“She wasn't really dressed for it,” Julie said. She'd been wearing a cotton skirt and a loose top, her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she'd had sandals on her feet.
“Maybe she went to a movie,” Andy said as he went back to sleep. But Julie told the sitter to call again if Kate didn't come home. She'd always liked Kate, and had no ax to grind with her. She knew Kate had hurt Andy terribly, when she got involved with Joe again, but Andy was philosophical about it now that he had remarried. And Julie was grateful that Kate had let him go. She was blissfully happy with him.
The sitter called again the next morning at seven o'clock, and this time Andy was very concerned.
“That's not like her,” he said to Julie as he hung up the phone. Reed was downstairs having breakfast, and he didn't want him to know. “I'll call the highway patrol and see if anything happened on the Merritt last night.” She was a good driver, and there was no reason for her to have an accident, but you never knew.
He waited for what seemed like hours for the highway patrol to answer the phone, and he described Kate and her car. She used a Chevrolet station wagon to drive the kids around, and it was a good solid car. It seemed like forever before the patrolman came back on the line.
“We had a head-on at Norwalk last night, at eight-fifteen. A Chevrolet station wagon and a Buick sedan. The driver of the Buick was killed, the driver of the Chevy was unconscious when they got her out. Female driver, thirty-two years old, there's no description of her here. They took her to the hospital at ten o'clock. It took them two hours to get her out of the car.” It was all he knew, but it was more than enough. Andy turned to Julie and told her what he'd heard. He was already dialing the number for the hospital the patrolman had given him. Andy's hands were shaking as he waited for them to answer the phone.
The nurse in the emergency room told him what she knew. Kate was there, she was unconscious, she was in critical condition. And the hospital hadn't been able to reach anyone when they called her home. They had called after midnight the night before, the sitter must have been asleep by then. Andy looked at Julie grimly when he hung up.
“She's in critical condition. She's got a head injury and a broken leg.”
“What about the baby?” his wife whispered, feeling sorry for her.
“I don't know. They didn't say.” He put his clothes on then, and told Julie he was going to the hospital, which seemed like a reasonable thing to do, as far as she was concerned.
“Shouldn't you call Joe?” Julie asked.
“Let's see what I find out first.”
It took Andy half an hour to drive to the hospital where they'd taken her, and when he walked into her room, he was horrified by what he saw. There was a huge bandage on her head, a cast on her leg, and he saw as soon as he entered the room that the sheet across her stomach was flat. She didn't know it yet, but she'd lost the baby in the car. It brought tears to his eyes to see the condition she was in, and he walked over to her and gently took her hand. It brought back so many memories just looking at her. In their early days, there had been so many happy times. And the thought of the first year of their marriage always warmed his heart.
She was still in a coma when he left the room. And when he spoke to the doctor, he told Andy that they weren't sure yet if she'd survive. It was going to be touch and go for a while.
Andy sat in the waiting room for hours, and it reminded him of when Reed had been born and he'd been there all day, worrying about her. This was far worse, and as soon as he'd seen her, he called the baby-sitter in New York and told her she had to get hold of Joe.
“I don't know how, Mr. Scott,” she said, bursting into tears. She'd been afraid that something awful had happened to Kate, and it had. She'd had a terrible feeling about it when she hadn't come home. But she hadn't heard the phone when it rang late that night. “Mrs. Allbright has the name of the hotel, I think, but I don't know where it is. He usually calls her. It's easier that way.”
“Do you know what city he's in?” It was a hell of a way to live, Andy thought, with a husband who was always on the road. But he knew that Kate was willing to do anything she had to, to be married to Joe. She would have done anything and everything for him, and had.
“No, I don't,” the sitter continued to cry. “Paris, I think. I think that's what she said. He called yesterday.”
“Do you think he'll call today?”
“Maybe. He doesn't call every day. Sometimes he doesn't call for a few days.” As Andy listened, he hated him, for what he wasn't doing for Kate. She deserved to have someone around to take care of her, not a traveling salesman running around the world, selling his airline and his planes.
Andy told the sitter what to tell Joe if he called, what condition Kate was in, and the hospital where she was. And he told her that no matter what, day or night, she was not to leave the phone. He couldn't even call Joe's office, because it was the weekend. If they didn't hear from him soon, Andy was afraid Kate would be dead by the time he called. He couldn't have done anything for her at this point, but it would have been nice for her if he'd been there, or if someone knew where he could be found.
“Is… is the baby all right?” the sitter asked cautiously, and there was a long pause.
“I don't know.” He didn't think it was his place to tell her that it had died. He thought that Joe should know first.
And after he hung up, Andy called Kate's parents, who were frantic when they heard about the accident. Andy told them he'd keep them aware of any further developments, and they said they'd come down from Boston as soon as they could. And then he called Julie and asked her to drive into town with the kids and pick Stevie up, but to leave the sitter in the city in case Joe called.
“How is she?” Julie asked, feeling some strange bond to Kate.
“Pretty bad,” Andy answered, and then went back to Kate's room again. He stayed until after six o'clock. He called New York, and Joe hadn't called.
He and Julie took turns calling the hospital through the night, and they said nothing to the kids. Reed sensed that something was going on, but he had been happy playing outside all afternoon, and his father had told him that his mother had gone away for the weekend. And the following week, he and Julie had agreed to keep him out of school and in Greenwich with them.
Kate didn't regain consciousness all through the weekend, and Joe never called. Her parents were there, looking devastated. Her situation didn't worsen, nor did it improve, she was just hanging there, in limbo, between life and death. From what Andy could see when he returned to the hospital on Sunday afternoon, she was hanging by the merest thread. And still there was no sign of Joe. Her mother cried every time someone mentioned his name.
Andy called Joe's office first thing the next day. He stayed home from work himself. Joe's secretary informed him that Mr. Allbright was en route from France to Spain, and she was sure she'd hear from him later in the day. He explained what the situation was, and Hazel was distraught. She said she would do everything she could to find him in the next few hours.
Andy didn't hear back from her until five o'clock. Joe had changed his plans and left a message in Madrid. No one had gotten hold of him, and she had missed him at the hotel in Paris when he checked out. She said she thought he was going to London, but she wasn't absolutely sure. She had left messages for him at every hotel in Europe where he stayed.
When they finally heard from Joe on Tuesday afternoon, he told Hazel that he had spent the weekend on a boat in the South of France. He had opted not to go to Spain, and taken a day off, which was rare for him. And there had been no way he could have called Kate. He had just gotten to London at midnight on Tuesday, and got Hazel's message at the hotel.
“What's wrong?” He had no idea how hard everyone had tried to locate him, and no suspicion that something had happened to Kate. He thought Hazel was frantic over some business problem that had come up, and he was in no great hurry to find out. He was relaxed and happy after the three-day sailing weekend, and he hated to spoil the mood he was in with bad news.