she saw. Maybe that was in the back of her head after all when she went to New York to find work as a model … and now here she was, walking up the three pink marble steps to her own house in Beverly Hills, as a serious-faced English butler opened, the door to her, and in spite of himself he smiled into her eyes. He couldn't resist the “young miss,” as he called her in private to his wife. She was the nicest employer they had ever had, they agreed, and certainly the youngest by far. And she had never acquired what they referred to as “Hollywood ways.” She didn't seem overly impressed with who she was, and she was always pleasant and polite and thoughtful to them. The house was a pleasure to run, and there was very little to do. Faye seldom entertained, and she was working most of the time, so all they had to do was keep things neat and clean, and running smoothly for her, a task Arthur and Elizabeth both enjoyed.
“Good afternoon, Arthur.”
“Miss Price,” he looked extremely prim, “excellent news, isn't it?” He assumed correctly that she would have heard, and he knew she had when she beamed at him.
“It certainly is.” She knew that they had no sons to fear for, but they still had relatives in England who had been hard hit by the war, and Arthur had always been deeply concerned for them. He spoke of the RAF as very near to God-like. They had discussed the Pacific Theater as well from time to time, but there would be no war to discuss anymore. As she walked into her study, and sat down at the little English desk to open her mail, she wondered how many of the men she had seen were still alive, how many of the hands she had shaken were no more. It brought tears to her eyes as she thought of it, and she turned to look out into the perfectly tended garden and the pool house beyond. How difficult to imagine the holocaust that had existed over there, the countries that had been destroyed, the people who had died. She wondered, as she often had, if Ward was among them. She had never heard from him, but over the years, he had never quite left her mind. And thinking of him often made her feel guilty that she hadn't gone on tour again, but there had never been time. There never was. Not lately. Not after her parents' deaths, and the constant demands of her career.
She turned back to her desk now, glancing through a stack of mail from her agent, and assorted bills, trying to force the faces of the past from her mind, but there was so little in her present to occupy her thoughts, other than work. She had had a serious involvement with a director twice her age the year before, and she realized at the end of it that she had been more in love with his work than she was with him. She loved hearing about what he did, but after a while there wasn't much excitement left, and they had finally drifted apart, and there had been no one serious in her life since. She wasn't given to the usual Hollywood affairs, and she had never gotten involved with anyone unless she truly cared about him. She kept to herself most of the time, and avoided publicity as much as she could. For a major star, she led a remarkably quiet life, but she insisted to her friend and agent, Abe, when he scolded her for “hiding” too much of the time, that she couldn't work as hard as she did unless she did stay home, to study and prepare for her roles, and that was just exactly what she was planning to do in the next five weeks, no matter how much Abe nagged her to get out, be seen, and have some fun with her colleagues.
Instead, she had promised to go up to San Francisco to visit a friend for a few days, an elderly actress, now retired, whom she had befriended at the beginning of her career. And on the way home she was planning to stop and see friends in Pebble Beach. After that, she had agreed to a weekend with the Hearsts at their vast country estate, complete with wild animals and a zoo, and after that she was coming home to