"Heaven! Heaven!" I heard a familiar voice call. Turning, I stared at the lovely young girl running my way. Was that Fanny? Fanny running in a slow and awkward way? "Heaven," she gasped, throwing her arms about me. "Tom came an tole me ya were leavin, an I couldn't let ya go way thinkin I don't kerr, when I do, I do! So skerred we'd be late an miss ya! Sorry I was mean t'ya, but they don't want me t'talk to ya!" She drew away and, with a broad, happy smile, threw open her heavy fur coat to display her bulging middle. Then she whispered in my ear. "Got t'Reverend's baby in there. It's gonna be so sweet, I jus know it is. His wife is gonna pass it off as her own, an give me ten grand fer it . . . then I'm headin on t'New York!"
Nothing could surprise me anymore. I could only stare at her. "You'd sell your own baby, for ten thousand?"
"Ya'd neva do that, would ya?" she asked. "Don't ya make me sorry I said yes when Tom came an said I had t'come an say good-bye." Tears shone in her dark eyes. "Do what I feel I gotta, jus as ya do."
She backed off, and only then did I see Tom, who was smiling at me in the sweetest, most loving way. He stepped forward to take me in his arms. "Cal Dennison called and told me you were leaving for Boston today, Heavenly . . . and he asked me not to bring along Pa."
Yanking away, I cried out, "You're not coming with me, are you?"
He spread his large hands wide in a
supplicating gesture. "LOOK AT ME! What do you think your grandparents will feel when they, see you've brought your half brother with you? They won't want me! I'm all hillbilly! Like Pa! Haven't you said that many times since you came back here? I'm not refined and dainty the way you are, with culture and manners. Heavenly, I'm thinking of your welfare when I say I've got to stay with Pa, even though I'd much rather go with you."
"You're lying! You'd rather stay with Pa!"
"Heavenly, please listen! You can't go to your mother's family hauling along all your hillbilly relatives! I want your life to turn out right, and it won't if I go with you!"
"Tom, PLEASE! I need you!"
He shook his head, his wild red hair flying. "If you need me later on, after you're settled in, write and I'll come, I swear that. But for now, start out fresh."
"He's right," vouched Fanny, coming closer and looking around nervously, as anxious to leave as Cal had been. "It was Tom who made me come, an I'm glad I did. I love ya, Heaven. Didn't want t'close t'door in yer face . . . but I do what I hav'ta. Mrs. Wise is takin me away so my baby kin be born where nobody will know who we are; an when it's ova, she'll go back t'Winnerrow with her own baby, an she'll tell everyone it's hers, an I was jus a no-good Casteel an ran off with a no-good fella."
"And you won't care?"
"Nope. Kin't affort ta." She smiled and backed off. "Tom, we gotta git back fore I'm missed. Ya promised me, ya did."
Fanny, who'd always said she wanted a baby so much, was selling hers, just as Pa had sold his.
Again I turned to Tom. "So you're going to stay with Pa and his new wife. Why don't you tell me about her--one of the girls from Shirley's Place?"
He flushed and looked uneasy. "No, not that kind at all. Right now I've got to drive Fanny back home. Good luck, Heavenly. Write . . ." And with those words he kissed my cheek and seized Fanny by the arm and hurried her away.
"Good-bye, good-bye!" I was calling again, waving frantically to Fanny, who turned and smiled through her tears. Oh, how I hated good-byes! Would I ever see Fanny or Tom again?
And why was Tom turning around to smile at me in
that odd, sad kind of way? I watched him and Fanny until they were out of sight, then turned and sat again, thinking now I had ten more minutes before my flight. It was a small airport with a nice little park outside where I could watch the planes as they landed. I paced back and forth in the frail autumn sunlight, with the wind whipping my hair and stealing all the neatness and making it wild again. I almost felt I was back in the hills.
My eyes swam in tears.
Then it was time for me to go to my plane, which was boarding passengers. For the first time in my life I was boarding a small plane, climbing the ramp, taking a seat and buckling my seat belt, as if I'd done this many times before. In Atlanta I transferred to another, larger plane that would land in Boston.
I'd begin a new life in a new place. My past would be unknown.
Strange that Kitty could be so happy just because my pa came to see her one time, and brought her roses, and said he was sorry, when Cal had bought her roses a hundred times, and he'd said he was sorry a million times, and that hadn't given her peace or happiness--or the will to survive. Who would have ever believed Pa could inspire that kind of lasting love?
But I'd asked myself that before, and hadn't found the answer. Why ask again?
I closed my eyes and determined to stop thinking about the past and clear the way for the future. Kitty and Cal would go back to Candlewick when she was released from the hospital, and they'd live on in her pink-and-white house, and somebody else would water all those plants. I reached in my pocket for a tissue to dry my eyes and blow my nose. To distract myself I opened the Winnerrow newspaper that I'd picked up in the airport just before I left and casually flipped through its pages.
It had only four sheets. On the fourth one I stared at an old photograph of Kitty Setterton Dennison, taken when she was about seventeen years old. How pretty she'd been, so fresh-faced and eager and sweet-looking. It was an obituary!
Kitty Setterton Dennison, age 37, died today in the Winnerrow Memorial Hospital. The deceased is survived by her husband, Calhoun R. Dennison, her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Porter Setterton, her sister, Maisie Setterton, and her brother, Daniel Setterton. Funeral services will be held at the Setterton family home on Main Street, on Wednesday, 2 P.M.
It took me a while before all that sank in.
Kitty was dead. Had died the day before I left Winnerrow. Cal had driven me to the airport, and he must have known and didn't tell me!
Why?
He'd rushed away. . . why?
Then I guessed why.
I bowed my face into my hands and sobbed again, not so much for Kitty as for the man who'd finally gained the freedom he'd lost at the age of twenty.
Freedom at last, I could almost hear him shouting, to be what he wanted, do what he wanted, how he wanted--and he didn't want me to deprive him of what he had to have.
What kind of crazy world was this anyway, that men could take love, then throw it back? Cal wanted to go on alone.
Bitterness overwhelmed me.
Maybe that's the way I should be, more like a man, take 'em and leave 'em and not care so much. I'd never have a husband; only lovers to hurt and discard, as Pa had done. Sobbing, I folded the paper and stuffed it into the pocket on the back of the seat in front of me.
Then, once more, I slipped a photograph out of a large brown envelope, the one Tom had handed me just before he pulled Fanny away, and at the time I hadn't even considered it important. "Hold on to this," he'd said in a low whisper, as if he hadn't wanted Fanny to know. There they were, Our Jane and Keith, looking older, stronger, happier. I stared and stared at Our Jane's sweet, pretty face, and then it came to me who she looked like. Annie Brandywine Casteel! Granny born again in Our Jane, just as I could see a bit of Grandpa in Keith's good-looking young face. Oh, they did deserve the best, the very best, and for now I'd do nothing to bring unhappy memories to them.
My tears dried. I knew without doubt that someday Fanny would reach her goals, no matter what she had to do to gain them.
What about me? I knew now that every event in anyone's life changed some facet of them--what was I now? Even as I thought that, my spine stiffened. From this day forward I'd step boldly, without fear or shame, not timid, nor shy, nor to be taken advantage of. If you gave me nothing else, Kitty, you did give me true knowledge about my strength; through thick and thin, through hell and back, I'd survive.
Sooner or later I'd come out the winner.
And as for Pa, he'd see me again. He s
till had a huge debt to pay, and pay he would before I quit this world that had shown me so little mercy.
As for now--Boston. The home of my mother. Where I'd change, as if magically, into all that my mother had been--and more.
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