Family album Page 0,209

I you. My biggest mistake was that I never had time. If you had only been born a year or two before you were …” But who could have changed all that? It was history now. Along with everything else that had happened to her … the Haight … the pregnancy … the child she had given away. Their eyes met again, and Faye decided to say what was on her mind. She reached a hand out to Anne, and took the hand that wasn't holding Max in her own. “I'm sorry about the other baby, Anne … I was wrong … at the time, I really thought we were doing the right thing …” Both women's eyes filled with tears, as Max lay in Anne's arms. “I was wrong.”

Anne shook her head, the tears spilling onto her cheeks. “I don't think you were … I don't think I really had a choice then … I was fourteen years old …”

“But you never got over it.” Faye knew that now.

“I've accepted it. It was right at the time. Sometimes that's the best you can do.” And with that, she took her mother in her arms, and held her there with Max. It was like saying “I forgive you for what you did,” but more importantly, she had forgiven herself. And now she could go on. As she walked her to her car later on, she held her hand again. “I'm going to miss you, Mom.”

“I'm going to miss you too.” She was going to miss all of them, but she was hoping they would all come to France at one point. Once, none of them had been a part of her life after all. And she had to let them go now. They had accepted her, in the end, and she had accepted them. All of them.

On the way to France, she and Ward stopped in New York and saw Jason and Van, happy in their loft, he writing his play, she working at a publisher and writing her book at night. There was no talk of marriage there, but no hint of either of them going anywhere. And as Ward and Faye flew to France, she smiled over at him. “They're all quite something, aren't they?”

“So are you.” As always, he looked proud of her. He had been for thirty years … since the day they'd met on Guadalcanal … if only he'd known then what he knew now … what a full life he had lived with her. He said as much and she reminded him that it wasn't over yet, and he kissed her over the champagne the stewardess had just handed them, as a woman stared at her and whispered to the man she was with … she looks just like a big movie star I used to love thirty years ago … the man smiled at her. Everyone looked like someone to her. And Ward and Faye went on chatting quietly, planning their year in France, which slowly became ten.

They never quite understood how the time went so fast. The children came and wents. Valerie married George, and they finally had a child, a little girl they named Faye, after her. Anne had four more, and everyone teased her that she should have been as lazy as their mother and had twins. Vanessa published three books, and Jason was still working on his plays, he had moved to Off Broadway now, from Off Off Broadway, and Faye was impressed at how good his productions were when they saw one once in New York. Valerie had won the Academy Award again, and finally so had George.

Everyone was doing well, and after eleven years abroad, at the age of sixty-four, Faye quietly died in her sleep one night. They were in Cap Ferrat for the fall, in a beautiful villa they had bought there, which they wanted to leave to their children one day. It would make a perfect place for them to come, all of them.

And now she came home to them, with Ward looking stunned. He was sixty-seven, and she had been his whole life since he was twenty-five years old … forty-two years…. He brought her home to Hollywood, the place she had loved, which she had conquered so many times, as an actress, a director, a woman … as his wife … he remembered those desperate years when he had lost everything, when she had pulled them all together so valiantly, and started a new career, with all of them in tow, when she had helped him get back on his feet … and he remembered the years before … and the years long afterward, as they made film after film for MGM … and the big break she had given Val … what he could not remember anymore were the years without her. That wasn't possible. It couldn't be true … it hadn't been true … and yet it was true now. He was alone now, she was gone. Anne and Bill met him at the plane, and mercifully, they had left the children home. They watched the casket being lowered from the belly of the plane, as the wind whipped Anne's hair, and in the twilight she looked so much like Faye. She was thirty-one years old, and her mother was gone,. s. Her eyes rose toward Ward's, and she quietly took his hand. She and Bill had talked about it the night before, and they could at least offer him that. They had built a guesthouse behind their house in Beverly Hills, and it would be nice if he came to live there. Ward and Faye had long since sold their old house in Beverly Hills. They hadn't lived there in years. And Anne looked up at him now, as Bill watched.

“Come on, Daddy, let's go home.”

For the first time, he looked suddenly old. He couldn't believe she was gone. And Anne wanted him to rest. There was a lot they had to do, and the funeral would be in two days at the church where they'd been married, and then Forest Lawn. And everyone would be there of course … everyone who had ever been anyone … everyone except Faye Thayer … but her family would be there. All of them. And Ward … it was difficult to imagine a world without her. He couldn't imagine it at all, as tears slid quietly down his cheeks, as they drove into the night, with Faye in the hearse behind … he could imagine her everywhere, if he just closed his eyes … she was still there with him, as she would be with all of them … always, for the rest of time. Her movies would live on … the memories … the love and above all the family, each one of them, touched by her, a part of her, just as she had been a part of them.

a cognizant original v5 release october 14 2010

Published by

Dell Publishing

a division of

Random House, Inc.

Copyright © 1985 by Benitreto Publications, Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Delacorte Press, New York, New York.

The trademark Dell• is registered in the U.S. Patent and

Trademark Office.

eISBN: 978-0-307-56643-0

August 1989

v3.0