Blue Willow

by Deborah Smith

  The hideous accusation registered in their gasps. She noted their horrified expressions, and her blood froze. They hadn’t known about Julia and Frank.

  “Close the door,” Artemas said.

  Lily straightened slowly and turned to face him. He was formidable—his eyes half-shut, head up, the dark brows pulled together in fierce concentration, his mouth harsh. The somber, beautiful suit he wore and the long black overcoat seemed too civilized for the look on his face, and the way he stood there—like some towering magistrate, weighing her fate—would have frightened her if she hadn’t been soaked in rage.

  Tamberlaine stood just behind him, looking troubled and alarmed. Michael Colebrook shut the room’s door and positioned himself beside Artemas, staring down at her with openmouthed dismay. “What did you just say?” Artemas asked. His voice was low but commanding.

  Lily returned his merciless gaze. The truth his siblings had just given her rejuvenated the dignity that had escaped her so often during the past weeks. She remembered the kind of person she’d been before. She wouldn’t be anybody’s victim—especially not his. “Julia loved Frank. It was something that developed a year or so into the planning for the Colebrook project.” The calm, sturdy sound of her own voice reassured her. She was as dispassionate as a hired assassin. When she finished here, she would track Oliver down. The consequences didn’t matter.

  “Go on,” Artemas ordered, staring at her. His eyes were narrowed with a different kind of consideration. Concern? Did he sense her cool madness?

  Lily exhaled and tried to concentrate on the conversation at hand. “Once the building was under construction, she spent most of her time in Atlanta. She and Frank were staying together every night—at her hotel or his house. It ended about a year ago.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Cassandra said. “How do you know?”

  Lily turned her head slightly and said over her shoulder, “Because Frank didn’t make any secret of it to Richard or me. Because Julia talked to me about it. To be specific, because I accidentally walked in on them once, in a construction trailer. They weren’t using the desk to study blueprints.”

  She met Artemas’s eyes again. There was a shadow of pained belief in the mask. She hurt for him, but couldn’t relent. “Frank had a live-in housekeeper. Ask her. She can tell you how often Julia stayed with him when she was in Atlanta. Ask Oliver Grant. He knows. Some of his men used to complain that there ought to be a Do Not Disturb sign on the construction trailer’s door when Julia was in town.”

  Artemas said slowly, “There was no reason for my sister to keep a secret like that.”

  “She worried that y’all would think she’d compromised her supervision of the building. But I assumed she’d confided in at least one of you. Or that you suspected.”

  It was obvious, from the looks that passed among the group, that no one had been informed. She glanced at James. His strained expression was infused with a quieter, more poignant rage. “What you’ve described wasn’t love. It doesn’t mean a damned thing.” His large, pale hands knotted in the sheets.

  Artemas’s voice cut through her. “Have your attorneys discussed the accusations that came out today about Richard and Frank?”

  “I learned about them the hard way, a minute ago, from people who think they’re true.”

  If there had been even a flicker of sympathy in his eyes, it was gone. “Don’t blindly defend Richard. This family deserves better than that.”

  “My husband deserves better than to be judged by the claims of a building contractor who’s looking to save his own ass.”

  “Richard and Frank were desperate to have the Colebrook Building turn out perfectly. They needed the big-money clients it brought them. You can’t deny that. Richard knew he stood to lose everything you and he owned if they failed. He used your personal property to acquire loans he and Stockman needed to build their new offices.”

  “I know. I agreed to it.” She’d been trying not to think about those loans, or how they would be handled now.

  “Do you realize how many lawsuits there are going to be? That the firm will end up in bankruptcy—and every asset connected to it will go to pay the debts? Will you still forgive Richard when you lose your house and everything else?”

  “I’ve already lost what I loved most,” she said, her voice hoarse. “There’s nothing to forgive Richard for. No reason to believe Oliver isn’t lying.”

  “If there’s proof to back him up, I’ll get it.” He took a step toward her. Unspoken threat seethed in him. She absorbed it without flinching. “What else should you tell me about Julia?” he asked. “Grant said, ‘Ask Lily Porter. She knows why we were all so crazy toward the end. Ask her about Julia.’ ”

  “Frank broke off their relationship when she started talking about marriage. I won’t defend him—he was stupid about it, and tactless, and I understood why Julia enjoyed making him miserable after that. But she took revenge on Richard, too, and Oliver, and me—everyone connected to the project. She’d always been hard to please. They’d never been able to make her understand that nothing runs smoothly about a project as large as the Colebrook Building. There are delays, mistakes, changes in plans, unexpected costs. Budgets that were approved before construction began have to be altered.

  “But she wouldn’t listen. And after she and Frank broke up, nothing was good enough for her. She threatened to sue if the project came in one penny over budget or one day late. She knew Richard and Frank couldn’t afford a lawsuit, not with all their money tied up in their new offices. She knew the economy had hurt Oliver’s business, and he was struggling to stay out of debt. She made everyone frantic by the end.” Lily’s hands rose in fists. “I watched Richard exhaust himself worrying about it. He had chest pains. He couldn’t sleep. I’ll never forgive her for what she did to him.”

  James interjected in a deadly tone, “Are you saying our sister pressured those gutless wonders so much that they’d do anything to survive, even if it amounted to criminal negligence?” His voice rose. “Goddammit, are you blaming her for what happened?”

  Elizabeth Colebrook moaned and put her hands to her throat. Alise sat limply beside James, shaking her head. There was revulsion in Cassandra’s face, denial in Michael’s, warning in Artemas’s—the silent assault made Lily’s skin crawl. Until that moment she hadn’t realized where the story about Julia was leading. It sank into her like a knife.

  “Are you accusing our sister?” Elizabeth echoed.

  Lily shivered. Artemas snapped a hand forward and gripped her shoulder. His eyes bored into hers. “Lily?” he said evenly.

  She tasted the coppery tang of blood where she’d chewed the inside of her mouth. “Nothing excuses what Oliver—and Oliver alone—chose to do. He was a coward, and innocent people are dead because of him, and—”

  “Stop it.” Artemas pulled her off-balance, his hand like a wedge under her arm. “Have the courage to admit that Richard might have been involved too. For God’s sake, if you ever loved—” He paused, the muscles working in his jaw, drawing her distorted attention to the mysterious pink cut on one cheekbone. “Do you love him so much,” he continued, “so much that you can’t believe he could be at least partially responsible for your son’s death?”

  “He’s the one man I’ve never doubted. I won’t start now.”

  There was a flash of anguish in his eyes, so private and brief, only she was close enough to see it.

  He lowered his hand. The cold facade dropped over his expression again. “Then perhaps you can understand the kind of faith this family has in Julia.”

  Blind faith, she thought. Lily regained her balance and wrenched his hand off her shoulder. “Your sister set the rules. She made them impossible to follow. She asked for trouble, and she got it. I’m telling you she’s got to share the blame.”

  James made a guttural sound of fury, matched by Cassandra’s keening one. She sprang forward. Her balled hand caught Lily in the mouth. There was chaos then—Artemas pushin
g between the two of them and uttering his sister’s name like a curse, Elizabeth and Alise catching Cassandra by the arms, Michael vaulting to James’s side and snagging him by the shirt as James struggled to push himself out of the hospital bed.

  Lily staggered back, raising a hand to the blood at one corner of her lips. Despair and horror at the ruin that had come to Artemas’s family and her own welled up inside her. Mr. Tamberlaine was suddenly beside her, a steadfast force who supported her with an arm under her shoulders. She couldn’t see Artemas’s face—he was turned away from her. But something in his expression made the others freeze. Even James stared up at him with fading violence. A chill crept up Lily’s spine. They were looking at Artemas the way people looked at a terrible accident on the highway—wincing, as if afraid they’d already seen too much to let them sleep peacefully at night.

  He turned toward her. She knew she’d see that haggard, tormented face in troubled dreams. She wanted to take him in her arms, pull his head to her shoulder, croon one of the wordless, soothing melodies she had used when Stephen was hurt or frightened. He lifted a hand toward her. Moving as if ancient and weary beyond imagining, he touched a fingertip to the bloody corner of her mouth. The feathery caress was gone immediately, his hand returning to his side. It nearly destroyed her. He was defeated.

  “I’m sorry,” he said in a voice hollow with despair.

  Lily bowed her head, returning the apology. Tamberlaine said gently, “May I walk you down to your car, Lily?” She nodded. As she went toward the door, she hesitated and looked back at the shaken, white-faced group around Artemas. “I’ve known you all my life, even though we never met. I read so much about you in Artemas’s letters. I thought of you as my other family I don’t want to hurt any of you.”

  “We’re not your family,” James said. “And we never will be.”

  She couldn’t look at Artemas again. She turned and walked out.

  The cold night wind tugged at loose strands of her hair and whipped her open coat around her legs. She walked from the Jeep to a low wall in the park across the street from Oliver’s house. The two-story Mediterranean was surrounded by an eight-foot wall of white stucco, with a courtyard and fountain beyond the ornate black gate, which stood open.

  Every light, inside and out, was blazing. The blue strobes of several police cars flashed across her face, a surreal addition to her shock.

  In the shadows just outside a street lamp, she sank down weakly on the wall, her fists shoved in the coat’s large pockets, staring at the unexplained scene at Oliver’s house. A hand closed on her shoulder. She jumped. Artemas stood over her. Her gaze darted up the street. A large, inconspicuous sedan was parked behind the Jeep. “You were following me,” she said.

  “I had one of my private security agents follow you,” he corrected. “He called when you left your house and started back to Atlanta.”

  He sat down beside her. One hand moved swiftly to her coat pocket, clamping her wrist. The other slid inside. It happened so fast, she didn’t have time to protest or pull back.

  He withdrew the heavy revolver and cupped it in his palm. Lily slumped a little and said nothing. Her mood was lethargic, as if she’d walked out of a nightclub in the wee hours of the morning, tired and a little drunk, to find the world deceptively peaceful and quiet. All she could think was, He knew I’d try something like this. He knows me that well.

  He sighed and looked at the gun, his shoulders sagging. “My people have been watching Grant too,” he said finally. “They managed to get some information after the police and paramedics arrived.” He opened the revolver’s chamber and dumped the bullets into his hand. “Grant lay down in a bathtub and slit his wrists. His wife found him.”

  Lily thought about that for a moment. She had been robbed of her revenge then. Nothing seemed real; not sitting here with Artemas after all that had happened earlier tonight, not the fact that she’d come here to threaten Grant, perhaps even kill him. Because this was too strange to be happening. “Is he dead?” she asked.

  “Yes. I was told over my car phone that the paramedics left about fifteen minutes ago, with his body.”

  Lily shut her eyes and exhaled raggedly. He handed the empty revolver to her. “For once in our lives, fate worked on our behalf.” He rose, stepped around to her other side, and gestured toward that pocket. She put a hand over it and shook her head. Bending over, he calmly pried her hand away and reached inside. He went very still when he extracted a small stuffed bear. Lily took it from him and slid it back into her coat.

  He didn’t ask if it was one of those he’d sent every year on Stephen’s birthday. He didn’t have to. He knows that too, she thought.

  His face was infinitely sad. “I wish—”

  “Don’t. It won’t change what you have to do, or what I have to do.”

  The poignant thread between them faded into stark silence. He straightened. “You’re right.”

  She got to her feet and stepped past him, dropping the revolver in her other pocket. “I wanted to hear Grant say what he said to you. I wanted to make him admit he was lying. If he wrote any kind of confession before he … I want to see it.”

  “If he left information, we’ll get it. And I promise you’ll know.”

  Their voices were low and weary, like those of couples who had lived together so many years there was no pretense of pleasure left. They walked to their vehicles. He halted on the curb, and she felt him watching her as she went to the Jeep. She stood there in a daze, her hand on the door. Ticking like a bomb inside her was the agonizing fear that what Grant had said might be true, that Richard and Frank had gambled on the bridge’s safety because they were desperate to save time and money. And that neither Artemas nor his family would ever concede that Julia’s unreasonable demands had been the catalyst.

  She stiffened and looked at him. “From now on it’d be better if you and I talk only through our attorneys. I couldn’t stand another scene like the one at the hospital tonight. It doesn’t do your family, or you, or me, any good.”

  Artemas stared at her without speaking. The bitterness and fatigue in his face made him appear cruel and older than his years. Inclining his head slightly, he nodded his agreement.

  • • •

  A courier’s envelope from Oliver Grant was waiting for him at the hotel. His chest constricted with dread. He opened it under the small, private light of a desk lamp in his suite.

  When he read the scrawled letter inside and realized that what Grant had told him could undoubtedly be proved, he sat back in his chair, letting the letter fall, unheeded, to the floor, out of his reach, beyond his control, as he stared into the blackness outside the windows.

  Gulping for air, James pulled himself across the floor to the bath’s oversized white tub and leaned against the side. The floor was brutally hard under his bare hips. His injured leg throbbed inside its bandages, and every movement bumped the thigh-to-ankle steel brace, sending shards of agony through his body. He wanted to cry, but rage and steely willpower held the tears back. No one, not even Alise, realized the depth of his humiliation or the terror he had of being helpless and pitiful.

  Sweat poured down his face. He tilted his head back and studied the handles and shower head high above him on the white tile wall. Goddammit, he was going to wash himself without help this morning. He’d been reduced to goals that small.

  Ripping at the buttons, he removed his damp pajama top and slung it aside; then, grimacing with revulsion, he stared at his naked body, hating the loss of muscle definition in his belly and the way his penis lay like a limp victim. After the doctor had reduced his pain medication and he began waking up with erections, he’d made a few halfhearted attempts to stroke himself. Alise had insisted on trying as well. Her gentle attention had only made him feel pathetic.

  He didn’t want Alise to touch him that way. He wasn’t a man anymore. His love for her and his desperate need for the tenderness they’d always shared were buried under layers of frustration.r />
  James gritted his teeth and pulled himself upward, using the sink. His good leg felt weak, and his bad one dragged like a dead weight. Finally he collapsed on the side of the tub and rested his forehead on the sink’s cool white lip.

  “James. Oh, God, honey, what are you doing?” Alise stood in the bathroom doorway, a garment bag sagging across her arms. She dropped it and bounded to him, her hands out.

  He straightened furiously. “No. Leave me alone.” She halted, hovering over him and looking distraught. The desirable sight of her in a trim gray suit and softly draped blouse, with her slender, shapely legs straddling his grotesquely outfitted one only made his frustration hotter.

  “Get out,” he ordered. “I don’t want your help. I keep telling you that. Believe me, for once.”

  “James, please. You can’t go on this way. There’s no sense in you being defensive and embarrassed around me.”

  The tendons strained in his neck. He wanted to hurt someone, anyone. Even the person he loved most. “You like mothering me,” he accused, his tone low and ugly. “It makes you feel important. I’m sick of it.”

  She recoiled as if he’d slapped her. Her hand covering her mouth, her eyes squinted shut, she sank onto the closed toilet seat and hunched over, crying silently. James strangled on regret. His hand wavered toward her, then clenched. Jerking it down, he said in a softer, more controlled voice, “I won’t be treated like an invalid. Especially by you. I may be useless, but I’m not pitiful.”

  “You stupid bastard.” Propping her elbows on her knees, she jammed the heels of her hands against her forehead and rocked slowly, her eyes still shut. “We still have a life. You still have a life. There’s so much work for you to do. Your family needs you. The company will be moving into temporary offices as soon as some are leased, and the other building has to be sold, and you and I have a huge house waiting to be finished. And next year, we’ll try to get pregnant—”

  “No.”

  Her head jerked up. Her eyes were incredulous, pleading. “We agreed. We’ve been married for five years.”