When he was sufficiently drunk, he crushed his last cigarette into the crammed ashtray and reached for the stack of mail LaMieux had placed on his nightstand.
The letter from Lily lay on top. He held it up to the light of the metal desk lamp bolted to the nightstand, staring at it, letting the light shine through it, illuminating her bold handwriting. She was eighteen years old now, saving money to enter college, planning to study botany. He remembered from her last letter.
He’d return to Blue Willow someday and enjoy seeing how she’d grown up, whom she’d married—if anyone; he knew Lily’s streak of independence—and what kind of plans she had for her beloved old farm. And if she ever asked for advice, or money, he’d give generously.
So he shouldn’t be feeling guilty. What he held in his hand were just polite words on paper from someone whose childhood fantasies had merged with his, someone who had admired and encouraged him ever since, as he had her.
He crumpled the letter in his fist and dropped it into a trash can under the nightstand. She had lost her Old Brook Prince, and he didn’t know how to tell her so.
They had on their best clothes. For once, Zea’s back didn’t ache. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, and there was a hint of spring in the air that curled into the old truck when Zea rolled the window down a crack. She drove because Drew had trouble negotiating traffic on the busy interstate with only one good hand. She smiled at him. He looked so handsome sitting next to her, like Gary Cooper, she thought, in his brown suit with the new tie she’d given him for their anniversary He draped his hand on her knee, his big, blunt fingers tickling her through the skirt of her new dress. Flirting with her like he always did. Zea shoved his hand away, and he put it back. She smiled as she drove.
Lily teased them about their games sometimes, when she caught them necking in front of the fireplace or saw one slap the other on the fanny in passing. But she was proud of her parents, and said so. Proud that after twenty years of marriage they still wanted to flirt with each other. When she’d heard that they wanted to go to Atlanta for the day and have dinner, she’d presented them with a registration slip for a downtown hotel. She’d given them a room for the night, with a hot tub.
“You better save that for the hot tub,” Zea said now, as Drew edged her skirt up and tickled her inner thigh. “We haven’t even had dinner yet.”
“We could go to the hotel first, then go to dinner.”
She cut her eyes at him, flashed him a coy look, and caught his sly grin in response. When she returned her attention to the crowded highway, he withdrew his hand and turned the radio on. He found Merle Haggard on a station and settled back happily. “One of these years,” he said, his voice low and thoughtful, “after we’ve helped Lily go off to college, I’m gonna build us a hot tub on the back porch. Every night you and me’ll strip all our clothes off and sit in it and drink some wine.”
“I’d like that.”
The car in the lane beside theirs, an old sedan, swerved a little. Zea frowned and watched the driver carefully. Burly-looking and disheveled, he lifted a can to his mouth and took a drink. The car’s back end was barely clearing the truck’s front bumper. “Pull back from that character,” Drew said. “I think he’s drinking a beer.”
She stepped lightly on the clutch and then the brake. The sedan lurched in front of them, moving into their lane too quickly. Zea gasped and stomped the brake to the floor. The sedan’s fender caught them.
She gripped the wheel fiercely as the truck careened sideways. Drew’s hand gripped her shoulder. “You’ve got it, you’ve got it, just hold on,” he yelled, as the truck began to fishtail.
But suddenly the truck was twisting, slamming into a car on the other side. The impact slung her hands off the wheel. She twisted toward Drew, screaming. They had always survived together. It couldn’t be over.
Then the world was in chaos, spinning, collapsing, breaking apart.
“I’ll put a hedge of forsythia along the side of the yard,” Lily told the sporty young matron, who chewed the end of a gold fountain pen and traced Lily’s crude sketch with a manicured nail. Lily planted her callused forefinger next to the clients and balanced the sketch pad in her other hand. She squinted in the bright February sunlight coming through the Friedmans’ shop window and continued, “Then some smaller shrubs in front of the forsythia, and in front of those, a wide bed of perennials. I’ll finish the edge in liriope or hostas.”
“And all of it will be easy to take care of?” The woman poked at the designer glasses sliding down her tanned nose. “My husband and I want to come up from Atlanta and enjoy our vacation home, not spend our time diddling with the landscaping.”
“Oh, everything I’ve outlined is hardy and pretty much self-sufficient.”
“All right then. Go ahead.”
Lily closed the sketchbook and laid it on Mr. Friedman’s desk. She dusted pieces of mulch from the front of her jeans and tucked a gnawed pencil into the pocket of her flannel shirt. “Good. I’ll figure out the budget and give you a call tomorrow—no, let’s see, tomorrow’s Sunday. Monday morning then. If the budget’s okay by you, I’ll start working at your place with my crew on Tuesday.”
The woman nodded, buttoned her white cashmere coat, and eyed Lily curiously. “I’m impressed. When the Friedmans told me their landscaper was only eighteen years old, I was a little concerned, frankly. But you’re very talented and confident.”
“Thank you.”
“Why aren’t you in college?”
Lily shoved her long hair under a floppy felt hat and tried not to show her discomfort with the question. “I’m saving money to go. Maybe next year.”
“A young woman as bright as you should have gotten a scholarship.”
“Didn’t have quite the grade-point for it.” Lily didn’t feel like explaining that working all these years to help pay her family’s bills had made it difficult to be an honor student. She shrugged lightly.
After the client left, she sat down at the desk and tried to concentrate on the budget she’d promised her. She heard Mrs. Friedman talking to customers in the nursery shop beyond the office’s open door. Checking the tarnished watch latched on one arm with a cracked leather band, she realized she’d have to take the paperwork home with her.
Pulling a nursery catalog toward her, she bent her head over a pad of paper and began making notes. Landscaping came easy to her—she had a lifetime’s experience with growing plants and trees, a natural understanding for what made them flourish or die, and as for the artistry of drawing designs, well, she’d studied every book she could find, poring over pictures of everything from cozy, free-form country gardens to formal masterpieces.
Lost in concentration, Lily looked up blankly when Mrs. Friedman stuck her head in the door and spoke to her. “Your aunt’s here to see you,” Mrs. Friedman said again.
Bewildered, Lily leaped up and strode into the shop. Aunt Maude stood there in a raincoat and her work dress—a baggy blue wool jumper with one of Uncle Wesley’s big sweaters underneath. Her favorite apron with the permanent blueberry stains on the bib and the patched spot on the white skirt hung crookedly on her stout body. Her graying hair was mashed, with the teased sections poking out like lumps in Cream of Wheat. Her face was ashen, and her red-rimmed eyes met Lily’s without blinking, as if frozen in the moment.
Lily gestured toward her strange, unkempt appearance. “What’s going on? …”
“Get your things and come with me.” Aunt Maude’s voice was low and hard. “Don’t ask questions. Just come with me.”
When Lily stared at her without moving, tendrils of fear crawling up her spine, Mrs. Friedman nudged her shoulder. “Go on. Go.”
A minute later Lily was striding into the parking lot beside Aunt Maude, her coat over one arm and her purse clutched in one sweaty hand. “Maudy?” she said, but the older woman shook her head violently. Lily halted in shock when she saw the sheriff standing beside his red-and-white patrol car. Sheriff Mullins, Aunt
Maude’s cousin, was short and beefy and half-Cherokee, with kind, dark eyes in a dusky, hawkish face. His thin black hair swept back from a high forehead. He held his tan broad-brimmed hat in both hands, clenching the brim. The sick little smile he gave Lily turned her stomach over.
“What’d I do?” she joked limply, peering down at him.
“Not a thing.” He opened the patrol car’s front passenger door, then the back one. “Maudy, you sit in the back, okay?”
Lily took a tentative step forward. Her nerves were screaming for answers. “What is it?” She looked from him to Maude. “I don’t like mysteries. You know, us MacKenzies like to have everything out in the open, no coddling, no favors, no …” Her voice faded. She wavered, her knees loosening. “Is something wrong with my folks?”
She felt Aunt Maude’s arm go around her shoulders. “They’ve been in an accident on the highway, sweetie. A drunk ran into them.”
Lily backed away. Her aunt’s face became blurred. Cold horror and denial stiffened Lily’s back. “How bad is it?” she asked, hearing her voice from a distance.
Aunt Maude didn’t answer. Her stoic, fleshy face crumpled around the edges, and tears crept down her cheeks. Lily turned blindly, searching, not knowing for what, sweeping the empty sky and the road and the parking lot surrounded by greenhouses and nursery beds. Instinctively searching for something—some sign. The whisper of Mama’s and Daddy’s voices, assuring her they were all right.
She heard nothing but the shriek inside her own mind and the echo of emptiness.
Nine
The girl was bad off. Hope well Estes could see that, in her hollow eyes and gaunt face, in the way her fingers picked a piece of lint to shreds, her shoulders slumped under a loose black dress. But she sat up straight in her chair in Maudes parlor, surrounded by Maude and the sisters, and him. He cleared his throat, stared at the knees of his black trousers, and thought of his son, Joe, ten years older than she but not half as tough or admirable. Joe was an embarrassment, a bad seed, some might say. Hope well sighed. His and Dutie’s son hadn’t turned out very well. It was killing his wife, giving her heart trouble.
“This ain’t real good timin’,” Hopewell said, planting his hands on his knees. “I know that, Lily, with your folks only gone a month. But you gotta think about the future. There’s no way you can pay all the bills you’ve got. Not even with your aunt Maude’s help.”
Lily stirred, raising vacant eyes to his. She blinked as if regathering her thoughts, then said, “I know that. I’ll think of something.”
“I need a place for Joe to live. With him, hmmm, with him needin’ a good, quiet place, after—” Hopewell stopped, unable to form the rest of the sentence. After he gets out of jail, he didn’t say. They all knew what he meant. Everyone knew. Joe had been caught growing and selling marijuana, and it had been the most shaming thing Hopewell had ever endured. And more than his wife could endure. He had to get the boy straightened out.
Or at least get him out of the law’s sight, deep in the wilderness that surrounded the MacKenzie farm, where his illegal crop could be hidden next time. “Your old farm is just right for him,” Hopewell continued, his throat raw. “I’m thinking that I’ll add to the cattle, maybe help him get started in the beef business.”
“I can’t sell it,” Lily answered. “That’d be like selling my own bones.”
Big Sis leaned on her cane and spit brown tobacco juice into a ceramic pot between her feet. Her lined old face worked with emotion. “Your folks wanted you to go to college. They wouldn’t want you to hang on to the old place until you were broke and it had to be sold at auction.”
Lily said softly, “They’d want me to fight to keep it. It’s mine. It’s all I have.”
“How are you going to keep it?” Little Sis asked, patting Lily’s shoulder. She waved the long-stemmed rose she’d brought to the meeting for memory and luck—what a strange, feisty floozy she was, Hopewell thought—and stroked the red hair hanging down Lily’s back in limp waves. “You’ll work yourself to death and still lose it. No, honey, it’s just not in your destiny.” She picked up one of Lily’s hands and studied it. “Your palm says right here that you’re going to, well, it’s odd, it says you’re going to break with the past, but then this line makes a circle, and goes way up there—meaning there’s a long period of time involved—but then it comes back, so certainly, someday—”
“Oh, shut up,” Big Sis said. “Go read a cereal box. It’d make more sense.”
Maude stood impatiently and took command. “Lily needs time to think this over, Hopewell.”
He stood, too, glad the offer had been made, and that he’d done all he could, for the moment. “Joe won’t be back for a couple of months.”
Lily looked up at him. The expression in her eyes was wrenching, but strong. “I’ve still got the scar where he shot me.”
Hope well nodded, too depressed to respond. His son’s irresponsible nature had been obvious, even back then. “You call me at home or my store, whichever. I’ll be waitin’.”
After he left, Lily sat dully, raw inside, her mind fuzzy. “Get her some tea with a shot of bourbon in it,” she heard Aunt Maude tell Little Sis. Aunt Maude sat down in a chair next to hers and said, “Mr. Estes has got plenty of money and a good business in hardware and farm supplies, Lily. He’s a respectable man. His family came here over a hundred years ago. it wouldn’t dishonor you to sell the farm to him. Even if he wants it for Joe.”
Lily stood. “I’ve got to go feed the cattle. And I’m going to spend the night there. Alone.”
Aunt Maude frowned. “We agreed that you’d stay here for a while longer.”
“I’ve got to go. I’ve got to look at it all by myself and think. I’ve got to think.”
“But, honey—”
“Let her go,” Big Sis said. “She’s grown now.”
Lily went out and climbed in the old Jeep parked along the street. Daddy and Mama had gotten it for her birthday last year. The dull brown finish had splotches of red where they’d painted over the rust marks, and the vinyl seats had bandages of duct tape over the torn places. But it ran like a fine watch. Substance over looks, Daddy had said. She cranked the engine. She knew what she had to do, and appearances didn’t matter in that case either.
His flight had been delayed by fog, and the unwelcome wait gave Artemas time to think. He was about to board a plane for England, to iron out the details of a partnership with a firm that used ceramics in state-of-the-art medical applications. Ceramic scalpels.
A cocktail lounge at LaGuardia was a bad place for soul-searching. Leaning over a drink, a cigarette in one hand, his tie loosened, he felt like a youthful caricature of a world-weary business hack.
Glenda was happy He’d made her bloom with appreciation, had begun taking her to bed a few weeks ago with gentle restraint, had encouraged her to trust him. He cared deeply about her; it was possible to love her, in a way—the way he could love anything or anyone of rare quality. He hid the fact that he would never love her the way she thought he did. He was trapped by her father’s devotion to her. He’d made his choice—his family’s future over his own. His decision was part of the price. He thought he’d reconciled himself to it.
But each time one of Lily’s letters arrived and he threw it away, unopened, he knew he would never resolve what he’d done. Perhaps there would be some means to tell her, to explain, eventually. Perhaps someday he’d secure everything he wanted for his family, and then be free. His brooding was interrupted when he heard his name being paged. Frowning, he went to a phone. Tamberlaine was searching for him.
Elizabeth had tried to kill herself.
Elizabeth was asleep in a private hospital room, and Artemas could only wait through the night, until she woke and he could ask her why she’d swallowed a handful of sleeping pills. Why she’d tried to end her life at twenty. How he and the others had failed her.
Anger, bewilderment, and anxiety summed up the emotions he felt, and saw
on his siblings’ faces also. They had gathered in the visitors’ lounge near her room. Artemas leaned by a window, cigarette ashes falling, unheeded, on his black trousers and shoes. He jammed his cigarette into the ashtray he held in one hand and cursed silently All he’d had on his mind while Elizabeth was overdosing on pills and lying unconscious on the floor of her college dorm room were his own problems.
James paced leadenly across the open space where the lounge opened into a corridor near the nurses’ station. He’d been at the Colebrook offices when word had reached him from Elizabeths college upstate. He’d arrived here at the hospital before anyone else. He looked angry, stalking back and forth with his hands shoved into the pockets of his dress slacks, his tie thrown on a table somewhere and forgotten, his large shoulders hunched in misery. James always wanted to know who was responsible, who deserved to be punished or rewarded. He treated their business associates that way, with a cool, threatening demeanor that concerned Artemas. Yes, James was an effective, even ruthless agent, doggedly loyal to the family, devoted to the business, proud to a fault. But he was a loose cannon also. He was already talking of suing the college, a venture Artemas would block.
Artemas lit another cigarette. His throat was raw; his eyes ached with fatigue. He felt much older than twenty-six. Elizabeth’s college wasn’t to blame for her problem. He, Artemas, was. It was his duty to be her parent—father and mother—and somehow, though he’d tried to make time for the family as well as the business, he’d failed. She was still shy and fearful of the world and completely lacking in self-confidence. Her sweet, dark blond prettiness and solemn intelligence drew people to her despite her timidness, but she never recognized her appeal.
He didn’t understand. Neither he nor the others reacted to the world as passive victims, the way Elizabeth did. Artemas swept his tired gaze around the lounge. Cass was in the hallway, talking to an intern, her head tilted back coyly so that her dark hair slid smoothly along the scooped neck of her snug coatdress, one slender hand occasionally toying with the lapels of the doctor’s white coat. The bedazzled-looking young man probably had no idea that the elegant, stylishly lanky Cass considered him a fool and was prying information about Elizabeth’s condition from him.
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