Blue Willow

by Deborah Smith

  Artemas looked at her wearily. “Right now, I honestly don’t know if it will ever be the same.”

  Crying, she turned and went back upstairs. Artemas watched in grim, miserable silence. The swift opening of a small door off the entrance hall drew his attention.

  “Oh, marvelous, sir. I was afraid LaMieux would never locate you.” Mr. Upton strode out of the anteroom that served as his office. Looking agitated, the butler said, “Sir, I’ve just had a very strange call from Louis, at the front gate.”

  Artemas regarded him with dull interest. “What?”

  “Mrs. Porter came through a few minutes ago. She said some very bizarre things to Louis. Sir, Mrs. Porter has always been the most courteous person, even last spring. That’s why Louis is so puzzled.”

  Artemas’s first thought was that her conversation with James had gone terribly wrong, and she was upset. But she would never take it out on a member of the estate’s staff. “What did she say?”

  “She accused Louis of not caring for her dog properly. She called him incompetent.”

  “What had he done?”

  “Nothing, sir. And she made it sound as if he’d treated the dog carelessly before. But he’s never kept the dog for her before.”

  Bewildered, Artemas scowled and went to the massive front doors, sliding the bolt and wrenching one of the ornate handles. He’d wait for her on the front steps. “I’ll take care of this. Call Louis back and tell him not to worry. I’m sure she didn’t mean to insult him.”

  Artemas pulled one door back. Cold, snow-scented air curled around him. The outside lamps cast ethereal light on the apron of stone landing and the shallow, wide steps that led down to the cobblestoned courtyard. Beyond the white expanse of the front lawn the entrance drive curved into the forest. He searched the dark wall of trees and listened for sounds of her approach.

  Mr. Upton followed him anxiously. “There’s something else, sir.”

  Artemas pivoted and stared at him. “Yes?”

  “She wasn’t driving her own vehicle. Louis said it was an old pickup truck belonging to one of her passengers.”

  “Passengers? Who? Did he know them?”

  “One of them, sir. Her aunt’s sister. The lady everyone calls, uhm, Little Sis.”

  “And the other one? The owner of the truck?”

  “A, uhm, Mr. Hoffman, I believe Louis said. She was very upset because Louis allowed the dog to jump up on the door of the gentleman’s vehicle. Though Mr. Hoffman seemed unconcerned. Frankly, sir, Louis was a little concerned about Mr. Hoffman’s appearance. I hope you don’t think this is forward of me to mention it, sir, but, well, Louis isn’t one to comment on a guest’s appearance unless it worries him.”

  “How did Louis describe him?”

  Mr. Upton shifted uncomfortably. “Louis said, and I quote, If I were in a Seven-Eleven late at night, and that guy walked in, I’d get my ass out of there before I got robbed.’ ”

  Artemas went very still. But reason argued with vigilance. This Hoffman was probably some local man Lily had known since grade school, someone like Timor Parks’s hulking but benign sons. The Parks boys’ appearance might send customers hurrying out of a convenience store too.

  “Hoffman?” Artemas repeated, musing over it. “I’ve never heard that name.” He shook his head in dismissal and went down the steps. The first, faint rumble of an engine came to him, from beyond the distant wall of trees. “No need for you to stand out here in the cold too,” he called to Mr. Upton. “I’ll usher them into the house.”

  Mr. Upton gave a slight bow and turned back to the open door. But then he halted, tapped his forehead and said, “Ah! Excuse me, sir. It wasn’t a Mr. Hoffman. She said his name was Halfman. Mr. Halfman.”

  Lily shivered with hope when she saw the house. There was no one on the steps. The looming walls and windows on either side of the entrance were in deep shadow extending out to the barren areas where the gardens had been in the old days, then merging with the darkness of the woods.

  Only the steps and the wide stone landing were bathed in light, creating an eerie sense that a bright stage had been set. Her worst fear had been that she’d find Artemas waiting for her there, unsuspecting. Had her warning gotten through? Had he interpreted it accurately? Or was this a false reprieve? Perhaps Elizabeth, Michael, and Cass had returned. It was possible that he and the family were involved in another round of intense conversations about their childhood, and he couldn’t break away.

  She feared that dapper little Mr. Upton would swing one of the doors open at any second and come out to greet her. She slowed the truck to a crawl. Little Sis sat rigidly, mashed tight to Lily’s side, and Lily felt her tremors. Joe was staring at the house, his eyes half-shut, his face contorted with preparation and disgust. “You’re gonna get me into the house,” he told Lily “The three of us are gonna walk up to the door, and I’ll be back of ol’ Sissy here, and you better say all the right things again, Lily.”

  Lily stopped at the base of the steps and cut the engine. The silence ticked in her nerves like a time bomb. She braced her hands on the steering wheel and was very still. The dilemma was tearing her apart. She could not escort this evil into the center of Artemas’s family. She thought of Elizabeth, Michael, Cass, even James. And of Little Sis. But always, first and last, of Artemas.

  A flicker of movement, reflected in the rearview mirror, riveted her. Artemas slipped forward, from the shadows, behind the truck, on Joe’s side. He bent low beside the bed, his hands splayed on the frigid metal, moving steadily and silently toward the passenger door.

  “Lily, let’s go,” Joe said, with a low, grinding threat in his voice. She did not move. “You’re going to kill him,” she said.

  “If you do what you’re supposed to, it’ll only be him. Helluva choice, ain’t it? Maybe you can fight me, Lily Maybe you can keep me from gettin’ him. But little Granny here won’t make it. And you won’t make it, either. And anybody else that crosses my path will pay. Think about it, Lily—is one man worth everybody else’s lives?”

  Yes. Screaming it inside her own mind, Lily knew the answer was savage and loving and impossible. He’s lived for everyone else. I won’t let him die for us too.

  But she had Little Sis to think of.

  Little Sis raised her chin. Lily realized she was staring into the rearview mirror also. “You know, Lily,” she said in a chirpy, sad little voice, “I’m sure I’m going to be reincarnated.” She looked at Joe. “I’ll be back,” she intoned. Then she jammed both hands between him and her, where the pistol was, and wrenched it upward. The fleeting shock on Joe’s face signaled his surprise. He jerked the pistol away and fired. The blast was deafening. The windshield exploded.

  Lily lunged across Little Sis, clamping both hands onto Joe’s and the gun. He jerked the trigger again. Sparks flew from the dash gauges. Bits of metal and plastic showered over them. She bored her thumbs into the soft hollow of his wrist. The gun’s muzzle was suddenly pointing at her face. “Bitch!”

  His door was flung open, and Artemas had both hands on him, jerking him backward. Another explosion. The window of her door shattered.

  Joe twisted, swinging the gun and his free fist toward Artemas. Lily shoved her door open and pulled Little Sis out that side. “Get! Go! I’m fine!” Little Sis cried, falling on the cobblestones. Lily ran around the truck.

  Joe fired again.

  Artemas’s head slammed backward. The force pushed him away from Joe. He collapsed.

  She screamed—a wrenching, guttural cry of fury and despair. Joe had already righted himself and stood with his feet braced apart, the pistol gleaming at the end of his outstretched arm. Lily leaped at him and hit him full body. They fell in a heap. The pistol jerked. A bullet screamed off the cobblestones.

  She heard the roar of another car, sliding to a stop inches away. She got her fingers between Joe’s legs and wrenched with every ounce of strength. He cuffed the side of her head. His bile flew on her face. She knew she’
d given him the rage and impetus to kill her. And after her, Artemas.

  Punching, kicking, Lily got away and scrambled to her feet. She threw herself toward Artemas.

  He lay on his back. She knelt and cradled his head in her arms, using her body to shield him from Joe. “Don’t be gone,” she begged, sobbing. “Don’t let Halfman win this time.” He moved groggily, one leg shifting a little, his eyelashes flickering. Blood seeped through his hair and down the side of his neck. There was hope. It wasn’t over.

  There was the sound of footsteps scraping on the cobblestones.

  “Stop!” Joe yelled. “Or I’ll finish it right now!”

  Whoever had arrived halted at the warning. Lily looked over her shoulder. James. He stood there, hands clenched by his sides, staring at her and Artemas with the torture of the damned on his face. Behind him, holding each other, were Aunt Maude and the sisters. Mr. Estes clung weakly to the front fender of his truck, his face bruised and his mouth stained with dried blood, absolute devastation in his eyes as he looked at his son. Joe was crouched on the cobblestones, one hand trembling over his injured groin, but he kept the gun pointed at Lily and Artemas.

  One of the mansion’s heavy front doors swung open a few inches. Mr. Upton thrust out his head and shouted, “The security people will arrive at any moment! And I’ve called the sheriff!”

  “James!” Alise darted past Mr. Upton. She looked like a terrified angel in her pale robe. Mr. Upton snagged her by one arm, but she jerked away from him.

  “Go back inside,” James yelled.

  “No!”

  “I love you. Please go back inside.”

  Mr. Upton latched onto her. She struggled with him, and he planted himself firmly between her and the threat below.

  Joe began shrieking, “Don’t do it! Don’t you fuckin’ do it!”

  Alise called James’s name, a begging, tormented sound. A shadow fell over Lily and Artemas. She turned her head, seeing James from the corner of her eyes. He had his back to them. He stood between them and Joe.

  Joe staggered to his feet, keeping the gun pointed at Lily and Artemas. Hunched over in pain, his face contorted, he stared at James and gasped, “I’ve got one. One left. One shot.” He glanced toward Artemas, who moved again, trying to sit up. Lily pulled him close to her and sheltered his head against her chest. Joe yelled, “Get away from him, bitch!”

  “Lily,” Artemas murmured. He tried to push her aside, but he was too weak. He focused on her, aware now, holding her gaze with his life. His lips moved, giving a faint, groggy whisper filled with determination. “Love you … all these years … not to lose you.”

  “I said move!” Joe yelled. “Both of you! Get away from him!”

  Lily bowed her head against Artemas’s and held him tighter. His blood was wet against her cheek, the ugly furrow in his scalp inches from her mouth.

  “It’s me you want,” James said. His voice had a low, melodic certainty, like the chime of the Colebrook clocktower. Lily shivered. He had measured time dearly and accepted his midnight. “Pull the trigger,” he continued. “Have the guts to do one thing right in your miserable life.”

  “So he wasn’t here, huh, Lily?” Joe taunted. “So I’d have to go to New York to find him, huh? Well, looks like the cripple surprised us.”

  Mr. Estes moaned. “Joe. Don’t you hear them sirens comin’? I love you, boy. Put the gun down.”

  “I hear ’em, old man,” Joe answered. There was rage and defeat in his voice. “You want to be the hero, huh, cripple? It ain’t gonna change nothing.”

  James said softly. “You can’t get around me. You can only kill me.”

  Artemas latched his hand onto Lily’s shoulder and lifted his head, groaning with the effort. “No, James.”

  “I love you, big brother,” James said. “And … Lily. Lily, I’m sorry for everything. I tried to stop it, but I was too late.”

  She caught a sob in her throat. “I know that now.”

  Joe gave a rancid laugh. “You want glory, cripple? Then here it is.”

  He swung the pistol toward James’s chest. The fierce shrieks of Aunt Maude and the sisters filled the air, like the sirens pealing through the night. Artemas’s hands dug into Lily’s sweater. She cried out and pulled his head into the crook of her shoulder, sheltering him from the horror that hung on the next second.

  The shot snapped like a willow breaking at the core.

  Beyond James, staring up into his eyes, Joe had a look of shock. Then his face convulsed. He folded, slowly, to his knees, slid backward, and sprawled with slow grace, blood bubbling from his lips, to the cobblestones. Behind him. Mr. Estes wavered, moaned like an animal in pain, and let a small pistol drop from his hand.

  Thirty-three

  Strangers were fiddling with him, which he disliked. A nurse dabbed antiseptic on the line of stitches in his scalp. The emergency-room doctor hummed lightly as he studied an X-ray, saying something about Artemas being fortunate.

  Fortunate, yes. Because Lily was sitting on a stool close to his side, her elbows propped on the gurney, her hands wrapped around one of his, and even though his blood was on her sweater and the bib of her overalls, and her hair was tangled wildly around her gaunt face, she was looking at him in a desperately pleased way that made the pain and the strangers unimportant.

  Artemas was satisfied simply to continue lying there in private, loving communication with her, letting his thoughts settle into orderly patterns. His sisters and brothers were waiting in the hall outside, with Tamberlaine. James was there. Safe. Everyone was safe. Artemas sighed with relief.

  Joe Estes was in surgery, though the paramedics who’d brought him from the estate had told the family that he’d never survive. Artemas found himself thinking, with bitter gratitude, that he hadn’t wanted Joe to die on the steps at Blue Willow. The grand old house had escaped that ultimate infamy.

  The troubling scene came back to Artemas in hazy pieces. His helpless rage. The fear for Lily, and James. Her fierce protection, her arms wrapped around him and her head bent over his, shielding him so that the sickening crack of the gunshot was muffled, the consequences hidden from his sight.

  Then the soft thud of someone falling, and Lily’s cry of shock and excitement when she turned to look. Artemas had been able to see then, too—to see that James was unhurt, that Joe Estes had been stopped by his own father.

  Events after that were blurred, because adrenaline had stopped flooding his pain and he hadn’t been able to overcome the dizziness or disorientation anymore.

  “Stop thinking so hard,” Lily whispered now. He was surprised to find that the nurse and doctor had left during his troubled reverie. “Stop thinking about it,” she repeated. She was teasing him a little, though her voice was hoarse. “You’ll pop a seam. Need extra stitches.” A muscle worked in her throat, and the amusement in her eyes faded into their stark blue depths. “I came so close to losing you. I’m afraid it’s just a dream that you’re alive.”

  He squeezed his fingers around hers. “Halfman isn’t coming back, Lily.”

  She shivered, slid closer to him, and rested her head against the side of his chest. He stroked her hair gently and shut his eyes.

  Eventually he realized that someone was walking toward them, and he recognized, with sorrow and pride, the uneven rhythm of the step. Lily heard it, too, and sat up. They looked at James, who stood a little distance from them. He seemed awkward, agonized. “Am I intruding?” he asked gruffly.

  “Not a bit,” Lily said. She beckoned him with a slight nod, and only then did he step closer, stopping beside the gurney James looked from her to Artemas. “I’m responsible for what Joe Estes did tonight.”

  “No,” Artemas replied, brushing a hand over his forehead and wincing at the pain. “You can’t blame yourself for Halfman’s intentions.”

  James frowned and glanced at Lily. “Is he still groggy?”

  She almost smiled. “A little. But he’s right. I’ll explain about Halfman to
you, sometime.” She stood and faced James squarely, her head up. “Listen to me. You stepped into the middle of a lot of history that had nothing to do with you. Joe has been in and out of trouble as long as I can remember. He’s always blamed everyone but himself. I expect you know that when I was a little girl I caught him hunting on the estate, and he fired at me, like an irresponsible fool. He shot me in the arm.”

  James nodded. “I’ve heard that story from Tamberlaine.”

  Lily continued, “Well, Joe blamed it on me. And he never forgot it. Then he blamed Artemas for having him arrested when he was growing marijuana on the estate.” She exhaled. “And when he got out of prison, the last thing he could accept was that I was living at the farm again. He wanted Mr. Estes to kick me out. When Mr. Estes wouldn’t do that, Joe reacted the way he always had”—her voice broke and she slumped a little—“only he made a god-awful mistake when he thought he could accomplish anything by … by what he did to my animals.

  “Joe thought his father would defend anything he did. But Mr. Estes was going to the sheriff. Even if we couldn’t have proved that Joe killed my livestock, he’d already violated parole by stealing from Mr. Estes. He knew he was going back to prison. It made him crazy.”

  She was finished. She leveled a hard, meaningful gaze at James. “There’s the only truth that’s important, James. Pure and simple. If you embroider it with more details, it won’t be any better.”

  James slid his hand roughly through his hair. He had tears in his eyes. “You don’t owe me this kind of loyalty.”

  “When I think of you now, I think of what you did for Artemas and me tonight. I don’t think about the rest. And neither does Artemas.”

  His gaze shifted quickly to Artemas. James sat down beside the gurney, his eyes urgent and shadowed. Artemas lifted a hand slowly, cupped it around the back of James’s neck, and James bent his head to his brother’s shoulder. Lily watched silently, her throat tight.