Lily was dimly aware of dabbing one end of the towel to her face as she went to Tamberlaine. He took her outstretched hand in both of his, and his face softened. Behind her, Artemas spoke brusquely, “I’ll wait here while Lily changes into some dry clothes.”
“I don’t need to,” Lily said. She dried her face and let the towel fall around her shoulders, then went to a fat blue sofa and sat down. Lupa stretched out on a rug beside her.
As if on cue, Tamberlaine turned to Maude and the sisters. “I would certainly appreciate a cup of hot tea.”
“We can do better than that,” Maude answered. She shot a wary look at Artemas. “We suspected we’d be extra baggage.” Little Sis linked an arm through Tamberlaine’s. “Come with us. We figured you for a cognac man.”
“How astute. Thank you.” He and the trio left the den. Artemas went after them and pulled its tall double doors closed. The only sound was rain pelting lightly on one of the wide skylights. The den, with its high, beamed ceilings and oversized couches, its heavy pottery lamps and bookcases, and the big-screened television in one corner, suddenly seemed too small for his presence.
Lily regarded him with dull lethargy. He stood with his back to her, his large hands still clasped on the doors’ ornately carved wooden handles. “I always wondered what your house looked like,” he said. “It’s what I pictured—warm, filled with unique touches.”
She found her voice. It was a raw scrape of sound. “Richard loved woodworking. He has … had … there’s a wonderful workshop out back. He made those doors.”
Artemas drew his hands off them. He turned and stood, motionless, his eyes troubled. His gaunt face belied the well-kept elegance of his clothes. Lily looked away from the sight. Dull pain stabbed at her throat. She looked like hell, but so did he.
“I wish I could put this conversation off,” he told her. “I wish it never had to be. Certainly not this soon.”
“What?” She felt distracted. Her mind wandered to Stephen’s bedroom upstairs, to her and Richard’s bedroom, the guest rooms, the downstairs with its den and large kitchen and dining room, and off the den, the large office she and Richard had shared. Her mind took in the whole house in the space of a few seconds. It was empty. She was empty, a mother with no child to hold. Artemas’s sister was dead, his brother perhaps crippled for life. And there were questions about the Colebrook Building. She had known they’d come.
He looked defeated by her blank silence. “We have to talk about what happened, and why it happened.” His voice was leaden, and his expression had become a mask of restraint.
“Some kind of accident. I don’t know.” Lily drew the towel into her lap, watching water drip from the curly strands of hair matted to her breasts. “I’ve asked myself questions. Every day, every night. I’ve screamed them at the walls in the shower, so Aunt Maude and the sisters can’t hear. I don’t know.”
“Then you and I have been doing the same thing.”
“The lawyers—Richard and Frank’s lawyers—tried to ask me. They gave up. I have to call them when I can make sense. And there are investigators. The state’s people. All of them. I have to talk with them.”
“You have to talk to me first.”
She raised her head, shocked by the command in his voice. There was enough of her old self left to feel wary. And more coming to the surface. But he had been devastated too. She had to help him learn who’d done this godawful thing. If there was anyone to blame. “How is James?” she asked finally.
“There’ll be another surgery on his leg tomorrow, to repair more of the muscle and nerve damage. He’ll stay in the hospital for several more weeks. The house he and Alise have under construction isn’t finished yet.”
“And the rest of your family?”
“They’re taking it one day at a time. Keeping each other—and James—from thinking too much. They have their homes here. They won’t be going back to New York. We’ve taken two floors at a hotel as a headquarters, for now, until we can find an office building to lease. Most of our people have already moved here. We have to get them situated as quickly as possible.”
“You’re living at the hotel?”
“Yes.”
“What about Blue Willow?”
“I still plan to restore it. Eventually.”
She leaned back in the chair and let her head rest on the hard rim. “Everything you worked for, your dream—”
“My family is torn apart. That’s my main concern.” He paused, his face working silently, the large gray eyes searing her. “I’ll never stop missing my sister, but Lily, your son—I can only try to imagine how it must feel to lose a child.”
“I feel as if everything inside me has been cut out and burned.” She heard her voice from a distance. It was dispassionate. An observer’s calm tone. “And all that’s left is this shell”—she gestured toward her body then laid her hands on the chair’s arms—“this shell that walks around pretending to be alive. If I didn’t need to find out what happened that night, I wouldn’t have any reason to pretend. I’d put the muzzle of my father’s old forty-five in my mouth and pull the trigger.”
He exploded, making some furious, guttural sound and almost running across the room to her. He snatched her out of the chair by her shoulders. Her bare feet strove for a landing, sliding off the toes of his shoes. She gripped his jacket and stared at him, barely keeping her balance. His eyes glittered wildly. “Don’t you ever think of doing that,” he said between clenched teeth. “Goddammit, swear to me that you won’t. Swear it.”
“I said if I didn’t have a reason to go on. I do. I’m not a coward—”
“I said swear it. Swear it on Stephen’s soul.” She gasped. “Swear that you won’t hurt yourself,” he said again, almost shaking her. “If I can survive, by God, you can too.”
“I swear. I promise. Let me go.”
Breathing heavily, he lowered her and released her arms. “I’ll give you plenty of reasons to want to live and fight back,” he said, the words low and fierce. He turned and walked away, ramming his hands through his hair. He took a deep, shuddering breath and dropped his hands to his side. Lily looked at him in horror. What he was going through equaled everything she felt. There were so many old ties between them, so much that couldn’t be described or considered. Or denied. So much love.
She groaned and covered her face. Richard, Richard, I didn’t mean to think that. I’ll never think it again. It was over before I met you. Forgive me. Lily turned blindly and went to the glass doors. Hugging herself hard, she forced herself to concentrate on the future. She had to begin dealing with her grief, subverting it, if only enough to do what had to be done. Artemas’s words suddenly snapped into focus. I’ll give you plenty of reasons to live and fight back. A chill crawled up her spine. Fight back?
She pivoted to face Artemas. Her fingers dug into her arms. She wanted to shield herself against the stark new thoughts rising in her mind. “Did you come here to tell me that my husband and his partner are accused of doing something wrong?”
The look in Artemas’s eyes froze her blood. “They were the architects. They designed the building. They designed the bridge. They worked closely with the contractor. Everyone who had anything to do with the design and construction is being investigated.”
Fury clawed at her throat. Steady, now. Don’t overreact. He’s only stating the obvious. He has to do that. “I’m not a fool,” she said slowly. “I know the investigators have to study Richard and Frank’s design of the bridge—that they wouldn’t be doing their job if they didn’t check every detail.” She returned Artemas’s relentless gaze. “But I also know that they won’t find any mistakes.”
His voice was low, anguished. “How can you be so sure of that, Lily?”
“Because there was only one thing Richard loved as much as he loved Stephen and me. His work. He lived for it. His pride in it was everything.” Cold threads of panic were winding around her chest. How could Artemas suggest Richard’s architectural fir
m might be at fault? “Do you think he would have allowed Stephen on that bridge if he thought it was dangerous? Do you think he would have let anyone go up there? That he would have gone up himself?”
“If he thought the risk were slight. If he and Frank Stockman miscalculated.”
“No. No. You’re saying they knew the bridge might not have been one hundred percent safe.” Trembling with a sense of betrayal—she was stunned that Artemas could be pushing this angle—she realized her hands were pressed to her throat. The pulse there slammed against her fingertips. “Don’t do this. Don’t make ludicrous accusations. I understand your need to blame someone. Revenge, it’s”—her hands formed into fists—“it’s what I want too. But Richard isn’t responsible. Never.”
He shut his eyes. Without moving or speaking, he radiated deadly energy, a maelstrom of conflicting emotions. When he looked at her again, there was a kind of despondency in his eyes, but also that lethal drive. “I want experts of my own to look at every document. Every blueprint. Every materials specification. It may take months, but eventually we’ll know what happened. But more important is why.” He paused. Then, softly: “Richard was the structural engineer—he calculated the stress loads, designed the steel frame—”
“I know what my husband’s work involved. And I know how meticulous he was about it.”
“His professional seal is on every blueprint, every materials specification. Lily, if we discover that the failure came from Richard’s calculations, I have to find out whether it was an honest mistake—or deliberate.”
Her knees went weak. Nausea twisted her stomach. “You are talking about a man,” she said between gritted teeth, “who had carpenters rebuild an entire wall of this house because it was one inch off vertical.”
Artemas walked over to her—stood beside her, not looking at her, his hands clasped behind his back. The gray light filtering through the rain and the glass doors cast his face in ashen hues, like stone. “There is the possibility that Richard and his partner collaborated with the contractor to save money, or time.”
“That makes no sense! The Colebrook project was a godsend to Richard. He and Frank staked their reputations on it! It meant everything—national respect, big clients, awards. They slaved over it for the past three years.” She leaned toward him, grasping his shoulder fiercely. “He and Frank wouldn’t have risked people’s lives to save a few dollars on a hundred-million-dollar project.”
“Unless they believed the bridge would be safe, regardless. If they gambled—and lost.”
The pulse roared in Lily’s ears. She felt the clammy, cold prickle of shock on her cheeks, and black shadows floated across her vision. But she would not show weakness before this man. She remembered all too well the cost of being vulnerable to him. She made her way to a couch as calmly as she could and sat down. There must be other answers to this horror. Ones she hadn’t had the time or the presence of mind to consider. Only one thing mattered right now—Artemas was saying Richard might be responsible for a tragedy that had taken the lives of a dozen people, including their son’s. A tragedy that marred the Colebrook name. All that had ever been paramount to Artemas was rebuilding that name. All he cared about now was finding some way to protect that name and his family, even if it meant destroying everything she believed in.
“I want you to tell me if you knew or suspected that anything strange was going on,” Artemas continued in the same, deadened tone. “Anything you can remember—comments Richard made, any odd behavior on his part, anything at all.”
Her voice finally escaped from the knot of despair in her chest. “I won’t help you make a scapegoat out of my husband. If you think I’ll ever help you do that, you don’t know me at all.”
A muscle popped in his cheek. “My sister is dead. My brother will walk with a limp the rest of his life. Several executives from companies owned by Colebrook International were killed. For God’s sake, Lily, so many lives were lost—and so many people will have to live with that grief. They deserve justice. My family and I deserve it. You’re caught in the middle, and you have to think about what’s fair, what’s decent—no matter how hard it is to accept the truth. There’s nothing I can do to protect you.”
“I’ve never needed your protection. I’ve proved that.”
“Lily, your landscaping business is tied to this. You worked on this project from the beginning.”
“Are you forgetting why? That I didn’t want any part of it—I didn’t want Richard’s firm to be part of it. That you coerced me.”
“Coerced?” His face, lined with strain, became even more drawn. “I gave a struggling pair of young architects an opportunity no one else would have given them, and a talented landscape designer the chance to prove herself.”
“You insinuated yourself into our lives, and I couldn’t even tell Richard why. I couldn’t hurt his pride. You knew that.”
His shoulders slumped a little. “There’s no point in arguing about my motives now.”
“You’re right,” she said, her tone condemning. “Because I understood them a long time ago. You’re capable of being ruthless to get what you want.”
“I came here to ask you for access to Richard’s personal files. I’ve been told he did most of his drafting at home. I want you to let my people go through Richard’s files.”
She stared at him. Her mind was hollow, except for one thought. He wants to punish me for marrying Richard. He wants to shame me for having a child with Richard. He wants me to beg him for forgiveness. “I chose my loyalties a long time ago,” she said evenly, “and I won’t desert them now.”
“They’ll ruin you. And if you don’t cooperate with me, there won’t be a damned thing I can do to stop it.”
“So you’re saying you have the power to save me?” She put her head in her hands. “If you had stayed out of my life, my son would be alive. My son is dead because of you.”
It was as if all the room’s light had been absorbed in his silence. When he finally spoke, his voice was a bare whisper, raw and stunned. “Your son is dead because of Richard. My sister is dead because of him. My brother is maimed. I’m going to prove that to you, even if you hate me for the rest of your life.”
She watched him walk swiftly to the doors Richard had built with such loving care. The heavy wooden panels gave rough, protesting groans as they slammed into the walls adjacent to them. He left without a backward glance, his posture brutally erect. The doors closed behind him gingerly, as if bruised.
They gathered in the hall outside James’s hospital room. The hall had the quiet, empty feel of evening, though bright, fluorescent lights played harshly on the white walls. Visitors’ hours were coming to an end soon. Nurses worked silently at their station. The low murmur of a television came from the open door of a room across the way.
Michael pulled the door to James’s room nearly closed. The hospital reminded him too much of the week he’d spent by his wife’s side, watching her fade under the hideous spell of the aneurysm in her brain. He felt the same stark defensiveness as now. It wasn’t possible that such a joyous, vigorous life could hinge on the workings of a tiny artery. It wasn’t possible that his dynamic brother was trussed up by slings and bandages and humiliating tubes, in the bed beyond this door.
Cass leaned against a wall, her face bleak, her slender hands lying unfurled along the sides of her tan silk slacks. Several coffee stains dotted the white angora sweater she wore. Elizabeth wavered in place, her body so leaden with fatigue that the shoulders of her suit-dress seemed to be holding her up. She put an arm around Alise’s shoulders, and Alise wearily tilted her head against her sister-in-law’s. Alise held a clenched hand to her stomach. Michael noticed that blood had speckled the ivory blouse she wore. He touched her hand. She looked at it wistfully, then tucked a square of bloodstained gauze into a pocket of her long skirt. She had kept it when the nurses were changing one of the bandages on James’s leg.
“I can’t understand why Artemas isn’t here yet,�
� Elizabeth said. “If he doesn’t get here soon, he won’t get to talk to James again until after surgery tomorrow.”
Cass stirred, brushed broken fingernails across lips chapped from being chewed constantly, and said hoarsely, “I remember Tamberlaine saying they might be late. I think they were going almost an hour’s drive from here. Someplace in the suburbs north of the city.”
Alise sighed. “Why did Artemas feel he had to see her today?”
“She’s an old friend,” Michael said. “He didn’t want her to hear the news from one of her attorneys.”
Cass’s mouth curled in dismay. “An old friend,” she echoed, acid in her tone. “Who probably knew that her husband and his cronies were screwing us over. Hell, she was even in charge of the landscaping. She had to know what they were up to.”
“Not necessarily,” Michael said. “Artemas doesn’t think so.”
“Does it matter?” Cass shot back. “Anyone connected to those bastards deserves to suffer. I say she’s guilty by association. She was married to Porter. She knew what he was capable of.”
“We don’t know who did what yet,” Elizabeth reminded her.
“Yes, but as soon as Oliver Grant caves in and talks, we will. If I hear his lawyers say ‘Our client followed the architects’ instructions’ one more time, I’ll strangle the S.O.B.”
Alise pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose. Her face was as pale as the walls. “I don’t know who to hate.”
“You will. We all will,” Cass promised.
Michael searched the front pockets of his dark trousers, found the bronchial inhaler he always carried, and rolled it between his fingers like a worry stone. His chest felt tight, as if the soft cotton polo shirt were binding it. Dammit, he always had to deal with his asthma when he was upset, but he would deny it as long as he could. “Whether Grant talks or not, the facts will come out. If he and the architects were willing to undercut construction standards to save money, we’ll know it, as soon as the investigators dig into all the invoices and work schedules.”
Blue Willow Page 25
