Twilight Whispers

by Barbara Delinsky

  Gil, in particular, caused her worry. He was looking unusually tired. Like Jack, he had been in Dover more of late than ever before, but those hours were spent, of choice, alone in the library. He looked older. He moved slower. Lenore shouldn’t have been surprised; after all, he was seventy-four. But he suddenly lacked vitality. There was something beyond his age, something to do with the look of defeat she saw on his face from time to time that disturbed her most.

  “Are you feeling all right?” she asked one night at dinner.

  “Fine. A little tired. But I’m fine.”

  “Gil?” She had been thinking about something as she had watched him come and go before her in the past few weeks. “Will you be running again next year?”

  He looked up in surprise, perhaps even annoyance. “Of course I will. Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  His tone stung. She had hoped it would change with the effort she had made to be more accommodating, but it hadn’t. Gil seemed to pride himself on being an icon of strength before her, and while she wanted to tell him it wasn’t necessary all the time, she feared his reaction. “You’ll have been in the House for twenty-four years when this term expires. You seem tired. I was wondering if you’ve ever given thought to retiring.”

  “Not particularly. I may be slowing down on the outside, but up here,” he tapped his head, “everything’s shipshape.”

  “Still … lately—”

  “Lately I’ve been worried about Jordan and Katia. What they’re facing—what we’re all facing—is enough to make any man tired. Despite what Peter says, VanPelt seems to be doing everything right.” His features tightened in frustration. “I was hoping the investigator would find something before the case was bound over to the grand jury, but it looks like that won’t happen. And when Jordan is rearraigned, it’ll be as unpleasant as the first time. They shouldn’t have to be facing that—Jordan and Katia shouldn’t—at this point in their lives. They should be thinking of buying a house in the country and having babies.”

  Lenore rather envied Jordan and Katia for the concern Gil felt for them. “Katia’s still working.”

  Gil’s smile held a touch of smugness. “That I can understand. How else can she keep sane in a world that’s gone mad? Work is her salvation.” As it always was mine, she could hear him say. Indeed, he was shaking his head and continuing as though he had said just that. “No, I can’t retire. If I were to do that I’d be dead in a week.”

  * * *

  But it was only three days later that Jordan received a phone call from Boston. Within minutes he was on his way to Katia’s office. One look at his drawn face and she was on her feet. “Something’s wrong,” she murmured, though she had no idea what more could possibly be wrong.

  Jordan took her hand. “It’s Gil. He’s had a major coronary. I just got the call.”

  “Gil?” she echoed in a tiny voice. Then, without another word, she reached back for her purse and left with Jordan.

  Two hours later they were landing in Boston and taking a cab to the hospital. Though they had held hands all the way, neither had said much during the flight or cab ride to the hospital. After a brief elevator ride and a slightly longer and more frustrating search for Gil’s room, they turned a corner and saw, waiting in the hall just beyond, the scattered gathering of Whytes and Warrens.

  “How is he?” Jordan asked to the group in general.

  A solemn Peter came forward. “He’s resting.”

  “What do the doctors say?”

  “That the next few days are critical. If he can survive them he has a fair chance. In any case he’s going to have to start taking it easy.”

  “Can we see him?” Katia asked shakily.

  “We’ve all taken turns, but just for a minute or two. My mother’s with him now.”

  Dropping Jordan’s hand, Katia moved slowly to the glass window and looked into the room. Gil lay on the bed, his face nearly as white as the hospital sheets. Oxygen tubes ran from his nose, an intravenous from his hand. Visible above the sheet were monitors on his chest, connected in turn to machines by the bed.

  Lenore sat in a chair close by Gil, her face reflecting the same fear that Katia felt deep inside.

  Jordan came up behind his wife. He looked at the man in the bed, then down at Katia, who tore her gaze from Gil’s face long enough to cast a beseeching glance at him. “I want to see him,” she whispered. “I have to see him.”

  Jordan studied her for several minutes before nodding, but even before he had moved Lenore rose and came to the door.

  She held it open for Katia and Jordan, then stepped outside as soon as they had entered.

  For a minute, as the door closed quietly behind her, Katia couldn’t move. Her knees seemed locked in spite of the fine trembling that shook the rest of her. Then Jordan took her hand, and giving it a squeeze, cocked his head toward the bed.

  “Katia?” It was Gil’s voice, hoarse and frightfully frail.

  “It’s me,” she answered unsteadily. Her legs started working again. Crossing to the far side of the bed, she took the hand Gil weakly offered her. “Jordan and I just got here. How are you feeling?”

  “Not great.”

  She swallowed down a wail and forced a crooked smile. “Your timing couldn’t have been worse, Gil. If you had to have a heart attack you could at least have waited until the end of the legislative session.”

  At another time Gil would have given a robust laugh and said something about how the damned fools would be struggling without him. But his face was devoid of humor as his eyes held hers. “Jordan will be cleared, Katia. I want you to know that … and be strong.”

  “I’m trying,” she said, feeling weaker than ever, torn by the sight of him lying in bed and the strange sound of his voice.

  Gil’s gaze darted briefly to Jordan’s face before returning to Katia’s. “Jordan will take care of you. I feel better knowing you’ve married him.” He took a sharp breath and winced at the effort. “I’ve worried. There was so much I’d like to have done—”

  Katia’s fingertips flew to cover his mouth. She gave several short, firm shakes of her head. “You shouldn’t be worrying about me.”

  “I do. I always have. You mean more to me—”

  Again she silenced him. “Please, Gil. Just concentrate on getting well.”

  But instead Gil shook his head, slowly and with resignation. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.” He faltered. “I’ve lived a long life, fuller than most … and I’ve tempted the devil once too often to get … away with it this time.”

  “You should rest,” she whispered, terrified when he seemed to be fading before her eyes. He had always been so strong. “All this talking is only tiring you out.”

  “Talking’s what I do best,” he came back with a surge of strength that was gone in the next breath. “It’s what I’ve always done best. I think I’ve let some of you down because of that.”

  She squeezed his hand. “You haven’t let us down. We love you. Don’t you know that?”

  “Do you?” he asked sadly.

  Her voice was the faintest of whispers. “Oh, yes.”

  Weakly, he raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it. Then, even more weakly, he reached up to brush his fingers against her cheek. “And I’ve always loved you,” he whispered before he closed his eyes.

  Katia gasped, but Jordan was close by her elbow. “It’s okay, sweetheart. The monitors are fine. He’s just resting.”

  Nodding dumbly, she leaned forward and brushed a kiss on Gil’s pale cheek. “Sleep well,” she murmured brokenly. “I’ll be back.”

  Straightening, she let Jordan lead her from the room, then down the hall until they were out of earshot of the others. She sagged against the wall, then against Jordan when he drew her into a protective embrace.

  “You knew,” he breathed by her ear.

  She nodded, but it was another minute before she could speak. “I’ve known for years.”

  “How?”

&
nbsp; “My artwork … and Gil’s. The way my mother looked at him. The way he looked at me.”

  Jordan rubbed his cheek against her hair. “You were quicker on the uptake than I was. It wasn’t until my father denied his involvement that I put two and two together.” He had known there had to have been an explanation for the conversation he had overheard so many years before.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that night in Maine?”

  “My mother and Gil chose not to say anything. I wasn’t sure it was my place to.”

  “But he’s your father!” Knowing that she knew explained why she had been so adamant about a wedding at which both Cassie and Gil were present.

  “And now he’s dying. He is, isn’t he, Jordan?”

  “We don’t know that,” he answered very softly. “Modern medicine can work wonders.”

  But she was shaking her head against his chest. “It sounds like he’s given up the fight, which is so unlike him that it’s almost unfair. How can he do this to us?”

  “At some point we have to stand on our own two feet. We’ve been doing it for years you and I, but knowing that Gil and my dad were there helped. What bothers me is thinking that something about my whole situation,” he couldn’t get himself to be more blunt, “was what brought this on.”

  Katia immediately drew her head back and looked up at him. “No, Jordan. It was nothing you did, or Mark did, or any of us did. It was life. Gil’s lived hard. We both know that. He’s weathered many another storm without a heart attack. You can’t blame yourself for what’s happened now.”

  Jordan wasn’t quite convinced, but then his thinking processes seemed to have been screwed up for days. “Well, I guess that’s water over the dam. All we can do is to hope that Gil recovers.”

  * * *

  Gil didn’t recover. Twenty-four hours later he suffered a second, fatal attack. Katia and Jordan were at the hospital—as they had been for the majority of those hours—along with the other Whytes and Warrens when the doctor emerged from the room and shook his head.

  The funeral was nothing like Mark and Deborah’s. For one thing it was strictly private, kept so by the fact that only the immediate family and friends were notified of the arrangements. For another, a stiff fall wind was blowing, causing the mourners to raise their collars against it. For a third, Lenore had taken charge.

  This last was the most profound difference. Something had happened to Lenore at Gil’s death. At first she had wept and started to crumble, then she had caught herself, and to the astonishment of her family she pulled herself upright. Before anyone quite knew what had happened, she had begun in her own quiet way to assert herself.

  And she had stood firm. When Peter had argued that a private rite would exclude the many people who had been part of Gil’s life, Lenore had insisted that the mourning ritual was for the sake of family and that she, for one, wanted to have Gil to herself for a change. When Laura had pointed out that Gil’s colleagues and constituents would want to do something, Lenore had announced that there could be a memorial service in Washington during the week after the funeral and that anyone else who cared to do something could make a donation in Gil’s name to the charity of his or her choice. When Emily had warned that the press would be sniffing around for coverage, Lenore declared that the Whytes and Warrens had given them too much, particularly recently, to sniff around for and that if the press couldn’t observe common decency they could stew.

  Lenore had her way, partly because deep down the rest of the family agreed with her and partly because they were so stunned by her sudden show of control and strength that they couldn’t muster the words, much less the heart, to defy her. She stood far more strongly at the funeral than anyone would have expected, certainly more strongly than her children, Natalie and Jack, or Katia.

  Or Cassie. Standing off to the side, head bowed, cheeks damp, she was a figure draped in sadness. Katia and Jordan stood by her side, but for the most part she seemed oblivious of their presence. Only when they had returned to the house and Cassie had tried to help serve dinner, though her hands were visibly shaking, did Katia slip away from the table and take her mother back to the cottage.

  There they held each other, crying softly for the man they had both loved but who had never been fully theirs. For the very first time Katia acknowledged what she knew, just as Cassie acknowledged what she felt.

  “Most people would have thought I was crazy to stay with him all these years,” she murmured as she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “But they didn’t know him as I did. They didn’t know how truly kind he was and how much he suffered inside sometimes. They didn’t know the feeling of coming suddenly alive when he entered the room.”

  “You loved him deeply.”

  “Too deeply for my own good, maybe. It’s possible that I could have done more with my life if I’d been willing to leave him, but I wasn’t. Just seeing him from time to time, or talking together as we used to do was enough to keep me going.”

  Katia thought about that as she stroked her mother’s back. “What about Henry? What did you feel for him?”

  “I was fond of him. I never told him what I felt for Gil, but I’m sure he knew. I’m sure Lenore does, too.” A broken laugh emerged through her tears. “It’s a miracle either of them kept me around.”

  “They both needed you. Just like Gil did.”

  Cassie dropped her eyes to the handkerchief she was fingering. “Well, I don’t know how much he needed me. But he did love me. I’m sure of that. Love goes a long way toward forgiving a world of other sins.”

  “We’re all guilty of sins, Mom.”

  Cassie looked up. “What are yours?”

  “I’ve spent the last few days crying on Jordan’s shoulder, clinging to him as though he’s going to be taken away from me any second. I’ve been ranting about how unfair life is, pretty much feeling sorry for myself.” Her voice cracked. Self-mockery wasn’t working. She was perilously close to tears again. “It’s so hard—this on top of everything else. I’m growing superstitious. Things just aren’t going my way.”

  Smoothing the hair from Katia’s damp cheeks, Cassie reminded her softly, “You have Jordan.”

  “But he’s going to be arraigned before the superior court next week.” One tear, then another trickled down her cheek. “He’ll have to stand trial. Nothing’s come up to counter the charges againt him.”

  “There’s time—”

  “But nothing’s come up. No tips, no leads, nothing. If he goes to trial, he’ll be convicted—”

  “That’s not necessarily true—”

  “But that’s how I’m seeing things right now!” She was crying freely. “And if he’s convicted I’ll be spending the next hundred years of my life loving him from a distance, which was very much what you had to do with Gil. You must be that much stronger than me, because I don’t think I could bear it! I’ve waited so long, so long for Jordan, and to have it all taken away again.…”

  Cassie took her in her arms and crooned to her, “Shh. You’re thinking too far ahead, assuming things that might never happen.”

  “I have to be prepared,” Katia gulped between sobs.

  “No you don’t! Jordan will not be convicted. You will not have to live without him.”

  “You can’t know that. No one can.”

  “You’re right. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life it’s that pessimism is self-defeating. If I’d given in to self-pity when I first came to this country I’d be just like some of the others who feel that the world owes them because of what Hitler did. So they walk around with chips on their shoulders and they’re never happy. If I’d given in to self-pity when I realized that no matter how much I loved Gil he’d never be mine I’d never have known Henry or had Kenny, and even in spite of what happened to each, for a time they made my life richer. If I’d given in to self-pity when I realized I had a daughter who would never fully be able to take the place she deserved I’d have warped you in the process.” She h
eld Katia back and looked her in the eye. “My God, Katia, life is worth more than that. Right now you should be thinking of everything you do have. If you dwell on what you might lose tomorrow or next week or next year you’ll never be happy.”

  “Have you been happy?” Katia asked, sniffling.

  Cassie straightened her shoulders, but her hands never once left Katia nor did her gaze stray. “Yes. In the long run, yes. I have a good job, a good home, wonderful memories of the man I loved. And I have you. Do you know how much pleasure I get when I look at you and know that Gil and I made you? Your marriage to Jordan was destined to be, which is why I simply can’t believe that anything will happen to take him from you. You’re the best of the Warrens and Whytes, you and Jordan, and one day you’ll have children, my grandchildren, who will make all of us proud.”

  “You sound so sure of things,” Katia said with a bit of awe.

  “I’ve had a lifetime of practice.”

  “But what happens when things don’t go the way you were sure they were going to?”

  Cassie quickly shook her head. “It’s irrelevant. It doesn’t matter. Don’t you see? A life spent fearing the worst isn’t worth living. It doesn’t matter whether your dreams ever come true. It’s the dreaming that counts. A person without dreams is a very, very sad creature.”

  * * *

  Katia thought about what her mother had said, but she found dreaming difficult when she saw the prospect of a nightmare ahead. Jordan was, indeed, rearraigned at the superior court, and the horror of lead stories and headlines went on. In the days that followed meetings with VanPelt occupied much of his and Katia’s time. They shuttled back and forth between New York and Boston at least twice a week, grateful that while the court had seized Jordan’s passport, it had given him permission to travel within the northeast. Given the circumstances he had no desire to travel farther. After his initial arraignment he had appointed his second in command to take over the visible aspects of the business, believing with just cause that his name had a certain notoriety to it now that could do more harm than good. Moreover, what with meeting with VanPelt and spending as much time with Katia as possible, he had little energy left for travel.