I'll Be Seeing You by Mary Higgins Clark Page B

her?
    She picked up the envelope that had contained the obituary notice. There was no name, but the address printed on the flap was a street in Chestnut Hill. She knew that Chestnut Hill was one of Philadelphia’s most exclusive residential areas.
    Who was the sender? More important, what kind of man had her father really been?
20
    I n Helene Petrovic’s charming colonial home in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, her niece, Stephanie, was cross and worried. The baby was due in a few weeks, and her back hurt. She was always tired. As a surprise, she had gone to the trouble of preparing a hot lunch for Helene, who had said she planned to get home by noon.
    At one-thirty, Stephanie had tried to phone her aunt, but there was no answer at the Connecticut apartment. Now, at six o’clock, Helene had still not arrived. Was anything wrong? Perhaps some last-minute errands came up and Helene had lived alone so long she was not used to keeping someone else informed of her movements.
    Stephanie had been shocked when on the phone yesterday Helene told her that she had quit her job, effective immediately. “I need a rest and I’m worried about you being alone so much,” Helene had told her.
    The fact was that Stephanie loved being alone. She had never known the luxury of being able to lie in bed until she decided to make coffee and get the paper that had been delivered in the predawn hours. On really lazy days, still resting in bed, she would eventually watch the morning television programs.
    She was twenty but looked older. Growing up, it had been her dream to be like her father’s younger sister, Helene, who had left for the United States twenty years ago, after her husband died.
    Now that same Helene was her anchor, her future, in a world that no longer existed as she knew it. The bloody, brief revolution in Rumania had cost her parents theirlives and destroyed their home. Stephanie had moved in with neighbors whose tiny house had no room for another occupant.
    Over the years, Helene had occasionally sent a little money and a gift package at Christmas. In desperation, Stephanie had written to her imploring help.
    A few weeks later she was on the plane to the United States.
    Helene was so kind. It was just that Stephanie fiercely wanted to live in Manhattan, get a job in a beauty salon and go to cosmetician school at night. Already her English was excellent, though she’d arrived here last year knowing only a few English words.
    Her time had almost come. She and Helene had looked at studio apartments in New York. They found one in Greenwich Village that would be available in January, and Helene had promised they would go shopping to decorate it.
    This house was on the market. Helene had always said she was not going to give up her job and the place in Connecticut until it sold. What had made her change her mind so abruptly now, Stephanie wondered?
    She brushed back the light brown hair from her broad forehead. She was hungry again and might as well eat. She could always warm up dinner for Helene when she arrived.
    At eight o’clock, as she was smiling at a rerun of
The
Golden Girls,
the front door bell pealed.
    Her sigh was both relieved and vexed. Helene probably had an armful of packages and didn’t want to search for her key. She gave a last look at the set. The program was about to end. After being so late, couldn’t Helene have waited one more minute? she wondered as she hoisted herself up from the couch.
    Her welcoming smile faded and vanished at the sight of a tall policeman with a boyish face. In disbelief she heard that Helene Petrovic had been shot to death in Connecticut.
    Before grief and shock encompassed her, Stephanie’sone clear thought was to frantically ask herself,
what will
become of me?
Only last week Helene had talked about her intention of changing her will, which left everything she had to the Manning Clinic Research Foundation. Now it was too late.
21
    B y eight