Bittersweet Passion

by Peggy Webb

  Daniel was smiling when he left the nursing home because suddenly everything seemed simple to him. Two people loved each other, therefore they should be together. He didn’t even question Hannah’s judgment. She was the least sentimental person he knew. If she said she saw love in Skylar’s face, then she saw love. Period.

  As he got into his car and drove toward Skylar’s house, Daniel’s only regret was that his father might never know about her. He might never know that at long last his only son had found the magic he’d witnessed between his parents his entire life.

  Now all Daniel had to do was convince Skylar.

  Chapter Twenty

  When Skylar walked into her house the curtains struck her all of a sudden as a symbol of everything that was wrong in her life, and she couldn’t stand them a minute longer. She raced to her windows and started ripping them off the walls. Pussy Willow jumped off the sofa where she’d been napping and scampered under the TV.

  Ordinarily Skylar would have apologized to her cat. She’d have said, “Sorry, Pussy W., this is nothing personal.” But today she was too distraught. There was too much on her mind. The past crowded in trying to smother her and the future was hammering so hard she could barely think.

  She didn’t stop until every window was stripped bare, then she sank into the heap of tattered curtains in the middle of her living-room floor and closed her eyes, overwhelmed.

  Her conversation with Hannah drifted through her mind, word for word. “All my life I’ve been looking for a safe harbor,” she’d told Hannah, she who had never in her life confessed anything to anybody. Skylar had always kept her true feelings inside. It was the only way she could escape recriminations.

  “Where did you look?” Hannah asked.

  “Paris, Rome, the Greek Islands. I was like some kind of migratory bird, alighting in one foreign port after the other always hoping to find a haven.”

  “And did you?”

  “No. Nothing ever satisfied. Nothing felt right. When I left I’d be filled with the same restlessness that had brought me there in the first place.

  “Your safe harbor is not a place, Skylar,” Hannah told her. “It’s a person, and I think you already know who he is.”

  Skylar did, but until she said it aloud she could still pretend it wasn’t so.

  “You’re safe with Daniel,” Hannah had said.

  And now Skylar couldn’t get the words out of her head. Dust from the curtains made her sneeze, and Pussy Willow came to sit beside her on the untidy heap of faded and torn fabric, and still Skylar could think of nothing except the one man who was the best thing that had ever happened to her…and the worst.

  She would never in a million years fit into his fishbowl world. She covered her face with her hands trying to shut out the thoughts.

  “Skylar…” There was Daniel framed in her doorway. “The door was open.”

  “I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  Time suspended as they stared at each other across the space, and Skylar knew in her bones that every dream, every hope she’d ever had depended on how she answered Daniel’s question.

  “No…” The minute the word was out of her mouth, he moved toward her. “That’s not what I want…I…”

  He knelt beside her and stopped her words with a kiss that reeled them both over backward until they were tangled together in the curtains. Dust billowed around them…and hope. Such hope that Skylar’s heart caught fire and she glowed with the wonderful possibility that had eluded her all her life.

  Daniel had come to her in spite of all her efforts at driving him away, and if she denied him now she might never get another chance at happiness. She wrapped her arms tighter and pulled him so close she could feel the beating of his heart against her own.

  “Last night I was afraid I’d lost you,” she whispered.

  “You’ll never lose me, Skylar.”

  “Oh, Daniel, I don’t deserve…”

  “Shhh.” He put his hand over her lips and she kissed his fingertip. “Magic just happens.”

  He captured her once more—her lips, her arms, her legs so that she was cocooned against him and safe. So very safe.

  “I wish we could stay like this forever,” she said, and Daniel brushed his fingertips tenderly along the side of her jaw and told her, “We can.”

  They didn’t say anything else for a long while, content instead to lie side by side drinking each other in, absorbing each other through their eyes, their skin, their hearts. It was the most romantic moment Skylar had ever known. In fact, it was the only romantic moment she’d ever known.

  The men who had passed through her life had merely skimmed the surface, never delving deep enough to know her, never taking the time to try to please her, and never, never touching her heart. It suddenly occurred to her that the chance of two true lovers finding each other in the vastness of the universe was small indeed, and if she turned her back on this miracle she was spitting in the face of fate.

  Oh, she had no doubt she could find someone else, but she would never, never find another soul mate. She would never find another person who filled her heart and created magic the way Daniel Westmoreland did.

  Daniel felt like a sixteen-year-old. Here he was lolling around on dusty old curtains in the middle of Skylar Tate’s floor, and he felt as if he were in the most romantic spot in the world. Candlelight and roses couldn’t have made things any better. A full moon and a night sky full of stars. A sunset over a painted sea. Nothing could have topped the moment.

  He memorized her face with his eyes, his fingertips, while everything he’d meant to say fled his mind. Things such as “Let’s go out to dinner and see if we can’t reclaim our common ground,” or “Let’s take a walk down by the river and talk,” or “Let’s start all over and see what happens.” There was only one thing to say to this woman. One thing to do.

  “Skylar, will you marry me?”

  “Yes.”

  If she’d hesitated Daniel might have backtracked and added, “As soon as Emily’s wedding is over and I’ve settled things at the nursing home for Mom.” But she’d accepted him in the wink of an eye, and suddenly nothing else mattered. They had this enormous love that had already overcome tremendous odds. What could possibly go wrong that the two of them couldn’t fix? Together.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  From the diary of Anne Beaufort Westmoreland:

  September 24, 2001

  It’s quiet here at the nursing home, but then it always is this time of night. The evening rounds finished, the last dose of medicine dispensed, everybody sleeping except the nurse on the night shift and me.

  I can’t sleep. I’m too excited, still reeling from Daniel’s news. He’s getting married. Even as I write these words I can still hardly believe it. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I love the girl. I really do, and he looks happier than I’ve ever seen him.

  Skylar Tate. A Huntsville girl. Southern to the bone. I like that.

  He brought her by early this evening right before Hannah left for Belle Rose, and she didn’t even act surprised. I haven’t been kept deliberately in the dark…my children wouldn’t do that. It’s just that I’ve been preoccupied with Michael and Daniel only just met Skylar. Here at Tranquility Manor of all places.

  Still…I knew the minute I saw Michael that I would marry him. True love socks you right in the heart. Let others court for months and even years. Soul mates simply know.

  Oh, and I do believe Daniel and Skylar are soul mates. Not that my opinion matters. Lord, I remember how Mother tried to talk me out of loving Michael. As if anybody could. As if anything short of a cataclysmic end-of-time event could keep the two of us apart. And not even then, for Michael and I are destined to be together always, in this lifetime and beyond.

  Well, anyhow…Daniel and Skylar had already gone to apply for their license. Hannah laughed heartily at that. “Striking while the iron is hot,” she called it, and then she and Daniel grin
ned at each other as if they knew something the rest of us didn’t.

  I’ll have to ask her about that tomorrow. Seems she and Skylar had already met, and I’m happy to say the two of them carried on together as if they were bosom buddies. That’s so wonderful to see. I would hate any divisiveness in this family.

  Lord, I’ll never forget when Emily announced she was marrying Jake how Hannah carried on. She came around though. That good Westmoreland blood.

  “I hope Emily won’t think we’re stealing her thunder,” Skylar told us, and I said, “No, of course not.” That’s when she told me that she and Daniel aren’t going to have a church wedding anyhow, but are going to have a private and very simple ceremony. With their own vows. Well, that certainly took me by surprise, Daniel being a minister and all, but I didn’t say anything.

  I guess that’s what being a good mother-in-law is all about. Not saying anything. At least that’s what Clarice said when I called to tell her about Daniel and Skylar. She has two daughters-in-law, and to hear her tell it they both think she walks on water.

  Lord, that Clarice…what would I do without her? When I broke apart and cried right in the middle of telling her all that happy news she said, “That’s all right, Anne. I understand your sadness.”

  And she does, for Clarice sees with her heart. She knows that seeing two of my children marry is bittersweet for me because Michael is not here to share it all. Oh, Daniel told him. I don’t mean that. He stood right there by that bed and held his father’s hand. “Dad,” he said, “I’m marrying the most beautiful woman in the world, somebody you already know. Remember how she sang for you, Dad? Well, now you’ll get to hear that angel’s voice anytime you want.”

  Hannah and I both cried when he said that. Skylar too.

  Well, enough of all these weepy confessions. I’m sick and tired of crying. I want to get on with living.

  And I want Michael there at my side. Not lying here in this nursing home like a turnip.

  As soon as I finish this entry I’m going to crawl into that bed and act as if we’re home in Belle Rose. I’m going to slither under the covers and do no telling what to him. I swear I am. Surely when I touch him he knows. Surely he’s stirred in the depths of his soul.

  That’s what he used to always tell me. “Anne, you stir my soul.”

  When is he going to wake up and tell me that again? Lord, if I didn’t have his diaries now I think I’d go crazy.

  Reading them is like hearing his voice. All those quotations he collected over the years, the little bits of wisdom he gleaned from other sources, the things he found noteworthy.

  And oh, the lovely things he said about me, about us. I thumb through his diaries, his letters to me and the memories are balm to my soul.

  I think I’ll read some more before I climb into bed with him. He seems so far away now. Unreachable, almost. But he’ll come back to me. I know he will. Because I love him. Because he loves me. I need to read the things he wrote so we won’t lose that heart-connection.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  From the diary of Michael Westmoreland:

  October l3, l966

  “Better to be without logic than without feeling.” Charlotte Brontë wrote those words and today I found out what she meant, for today I met the love of my life, the woman of my dreams, the woman I intend to marry. Come hell or high water.

  When I walked into that bus station this afternoon and saw Anne Beaufort sitting in the sunshine reading, my heart flew to hers without a moment’s hesitation, circumstances be damned. Being with her tonight at the Algonquin merely confirmed my feeling: This woman and I were destined to meet, destined to be together. For all time.

  If I deny that I might as well cut off my right arm and anesthetize my heart, for she’s the only woman I can ever feel truly alive with. This I know.

  Getting together is not going to be easy. God, how I wish it were. How I wish I’d never met Sarah, never been boxed into confessing a love I never really felt. How I wish I had never given her a ring.

  Old Oscar Wilde told the truth when he said, “Suffering is a revelation. One discovers things never discovered before.”

  I have to break the engagement. There’s no other way, for now I know that a marriage without true love will kill the spirit and deaden the heart. If I stay with Sarah after having met Anne I’ll shackle some part of me that was meant to soar. Not only that, but Sarah will be denied the pleasure of being all she can truly be. She won’t get the chance to grow, to spread her wings and fly, too.

  It’s not going to be easy. Telling either of them. Knowing Anne as I do (I’ve only been with her hours, and yet already I feel as if I know her to the bone), she’ll take it all in stride, but Sarah will be a different matter. She’ll try to chain me to her side with guilt. And reminders of a shared history, a commitment. Lord God, how I hate that word. Only the Puritans could have come up with something so soulless and cold. What the hell does it mean? Chained side by side, no matter what? All because of laws laid down by a bunch of men who knew everything about sin and nothing about joy.

  True love needs no extrapolation. Only true love truly binds. And without a bunch of sanctified, sanctimonious old farts carping about commitment and making folks pledge until death do us part.

  Hell, death can’t part true lovers. Both Anne and I know that.

  When I marry that woman…and I will marry her…we’ll write our own vows. We’ll speak love and leave the words of bondage to people less aware.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Skylar was in the midst of writing the vows she would say to Daniel when she panicked. Tomorrow she was supposed to stand on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi and pledge herself to Daniel in front of his family. She, Skylar Tate, married to a preacher!

  She must be going crazy. That was it. Living out of a suitcase for years and having conversations with a cat had driven her over the brink. Why else would she be setting herself up for a future doomed to failure?

  She would run away. Pack her bag and catch the first bus out of Vicksburg.

  Grabbing a suitcase from the top of her closet, Skylar began to toss in clothes. She was good at this. She’d done it many, many times.

  Pussy Willow jumped on the bed and nosed around the wadded clothes, then sniffed in disgust and walked off.

  “It’s for the best P.W., you’ll see. Someday Daniel will thank me.” Skylar tossed her perfume on top of a pair of silk pajamas, and all of a sudden she thought about Daniel, standing underneath the ancient oak waiting for her. Daniel who had never been anything except wonderful.

  She picked up the phone and dialed his number. “Daniel?” He made a few sleepy sounds into the receiver and only then did she look at the clock. “Oh lord, I’m sorry. I didn’t know what time it is. Go back to sleep.”

  “Sky? What’s wrong?”

  “Everything. I can’t do this, Daniel. I can’t marry you.”

  “I’m coming over.”

  “No…Daniel…wait. It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

  “Stay right where you are. Don’t you go anywhere, Sky. Promise you won’t leave.”

  “Please don’t come, Daniel. I’m no good for you.”

  “Say it, Sky! Say you’ll wait for me. Please…”

  She sighed. “All right. But it won’t do any good. I’ve already made up my mind.”

  “We’ll talk…as long as you like…and if you still feel the same way after that, then you can leave.”

  “You won’t try to stop me?”

  “No, I won’t try to stop you.”

  “All right, then.”

  Daniel broke speed limits. If the cops stopped him he’d have to go to jail without a shirt or socks. Beard stubble and bleary eyes.

  He let off the accelerator. He couldn’t go to jail. He had to see Skylar. He had to talk her out of leaving him.

  When he pulled up she was standing at the door, and he bolted from the car so fast that he left his car door wide open. All the w
ay over he’d worried about what to say to her, what to do. Give her space or hug her close? Start the conversation or wait and listen?

  Now there was no hesitation. None whatsoever. He scooped her into his arms and pressed her close, cradling her head with one hand and stroking her back with the other.

  “Daniel…”

  “Shhh. Just let me hold you a while.”

  Sighing, she swayed against him, and they stood that way for a long while, gently moving back and forth like two saplings in a summer wind.

  “This feels wonderful,” she murmured against his chest.

  He said, “Hmmm,” and kept on rocking her, rocking her gently in his love.

  Leaning back slightly so she could see his face she said, “You don’t know me at all.”

  “I know everything I need to know, Sky. You have a loving and generous heart.”

  “I can never fit in. I can never be a proper preacher’s wife. I can never act pious and pretend to be something I’m not.”

  “You don’t have to pretend. I love you exactly the way you are, and I don’t want you to change. Not for me, not for anybody. Didn’t I tell you that already?”

  “Yes.”

  “You won’t have to fill a role. You won’t have to meet anybody’s expectations. You can continue your career or not. It’s up to you.”

  She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe it, then burrowed closer to his chest. “Oh, Daniel….”

  “What? Tell me what else is bothering you, Sky.”

  “I’m scared. I’ve never had anything this wonderful. I’ve never known what it was like to love and be loved in this absolutely accepting, totally encompassing way and I’m afraid if I blink my eyes it’ll all be taken away. I would die if I lost you, Daniel.”

  In his profession Daniel had comforted many a bride-to-be with wedding-day jitters, but there was no way he could pass off what Skylar was feeling as a simple case of jitters. Her hurts were deep and wide, going back many years to a childhood without love.