Blue Willow

by Deborah Smith

  “Did you order flowers to send to her today, like I said?”

  He shifted from side to side. A sheepish tilt curled his mouth. “Didn’t have to. Gave her some before she left this morning.”

  “Left where?”

  His face colored, and he began running a hand over the back of his neck. He shot her an exasperated glance. “It went read good.”

  As the implication sank in, Lily bit her lower lip to keep from smiling. “Well, I swear. I swear.” She bounded over and hugged him. After a startled second he returned the hug. She stepped back and scrutinized him. “I’m glad for you and her.”

  “I know you are. I know it never woulda happened except for you.”

  “Oh, I doubt that. Little Sis would never have given up.”

  “But I … I needed a kick in the pants. You got me out into the world again.” He halted, his mouth working silently, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “You been more like family to me than my own son.” Suddenly distressed, he moved away, clutching his old felt hat in front of him. He walked slowly through the room, his distracted, scowling gaze going from her to the family photos on the fireplace mantel. He turned toward the fireplace. “I’d rather burn in hell,” he muttered.

  “What?” Lily moved closer and leaned on the back of the couch.

  He turned, went to the door, then blurted, “I gotta go. I got, uhm, things to do. I’ll see you over at Malloy’s place this afternoon, but, well—”

  “Tell Little Sis I said hello.”

  He sighed. “Okay, okay, I’m going back to my house. When I left, she was cleanin’ out the freezer. If I don’t hurry back, she’ll have throwed out all my TV dinners. I better go, uhm, get her mind off changin’ my diet.”

  Lily went to him and kissed him on the cheek. “Watch out now, because if you end up marrying Little Sis, you and me will practically be related. If I treat you like a grandpa, you won’t be able to fuss about it.”

  Mr. Estes looked at her somberly. “Maybe a new family is the best thing I can have waiting for Joe when he comes home.”

  She hid her dismay. She didn’t want to be Joe’s family. “If there’s any way to help you get Joe straightened out, we’ll do it.”

  “I’ll deal with Joe,” he said darkly, and left.

  Twenty-eight

  The table brimmed with a Thanksgiving feast, crystal, silver, and the finest Colebrook china. Oak logs crackled in two ornate fireplaces at either end of the room. Artemas sat at the head of the massive table in the estate’s magnificently restored dining hall, surveying the surroundings and his brood with strained pride. It was wonderful to see Elizabeth with Leo, and Cass with John Lee. James and Alise sat stiffly, always subdued, but together. Glancing at Michael, he thought his youngest brother looked heartier than usual. Even Tamberlaine, who often joined them for holidays, looked peaceful enough.

  But there would always be one person missing, the one he needed most, the one they would never accept. “Here’s to our first Thanksgiving at Blue Willow,” he said, lifting a glass of champagne and trying to inject more serenity into the words than he felt. He noticed that Cassandra merely sipped hers and put it down. Her face pale, her black hair pushed back from flushed cheeks, she looked nervous. Next to her, John Lee downed his champagne in one swallow, then reached for hers and drank it as well.

  “I have—we have an announcement,” she said suddenly, glancing at John Lee. Everyone was silent, a little taken aback. Cass rose to her feet. John Lee stood beside her. She rapped her knuckles on the table, then blurted, “We’re married. And pregnant.” And sat back down. John Lee was left to buffer the wave of frozen surprise. Troubled, he stared down at Cass and said dryly, “That wasn’t real diplomatic, darlin’.”

  She faced forward, staring at the roasted turkey in the center of the table as if she knew how it felt. “They were going to be stunned, no matter how I said it.”

  Artemas rose and asked as calmly as he could, “When did this happen?”

  One of her dark brows flew up. She looked rattled. “The pregnant part? About two months ago. The married part? A month later. In Las Vegas.”

  Elizabeth dropped her napkin on the table and pressed both hands to her chest in wounded dismay. “Why didn’t you tell us, Cass? Why didn’t you want us at your wedding?”

  “That’s my question also,” James interjected, his face bleak and angry. “Has this family degenerated into complete, self-serving secrecy?”

  Alise leaped up. Her hands jerked out, knocking her champagne glass over. “Don’t you dare,” she said to James in a tight little voice. “Don’t you dare accuse your sister of your own faults.”

  “Sit down,” he ordered, flashing her a look of both fury and distress.

  Michael stood then. “We haven’t even heard Cass’s explanation. James, this is not the time for stupid comments.”

  Artemas knew he was losing control over the loyalties he’d spent his entire life building. Frustrated and alarmed, he gestured curtly for silence. “I won’t have this kind of hateful bickering.” He looked at Cass. “Why didn’t you want us to know before now?”

  She flattened her hands on the table. They were pale and stiff against the white linen cloth. “Because I was afraid you’d all misunderstand. You’d all just accuse me of being reckless, I thought.”

  “There seems to be ample evidence of that,” James said. “You’ve known the man only slightly longer than you’ve been pregnant by him.”

  The remark had the effect of a hard slap. Everyone stared at James as if he’d called Cass a whore. Artemas turned toward his brother, struggling with rage over the thoughtless condemnation. Before he could speak, John Lee interjected in a murderous tone, “You can trash me all you want, but if you talk to your sister that way again, I’ll break your neck.”

  James’s eyes narrowed. “What, precisely, do you hope to gain by marrying into this family?”

  John Lee held his own with a hard look that met James’s reproachful one. “Not a goddamned thing, if you mean money. All I want is Cass, and I’d want her even if she was a piss-broke nobody. And I’m going to be the best old man our kid could ever have.”

  Cass made a garbled sound of affection and grasped his hand. “How could I not love this sweet idiot?” she asked. “And I intend to stay with him. You can all think this is just another one of my flings if you want to. But it’s not. I’m going to move into his house next week.”

  Artemas exhaled wearily. “We would have understood. And we would have liked to have been there at your wedding.”

  “How could I expect everyone to approve? Especially since every argument we have seems to center on Lily, and Lily’s the one who’s responsible for my meeting John Lee.”

  “She does have a way of infiltrating the family and causing endless grief,” James said, his eyes narrowed. “It seems she’s struck again.”

  Alise shoved her chair back and left the room. James flinched, rose awkwardly, and went after her. Artemas looked at the shambles of the family dinner—the empty places, Michael hovering at his place, coughing and reaching in his coat pocket for his inhaler, Cass gazing sadly up at the furious John Lee, Elizabeth bending her head to Leo’s shoulder, while he stroked her hair sympathetically. Tamberlaine was scowling at the scene as well, but with a brand of thoughtful anguish that hinted at deeper worries.

  Artemas towered over the end of the table, his jaw clenched, his hands in fists on the tabletop. “You are welcome in this family,” he told John Lee slowly. “If you can stand the mess it’s become.”

  Alise called downstairs a few hours later and asked Mr. LaMieux to have a car sent out front immediately. Artemas, sequestered in his study with the silent, brooding Tamberlaine, heard Alise’s request from a startled LaMieux and ran downstairs as Alise strode into the entrance hall with her suitcase. She looked as if she’d been crying since dinner. James limped after her. He had discarded his coat and tie; his dress shirt hung open, missing several buttons. Artemas grima
ced at the scene. God, what kind of battle had they been through?

  Alise whirled at the sight of them and said to Artemas, her voice broken, “I’ve had all I can take. He won’t stop until he destroys himself, and me, and everything all of you love. I’m leaving him. I’m going to our apartment in London. I won’t be back.”

  “You can’t,” James said hoarsely, reaching for her arm. She snatched it away.

  Artemas stepped between them. “Alise, will you sit down with me—just me—and talk about this?”

  “It’s useless.” She looked up at him with frantic sorrow. “I’ve tried. I’ve tried so hard to believe he’d change. But he hasn’t. I can’t bear to watch him sink any deeper into self-pity.” She staggered. Tamberlaine and Artemas caught her. Pushing away from them, she said bitterly to James, “You think I’m upset because Cass is pregnant and I’m envious. Yes, I’m jealous. I want a baby, too, and you won’t agree to it. And I’m hurt because all you could do tonight was ruin her announcement. You don’t want anyone to be happy. You blame everything on Lily, as if she controlled our lives. She doesn’t. You do. But not anymore. Not my life.”

  James, a muscle popping in his jaw, lunged past Artemas and caught her by the shoulders. “If you want a baby, then by God, don’t leave. We’ll have one, if that’s what it takes.”

  “A consolation prize?” she asked, her voice rising. “You think that’s the reason we should conceive a child—so I’ll be distracted and mollified enough to ignore the fact that you don’t care about our future, that you can’t stop tearing yourself apart over what happened almost two years ago? What kind of father would you be? I don’t want our child raised with your attitude of blind self-interest!”

  James pulled her off-balance. They swayed together. “Trying to keep this family’s reputation intact is not blind self-interest,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Alise groaned in defeat. Her gaze darted past him, to Artemas. “James called Senator DeWitt. It was James who wanted him to talk you out of associating with Lily.”

  Artemas gave an indignant cry. The idea that his feelings for Lily had been discussed that way behind his back brought rage to the surface. James let go of Alise abruptly. A fierce shield dropped over his expression.

  Alise read it accurately and shivered. “I broke your confidence. That’s all you see. You don’t understand that I did it because I love you.”

  “Perhaps you’ll be happier in London.” His voice was low and icily dismissive. He turned to Artemas. “I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done.”

  Artemas wound a hand in his shirt and looked into his eyes with brutal warning. “Your wife is leaving you. Are you just going to let her go?”

  “I’m not like you. I don’t know how to compromise. And I can’t conjure up forgiveness at the expense of everything I believe in.”

  Alise destroyed their tense confrontation by turning and walking to the doors. Mr. Upton, the butler, reluctantly opened one of them and took her bag.

  James’s agonized gaze tracked every step. Artemas released him and stood aside, praying that he’d go after her. When he didn’t, Artemas told him, “Nothing I can say or do could condemn you more than what you’ve just done to yourself.”

  James turned and walked from the hall, his shoulders squared.

  Tamberlaine found Artemas on the loggia, standing alone in the darkness. The cold November sky shimmered with a canopy of stars.

  “Lily may never forgive me for what I’m about to tell you,” Tamberlaine said wearily. “But this madness will certainly escalate if I don’t take the risk. James cannot go on this way I see, now, that he’ll never stop fighting for his misguided vision.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tamberlaine took a breath of the chilly air. Then he told Artemas, as precisely as he could remember, about the taped conversations Lily had never wanted to reveal.

  Her hands were trembling on the truck’s steering wheel as the guard waved her through the enormous gates at Blue Willow. The sunlight felt harsh against her eyes. Lily followed the paved lane through the forest. The woods closed in, almost bare of leaves, gray silhouettes against a bright blue sky. She rounded a curve and entered the park’s large clearing, with its circling drive girdling the enormous willow in the center.

  Artemas stood by the massive old willow where they had met so tempestuously as youngsters, its leafless tendrils making a delicate lacework behind him. The sight of him affected her like a seductive drug.

  Lily got out, slamming the truck’s door. Was this the best they could ever hope for—furtive, mysterious meetings?

  She flung out a hand angrily. “I was in the middle of mulching a bed of tulip bulbs at the Malloy Inn. Aunt Maude showed up looking like General Patton on his way to the front. I thought the Parks boys were goin’ to salute her. She told me I had to come here right now and see you. Like the sky would fall if I didn’t. You want to explain how you convinced Aunt Maude to play messenger for you?”

  He halted in front of her. One dark brow arched, he said, “I’ve been planning to donate money to the library. I suppose it softened her mayoral heart.”

  “How convenient.”

  “Please,” he added. “Just come with me, and listen.” Lily looked at him in bewildered anguish, her heart kicking into a higher gear at the urgency in his expression.

  His silence hypnotized her as they walked to the tree. Her gaze fell on the new bronze plaque set in a rough stone pedestal at the tree’s base, THE BLUE WILLOW PRESENTED BY THE MACKENZIES TO THE COLEBROOKS, 1900. MAY IT ALWAYS GUARD AND INSPIRE THOSE WHO LOVE IT.

  He faced her and took her by the shoulders. He exhaled raggedly. “You can’t protect me or my family anymore. God, I love you for what you tried to do. But it’s time to face all the truth, Lily.”

  “What—”

  “I know about Julia. I know what you tried to do, for my sake.”

  Lily gave a sharp cry of defeat. “No. Why? I thought he understood—”

  “Julia wasn’t innocent. You were right. Did you think I wouldn’t accept that? That I’d hate you for forcing me to face the truth?”

  She slumped a little. “Yes. That was part of my reason. I know how much it must hurt you.”

  “Yes, it hurts. I wanted to believe my sister knew nothing about the problems with the bridge. But I won’t let you defend her, just to protect my feelings.”

  “What good does it do for you to know? It doesn’t give me any satisfaction. I prayed that Richard was innocent. He wasn’t. Hurting you and your family won’t change that.”

  “You were willing to live with what you’d learned about Julia, letting my brothers and sisters go on rejecting you because they think you accused Julia unfairly—letting me continue to believe you were wrong to defend Richard?”

  “I’ve come to terms with what Richard did. He made a terrible mistake. He lost sight of right and wrong. I understand why, and even if I can’t forgive him for it, I can live with what I know. But I can’t ask you to forgive him.”

  His struggle for composure was painfully obvious. Finally, his voice low and full of sorrow, he said, “Just as I won’t ask you to forgive Julia. But should that make it impossible for us to love each other?”

  His words swept through her like a cleansing fire. Lifting her head, she searched his eyes desperately. The look on his face destroyed her. She had to break the barriers, burn the past, so no other tragedies could come between them. “I have loved you all my life,” she told him, her voice breaking. “And no matter what happens, I’ll love you for the rest of my life.”

  He kissed her. She cried out in welcome and relief. His hands swept over her hair and caressed the sides of her face, and the drugging affection of his mouth hypnotized her.

  Their struggle had the fast, wrenching consequence of pain and pleasure. He lifted her against his chest, and she stroked the back of his head fervently. She cried out, a soft, urgent sound. “I know why you left me before.” The words were tumbling
out recklessly. “I know why you married Glenda DeWitt.”

  “How? Who—” His eyes burned into hers. Understanding sank into the gray depths. “The senator. He told you?”

  “Yes. He came to see me before he left for New York. He did that for you. He said he was giving us back our future.” Her sorrow and frustration crested in a shaken moan. “And all I could do to show you how much it meant to me … all I could do was plant a few miserable flowers and shrubs outside your bedroom, such a pathetic way of telling you that—”

  He kissed her again. She clung to him, winding her arms around his neck, sinking into him with welcome and forgiveness, absorbing the gentle violence of desperation and pouring it back into him.

  “We’re going to be together,” he said, his voice low and desperate. “Not in secret, not in hiding, and not with regrets. Together, the way we should have been years ago.”

  She smiled at him, calm but torn down, trembling inside, starting from a new place, summed up from the instinctive gifts of their childhood, and everything this old willow represented.

  A universe of sensation existed between them—skin against heated skin, the weight of the soft old quilts and blankets on her bed; the smoothness of the white cotton pillowcase against her face as her head moved from side to side, receiving the slow, intimate caress of his lips and the stroke of his fingertips. His gentleness wrapped her in languid excitement, every discovery revealing stunning kindness and desire.

  Lily drew her hands over the expanse of his chest and down the thickly muscled wall of his abdomen, curling her fingers lower, glorying in his quivers of pleasure and low sighs. She raised herself to him again and took him into her with a plaintive cry, and he gave back deep, infinite servitude, until only heat and trust existed between them.

  He was speaking to her, maintaining her hypnotic trance with a voice so low and private and filled with ecstasy, it might only have been his thoughts she heard.

  They held each other fiercely at the last, exquisite moment, shivering, merged so completely that sight and sound faded into a soft blur of elation. When he drew his head up from her damp shoulder and met her eyes, she saw the satisfaction of old promises brought to fulfillment and the quiet knowledge that they would willingly share a future neither he nor she could predict.