by John Saul
Lucinda Willoughby hesitated only a moment, then nodded. “She could have died just now,” she said. She paused, then decided there was no reason not to go on. “It’s her temper, Miss Marguerite. If she’d just learn to stay calm, she could go on for years yet. But she won’t. She’ll keep flyin’ off the handle at folks, and every time she does, she’ll just make herself worse. Since we all know she isn’t going to change, we better face up to the fact that she’s going to die.”
Marguerite stood perfectly still for a moment, letting the nurse’s words sink in. She knew, of course, that it was true—had known it for years now. Her mother couldn’t live forever. But there had always been something about the old woman that seemed eternal; Marguerite couldn’t quite imagine the house she’d lived in all her life without her mother’s presence. And yet, a few minutes before, she’d seen mortality in her mother’s face, seen death stroking the old woman’s sunken cheeks.
And her mother had been demanding to see Kevin.
It was the first time Helena Devereaux had spoken her son’s name in more than twenty years.
Marguerite turned away from the nurse and started slowly along the wide second-floor corridor toward her own room. Almost unconsciously her right hand went to her hip, her fingers pressing at the pain. The sharp stabbing, like a hot knife driven deep into the bone, had been part of her life for so many years that she rarely noticed it anymore. Except that tonight it seemed even sharper than usual, and she could feel the lameness in her right leg shooting all the way down into her ankle.
Resolutely she put the pain out of her mind and tried to straighten her gait. At the door to her room she felt a touch on her shoulder and turned to see Ruby, the woman who had been in the house even before Marguerite was born, looking anxiously at her, her large, dark eyes reflecting her worry.
“What is it, Miss Marguerite?” Ruby asked softly. “Is it Miss Helena?”
Marguerite nodded and managed a sympathetic smile. “I’m afraid so, Ruby. I think—I think I’m going to have to call Kevin in the morning and ask him to come.”
A slight gasp escaped Ruby’s lips. “She asked for him? She spoke his name?”
Once again Marguerite nodded. “I wonder,” she breathed, more to herself than to the old housekeeper. “I wonder if he’ll come.”
Ruby’s lips pursed and her eyes narrowed. “He’ll come,” she replied. “And you won’t need to call him, Miss Marguerite. He already knows Miss Helena’s bad off.”
Marguerite tipped her head slightly, examining Ruby’s dark face in the soft glow of the tarnished brass sconces that lined the hallway. What was she talking about? “But he can’t know,” she said. “Ruby, none of us have even talked to Kevin for years.”
“Don’t matter,” Ruby replied, her voice stolid. “He knows what’s happening with his mother. He’s a Devereaux, and that’s the end of it. You see if I’m not right, Miss Marguerite. You see if he doesn’t call himself, come morning.” Without waiting for a reply, Ruby turned away and a moment later disappeared down the back stairs to her room, next to the kitchen.
When she was gone, Marguerite retreated into her own bedroom, closing the door behind her. She took off the robe and slid back into her bed, pulling only a sheet over her body. Even the worn cotton felt heavy in the humid warmth of the summer night, but she left it where it was, taking a faint reassurance from its closeness. Outside, the droning of insects and tree frogs all but screened out the soft murmuring of the sea a few hundred yards away, and the sweet perfume of honeysuckle drifted around her.
She thought about Kevin then. It would be good to see him again, good to meet his family. He’d been gone far too long, and though she’d never told her mother, she’d missed him terribly.
But did it have to be her mother’s death that brought him home?
It wasn’t fair. She shouldn’t have to lose her mother to regain her brother.
Still, she had to come to grips with the fact that her mother was going to die, whether Kevin came home or not.
It was a fact of life, and life was to be dealt with.
And whatever happened, Marguerite had always dealt with life as best she could, and never complained.
She would not begin complaining now.
She would accept whatever happened, and deal with it.
With the perfume of the honeysuckle and the sounds of the night lulling her senses, she drifted into sleep.
In her own room, Helena Devereaux did not sleep. Instead, she lay still in her bed, willing her heart to keep beating smoothly, just as she had willed most things in her life to happen according to her own choices. Until the last few months her will had been sufficient. But she was nearing the end now. She could feel her strength slipping away from her, feel her grip on Ruby and Marguerite loosening, just as her grip on life was loosening too. Now, as she lay in the darkness of her room, she wondered which she hated most—the fact of dying, or the fact of losing her control over events around her. Not that it mattered, of course, for in the end it added up to the same thing: death was the ultimate loss of control.
Memories drifted through her mind.
Her first meeting with Rafe Devereaux, when she’d been only sixteen. Rafe had been ten years older than she, darkly handsome and dashing, and he’d promised her the world. But all he’d been able to give her were the remnants of a worn-out plantation and a family heritage that had been meaningless to her. What did she care for Rafe’s Huguenot ancestors and their long-faded antebellum glory? She’d assumed, during the first months after she’d married him, that after a year or so he’d take her to New York and use his influence on behalf of her career. But it turned out that he had no influence beyond Charleston, and even there the Devereauxes weren’t on the best social lists. Then Marguerite was born, followed eight years later by Kevin, and her dreams had slowly faded away until all that was left of her dancing was the lessons she gave to her daughter.
Then, when Kevin was seven, Rafe had given up on life completely and killed himself. She’d covered it up, of course, cutting his hanged body down from the rafters in the barn and shoving it off the edge of the hayloft herself. The doctor, as she’d intended, had called his broken neck an accident, and never even noticed the traces of rope burns on his throat.
It wasn’t until the next week that she’d discovered that even in death Rafe Devereaux had done nothing for her. The entire estate was left to her only in trust. She could keep it until she died, but then must pass it on, intact.
And so, in the fury that had sustained her from that day forward, she’d banished her son to boarding school and devoted her energies to Marguerite.
Marguerite, too, had failed her, and in the end—and she knew now that the end was very near—she had been left with nothing. Nothing but a weakening body that kept her confined to bed most of the time now, and a weakening spirit that was losing its ability to dominate. She could even see it in their eyes. They weren’t afraid of her anymore, not really. They were only humoring her in her last days.
Well, she wasn’t through yet.
She might not be able to control Marguerite much longer, but there was still Kevin.
She chuckled silently to herself as she realized that now, in the end, her long-dead husband was finally going to help her. In his own will he’d given her the tool she needed to maintain her power, even after her body submitted to its final failure.
The chuckle still echoing in her mind, she at last let herself give in to sleep.
The first light of dawn was just beginning to turn the eastern sky a silvery gray when Kevin heard the creaking of floorboards in the foyer. A moment later his daughter came into the room, rubbing the last vestiges of sleep from her eyes. Kevin watched her for a moment, marveling as he always did at how much she looked like his sister.
Julie was fifteen now, and her light brown eyes had taken on the same slant as Marguerite’s. Her dark, slightly wavy hair framed her heart-shaped face in the same flattering manner that Marguerite’
s had, and her body was even molding into the same lithely muscular proportions that Marguerite had had at the same age—the result of endless hours at the barre. But Marguerite had practiced her ballet with a deep intensity that Julie had never felt, and that neither Kevin nor Anne had ever encouraged. Privately, though, Kevin thought his daughter was already a better dancer than his sister had ever been.
He smiled fondly at her in the brightening light. “Shall I mark this day on the calendar? The day Julie got up without anybody having to yell at her?”
Julie grinned self-consciously and plumped herself onto the sofa. “I had a nightmare,” she admitted, blushing slightly at the confession. “I know it’s dumb, but I was afraid to go back to sleep.”
“Join the club,” Kevin offered. “I’ve been sitting here since four o’clock, for exactly the same reason, and I was just thinking of going back to bed.” He winked conspiratorially at his daughter. “On the other hand, there’s the possibility that the two of us could whip up a truly fabulous breakfast and surprise your mother and brother.”
Julie grinned her reply and followed her father into the kitchen, where she perched on a stool while he began expertly preparing eggs Benedict. “How come you never opened a restaurant? You cook better than anybody else.”
Kevin shrugged. “Economics. The restaurant business is the fastest way to go broke ever invented by man, and it always struck me that I’d rather feed you and your brother off a steady income than wind up broke feeding a bunch of strangers. Of course, when you two grow up and your mother and I have thrown you both out of here, I might change my mind.”
Julie took the whisk her father handed her and began stirring the Hollandaise sauce. “By then you’ll be too old, won’t you?” she asked with carefully studied innocence.
Kevin scowled deeply and did his best to sound offended.
“I beg your pardon. In ten years I’ll be fifty. Fifty, in case you didn’t know it, is now considered the bare beginnings of middle age, and—”
Julie giggled, her eyes rolling. “And old age doesn’t start until eighty,” she finished. Then her voice suddenly turned serious. “But don’t you get tired of working for someone else?”
Once again Kevin shrugged. “The Shannon is a good hotel, and I run it pretty well.”
“But you wish you owned it,” Julie stated flatly, her eyes meeting his. “Jeff and I hear you and Mom talking sometimes, you know.”
“Children are snoopy creatures, and shouldn’t listen to things they’re not supposed to hear,” Kevin observed mildly. “Besides, if the opportunity ever came up, I’d open a restaurant—or, even better, an inn—in a minute. But so far the opportunity hasn’t come up.”
Julie grinned mischievously. “Maybe Grandma will die and leave you a lot of money,” she suggested, then her eyes widened as she saw the blood drain from her father’s face.
Kevin turned to her, his voice tight and the muscles in his jaw knotting. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“I—I’m sorry,” Julie stammered. “I didn’t mean it. It was just a joke, Dad.”
“Not a funny one,” he told her, angry now. “You should never joke about things like that—”
Suddenly Julie felt herself getting angry too. “Why not?” she demanded. “You don’t even like Grandma! You’re always talking about what a mean person she is and how she makes Aunt Marguerite take care of her. What’s the big deal if I make a joke about her?” She slid off the stool and ran out of the kitchen.
For a long moment Kevin stayed where he was. He should go after Julie and apologize to her, for he knew what she’d said was the truth. If it hadn’t been for the dream, he wouldn’t have reacted to her words as he had.
So the dream was still bothering him.
He glanced at the clock. It was almost six-thirty.
Ruby would be up, fixing breakfast for Marguerite and his mother. If anything had happened, she would know.
Making up his mind, he reached for the phone.…
Ten minutes later he went slowly up the stairs and woke Anne. As soon as she saw his face, she knew something was terribly wrong.
“We have to go down there,” Kevin said, his voice flat. “I just talked to Marguerite. She says Mother is dying and is asking for me. I can’t put it off any longer. I have to go home.”
Anne looked at her husband in silence for a moment, then pushed the covers aside and got out of bed.
So it was finally going to happen.
For the first time in the eighteen years of her marriage, she was going to meet her husband’s family.
CHAPTER 2
“How much farther?” Jeff Devereaux demanded from the back seat of the Dodge station wagon. Outside, what seemed to him to be an endless expanse of flat land dotted with mossy pine trees rolled past. For the last two hours even looking at the wide sandy beach between the left side of the road and the sea beyond had bored him.
“You just asked that five minutes ago,” Julie told him. “So if it was fifteen minutes then, how long is it now?”
“I wasn’t asking you,” Jeff retorted. “I was asking Mom.”
“It doesn’t matter who you asked. It’s still ten minutes. Why can’t you just be quiet and watch the scenery like everyone else?”
Jeff glared at his older sister, wishing for the millionth time that it were possible for an eight-year-old boy to beat up a fifteen-year-old girl. But whenever he’d tried, Julie just held him away from her and started laughing, which only made him madder. Well, maybe he couldn’t pound her, but he didn’t have to let her boss him around. “I don’t have to do what you say,” he grumbled. “You don’t know everything.”
“And you don’t know anything!” Julie shot back, then realized that was probably exactly the response Jeff had been hoping for. Before she could say any more, Anne twisted around in the front seat to give both her children a warning look.
“Ten more minutes,” she said. “And we can do without any quarrels for the rest of the trip. All right?”
“I didn’t start it,” Jeff piped. “All I did was ask a question. How am I supposed to learn anything if I can’t ask questions? Dad always says—”
In spite of herself, Anne began laughing. “All right, all right! I don’t care who started it, I just don’t want it to go any further. And if you want to ask questions, go ahead.”
Jeff’s response was instantaneous. “How come we’ve never been here before?”
Once again Julie answered her brother’s question before her mother had a chance to say anything. “Because Dad doesn’t like Grandmother,” she said.
“Why not?” Jeff pressed. “What’s wrong with her?”
Out of the corner of her eye Anne saw Kevin’s jaw tighten, and his knuckles whiten as he squeezed the steering wheel, “It’s not that,” she said quickly, hoping to distract Jeff’s attention. “It’s just that it’s a long way from Connecticut, and we’ve never really had the time.”
“But we go on a vacation every year,” Jeff argued. “Why couldn’t we have come down here? It’s a better beach than the one on Cape Cod.”
“I thought you liked False Harbor,” Anne replied, welcoming the chance to change the subject.
“It’s okay,” Jeff reluctantly agreed. Then he spotted a sign as they passed it: DEVEREAUX—10 MILES. “WOW,” he breathed. “Is there really a whole town named after Dad?”
For the first time in more than an hour, Kevin spoke. “It’s not named after me,” he said, his voice tight and his words clipped. “It’s named after my family, and it’s been there for a couple of hundred years. And it’s not much of a town.”
The tone of his father’s voice made Jeff glance uneasily at his sister, but Julie didn’t seem to know what was wrong with their father either. “What’s wrong with it?” he finally ventured.
“In a few minutes you’ll see,” Kevin replied. Then he lapsed back into the heavy silence he had maintained all morning. For the next ten miles no one in the car spoke.
And then, abruptly, Kevin pulled the car off the road and stopped. “There it is,” he said. “That’s Devereaux. That’s where I grew up.”
Jeff opened the back door and scrambled out, then climbed to the top of a low bank that separated the road from the beach.
Ahead, another half mile down the road, was a worn-looking collection of buildings, some of them almost hidden in a tangle of vines. He could see a church steeple, an Exxon sign, and what looked like a row of shabby stores. There was also a scattering of houses, most of them fairly run-down, a few of them clearly abandoned. He looked up at his father, who was standing beside him now, Jeff’s disappointment clear on his face. “Is that all there is?” he asked.
“It goes on for about half a mile,” Kevin told him. “But it all looks pretty much the same. I suppose there are still a few nice places, but it just keeps getting worse.” He smiled wryly. “Still want to spend your vacation here?”
“But what happened to it?” Anne asked. “It looks like it must have been a nice town once.”
“It was,” Kevin agreed. “A long time ago, before I was born. Probably before my father was born. It used to be cotton plantations, until the land wore out.”
“But which house is yours?” Julie asked. “Where do Grandmother and Aunt Marguerite live?”
“Out there,” Kevin said quietly, turning away from the town and pointing to a low island two hundred yards off shore, connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway built up from the shallow seabed. “That’s Sea Oaks, where I grew up.”
Julie’s eyes widened as she stared at the immense white house that dominated the north end of the island. From where they stood, only the chimneys and a few gables were visible, for the building was surrounded by enormous live oak trees, their branches heavily laden with streamers of Spanish moss. Dotted among the oaks were a few white-blooming magnolias and some pines, but it was the wide, spreading branches of the ancient oaks themselves that caught Julie’s eye. They seemed to cradle the house, as if trying to protect it from something.