The Dark Side Read online

  The Dark Side is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Danielle Steel

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  DELACORTE PRESS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Steel, Danielle, author.

  Title: The dark side : a novel / Danielle Steel.

  Description: New York : Delacorte Press, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019011877 (print) | LCCN 2019013138 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399179426 (Ebook) | ISBN 9780399179419 (hardcover : acid-free paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Domestic fiction. | Psychological fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Family Life. | FICTION / Romance / Contemporary. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3569.T33828 (ebook) | LCC PS3569.T33828 D37 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2019011877

  Ebook ISBN 9780399179426

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Virginia Norey, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Eileen Carey

  Cover photograph: Irene Lamprakou/Arcangel

  v5.4

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Dedication

  By Danielle Steel

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Zoe and Rose Morgan were the perfect complement to each other as sisters. Zoe had straight, dark, shining hair. Rose had a halo of white-blond curls, which sat like a cap on her head. Zoe’s features were beautiful, though sharp and well defined for a child so young. Rose looked like a cherub, everything about her was round, including her small, smiling face. Zoe was long and angular, all legs and arms, like a young colt. There were no sharp edges to Rose. She was loving and soft. She had learned to blow kisses before she could say hello. Rose was an irresistible child. Zoe had always been shy, although having the irrepressible, fearless Rose as her little sister made Zoe bolder and stronger. Rose loved following her around. It annoyed Zoe at times, particularly if Rose ran off with one of Zoe’s toys, and Zoe gave her a sound scolding for it when she did. Zoe was three when Rose was born and had stared in wonderment at her in the bassinet. Rose had bonded with her immediately. Her face lit up whenever Zoe walked into the room.

  Zoe was six when Rose was diagnosed with leukemia at three. Zoe didn’t know what it meant. Her mother had explained it to her, that it was a sickness Rose had in her blood. She would have “treatments,” and have to go to the hospital and stay there sometimes. She was going to have “chemotherapy.” When they were alone, Zoe had asked her mother if it would hurt, and she said it might, and it would make Rose sick for a little while, but in the end, it would make her well. She would be fine again. Zoe saw something in her mother’s eyes then that she had never seen there before: fear. She could see that both her parents were afraid. Her father said he was going to take care of her whenever Rose had to go to the hospital, so their mother could stay there with Rose. And when Rose got well again, everything would go back to normal. He promised her that it would, and she believed him. She could tell that he believed it too.

  Three days later, Rose left for the hospital, with Beth, their mother. Zoe remembered that she had a little pink suitcase and took her favorite teddy bear, Pinkie, with her. She was gone for four weeks, and their mother stayed with her, and came home for an hour or two every few days, to get more clothes and give Zoe a hug. When Rose came home the white-blond curls were gone. Rose slept a lot, and she lay on the couch, but she wanted to play when Zoe came home from school. And Zoe was happy to have Rose and their mom home again.

  Rose stayed at the hospital a lot in that first year, and she had something called a bone marrow transplant. Their mom gave her some of her bone marrow, and it helped. Rose got better after that, just like Brad, their father, had said. Her curls grew back, although they were a darker blond, and her eyebrows and eyelashes came back too. Zoe didn’t yell at her anymore when Rose took her toys. She was just happy Rose was home, and so were their mom and dad. Zoe was used to spending most of her time with her father by then. It wasn’t quite as good as being with her mom, who always had everything perfectly organized and in control, but he was almost as good at it as her mom was by the end of that first year. Zoe told him what he didn’t know, like how she liked her toast, and which cereal was Rose’s. He did the laundry, made the beds, picked her up at school, cooked the meals. He let Zoe help him make s’mores for dessert every night if she wanted them. He read her bedtime stories, and they always called Rose before Zoe went to sleep, if she was at the hospital that week. They had a party for just the four of them every time Rose came home. They made cupcakes for her, or baked a cake. They put candles on them, and Rose got to blow them out. It was like her birthday every other week.

  Zoe knew she was lucky that her father could stay with her because he worked at home, and had a studio upstairs. He had been an animation artist at Disney studios, until he wrote a book about the adventures of Ollie the Mouse, who loved to travel and went everywhere. He did the illustrations himself. The first Ollie book was an instant success. After the second one, a TV show was produced, which led to merchandising and Ollie dolls. Brad left Disney then, and moved to San Francisco with Beth, right before Zoe was born. They had never expected the book to be such a huge success. It was sold all over the world in sixteen languages. Zoe loved it when he read the Ollie books to her, and a new one came out every year. Eventually, Ollie married a little white mouse named Marina, who was a ballerina, and they had twin baby mice named Charlie and Seraphina. Their family was complete and their adventures continued. From the time Beth and Brad moved to San Francisco and Zoe was born, Brad continued to work at home in his studio. When she was old enough, Zoe loved going upstairs to visit him. She had a little table in a corner, with her own drawing pad and colored pencils and crayons, and later paints. She loved drawing Ollie and Marina and the twins too.

  Zoe’s mother didn’t work. She had worked in a hospital in L.A. as a surgical nurse before they’d moved, but once Zoe was born in San Francisco, Beth became a full-time mom. They went to the park every day, baked cookies, went to swimming lessons and play groups, and took a music class for moms and little kids. They were busy all the time. Zoe had just started preschool when Rose was born. She kept everyone busy, and Zoe felt like their family was complete, just like Ollie and Marina and their twins in their dad’s books. Zoe’s mother even let Zoe take Rose to show-and-tell at school, so everyone could see her, when she was four months old. Rose smiled at everyone while Zoe held her, an
d then she fell asleep. Her visit was a big success, and everyone agreed that she looked like an angel. The children commented that Zoe and her baby sister looked very different, except that they both had big blue eyes like their mom.

  Zoe loved living in San Francisco. It was the only home she had ever known, and she loved their rambling old house with a view of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. She and Rose shared a room, and there was lots of space to play. At first, Rose slept in a basket in their parents’ room, next to their parents’ bed, and when she was too big to sleep in the basket anymore, Rose slept in a crib across from Zoe’s bed. Zoe would tiptoe over to peek at her, sound asleep in her crib, and then go back to her own bed. By the time Rose got sick, they were both sleeping in beds. Their father had painted a magical garden on the wall, with fairies flying over it. Zoe loved it. They had the best room in the world. When Rose was in the hospital, Zoe would look at her empty bed at night and miss her. The room seemed sad when she was gone. She counted the days until Rose came home.

  Zoe loved her status as big sister. Even if Rose was a pest at times, Zoe loved her. Later on, her memories of her first six years, until Rose got sick, were as close to perfect as you could get, with adoring parents, happy days, and a little sister who was fun to play with. She couldn’t wait for Rose to start school with her, but she started a year late, since she’d been sick.

  Rose had a year after the bone marrow transplant, and then the leukemia came back with a vengeance, and made her even sicker than she’d been before. Her hair fell out again, she had to have something called a port, because she got chemotherapy so often and they couldn’t use the veins in her arms anymore. From the time she was diagnosed again, and was no longer in remission, her deterioration was slow but steady over the next two years. Her life was a living hell. At nine, Zoe understood that now.

  She saw her parents crying lots of times, and their mom was almost always gone. She never left Rose alone at the hospital, and Zoe hardly saw her. There was too much going on, too many decisions to make, too many doctors they had to see and call, or meet at the hospital. Her father went a lot too, and Zoe stayed with the neighbors when he had to be at meetings with the doctors, or went to visit Rose. Rose usually came home between rounds of chemotherapy, but she cried a lot, and slept most of the time. Zoe watched her slip away inch by inch. Their mother said Rose was going to get well, but their father didn’t make promises anymore. When Zoe asked him what was going to happen, he said he didn’t know. She could always tell from their eyes when bad things were happening, which was most of the time during the last year. Zoe was nine then, and Rose was six. She still looked like a little girl, but her eyes were very old. Sometimes when she was home, Zoe would sit next to her bed on the floor and hold her hand. She asked Zoe once if she thought the fairies would come down from Heaven to get her, as tears rolled down Zoe’s cheeks, and Zoe told her sternly she wasn’t going anywhere.

  Zoe had heard her parents say that Rose had a rare form of particularly virulent leukemia. Other children had recovered from different kinds of the disease, but the one Rose had was harder to beat. The doctors tried everything. Zoe could no longer remember a time when her parents laughed at anything, smiled, or relaxed. They looked terrified all the time, and in the end, no matter how hard they tried, or how lovingly Beth nursed her, Rose slipped away in her sleep at the hospital one night. She had told their mother that Pinkie, the pink teddy bear she had slept with all her life, wanted to sleep with Zoe when she went to Heaven. When their mother handed it to Zoe the next morning, Zoe knew what had happened. She felt like someone had ripped her heart out of her chest. Rose would never come home again.

  Zoe was ten when her sister died, and Rose was seven. She had fought the battle for four years, and the moment she died, their parents turned into people Zoe didn’t know. Her mother lost all hope and turned into a zombie. After the funeral, which was unbearable for all three of them, Beth no longer got out of bed. Brad wanted her to see a doctor but she wouldn’t. She said nothing would bring Rose back, so what did it matter now. He wandered around the house day and night like a ghost. Zoe tried to reach out to both of them, but nothing she said or did helped. There had been so many happy times in their lives before Rose died, and none that Zoe could remember after that. Their home became a ghost town, as Zoe lay in bed at night, clutching Pinkie to her chest, trying to picture Rose’s angelic face before she got sick. All she could remember now was how she’d looked without hair, ravaged by the disease. Old photographs of her no longer looked like the Rose she knew.

  For the four years of Rose’s illness, their parents’ lives had focused entirely on her needs. Zoe’s had to take a backseat, and her father had promised again and again that one day their life would get back to normal, but that time had never come, even once Rose was gone. They were too stunned and broken to deal with Zoe after it happened. All they could think of was their own grief, which filled the house like a numbing gas and rendered them unable to relate to anyone else. They could barely function or speak, even to each other, and didn’t want to. Zoe was always just beyond their ability to focus on too. Brad tried a little harder to reach out to her, with no success. Beth just couldn’t. She had been a beacon of hope for all of them for four years, but her light had finally gone out when Rose’s did. Her emotional tanks were dry, for everyone, even herself. She had given all she had to give to her youngest daughter, and Zoe seemed to be beyond her horizon. Beth slept almost all the time. Brad saw to it that Zoe got to and from school, and then signed her up for a carpool. He ordered in meals at night, mostly fast food.

  Zoe always had the feeling that in their heart of hearts they believed that the best of their children had died, and they had been left with the “other one.” Their disappointment seemed total. Rose had been the little angel among them, and now she was gone. It never occurred to Zoe that if she had died and not Rose, they might have felt the same way about her. Zoe didn’t believe that. In their unrelenting grief, they made it clear that she was second best. They talked of Rose’s absence when they talked at all, and never of Zoe’s presence, as though she had become invisible. For two years after Rose’s death, her parents were emotionally inaccessible. She had to learn to take care of herself, to meet her own needs and expect nothing from them, which was all she was getting.

  Her father was the first to awaken from the nightmare that had engulfed them. Zoe had just turned twelve, her parents waited for her in the kitchen when she came home from school, and told her they were separating. The pain had just deepened for her. She had clung to a wisp of hope that things would get back to normal again one day, but now even that hope was dashed. Her father told her the bad news as they sat at the kitchen table. Her mother said nothing, as though she had become mute. He explained that he’d wanted to go into therapy with her, and Beth had refused. He gentled it by saying she wasn’t ready. She looked dead as she sat staring at the dishwasher and not her daughter and didn’t speak, or try to explain what she was feeling. They all knew. She had given everything of herself to her daughter and lost her anyway, and now she was losing her husband too. She didn’t have the strength to resist. She was drowning, or already had.

  “Can’t you two try to work it out?” Zoe asked in a pleading tone, as Brad slowly shook his head and Beth said nothing.

  “I don’t think so,” he said softly, glancing at the woman who was still his wife, but was now unrecognizable as the woman he had loved. He couldn’t imagine her becoming that person again, and she refused to try. She had been turning down his pleas for marriage counseling since grief had overwhelmed them, with devastating results. “We’ll see what happens,” Brad said vaguely. He told Zoe they weren’t getting divorced yet, but he felt he needed counseling to help him get over Rose’s death. He thought they all did, but Beth insisted Zoe was fine. She was getting good grades in school, wasn’t on drugs or acting out. She was a child, she would survive it. Beth wasn’t sure
that she herself would. She thought probably not. And she felt Brad’s wanting to get past it was a form of betrayal. His wanting to get over their crippling grief felt to her like an abandonment of their daughter, and his wife. She was intending to mourn forever, to honor Rose, while once again overlooking Zoe in the process. Zoe was used to it by now, from both of them. They only thought of themselves and what they were feeling. After all they had done for Rose, she had never before realized how selfish they were.

  Brad moved out that weekend. He’d found a studio apartment on Broadway in a building that people referred to as the Heartbreak Hotel. It was usually the first step in a divorce, while people got their bearings. There was nowhere for Zoe to stay in the apartment. He took her to dinner once a week, which meant that her main caretaker for all four years of her sister’s illness, and the two years since, had jumped ship and become an occasional visitor. Her mother was even more withdrawn after he left. She hardly came out of her room anymore. Zoe cooked her own meals in the kitchen, cans of ravioli or spaghetti, frozen dinners her mother bought and left in the freezer for her to prepare. Beth hardly ate and had lost a shocking amount of weight. Zoe had gotten much thinner too. They all had.

  Six months after he had moved out, Brad told Zoe over dinner that he had filed for divorce. Beth was still refusing any form of therapy, and would barely speak to him. There was no malice in the separation, or even in the divorce, but there was a total absence of communication. They were completely out of step with each other, and Brad explained to Zoe, at the tender age of twelve and a half, that their marriage had died with Rose. Beth didn’t deny it. It was a relief for Beth in a way that he expected nothing more from her. All he wanted was out after two and a half years of intense mourning. He wanted to heal and move on. Beth simply couldn’t do it, at least not yet, and she wouldn’t even try.