Blue Willow

by Deborah Smith

  “One more second,” he said, his voice as low and private as a caress but also threaded with anticipation. She heard the doors closing, and the barely audible click of a switch. He took one of her hands in his. “Look at your palm court, Lily.”

  Her chest ached with poignant recognition. A sigh of pleasure and surprise burst from her. He had transformed the vast, ruined, glass-enclosed room into the luscious heaven she had always tried to imagine.

  After decades of loneliness, the little stone girl poured water from her fountain pedestal. A pampered forest of palms formed a background for ferns and a glorious variety of flowering plants. Tiled pathways wandered through their midst. Beautiful white-ceramic urns replaced the broken vessels she remembered.

  “It’s wonderful,” she whispered. “Even better than I dreamed.”

  She heard the melodic chatter of sleepy, disgruntled parakeets roosting in the trees. Artemas lifted her hand. One bright yellow bird swept down and landed there. Lily studied it wistfully. Perched atop their intertwined fingers, it was as delicate and proud as a memory.

  Twenty-seven

  The ruthless old bargain hung in the air like the scent of the pine logs burning in the music room’s fireplace. The room was softly lit and comfortable, the stately baroque pieces soothed by overstuffed couches and chairs, a baby grand gleaming like sculptured onyx by tall, filigreed windows.

  Artemas leaned back in an armchair, a tumbler of scotch ignored on the table beside it. His arm, cushioned on a pillow in his lap, itched and hurt like a hundred sunburns. He’d taken no pain pills since the senator’s arrival. It was unwise to be less than alert around the man.

  The senator nursed an ornate pipe and stared, slit-eyed, into the flames. Stretching one leg over the other on the ottoman in front of his own chair, he looked deceptively benign. Finally he took the pipe in mottled, elegant old hands and studied it as if seeking enlightenment. “Since I’ve retired, I have entirely too much time to think,” he told Artemas. “And one of the things I’ve discerned, in my infinite wisdom, is that your continuing kindness and respect since my daughter’s death are more than I deserve.”

  Artemas measured his words carefully. “We’ve paid our debts to each other.”

  “No resentment, my boy? You have no inkling of disgust for the dreadful old bastard who manipulated your life?”

  “I chose to accept your offer. I could have walked away.”

  “As I recall, it was a threat, not an offer. I was desperate. I can’t be pious in my old age and say I’d have been forgiving if you’d turned me down. I assure you, I would have done everything in my power to ruin you. Don’t tell me you doubted that.” The senator smiled thinly. “It would insult my ego.”

  “Whether I felt trapped or not, I kept my word. And you kept yours.”

  “And now I sound as if I’m a frail old sinner asking for redemption.” The senator made a derisive sound at the thought. “In fact, I’m here to meddle in your life again.” When Artemas straightened in the chair and studied him with deadly intensity, the senator shook his head. “You are far too powerful to fear me now. Relax, my boy. I’ve come here to listen and advise, not to threaten. I’m concerned about you and this woman—this Lily Porter.”

  His teeth clenched, Artemas said softly, “I don’t owe you an explanation of my personal life.”

  Cupping the pipe on the lap of his trousers, the senator settled deeper into his chair. “I understand you’ve known this woman since both of you were children. I can only assume her friendship is well worth the risk of alienating your family.”

  “She hasn’t caused the problems. She’s done her best to avoid hurting me or my family. Which is more than I can say for how we’ve treated her.”

  The senator contemplated that in silence. “I’ve never doubted your loyalty to my daughter. I don’t now. But I’d like an answer to one question. Were you involved with Mrs. Porter—Miss MacKenzie, at that time—were you in love with her when you married Glenda?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you gave her up to honor our agreement?”

  “Yes. Lily and I didn’t see each other again until after Glenda died. By then, Lily was married and had a son.” Artemas held the senator’s gaze. “Lily is not the kind of person who ignores her vows. And I never asked her to.”

  “And now that those vows are not an issue?”

  “I’ll draw her into this family. I’ll convince her that the past can be overcome. I’m going to prove that to her if it takes the rest of my life.”

  “And what if your hopes are never realized? Are you prepared to choose her over all that you’ve worked for, and all those who love you?”

  “Yes.”

  “My God.” The senator sighed. “I came here to remind you of all you’ve sacrificed to secure your family’s stability and success. I feared your feelings for Mrs. Porter would make those noble efforts meaningless. It seems I was mistaken.”

  “Completely,” Artemas replied. He said nothing else. His love for her was something he didn’t want to discuss further. He had so few private treasures. Lily was his greatest sacrifice. Having her with him again would give meaning to it all.

  Mr. Estes sidled over to Lily as she was hanging bundles of dried flowers on pegs along the greenhouse wall. She wanted flowers to put in her house all winter, even dried ones. “You are never still,” he complained.

  She grunted. “Always got work to do. Unlike some folks I know, I don’t see the use in mully-grubbing around in a bad mood.”

  He scowled and leaned against a table, lost in thought. The cloudy light of the autumn afternoon cast him in a pewter tint, like an old photograph. But his eyes gleamed vividly, shifting to her and then away. His moods had been more mercurial than usual since that frightening day at the hospital. She couldn’t penetrate them. “That empty pad of concrete outside is starting to get on my nerves,” she said lightly. “We ought to use most of the profit from Malloy’s project to build a shop. Mr. Parks says we could put up the shell for under five thousand dollars.”

  “It’s too late in the year to fiddle with construction.” Mr. Estes’s voice sounded strained, distracted. He rubbed his jaw and stared at the tables and shelves filled with plants. He wandered outside. Lily watched him walk among long rows of shrubs and willow saplings. Their outside inventory covered almost an acre, forming a neat patchwork. When she looked at it, she thought of the old quilts she’d put on her bed yesterday. Mama’s and Grandma’s handiwork had the same loving order to their patterns.

  He ambled around, thumping his hands against his trousers like the fat red rooster who was standing on a pile of mulch, preening for his hens in a beam of sunshine that had burst through the clouds. When Mr. Estes finally came back into the greenhouse, he wandered up and down the aisles between the tables, muttering. “Winter’s coming. I feel it in every bone of my body.”

  “Joe’s up for parole in January. You’ve got a lot to look forward to.”

  He halted, staring at her with unfathomable distress, the way he did any time Joe’s name came up. “You don’t,” he blurted.

  She jerked a piece of twine tight around a clump of lavender. “I can’t say he’s one of my favorite people.”

  “He’s the only flesh and blood I have. You got to understand that. Don’t you hate me for taking his side.”

  “I never said I did.” She gave him a puzzled look. “How’d we get off the subject of building the shop?”

  “I said it’s too late in the year to fool with it. You … you don’t need to be putting your profit from the Malloy job back into this place. You need to save some money.”

  “Nope. I’ve got a place to live, food to eat, and a new electric space heater to keep my toes from freezing in the house this winter. I’d rather put the money into a shop.”

  “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “Okay. We’ll talk about it in January, after I sign a new lease. I want two years on the next one.”

  His voice ro
se. “You just can’t stop jabbering about the future, can you? I don’t want to talk about it!”

  “All right, let’s talk about Little Sis.”

  His shoulders sagged. “I don’t know what to do about her. I don’t know what to say, or how to say it.”

  Lily dropped to her heels beside a basket and pretended to concentrate on bundling her flowers. “Do you sincerely want to try? Is that what’s making you so unhappy—that you want to change things, but you’re too shy?”

  He waved his hands loosely. “It won’t last. I’m caught in the middle. You just don’t understand. She’ll end up hatin’ me.”

  Lily would never understand his dark, vague mutterings. She was tired of trying to decipher them. Rising like a threat, she pointed at him firmly. “Go home and take a bath and put on a nice shirt and a pair of slacks and your dress shoes. Then go to the florist’s shop and get a half-dozen red roses wrapped in paper and tied with a nice ribbon. Then you go over to the sisters’ house and give the roses to Little Sis and ask if she’d like to have dinner with you at a nice restaurant over in Victoria. She’ll say yes.”

  He snorted. “You just want to see me make a fool of myself.”

  “Somebody has to look out for you.”

  “I ain’t your granddaddy.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “I ain’t holding my breath for you to adopt me either.”

  “Meddler.”

  “Not long ago, when you thought you were dying, you looked like a man who wanted a second chance.”

  He wavered, exhaled, then said wearily, “I do.”

  “Then don’t wait around. Don’t worry about what’s going to happen next. Make hay while the sun shines. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  She waited. He stalled. Finally he wrenched his hands together and swallowed hard. “What’ll I talk about at dinner?”

  When her astonishment passed, Lily nodded with approval. “You don’t have to talk. She’ll talk enough for both of you. You just listen like your life depended on it and answer when she asks you a question.”

  “She’s got more words than a dictionary.”

  “After you get used to her, you’ll feel like talking too.”

  “If it goes all right, I won’t know what to do next.”

  “Send her flowers in the morning, and then call her and ask her if she wants to go bowling.”

  “Will she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, my God. This kind of sticky-sweet stuff is for kids. I’ve seen it on Love Connection.”

  “Well, if you’re going to think of yourself as an old man, then let me go get a rocking chair for you and cover you with a blanket before your arthritis starts acting up.”

  He stomped to the greenhouse door, looking rusty and rakish, like an aged Willie Nelson with short hair. He scowled at her as he flung the door open. “I can’t be any worse off than I already am.”

  She held her breath. “A half-dozen roses. Don’t forget.”

  “I’m not senile.” Distress radiated from him like smoke from an old engine. “I won’t forget.” He went out and slammed the door behind him. Lily sat down on the hard concrete floor and laughed wearily. Mr. Estes and Little Sis. Cass and John Lee. Elizabeth and her ex-husband. Her laughter faded into lonely regret. She seemed destined to be a catalyst for other people’s romances.

  One of the estate’s black limousines pulled into her darkening yard. Peering out the window at it worriedly, she tossed a handful of kindling into the fire she’d just built and rose quickly from the hearth. Lupa trotted ahead of her to the porch, giving a latent woof of territorial alert.

  Lily stood on the porch, wary and watchful, as the driver opened a back door and helped an elegant white-haired man from the car. His beautiful old suit and overcoat were as stately as his face. He walked with careful grace to the base of her steps and looked up at her with somber regard. “Mrs. Porter? Forgive my unannounced intrusion. I am William DeWitt. I’d like to speak with you. May I come in?”

  Artemas’s father-in-law was the last person she’d ever expected to invite into this house. Her first thought was that Senator DeWitt had come to see the Colebrook dilemma for himself. The senator returned her silent, cautious scrutiny. “I’m not here to pass judgment, Mrs. Porter. You’ll hear no speech of righteous indignation from me. And I assure you, Artemas has no idea I’ve come.” Arching a white brow, he said over his shoulder to the stocky little driver standing at attention by the car, “Isn’t that right, George? We’re simply on our way to the airport, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, sir. We never took a detour.”

  Gazing at Lily again, the senator gave a slight bow. “Whether you choose to reveal this meeting to Artemas is up to you.”

  Confused but polite, she nodded and opened the porch door for him.

  When he was seated on the couch, waving aside her offer to take his coat, she sat down on the hearth. He swept a curious look around the spartan, dimly lit room then returned his attention to her. Lily remembered going to the library at Agnes Scott during the months after Artemas had married his daughter and searching out a photograph of her in the society pages of a New York newspaper. Glenda De Witt had been a small, waifishly pretty woman, as elegant as a piece of the finest Colebrook china. Glenda DeWitt Colebrook. The woman to whom Artemas had devoted himself. The woman Artemas had loved enough to marry.

  She hated the prickle of self-conscious discomfort she felt. She was suddenly too tall, rangy, and indelicate in jeans and a work shirt, with her hair tangled down her back. Not fine porcelain, like Glenda DeWitt, but thick, sturdy stoneware, unbreakable but ordinary. “Why did you come to see me?” she asked the senator, her head up.

  He took an ornate pipe from the pocket of his coat, stroked it, frowned, then put it away again, and leaned forward. His narrowed eyes simmered with the pensive reserve of a man who had thought long and hard about what he wanted to say. “I took so much away from Artemas. And from you,” he answered slowly, his gaze burning into hers. “I came here to give the future back to you both.”

  Wearing only white pajama bottoms, Artemas stood in the open doors that led from his bedroom onto the low stone balcony, his head tilted. He studied the panorama of autumn mountains over the balustrade, blue-tinted, rust-and-gold in the early light. He was puzzled without knowing why.

  His restless sleep had been filled with Lily’s presence even more than usual, both melancholy and promising, half-seen yearnings rising like a morning arousal. The dawn air was cool on the feverish skin of his arm.

  The two kittens scampered past him. Their sporadic shenanigans through the night had woken him at least once, and he recalled them sitting on a table near the doors, silhouetted in the moonlight, fixated on some mystery beyond the beveled-glass panes.

  He walked out onto the balcony, flexing his burned arm, deciding gratefully that he was comfortable enough to dress and go to the office. He needed the routine, the work. Having Lily with him for even their brief time made his solitude more painful. After the senator had departed yesterday, Artemas had debated calling her, but he’d known she wouldn’t return.

  Stroking a hand through his disheveled hair, he pulled a heavy iron chair to the edge of the balcony. He craved the cigarettes he’d crumbled over a trash can yesterday He’d open a new pack later, smoke one, throw the rest away.

  He started to sit down, then halted, astonished, disbelieving, as he studied the ground below the balcony. A section of the mansion’s looming stone walls jutted out, giving him a private area. In his childhood it had sheltered a small, secluded flower garden. He’d had the space scraped clear of brambles and pines, like the rest of the lost gardens around the house.

  During the night it had been reclaimed.

  A thick bank of azalea shrubs, their summer greenery not yet subdued by an autumn frost, nestled against the wall. Other shrubs, which he couldn’t identify, bordered the private space. The earth in front of them had been mulched with pine straw, cre
ating curving, empty spaces dotted with wooden stakes. The stakes bore small paper notes. Artemas hurried down the stone steps and dropped to one knee, to read them. They promised a spring show of irises, daffodils, tulips, and lilies.

  Her signature. He wanted to go to her, ask her if there was some special meaning, something new. But he wouldn’t. She had her reasons, and she’d explain when the time felt right to her. He imagined her slipping back and forth through the dark woods between the estate and her place, carrying her gifts, working beneath his balcony, his bedroom, in the moonlight. Telling him in this simple, profound way that she was with him.

  Lily woke to the sound of Mr. Estes bellowing her name. She jerked upright, disoriented, and looked around her bedroom wildly. She lay on top of the quilts, with the corner of one pulled halfway across her body. Bits of pine straw clung to her jeans and shirt. Her socks were stained with dirt. Her hair lay in matted disarray over her shoulder, an elastic band jumbled in the strands. She’d fallen asleep in the middle of unbraiding it.

  Then she remembered—Senator DeWitt’s visit, and the reason Artemas had married his daughter. Knowing made her feel both better and worse. Nothing else had changed, but that one, very deep sorrow was gone.

  “Lily! Where are you? Get out here, girl!”

  She stumbled into the main room. Mr. Estes stood there looking at her with gleaming, mischievous eyes. “It’s ten A.M., girl! What’s wrong with you, takin’ a nap on a beautiful morning like this?”

  Scrubbing a hand over her face, Lily absorbed his astonishing cheerfulness. “You’re not Mr. Estes. Aliens must’ve switched him for someone who smiles.”

  “Ask me,” he ordered, giving a proud little jerk to the open sides of his work jacket. “Ask me how it went.”

  “Your date with Little Sis? Tell me.”

  “Went good,” he said, suddenly shy and gruff. He pulled his hat off, and twisting it in his hands, stared at the floor.