“That’s why I’m calling, Miss Adams. Have you heard about Mr. Peter?”
It wasn’t necessary to tell the maid that she hadn’t been officially notified, but confirmed that she knew of Peter’s accident.
“Well, all hell’s broken loose over here. Mrs. Manning is hysterical, screaming and yelling. Mr. Manning is little better. Photographers and reporters are all over the place talking and waving cameras and microphones and flashing lights—”
“How is Mary?” Katherine interrupted imperiously.
“I’m coming to that. When the policeman told them about the wreck, they were all in the living room. When he mentioned that a woman was in the car with Peter, and that she was dead too, Mrs. Manning turned to Miss Mary, who is so sweet, and started yelling at her. She said such awful things to her, Miss Adams. She said if Miss Mary had been a better wife, Mr. Peter wouldn’t have gone out at night to look—”
“Please, Elsie, is Mary all right?”
“No, Miss Adams, she isn’t. She ran up the stairs to her room to escape Mrs. Manning. No one was paying any attention to her, even in her condition. I went in to check on her and she’s bleeding, Miss Adams.”
“Oh, God—”
“Yes, and she’s in labor, I think. I thought you ought to know ’cause nobody around here seems to care about her. They’re all thinking about—”
“Elsie, listen carefully. Call an ambulance. Get Mary to the hospital right away. I’ll call her obstetrician. Don’t tell anyone what you’re doing. If you have to sneak Mary out through the kitchen, do it. Just get her in the ambulance. Okay?”
“Yes, Miss Adams, I will. I always liked your sister and thought—”
“Never mind all that now, Elsie. Just call the ambulance.” Katherine couldn’t afford to be exasperated by Elsie’s garrulity, but she hoped the excited woman would get Mary to the hospital immediately.
Katherine cut that connection and quickly dialed the doctor after fumbling through the telephone book frantically searching for his number. Alphabetical order seemed to have escaped her, and she cursed her ineptitude. She reached his answering service and quickly apprised the operator of her sister’s condition. The operator promised to contact the doctor immediately and have him go directly to the hospital.
Without thinking about her actions, Katherine stripped off her robe and nightgown and dashed to her closet. Pulling on a pair of jeans, she damned the Mannings and especially Peter. How could he? Hadn’t he made Mary’s life miserable enough without humiliating her by getting himself killed while another of his women was in the car with him? She believed Mary’s tales of his physical abuse, but would that extend to his inducing her labor to deliver a seven-month fetus? God, help her, Katherine prayed while pulling a T-shirt over her head and stepping into a pair of sandals.
Without combing her hair or bothering to apply any makeup, she ran out of the house, climbed into her car, and headed for the designated hospital. She forced herself to drive slower than she felt compelled to do. She would be no help to Mary if she were injured or killed herself.
Mary, Mary, why didn’t you see the kind of man Peter Manning was? Had she been so blindly captivated by the smi
le that graced the society page columns that she couldn’t see the superficiality of it? Peter Manning, the Golden Boy, son of one of the wealthiest and most prominent families in Denver, heir apparent to bank directorships, real estate holdings, insurance companies, and numerous other enterprises, had become Mary Adams’s husband a year ago.
Katherine had been puzzled to say the least when Peter’s attention had suddenly become riveted on Mary, whom he had met while she was working in an art gallery to help pay for art classes.
He was suave, debonair, devastatingly handsome, polished, and confident. He had swept gentle, naive, trusting Mary off her feet and then let her fall. Hard and far.
Why? From the outset of that bizarre romance that question had plagued Katherine. Mary was pretty, but nothing like the dazzling debutantes and celebrities Peter was accustomed to escorting. Why had he bothered with Mary?
Katherine honked belligerently at a motorist who was sitting through a green light. Her anger wasn’t directed toward the other driver, however. It was directed toward the man who had turned a laughing, happy, vibrant young woman into a haunted, listless robot.
After only a few months of marriage, Peter’s loving attitude toward his wife, which Katherine had always felt was a little too overdone to be sincere, began to change drastically.
Katherine had been shocked to listen as Mary tearfully related one horror story after another. Physical and emotional abuse were daily occurrences. Peter was furious over Mary’s pregnancy, though she swore he had raped her one night without giving her time to take precautions against that condition. The marriage was a living nightmare.
But the picture Peter presented to the world was one of marital bliss. With total devotion he doted on Mary in front of his parents and their country club friends. His hypocrisy would have been laughable if it weren’t so tragic.
Katherine wheeled into the hospital’s emergency entrance and thankfully found a parking space near the door. She locked her car and raced for the well-lighted alcove only moments before she heard the wail of the ambulance.
She and Mary’s doctor were standing in the wide foyer as the paramedics guided the stretcher through the glass doors which opened automatically. Katherine gasped when she saw her sister’s face. She covered her mouth to stifle a scream. Mary’s eyes were open, but unfocused, and didn’t register her sister’s presence as they whisked her past Katherine and into one of the treatment rooms.
After a cursory examination Mary was sent to the maternity ward where she delivered a baby girl after only thirty minutes of labor.
The doctor looked bleak as he walked toward Katherine down the hushed, softly lit corridor in his rubber-soled shoes.
“She’s in a bad way, Miss Adams. I don’t think she’ll last the night.” Katherine slumped against the wall and stared at him over the tight fist she was pressing hard against her bruised lips. Her green eyes overflowed with tears that flooded over the lower lids, coursing down her pale apricot cheeks. They dampened the strands of honey-gold hair that tumbled around her head in heedless disarray.
“I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I think you ought to know the severity of her condition. She hemorrhaged so much before she got here that there was little we could do about it, though I transfused her.” The doctor paused and studied Katherine before saying softly, “It hasn’t been a happy pregnancy. She wouldn’t take care of herself. I’ve been worried about her before.… Well, I know what happened tonight. I’m sorry about Mr. Manning. I don’t think Mary wants to live,” he added sympathetically.