Blue Willow

by Deborah Smith

  He opened up under her casual questions, telling her he came from a family of construction workers, that his mother was dead and his father was tied to a new wife and her small children. Richard had no brothers or sisters of his own. He was the first one in his family to attend college. He and Frank Stockman already had internships lined up with a big architectural firm here in Atlanta.

  When Lily told him she was working weekends for a landscaping contractor and wanted to get into that business after she graduated, he said, solemnly and without the least bit of flattery, “You’re perfect.”

  “Well, nobody’s ever said that to me, before,” she answered. “Boy, have I got you fooled.” She looked away, pensive and yet glad he’d said it. She was greedy for someone to talk to, to care about, for somebody to care about her.

  “What are you so sad about, Lily MacKenzie?”

  “Nothing.” His voice was so somber and kind. She turned toward him, studied the sincerity in his face, and watched a lightning bug blink its fairylike yellow glow on his shirt collar. “Hold still,” she said. She scooped her finger under the bug, blew gently on it, and it fluttered away. “When I was little, I’d catch these and keep ’em in a mason jar until I went to bed. Sometimes I’d turn ’em loose in my room and watch the show.”

  “I did that too,” he said. “I had pet squirrels, and lizards, and a raccoon once.”

  “Me too.”

  They were silent. It was an easy silence, even if she felt the intense interest coming off him in waves. Strange, how she could crave his company so quickly, but in such a different way than she’d wanted Artemas’s. Maybe life was safer this way.

  He didn’t seem to know what to do with his handsome, oversized hands. He kept laying them on his knees, then knotting them together. Now, he was fumbling with his tie.

  Lily snagged one of them. “You’re making me jumpy, boy,” she drawled. “Are you always this fidgety?”

  His shoulders slumped. “Never.” He looked at her strong hand cupping his. His long, blunt fingers curled carefully through hers. She leaned back on the car seat and looked at the stars that were beginning to appear straight overhead. He settled beside her. Peaceful, that’s what this was. The first peaceful moment she’d had in so long. She wanted to preserve it, build on it, see if there could be more to life than disappointment.

  “I could get used to this,” he said. “I’d love to get used to this.”

  Lily felt the careful, warm grip of his hand tightening on hers. She shut her eyes, concentrating on it. “Me too,” she whispered.

  Lily woke to the touch of Little Sis’s hand smoothing the hair back from her forehead. She was still on the couch in her and Richard’s office. Her face was damp. “You were crying,” Little Sis said. She was kneeling beside the couch. “Come on, now, let’s go upstairs. I’ll lie down with you until you get back to sleep.”

  Lily took her hand and held it tightly The pain came roaring back, tearing at her chest. She drew her knees up and bent her head to them, sobbing brokenly. “I want Stephen,” she moaned. “I want Richard.”

  “Oh, honey,” Little Sis crooned, putting an arm around her. “It won’t always hurt like this, just give it time. You’ll always miss them, but eventually that’ll only be one part of who you are, instead of the whole shebang.”

  “I have to know what caused it,” Lily said, panting for air. She laid her cheek on one knee and looked at Little Sis. “What if Richard, oh, God, what if—”

  “That’s a question you can’t answer tonight. And if you don’t take care of yourself, you’ll be too crazy and sick to ever find the answer.” Little Sis huddled next to her, rocking her a little.

  “I have to do something. I have to make Artemas see—make his family see—that it couldn’t have happened because of Richard.”

  “There’s nothing you can do except hunt down the facts and hope for the best. I don’t think the Colebrooks can hate you for having faith in your husband. I know Artemas can’t.”

  “Yes, he can. He does.”

  “He’s so full of grief and confusion, he doesn’t know which way to turn himself, right now.”

  Lily said no more. Retreating inside herself, she gave into the slow, soothing rhythm of Little Sis’s rocking, and finally she knew what she wanted to do next. I have to talk to them. I have to make them understand. Something Artemas had said the other day came back to her, but she told herself it didn’t matter. If you won’t cooperate, I can’t protect you.

  Seventeen

  The scotch was a good companion tonight. It asked no questions, made no demands, and muffled the sharp edge of frustration and despair. Artemas tilted the half-empty bottle over a glass where only slivers of melting ice remained. Where was the peaceful lethargy he wanted? Setting the bottle back on the small table beside his chair, he cursed the steadiness of his hand.

  With the tumbler dangling from his fingertips, he leaned his head back on the chair’s thick upholstery and stared at the suite’s chandelier. A flash of self-awareness caused him to grimace. He saw himself at the moment as a stranger would—slumped in the big armchair in the center of the main room of a large, magnificent hotel suite, lit only by the crystal lamp on the table beside his chair and the faint glow of the lights from the tall buildings beyond the open draperies of the hotel’s enormous windows.

  A stranger would note that he had carelessly dropped the coat of his fine dark suit on the floor, with his tie atop it, that his linen shirt was wrinkled and half-open, that there were smudges of cigarette ash on his trousers. Despite the air of exhausted unconcern, he had not gotten around to removing his shoes.

  The melodrama of his self-image did not appeal to him.

  He shifted wearily, stretching one leg to its full length, the other remaining bent, balancing a bulging leather portfolio on the thigh. Flipping it open, he lifted a sheet of neatly formatted notes that Tamberlaine and LaMieux had prepared.

  Here, waiting for the scrutiny of his vengeful family and the team of aggressive and highly skilled attorneys Colebrook International retained, were dossiers on everyone who had been significantly involved in the Colebrook office project. There were dozens—subcontractors, real-estate brokers, bank executives, local and state government officials.

  Colebrook International had taken out huge construction loans, but had still funded at least half the cost of construction directly. Regardless, the liabilities had been small. Atlanta was eager to lure new jewels into its Olympic-caliber crown. There had been generous tax incentives. Artemas remembered how easy it had been to pitch the move from New York to his brothers and sisters. Without dwelling sentimentally on the estate at Blue Willow, which he planned to restore, or the family’s southern heritage—and without mentioning his even more personal interest in relocating—he had convinced them that a lucrative and more gracious new world waited for them here.

  He had convinced them, and now Julia was dead. Artemas drained the glass in one swallow, shoved it onto the table, and picked up the portfolio. Most of the people who were profiled in the report had been relegated to a paragraph or two of basic facts. Those could wait. Rifling the stack of dossiers, he found the pages he wanted, dropped the rest of the portfolio on the floor, and began to read. He knew it all already—from Tamberlaine’s reports over the years, from his own contact with her—but seeing all those years reduced to lines of facts and dates tortured him.

  Lily Amanda MacKenzie Porter. Named after a flower and her grandmother MacKenzie. Thirty years old. Bachelor’s degree in botony, with honors. Married for seven years. Award-winning landscape designer. Two terms as an officer of a state horticulture society, one as secretary, the other as vice president.

  No criminal record. Her only brush with notoriety had been the brief loss of her driver’s license several years ago, for an accumulation of minor speeding tickets. She’d paid a small fine, attended the state’s three-day school for violators, gotten her license back. She had remarked to Tamberlaine that she enjoyed
getting to know her fellow miscreants, especially the bikers.

  No church membership, though she and Richard had attended a moderate Baptist church occasionally They had a small circle of devoted friends, ranging from construction workers to her old college roommate, Hai, a cellist with the Atlanta Symphony. What few parties they gave were casual, usually barbecues. She remained close to her aunt Maude and the sisters, and had been very generous to the trio, giving them vacations in Hawaii and paying for a new roof on Maude’s aging Victorian house.

  She had met Porter when she was a freshmen at Agnes Scott and he a senior at Georgia Tech. She had dated no one else, had lived with him eventually, and had married him the summer after her own graduation. The wedding had been held in the backyard garden at Maude’s.

  By then Porter and Stockman were junior partners in one of the city’s largest architectural firms, and Lily was manager of landscaping design and maintenance operations for a nursery wholesaler. Stephen was born just over one year later.

  That was the same year Richard and Frank started their own firm. She quit her job to spend time with the baby and work as a freelance designer. Her clients recalled her striding vigorously around construction sites in brogans and overalls, a notepad in her hands and Stephen snuggled against her back in a cloth knapsack she’d converted into a baby carrier.

  Now, she was one of the most respected landscape designers in Atlanta. She and Richard had lavished attention on their sprawling, six-bedroom house set on prime land outside the city. She still drove a Jeep—but a new model every other year—and she was just as likely to be seen behind the wheel of their big Lincoln, or one of her and Richard’s two oversized pickup trucks, or the restored Corvette that had been Richard’s pride and joy. They owned a thirty-foot sailboat berthed at a coastal resort in South Carolina, and they had traveled frequently, always with Stephen happily in tow, taking vacations all over the States, going to England and Scotland for several weeks last summer.

  Artemas poured himself another drink. He rubbed the glass to his forehead and shut his eyes.

  There was so much about the past twelve years that couldn’t be included in a few pages of typed notes. She had married Porter reluctantly—at least, that was the way Artemas saw it. She had been content with their live-in arrangement and saw no reason to change. Porter finally became so desperate, he’d threatened to walk unless she made a commitment.

  Richard had confided to Frank Stockman that he was bewildered and hurt by Lily’s unfathomable behavior. After all, they wanted the same things—a beautiful home, kids, success. He was crazy about her—had been from the first moment he saw her—and she seemed to love him too. She had never so much as looked at anyone else.

  You poor, dumb bastard. She must have still loved me then. She hadn’t given up yet, Artemas thought, clutching the glass. He would always believe that.

  Artemas knew all these details about Richard and Lily’s early relationship because Stockman had told Tamberlaine during preliminary discussions about the Colebrook Building, when Tamberlaine was cultivating Stockman’s love of martinis and gossip.

  When Lily had married, Artemas sent her a complete set of Colebrook’s finest bone china—the white Avalon—as a wedding present. She responded with a crisp, polite thank-you note. Tamberlaine deduced that she immediately donated the china to a charity auction for the Humane Society.

  A swallow of scotch chased that memory. He scowled at the pages lying on his knee. Perhaps to provoke her, but also because he wanted to reclaim a glimmer of their old affection, he’d sent an enormous toy bear when Stephen was born, and a smaller one every year after that, on Stephen’s birthday. Tamberlaine assured him that she’d kept them all, and that she still had the Colebrook teapot.

  When Glenda died of kidney failure related to her diabetes, Lily wrote to him—a brief, kind letter of sympathy He had wanted to call her in gratitude, but stopped himself. Lily was happily married; she had a child. He couldn’t say to her what he loathed admitting even to himself—that he grieved for his wife and had cared about her deeply, but felt cleansed of the lie he had lived for years. Now, he was free to pursue his own happiness again.

  But how? Lily would never leave her husband, the father of her child. Fidelity was as much a part of her as her blue eyes and fiery MacKenzie hair. And so he had done what he could to be part of her life, even a distant part.

  Richard and Frank were struggling to make a name for themselves. They were too young and unknown to compete for prestige projects against the large, established firms. Artemas had changed all that. The Colebrook project had given them fantastic opportunities. But to Lily, it had been a threat from the beginning.

  The day she’d come to New York to confront him—this time secure in the knowledge that Tamberlaine had arranged an appointment—was vivid in his mind. So many years had passed since that time at the farm. So many years since they’d stood face-to-face. The tension simmering between them pulsed with rediscovery and the unspoken memories of the brief period they’d spent together, the night they had shared. Though she would never admit that current still existed, he doubted she could deny it either. Her attitude was accusing, defensive, almost fearful.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I was never able to get the farm back for you.”

  “Richard doesn’t know about any of that. He thinks you’re just an old childhood friend of mine.”

  “Isn’t that all I am?”

  “You know what I mean. I never told him the rest.”

  “He never asked if he was your first?”

  “He asked. I told him there had been someone at home, who didn’t matter anymore. That’s all he wanted to know. He’s one of the most trusting people I’ve ever met.”

  “Or one of the least inquisitive.”

  “Maybe I wanted to keep a few good memories, and I couldn’t justify that if he knew everything. It would have worried him when there was nothing to worry about.”

  “Then why suspect my motives now?”

  “Don’t you realize what it would do to his pride if he thought he and Frank hadn’t earned the Colebrook project on their own merits?”

  “Do you think I’d have chosen them if they weren’t deserving?”

  “No, I learned a long time ago that you do what’s best for the Colebrook name, regardless.”

  “Then there’s no need for you to tell him about our history.”

  “He’s my husband, and I love him. I don’t like to keep secrets from him.”

  “Then tell him.”

  “You know I won’t. You know it, and you don’t care if that makes me feel like a traitor.”

  “Consider me a friend who has his best interests at heart, as well as yours. That should soothe your overworked conscience. I’m trying to help you and your husband, Lily. All I want in return is to hear you say the past is forgotten.”

  That had forced her into a corner. He was certain she couldn’t honestly say it. The look in her eyes told him so. Finally she answered, “It may not be forgotten, but I stopped letting it control my life a long time ago.”

  “Then we’ve reached a truce. Good.”

  “You mean you’ve settled some kind of debt you think you had.”

  “However you want to interpret it. May I ask one favor of you, to cement our new understanding?”

  “You can ask, and I’ll let you know what I think.”

  “Will you design gardens for the Colebrook Building? Exterior and interior. With a blue willow as the centerpiece.”

  Her speechless, almost painful regard had made him fear she’d say no. He wanted her touch on the building. He wanted to be surrounded by it. Eventually, looking defeated, she had agreed. “I’ll have to ask Joe Estes if I can buy a willow from the grove at the farm,” she said wearily. “I haven’t been back since … Aunt Maude says he’s let the place get run-down. I didn’t want to see it.” Then she’d squared her shoulders and studied him proudly. “But you’ll get your
blue willow.”

  He nodded, afraid if he tried to say anything else, it would sound too relieved. She gave him one last look as she walked to the door of his office. “After all, it’s only a damned tree.”

  Only a tree. And they were only friends. The past had no power. He could live with those lies if she could.

  Artemas stirred, breaking the memory’s spell. He dropped the pages about her to the floor. No one but he cared about the absent details, the heart and soul behind the facts. The irony of it was that those details would only complicate matters now. To his siblings and business associates they would set off alarms, make them wonder if he could be objective about her and take whatever action the situation demanded. He could.

  The dossier did not reveal how many times he’d contacted Hopewell Estes over the years, trying to buy the farm back for her, and how diligently she’d tried, also, according to what Tamberlaine had heard from her. Hopewell had never budged. His wife was dead, his son was all he had left. Joe loves that place, he always said.

  Two years ago Artemas had sent people to do routine maintenance on the mansion at Blue Willow—with instructions to discreetly check on the farm’s upkeep. He’d been furious when they found the farm overgrown, the house empty, and well-tended plots of marijuana hidden in the mountain hollows—not only on the old MacKenzie land, but on the estate as well. Joe Estes had moved to a quarter-million-dollar condo in Atlanta and drove a Ferrari.

  Small wonder that he’d wanted access to so much empty, privately owned forest. Small wonder that his despondent, defensive father could not risk selling the MacKenzie place.

  Ending Joe Estes’s career had been a simple, discreet matter of placing a few calls to the right people. Drug agents had descended on him. He had gone to prison. Somehow, the rumor of Artemas’s involvement in his downfall had gotten out. Hopewell had sworn to keep the farm, out of spite. A dead end, after so many years. Lily knew what had happened. Artemas had explained. If anything, she’d seemed relieved. It was finally over, she’d said.