She gave him a sidelong glance. When Corrine set the table, she’d sat her and Jeff together while she and Jeannette sat side by side. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Jeannette and Corrine chorused.
Kara slowly chewed and then swallowed a forkful of chicken. Corrine had prepared a delicious dinner: stewed chicken with dumplings so light and fluffy they melted on the tongue, steamed cabbage, baked sweet potatoes, and corn bread.
“I don’t like the pink-and-green combination.”
“It’s on and poppin’ now,” Jeff said under his breath.
Jeannette then Corrine launched into a discourse that it wasn’t about the colors but the organization. Then each went on to talk about all the notable AKAs and their service projects.
Laughing, Kara put up a hand. “Please stop. I feel as if I’m sitting under a hot light being interrogated and intimidated into confessing to a crime I didn’t commit.”
“Easy there, baby,” Jeff drawled. “Let’s not start with the cop jokes.”
Kara pressed her shoulder to Jeff’s. “Ooooo. Aren’t we touchy,” she teased.
“No I’m not.”
“Let it go, Jeffrey. She’s not intimidated. And I think you’ve finally met your match.”
“To be continued,” he said, repeating the promise he’d made to Kara in the bathroom.
The conversation shifted to local politics, Corrine recounting what she’d heard about another developer who’d approached several of the Cove’s older residents. “Now they’re going after folks who don’t have any children or grandchildren to look after their property once they die.”
Jeff took a swallow of sweet tea. “I don’t know why they continue to sniff around the Cove because they know no one is going to sell to them.”
“What about Haven Creek?” Kara asked.
Corrine looked directly at her. “They’re sixty-forty against the developers. It’s a bit different in Angels Landing.”
“The last survey put them at seventy-thirty,” Jeff added. “And with the Pattons leading the charge that percentage could go higher.”
Kara set down her fork. “Why would they want to sell their land? And if they did, where would they go?”
Corrine dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “I know you haven’t been here long, but how much contact have you had with your relatives?”
“Very little.”
“You should try and keep it that way.”
“Gram!” Jeff chastised.
Corrine waved her hand. “I’m right and you know it, so don’t ‘Gram’ me. Those folks are not right. Ever since Teddy left everything to Taylor, they’ve been out for revenge.”
A warning voice whispered in Kara’s head as she recalled the threats directed at her. “Revenge against who?”
“Whoever is the owner of the house.”
Jeff placed a hand over Kara’s knee under the table. “Gram, you’re frightening her.”
“There’s no need to sugarcoat it, Jeffrey. She needs to hear the truth.”
“Is my daughter in some kind of danger?” Jeannette asked.
“No,” Jeff said quickly. “Nothing’s going to happen to Kara.”
Jeannette massaged the back of her neck. “Can you guarantee that, Jeff? Because right now I don’t feel very comfortable with the direction of this conversation.”
“Yes. I guarantee it,” he said with such conviction that everyone at the table looked at him. “Gram, I think it’s time Kara hears the truth about her ancestors.”
Corrine pushed back her chair, coming to her feet. “Let’s go into the sunroom where it’s more comfortable.”
Kara stood up when Jeff pulled back her chair. “I’ll help clear the table.”
Corrine shook her head. “Please leave it. I’ll do it later. After I tell you about your folks, we’ll have dessert and coffee.”
Jeff rested a hand at the small of Kara’s back when they filed out of the dining room and into the expansive enclosed back porch. The space reminded her of the garden room at Angels Landing.
Corrine sat in an easy chair and rested her feet on the ottoman. She waited until everyone was seated, then said, “People have always thought of the Pattons as Lowcountry royalty but the griots tell a much different story. They told stories long before they were written down, passed down from one to another. It began back in 1830-something when Shipley Patton bought land here to start up a rice plantation. He was already growing cotton on the mainland but decided Carolina Gold was much more profitable. He was an architect by profession and drew up plans for what would become the grandest house on the island, calling it Angels Landing. Meanwhile he had the swamps drained so he could plant his rice, Sea Island cotton, and indigo. Shipley was an anomaly in his day because all his skilled laborers were free blacks. It took two years to complete the house and furnish it. He moved his family from what is now Goose Creek, and he and his wife hosted a lavish ball, inviting people from the mainland.
“That summer he lost his wife and two daughters to swamp fever. After that he always took his two remaining sons back to the mainland during the summers. A year later he remarried, and his second wife eventually gave him two sons and four daughters. Even though dueling was outlawed, Shipley challenged another planter to a duel. The man supposedly had spread a rumor that Shipley’s youngest son wasn’t his and the boy’s father was a mulatto slave. Unfortunately Shipley’s gun jammed, and he was mortally wounded. It took him two weeks to die.”
Kara was barely able to control the gasp that escaped her. “Was he the child of a mulatto?”
“The slaves said yes while his wife denied it. Fortunately for her, Oakes looked more white than black. Mrs. Patton closed up the house and moved her children to Charleston to be closer to her parents. Years later a smallpox epidemic swept through the Lowcountry, and all of the Pattons except Oakes and his half sister were among the many casualties. She joined a convent, and Oakes inherited everything.
“Oakes eventually married a local girl who refused to move to the island because she feared coming down with swamp fever. She hosted glittering parties while he entertained himself at Angels Landing when he made nightly visits to the slave village. He fathered a lot of black children, but when he saw a slave woman from a neighboring plantation, he knew he had to have her. Word was he paid nearly five thousand dollars for her, an unheard-of sum during that time. Once the woman with whom he’d found himself enthralled told him she was pregnant, he moved her into the main house and did something most slaveholders refused to do. He freed her children on their first birthday.”
Kara closed her eyes for several seconds. “Why did he free her children when he hadn’t freed the others?”
“Wasn’t it obvious, Kara? He was in love with her. Their relationship was scandalous because they were living together as husband and wife. Most married men didn’t bring their mistresses into their homes.”
“How many children did they have?”
“It was either three or four. Everything changed when word got back to his wife, and she’d become the laughingstock of Lowcountry society. And what made it even worse to Rebecca Patton was that he’d refused to sleep with her and give her a child.
“Rebecca waited until her husband had sailed to England to meet with a cotton broker; then she paid several men to bring her to Angels Landing. Waiting until nightfall, she had them douse the house with a flammable liquid and then set it afire. Everyone inside the house died from smoke inhalation. Rebecca believed she’d wiped out her husband’s mistress and his bastards, but there was one child who’d escaped the carnage. Jacob was a two-year-old boy who was prone to sleepwalking. That night he’d crawled out of his crib and out of the house. The next morning he was found sleeping under a tree. I’d heard that my great-great-great-grandmother took Jacob in, hiding him in case Rebecca would come back to kill him, too. When Oakes returned to find his home damaged by fire and his mistress and children dead, he abandoned the property and never returned to
Angels Landing.”
Jeannette held her throat. “What happened to Rebecca?”
A slow smile spread over Corrine’s face, a smile so much like Jeff’s. “What’s the expression about revenge best served cold? Well, Rebecca Patton got hers served hot. Apparently she’d gotten up one night, lit a candle, and went downstairs to sit on the porch because she’d become an insomniac. She probably tripped, and the lighted candle landed on her nightdress, and she went up in flames. By the time house servants heard her screams, she’d been burned over half her body.”
“Did she die?” Kara asked.
“The Lord wasn’t that merciful. She recovered from the burns, but never left the house because of the scars to her hands, face, and neck. One day she took an overdose of laudanum and never woke up. Oakes started drinking, and he gambled away Angels Landing. Once word reached the island that Becky was dead, Oakes was told that his youngest child had survived the fire. He had someone retrieve the boy, and they went to live in Europe for several years. Jacob had trained to be a doctor at the University of Edinburgh, and once he and his father returned to the States after the Civil War, Jacob was fully fluent in French, Italian, and Spanish.
“Unlike his father, Jacob couldn’t pass into the white race, so he lived in Charleston as a free man of color. However, he was treated with polite respect because he was a doctor. After the war, rice production became too expensive, and soon, most plantations on the Sea Islands fell into bankruptcy and were sold off to new owners. Jacob’s driving ambition had been to make enough money to buy the house where he’d been born and restore it.”
“Did he?” Kara had asked yet another question.
“He couldn’t do it directly because antiblack sentiment was rampant throughout the South, and the Klan had begun burning the homes, schools, and churches of former slaves. He finally convinced his father to negotiate the sale for him. Oakes agreed, and once again Angels Landing belonged to a Patton. Jacob relocated his practice to the island, and the folks here had their first colored doctor. He lived in one of the outbuildings while the main house was being renovated. He married a Gullah woman from Edisto Island, and they had eight children, six that lived to adulthood. I remember the old folks talking about how the Pattons, whether dark or light, all had Oakes’s gray eyes, and in each succeeding generation they had at least one or two children who’d die young. Some say Rebecca put a curse on her husband’s children and his children’s children.”
Jeff shook his head. “Come on, Gram. That’s just superstitious nonsense.”
“Is it, Jeffrey?” Corrine asked. “Taylor’s sister wasn’t thirty when she died from that brain tumor.” She turned to Kara. “It’s not the men in the family, but the women they marry who turn into villainesses. Cornelius was a gentle soul, but very few people could stand Theodora. Once she became Mrs. Patton you’d think she was the queen of England. She could never keep any help because she systematically bullied them. The only ones who stayed were Willie and Iris Todd.
“She practically destroyed her children when she pitted one against the other. Taylor had become her favorite, and as a result his siblings hated him. He’d tried reaching out to them, but they turned their backs on him. The only time they did come together was when it came time for them to make a decision on whether to put Teddy in a nursing home. That’s when it became unanimous because they were glad to be rid of her. Taylor was the only one to visit her, and she rewarded him when she left him everything in her will: house, land, and money.
“His brothers and sisters talked about him as if they didn’t share blood, so Taylor withdrew from them completely. He’d put the word out that if any of them stepped foot on his property, he would shoot them on sight for trespassing. I don’t believe they were notified of his death until after he was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the ocean. Now you know the story of your people. Their entire lives were shrouded in secrets, lies, illegitimate babies, arson, and murder—all the ingredients for a very interesting novel. I only tell you this because you’re not going to know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve come from.”
“Why don’t you write the novel, Gram?”
Corrine’s mouth tightened into a thin line as she glared at her grandson. “It’s not my place to presume to write about someone else’s people. It’s the past, so let sleeping dogs lie.”
Hours later Kara stood on the porch, staring out at the encroaching darkness. It was only now that she was able to react to Corrine’s account of her biological father’s family.
“Lives… shrouded in secrets, lies, illegitimate babies.” It was as if Corrine was talking about her. She’d lived more than three decades believing one man was her father when he wasn’t. Her mother had lied by omission because she had no intention of telling her Taylor Patton was her biological father if he hadn’t written her into his will. And last but certainly not least, illegitimate babies. If Austin hadn’t married Jeannette, then Kara would’ve become one of an endless list of babies out of wedlock. In essence her entire life had been a lie. This is not to say she didn’t have a wonderful childhood, but if she couldn’t trust her own mother, then who could she trust?
“Kara?”
Her eyelids fluttered. Kara had been so deep in thought that she hadn’t heard her mother come up behind her. “Yes, Mama?”
“It’s after midnight.”
“I know.”
“Don’t you think it’s time you go to bed?”
She shook her head. “I can’t sleep.”
“Is it because of what Corrine told you this afternoon?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “It was and still is a lot to take in.”
Jeannette took a step and put her arms around her daughter’s waist. “What’s bothering you, baby?”
Kara didn’t know why, but she felt like crying. “Everything.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She shook her head. “No, because what you want to talk about is something we should’ve discussed a long time ago. You say you love me, but it’s apparent you didn’t love me enough to trust me with your tainted little secret. Did you actually believe I would’ve loved you or Daddy any less if you’d told me about Taylor? I talk to my clients about trust issues, and right now I’m having a bit of my own.”
“Why now, Kara? You didn’t seem that upset this morning when I told you about Taylor.”
“I guess it’s taken a while to sink in.”
Jeannette made a sound that came from the back of her throat. “You wouldn’t be like this if Corrine hadn’t filled your head with all that talk about people who have nothing to do with you.”
Kara pushed her mother’s arms down, turning around and looking at her. “That’s where you’re wrong. They have everything to do with me. You may not share blood with the Pattons, but I do. I’m not proud of some of the things they’ve done, but they are still my family.”
“A week ago you didn’t know these people existed!” Jeannette shouted, her voice carrying easily in the silent night.
“Don’t shift the blame, Mama. I should’ve known about them as soon as I was old enough to understand that I had another family. What were you afraid of? That I would judge you for getting pregnant from one man when you were practically engaged to another?”
Jeannette ran her fingers through her hair, pushing feathered bangs off her forehead. “Now that I look back, I realize not telling you was a mistake, but I thought it was best because I didn’t want to confuse you. You’re angry and you have every right to be, but I did it because I wanted to protect you.”
“Protect me from what, Mama? The truth?”
“No, baby. I wanted to protect you from the ugliness that’s so insidious to the Pattons. Corrine said a lot of things about Taylor’s family I didn’t know. But there were other things I did know, and that’s why I wanted to protect you from them. They’re no better than a pit of vipers turning on themselves. However, you seem so hell-bent on living here among them
when it’s obvious they would prefer to see you gone.”
“I’m not afraid of them. If they expect me to pack my bags and leave, then they don’t know who I am. One thing I learned having a marine as a father is that they never ran and never will. I’m going to stay and do what I have to do.”
“Do you intend to shoot them if they come on your property like Taylor threatened to do?”
Kara couldn’t help but smile. Austin had taught her how to shoot the year she turned thirteen. The recoil from the automatic had nearly knocked her off her feet, but after he’d shown her the two-hand grip, she was proficient enough to hit her target.
“I would if I could find Taylor’s gun. If I have any problems with the Pattons, then I’ll report it to the sheriff’s office.”
“What about an emergency, Kara? Do you think the sheriff can get to your place in three minutes or less?”
“If Jeff can’t, then one of his deputies can. The deputies live in each town, so response time will be less than three minutes.”
“The only thing I’m going to say before I go inside is be careful.”
A nervous smile trembled over Kara’s mouth. “I will.” She moved closer and kissed Jeannette. “Good night, Mama.”
Jeannette hugged her as if she feared she would disappear in front of her eyes. “Good night, baby.”
Kara waited for her mother to retreat inside the house before she walked over and sat on a rocker. Back and forth, back and forth. She rocked until she felt herself relaxing. Then she rocked some more until her eyelids started to droop. Then something woke her. Sitting up straight, she squinted in the darkness as the shape of a vehicle came closer.
Pushing to her feet, she stood in a corner of the porch to make herself a smaller target. A smile parted her lips when she recognized the Jeep, then the man who stepped out.
“What are you doing here?”
Jeff placed a foot on the first stair. “I’m out on patrol. I didn’t expect to see you up this late.”
Kara rested a hand on the column, its coolness seeping into her palm. “I’m glad you drove up because I was falling asleep.” He mounted two more steps until his head was level with hers.
Angels Landing Page 15
