I'll Be Seeing You (39 page)

“Williams called Carter, who immediately panicked. Carter had a key to Helene's apartment in Connecticut. They weren't romantically involved. Sometimes he'd need to transport embryos she'd brought from the clinic immediately after they were fertilized and before they were cryopreserved. He'd rushed them to Pennsylvania to be transferred to a host womb.”

“Carter panicked and killed her,” Weicker agreed. “Meg, Dr. Williams gave you the address of the place where he and Carter kept those pregnant girls. We're obliged to give that information to the authorities, but we want to be there when they arrive. Are you up to it?”

“You bet I am. Tom, can you send a helicopter for me? Make it one of the big ones. You're missing something important in the Williams statement. He was the person Stephanie Petrovic contacted when she needed help. He was the one who had transferred an embryo into her womb. She's due to give birth now. If there's one redeeming feature about Henry Williams, it's that he didn't tell Phillip Carter that he'd hidden Stephanie Petrovic. If he had, her life wouldn't have been worth a plugged nickel.”

Tom promised to have a helicopter at the Drumdoe Inn within the hour. Meghan made two phone calls. One to
Mac. “Can you get away, Mac? I want you with me for this.” The second call was to a new mother. “Can you and your husband meet me in an hour?”

The residence Dr. Williams described in his confession was forty miles from Philadelphia. Tom Weicker and the crew from Channel 3 were waiting when the helicopter carrying Meghan, Mac and the Andersons touched down in a nearby field.

A half-dozen official cars were parked nearby.

“I struck a deal that we'll go in with the authorities,” Tom told them.

“Why are we here, Meghan?” Dina Anderson asked as they got into a waiting Channel 3 car.

“If I was sure, I would tell you,” Meghan said. Every instinct told her she was right. In his confession, Williams had written, “I had no idea when Helene brought Stephanie to me and asked me to transfer an embryo into her womb that if a pregnancy resulted, Helene intended to raise the baby as her own.”

The young women in the old house were in various stages of pregnancy. Meghan saw the heartsick fear on their faces when they were confronted by the authorities. “You will not send me home, please?” a teenager begged. “I did just what I promised. When the baby is born, you will pay me, please?”

“Host mothers,” Mac whispered to Meghan. “Did Williams indicate if they kept any records of whose babies these girls are carrying?”

“His confession said they're all the babies of women who have embryos cryopreserved at Manning,” Meghan said. “Helene Petrovic came here regularly to be sure these girls were well cared for. She wanted all the cryopreserved embryos to have a chance to be born.”

Stephanie Petrovic was not there. A weeping practical
nurse said, “She's at the local hospital. That's where all our girls give birth. She's in labor.”

“Why are we here?” Dina Anderson asked again an hour later, when Meghan returned to the hospital lobby.

Meghan had been allowed to be with Stephanie in the last moments of her labor.

“We're going to see Stephanie's baby in a few minutes,” she said. “She had it for Helene. That was their bargain.”

Mac pulled Meghan aside. “Is it what I think?”

She did not answer. Twenty minutes later the obstetrician who had delivered Stephanie's baby stepped off the elevator and beckoned to them. “You can come up now,” he said.

Dina Anderson reached for her husband's hand. Too overwhelmed to speak, she wondered, Is it possible?

Tom Weicker and the cameraman accompanied them and began taping as a smiling nurse brought the blanket-wrapped infant to the window of the nursery and held it up.

“It's Ryan!” Dina Anderson shrieked. “It's Ryan!”

The next day, at a private funeral mass at St. Paul's, the mortal remains of Edwin Richard Collins were consigned to the earth. Mac was at the grave with Catherine and Meg.

I've shed so many tears for you, Dad, Meg thought. I don't think I have any left in me. And then she whispered so silently that no one could hear, “I love you, Daddy.”

Catherine thought of the day when her door bell had rung and there stood Edwin Collins, handsome, with the quick smile she'd so loved, a dozen roses in his hands.
I'm courting you, Catherine.

After a while I'll remember only the good times, she promised herself.

Hand in hand the three walked to the waiting car.