by Jane Toombs
But by the time Samara got home, Vera was in bed recovering from a miscarriage.
"You're young and healthy, there'll be plenty of babies ahead ," Frances assured her.
Vera knew she was right and yet depression lay heavily on her like the blanket of heat hanging over the valley. A part of her insisted the baby had been killed by Hallow House as compensation for Sergei--an eye for an eye. But she never voiced the thought to anyone and strove to push it from her consciousness,
She had John. She loved him as he loved her. Johanna called her mama and Samara sought her company, obviously fond of her stepmother. Vera told herself firmly she had no reason to lie abed and cry. So she got up and focused her attention on Samara.
Samara was still a quiet girl, but her entire appearance had changed in the time she'd been away. She now had an eager, alive look and she smiled often. Though she never would be as dramatically attractive as Sergei had been, she was pretty, with her brown eyes and curling black hair. Best of all, her mind seemed clear of the darkness that had brought Sergei's death.
"What are you interested in," Vera asked her. "What courses do you like best?"
"Literature mostly. I think maybe I'd like to teach."
Vera smiled at her, knowing Samara would never have to earn her living, but not discouraging her from her ambition.
Samara left for school and fall arrived. The household bustled with the picking of apples, peaches and pears and the extra work of preserving them, Additional help came to the outbuilding that held the canning kitchen,
Vera watched amazed. "With all the canned food from the Lobo plants," she asked John, "why must we put preserves away as though our survival depended on them?"
"That's the way it's always been done," he said, which was the end of it. John, she'd learned, had a streak of inflexibility when it came to changing any tradition of Hallow House.
In November, Vera realized with both fear and happiness that she was pregnant again. "What if I lose this one, too?" she said to Frances.
"You won't." Frances sounded so positive that Vera took herself in hand and tried to forget her fears.
By the time Marie returned unexpectedly in February, having hired a car to bring her from the train, Vera was wearing maternity clothes.
"Congratulations, Marie offered with a wry smile. "I hope you'll let me stay for a while. I've run completely out of money and have nowhere else to go." She seemed drained of vitality and looked old despite her smart suit and newly waved hair.
Vera hugged her. "Stay forever if you want. This is your home."
Marie stared at her, an enigmatic expression on her face. Dislike? Envy? But she thanked Vera and settle back into the routine of the house.
"Where's she been?" John asked Vera a few days later.
"She doesn't talk about it. I've asked and Marie just changes the subject. She's drinking quite a lot."
"Do you mind having her here?"
Vera shook her head. "She has nowhere else to go.. We'd be cold-hearted not to take her in."
It wasn't quite a lie. Vera didn't begrudge Marie living in the house, but having her around was a constant reminder of Delores, though Marie seldom mentioned her cousin's name.
"You treat that poor little changeling better than Delores ever would have," Marie had said one day, watching Johanna's efforts to speak. "John, too, as far as that goes. I thought once..." She stopped and looked away.
What had she thought? That John might marry her? Would he if I hadn't come? Vera shook her head. No, John would never have married Marie.
One day in March, Marie, Vera and the two old ladies were having tea in the living room, a newly established custom. Adele and Theola often came downstairs since Vera had asked John to have a chair lift installed to convey Adele up and down the staircase. Marie usually didn't join them for afternoon tea, but Vincent was home and she made an obvious effort to drink less alcohol and be more sociable when he was around.
"Are you sure you started this baby in November?" Marie asked, staring pointedly at Vera's girth.
Adele shook her head wisely. "Not baby," she corrected. "Babies. Vera will have twins. The Gregory wives all do sooner or later"
"Twins," Theola echoed. "Of course."
Vera had heard this from them before, Though she didn't take them seriously, lately she had begun to wonder if they might not be right.
When asked, Dr. Whitten insisted it was early to tell. She'd been to consult a San Francisco specialist and was scheduled to deliver at St. Sergius. She and John planned to go up to the city several weeks before her due date in July and stay until the birth. Meanwhile, Dr. Whitten saw her regularly in Porterville.
In May they celebrated Johanna's second birthday. Though she seemed normal in every other way, her speech problem persisted--a stammer combined with stuttering, making her difficult to understand. She was especially fond of her Uncle Vince, and never forgot him during his absences.
Summer drenched the valley in heat, as usual, and Vera kept mostly to the air-conditioned house, By now both Dr. Whitten and the specialist had confirmed she was carrying twins. She tried not to think about having two babies, tried not to remember what had happened over the years to one of every pair of Gregory twins. Death. Madness. Surely Hallow House couldn't be responsible for such tragedies. Or could it?
In July she began the arrangement to leave for San Francisco with John. The night before they were due to leave, Vera woke in the night feeling someone had called her name. John slept on next to her, warm and oblivious. She could see nothing in the dark room and after a while she drifted back to sleep...
Vera knew she was somewhere she didn't want to be. Even in the dark she could feel evil about her and she suddenly realized where she was. In the room behind the black door. "Of children two, the one must die," someone, something invisible whispered. The words dropped into her mind like lead weights...
Vera woke, heart pounding to find her membranes had ruptured, fluid pouring from her. Alarmed, she sat up and started to slide out of bed to get Frances when the first contraction hit her.
Identical twin girls, Naomi and Katrina, were born prematurely at Hallow House with Dr. Whitten arriving barely in time. They were large for preemies, five pounds for Naomi and four pounds, ten ounces for Katrina. There were no complications for mother or daughters.
I've won, Vera thought dazedly as she lay in bed the next morning. The house didn't take one of my twins from me. And it won't, she vowed. I'll not let it.
Chapter 22
A new decade began when January ushered in 1940, one Samara Gregory hoped would be full of wonderful surprises She hummed as she drove her yellow convertible east toward the Sierra foothills. The top was down and the warm afternoon breeze blew through her shoulder-length black hair. She didn't mind the heat--a hot summer seemed right. A hot summer was home.
Samara looked forward to seeing her family. Her memories of growing up were full of pain and fear, but Hallow House was a happy place now and she'd done her best to forget the past.
"Somewhere," she sang, "over the rainbow..."
She drove by cotton field where the bolls were swelling to puffy ripeness, passed an orange grove with the fruit tiny and green on the branches and entered the outskirts of Porterville. On the main street her gleaming yellow Buick attracted whistles and call that she tried to ignore. She was thrilled with the convertible, her father's and stepmother's Christmas gift.
"We chose yellow because it'll be a striking contrast with your black hair and dark eyes," Vera had told her. "You're a very pretty girl and this is the time to show off."
Was she really pretty? Samara shifted gears outside of Porterville and turned onto the road leading home. Uncle Vince told her she was beautiful, but he and Vera were family. Certainly she wasn't particularly popular at Stanford.
Not that she didn't have dates. Samara sighed. The boys who asked her out were always the serious ones. Not serious about her necessarily but about their studies, their
futures. Too serious to be much fun.
How she longed to have fun, to be like one of the casual, laughing coeds she saw on campus. She thought again of Uncle Vince, fun to be with, always rushing her off to San Francisco when he came to visit her at Stanford.
"You mean you've never been to swim at Sutro's Baths?" he'd said at his last visit. "Not at their best anymore, but for that reason even a better reminder of Rome's last decadent days."
When he'd taken her to the 1939 Golden Gate Exposition last year she'd joked about going to see Sally Rand's "Nude Ranch," never dreaming he'd actually bring her inside. She giggled at the memory. Daddy would have had a fit if he'd known. Actually she'd been embarrassed, but maybe Uncle Vince hadn't noticed.
Why couldn't she meet men who were handsome, dashing and romantic like her uncle?
She passed a dark-haired, olive-skinned man walking along the shoulder, hesitated, then braked the car. Wasn't he Sal Guerra, who used to work in her father's stables? "Sal?" she called.
He turned to stare, then grinned and approached the car. "Samara Gregory! You really grew up."
"Want a lift?"
His smile faded and he took a step back from the car. "What's the matter?" she asked.
"Thanks, I don't need any trouble."
Samara felt a sudden chill. She'd almost forgotten how it had been four years ago after the terror and deaths at Hallow House, when townspeople avoided the Gregorys. She started to shift, intending to drive off, then changed her mind. She run away from too many things.
"Trouble?" she repeated, determined to confront Sal.
"You've been away, but things haven't changed around her." His face was cold.
What was wrong with him? He'd been her friend from the time he came to work with the Hallow House horses until the day he left. He wasn't much older that she--maybe four years--and had there for her to depend on during those bad times with Sergei, when she'd desperately needed someone she could trust.
"You'll have to spell it out for me," she told him firmly. "Just the way you taught me to be a better rider."
Sal relaxed a little, shaking his head. "I figured you knew, but I guess maybe you were too isolated to catch on. You don't ask me to ride with you--I'm a Mexican."
"But you were born in Porterville. I remember you telling me."
He rolled his eyes. "What do they do in Stanford, lock the students in ivory towers?"
"I thought we were friends," she persisted, still unclear about what he meant.
"I worked for your father, Take another look at me, Samara, then at yourself. I'm Mexican. You're Anglo. Here in the valley, you got to remember that."
"Well, okay, but if I were my father would you ride with me?"
Sal laughed. "I can't believe you. You're what--nineteen? Twenty?--and still as innocent about the world as you were at fifteen. The hell with it." He opened the passenger door and slid into the seat. "Good to see you, mi amigo Samara."
She pulled the car back onto the road, then glanced at him. "Let me get this straight. Is it taboo for me to pick you up or for you to ride with me?"
"Both. Anglos don't mix with us in this valley, at least not Anglo girls and Mex boys."
"But all I'm doing is giving you a lift."
"I've seen friends of mine get beat up for less."
Samara couldn't believe her ears. Apparently Hallow House had really isolated her from the world. So had the Catholic girls' school she'd gone to. No wonder her Stanford friends called her incredibly naive.
"It seems stupid to me," she said.
Sal shrugged.
"What are you doing these days?" she asked.
"Trying to get enough money together to afford another year of college. I went to Cal Poly last year and used all I'd saved up. I'm good with animals, hope to be a veterinarian eventually."
"Where are you working this summer?"
"Up the road a couple miles. That's one of my jobs--ranch hand. I pick fruit and work in the fields, too. Anything I can find." Sal spoke matter-of-factly, without rancor.
"Are you married?"
He laughed. "Are you kidding? I can hardly support myself, much less a wife."
Something occurred to Samara, but she wasn't sure whether or not Sal would want to hear it. Finally she said, "My father might have a job where you could work up north in the canning plants. Would you be angry if I asked him?"
"A job's a job," he said, his voice taut with an emotion she couldn't identify.
"Once you were my only friend," she said. "You used to talk to me when no one else around even seemed to notice me. You were busy, but you made time for me. Please don't get mad if I try to repay you."
Sal said nothing for a time, finally grinning at her. "Machismo. A Spanish word that's hard to translate. Male pride's about the closest. If your father finds me a decent-paying job I'll swallow mine and take it. You always were a sweet girl. I used to think your brother treated you like dirt. He--" Sal broke off abruptly.
Seeing the stricken look on his face as he remembered what had happened to Sergei, she said, "It's all right."
After she dropped him off, though, she acknowledged to herself that it wasn't all right and might never be. It hurt to think about her dead twin, so she turned on the radio, even though she knew reception wasn't good in the foothills, the music distorted by static.
The clearest station she could find had a newscast, "President Roosevelt asked Congress today for an unprecedented five billion dollars for military appropriations this coming..."
Samara switched it off. There seemed to be nothing in the news anymore except the war in Europe. That certainly didn't have anything to do with her.
As she coasted down the last hill, she choked up when she caught sight of Hallow House. Joy and anticipation mixed with an underlying faint dread, as though the wraith of Sergei waited there for her along with her father, stepmother and her sisters.
She passed the snarling wolves perched on stone columns to either side of the now always open gates, then the spreading branches of the valley oaks lining the drive hid all but the chimneys and the twin towers. Some of the giant camellia bushes between the oaks were still in bloom, reds and pinks and whites. Camellias were so beautiful with their perfect flowers, but they'd always disappointed her by having no scent. Was everything flawed in some way?
The pine grove rose behind the house to her left, orange groves climbed the hillside to her right. As she turned the last curve and left the oaks behind she heard children shouting. There Hallow House was, just ahead of her, white and imposing with its columns and towers and balconies. Three little girls ran down the steps, heading for the drive. Five-year-old Johanna was in the lead, the almost four year old twins behind her, their chubby legs churning. Samara braked to a stop.
"Gee, what a pretty car, Samara. I didn't get to ride in it yet, will you take me for a ride sometime?" Johanna's words tumbled from her without her usual stammer.
Samara got out and hugged her sister. "Let me get unpacked first."
Naomi and Katrina each grabbed one of her legs, "Sammy!" they cried in unison.
She crouched down and hugged them, too, looking from one set of brown eyes to the other. "Let me guess," she said, poking her fingers into one of the twin's ribs. "You're Naomi, right?"
They both giggled, but wouldn't tell her. She looked over their heads at Johanna, who nodded.
"I could tell because you got here first after Johanna," she said.
Naomi nodded vigorously. "First," she repeated.
Samara smiled at all three of her sisters, thinking the twins looked more alike than ever, absolutely identical. Johanna was still too solemn, her big gray eyes fixed expectantly on Samara.
"Are you h-home to s-stay now?" she asked, the stutter barely evident, nowhere near as bad as it had been.
"I'm not sure. But for all summer anyway, Jo-Jo."
"I can swim," Naomi announced.
"Me, too," Katrina said.
Samara glanced toward
the pool, hidden by the house. Her father had added the enclosed swimming pool soon after he married Vera, leaving the old outdoor one for the enjoyment of the ranch workers. She was tired and sticky from the drive, so a swim right now would feel good. The June, sun though low in the western sky, was still hot.
Jose came up the drive from the garage and she noticed with a shock that his hair was almost all gray. When had that happened? But he still walked with a spring in his step, belying his age.
