Free I'll Be Seeing You by Mary Higgins Clark Page A

nothing. Annie had listened to the painful explanation, her eyes wide and shocked. Then she’d walked across the room anddeliberately knocked over the stand holding the bronze bust.
    At Frances’ horrified cry, Annie had rushed from the house, jumped in her car and driven away. That evening Frances tried to phone her daughter at her apartment in San Diego. The answering machine was on. She’d phoned every day for the last week and always got the machine. It would be just like Annie to disappear indefinitely. Last year, after she’d broken her engagement to Greg, she’d flown to Australia and backpacked for six months.
    With fingers that seemed to be unable to obey the signals from her brain, Frances resumed her careful repair of the bust she had sculpted of Annie’s father.

    From the moment she entered his office at two o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, Meghan could sense the difference in Dr. George Manning’s attitude. On Sunday, when she’d covered the reunion, he had been expansive, cooperative, proud to display the children and the clinic. On the phone yesterday, when she’d made the appointment, he’d been quietly enthusiastic. Today the doctor looked every day of his seventy years. The healthy pink complexion she had noted earlier had been replaced by a gray pallor. The hand that he extended to her had a slight tremor.
    This morning, before he left for Westport, Mac had insisted that she phone the hospital and check on her mother. She was told that Mrs. Collins was sleeping and that her blood pressure had improved satisfactorily and was now in the high-normal range.
    Mac. What had she seen in his eyes as he said goodbye? He’d brushed her cheek with his usual light kiss, but his eyes held another message. Pity? She didn’t want it.
    She’d lain down for a couple of hours, not sleeping but at least dozing, sloughing off some of the heavy-eyed numbness. Then she’d showered, a long, hot shower thattook some of the achiness from her shoulders. She’d dressed in a dark green suit with a fitted jacket and calf-length skirt. She wanted to look her best. She had noticed that the adults at the Manning Clinic reunion were well dressed, then reasoned that people who could afford to spend somewhere between ten and twenty thousand dollars in the attempt to have a baby certainly had discretionary income.
    At the Park Avenue firm where she’d set out to practice law, it was a rule that no casual dress was permitted. As a radio and now television reporter, Meghan had observed that people being interviewed seemed to be naturally more expansive if they felt a sense of identity with the interviewer.
    She wanted Dr. Manning to subconsciously think of her and talk to her as he would to a prospective client. Now, standing in front of him, studying him, she realized that he was looking at her the way a convicted felon looked at the sentencing judge. Fear was the emotion emanating from him. But why should Dr. Manning be afraid of her?
    â€œI’m looking forward to doing this special more than I can tell you,” she said as she took the seat across the desk from him. “I—”
    He interrupted. “Miss Collins, I’m afraid that we can’t cooperate on any television feature. The staff and I had a meeting, and the feeling was that many of our clients would be most uncomfortable if they saw television cameras around here.”
    â€œBut you were happy to have us on Sunday.”
    â€œThe people who were here on Sunday have children. The women who are newcomers, or those who have not succeeded in achieving a successful pregnancy, are often anxious and depressed. Assisted reproduction is a very private matter.” His voice was firm, but his eyes betrayed his nervousness. About what, she wondered?
    â€œWhen we spoke on the phone,” she said, “we agreed that no one would be interviewed or caught on-camerawho wasn’t perfectly willing to