The meeting was to take place in the luxurious drawing room of Ellen Scott's townhouse. She paced back and forth waiting for Alan Tucker to arrive with the girl. No. Not a girl. A woman. A nun. What would she be like? What had life done to her? What have I done to her?
The butler walked into the room. "Your guests have arrived, Madam."
She took a deep breath. "Show them in."
A moment later, Megan and Alan Tucker entered.
She's beautiful, Ellen thought.
Tucker smiled. "Mrs. Scott, this is Megan."
Ellen looked at him and said quietly, "I won't need you anymore." And her words had a finality to them.
His smile faded.
"Good-bye, Tucker."
He stood there a moment, uncertain, then nodded and left. He could not get over his feeling that he had missed something. Something important. Too late, he thought. Too bloody late.
Ellen Scott was studying Megan. "Sit down, please."
Megan took a chair, and the two women sat there inspecting each other.
She looks like her mother, Ellen thought. She's grown up to be a beautiful woman. She recalled the terrible night of the accident, the storm and the burning plane.
You said she was dead...There's something we can do. The pilot said we were near avila. There should be plenty of tourists there. There's no reason for anyone to connect the baby with the plane crash...We'll drop her off at a nice farmhouse outside of town. Someone will adopt her and she'll grow up to have a lovely life here... You have to choose, Milo. You can either have me, or you can spend the rest of your life working for your brother's child
And now here was the past confronting her. Where to begin?
"I'm Ellen Scott, president of Scott Industries. Have you heard of it?"
"No."
Of course she would not have heard of it, Ellen chided herself.
This was going to be more difficult than she had anticipated. She had concocted a story about an old friend of the family who had died, and a promise to take care of his daughter - but from the moment she had first looked at Megan, Ellen knew that it would not work. She had no choice. She had to trust Patricia - Megan - not to destroy them all. She thought of what she had done to the woman seated before her, and her eyes filled with tears. But it's too late for tears. It's time to make amends. It's time to tell the truth.
Ellen Scott leaned across to Megan and took her hand. "I have a story to tell you," she said quietly.
That had been three years earlier. For the first year, until she became too ill to continue, Ellen Scott had taken Megan under her wing. Megan had gone to work for Scott Industries, and her aptitude and intelligence had delighted the older woman, giving her a fresh outlook and reinforcing her will to live.
"You'll have to work hard," Ellen had told her. "You'll learn, as I had to learn. In the beginning, it will be difficult, but in the end, it will become your life."
And it had.
Megan worked hours that none of her employees could even begin to emulate.
"You get to your office at four o'clock in the morning and work all day. How do you do it?"
Megan smiled and thought: If I slept until four o'clock in the morning at the convent, Sister Betina would scold me.
Ellen Scott was gone, but Megan had kept learning, and kept watching the company grow. Her company. Ellen had adopted her. "So we won't have to explain why you're a Scott," she had said. But there was a note of pride in her voice.
It's ironic, Megan thought. All those years at the orphanage when no one would adopt me. And now I'm being adopted by my own family. God has a wonderful sense of humor.