I had hoped to remain here a while longer, even though I recognized it would be a torture, and from time to time spy on you at Farthy. It would have brought me pleasure as well as some pain to see you walking over the grounds or sitting and reading. I would have been like a foolish schoolboy. I know.
This morning, not long after you left me, Tony came to the cottage and told me the news, news I expect you will be bringing to me, too. Only by the time you arrive I will be gone. I know it seems cruel of me to leave Tony at a time like this, but I gave him all the comfort I could while he was here and we had a chance to talk.
I did not tell him about us, about your visit last night. He does not know you know of my existence. I couldn't add that to his troubles at this time. Perhaps there will be a time in the future when you feel he should know. I leave that to you.
You are probably wondering why I feel it
necessary to leave so quickly after Jillian's death.
My dear Heaven, as hard as it may be for you to understand, I feel somewhat responsible. The truth is I enjoyed tormenting her with my presence. As I told you, she saw me a few times and I knew it shocked her each time. I could have told her the truth, that I was not dead, that I was no ghost, but I chose to let her believe she was seeing a spirit. I wanted her to suffer some guilt, for even though it wasn't her fault you were born Tony's daughter, I always resented her for telling me, for exposing that horrible truth between you and me. She was always a very jealous person, resentful of the affection Tony had for me, even when I was just a little boy.
Now I feel terribly guilty about it all. I had no right to punish her. I should have realized it would only bring pain to Tony and even to you. It seems that I bring sadness and tragedy to everyone around me.
Of course, Tony doesn't feel this way. He didn't want me to leave, but in the end I convinced him it was best.
Please stand by him during this time of great need, and comfort him as best you can. You will be acting for both of us.
I expect you and I shall never set eyes upon each other again or touch each other the way we touched each other last night. But the memory of you is so engraved in my heart that I take you with me no matter where I go.
.
Forever and ever, Troy
.
I folded the letter neatly and put it back into the envelope. Then I stood up and went to the front door.
I unlocked it and turned to look about the cottage one more time, then I left, locking the door behind me.
Without turning to look back again, I rushed into the maze and ran through the corridors of hedges, pursued by the sound of my own sobs, running harder and faster in hope of fleeing that part of me that had lived in the-dream. Now it was cursed to wander forever, lost in this maze.
NINE
Old and New Lives
I WAS IN OUR SUITE LYING IN BED
WHEN LOGAN FINALLY arrived. I had cried
myself to sleep, and awakened with my throat raw, my heart like a stone in my chest. I just lay there staring up at the ceiling. Sorrow had seized me and made me its own silent creature. I didn't even turn to greet Logan as he came through the bedroom door.
"Heaven!" He rushed to my side and hugged me. Even though I felt limp in his arms, I welcomed the feel of his strong, comforting embrace and the rich scent of his manly cologne.
"Poor Heaven," he crooned, stroking my neck.
I lowered my head to his shoulder. I felt false, betraying him, knowing he thought he was soothing sorrow brought about solely because of Jillian, but I let him go on. He pressed his face to mine and kissed me.
"It must have been terrible for you," he said.
"I'm sorry I wasn't here when you found her. Tony's taking it very badly," he added. "I stopped by his office to see him on my way up to you and he would barely talk. Is there anything left to do? Anything I could help with? I couldn't get him to say."
"I don't think so," I said, shaking my head. I looked at him, my faithful, devoted Logan, energetic, optimistic, and determined. He was healthy and strong and vibrant. He seemed incapable of being depressed or diminished. His sapphire eyes were full of hope and life. Even now, even during these troubled times, he still possessed the same demeanor of assurance he had when I had first set eyes on him.
How different in temperament he was from
Troy, who always lived under a threatening cloud of sorrow. True, Logan wasn't as sensitive or as poetic, but at this time I welcomed his sunshine like the grass and the wild flowers in the Willies welcomed the sun's rays that slipped through the gloom of the forest.
I knew he would always be there to lean on, should I need to or want to. He was my source of strength, my Rock of Gibraltar.
During the days of mourning, Logan kept in constant contact with his office in Winnerow, but he had the decency to carry on his business out of sight and hearing and rarely, if ever, mentioned it. Tony didn't want to talk about anything but Jillian.
Visitors began to arrive the day after Jillian's death. It fell to me to be the hostess to greet and thank them. The day before the funeral there were over a hundred people at Earthy. Rye Whiskey prepared trays and trays of food and drink. All the servants were wonderfully supportive and terribly concerned about Tony. I saw how much they respected and even loved him.
Logan remained constantly at Tony's side,
looking more and more as if he, and not Troy, were his younger brother. I was proud of him, proud of the way he conversed with people, and proud of the affection and comfort he was able to give to Tony.
Jillian's two sisters and brother didn't arrive until the morning of the funeral. As soon as they came to Farthy, Tony got up from his chair and took them directly into his office to show them Jillian's will and make it very clear that they weren't going to leave with any inheritance. He took the wind out of their sails of greed, gathering some pleasure from their gloomy faces of disappointment. Afterward, he told me this was something Jillian would have loved to have seen.
"They were always jealous of her," he explained, "especially her two sisters. They were so plain and homely looking it was no wonder they couldn't attract a man. They became so sour and so bitter, Jillian hated to be in their company. They never even informed her they had put her mother into a home until months after they had done it."
The elegant Boston church was packed for the funeral; there were even people standing in the rear by the door. Afterward, the funeral procession of fancy automobiles and high society that inched along the highway to the cemetery reminded me of the parade of people who had come to Logan's and my wedding reception. When I looked back at the way these people greeted one another, the men dressed in expensive suits, the women in costly dresses, bedecked in rich jewels, I couldn't help but compare them to people in the Willies at the burial of their own poor and distraught, their faces cloaked in gloom, as they stood by and watched one of their young 'uns or old ones lowered into the earth.
As poor and as unsophisticated as the people in the Willies were, they felt sorrow for one another in a way that suggested they were all of one family.
Perhaps all the hardships, all the struggles tied them so tightly together that it was impossible for them to come to the funeral of one of their neighbors, whether he be young or old, and not feel as though one of their own had passed on.
Afterward, they would return to their own
shacks to ponder their own fragile, vulnerable existence. Death had a freer hand in the Willies; there was less resistance. Being poor made them weak. And yet, I thought, how foolish these rich people were to move about with such arrogance. Did they have no feelings, no empathy? Jillian's death should have put in their hearts the same kind of cold fear as was put in the hearts of the people in the Willies to see one of their own, a woman as rich and as protected as Jillian, so easily claimed by death.
I stood by Tony's side and held his arm as they lowered Jillian's coffin into her grave, and I thought about Troy's plea in his final letter to me
to give Tony enough comfort for both of us. His hand tightened around mine, but he did not weep openly. I felt him shudder and then we all turned to leave the cemetery.
"Well," he said stiffly, "now she's finally at peace. Her stru le is over."
Neither Logan nor I said anything more. We all got into the limo and Miles drove us back to Farthy.
Rye Whiskey had prepared some hot food, but Tony ate little. He left the mourners and went to his suite to sleep and it remained for Logan and me to greet, entertain, and finally say good-bye to people.
One of the mourners who came to pay her
respects was a girlfriend of mine from the Winterhaven School, Amy Luckett, who had been the friendliest to me of all the rich, arrogant, and snotty girls who made my life miserable there. Amy wasn't married. She had been traveling a great deal through Europe and had only recently returned. She promised to come to Farthy in a day or two to visit. I thanked her; she was one of the last to leave.
"Tired?" Logan asked me when we were finally alone
"Yes.'
'Me, too." He put his arm around my shoulders.
'You go up," I said. "I'll be right along."
"Don't be long," he said and left me. I went outside to get a breath of air before going up to our suite. It was that time of the day Granny used to call the gloaming. Darkness had fallen; most of the natural world was preparing to sleep. I looked off at the maze and thought about Troy, wondering where he had gone and what he was thinking at this moment.
Somehow, I was sure his thoughts were of me. My thoughts were interrupted when Miles drove the limo up front. Curtis appeared at the front door with two suitcases and Martha Goodman followed him out of the house.
"Oh, Martha," I called, walking over to her. "I had forgotten you were leaving tonight." I took her hand and then we embraced. "Where will you go now?"
"Oh, the employment agency has already offered me another position in Boston. I'll write to let you know where I am and maybe sometime when you are in the city . . ."
"Oh, of course. I'll take you to lunch," I offered.
She nodded, smiling,and then her face saddened.
"I knocked on Mr. Tatterton's door to say goodbye, but he never responded. You'll tell him for me, please."
"I will. Take good care of yourself, Martha," I said. We kissed and she started for the car. Then she paused and turned back to me.
"That piano music," she said. "It wasn't in Mrs.
Tatterton's imagination and it wasn't in mine, was it?"
We stared at each other for a long moment.
"No, Martha," I finally said. "It was real." She nodded and went on to the limo. I watched it drive away and then I went inside to go up to Logan.
It was that night that I learned that a man and a woman sometimes make love out of a need to comfort each other, and not only out of sexual passion and desire. Logan was already in bed when I arrived. I prepared myself for sleep and got into my sheer nightgown. As soon as I got in beside him he put his arm around me and kissed me. I pressed my face against his shoulder and chest and began to weep. It was true I was weeping for Jillian and for Tom and for Troy, and for all the people I had loved and lost, but I think most of all I was weeping for myself, and even for Logan.
I was weeping for that little girl in the Willies, that wide-eyed, blue-eyed girl who had been forced to grow up too quickly, who had been forced to be a mother to her younger brother and sister and who had seen even that hard, often overwhelming life torn apart by the devastating sale of her brothers and sisters to other families. I was weeping for that yet innocent child victimized by the insanely jealous Kitty Dennison and then befriended and seduced by her husband, Cal. I thought that would be all the love and tenderness there could be for me and was so confused as to mourn the loss of it at first. Most of all, I was weepy for Troy, for the love I should have been able to claim as mine forever.
Logan kissed away my tears the way Troy had and I found myself kissing him back. I needed to be loved. I needed to be reassured and to know that I was alive and that I was cherished. Every kiss, every caress, built the foundation of my fortress of faith in the future. I didn't want loneliness and sorrow. I wanted an end to tears. I wanted to feel something other than sadness, and I knew that through the act of lovemaking I could do that.
I could make my body feel alive; I could make it tingle and send thrilling electricity up and down my spine until the very tips of my fingers sang. I wanted Logan to kiss me everywhere, to touch me everywhere. No part of me was to be left out; it was to be a complete surrender of myself to the ecstasy of our lovemaking. My demands excited him and made him more passionate than he had ever been. I knew the intensity of my kisses surprised him, and he was surprised by how hard and how long I held on to him.
But I couldn't control my urgent need. Our lovemaking was so intense that after it ended, neither of us could speak right away.
"Heaven," he finally said, putting his hand on my shoulder, "there is something . ."
"Shh," I told him. "Don't break the spell," I said. I wanted only to turn over and drift into a deep, peaceful sleep. I did. I barely heard him say good night. My eyelids shut and darkness came thundering down like a heavy black curtain falling with the weight of stones to punctuate the end of a performance.
But I knew that tomorrow it would all begin again.
Right from the morning after Jillian's funeral, a dramatic change came over Tony. He suddenly seemed much older, even though he was twenty years younger than Jillian had been and shouldn't have been showing such signs of age. His hair looked grayer, his eyes looked darker, the wrinkles in his forehead looked deeper, and he seemed to move more slowly.
That aristocratic posture I had always seen somehow seemed stooped.
He didn't dress as impeccably, either. Before, he rarely came downstairs without a jacket and tie.
Now he wore an open shirt and trousers that needed pressing. He didn't brush his hair or shave, and he was consumed with a desire to rifle through old documents, old pictures, all sorts of memorabilia. Immediately after breakfast, which now for him consisted of little more than coffee, he cloistered himself in his office and spent hours and hours going through old cartons and old files. He could not bear to be interrupted by anyone or anything and was very short with both me and Logan.
Calls were coming in from the Tatterton stores and offices, but he neglected them. Logan did what he could, but he didn't know anything about the business and he had his own responsibilities in Winnerow. I knew he was champing at the bit to get back to the project. Finally I told him to return.
"But I hate-To leave you here the way things are now," he said. "Can't you come with me for a few days? I want you with me. It's important to me and—"
"I don't think I should go anywhere just yet, Logan. Don't worry about me. be all right. It's Tony who is going through the hard time."
Logan nodded silently. "Don't I know it. I went in to talk to him about some of the decisions that have to be made in Winnerow and do you know what his response was?" I shook my head. "He acted as if he'd never heard of the project. Which project is that? he said. I didn't know what to do. A moment later he was back at those cartons. I wouldn't have thought Tony was a man comfortable living in an illusion," he said.
"He's too much of a realist; he's too practical."
"Maybe when it came to others, but not himself. We all have our private illusions, Logan."
His eyes widened. "Oh?" He stared at me for a moment, a rather strange look on his face. Then he shrugged. "I guess I'm just going to have to make all the decisions that have to be made, myself."
"Tony expected you would anyway," I said.
"He wouldn't have given you the responsibility if he hadn't trusted you."
"I suppose you're right. Yes. Okay, I'll be back by the weekend," he said. "I'll call every night and you don't hesitate to call me if there are any problems."
"I will. Don't worry," I told him. He made his arrangements to
return to Winnerow and then went up to pack his bag. I was sitting in the living room by myself when he stopped to say good-bye. We kissed and he left. I couldn't blame him for wanting to leave this gloomy house right now.
I stopped in to see Tony a few times, each time finding him absorbed by a document or a photo album.
"You've got to start eating regularly again and get back into the swing of things as soon as possible, Tony," I told him the last time I looked in on him. "It's the only way to overcome grief."
He stopped reading and looked up at me as if just realizing what had taken place. The curtains on all his windows were shut tightly, so that the bright afternoon sunlight couldn't warm the dull, dark, and dismal room. The only light on was the lamp on his desk and it cast a pale, yellow glow over him. He looked about the office, down at his documents and pictures, and then back at me. Then he sat back in his chair and pushed his reading glasses up over his forehead
"Well," he said. "What time is it?" He looked at the grandfather clock in the corner to answer his own question. "I guess I've been in here quite a long time."
"Yes, you have. And you've not eaten anything substantial."
"I like it when you worry about me," he said, smiling, suddenly animated. "Your mother never really worried about me," he added.
"My mother?" Why would he even bring up such a thing? I wondered. My mother had been too young to have such concerns. She ran away when she was barely old enough to bear mature responsibilities.
"My mother?" I repeated.
The half smile on his face slowly faded and he sat forward, shaking his head as he did so. Then he scrubbed his cheeks with his palms and rubbed his eyes with his fists as if wiping away tracks of sleep made by the sandman. He took a deep breath and looked up at me.
"I'm sorry," he said finally. "I lost myself in time for a moment there. You're standing in the shadows and I was retrying a moment when Leigh had come through that door. I guess I am concentrating on the past too much. You're right. I should shower and dress and eat a decent meal. I don't know what I'm doing or why I'm doing it. Heaven, I feel so guilty about what happened to Jillian," he added in a confessional tone.
Fallen Hearts (Casteel Series #3) Page 16
