But after a long and painful battle with cancer, Maude had died tragically just before her fortieth birthday. To fill his empty hours, Billy had taken on the job of organizing volunteer tutors at Chase High—of which Sarah was one—they had been thrown back into each other's path, and what had once been a high school crush had, with time, grown into something undeniably adult.
Billy increased the pressure of his hand on her back, and they moved around the room without talking for a few minutes, content to be in each other's arms.
They did not hear John Wilde arrive. He had come through the porte-cochere at the side of the house and into the kitchen, and it wasn't until they heard voices raised in argument that they realized their guest of honor had returned. Billy grimaced, and Wayne let out a low whistle and said it was time to wrap it up. Clarice flew out of the kitchen with an embarrassed smile on her face and scuttled around the room in her stocking feet blowing out candles.
They were rolling back the rug when John Wilde rushed into the room. He carried a fat and tired-looking leather briefcase and a load of books under one arm, and he stopped in his tracks and looked at them all strangely with that blinding blue gaze of his. Everyone stopped talking then and the room grew dead silent, and Sarah was afraid even to breathe. She suddenly wished she was not there, wanted desperately to escape.
To her astonishment John's eyes found her, traveled quickly over the faces to hers, and she felt her pulse leap with the shock. Then he hurried on to his study but paused once more at the door to turn with a rather bewildered look and mumble something apologetic before closing the door behind him. Susan emerged from the kitchen and hurried after him.
Billy must have noticed the look on Sarah's face, because he slipped an arm around her waist and said loudly enough for everyone to hear that John Wilde didn't look a whole lot different than he had that night he rescued him from a blizzard. Still had that look of a doe caught in the headlights. Only difference was this time he had sense enough to wear a coat. Everyone laughed except Sarah.
John had only just switched on his desk lamp and dropped his books when Susan stormed in. She stood fuming silently in the doorway and then marched across the study toward him.
He was sifting through the clutter of papers on his desk, apparently looking for something. He glanced up, eyes bleary and bloodshot, and muttered, "I'm sorry. I really am."
She crossed her arms and gave an exasperated sigh. "You're hopeless," she said.
"So I've been told," he replied with a dry smile.
"Will you come out now? At least make some apologies?"
"Sure. Just give me a minute." He closed his eyes, and massaged them gently with long, lean fingers. "Will your mom ever forgive me?"
"Maybe. One of these years."
She approached him and smoothed back the lock of hair that had fallen into his face. "I need to sit you down and take the scissors to your hair again."
She leaned forward and gave him a quick peck on the mouth.
A sound from behind drew their attention, and John turned to see a young woman in the doorway holding a coat. She came forward into the light and John recognized her immediately; she had been standing next to Billy Moon, and it had crossed his mind that this was Billy's Sarah.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I was looking for my grandfather. I thought maybe—"
"There's no one here," Susan answered curtly, and Sarah apologized again and turned to go, but just then there came from the back of the study, where an old armchair was turned toward the fireplace, a kind of choked snort, followed by an incoherent mumble.
Sarah halted and turned.
"Grandpa?"
There was a slight commotion as the old man tried to stand and kicked over a bottle of whiskey beside the chair. He bent to retrieve it, staggered, and fell. There was a stream of muttered epithets as he tried to pick himself up off the floor.
John caught the expression on Sarah's face as she hurried toward the old man. There was no shame, only compassion and deeply felt sorrow.
She took the bottle from his hand. "Come on, let me help you," she whispered and crouched to get a grip on him. John dodged quickly around the end of his desk and hurried toward them. Jack had risen from his stupor, was staggering alongside Sarah with an arm slung over her shoulder. He narrowed his bloodshot eyes on John and told him he could manage by himself, thank you, and thanks for the Jack Daniel's.
"I'm sorry," Sarah said in a low voice with an embarrassed glance at John. "I just need to get him home."
John emerged from his study a few minutes later, but the remaining guests had scattered into the night. He stood on the doorstep and watched while Wayne chased Janie across the front lawn with a clumsily packed snowball raised over his head, and Billy Moon and Sarah helped Jack Bryden down the front walk.
Sarah drove home that night with her grandfather slumped against the window, snoring softly. She drove automatically, following the ribbon of road without seeing it, trying to summon up an image of John Wilde, but all she could recall was the penetrating set of those stone blue eyes.
CHAPTER 8
Clarice had inherited the Blackshere mansion upon her husband's death—and a good deal of money besides— much to the outrage of the Blackshere clan. Clarice was certainly not without distinction, had a noticeable and lively charm about her, the very quality Jacob Blackshere, Jr. had so enthusiastically embraced. She had been Jacob's second wife, and by the time Susan was born, Jacob was sixty-eight and had already sired three sons and two daughters, and had five grandsons to carry on the name.
Now, the Blacksheres were a clannish people, and when Clarice had appeared on their horizon with her dark, glowing eyes fixed on their Jacob in no uncertain manner, they closed ranks and greeted her with cold smiles. Clarice was delicate and flirtatious and all those things the Blacksheres were not. She laughed too much and dressed in trim pastel suits and sling-back shoes; she wore gold charm bracelets that tinkled with her every move, and a cloud of soft, puckish scent always seemed to cling to her, inevitably leaving its trace on Jacob so that they could always tell when he had been with her, and it rankled them something awful. Eight months from the day of their marriage she gave birth to a nine-pound little girl, and that child, proof of Jacob's enduring manhood, became the crown jewel of his heart.
Susan looked and acted every bit a Blackshere, gave evidence even at the toddler stage of a single-minded determination and keen intelligence. But with Jacob's early death, Susan was tossed into her mother's camp, and after several years of empty gestures the Blacksheres snapped clean of them.
Clarice spent the rest of her days trying to whittle herself a chunk of life out of that tight-mouthed and judgmental little community. When a new man came through town, Clarice swallowed her pride and put a little color on her face, wriggled into a skirt, and went out and tried to catch his attention. But inevitably the town machine went to work on her. The nastiness always got back to her, came flapping around on the tongue of a dim-witted neighbor, and then Clarice would spend sleepless nights with those cutting words sluicing through her mind. More than once, Susan had watched her mother crumble to her knees and huddle childlike in the corner of her bedroom, sobbing her heart out in loneliness and despair.
It was like that until Susan and John had adopted little Will, and Clarice felt maybe her life still mattered to someone, maybe she was needed after all. Mothering had not come easily to Susan. The baby had needed surgery and his recovery had been slow, and Susan had the idea to come home for a visit with the baby. Then John got approval for a semester's leave of absence, and so Clarice volunteered to move into the renovated servants' quarters next to the old bam, offering them the old Blackshere house for as long as they wished to stay.
Despite Clarice's good-hearted intentions, Susan had few illusions about her mother's reliability, and so immediately upon their arrival in Cottonwood Falls, Susan had begun a search for a baby-sitter. The only suitable candidate was Joy's teenage daughter, Miss Amy Bel
l. During the school year, Amy lived with her father, Sheriff Clay Bell, up in the Falls. She spent her weekends and vacations in Cassoday, picking up a little extra money working at her mom's cafe. The Wildes had laid an early claim to her cheap although not always reliable labor. They had suffered her chewing gum on their carpet and her cigarette butts in their flowerpots, had shown extraordinary patience and considerable skill in decoding her garbled speech, because they recognized how lucky they were to find anyone who would stick it out for any length of time with little Will.
It was late in the evening on Valentine's Day when Sarah got a frantic call from Amy. Sarah recognized her thin whine when she answered the phone.
"Sarah, puhleeez...," a plea followed by unintelligible babble.
"Whatever you've got in your mouth, spit it out and start over."
"I don't have anything in my mouth."
"Well then, just start over. Slowly."
"I'm baby-sitting for Susan and you've just got to come over," she repeated. "Please... I don't know what to do..."
Sarah could hear the baby crying in the background. She asked Amy what was wrong.
"He's been crying for so long, I'm afraid he's gonna have a heart attack and die. Can that happen to a baby? Can babies have heart attacks?"
"Where's Susan?"
"They drove up to Emporia to have dinner. I tried the cell phone but nobody answers. Then I called Clarice..." Amy paused. Everybody knew evenings were Clarice's worst times. "She couldn't help. She was useless," Amy finally pronounced with a sigh.
"You want me to come over?"
"Will you? Please? I'm so sorry. I just don't know who to call."
A light snow was falling when Sarah parked her truck in front of the house. The front door stood open, with Amy shivering on the porch and the baby's cries piercing the still night. Sarah had heard they were having a rough time of it. The baby had been born prematurely and with a weak heart, and he had spent most of his time in hospitals before the adoption. Now, at fourteen months, he wouldn't bond with Susan, didn't seem to take to anybody, wouldn't eat and just whimpered or fussed. The doctors called it "failure to thrive," but nobody seemed to know how to cure it or what to do.
"You know," Amy said as she led Sarah up the stairs, "I can see why Susan just comes unglued. He's impossible when he gets into one of these moods. He doesn't want to be held, doesn't want to eat." Her voice got all pinched, and Sarah could tell she was near tears. "I never knew a baby could cry the way he does, nonstop, and he just doesn't fall asleep."
Sarah opened the door to the nursery and looked toward the crib. His cries were muffled now; he had crawled to the corner of the crib and buried his face in the blanket.
"Hey, buddy..." she said as she approached.
At first he didn't respond, but then she called him by name and he sat up. He was clearly undernourished, but there was something in his appearance, in the feral-like gaze of his pained eyes that spoke of a misery beyond hunger. His face was flushed from exertion, and his thin little shoulders shuddered in exhausted sobs.
Sarah stopped then, gripped by a powerful sentiment. She had known sadness and despair and read these things easily in others, but what passed between this abandoned infant and the troubled young woman now approaching him was something beyond logic and reason.
Will grew still and fixed his large dark eyes on Sarah, and the anger on his face gave way to a curious look.
Sarah paused momentarily with her hands on the crib rail, studying him as he studied her, as though they both were deliberating the next step.
Then she scooped him up, lifting him into the air, and felt a shudder run through his body. She was sharply aware of his slightness, as if he were more bird than child. He tilted back his little head and fixed her with a curious stare, then he grabbed a handful of the corkscrew hair and kneaded it in his tiny fist.
"He wouldn't even let me pick him up," Amy said. "I don't think he likes me."
Sarah answered, "Oh, it's just my hair," and felt a warmth flow through her body as he inclined his head on her shoulder. There were bald patches on his head, but the little bit of hair he had was dark and shiny and smelled sweeter than anything she had ever smelled before. She kissed the top of his head and said softly, with a faintly secretive smile, "I don't think it's anything personal."
"He's lost a lot of hair, I guess. Susan said they might have to put him back in the hospital."
"I hope not."
"They will if he doesn't gain any weight."
"Has he eaten anything?"
"No. He drank a little water. That's all."
"Let's go downstairs and give it a try."
Sarah rifled through the bags of homemade baby food Susan had so carefully prepared and stashed in the freezer. She pulled out one marked "Spinach" and waved it in front of his nose, emphasizing his need for such strong medicine, and while the cubes melted down in the microwave, Amy—now relieved of responsibility for Will—turned her thoughts to more personal worries and began to fret about her algebra exam the next morning. She carried on at length about her distaste for algebra, which, she believed, exceeded even Will's dislike of food, although, she astutely remarked, she would not expire for lack of it. It so happened that Sarah was good at math, had great fondness for those things that came together so neatly at the end, with just one simple, happy ending. So Amy fetched her book while Sarah settled Will on her lap with a dish towel tucked into the neck of his sleepers, and they sat at the kitchen table and went over several of the problems that had given Amy difficulty. Which is to say they did together the homework Amy had neglected to do in favor of evenings on the telephone with her boyfriend.
It was a while before they took notice of Will. He had not fussed and had eaten a little of the spinach. He had not flicked it away, had not turned his head and squeamishly avoided the spoon as was his habit, but instead had nibbled at it, lolled it around in his mouth and even swallowed some. By the time several mysterious unknowns had been deduced, he had eaten more than half the rather inappreciable puddle of greens that had been placed on the table before him.
They were, of course, relieved, and a little amazed, but Amy was even more amazed by her ability to grasp one or two mathematical concepts that had up until that evening eluded her.
"He tried to help me," Amy said as she pushed her chair away from the table and stretched her legs.
"Who?"
"Mr. Wilde." She rose and pulled open the refrigerator door. "You want a Coke?"
"No thanks."
Amy popped open a can and sat back down. "He was very nice about it, but I couldn't understand diddly-squat, and then he started showing me what he was doing, you know, some of the stuff he's working on." She leaned across the table on her elbows to catch Sarah's eye. "He gets so intense when he talks about that stuff. I mean, the guy can actually make math sexy, I swear to God."
Sarah's reaction was immediate, a heat rising to her cheeks. She looked down at Will, away from Amy's quick eyes. "He struck me as rather... I don't know." She shrugged. "Detached."
"Oh, he's in the clouds, that's for sure." Amy giggled. "But damn, I sure wouldn't mind being up there with him."
"What's Susan like?"
"Oh, I don't know. Busy all the time. She's on the phone a lot. Does investment stuff from home. She works in the room upstairs." Amy paused to guzzle down the last of the Coke. "Not much of a cook, either. Fixes the same thing all the time. On Mondays it's this. Tuesdays it's that." She grimaced. "Yuck. How boring."
She removed a sheet of ruled paper from the back of her book and unfolded it.
"Here. I kept this. It's his handwriting."
Sarah lifted an eyebrow. "Did you get a lock of his hair, too?"
"Seriously, look at it. This is where he was trying to explain number twelve, and he just totally lost me."
Sarah took the paper from her. The script was surprisingly neat, even elegant. She found herself intrigued by it. As if she might read some expression o
f the man in his equations.
She folded it up and gave it back to Amy without further comment. Will had grown restless, and Sarah attempted a last swipe to clean his mouth, then lowered him to the floor.
"He forgets to eat, too."
"Who?"
"John!"
"Oh."
"I've taken lunch in to him sometimes and it sits there all afternoon."
Her mouth flew open in a great gaping yawn. She slid the Coke can aside and dropped her head on the table and mumbled, "I'm so tired. I wish they'd come home."
That's when Sarah suggested she go on home, leaving Sarah to finish out the evening. Amy took to the idea immediately, particularly when Sarah reassured her she wanted none of the baby-sitting money for herself, would gladly turn over to Amy all monies paid and received for an evening of suffering Will.
But Sarah was secretly glad when Amy left, and she carried Will around the kitchen and the parlor, talking to him the way one talks to things that listen mutely. She tempted her luck with a bottle of formula, and Will took a little of that, too. Finally, it seemed that sleep was winning out; his head rested heavily on her shoulder and his fingers slipped from her hair. But when she went upstairs to the nursery and approached the crib and attempted to separate him from her, even though his eyes were closed and his breath was giving way to slow, deep rhythms, he protested and grew agitated, and she could see he might easily throw himself back into a state.
In truth, Sarah was no more eager to part from him than he was to part from her, and so she turned out the lights and closed the door and went downstairs with Will curled up on her shoulder. She found her backpack on the floor in the parlor and pulled out a book, then looked around for a place to alight.
It was curiosity that drew her to John Wilde's study that night, and undoubtedly a wish to know him obliquely, to discover him refracted through the places he inhabited and the words he wrote and the books he read. There would be no harm in knowing him like this, with intent so innocent, while she might still remain unseen and unrevealed to him.
Sarah's Window Page 3
