pills the nurse had given her, and Megan checked the dose and gave them to John, as Hilary slowly turned toward them. “You must be Megan.” She smiled through her tears, and held Alexandra's hand as they pulled apart from their embrace. “You've changed quite a bit since the last time I saw you.” The three women laughed, but Hilary's eyes clouded as she saw the old man, and she held tight to Alexandra's hand as she spoke to him. “I said I wouldn't come, and I meant it, Arthur.” He nodded, meeting her eyes with fear and pain, and he saw everything there that he had dreaded seeing. She hated him, and one could see it there like black poison. But he also knew he deserved it. He knew better than anyone. “I never wanted to see you again.”
“I'm glad you did come, Hillie,” Alexandra said in her gentle voice. “I wanted so much to see you … both,” she added, smiling at Megan, but Hilary wasn't smiling now, and she dropped her sister's hand as she advanced on Arthur.
“Why did you do this to us? Bring us here after all these years, to taunt us with what we didn't have, what we missed, who we might have been if we'd stayed together?”
He choked on his own words, and clutched the table with both hands as he faced her. “I felt I owed it to you to make up to you for what I'd done.” He could barely breathe as he spoke to her, but it didn't faze her.
“And do you think you can make it up?” She laughed bitterly and they all ached for her, but John was frightened of what she would do now. She had waited thirty years for this, and he had always sensed the full measure of her hatred for Arthur. “Do you really think you can wipe out thirty years of loneliness and pain with one dinner?”
“Your sisters have been luckier than you, Hilary.” He spoke honestly. “And they don't hate me as much as you do.”
“They don't know as much as I do … do they, Arthur … do they?” She shouted into the silent room, the words echoing off the walls as he trembled.
“That's all in the past, Hilary.” It was a conversation between only the two of them. Only they knew of what they were speaking, as the others wondered.
“Is it? How about you? Have you been able to live with yourself for all these years, after killing my parents?” Her green eyes blazed and Alexandra advanced to gently touch her arm, but Hilary shook her off.
“Hillie, don't … it doesn't matter now …”
“Doesn't it?” She wheeled on her sister. “How do you know that? How could you possibly know, living the good life in France, while I sat on my ass in juvenile hall, after getting raped, trying to figure out how to find you. And that son of a bitch didn't even know where you were, he didn't know where any of us were. He didn't even care enough to keep track of us after he ripped you out of my arms that day, crying and sobbing … you don't remember that now, but I do. I've remembered it … I've remembered both of you …” She looked from Alexandra to Megan, “… every day of my life and I've cried for you because I never found you. And now you tell me it doesn't matter? That I shouldn't hate him for killing our parents? How can you say that?” The tears were pouring down her cheeks unashamedly.
“But he didn't kill them.” Alexandra spoke for herself and Megan. “His only failing was in not keeping us together, or keeping track of us over the years, but perhaps he couldn't help it.” She looked benevolently at the old man, and Megan silently nodded, unable to understand why Hilary hated him so much. He had failed them, but he had not betrayed them the way Hilary said. But she was shaking her head and laughing at them through her tears.
“You don't know anything. You were babies. I was standing there the night Mama died … the night Daddy killed her … I was listening … I heard what they said …” She began to sob and John stood nearby, ready to help her if she collapsed or needed him. He was near her, as he had been for months, although she didn't know it. “I heard her screams …” Hilary went on, “when he hit her and hit her and hit her, and then strangled her into silence until she died. …” She was gulping down the sobs and she stood right in front of Arthur now. “And do you know why he did that?” Her eyes never left Arthur's face, she had waited a lifetime for this. “He did it because she was having an affair with him, and she told father so….” She was listening to the voices of the past as she spoke, and she almost looked as though she were in another world, remembering back to the night her father had killed her mother. “He had been cheating on her, she said, with lots of different women for years … all his leading ladies, she said … and he said it wasn't true … he said she was crazy … and she said she had proof … she knew who he'd just taken to California … who he'd been with the night before … and she said it didn't make any difference to her anymore … that she had someone of her own, and that if he wasn't careful, she'd leave him and take us with her. And he said he'd kill her if she did, and she laughed … she kept laughing at him … and he said she could never take away his baby girls … and she laughed … and then she told him who it was….” She was crying so hard she could hardly speak, but she went on, as Arthur shook more and more violently in his seat and she stood inches from him, shouting down at him and crying. “She told him, didn't she, Arthur … didn't she?” Hilary shouted. And then she looked at her sisters, and told them what she had always known, and they hadn't. “She was having an affair with Arthur, Daddy's best friend … and he said he would kill her for it, and she only laughed, and when he told her she couldn't take us away, she told him that only two of us were his anyway….” There was a stunned silence in the room, and Arthur sat back in his chair as though he'd been struck by lightning. And Hilary's voice was quiet when she spoke this time. She had done what she had come for. “She told him that Megan was Arthur's child,” she said in a dull voice, staring down at him with contempt. “And then Daddy killed her.” She sank into the chair next to him, crying softly, as Alexandra put an arm around her shoulders and the old man whimpered softly in his chair.