James felt as if he were being torn apart. “I see my brothers teaching my children to play baseball, because I can’t run. I see my children telling their friends that their father is handicapped. I see a hundred other scenarios such as those.”
Alise moaned, “You’ve lost your mind.”
“No, that’s the one part of me that still works perfectly.” He flung a hand toward the garment bag. “Hang that on the door. Wait outside.”
She stood, wavered unsteadily, and looked down at him with a shattered expression. “I love you too much to believe you’re always going to act this-way. That faith can keep me going for a long time. Please don’t shut me out forever. I couldn’t stand it.”
After she left and closed the door, he leaned his head on the sink, turned the water on full blast, and cried.
The meeting was called in the offices of the law firm that represented Porter and Stockman. Holding it there was a small favor Artemas could do for Lily, letting her meet with them on turf friendly to her. He would not have asked his siblings to attend, but she insisted. Her courage broke his heart. She and the architectural firm’s attorneys already knew what Oliver Grant had written before he died.
“They’re late,” Elizabeth said, leaning her elbows on the long conference table and smoothing her fingertips over her temples. “I want to get this over with.”
“I doubt she’s anxious to see us again, after the other night,” added Michael. He leaned back in the chair next to Elizabeth’s and shook his head. “I can’t blame her.”
Artemas stood by a window in the large, handsomely appointed conference room, his hands clasped behind his back. He pivoted and studied the assembled group. Elizabeth, Michael, and Cass. Several Colebrook attorneys. James near the end of the table, pale and stiff in a special wheelchair, with his leg extended on its raised footrest. It was good to see him in a suit again, even if the weight he’d lost over the past six weeks made the sharply fitted black coat hang badly. Alise had asked his tailors to alter the left leg of his trousers. They had shortened it to the thigh and widened it, to accommodate the cocoon of bandages and steel.
Alise had pulled a chair up behind his—to leave room at the crowded table, she said, but her eyes were swollen as if she’d been crying before Michael arrived at the hospital to help her bring James here. Since James couldn’t see her from her position, he didn’t know that her gaze rarely left him, or that her expression alternated between anger and sorrow.
A heavily paneled door opened across the room. Marcus DeLan, the law firm’s senior partner, ushered a small, wiry, reluctant-looking man in a cheap blue suit to a place at the far end of the long table. “Sit here, Mr. Spencer,” DeLan told him. Spencer dropped quickly into the chair and fixed his gaze on the gleaming mahogany tabletop. His thin, heavily oiled brown hair was as shiny as the table.
“I expect Lily at any minute,” DeLan said, and left the room.
Artemas went to Spencer and shook his gnarled hand. A lifetime of heavy labor and skilled carpentry work was stamped on them. “Thank you for coming to yet another meeting filled with attorneys, Mr. Spencer. You won’t be asked to give another formal statement. Just tell Mrs. Porter what you’ve told the state investigators and my attorneys.”
“Yeah, this un’s for Mrs. Porter.” There was a defensive, anguished note in Spencer’s voice. “If it wadn’t a courtesy I owe her, I’d just as soon have all my fingers broke in a vise. She don’t deserve none of this. And I ain’t sure Mr. Porter does, neither. Him and her was awful nice to me over the years. They never acted like they was better than the workingmen.”
“I understand why this isn’t easy for you.” Better than anyone else in the world, Artemas added silently. He introduced his brothers and sisters.
The door opened again. Artemas’s chest constricted. DeLan entered and stood aside. Lily walked in. She was tall and stately in a dark suit, with her mass of red hair pulled up. Large sunglasses covered her eyes. Her cheeks were gaunt. Michael stood, ignoring Cass’s snort of dismay at his etiquette. Spencer popped up and hurried to her. “I would never have said nothing to you or anybody else if Mr. Grant hadn’t put my name in that letter of his,” he told her poignantly, and when she took both of his hands in hers, his leathery face contorted with emotion. “I guess he heard I’d talked to Mr. Porter. I was scared to tell, scared I’d get in trouble somehow.”
“I know, Spence.” Her voice was a raw whisper. Her shoulders had a defeated slump to them. Artemas stood motionless, hating what this day was doing to her.
“But it weren’t just bein’ scared,” Spencer continued. “I didn’t want to lay nothing on Mr. Porter. He was always straight with me, and when he told me he’d do something about that bridge, I believed him. I reckon I still do.”
Delicate muscles flexed in her jaw. When she spoke again, she sounded stronger. “I wish we could know everything he was thinking, but we can always believe he did what he thought was right.”
“Yes’m. Yes’m.”
James made a low sound of anger. Artemas shot him a warning look, but James was staring vindictively at Lily. So was Cass. Michael sat down slowly. He and Elizabeth watched her with thoughtful frowns.
Marcus DeLan took over then, shutting the door then gracefully showing Lily to a chair and taking the one next to hers. Spencer returned to his chair and slumped. Artemas walked back to the window and stood where he could study her without being noticed by the others.
Lily removed her glasses and folded them carefully on the table. Her blue eyes were hollow as they rose to him, devoid of emotion. She turned slowly and looked at Spencer. “Tell me everything you know, please.”
The little man clenched his hands on the table’s edge. “I was building forms for the concrete crew, while they was pourin’ the support walls and bridge. I heard ’em talking—sayin’ Mr. Rutgers was ridin’ ’em too hard. They don’t like those quality-control snoops—the boys think nobody knows their business better than them. Anyhow, I hear that kind of complainin’ all the time, so I didn’t pay much attention to it.”
“When did you hear all of this?” Lily asked.
“A couple of months before we turned the building over to the painters and all.”
“What do you mean, ‘painters and all’?” Cass asked sharply.
“The interior-decorating crews,” Artemas explained. “Carpet, tile, wallpaper, that phase of the building.”
Lily’s eyes had never left Spencer. “You didn’t say anything to Richard then?”
“No. Maybe Mr. Grant thought I’d heard something I shouldn’t, ’cause he sent me to work on a building across town. But maybe a couple of weeks before the Colebrook Building was all done, I come back to do some work on the molding in the big offices upstairs.”
“Why?”
Spencer ducked his head and glanced warily at Artemas and the others, then told her, “Miz Colebrook said she could see some of the nailheads. She wanted all the molding ripped up and new molding put down. I coulda fixed them nailheads so nobody’d notice, but Mr. Grant said she’d notice, so it had to be done all over.”
“Get to the point,” James interjected.
Lily swiveled slightly. Her fathomless gaze held James’s. The room seethed with silent confrontation. Artemas stepped forward. “Please continue, Mr. Spencer.”
Lily turned toward the carpenter and waited. Spencer sighed. “When I was doing that molding work, I seen Mr. Porter again. He stopped by to shoot the breeze with me, the way he always done. And I said, just talking about nothing, you know, I said, ‘When we was working on the bridge, I thought the concrete boys was goin’ to lay into Mr. Rutgers. He’s lucky he didn’t find no batch of wet mix in the front seat of his car.’ ”
Lily exhaled raggedly “This was only a week or two before the building opened?”
“Yes’m. Mr. Porter asked me what exactly I meant, and I told him Rutgers had given the boys all sorts of grief about the concrete not being let to cure long enough, and Mr.
Porter got this look on his face like, like he was going to have a heart attack. He was mad. And scared. I ain’t never seen him look that way before.”
Lily steepled her hands against her mouth. Her eyes were half-shut, a tortured expression in them. “What did he say?”
“He asked me if I’d told anybody else. I hadn’t. I said, ‘Mr. Porter, do you think Mr. Rutgers and Mr. Grant let something bad slip by?’ And he said—I remember exactly, because I was staring at him hard, and worried—he said, ‘If they did, this building isn’t going to open until it’s fixed.’ That was all. We didn’t talk about it again. I didn’t see him no more, after that day.”
Lily’s eyes closed. She sat there, her hands almost in an attitude of prayer against her lips, misery seeping from every inch of her expression. Marcus DeLan touched her arm. She settled back in her chair and slowly lowered her hands into her lap. Exhaling, she opened her eyes and gazed at the tabletop, as if seeing nothing. Spencer bowed his head and mumbled, “He wanted to make things right. Maybe he just couldn’t, for some reason.”
One of the Colebrook attorneys said, “I’m afraid that what Mr. Porter and his partner did or didn’t do next is beside the point. It’s clear they knew there were questions concerning the bridge’s safety, and they either took no steps or inadequate steps to remedy it. They and Oliver Grant are responsible. That will have to be Colebrook International’s official conclusion on the matter.”
“Case closed,” James said, his voice curt. “I have some sympathy for you, Lily, I really do. I’m willing to believe you knew nothing about your husband’s lack of ethics. But you’ll have to live with what he did for the rest of your life.”
Artemas strode to the end of the table, planted both hands on it, and leaned toward his family, his fierce attention focused on James. “We’re not here to punish Lily. If anybody here doubts that she’s suffered as much as we have, then leave the room. I don’t want to hear it.”
Cass pressed forward. “We may have some sympathy for Lily, but I, for one, want to hear her apologize for implying that our sister had anything to do with what happened.”
Lily lifted her chin. Her eyes glittered. “That fear is something all of you are going to have to live with. And you’re going to have to wonder if she knew about the bridge too and did nothing.”
Artemas heard the rattle of his own breath, the sickening implosion of the fear that had crossed his mind more than once, the fear he could never bring himself to voice. Cass was rising from her chair, furious. James clutched the arms of his wheelchair. Michael and Elizabeth looked stunned. Artemas met Lily’s gaze and said the only thing he could. “That’s not true. It could never be true. I don’t ever want to hear that from you again.”
She pushed herself up from the table, unsteady but stiffly erect, and shook her head. “God help you, you’ll never know for certain, and you’ll never have any more peace of mind than I will.”
Artemas watched in speechless despair as she left the room. She was right.
A few months later, as the home she and Richard had created so lovingly became a showplace of flowers and blossoming trees, Lily packed to leave. She would live with Aunt Maude for now, while she decided what to do next.
Almost everything she owned had been sold to settle legal fees and the debts tied to Richard and Frank’s architectural firm. Colebrook International had filed suit, as she’d expected. That was what Artemas had to do, a corporate decision he could not escape. She understood, but her bitterness was too deep to forgive it.
Artemas came to see her the day before she left. It was a terrible, grim visit, with Aunt Maude and her sisters refusing to budge from their presence, watching him warily. He asked if she’d accept help from him. He wanted to loan her—hell, give her—the money to start over, somewhere else. Whether the offer was sympathetic or merely an attempt to keep her from moving back to MacKenzie—or both—she hadn’t cared. He had looked angry but not surprised when she turned him down.
She moved through the empty rooms, touching the woodwork, stooping to pick a bit of lint from the carpet or wipe distractedly at smudges on the walls. If you can’t bend, you’ll break, Mama would have said. She felt very close to breaking.
Part Three
Some parts of your small hill I will resign,
For it is yours, but where your hill is done
I’d love to add new worlds for us to roam,
For all my worlds have ended at your home.
Georgia poet
Nineteen
January second. The new year was one day old, and the specter of next weeks anniversary darkened it.
Artemas threw a file of notes on his desk and swiveled toward his office window. The uninteresting parking lot and muddle of generic, glass-and-steel office buildings nearby only reminded him that this building they’d leased was a poor substitute for the neo-Gothic grace of the Colebrook Building, with its wooded, parklike surroundings and gardens.
He’d authorized his attorneys to sell the Colebrook Building to a group of real estate investors. They would renovate the lobby. There would be no bridge, no magnificent garden centered around a blue willow.
Artemas got up and paced. He could have kept the building and occupied it as planned. Maybe that would have been perceived as a courageous gesture. Not to him. It would only sicken his family and the families of the Colebrook executives who’d been killed. He knew he would have relived that night every time he walked through the lobby.
He halted to watch, with dull relief, as workmen took They’d gathered at James and Alise’s new home, a brooding stone mansion set on the Chattahoochee River. The place had the medieval atmosphere James had always loved. Considering everyone’s mood, the holidays had been as pleasant as being held prisoner in a dark, sumptuous dungeon.
He wanted to know how Lily had spent her Christmas. He wanted to know her plans, and everything she’d done during the months since he’d last seen her. He had forced himself to give her the time and privacy to recover, as he was recovering. Tamberlaine called her regularly, but learned very little.
“Artemas? I need to speak with you. It’s urgent.”
Artemas turned and saw Tamberlaine standing in the doorway. The coincidence of thinking about him and then having him appear seemed uncanny to Artemas. “Come in. I was distracted. Sorry.”
“You were a thousand miles away.”
“Much closer than that.” Fifty, perhaps. It’s fifty miles to Blue Willow. He would be moving there in a few months. The fact that Lily was living nearby with her aunt meant they would have to deal with each other, and it must be done delicately. No confrontations, no aggression, no manipulation. Trust could only be rebuilt by slow, careful degrees.
“What is it?” he said, studying Tamberlaine’s grim expression.
Tamberlaine shut the door. “There is talk among the workmen at the estate.” Tamberlaine hesitated, then added, “They say someone has been cleaning up the MacKenzie place. As if planning to live there. I suspect it’s Lily.”
Hopewell’s angry pounding made the Christmas wreath swing back and forth on Maude’s front door, and red berries flew off sprigs of nandina tucked among the cedar boughs. A lithe form hurried up the hall, making a red-and-gray blur behind the panes of frosted glass. Little Sis slung the door open and stared up at him.
“Why, Happy New Year, Hopewell.” Her eyes were bright and exasperated, but a little flirtatious, too. Hopewell stared back awkwardly, his mouth working but not saying anything.
Damned woman. She had grandchildren. Ought not to look at him that way. She always looked at him that way.
A clump of plastic holly and red ribbon was tucked rakishly in the knot of gray hair pinned on top of her head. She gave her glittery red sweater a jerk, crossed one blue-jeaned leg over the other, and leaned against the doorjamb. Little pink-quartz crystals jiggled below her pierced earlobes as she shook her head.
“Don’t you beat on our door,” she added. “If you’d let me know
you were coming, I’d have gotten out some wine and gingerbread cookies.”
He shoved his fists into the pockets of his ancient coat so hard that the already torn seams gave a little more. “Lily’s not here, is she? I bet you all know where she is. Do y’all take me for a fool? Did you think I’d never hear what she’s been doing all these months? Did you think she could do it right under my nose?”
Little Sis eyed him with fading cordiality. “If you weren’t a grubby old hermit who stays at home watching TV all the time, you’d have figured it out before now.”
“What I do with my life is none of your concern, you prissy old bat I.”
“Somebody ought to be concerned about you! For years you’ve let your store go to hell, your house go to hell, and now you look like a seedy bum! Your life didn’t end when your wife died and Joe went to prison for growing dope!”
“I want to talk about Lily!” He stomped a scuffed cowboy boot on the porch floor. Another nandina berry fell off the wreath. Thrusting his grizzled jaw out, he leaned toward Little Sis menacingly. “She’s been hanging out at the farm since she moved up here last May, huh? Herbert Beatty at the garden center in Victoria told me she came in back in the spring to buy seeds and fertilizer. I knew she hadn’t planted nothing here—”
“She’s not hurting anything.”
Little Sis poked him in the chest with a fingertip. “She went out to see her old homeplace one day, and she came back with some of the spunk in her eyes, and she told us the only thing that made her feel better was working there. She knew you wouldn’t approve. So we kept it quiet. Goodness, all she does is drive over there every day with a few of our yard tools and get some exercise.”
“What does she want? I’m not gonna sell the place back to her!”
“She couldn’t buy the place back even if you offered. The bank didn’t leave her with much more than a pickup truck and that ugly dog of hers.”
Blue Willow Page 31
