by Freda, Paula
"Herbert," the old housekeeper called from the rear entrance. "Mark would like to see you before you leave."
"I'll be right there, Geraldine."
The years had turned her hair completely grey, as it had her husband's, Harry, the handyman. They had cared for Mark's house and property since the time of Carol's grandparents. Mark refused to retire them and insisted they continue to live in the attached apartment specially built for them at the time of their employment. He hired additional help to relieve Geraldine and Harry of the heavier chores. The Carlsons had never hidden their affection for the old couple.
Carol's voice grated. "Well, what's keeping you?" she asked, eyeing him sardonically.
Herb frowned. Sometimes he wondered what he saw in her.
"See you later," he said, standing and heading back into the house.
"Hmmm," Carol whispered under her breath. Why couldn't the fates have given him Evan's features and gentle ways? She would have married him by now. Contrary to what she made him think, she wasn't blind to his qualities, or to his affection for her. She'd never let him know how well he saw into her character, or how his piercing grey eyes sometimes discomposed her, especially in the moonlight, when they glinted metallic silver.
CHAPTER TWO
Carol stayed in the garden, resenting the fact that no one understood her, least of all, Herb, until the housekeeper came to tell her that lunch was ready. The family usually ate the midday meal in the large colonial-styled kitchen.
She entered the kitchen and sat on the left side of the table at her normal place from her earliest memories. She never tired of admiring this room. Aside from its modern utilities, the room transported one into the past. Generations of Carlsons had walked across the bricked floor under the high-beamed ceiling, and sat at the smooth rectangular, dark wood table, their backs straight and stalwart in the slate-back chairs with rush seats.
Heirloom plates handed down proudly from mother to daughter added color to the white walls and adorned the dark wood shelves of an antique hutch-on-buffet. On the stone mantel above the fireplace stood centuries-old tin plates and pewter tankards, copper teapots and fine porcelain figures. An authentic spinning wheel rested beneath a pair of windows dressed with gathered lace.
With Geraldine in and out of the pantry, the door to the food closet had been left partly open. The pantry was the room where as a child, she had liked to hide and play, imagining herself a colonial housewife, running her household, composing her guest list and dinner menu. She had always considered Geraldine a fantastic cook who continued the tradition of keeping the shelves within stocked with jars of homemade jams and canned fruits, and an assortment of aromatic herb sprigs she hung from a cord strung high across the pantry’s width.
Geraldine's husband entering the kitchen interrupted her reverie. He'd been working in the garden, pruning and weeding. He was lean and grey-haired and in his mid-seventies, but still active and capable of landscaping the grounds. The Carlsons loved the old couple, and thought of them more as family than loyal servants.
Mark and Cybelle entered the kitchen and sat down at the table, Mark at the head, and Cybelle on his right, refusing to sit at the opposite end of the long table, preferring to be near her husband. Up until a few years ago, Carol's younger siblings, two brothers and a sister, had occupied the table as well. But Jessica had married a rancher in Montana, and Henry and Richard were attending graduate school abroad.
"Well, how is our lovely daughter feeling today?" Mark asked.
"I'm hanging in there, Dad," Carol sighed.
Cybelle shook her head. "You don't sound it. On his way out, Herb said you felt miserable."
Carol scowled. "I wish he'd mind his own business."
"He was only showing honest concern," Mark said. "You know he's always tried to be a friend to you."
Cybelle added, "I'm sure by now you've guessed how he feels about you."
"Is that why he's always taunting me?"
"What has he done to taunt you," Cybelle asked, in all seriousness.
"Well, for instance, he calls me Cat."
Mark couldn't hold back a chuckle.
"My name is Carol."
"He's just jesting with you," Mark said.
"No, he's not. He enjoys insulting me."
"He does not," Cybelle protested. "You know very well how he feels about you."
"Yes, mom, and he knows how I feel about him. He knows I have absolutely no interest in him. Never have, and never will! And that's why he taunts me, because he's too proud and arrogant to accept that fact."
"Herb?" Mark asked, with a bewildered expression.
Cybelle protested, "He knows his worth, but arrogant, No."
"Your mother's right," Mark said. "He's one of the most liked employees in my firm. Smart, yet always welcomes his co-workers' opinions with an open-mind. He's a stickler for details, but he's never considered himself a know-it-all."
"I remember him as a young boy," Cybelle said, "And I can't forget that he saved your life when you stubbornly ignored the news alert about the thinness of the pond ice that warm winter. If he hadn't followed you like a puppy dog, and jumped in after you when the ice cracked—" Cybelle's dark eyes glistened with threatening tears, her hands gripping the edge of the table.
"Cybelle, sweetheart," Mark solaced, covering her hand closest to his."
Carol felt immediate remorse. Her mother was a well-adjusted woman in her mid-fifties, but the memory of watching her own parents die in a house fire when she was sixteen, still gave her occasional nightmares, making Mark and her children, even more precious to her.
"Mother, please," Carol entreated. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. Let's not talk about Herb."
To change the subject, Carol inquired of her father, "Mom told me you're thinking of opening a branch in Switzerland?"
Glad of her tact for once, Mark answered, "Yes, I am. An office located abroad would eliminate some of the travel involved with international patent filing, consultations and interviews."
Mark glanced at Cybelle with a slight tightening of his mouth as though he were preparing to say something controversial and debatable. Cybelle took up the challenge.
"Sweetheart," she began, smiling warmly at Carol. "As you know, Dad's office here is doing well, and he can't spare much of his time, or his employees, to supervise the establishment and management of a new branch. You haven't yet decided on a career. And you've always been the most intelligent of our children. Would you consider joining the firm as a business consultant and supervising the opening of the new branch in Geneva, Switzerland, once the locale is approved?"
Carol's eyes widened. "Dad? Me?"
"Yes," Mark affirmed. "You've had the best education we can afford. You're smart, aware, and lovely to boot. The perfect representative to deal with Geneva's top echelon in establishing a foreign branch for my firm."
"You're right about my talents, of course. But wouldn't one of your lawyers be a better choice. Outside of helping out occasionally as a typist in your office during summer breaks, am I qualified to manage a complete branch?"
"I'm not asking you to do all the work involved. We have lawyers for that. I trust your impressions and your judgment—" He clarified, "in business matters."
Carol bit down a retort. His remark was not unfair after her behavior these past years regarding Evan.
Cybelle urged, "What do you think? Time abroad might ease your sadness at losing Evan. New sites, new vistas, a career, your best talents utilized, a re-assertment of yourself, your self-esteem. Not to mention the big help you'd be to your father, and me."
"May I think on it?"
Her father posited, "I need your answer by the end of the week." He offered no further explanation, but Carol knew there were urgent decisions to be made if the foreign branch was to become a reality.
"Noted," she agreed.
Geraldine and her assistant, a young local girl hired as a helper to the old housekeeper, entered and began s
erving lunch.
When lunch was over, and Carol had left the table, Mark turned to Cybelle. "I hope we're doing the right thing not telling her Herb will be accompanying her to add his expertise and as a chaperone."
Carol cringed. "Telling her would have elicited a quick refusal. Yet, Mark, you remember that as a child, Carol and Herb were inseparable."
"Until she met Evan."
"Perhaps," Cybelle sighed, "if she's pushed into working with him, for your sake and that of the firm, and the task you've assigned her, she'll be stubborn enough to see it through, possibly regain the camaraderie she once shared with Herb."
Mark chuckled. "Stubbornness, she's inherited an abundance from you, my sweet wife."
Cybelle laughed. Mark tweaked her nose. Sixteen years his junior, she still looked so young to him, even with the silver-streaked cocoa-brown hair. "Evan wasn't the man for Carol," Mark said. "She tried to emulate the beginning of our romance."
"With one difference," Cybelle said. "You already loved me."
"And you always knew that, despite my best efforts to keep you safe from me."
"In my teen years, yes. Now that we've reared children of our own, I respect you all the more for keeping me safe during my most vulnerable years. But when I grew into womanhood, Heavens, what you put me through!"
Mark laughed heartily. "What I put you through?" he countered. He stood up and drew her into his arms. "My feisty, sweet, stubborn ward. You demolished all my defenses; swept the floor from under me. I think your father suspected the outcome of appointing me your guardian."
"He respected you and held you and your parents in high esteem. He never doubted your morals and sense of honor, or he would never have left me in your care."
"Sorely tempted," Mark admitted. "But thank the good Lord, I never lost my head. My heart, for sure, but not my head, until the time was right and you had made your choice."
Cybelle held him tightly, her heart pressed to his. Her gentleman to the core, refined, debonair, hair white streaked with years of loving her and their children. A verse she had written years ago, shortly after becoming his ward, once again came to mind.
The Bluejay and the Sparrow,
Sparrow thrust from your nest,
Fluttering, twittering your very best,
Lonely, helpless, you fear
What the next moment brings,
For a blue jay has swooped
And caught you in its wings.
CHAPTER THREE
The jet settled into a level run above the clouds. Carol unbuckled her seat belt and picked up the Switzerland Travel Guide she had placed on the empty seat beside her. She paged through it, admiring the photos of snow-covered hills and mist shrouded mountaintops, huge placid lakes and wide, long flowing rivers. centuries-old double-decker farmhouses, Romanesque and Gothic old-world stone structures and Cathedrals, modern business buildings and luxurious hotels, silvery sloping glaciers and lavish flower gardens, vineyards, wineries and distilleries, and comments about Switzerland's numerous dairies where cheeses of all varieties were made by hand from milk, and references to delectable Swiss chocolate factories and expert watch crafters.
She leaned back, the guidebook kindling the tourist in her. She had visited England and Rome during summer breaks in her college years, but not Switzerland. She closed her eyes, for the first time in months, feeling an unfettered sense of joy and expectation, so much so she barely felt someone settling into the empty seat beside her, until the flight attendant stopped the beverage cart at her row, and asked, "What would you like to drink, Miss? Sir?
"W-what?" Carol opened her eyes. A man sat beside her.
"Cat, would you like a beverage?"
"Herb?!" She stared, gaping. "What the—
Before she could utter a startled expletive, Herb glanced up at the flight attendant. "A brandy for the lady, a scotch for me, please."
His reference to her as a lady, kept her from using an expletive in front of the flight attendant. She controlled her outburst until the woman had moved to the next row. "What are you doing here?" she exclaimed.
"Your parents thought it best to wait to tell you I'm their choice to head their legal department at the new branch, once you and I both approve the branch's location."
"Wasn't that supposed to be my job?" Carol asked through clenched teeth.
"It is," Herb said, grinning. "You're Public Relations, and I take care of the legal details."
"Ohhhh," she punctuated, green eyes metaphorically flinging daggers.
"Your father wanted the best for his overseas branch. And we're the best in his firm."
Carol gritted her teeth and glanced around her. The seats were all taken. For an instant she entertained the ludicrous thought of locating a parachute and jumping off the plane. She opted for leaning back, staring straight ahead tight-lipped, determined the moment she disembarked, to use her open return ticket to immediately fly back home."
"Carol, look, your dislike of me aside, your father needs our expertise. For his sake, let's cooperate, do our jobs to the best of our ability, and once the new branch is running smoothly, someone else can take over for you.
Carol gazed at him, surprised. He'd actually used her given name. And his tone sounded earnest. It was no secret how much he respected her father and how beholden he felt toward him for employing him straight out of law school. She recognized that her parents had meant her no harm by conveniently not mentioning she would be working with Herb, realizing she'd never have accepted the job if she had known.
She sighed, some of her anger subsiding. "All right," she relented. "For my parents' sake, and the new branch. But I'm warning you, one taunt, one tease, so help me—"
"Thank you, Carol." He smiled pleasantly. She remembered the young boy who followed her about as she played in the garden behind the house and the grounds surrounding the estate. Sometimes, when no grownup was looking, she'd climb over the stone fence that bordered the property, and manage to part-climb, part slide down to the banks of the Hudson River. Herb was pudgy at that early age, but he stumbled persistently behind her, most of the time rolling downhill, arriving at her side, bruised and disheveled. He had the preposterous idea that she needed his protection, so much so that as she and Herb grew, her parents expected it of him. He became her chaperone.
She didn't object, because he never intruded in her freedom. He acted more as an escort who blended into the background and only interfered if she needed help.
She met Evan around the time she turned fifteen. Her mother's best friend, Evan's mother, who still lived on Long Island, became very ill. The family could not afford a stay-in nurse, and when Cybelle heard that her friend's only recourse was a nursing home, she insisted on staying with her and her family that included Evan and his sister Kathleen. Cybelle took her eldest daughter, Carol, to help as well. She had Geraldine and Harry to help with her own children. And Mark, always a generous and understanding man, although he missed her daily presence dearly, did not object to his wife's absence during the months she cared for her ailing friend. He often praised that without Cybelle's help, her friend might not have healed and would not be alive today, living comfortably with her husband in a condo on the Island.
She fell in love with Evan. But except for his respectful behavior and friendship, he seemed oblivious to her charms, and her attempts, subtle at the time, to capture his heart. Always the center of attraction, she felt bewildered at her failure. In the meantime, her mother had registered her at the local high school to prevent her from falling behind in her studies.
During the six months that she and her mother remained with Evan's family, and she attended the local high school, she learned the reason for her failure to attract Evan — the shyest, silliest-looking, hillbilly faced girl in the school, Julie, aptly nicknamed, Miss Twisty Piggy Tails. The blow to her ego left her devastated.
When she had first met Julie in class, she'd felt sorry for her. Even tried to be nice to her. She'd heard from the other s
tudents about Julie's divorced mother and her extreme over-protectiveness and backward ways; and overheard the other mothers saying as much. But seeing the way Evan looked at Julie and smiled at her, and never joined the other boys who openly laughed at Julie, struck a sour note in her heart. "No more nice girl!" she swore.
Evan's mother healed. Mark was overjoyed to have his wife and daughter returned to him. She begged to stay longer, but to no avail. In the long run, it wouldn't matter. Evan's father found a better paying job and moved his family to a less expensive home and neighborhood. The thought that Evan would no longer be attending the same high school with Julie, mollified her hurt ego. Julie's presence would no longer interfere with her chances to win Evan's affection. She utilized her friendship with his sister Kathleen to find every excuse possible to visit the family in their new home.
The boy turned into a man. Their friendship grew closer, but never evolved. She avoided Herb at every turn. Evan was always there for her, for instance, if she needed a date to make it a foursome. She spent most of her school breaks and holidays with Evan and his family. He never discouraged her presence, but neither did he encourage it. As the years passed, she began to feel that he was merely doing her a favor by letting her be around him. And then Julie came back into the picture!
Julie had blossomed into a lovely woman, graduated college, secured a good job, and lived on her own. Except for her timidity and shyness, she had cast away the remnants of Miss Twisty Piggy Tails. Meeting her last Christmas at Kathleen's home, Carol realized Julie was a definite threat and rival. Then her worst fears came true. Evan told her midst her tears and final efforts to win his heart, that he had always loved Julie, and now that he had found her again, he intended asking her to marry him. The news ripped her heart apart. She lost all control and threatened to kill herself. Evan, being Evan, tried to be kind and understanding. He drove her back to her parents' home in the Hudson River Valley, stayed until he knew she was in safe hands, and after a few hours' sleep, he returned to his sister's home and to Julie.
