THE ANGUISH OF ALEX HALEY'S WIDOWWITH HER HUSBAND'S LITERARY LEGACY DISPERSED, SHE'S LOCKED IN A BITTER PROBATE BATTLE

Alex was delighted with her new pursuit. He sent her an expensive bow. And he sent her a necklace designed like a bow and arrow.

It was to be his last gift.
On the day before he died, he called her from the airport in Los Angeles. He was on his way to his apartment in Seattle. He told her soon they would start working on Queen. They would not only work together, he said, they would write together.

The next day, he was dead.
"People say, 'How could you possibly stay with this person?'" she says. "But to me, in a way, when I connected with Alex part of it was realizing simply that we were supposed to be. Part of my specialness was to thelp this man who had such a wonderful calling to be able to bring understanding, to expand the imagination, to show that it was possible for different races of people to not just get along, but be along together.

"So those really hard times working with him didn't matter because I was fulfilling part of what I was supposed to be.