Birthright

by Judith Arnold

  He nodded, looking away. His mother was proud of him. She probably even loved him, in her way. But like Lily’s late husband and her father, Evie Mazerik had made her own choices, and she’d made them without regard for how they would affect anyone else.

  She had chosen never to tell Aaron the truth about who he was. She had raised him with no father. She had chosen to deny her son the one thing he needed to know. That choice of hers still hurt him. Even if he loved his mother, he could hate her for that.

  He drained his bottle, set it on the table with a quiet thump and stood up. His mood was going south, fast. He’d made Lily feel better about herself; he’d better leave before things deteriorated. “I’ve got to go,” he said.

  She sprang to her feet and put her glass down next to his bottle. “I’m sorry.” She gave him a sheepish smile. “I must be the worst hostess you’ve ever had.”

  “I don’t deal with hostesses on a regular basis,” he said, then smiled. “You’re fine, Lily. Why do you keep apologizing?”

  Her smile expanded. “I’m a long way from fine. And you’re very tolerant to put up with me.”

  “Tolerance has nothing to do with it.” He put up with her—God, no, he didn’t do that. He enjoyed being with her, enjoyed talking to her, enjoyed looking at her far too much—because she was Lily. Because she was lovely. Because in spite of everything she’d been through, she had a core of innocence and generosity. Because even being caught in a nightmare marriage for ten years couldn’t make her cynical. Because, like her husband, he believed she was the sweetest woman he’d ever met.

  She peered up at him, and he realized she was standing too close to him. “Why do you put up with me, then?” she asked.

  Because when you look at me, I can’t look away, he almost said. Because you’re everything I want and can’t have.

  And then, before he could stop her, she rose on tiptoe and touched his lips with hers.

  No, he thought, but the word wouldn’t emerge. His throat slammed shut against it, barring it from escape.

  His lungs filled with her scent, faintly flowery but subtle, and his eyes filled with the sight of her, so near, so womanly. His hands curled into fists at his sides, aching from the amount of energy it took to keep them away from her. He wanted to touch her hair, to feel its feathery softness. He wanted to touch her shoulders, her back, to pull her against him and kiss her the way a man kissed a woman.

  No.

  She stretched to kiss him again, perching her hands on his shoulders for balance. Her mouth moved beneath his, so soft. Whisper soft and so, so sweet.

  The only way he could keep from responding would be if he died right that instant. But he was alive; every damned cell in his body was bristling with life. He couldn’t stop all that life from surging through him, clamoring for Lily, hungering for her.

  He lost the battle with his hands. They lifted to her cheeks, cupped them, tipped her head back.

  And he kissed her. The way he’d wanted to the first time he’d ever seen her. The way he’d wanted to every day since that first time. The way he’d wanted to in his car the other night. The way he’d sworn to himself he never would, never could.

  His mouth opened over hers. She parted her lips and lured his tongue in. A low moan broke free from him, desolate, desperate. If only he could have kissed her and felt nothing, his obsession with her would wither and he’d get on with his life. But this…

  It was too good. Too deep. Too wrenchingly erotic. She nestled into him, her slender body tight against him, her breasts flattened against his chest. Her breath mingled with his, her sighs, her fingers twining through the hair at the nape of his neck until they could lace together there. Arousal shot through him, hot and fierce and painful, making him shudder inside.

  Lily, he thought. Lily. The woman of his dreams. The girl of his fantasies.

  His sister.

  “God,” he groaned, pulling back, twisting away from her. “Stop.”

  He was talking to himself, not her, but she obviously didn’t understand that. She released him, her hands flying from him as if burned. Her cheeks were flushed, whether from passion or embarrassment he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t bear to look at her long enough to figure out what she was feeling.

  He staggered to the porch railing, gripped it, leaned over and let the cool night air wash over him. His stomach roiled; he hoped he wouldn’t throw up. He was still aroused, and that alone nauseated him.

  His sister. God help him, his sister.

  A stark silence lengthened between them. He listened to that silence until his breathing grew steadier, until his pulse ceased drumming in his ears. Until his body subsided and his hands no longer trembled and the crickets filled the emptiness with their chirping.

  “I suppose you’ll be saying I shouldn’t apologize for that, either,” Lily murmured.

  She sounded wretched. Distressed but resigned, as if she considered his rejection of her natural and inevitable, as if she counted herself the biggest loser in the world.

  “Don’t apologize,” he said, his voice rusty and ragged. “It’s not your fault.”

  “Whose fault is it?”

  He wished he had the guts to face her, but he knew if he turned around, he would see sorrow in her eyes, disappointment—and that disappointment would be directed at herself. “Mine,” he said, staring out at the roses. They looked platinum in the night. “It’s my fault.”

  “Why is it your fault? You can’t help it if you don’t want me.”

  He swore, a quiet, ugly word. “I want you,” he said, the most painful three words he had ever spoken. “I want you, Lily. I just…can’t.”

  “Can’t want me? Or can’t act on it?” She sounded bewildered. “Why not?”

  He couldn’t tell her she was his sister. Not now. Not after they’d already told each other too many things. Not when his only proof of their relationship lay in the beating of his heart.

  “I can’t. That’s all.” Before he could say another word, before he could destroy her world any more, he turned and stalked down the porch, around her house to the front and into his car. Gravel flew as he drove into the night.

  TRYING TO FALL asleep would have been futile, so she didn’t bother. After cleaning the kitchen, she changed out of her dress and into an old shirt and jeans, then slammed a Don Henley CD on her stereo, a collection of songs about lovers screwing up, wounding each other, leaving each other in forlorn solitude and staggering alone through the landscape of love. Then she attacked her canvas.

  The halogen lamp blazed in her studio, filling it with a light brighter than the sun at noon. The paints lent their pungent scent to the air. She mixed them on a plate, slapping browns and greens together, stabbing the dollops with her palette knife and slashing the resulting colors onto the canvas.

  She was painting corn. Indiana. The open endless fields of her home, the bleakness of her world. Dying corn, broken stalks beneath a lemon-hued sky.

  She wouldn’t cry. Not over the mess she’d made of her life. Not over the travesty of her marriage, the decade she’d spent trying to prevent her world from crashing and burning, and not over the ultimate crash, the ultimate burn. She wouldn’t cry over her inability to reach out to her old friends or her inability to connect with a new friend.

  She wouldn’t cry over Aaron. She wouldn’t shed a single tear over how she’d taken the biggest risk of her life by kissing him, and he’d pushed her away.

  How many failures could the golden girl of Riverbend High rack up? How many imperfections could Miss Perfect carry inside her? How many times could a woman crash and burn before all that was left were ashes?

  He’d said he wanted her, she recalled, studying the Dijon-mustard blob of paint on the plate and adding more green to it. She blended the paints until the blob was the shade of a drying husk, then daubed it onto the canvas with a half-inch brush.

  Aaron had said he wanted her, and he hadn’t had to say it. When he’d kissed her, th
ose few blissful moments when he’d let go, given in, taken the same chance she’d taken, he hadn’t had to say what had been so obvious. She’d felt it in his kiss, in his ragged breath, in his hands stroking her cheeks, in the pressure of his arousal.

  Her own husband hadn’t responded to her like that, not at the end. The last few years of her marriage had been as bleak, as dry and broken as the cornfield she was painting. Half the time Tyler had been too drunk to function—and she’d been relieved. The other half, she’d given in to him to avoid a fight. Until that last night, when she’d had enough and thrown him out of their bed.

  Aaron hadn’t completely convinced her she wasn’t responsible for Tyler’s death. But he’d made her feel a little better, a little less guilty. Before tonight she’d found him irresistibly attractive. After he’d said what he had, she’d gone beyond simple attraction. Any man who could offer such healing words to a woman like her…

  She could fall in love with him.

  But he wouldn’t let her. What felt so right had suddenly turned wrong. Aaron had seemed sickened by her, and he’d run away. The man who had goaded her to stop playing it safe had fled like a coward at the first sign of danger.

  She stepped back to study her canvas. She’d been at it for hours. The CD was finished; the house was silent. Someone who didn’t know what the painting was supposed to be might not guess by looking at it. The canvas was covered with angles and points, stalks bent and broken as if they’d just been pummeled by a midsummer hail storm. The sky had an eerie post-storm glow.

  It was a sad picture, she realized. A mournful picture. An angry picture.

  It was the most honest picture she’d ever painted.

  “HI, MOM,” LILY SAID.

  It was eight-thirty in the morning, and she was running on fumes. She’d dozed off on the floor of the studio for a few hours and been awakened by the warmth of the sun spilling in through the windows. As her eyes had adjusted, she’d kneaded the stiffness out of her neck and studied the painting on the easel. It was still angry, still mournful, still an honest depiction of her life—only, she noticed something else: some of the stalks were still green and standing.

  If the painting was a reflection of her, she wasn’t dead yet.

  She’d taken a long hot shower, loosening her cramped muscles a bit more, then consumed a cup of coffee. She’d felt odd, as if she had one foot in Riverbend and the other in a dream somewhere, a dream brimming with possibilities. If she could survive one risk, she could survive others. Her life might be a disaster, but at least it would be an interesting, daring disaster.

  She’d decided to pay a call on her mother, another golden girl of Riverbend, someone who had always lived up to everyone’s expectations. Maybe Lily and her mother hadn’t been close when Lily had been younger. But that was no reason for them not to become close now. Eleanor might have knowledge she could teach Lily. Lily wanted to learn.

  She found her mother still in her bathrobe, her breezy blond hair unbrushed and her face untouched by makeup. Eight-thirty was perhaps a half hour before civilized people dropped in on each other. But Lily was family. Her mother didn’t have to groom herself for a visit from her daughter.

  “Lily! Hello!” Her mother’s smile was warm enough to assure Lily she was welcome. “Dad isn’t home. He’s already left for the clinic.”

  Lily suffered a pang at the realization that her mother thought she would stop by only to see her father. “That’s fine,” she said softly. “You’re the one I want to talk to.”

  A fleeting look of bewilderment crossed her mother’s face, and then her smile widened, its courtesy failing to mask her curiosity. “Come on in,” she said, holding the door wider so Lily could enter. “You must think I’m a lazybones, not even dressed at this hour…”

  “I think lounging around in your pajamas is a blessed luxury.” Lily said. “No need to explain.” She followed her mother into the sun-filled kitchen.

  The room hadn’t changed much since Lily had left home. It was still cheery, the knotty-pine cabinets golden in the morning light, the tile floor spotless. Lily’s mother could afford to pay someone to wash and wax her floors, but she didn’t. Her career was keeping her husband’s life tidy and comfortable, and she wasn’t ready to retire.

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  “Yes, thanks.” Even though Lily’s mind was alert, her body was sore and sluggish from having slept on the floor—and slept too little. Another cup of coffee would give her nervous system a much-needed jolt.

  Her mother fixed two cups, adding skim milk to Lily’s as well as her own. They sat facing each other at the round pine table by the window.

  “How are you?” Eleanor asked.

  Could she tell Lily was teetering on a fine edge? Was she asking a question she already knew the answer to—that Lily was a wreck? Or was she just being polite?

  “I don’t know,” Lily replied, determined to remain as honest with her mother as she’d been with her painting last night, and with Aaron before that.

  Her mother’s gaze softened with concern. “Ah, sweetie. You’ve been through so much these past few months. Losing Tyler so horribly, selling your house, moving back to Riverbend—”

  “Tell me about love,” Lily said. Her voice sounded young to her, a child begging for a lesson.

  Her mother’s eyes widened. She sat back in her chair, and Lily almost laughed at the puzzlement in her mother’s expression. Her eyebrows quirked up, her mouth pursed; even her hair looked more mussed, stray tufts standing on end. “Love?”

  “I’ve been married, I’ve been widowed, and I still don’t get it.”

  Her mother regarded her thoughtfully. The puzzlement seemed to fade from her eyes as she took a sip of her coffee. “Didn’t you love Tyler?” she asked.

  “Of course I did,” Lily said. She had loved Tyler—very much at the beginning and intermittently even at the end. He’d swept her off her feet, but even swept, she wouldn’t have married him if she hadn’t loved him. She wouldn’t have tried so hard to keep the marriage alive if she hadn’t cared. “But…there were bad times in the marriage, too, Mom.”

  “There are always bad times in a marriage.”

  “Not yours,” Lily argued. Her parents were perfect together. Yet her mother abruptly looked away, staring out the window into the morning sun. Lily leaned forward and covered her mother’s hand with her own. “Mom?”

  “Even the best marriages have bad times in them,” her mother murmured.

  “But you and Dad love each other so much. I know you do.”

  “I love him more than I can say,” her mother confessed, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  “And he loves you.”

  Her mother snapped her head around to Lily, and she saw the pain, a damp shimmer in her mother’s eyes. “I don’t think so.”

  Lily’s heart thumped against her ribs. Her own woes and frustrations went forgotten as she absorbed her mother’s words and joined them to her own recent observations: her mother’s investing in anti-wrinkle cream and perking up her hair, her father’s seeming indifference to her mother’s upcoming birthday. “What are you talking about?” she asked, trying to tamp down her suspicions.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” her mother said hastily, blinking away her tears and shaping a poignant smile. “I don’t know why I said such a thing.”

  “You said it because you believe it.”

  “No. It’s just the silly insecurities of an old lady.”

  “You’re not old, and your insecurities aren’t silly. Talk to me, Mom. We need to talk to each other about these things.” She tightened her hold on her mother’s hand, as if she could pass trust from her fingertips through her mother’s skin and into her heart.

  “It’s really nothing.” Her mother used her free hand to dig a tissue from the pocket of her bathrobe. She dabbed at her cheeks, blew her nose and attempted another feeble smile. “Your father and I have been together forever, Lily. You know that. Maybe the fire is
just burning itself out a little, that’s all.”

  “Dad is devoted to you,” Lily insisted, wanting desperately to believe it.

  “Dad has his life. He has his job, his golf, his friends. He has glory in this town. Everyone knows and loves him. I—” she sighed deeply and gave up trying to smile “—don’t fit in anymore. I think he’s…bored with me.”

  “You aren’t boring!”

  “He’s been staring at the same face across this table for thirty-seven years, Lily. That’s an awfully long time. He’s tired of me.”

  “But you’re not tired of him.”

  “I’m different from him. It takes much less to make me happy.” Eleanor sighed again. “I used to think all I needed to be happy was to know that I was making him happy. And you. When my loved ones were happy, I was content. It was all I needed.”

  “You need much more than that, Mom. Everyone does.” Lily stroked her mother’s hand gently, feeling the bones beneath the skin. “Has Dad said he wants to leave you?”

  “No, but—”

  “Is he cheating on you?” It hurt her to speak the words, but she forced herself to get them out into the air.

  “I don’t know.”

  Lily’s heart slammed against her ribs again. “Do you have any evidence?”

  Her mother sipped her coffee. She seemed stronger, not quite as shaky or close to tears. “He’s inattentive. He sometimes seems to forget I’m here. He drifts off when I’m talking to him. I wonder if he’s thinking about someone else.”

  “Just because he drifts off—”

  “And he doesn’t tell me where he’s going. He leaves and goes off and I have no idea where he is.”

  Lily recalled that past Saturday, when she’d gone to the golf course to find her father and he hadn’t been there. Where had he been while her mother had thought he was golfing? Lily had finally found him at the Sunnyside Café, chatting with Aaron’s mother, of all people, but where had he been before that? What had he been doing Saturday morning?

  “All these things add up to circumstantial evidence,” Lily said, resorting to the legalisms she’d learned in her decade as a lawyer’s wife. “They don’t prove a case. Maybe Dad assumes you know where he is. Or he thinks it’s not that important that you know. Maybe he leaves intending to go one place, but he gets sidetracked and winds up somewhere else. Without more concrete evidence, you can’t say he’s having an affair.”