Roses

by Leila Meacham

  “It’s the family farm, Matt, the legacy of generations of Tolivers. It’s the soil of our history. To lose it… to see it in the hands of anyone not of my blood… I couldn’t bear it. How can you ask me not to fight for the only connection I have now to my family?”

  He dropped his arms. “So that’s the way it is.”

  She turned toward the table and wrote a number on the motel notepad. “This is my number in Dallas. Your grandfather can reach me there, if I don’t hear from him tonight. Tell him he has until the end of the week to agree to my terms. Otherwise, Monday morning I give Taylor Sutherland the go-ahead to file suit.”

  “You realize you’ll be forcing Granddad to betray Mary’s trust. How can he ever live with that?”

  “The same way he’s learned to live with the betrayal of mine.”

  “Answer me this, Rachel,” Matt said, taking the note. “If Mary had remembered you as you’d expected, would you still regret reneging on your promise to your mother—and sacrificing all the years you could have had with your family?”

  The question rocked her. She had not thought to ask it of herself, perhaps never would have. He deserved the truth. It would make it easier for him to forget her. “No,” she said.

  He inserted the notepaper and letters into the breast pocket of his jacket. “Well, I guess that makes you a Toliver after all. We’ll be in touch,” he said, and strode through the open door without looking back.

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  In the kitchen of his bachelor domicile—an elegant six-room apartment set atop a row of shops that faced the town circle—Amos studied the contents of his pantry for something effortless to prepare for supper. He was hungry, but too dispirited to go to the trouble of making a meal, and if he went out, he might miss a call from Matt or Percy or—dared he hope?—Rachel. All afternoon, he’d waited to hear from one of them, hoping to learn what she was doing in Howbutker. There was certainly nothing here for her anymore except, of course, those who loved her, but it looked as if she wanted nothing to do with them.

  Bran flakes, he decided, taking down a bowl. Lord, he was depressed! Not since Claudia, Matt’s mother, had died had he felt this low. He could guess what she would have thought of this mess. As he’d predicted, the fallout from that damn codicil had been ruinous for everyone concerned—Rachel most of all, of course, but his main worry was Percy. He’d never seen a man go down so fast. Always faultlessly groomed, confident, energetic—he now looked like a patient on bed rest and chicken broth. He had expected him to grow old, but not shrivel—not Percy Warwick, business magnate, prince among men, his hero.

  The buzz of the apartment’s intercom cut sharply into his gray thoughts. His heart jumped. Rachel! He set down the milk carton and hurried to speak hopefully into the grid. “Yes?”

  “Amos, it’s me. Matt.”

  “Matt!” Thank God somebody was checking in. He pushed the button to unlock the street-level door. “Come on up.”

  He stepped out onto the landing expecting to see Rachel behind Matt’s broad shoulders, but that hope dived like a rent kite as Matt alone stepped through the security door, his look auguring nothing good. “You didn’t find her,” he said as Matt started up.

  “Oh, I found her all right.”

  “She spat in your face.”

  “Might as well have. Got a beer?”

  “An unlimited supply. Come on in.”

  Amos led his guest into a small living room with French doors opening to a terrace that overlooked the trim acres of the city park. It was his favorite spot. “If you don’t think it’s too warm for the terrace, I’ll bring a couple out there,” he said.

  He heard the French doors open as he went into the kitchen, returned the milk to the refrigerator, and tore two cans out of their paper packaging. An ominous chill rippled along his skin. He sniffed bad news like the threat of a storm.

  “Where did you find her?” he asked as he joined Matt and handed him a can of beer inserted into a foam holder. Matt had not sat down. Amos could almost feel the heat of suppressed emotion keeping him on his feet, but also a cold control, reminding him somehow of Matt’s rugged Marine Corps father, whom he’d known only through Claudia.

  “At a motel in Marshall. She knew I’d find her if she booked a room in Howbutker. It was just by luck that I learned her whereabouts from Henry. She’ll be leaving for Dallas in the morning. Don’t take it personally that she didn’t contact you, Amos. She wasn’t here on a social call.”

  “What, then?” he asked, choosing to sit down.

  Matt took a strong pull of the beer, set it down, and removed his jacket. He draped it over the back of a fat striped lounger and took two letters from his pocket. “Are you familiar with the name Miles Toliver?”

  Amos nodded. “Mary’s brother. William’s father. He died in France when William was about six, leaving the boy orphaned. That’s why he became Mary’s ward.”

  “You know your Toliver history well. I wish I had before today, but let me tell you a tale I’ll bet you don’t know.”

  Amos listened in silence, his jaw slack, the beer turning to sour mash in his stomach. When Matt had finished and he’d read the copies of Miles’s and Percy’s correspondence, all he could manage to say was, “What arrogance, what conceit, to believe I’ve ever known anything about the Tolivers, Warwicks, and DuMonts of Howbutker, Texas. What does Rachel intend to do with this information?”

  “Sue Granddad for land fraud, if he doesn’t meet her terms.”

  Amos whipped off his glasses. “You can’t be serious. And her terms are…?”

  “She wants Granddad to trade Somerset for the land he stole from her—her word.”

  “Oh, dear.” Amos closed his eyes and massaged the depressions in his nose where his glasses had sat. In light of the child’s appalling discoveries, how could she do anything else? “Will Percy be willing to do that?” he asked.

  “I… don’t know. He said he’d do the right thing, whatever that is. I’m here to ask if we’re in trouble—if Rachel’s boat has a chance of floating.”

  Amos handed back the letters. “If it doesn’t entail returning Somerset, your grandfather may not have the choice of doing the right thing. Those letters pose a credible threat to the property in question. So, yes, I’d say that you’re in trouble and up against more like a frigate with a full sail.”

  Matt reached for his jacket. “Let’s go see Granddad, Amos. He needs to hear that from the only man who can convince him.”

  But will he listen? Amos wondered, getting to his feet despite the heaviness of his doubts.

  IN THE LIBRARY, WHERE HE’D been waiting for Matt and Rachel, Percy returned the receiver to its cradle, crestfallen. “Rachel won’t be coming, Granddad,” Matt had telephoned to inform him. “She has her own interpretation of the facts, and no amount of artful persuasion will budge her from it. She wants Somerset back, and she may have the leverage to get it. Amos and I are on the way now to discuss options with you.”

  “How… is she?” he’d asked.

  “Feeling betrayed, deceived, lied to, kicked in the gut, definitely not kindly disposed to the Warwicks—or the memory of her great-aunt.”

  “What a terrible injustice to Mary,” Percy had murmured.

  “You’ll have to convince me of that, Granddad.”

  “I intend to.”

  Sighing, Percy worked himself out of his chair on trembling legs, his earlier hopes evaporated. He did not feel well. A thin film of perspiration stood on his forehead, and his loafers felt as if there were weights in them, not a good sign. He shuffled to the intercom and pushed the on button. “Savannah, there’s been a change of plans,” he rasped into the speaker. “I’m afraid we won’t be entertaining our special guest after all, but your good meal won’t go to waste. Matt and Amos are on the way, and they’ll make short shrift of your efforts. Leave everything warming and we’ll serve ourselves.”

  “The appetizers, too?”

  “Send them upstai
rs. The boys’ll need sustenance. And a bucket of ice and a bottle of my best Scotch,” he added.

  “Mister Percy, you don’t sound so good.”

  “I’m not good. Put Grady on. I have one further request.”

  In the hallway, he bypassed the staircase, which at the moment looked an Everest beyond his strength, and took the elevator, which he rarely used, but tonight he must conserve himself for what he had to do. At his age, and feeling as he did, tomorrow might be too late. If Rachel refused to hear his story in person, he’d set the record straight another way—and in the presence of Amos and his grandson, who—no matter what it cost him—were entitled to the truth.

  MATT, WITH AMOS FOLLOWING IN his car, arrived ten minutes later. He smelled something delicious drifting from the kitchen and saw the flowers and prettily set table and felt sick to his soul. The feast was laid, but Rachel would not partake. What a tragic and unnecessary waste. He’d feebly believed that, given time, he’d get over her, but even now that she’d shown him where her heart lay, he knew he wouldn’t. She was a string of the girl he remembered, brown as river rock, all angles and sharp edges, but she had taken his breath away when she’d stepped into that motel room, and he’d have given everything he possessed in that moment to sweep her up and carry her away to some… bower to love all the hurt and pain away. His grandfather had warned him, and he wished he’d listened, but there it was. She was the woman he wanted in his life for the rest of his days. After her, there would be no one else. A wife, maybe, but no other woman.

  He entered the sitting room to find his grandfather returned to his old impeccable form, but his sick pallor shook Matt to the center of his being. “Granddad, how are you feeling?”

  “Up to what I’ve got planned for the evening. Take a seat, fellows. Amos, will you do the honors?” He gestured toward the bottle of Scotch set beside a sterling silver ice bucket on the bar.

  “Gladly,” Amos said, sharing a look of grieving concern with Matt.

  Matt sank in his usual wingback. The ghosts from the past were galloping this evening. He suddenly longed for his mother, for the father he never knew. He had never felt so lonely in all his life. The seat of his chair was frayed, he noticed, provoking even more acutely the memory of his gentle, soft-spoken mother. She had decorated this room. The blues and creams and greens, the occasional bright burgundies, all faded now, had been her choices. He could remember a discussion at the breakfast table about wallpaper, his grandfather saying, “I’ll like whatever you decide upon, Claudia. You could not possibly disappoint me.”

  Apparently, she had not. Not even a lamp shade had been changed in twenty-five years. Only the painting over the mantel had not been her selection. It was his father’s, brought by a marine buddy from overseas after his death.

  “Isn’t it time this room was redone, Granddad?” he asked. “It’s beginning to look a little threadbare.”

  “So is the time I have left,” Percy said, declining a drink with a motion of his finger. “I’ll leave it to you to do something about.”

  “Start with that,” Amos said wryly, nodding toward the painting.

  Percy gave him a twisted smile. “Can you not make out the subject, Amos?”

  “Frankly, no. If you’ll forgive my saying so, its quality has not inspired a close look.”

  “Well, give it a close look, and tell me what you see.”

  Amos unwound himself from the wingback and drew close to examine the artist’s attempt at an impressionistic setting. Matt, too, craned his neck around. What was his grandfather getting at? The painting had hung there so many years, it had become invisible to him. Other than the sentiment attached, it held no artistic value to him whatsoever.

  “Why, I see a small boy running toward a garden gate…,” Amos mused.

  “What’s in his arms?”

  “It looks as if they’re… flowers.”

  “What kind?”

  Amos turned to Percy, his face brightening in surprised recognition. “Why… they’re white roses.”

  “My son Wyatt had that painting delivered to me posthumously. Not a very good one, I grant you, but its message means the world to me.”

  Matt knew something was coming. He caught the emotion in his grandfather’s voice, the soft shine of tears in his eyes. A pit opened in his stomach. “What message, Granddad?”

  “A message of forgiveness. Did you ever know about the legend of the roses, son?”

  “If I did, I’ve forgotten.”

  “Tell him, Amos.”

  Amos explained, his Adam’s apple bobbing, its tendency when he was feeling deep emotion, Matt was aware. The history lesson completed, he said, “So my dad was saying he forgave you. For what?”

  “For not loving him.”

  Matt slowly straightened in his chair. “What are you talking about? You were crazy about my father.”

  “Yes, yes, I was,” Percy said, “but that was many years after he came into the world—and past the time when it mattered. You see, I had two sons. One I loved from the beginning. The other—your father—I did not.”

  Both men gaped at him, their glasses held motionless. “Two sons?” Amos croaked. “What happened to the first?”

  “He died at age sixteen of influenza. Wyatt lies beside him now. There’s a picture of him on my bedside table. Mary mailed it to me the day she died.”

  “But—but—that’s Matthew DuMont,” Matt sputtered.

  “Yes, son. Your namesake. Matthew was Mary’s and my child.”

  Shocked silence met this calm revelation, broken by Grady’s tentative knock and Percy’s, “Come in.” He tiptoed in as if entering a sickroom and set down a tray wafting a savory smell. On it was a plate of appetizers and a tape recorder. When he had departed, Percy turned to his still thunderstruck audience, Matt looking as if hell had opened up, Amos as if the heavens had parted. “Better eat up, fellows, before Savannah’s cheese puffs get cold,” he said. “It’s going to be a long night.”

  “Granddad,” Matt said finally, “I think it’s time we heard your story.”

  “And I think it’s time I told it,” Percy said, and punched on the tape recorder.

  Chapter Seventy

  Up the street from Warwick Hall, next to the Toliver mansion, Hannah Barweise sat rocking on her verandah, in the grip of a quandary. Percy Warwick was failing, and now the question was whether she should inform Lucy to be prepared for the worst. Her friend would never admit it, but it was plain as the freckles on Doris Day’s face that she was still in love with her husband.

  Should she tell Lucy of the latest developments that may have sent Percy over the edge? The first began around noon when she’d spotted the Toliver girl go into Mary’s house. She’d stayed long enough for Henry to carry some boxes out to her car, then left. She hadn’t been gone any time before Matt had come careening up the street like a madman, screeching into Mary’s drive. Not long afterward, he’d come tearing out as if he had a plane to catch.

  As a past president of the Conservation Society, she’d considered it her duty to question Henry in regard to Rachel Toliver’s visit. The society had received no instruction from her concerning what to do with Mary’s possessions. Without Sassie around to curb his tongue, he’d told her plenty. First, Rachel had taken only a few antiquated ledgers and the items from a trunk in the attic. She’d wanted nothing else of Mary’s. That told Hannah what the girl now thought of her great-aunt, and who could blame her, considering the bomb she’d tossed in her lap?

  Next, she’d gotten out of him that Matt had taken off after Rachel on a hunch that she was holed up in a motel outside Howbutker. How she’d have liked to be a mouse under the bed for that reunion. It was no secret around town that before everything blew up in Rachel’s face, she and Matt had been a hot item. She was guessing he’d found her and she was the special guest expected for dinner, based on a conversation she’d listened in on between her housekeeper and Savannah, the Warwicks’ cook, a little while ago.

>   Savannah had called to wail that after all her hard work, the girl wasn’t coming and that Percy was terribly disappointed. Hannah would bet two to one that he’d hoped to redeem himself with Rachel and salvage a chance for her and his grandson to get back together. Matt and Amos were down there now, Amos looking longer in the face than usual and Matt not much better. According to Savannah, they were all three closeted in Percy’s study drinking Scotch while the chicken Florentine dried out in the oven.

  It was Savannah’s contention that Percy couldn’t take much more and that it was only a matter of time before he succumbed to the inevitable. It would break Lucy’s heart to hear it, but Hannah had promised to inform her of news that affected her family. If worse came to worst, she would want to be there for Matt. On that note, Hannah left her rocker and went inside to make the call.

  LUCY HUNG UP THE PHONE and rang for Betty.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Forget the dessert and coffee tonight, Betty. Bring the brandy.”

  “Somethin’ wrong?”

  “There most certainly is. My husband is dying.”

  “Oh, Miss Lucy!”

  “How could he?” Lucy thumped the floor with her cane. “How could he?” Thump. Thump. Thump.

  “But, Miss Lucy!” Betty stared at her mistress in astonishment. “Maybe he don’t have no say about it.”

  “Yes, he does! He doesn’t have to give up the will to live because of that woman.”

  “What woman?”

  Lucy caught herself. She pulled up her shoulders, neutralized the cane. “The brandy, Betty. Immediately.”

  “Comin’ right up.”

  Lucy dragged in a deep breath. Her heart was thrashing like a caged wild bird, but Lord, when had it not when it came to Percy? She was beginning to dread these calls from Hannah, but at the same time she was grateful for the information. Hannah hadn’t a clue how to put the pieces together, thank God, but Lucy did. Hannah relayed, and she assembled. From the tidbits she’d sent on through the years, assisted by the unwitting Savannah and the information she could pump from Matt, Lucy had had a clear picture of the happenings at Warwick Hall.