He flicked a hand at Paul, who went out of the room, probably to stay within hearing.
“Jilly’s told me what happened,” he said, sounding as stiff as I felt. “Thank you for saving my daughter’s life.”
“I saved my own as well.”
“She told me that you heard the boulder coming down, and you pushed her into the bushes and lay on top of her.”
“Which wouldn’t have done much good if it had landed on us. I don’t need to be thanked. But I do feel somebody ought to look into why that rock fell.”
Stephen bent his head for a moment, and I reminded myself that this wasn’t the strong, independent man I remembered. Burdens were being put upon him that he might not be able to carry.
“Of course Julian will have to take care of that,” I said quickly. Though I wasn’t at all sure that the Julian I’d seen just now would do anything constructive.
“Do you believe in fatalism?” I asked Stephen on impulse. “I mean that everything happens for a reason and there’s not much use in trying to change the future?”
He looked at me, startled. “I haven’t thought much about it.”
“I didn’t either until I began to listen to Julian. But I don’t want to go down that road. I’ll always believe—”
“In freedom of choice? But what good does choice do where there is no choice?”
It hadn’t done Stephen much good when he’d stepped on a plank that cracked and dropped him two stories down into the earth, changing his life. Perhaps our only real choices came after disaster. We could say yes, I accept, or no, I mean to fight. Stephen’s choice had been to give up.
He went on. “I wanted to tell you that Oriana is coming. I’ve had a call from her and she’s already in Charlottesville. She’ll stay at the Boar’s Head Inn tonight and come out early tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry—I’ll be gone,” I assured him quickly. “Meryl’s coming through tomorrow to pick up Jilly and I’m going to stay for a few days with them in Charlottesville. Though now perhaps you won’t want Jilly to go. In any case, I’ll be away before Oriana comes, and I’ll stay out of her sight.”
“Oriana can handle whatever happens. I was thinking that it might be unpleasant for you. In any case, it’s best if Meryl takes Jilly away. Her mother can see her later. Oriana and I have some talking to do—decisions to make. I haven’t seen Everett yet, but from what I hear, he means to close up this house for a while. And perhaps send Jilly away to school.”
I hated the resignation in his voice. “What about you?”
“There are places—Everett will find something.”
“Don’t you and Oriana have a choice?”
He looked away and I sensed that he would do nothing—perhaps could do nothing. Sands were shifting under my feet and I couldn’t gain a foothold.
Stephen went on. “Paul is leaving and so is Carla. Something has to be done right away.” He sounded listless, as though he simply didn’t care.
“Can’t Oriana keep things together?” I demanded.
Something quickened in his eyes—annoyance with me. “I only wanted to let you know that she is coming.”
“Thanks.”
“She won’t stay long. She never does.” He sounded matter-of-fact now, and not resentful. I was the one who resented Oriana.
His look moved to the envelope in my hands and he recognized it. “I told Vivian to throw those away.”
“She thought I might like to look through them first—so I did. Perhaps it was good for me. Good for my perspective.”
I opened the envelope and reached in to pull out the top picture—the enlargement that had been made of Stephen and me on the steps of Monticello. I held it out to him and he took it reluctantly.
“There’s a story to be read in that shot,” I told him. “You aren’t in that picture, and neither am I. Not the way we are now. Those are two people who couldn’t help the way they were. The man thought everything would come to him as easily as it always had, and he could forever do as he pleased. The girl—she wasn’t a woman yet—didn’t know much of anything. She didn’t begin to grow up until after she left Virginia. So perhaps she has the man to thank for her maturing. Even with years, not everyone matures automatically.”
“What are you getting at?” A spark of anger came into his voice, but it didn’t frighten me.
“Don’t you see? Those are two other people. Two people who need to forgive each other and forgive themselves. The man was a bit of a bastard, and the girl didn’t have enough character in herself to hold him. She was only a potential. She gave in to all her hurt and anger, instead of sticking it out and trying to understand what was happening.”
“She ran off pretty easily,” Stephen said. He smiled slightly. “And I guess you’re right about the bastard part.”
“She didn’t think he was worth keeping as a husband.” I slipped the picture back in the envelope. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” I added quickly, not wanting him to guess how much it mattered to me. “Those two have disappeared into the past, and we haven’t any right to blame or criticize what they did. They were using what they had at that particular time. If we can just let all that soreness and anger go, maybe we can get on with our lives now.”
He started to speak, and I suspected that he’d meant to say that he had no life to get on with, but he stopped himself in time. There was no self-pity when he went on.
“I suppose I have a lot of things to get on with—even though they didn’t especially appeal to me.”
“Perhaps Oriana will help,” I said, and knew that I spoke out of still-lingering malice—exactly what I wanted to be rid of.
He seemed not to notice. “If Oriana will help, I’ll welcome her. We both need her, Jilly and I.”
The girl I had denied, and who was still part of me whether I liked it or not, winced, and I hurried into words to hide our hurt.
“Jilly took me up to the Singing Stones today. We had to get out through the cave. She told me that your father died up there.”
Stephen said nothing, and I sensed a deep uneasiness in him.
“Jilly believes that the Singing Stones frightened him and gave him a heart attack.”
“Jilly is a fanciful little girl.”
“That’s what I would have said. But since I’ve experienced that place, I’m not sure. There’s some sort of—of power there.”
He wouldn’t accept this, and I held out my hand.
“Good-bye, Stephen, if I don’t see you again. I do wish you happiness—and the will to get well.”
Before he could take my hand—if he’d even intended to—Paul rushed into the room.
“Oriana’s here!” he announced, looking pleased and excited over this dramatic turn.
“I’m gone,” I said to Stephen and hurried to the nearest door to the deck.
“Wait!” he said. “Don’t go running off like a rabbit.” Then he spoke to Paul. “Go away. I’ll call you if I need you.”
Looking disappointed, Paul went out of the room just as Oriana came floating in. I’d turned around as Stephen spoke to me, my heart thumping unpleasantly. I was no longer sure about all those brave words concerning the two strangers in the Monticello picture. In the same room with Oriana, I might slip right back into that young girl’s skin. I might really turn into a rabbit.
But if Oriana saw me, she paid no attention. She went directly to Stephen and dropped gracefully to her knees beside his chair. All in one long fluid movement that I’d seen on the stage and was the way in which she always moved. She’d shed her coat in another part of the house and wore a thick sweater the color of toast, with golden sequins in a dramatic arabesque across the front. Slim brown trousers covered her dancer’s legs, and she wore flats that were like ballet slippers, their leather the same golden brown.
If anything, she looked even more stunning than I remembered. On the stage she’d worn her black hair down her back, reaching below her waist. Now it was pinned into a heavy roll at the nap
e of her neck and fastened there with a brown silk orchid, exquisitely patterned. Some women leave beauty behind as they add on years. Not Oriana. In her forties she had gained far more than mere prettiness. She was a personage and she knew it—wearing her beauty triumphantly.
“Darling!” she cried to Stephen, her arms about him, her kiss on his mouth. When she moved away, his eyes followed her, and I could see that her fire warmed him and turned him into a man who was loved. I tasted bitterness, knowing that my love had never done that for him.
“You’re looking marvelous!” she ran on. “I’ve just talked to Paul, and he tells me how well you’re doing, and that he hopes to have you on your feet before long.”
“Paul’s a liar,” Stephen said. “Don’t count on that.”
Perhaps his words quenched her spontaneity a little, but I couldn’t bear to stay and watch. I put a hand on the door behind me and began to slide it quietly open. Oriana heard and looked around at me. Her smile never wavered and it included me easily.
“Hello, Lynn. I’m glad to have a chance to thank you for all you’ve been doing for Jilly. She’s told me on the phone that you’ve become friends.”
Her acceptance indicated the confidence of a woman who knew exactly where she stood with her man. And I suspected that if there was a friendship growing between Jilly and me, it wouldn’t last long with Oriana here.
I nodded to her from some distant plane to which I’d removed myself and went outside into the cool air of the deck, closing the door behind me.
I walked to where I could stand at the rail out of their sight, farther along from Stephen’s rooms. The wind blew cold out here as the sun dipped, and its sharp touch braced me. I felt troubled for Stephen. How humiliating his disability must be for him with Oriana!
For a few moments I tried to quiet myself inwardly. Then voices reached me from beneath the deck. I looked over the rail to see two people standing under the cantilever where the deck curved out at the far end of the house—Carla Raines and Paul Woolf. They both looked angry, as if they might be quarreling, and I stood very still, trying to catch what they were saying. Wind blew their words away, but I could see the antipathy of Paul’s posture, his arms akimbo. Carla hugged herself defensively, though clearly responding with her own indignation. If their words concerned Jilly, I wanted to know what they were saying, and I moved softly along the rail to place myself closer.
The deck creaked under my foot, so that Paul looked up and saw me. With a derisive salute in my direction, he vanished through a door on the service level. Carla stepped out to where she could speak to me.
“Come down, Lynn. Please. I need to talk with you.”
I wondered why she wasn’t with Oriana, why she hadn’t taken Jilly to her mother, since she must know from Paul that Oriana was here.
The lower region of the house was an area I’d never explored, and I walked along until I came to a flight of outside steps leading down. At this end, the hill dropped sharply away, so that the deck hung out over space. Underneath, behind the cantilever, were storage and utility rooms. I remembered something of the plan from Stephen’s drawings.
A door at the foot of the steps led me inside, out of the wind. Carla waited for me, sitting on a stool near a washing machine. She wore a dress the color of citron and her usual strands of beads rattled as she moved. She had turned on lights in this shadowy nether region, and she waved me toward a straight chair.
“You’ve seen Oriana?”
“I’ve seen her. Why aren’t you up there with her now? Did you know that she’d changed her plans and was coming sooner than Stephen expected?”
“I’m the one who told her to come, when she phoned me from the airport. So she asked a friend to drive her out.”
“You might have given me time to get away before she arrived. Meryl is coming tomorrow to pick Jilly up and I’m going to stay with them in Charlottesville.”
“I know. That’s what I wanted to stop. Jilly mustn’t go to Everett’s house—she’d be miserable there.”
Carla hadn’t seemed interested in Jilly’s state of mind before, and I wondered why she pretended to care now.
“It’s Meryl she’ll be with,” I told her, “and I don’t think Everett interferes too much with what Meryl wants.”
“You don’t know Everett! As long as he’s in charge, Stephen will never stand a chance. Stephen trusts his brother and believes in him. He’s a helpless fool!”
“He’s far from that.” I watched as Carla twisted nervously about on the stool. She wore bracelets made from some exotic Indian seeds, and she kept pushing them up and down her arms. “Perhaps everyone has been underestimating Stephen,” I added.
She shook her head. “He’s a cripple, really. Though you don’t want to see that. Oriana sees it.”
There was no point in arguing with her. “What do you think Everett wants?”
“To hire people who will do exactly as he says. There’s a lot of money involved, and Everett wants it all in his hands. I’ve learned a good deal since I’ve been here. Is this the atmosphere you want to take Jilly into?”
“Someone tried to harm us this afternoon, Carla. That boulder didn’t move by itself. I’m not sure whether I was the target—or Jilly. But we both could have died.”
Carla slipped off the stool and came close to me. “Jilly’s always been the target. I’ve felt it all along. She knows the danger. I’m sure of it. But she won’t talk because she’s protecting someone.”
“The fourth person,” I said.
“What?”
“The fourth person who was there at White Moon when Luther Kersten died and Stephen was hurt.”
Carla stared at me for a moment. Her fingers grasped a strand of beads so tightly that it broke and sent brown pellets scattering across the cement floor. She seemed unaware as beads continued to fall and bounce at her feet.
“A fourth person? Someone Jilly must have seen?”
“I think so, though she won’t say who it was.”
“Then it was all a toss of the dice—that Luther died!”
“What do you mean?”
She let the rest of the beads skitter through her fingers. “Why were those four people brought together that day? Why were they tested?”
“What are you talking about—tested?”
“Fate, Lynn—whatever karma brought Luther to his death.”
I’d had enough of that sort of talk for now. “Carla, why were you arguing with Paul? Is he up to something?”
“No more than usual. He’s always up to something. I think he’s a little scared and he’s deserting a sinking ship. Anyway, this isn’t getting us anywhere. I’m going upstairs.”
“Do you know who the fourth person was—the one Jilly saw?” I asked.
“Of course not!” Carla was vehement, and anxious to be away from me. When she hurried off through a door that led to the rest of this basement region, I let her go. However, I didn’t want to linger here myself. The area seemed too quiet and empty, and the rooms about me were unknown. I couldn’t remember the details of Stephen’s plans, since this part of the house hadn’t interested me especially.
I followed Carla more slowly, turning out lights behind me and finding new switches to light my way ahead. A corridor stretched before me, running into darkness. When I opened a set of double doors on my right, I found a switch and discovered that I was in the “engine room” of this ship. That was what Stephen had called it once.
All the electrical equipment for backing up the solar hot water and heating systems was located here. A huge, rounded tank, almost as high as the ceiling, held water for the heating pipes that ran under the floors. Panels of circuit breakers hung against a wall. At the far end of the room was a root cellar where food could be kept.
Stephen had planned every detail, but now I was in unfamiliar territory, and I wanted to find my way upstairs. By this time I wasn’t sure which doors had brought me here. A piece of machinery near me clanked, and I jumped, sta
rtled. My nerves were really shot, and with good reason.
When someone called my name, I answered eagerly and hurried toward the voice. Other lights came on, and I saw that Vivian had come looking for me.
“Carla said you might be down here. Did you get lost? Do come upstairs, Lynn. Meryl’s come up from the farm, because I phoned to let her know that Oriana is here. She wants you and Jilly to start for Charlottesville right away.”
My perspective—if I’d ever had one—seemed to have blurred. I no longer knew what my direction ought to be, or how to keep Jilly safe.
“Are you sure this is the right move?” I asked. “I mean, has anyone asked Jilly what she would like?”
“She doesn’t know her mother is here. Come along, Lynn. Julian wants to see you for a minute before you leave.”
The way upstairs was easy enough with Vivian leading, and perhaps Julian would help me find some answer to my confusion. However, when I reached his study, I was given no time for discussion. He merely wanted to return my bit of turquoise.
“It’s been cleansed and restored,” he told me. “It’s had a bath in sea salt and then put to dry in the sun. So the color is true now. Keep it with you, Lynn.”
I took the stone, noting that the blue, sky color had returned. “I wish we had time to talk, Julian. I feel unsure of everything. There’s been so much happening. Not only that boulder—Carla’s room, the slashed picture. Jilly couldn’t have damaged that photograph of Luther.”
Julian looked rueful. “It’s an ancient, primitive belief—that someone can be harmed by destroying a picture.”
“But Luther is already dead.”
“Whoever cared about him may not be.”
“You mean Carla?”
He shrugged. “Hurry now. Meryl’s waiting for you. It’s best that you go away from this house for a little while.”
My bag was already packed for tomorrow, and when I went to fetch it, I found Meryl waiting in my sitting room.
“Where have you been?” she cried. “Do hurry, so we can get away.”
The Singing Stones Page 18