The Tracy Daughters
Part Two - Emily Haas Tracy
I do not own the Thunderbirds or the song While You Loved Me by Rascal Flatts. So go sue someone with more money than me. That would be almost anyone.
Gerald Haas looked at the paper with so much sadness, so much remorse, that it threatened to choke him. An article in the paper detailed how a severe tropical storm had claimed but a few lives instead of the hundreds it could have. Part of that was in thanks to the Thunderbirds. But a bigger reason so many people were alive was the person detailed in the story – Dr. Emily Tracy. The woman had coordinated relief efforts, made sure sanitary conditions were met and – through a blend of strong-arm tactics and sweet-talking – pulled in medical supplies and personnel from around the world. Looking at the picture of the exhausted physician, leaning against her equally exhausted husband, he smiled as bittersweet tears fell from his eyes.
"Oh, my baby girl. Why wasn't I stronger? Why did I let your mother hold so much sway over our lives? Why did I never tell you that I loved you, that I was proud of you? That from the moment I saw you, that I held you, you had a piece of my heart no one ever could?" At times Gerald wondered if that was one of the reasons his wife Susan had been so cold to their daughter. She certainly hadn't acted that way with their son Reginald. But from the moment of Emily's birth, the child could do no right in her mother's eyes.
He could clearly recall the night Emily had been born. Susan might have complained loud and long, but Emily's birth had been easy and straight forward. His wife hadn't even seen fit to inform Gerald, simply leaving a message with his secretary to call when his plane landed. Emily had already been born when he arrived at the hospital. Standing in his wife's room, Gerald had heard her cold statement that it wasn't her fault that their second born – the "spare" to the "heir" – was a girl. But, she responded, perhaps the child could be molded to be a proper debutant. Abruptly quieting when the nurse arrived with the newborn, Gerald had stepped in when it looked as if Susan was about to decline to hold her own child. Taking his daughter into his arms, he had stared, bemused, at perfection in miniature. She looked so much like his mother with her swatch of golden blonde hair and porcelain skin. The nurse had smiled at the sight, approaching only when Gerald had gasped. Looking up at the nurse, he had asked shakily, "Should her eyes be that deep a blue?"
The nurse had smiled at the baby the maternity ward was already calling the "cherub" for her angelic appearance. "It is unusual. But," she turned her smile on Gerald, "it looks like she has her daddy's eyes." The nurse had walked out, relieved that the baby girl who had enchanted the floor would have one loving parent. The mother was clearly a cold fish who could not spare a moment for her own child.
Gerald and Susan had only discussed boys' names. "What to you think of Elizabeth?" he asked, wanting to honor his own mother.
"And have people call her Betsy or Bessie? Those are names for farm animals, not a future debutante of the year. But we can do a name with an E. Emily should do nicely." Not wanting to start a fight with his wife, Gerald had agreed. Besides, Emily seemed to like the name as she cooed when her father called her it.
If I ever write the story of my life
Don't be surprised if you're where it begins
Girl, I'd have to dedicate every line on every page
To the memories we made, while you loved me
Gerald rarely got to spend much time with his daughter. He had become a senior partner at the firm and he was forced to spend much of his time at work. Gerald had trusted Susan to care for their home and children. It shouldn't have been much. Reginald was away at boarding school most of the year and Emily had a nanny. It was her nanny who had insisted that the child was unusually bright. Any attempts to talk to Susan had been rebuffed. The woman had sacrificed her position when she secretly took Emily to be tested and gave the report directly to Gerald.
Emily was – to put it simply – a genius. Her IQ was somewhere over 180. Toddler dance classes and deportment school were replaced by special tutors and a school for gifted children. A new au pair was employed, one who escorted the child to and from the lessons. Susan threw herself into her charity work. She refused to discuss their daughter as if the child had some kind of social disease instead if a gifted mind. Attempts by Gerald to discuss her or spend time with Emily were disrupted by Susan. At the time, she had maintained that Gerald would distract Emily from using her gifts to the fullest. Later, Gerald saw how Susan had been carefully disintegrating any true bonds between the father and daughter. He wondered now, if he had known what was happening then, he could have kept his daughter's love.
I was born the day you kissed me
And I died inside the night you left me
But I lived, oh how I lived
(I lived)While you loved me
The years that followed passed quickly. Emily tore through her learning the way most children would through candy. Gerald did his best to try and talk with Emily, did what he could to be a loving father. He was sure Emily knew how much he loved her, how proud he was of her. But as the girl went away to school – which, having gone to Columbia for pre-med, wasn't until she was in her teens – Gerald was not consciously aware how much damage Susan was doing to their relationship until it was too late.
Emily never complained about her treatment by her family. It simply wasn't in her to do so. Gerald treasured the few times he was able to spend with his daughter. Times when he would take her for an ice cream, or simply a walk in the park. It was always during the school day or occasionally on the weekend. Times when her tutors thought she was in the library studying. Anything else was discouraged by Susan, his wife insisting that Gerald was taking time from Emily's studies. He often found it odd how much she insisted Emily study as much as possible yet the way Susan never discussed what the girl was studying or mentioned it to others. And he certainly did not know until it was too late how his wife berated or mocked Emily when he was not around. Oh, he heard the tone of voice Susan used, and how bitingly she spoke with Emily. But Susan did that with many people. It would be too late when Gerald realized how Emily was truly being treated, how her mother had tried to force Emily into a mold the child wouldn't was only after Emily left Manhattan to become a resident at Boston Medical Center that Gerald began to recognize the amount of damage Susan had done. With Reginald already in school by the time Emily was born, Gerald had not seen how there was almost no connection between the siblings. Gerald had visited Emily repeatedly when she was attending the accelerated medical school and internship program at Yale. It was easier to get away to Connecticut than it was to Boston. He would try and assure himself that Emily was simply busy. He would be relieved that she had a strong relationship over the last few years with her maternal grandfather. Susan had been raised by her mother and stepfather, even using her stepfather's name. Her birth father had been as wealthy as her stepfather but preferred living quietly in New Hampshire to what he called the "Madhouse" – New York City. While Susan's mother had found it "quaint" at first, she quickly fell out of love once she realized it wasn't a "phase" on his part. Susan shared her mother's views and had never been close to her father. Gerald would later almost smirk when Susan discovered the fallout of her father's will. David Hebert had left his entire estate to Emily. He never knew what annoyed Susan more: that the ill-favored child had received such a large blessing or that their daughter had given half the estate away. He suspected she would have given away more but the terms of her grandfather's will simply wouldn't allow it.
I'd start with chapter one, love innocent and young
As a morning sun on a new day
Even though I know the end, Well I'd do it all again
'Cause I got a lifetime in while you loved me
What Gerald did know was that this was the time when he saw how much damage had been done. Emily had left the northeast, taking off for Los Angeles and a position on the trauma team of Cedar-Sinai. Susan seemed content at this, until word came back that Emily had begun to date a fellow doctor. That the doctor was a brilliant, young cardiac surgeon was not a problem. That his mother came from India was mildly disconcerting to her. The fact that his paternal grandfather was Jewish was appalling to Susan. Gerald did not find out until Susan returned to New York from "nipping this is the bud" how upset Emily had been. The next thing Gerald had known, his daughter was no longer even living in America. She had taken a position in New Zealand.
It would be while Emily was living in a foreign country that they would receive word that she had married. The message had been brief. Emily had married a man – he was a writer, she said – whose family lived "on an island north of Auckland". She gave no other details, and her mother had a junior associate at the law firm contact Emily with the offer of arranging an annulment and her return to New York. Repeated refusals by Emily made Susan rant – in the discretionary location of their townhouse – of how Emily was "embarrassing the family with her misalliance". Fifteen weeks after being notified of Emily's marriage, their daughter contacted her mother directly. Informing her that she would be in Manhattan in a few days, Susan began to plan strategy as if a general planning for war.
Later, Gerald discovered Susan's strategy and was appalled. When Emily once more refused an annulment, revealing that she was pregnant with her husband's child, Susan – having suspected this was the reason the usually laid-back Emily was pushing for the meeting – had presented her daughter with an ultimatum: divorce her husband and have an abortion, or face being disowned and disavowed. Emily had refused and, joined by her husband's sister-in-law, had presented Susan with a document of their own. Susan had signed it, acknowledging the Hass' would have no claims or contact with the former Emily Haas, her husband, the husband's family or any children born of the marriage. Ironically, it was only then Susan discovered that the "native writer" Emily had married was astronomer and author John Glenn Tracy, second son of billionaire Jeff Tracy. Susan had ranted for days about how Emily had "tricked" her and how her new sister-in-law – ironically, the younger cousin of the "unsuitable" physician Emily had dated in L.A. – had practically gloated when revealing just who Emily had married. Gerald would discover a few months later that he had become a grandfather the same way as the rest of the world. He read it in the paper.
I was born the day you kissed me
And I died inside the night you left me
But I lived, oh how I lived
(I lived) While you loved me
Years flew by. Gerald threw himself into his work. He later would meet one of Emily's brothers-in-law. Gordon Tracy attended few society events. Gerald probably attended fewer. The younger man somehow recognized who Gerald was and, in the course of a casual conversation, showed him a picture of his daughter's family. Emily was still married to John and they had two children now, Elizabeth and Keith. It was only then that Gerald had discovered that Emily had nearly died in giving birth to her second child. Apparently, she had inherited the problems her paternal grandmother had suffered from. Gerald recalled with great sadness the mother he had lost when she became pregnant again when Gerald was six. Both she and his baby sister had died when labor came in the eighth month. The discovery of how much Susan had cost him, not to mention her current attempts to curry favor with the Tracy Family, left him angry and frustrated. When she died soon after, Gerald was surprised that he was not a prime suspect. But by that time, Gerald had found it hard to care what happened to his wife.
More years would pass. There would be the occasional bit of news. Gerald drank any hint of his daughter's life like a man lost in the desert drank from an oasis. Because they were Tracys, he discovered that his grandson had briefly worked with the newly formed International Space and Exploration Organization before going to work for his paternal grandfather; that his granddaughter had joined Tracy Enterprises and was considered the heir apparent. He learned that she had married and, when Jeff Tracy suffered a heart attack, it had been Elizabeth, young as she was, who had been named as President of the family business.
Not long after, Gerald, now retired, the highlight of his day being going to a nearby café, saw a young woman on the street. Convinced it was Emily, he tried to approach her, only to clasp a hand to his chest in pain. The woman, seeing his distress, called 911 and gently spoke to him until the paramedics arrived. Unable to speak past the pain, Gerald had watched in dismay as the young woman, assured that the man was being cared for, turned and walked away. Gerald had, however briefly, been allowed to meet his granddaughter. It was with that comforting thought the he passed away enroute to the hospital. Elizabeth had never even known that the stranger she had comforted on a sidewalk in Manhattan was her grandfather.
I was born the day you kissed me
And I died inside the night you left me
But I lived, oh how I lived
(I lived) While you loved me
A/N - I hoped that Emily would have learned how to love from someone. Obviously, it wasn't from her mother. But Gerald would regret his lack of action in regards to Emily. His silence cost him an unbearable price. Thanks for reading, Sarah's story is up tomorrow and as always, review!!! - CC