by Sandra Brown
“I could guess.”
“But you won’t have them arrested, will you? Because they’re Huff’s bullies. And you’re their ring-leader.”
“A word of advice, Sayre, which I’m sure you’ll ignore. Stay off the picket line. When word gets out about Clark, tempers are going to flare. There’s bound to be a showdown of some sort, and you could get caught in the cross fire.” He glanced toward the door. “At least you’re using the chain now.”
“After this morning, I’ll never neglect to.”
He came toward her slowly. “Did he hurt you, Sayre?”
“I told you—”
“I know what you told us. But I also know you left things out. Did he touch you?”
She shook her head, but to her chagrin, tears filled her eyes. “Not much.”
“What does that mean?”
“He . . . he said some vulgar things, but he didn’t act on them.”
He reached for her, but she staved him off with a stiff arm and a shake of her head. “I’m fine. You should go now.”
“All right,” he said with a terse nod. “I only came to tell you about Daly and to convey his wife’s wishes that you stay away from him. But I’m going to leave you with this question, Sayre. Why are you getting involved in all this?”
“I gave you my reasons last night.”
“Because your conscience is bothering you for not taking Danny’s calls. The ambiguities surrounding Iverson. To improve working conditions at the foundry. I know what you said.”
“Well then?” she asked tightly.
“Are those the real reasons? I don’t think so. There’s only one reason behind every decision you make and everything you do.” He pulled open the door and stepped out. Turning back, he said, “Huff.”
• • •
“Sayre! Are you by yourself? Good Lord, girl, what business do you have driving around alone this time of night?”
“I hope I didn’t disturb you, Selma.”
She motioned Sayre into the house. “What if that white trash Watkins boy is stalking you?”
“I imagine he’s halfway across Texas by now on his way to Mexico. Is Chris at home?”
“He left after dinner and hasn’t come back. You want me to try and call him?”
“Actually I came to see Huff. Is he still up?”
“He’s in his room, but I’ve heard him moving around up there, so I don’t think he’s asleep yet.”
“How is he feeling? Does he seem to have recovered?”
“I can’t tell if he’s any different from before the heart attack. I make sure he takes his blood pressure medicine. With all that’s gone on since Danny’s parting, it’s a wonder to me he hasn’t blown a blood vessel clean out his neck.”
Sayre patted her hand. “You’ve always taken good care of us, Selma, and I for one am grateful. Go back to your room. I’ll let myself out after I’ve seen him.”
The housekeeper’s slippers slapped lightly against the hardwood floor as she retreated down the central hallway toward her apartment on the far side of the kitchen.
Taking Beck’s parting words to heart, Sayre had dressed quickly and driven fast to get here. But now she was second-guessing her spontaneous decision to come. She wished she had asked Selma to summon Huff from his bedroom. This was no longer her house, her home. To be here in the middle of the night, creeping up the staircase, made her feel like an intruder.
The silence was unsettling. The staircase was so dark she could barely see the landing at the top. She hadn’t been on those stairs in ten years. The last time, she’d been coming down them, carrying a suitcase, leaving for what she had thought would be forever. She had been apprehensive about her immediate future but resolved to face it.
She was no less apprehensive or resolute now as she set her foot firmly on the first tread. The going was easier after that. At the landing, she paused to gaze at the portrait of her mother and felt a familiar tug of homesickness. But was it for this individual who smiled down at her from the canvas, or did she miss the idea of a mother, someone to go to for comfort, advice, and unconditional love?
The upstairs hallway was illuminated by two night-lights plugged into wall outlets on the baseboard. Her footfalls were muffled by the carpet runner that had been one of Laurel’s prized possessions. It had been an heirloom from her maternal great-grandmother’s plantation house.
The door to Danny’s room was closed. She hesitated but moved past without opening the door, feeling that going inside would be a violation similar to walking on his grave. It was still too fresh to disturb.
The door to Chris’s room was standing ajar. According to Selma, he had moved back home, into his old room, after Mary Beth had taken up residence in Mexico. “We outfitted it a bit different than when he lived here before he got married.”
Sayre peered into the room and, in spite of herself, recognized the good taste with which it had been decorated. The pieces were of good quality, but not ostentatious. The color scheme was neutral. It was masculine and uncluttered, much the way she would have decorated the quarters of a recently single male.
Light was showing beneath Huff’s bedroom door. Before she could talk herself out of it, she rapped the door twice. It was opened instantly, creating a vacuum in which they stared at each other.
He removed a smoldering cigarette from his mouth and looked at her speculatively. “I was expecting either Chris or Beck.”
“I want to talk to you.”
His eyebrows lowered into a scowl. “By your tone of voice, sounds more like you want to chew my ass.”
“Did you sic your thugs on Clark Daly?”
He stuck the cigarette back in his mouth and turned into the room. “Come on in. We’d just as well have this out now as later.”
She followed him into the room, which also had undergone a redecoration. While Sayre had lived here, the master suite had remained much as it had been when her mother was alive. But at some point during her absence, Laurel’s frills had been replaced with more tailored drapes and bed-coverings.
Huff motioned toward a small serving cart. “Pour yourself a drink.”
“I don’t want a drink, I want an answer. Did you give the order to have Clark beaten?”
“I didn’t know it would be Clark.”
“But you turned your dogs loose.”
He sat down in a large easy chair and inhaled deeply on his cigarette until the tip smoldered red hot. “I have some boys who’re loyal to me. I told them to stop any talk of a strike, and I wasn’t particular about the way they did it.”
He pointed the cigarette at her. “I won’t have men taking my money and picketing me at the same time. If they want to join ranks with that Nielson character and his agitators, fine. But not on my clock and not on my dollar,” he said, raising his voice.
“They almost killed him.”
“But they didn’t, and I’ve been told he’ll recover.” He ground out his cigarette. “Frankly, I’m surprised Clark Daly had the guts to inspire a spelling bee, much less a labor strike.”
“He might not have . . . if I hadn’t urged him to.”
He reacted with a start. Then after several seconds of stunned silence he began to laugh his wheezing chuckle. “Well, I’ll be goddamned. Should’ve guessed that. Clark Daly hasn’t got the balls to undertake a project like that himself. He’s been on the skids for years. Spineless as they come.”
“That’s what you thought, Huff. But you were wrong. Clark was a leader. You beat him down, robbed him of his scholarship, and consequently any chance of a college education. You trampled his hope and his confidence.”
“Oh, Jesus, sing me another song. Haven’t you gotten tired of that one? All the bad that’s happened to that boy, he’s brought on himself.”
“He’s not a boy any longer, Huff, he’s a man. And he’s proven again that he’s a natural leader.”
“Yeah, he could lead you straight to every bar in the parish.”
“Men lis
tened to him, Huff. Beck said Clark’s friends were ready to walk off the job tonight in order to go find him. That sounds like a person who inspires the confidence of others.”
Huff came out of his chair angrily. “What did Clark Daly ever inspire you to do except disobey me?”
“I was eighteen. We didn’t need your permission to get married.”
He went to the serving cart and sloshed whiskey from a decanter into a glass, then drank it down in one swallow. “Damn good thing I got word of your elopement and stopped it.”
“Oh, yes, you were quite the hero, Huff. Chasing us down like criminals and then threatening to fire Clark’s father if we went through with the marriage. You terrorized his parents, terrorized me and Clark. Very courageous.”
“Would you rather I have shot that kid?” he bellowed. “I had a right to shoot him stone dead.”
“The right? What right?”
“The boy defied me. He deserved—”
“None of it, Huff! The only thing he did to you was love me.”
“He was wrong for you.”
“Only in your selfish, self-serving opinion.”
“He was fine for a high school sweetheart, but when it came to marriage material, you needed somebody from a family more like ours.”
She threw back her head and gave a bitter laugh. “Huff, there is no family like ours.”
“Don’t play word games with me, Sayre. You know damn well what I’m talking about,” he said querulously. “You needed to marry into a family with clout. Money. Not a family of wage earners.”
“That’s crap. It was crap when you used that excuse to separate Clark and me, and it’s crap now. Money wasn’t the issue, Huff. The only reason you didn’t like Clark was because you didn’t choose him.”
“I’m tired of getting blamed for every goddamn thing,” he said, making a broad sweep with his arm. “What did I ever do except want the very best for my children?”
“No, what you wanted was your way,” she said, matching his voice for volume. “It had to be your way. You would not tolerate a single idea or a solitary plan that wasn’t of your devising.” She took a deep breath, and when she released it, her voice was lower and gruff with emotion. “Otherwise, you destroyed it.”
He glowered at her as he poured himself another shot of whiskey. He carried it with him back to the chair, where he lit a fresh cigarette. He was breathing with effort. She could smell the whiskey fumes of his breath even from the distance that separated them.
“Yell at me all you want, girl. Rant and rave and stamp your foot, you’ll never get an apology or an excuse out of me. When I was just a kid, this high, Sayre,” he said, holding his hand parallel to the floor, “I swore I was going to begin a line of Hoyles where the name meant something. Where nobody was going to ignore or forget the name Hoyle.” He wagged his cigarette at her. “And that line of Hoyles was not going to include Clark Daly’s bastard baby.”
She drew a shaky breath. “So you had it cut out of me.”
“I did what any father would do who—”
“Who didn’t have a soul.”
“Who saw his daughter destroying—”
“You had my baby cut out of me!” Crossing the room in three strides, she struck him as hard as she could across the face.
He shot to his feet. His drinking glass fell from his hand and rolled across the carpet. He threw down his cigarette and balled his hands into fists, raising them threateningly.
“Go ahead, Huff, strike back. You hit me in the face the night you dragged me out of your den, kicking and screaming and begging you not to do it. Did you know that the floor still shows dents where my heels gouged it while I was trying to stop you that night? Go look at them. They’re a testament to just how evil you are.
“When you couldn’t get me in the car, you knocked me unconscious. I woke up in Dr. Caroe’s back room. My feet had been tied into the stirrups, and my arms were bound to the table.” She extended her arms from her sides, feeling again the restraints that had held her immobile.
Her face, she realized, was wet with tears. She licked them from the corners of her lips. “And that unscrupulous bastard scraped my baby out of me. How much did you pay him to end that sweet little life, Huff? How much did it cost you to prove your dominance over me?”
She was sobbing now on every word, but she pressed on. “It was put in a plastic bag and thrown out with the garbage.” She flattened her hand on her chest and screamed, “My baby.”
Following the outburst, the room became as quiet as a tomb, save for the ticking of the clock on Huff’s nightstand. She wiped the tears from her face and shook back her hair.
“It’s recently been observed that you’re the motivation for everything I do. That’s true. Hating you sustained me through depression and two unwanted marriages. And to this day, to this moment, I thrive on hating you for what you did to me that night.
“But . . .” She laughed lightly. “But, the joke is on you, Huff. You and your fucking dynastic ambitions. All your scheming to marry me off to Beck? Funny. Hilarious. And futile. Because, see, when your inept friend Dr. Caroe took my baby, he also ruined any chance of my having another.”
He staggered back a step. “What?”
“That’s right, Huff. I can’t perpetuate your goddamn line of Hoyles, and you’ve only yourself to thank.”
She turned and ran from the room, drawing up short when she saw Beck standing in the hallway.
chapter 30
Sayre faltered when she saw him, but without a word, she walked swiftly down the hallway and disappeared into the shadows on the landing. Seconds later he heard the front door close behind her.
He didn’t go after her. She wouldn’t have wanted him to. He was tainted by his association with Huff, and now he understood the reason for her animosity.
He knocked once on the bedroom door. “Huff, it’s me.”
Huff was sitting down, although Beck got the impression that he’d dropped into the chair without consciously deciding to. He was balanced on the edge of the cushion, staring at the floor, oblivious to the cigarette that was burning a hole in the carpet inches from his feet.
Beck picked it up and ground it out in the ashtray on the end table beside Huff’s chair.
Huff seemed to notice him for the first time. “Beck. How long have you been here?”
“Long enough.”
“You heard what Sayre told me?”
He nodded. “Are you all right? Your face is flushed.”
“I’m okay. She hasn’t killed me. Yet.” Frowning down at the spilled bourbon, he added, “Could do with another drink.”
Beck poured him a glass of water and brought it to him. “Start with this.”
Huff made a face of displeasure but drained the glass. Then, leaning back in his chair, he released a sigh. “This has been a pissy twenty-four hours. Started last night with a picket line outside my foundry. Fine way to end it is learning that Sayre’s barren.”
“That’s what’s bothering you?”
“Pardon?”
Beck sat down on the ottoman that matched Huff’s chair, facing him. “With everything the two of you talked about . . . I mean, when your only daughter . . .”
Huff gazed back at him as though waiting for him to stop stammering and get to the point.
If Huff didn’t comprehend his point by now, he never would. “I don’t know what I meant. It’s a private matter between you and Sayre.”
“Yeah, it’s been a matter between us since the night it happened.”
“ ‘Happened’? She didn’t lose her baby by happenstance, Huff. You forced an abortion on her.”
“She was just a girl,” he said, gesturing impatiently. “I wasn’t about to let her ruin her life before it got started, especially by saddling herself with a kid sired by Clark Daly. You know why she got pregnant, don’t you?”
Although Huff didn’t really expect a reply, Beck said, “To ensure the marriage.”
�
�Exactly. I had stopped the elopement. Daly’s parents folded quick enough, once I put his daddy’s job on the line. They sent Daly to spend the summer with relatives in Tennessee. I thought distance would put an end to the romance.
“But Sayre defied me again. Sneaked off and met up with Daly for a weekend, then sashays in one day about a month later and announces that she’s pregnant, says now I can’t stop them from getting married.”
“Only you did.”
“You’re damn right I did. No baby, no marriage.” He snapped his fingers loudly. “I took care of two problems in one night.”
It was such an appalling statement, Beck could think of nothing to say in response. “What about Daly? Did he know about the baby?”
“I don’t know. I never asked Sayre, and even if I had, she wouldn’t have answered me. She went for months without speaking to me. I thought she’d snap out of it, forget it in time.”
Beck remembered the shattered expression on her face when she left Huff’s bedroom. She’d looked as though she had lived through the experience only days ago rather than years.
“I don’t think she’ll ever forget it, Huff,” he said quietly.
“Doesn’t appear that way, does it? She’s picketing, you know. Carrying a sign denouncing me. And she’s the one behind this business with Clark Daly. Stood right there and admitted it. If he doesn’t pull out of this, there’ll be hell to pay from her, and you can bet I’ll catch most of it.”
“He’s going to pull out. I called the hospital as I was driving over. No skull fracture, but several broken ribs. They’re still looking for internal bleeding, but it’s a good sign that none has been detected so far.”
Huff rubbed a hand over his flattop and laughed with chagrin. “Guess the boys went a little overboard.”
“It was a dumb move, Huff.”
His laughter abruptly ceased. He looked at Beck sharply and angrily, which was rare.
“Don’t get your back up,” Beck said calmly. “You pay me to counsel you. If you don’t appreciate my candor, get a new attorney. I’m telling you that drawing first blood was a bad idea. You said so yourself last night.”
“I didn’t know things were going to get out of hand as fast as they did. I wasn’t going to stand around and do nothing.”
