Part 3 (1/2)
My nerve ends tw.a.n.ged. He was the one to know more than Granny or Grandpa, or even Pa! ”How would they know unless she told them?” I asked with some resentment. ”From what I've heard, she never talked about her home, except to say she came from Boston, and she was never going back. My granny guessed she was rich, for she brought such pretty clothes with her and a small velvet box of jewelry, and her manners were so elegant.” And for some reason I didn't say a word about the portrait bride doll she'd hidden in the bottom of her single suitcase.
”She told your father she was never coming back?” he asked in that strange, tight voice that showed he was affected. ”Who did she tell that to?”
”Why, I don't know. Granny used to wish she'd go back to where she came from, before the hills killed her.”
”The hills killed her?” he asked, leaning forward and staring at me hard. ”I had presumed inadequate medical care took her life.”
My voice took on intonations that reminded me of Granny, and the spooked way she used to make me feel. ”Some say that there isn't anyone who can live in our hills happily unless they are born and bred there. There are sounds in the hills that no one can explain, like wolves howling at the moon, when naturalists say that gray wolves disappeared long ago from our area. Yet we all hear them. We have bears and bobcats and mountain lions, and our hunters come back with tales of having seen evidence that gray wolves still live in our hills. It doesn't matter whether or not we see the wolves, not when the wind carries their howls and cries to wake us up at night. We have all kinds of superst.i.tions that I tried not to pay attention to. Silly things like you've got to turn around three times when you enter your home, so devils won't follow you inside. Still, strangers who come to live in our hills fall sick easily, and sometimes they never get well. Sometimes there's nothing wrong with them, and still they fall into silence, lose their appet.i.tes, grow very thin, and then death comes.”
His lips grew so tight and thin a white line developed around them. ”The hills? Is Winnerrow in the hills?”
”Winnerrow is in a valley, what the hillfolks call a 'holler.' I tried all my life not to talk as they do. But the valley isn't any different from the hillsides. Time stands still back there, on the hills, in the valley, and not in the way it does for Jillian. People grow old quickly, too quickly. Why, my granny never had a powder puff,-Much less put polish on her nails.”
”Don't tell me any more,” he said somewhat impatiently. ”I've heard enough. Now why in the world would a smart girl like you want to go back there?”
”For my own reasons,” I said stubbornly, lifting my head and feeling the tears sting behind my eyes. I couldn't tell him how I wanted to lift up the name of Casteel and give it something it had never had before --respectability. For my granny I'd do this, for her.
So I stood and he sat. For an eternally long time he sat with his elegant, well-manicured hands templed under his chin, saying nothing, and then he lowered those hands and drummed a mindless beat on the crisp white breakfast cloth, and on my nerves. ”I've always admired honesty,” he said at length, his blue eyes calm and unreadable. ”Honesty is always the best gamble when you don't know whether or not a lie will serve you better. At least you get to state your case, and if you fail, you can keep your 'integrity.'” He flashed me a brief, amused smile. ”About three years after your mother ran from here, the detective agency I hired to find her finally traced her to Winnerrow. They were told she lived outside of the city limits, and those who were born or those who died in the county didn't often make it to the city records. But many residents of Winnerrow remembered a pretty young girl who married Luke Casteel. My detective even tried to find her grave for a record of the day she died, but he never found a grave with her name on the headstone . . . but long ago I knew she was never coming back. She made good her word . .”
Were they tears I saw in his eyes? Had he loved her in his own way?
”Can you truthfully say she loved your father, Heaven? Please, think this question over well. It's important.”
How was I to know anything about what she felt, except what I'd always heard? Yes, so Granny had said, she had loved him--because he never showed her his cruel, hateful side! ”Stop asking me about her!” I cried, hara.s.sed to the point of breaking. ”All my life the blame for her death has been put on my head, and now I think you're trying to put something else there as well! Give me my chance, Tony Tatterton! be obedient. I'll study hard. I'll make you proud of me!”
What was it he heard in my voice that made his head bow into his cradling hands? I wanted him to hate Pa for killing her just as much as I did. I wanted him to pledge with me a joint resolve for revenge. And with that expectation I quivered as I waited.
”You swear your obedience to abide by my decisions?” he asked, looking up quickly and narrowing his steady gaze.
”Yes!”
”Then you will never use the maze again, or seek out opportunities to visit my younger brother, Troy.” My breath caught. ”How did you know?”
His lips curled. ”Why, he told me, little girl. He was very excited about you, how much you look like your mother, what he can remember of her.”
”Why don't you want me to see him?”
He shook his head, frowning. ”Troy has his own afflictions, which may well be just as fatal as your father's illness. I don't want you to be contaminated with them--not that anything he has is contagious.”
”I don't understand,” I said helplessly, deeply disturbed to hear he might be ill . . and dying.
”Of course you don't understand, n.o.body understands Troy! Did you ever see a more handsome young man? No, of course not! Doesn't he appear remarkably healthy? Yes, of course he does. Yet he's underweight. He's been in and out of illness since the day he was born, when I was seventeen. Now do as I say, for your own good, leave Troy alone. You can't save him. n.o.body can save him.”
”What do you mean, I can't save him? Save him from what?”
”From himself,” he said shortly, waving his hand to dismiss the subject. ”All right, Heaven, sit down. Let's get down to business. I will provide you a home here and outfit you like a princess, and send you to the very best schools, and for all that I do for you, you will do just a little for me. One, as I said before, you will never tell your grandmother anything that would cause her grief. Two, you will not see Troy in secret. Three, you will never again mention your father, either by name or by reference. Four, you will do your best to forget your background and concentrate only on improving yourself. And fifth, for all the money that I am investing in you, and for your benefit, you will give to me the right to make all important decisions in your life. Agreed?”
”What . . . what kind of important decisions?” ”Agreed or not agreed.”
”But . . .”
”All right, disagreed. You want to quibble. Be prepared to leave after New Year's Day.”
”But I have nowhere to go!” I cried out in dismay.
”You can enjoy yourself over the next two months, and then we will part. But don't think by the time you are ready to go you will have won over your grandmother so much she will slip you enough money to see you through college, for she doesn't control the money Cleave left her--I control it. She has everything she wants, I see to that, but she is a fool with money.”
I couldn't agree to something as monumental as his making choices for me, I couldn't!
”Your mother was planning to attend a special girls' school that is the best in this area. All the affluent girls cry to go there in hopes of meeting the right young man they can marry later. I expect you will meet your 'Mr. Right' there, too.”
Long ago I'd met my Mr. Right, Logan Stonewall. Sooner or later Logan would take me back. He'd forgive me. He'd realize I had been a victim of circ.u.mstances . . .
Just as Keith and Our Jane were victims. My teeth came down on my lower lip. Life offered very few chances such as he was extending to me. Here in this big house, with his business in town to take him away often, we'd seldom see each other. And I didn't need Troy Tatterton in my life, not when one day soon I'd see Logan again.
”I'll stay. I agree to your conditions.”
He gave me his first really warm smile. ”Good. I knew you'd make the right choice. Your mother made the wrong one when she ran. Now, to simplify what might puzzle you, and make it unnecessary for you to go snooping, Jillian is sixty years old, and I am forty.”
Jillian was sixty!
And Granny had been only fifty-four when she died, and she had looked ninety! Oh G.o.d, the pity of that was numbing. Still, I didn't know what to do or say, and my heart was thudding fast and furiously. Then came the relief, flooding over me, inundating me so I could breathe, relax, and even manage a tremulous smile. It would work out all right in the end. Someday I'd put Tom, f.a.n.n.y, Keith, and Our Jane together again, under my very own roof. But that could wait until I had a strong, educated grasp on the future.
”Winterhaven has a waiting list yards long, but I'm sure I can pull a few strings and get you in; that is, if you are a good student. You will have to take a test to establish your grade level. Girls all over the world want to attend Winterhaven. You and I will go shopping together and leave Jillian to her own affairs.
You'll need extra warm clothes, coats, boots, hats, gloves, robes, the works. You will be representing the Tatterton family, and we have set certain standards you must live up to. You'll need an allowance so you can entertain your friends, and buy whatever your heart desires. You'll be well taken care of.”
I had fallen into a bewitched state, caught up in this charming fantasy of riches, where I could buy anything I wanted, and the college education that had always been so far out of reach was suddenly close, within grasp.
”This woman Sarah that you mentioned, the girl your father married shortly after Leigh died, what was she like?”
Why did he want to know that? ”She was from the hills. She was tall and raw-boned, and her hair was bright auburn, and her eyes were green.”
”I don't care what she looked like, what was she like?”
”I loved her until she turned against . . . ” and I started to say ”us” before I stopped abruptly. ”I loved her until she ran off because she found out Pa was dying.”
”You must strike the name of Sarah from your lips and your memory. And hope never to see her again.”
”I don't know where Sarah is,” I hastily said, feeling strangely guilty, wanting to defend Sarah, who had tried, even though she had failed . . .
”Heaven, if there's one thing I've learned in forty years, it's the fact that bad seeds have a way of turning up.”
I stared at him with forebodings.
”One more time, Heaven. When you become a member of this family, you have to give up your past. Any friends you may have made there. Any cousins or aunts or uncles. You will set your goals higher than being just another schoolteacher who buries herself in the mountains where nothing will improve until those people decide they want to improve. You will live up to the standards of the Tattertons and the VanVoreens, who do not turn out average citizens, but exceptional ones. We commit ourselves, not only in words, but in deeds, and that means both s.e.xes.”
What kind of man was he to demand so much? Cold, mean, I thought, trying very hard to conceal my true feelings, even as I wanted to stomp and rage and tell him just what I thought of such cruel restrictions.