She bent down and impulsively kissed Edith's parchment cheek. "I'll buy you an 'uplifting' scarf today to counteract the effects," Sloan promised, straightening.

"Nothing too expensive—" Edith called after her.

30

Since neither of them had eaten, Paris suggested they stop for lunch first, and Sloan agreed. She was eager to give Paris her mother's message, but she was acutely aware that from now on each step Paris took toward Kimberly was going to be a step away from her father.

A waitress filled their water glasses and handed them leather-bound menus. Sloan took hers automatically and opened it. Staring blindly at the list of appetizers, she thought about the discussion that lay ahead and tried to be objective: Despite her personal opinion of Carter, she couldn't deny that he'd been a devoted father to Paris, albeit a suffocatingly controlling one, and so Paris was understandably loyal to him. It had been relatively safe and easy for Paris to take a liking to Sloan, because in doing that, Paris hadn't been forced to face the fact that her father was a liar and a villain. That wasn't true when it came to Kimberly.

Carter and his mother had made Paris believe that Kimberly was so reprehensible that a judge had issued a court order to protect Paris from her. In order for Paris to accept that that was all a lie, she also had to accept that her father and his mother were blatant liars. Sloan already knew Paris was going to find that painfully difficult to face, and she was afraid Paris would try to escape the pain in the only way she could—by ignoring Kimberly's overtures and inventing reasons not to go and see her.

The waitress appeared to take their order, and Sloan ordered the "special" without actually having read what it was. As soon as the woman walked away, Sloan decided to broach the subject of Kimberly, but Paris had something else on her mind. "What did Great-grandmother want to talk to you about this morning?"

"Jewelry," Sloan said lightly. "She wanted to give me some heirlooms, which I declined."

Paris's facial muscles tensed. "Did she also mention her will to you, too?"

When Sloan nodded, Paris put her fingertips to her temples and began to rub them as if she'd gotten a sudden headache. "I'm sorry," she said ruefully. "I know she has to die."

Sloan waited in sympathetic silence for her to say more, and Paris sighed, dropping her hands. "I saw the velvet box on her table, and I had a feeling she was going to do something like that. It's just that I hate it when she talks about dying. Maybe I feel as if talking about it will make it happen. I don't know." She shook her head as if to shake off her morbid thoughts, then she leaned forward and crossed her arms in front of her on the table. "Let's talk about something cheerful."

It was the opening Sloan needed. "Would you like to talk about your mother?"

"Okay."

"I talked to her this morning and told her all about you. I told her you wanted to come meet her."

"What did she say?"

Sloan looked directly into Paris's eyes and softly said, "She cried. I've never known Mom to cry before."

Paris swallowed as if she understood the emotional impact. "Did she say anything else?"

"Yes. She asked me to give you her love."

Paris's gaze slid to her water glass. "That was nice of her."

The emotional chain reaction Sloan had anticipated was setting in, and she racked her brain for a way around it. "I know this is hard for you. I know you were told terrible things about her, and now I'm telling you that she's one of the sweetest, kindest people on earth. There's no way to escape the fact that if I'm telling you the truth, then someone lied to you. No, not 'someone.' Your father and his mother."

"He's your father too," Paris said in a pleading voice, as if asking Sloan to acknowledge that relationship before Paris could form one with Kimberly.

"Of course he is," Sloan said, and she decided to use the same nonjudgmental rationale that Paul had used on the way to Palm Beach when he hypothesized about the breakup of their parents' marriage. She asked a question first. "Were you very close to your father's mother?"

"Grandmother Frances?" Paris hesitated and then guiltily shook her head. "I was terrified of her. Everyone was. It wasn't that she was mean—although she was mean—but she was also cold."

That was exactly the sort of answer Sloan had hoped to hear. "Then let's blame her for what happened and what you were told," she said half seriously. "She probably was mostly to blame for everything, anyway."

Sloan told Paris her version of the day Carter's mother arrived in Florida in a limousine alone and departed for San Francisco with Carter and Paris. As Paris listened to the story, Sloan could see her withdrawing into herself, as if she couldn't bear to believe her father and his mother could be capable of such cruelty.

"The thing we have to remember is this," Sloan finished on a deliberately optimistic note. "At the time our father agreed to go back to San Francisco with his mother and you, he was only twenty-seven. He wasn't the man we know now. He was young, and he'd grown up in luxury, and suddenly he was burdened with a wife and two babies to support. He was probably scared to death. His mother probably convinced him she knew best. Maybe she convinced him he was desperately needed in San Francisco, since his father was so ill. Maybe he wanted to believe it. Who really knows?"

"No one," Paris said after a moment.

"There's one more factor that needs to be added into this equation: Our mother and father had absolutely nothing in common. He didn't love her. She was just a beautiful, naive small-town girl who fell in love with a wealthy, sophisticated 'older' man and got pregnant."

"And he tried to do 'the right thing' and married her," Paris put in.

"Not exactly. When she went to San Francisco to tell him she was pregnant, his parents were there. They were so disgusted and furious that when he got home late that night, they told him to get out and take Mom with him."

Sloan wisely refrained from telling Paris that Carter had been drunk when he got home, and that his parents regarded a pregnant, small-town teenager as the final intolerable item on the long list of his irresponsible actions.

With great caution, Sloan broached the real problem that remained to be overcome. "After the marriage broke up, they told you terrible things about our mother that aren't true, and that was wrong of them, but when you think about it, it's not all that surprising."

"Actually, it was Grandmother Frances who said most of the really bad things."