The Unloved

by John Saul

  “It’s Anne, Kevin,” the police chief said. “There isn’t any easy way to tell you this. Her … well, her body just washed up on a shore little bit north of town. We don’t … well, we don’t exactly know what happened yet, but …”

  Hempstead’s voice droned on, but Kevin heard none of it. It wasn’t possible. Anne couldn’t be dead—she couldn’t! She’d just gone for a ride, just wanted to be by herself. She was coming back. She was coming back any minute now, and she wouldn’t be angry anymore. She’d be smiling at him, and telling him she’d finally thought it all through, and—

  But she wasn’t coming back. Something had happened, and she was never coming home to him, or to the children, again.

  He dropped onto the wooden chair near the door and buried his face in his hands, his body wracked by the first sobs of his grief.

  Even the creatures of the night seemed to have fallen silent.

  The air was still, and the last of the storm-driven surf had long since died away. Only a gentle lapping sound drifted through the darkness, and Kevin, alone now in the room he had shared with Anne, sat by the window, staring out. His mind felt numb, unwilling to accept the truth of what had happened. He kept feeling a strange urge to talk to Anne, to call out to her as if she were in the bathroom, preparing herself for bed. Twice he’d heard a sound and looked up eagerly, ready for the door to open, for Anne to come into the room. But each time he’d caught himself.

  It wasn’t Anne.

  It would never be Anne again.

  They’d pieced together what must have happened. She hadn’t even made it across the causeway. The wind and the sea had taken her, washing the car off the road, trapping her inside. But she’d gotten free, almost.

  Will Hempstead’s words still rang in his mind. “We found the car. She’d gotten out of it. Almost made it. But from the marks on her body it looks like the seat belt wrapped around her ankle and held her under. So stupid. So goddamned, fucking stupid!”

  Kevin almost wished Will hadn’t told him. In a way, it would have been easier if he could have believed she died instantly, knocked unconscious before she drowned. But to have been fighting to the very end, to be so close to surviving—

  He shuddered, and tried to fight back the tears that overwhelmed him. Unable to stop himself, he gave in, sobbing silently for a few minutes until the wracking wave of grief ebbed once more. He opened the window, sucking the heavily perfumed air deep into his lungs.

  It was the scent that did it, the strong odor that suddenly carried him back to his youth, the days before his father had died, when life had seemed wonderful to him. But then, when he was six, his father had fallen in the barn, broken his neck and died. After that everything changed.

  His mother had suddenly turned all her attention to Marguerite. And Kevin couldn’t blame her really, not now. Not from the perspective of his own maturity. After all, Marguerite had been so much like their mother. Her beauty, her grace, her talent …

  Marguerite had suddenly filled his mother’s life, and in her determination that her daughter should have the career she herself had missed, she had turned away from Kevin himself. Turned away from him, and finally sent him away to military school.

  To the Fortress, where he had spent nine miserable months each year, only to be sent away each summer to a camp in Maine.

  Home—home at Sea Oaks—only for Christmas.

  It shouldn’t have been home anymore, not after all these years. And yet, as the gloriously sweet smells of the southern summer filled his lungs, he knew that it was home.

  It was his mother he’d hated, not this place.

  He wished Anne could have understood that, understood that the hatred for his home that he’d always expressed had never truly been directed toward the town, or the island, or the house.

  Only toward his mother.

  But his mother was dead now.

  And so was Anne.

  All he had left was Sea Oaks. Sea Oaks, and his dream. The dream he’d hoped Anne would share with him and help him make into reality.

  Slowly, as he gazed out over the island and felt the house around him, he realized that his decision was finally made. For without Anne, there truly was no longer a choice. He was needed here, and his roots were here, and here, with his children and his sister, he would stay.

  Stay, and survive.

  But Anne, he knew, would never leave him. Nor, he realized, would the fact ever leave him that after twenty years of happiness, their last moments together had been moments of anger. Anger, and bitterness. That, he knew, was something he was going to have to live with the rest of his life.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered into the night. “Oh, Anne, I’m so sorry. If only—”

  But he didn’t finish the sentence, for there were no “if onlys” left. All that was left was reality, and the strange emptiness within him.

  Marguerite moved slowly down the hall, trying not to disturb the silence in the house. She paused outside Kevin’s door for a moment, listening. There was silence, but as she was about to tap softly at the door, the stillness was broken by the strangled sound of an uncontrolled sob, and Marguerite hesitated.

  What could she say to him? What could she say to relieve the pain he must be feeling?

  Nothing.

  Her hand, poised a few inches from the door, dropped to her side, and she moved on.

  The pain in her hip had eased this afternoon, and her limp wasn’t too bad. It was the passing of the storm, of course. Her limp was always better after the storms had passed.

  She came to Jeff’s door, listened again, then let herself inside without knocking. The boy lay in his bed, his eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. She crossed to the bed and leaned down, gently stroking his cheek.

  He turned his face away.

  “I’m sorry, darling,” Marguerite said, lowering herself gingerly to the edge of his bed. “I’m so sorry about what’s happened.”

  Jeff looked at her with angry, tear-filled eyes. “It’s not fair,” he said, his voice quavering. “Why did Mommy have to die? It’s just not fair!”

  “I know,” Marguerite crooned, reaching out to touch him again. “I know how you feel, and I want you to know—”

  But once again Jeff turned away from her, pulling the covers over his head and curling himself into a tight ball. “Leave me alone!” he cried, his voice muffled by the blankets. “You’re not my mother! Just leave me alone!”

  Marguerite’s hand jerked back as if she’d been stung. She sat still for a second, wondering what to do, then sighed heavily and got to her feet. She reached down to pat the boy once more, but he shook violently under the covers, wriggling away from her touch. A moment later, nodding vaguely to herself, Marguerite left the room, silently closing the door behind her.

  She walked slowly along the corridor, coming at last to Julie’s room. She paused a moment, listening again, then rapped softly at the door. There was a moment of silence, then she heard Julie’s voice, clear, but strained: “C-Come in.” Marguerite placed her hand on the knob, twisted it and pushed the door open. Julie, her eyes red with tears, sat on the bed, a pile of pillows supporting her slumped back. Marguerite stood still for a moment, her heart reaching out to the girl.

  Like me, she thought. She looks so much like me when I was her age.

  She took a step forward, then another, then was beside her niece. She felt Julie’s arms slip around her neck, felt Julie’s face press against her bosom.

  “What am I going to do?” Julie sobbed, tears flooding down her face. “Oh, Aunt Marguerite, what’s going to happen? I—I feel so sad and so—so alone. I can’t stand it, Aunt Marguerite. I just can’t stand it.…”

  “Hush, darling,” Marguerite whispered into Julie’s ear. “It’s going to be all right. I’m going to take care of you, my darling. I’m going to take perfect care of you, and you’re never going to be alone again. Never, ever again.”

  Slowly, she felt Julie relax in her arms, and the girl�
��s sobbing began to ease. Marguerite rocked her for a moment, very gently, and a small lullaby drifted from her lips.

  She stayed there for hours, long after Julie had finally fallen asleep, watching her niece, reaching out now and then to stroke her cheek, to brush a strand of hair away from her brow.

  It was going to be all right, Marguerite thought silently to herself as dawn finally began to break. She would take care of them all now; take care of Kevin and Jeff.

  And Julie.

  She would take care of Julie, just as Helena had taken care of her.

  Yes, everything was going to be fine now.…

  CHAPTER 13

  For two weeks a strange sort of paralysis hung over Sea Oaks, as if Anne’s death had drained the energy out of the mansion. A cold numbness had engulfed Kevin, and for the first few days after the funeral—a small funeral, since few of the people in Devereaux had come to know Anne in the short time she’d been there—he found himself doing nothing at odd times of the day. He would begin some small task, perhaps nothing more than clearing the overgrowth from a section of the garden, when he would suddenly become aware that time had passed—time he had spent in some private world, a world in which his wife still dwelt, still stood close to him, almost close enough to touch. But he couldn’t touch her, not quite, for even in those times of silent, unmoving retreat, he could never quite reach her. They were painful times, for when they ended, Kevin would find that his memories had only left him more bereft, and as he continued whatever small chore he had assigned himself, he would be acutely aware of the emptiness within him. And yet, as the days went on, he knew he had to stop retreating, stop blaming himself for the argument that had hung unresolved between him and Anne when she died. He still had his children, and Marguerite, and Sea Oaks. Slowly, each day, he forced himself to do a little more, to turn more of what little energy he had toward the real world, and less toward the private world of his own grief.

  Now, his own wounds slowly healing, he could also see the progress in the mansion. The grounds around the house, so long left unattended, had been cleaned out, and the gardens once more looked as if they had been planned and cared for. The peeling paint had been chipped away and carefully sanded, so that the house was ready for the painters who would begin working in another week or two. But what he really needed to do was begin working on the interior, something he had been almost unconsciously putting off. It wasn’t that he didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do, for he did. In his mind’s eye he had already decided exactly how each of the rooms should look, and even the renovations of the third floor, where he, Marguerite, and the children would eventually be living, were laid out in perfect mental detail, ready to be committed to paper by the architect from Charleston he had commissioned only yesterday. And yet, despite his mental planning, he had still delayed the actual work inside the house, for each day, as he moved from room to room, he could almost hear his mother’s voice, whispering to him:

  “This is my house. You have no right to change it. It should stay just as it is, just as I left it.”

  The practicalities of the situation—the fact that Marguerite, he, Julie, and Jeff were each occupying rooms, and that Marguerite had begged him to put off doing anything to the nursery or their mother’s suite—had been only an excuse. There were still three other rooms he could work on, rooms as badly in need of stripping and sanding as the outside of the house had been. Indeed, some days, after he’d finished work and spent a few minutes wandering through the mansion, he had wondered if it was truly possible for him to accomplish what he’d set out to do.

  And yet, after long conversations with Sam Waterman, he knew that it was. Between them they’d come up with a scheme that would make all the financing he needed available to him, so long as he stayed at Sea Oaks. In the end they had had to take out a performance bond, guaranteeing his compliance with the residency clause of the will. Everything he owned beyond the estate now had a lien against it; every asset he had would be held in escrow for ten years. In return he was able to sell options on the land on the mainland, exercisable in ten years, which would raise more than enough cash for the renovations necessary to the mansion and enough capital to tide him over until the hotel began showing a profit. And the profit, he was pleased to discover when he finished his financial projections, was going to be far beyond what he’d initially hoped for. Since he owned the island free and clear and would have no mortgage debt to service, even a forty percent occupancy of the nine bedrooms he would start with would put him at the break-even point. After that it was clear profit. And so in two weeks the crews would come in to begin the renovations to the interior.

  This morning he had to talk to Marguerite about his plans. He could put it off no longer.

  And he could put the children off no longer either. He knew he’d been neglecting them, forcing them to deal with the loss of their mother as best they could while he nursed his own wounds. It hadn’t been fair, and yet, in the first days of wrenching grief, he’d been able to do nothing else. Still, he’d been aware of what was happening, of how each of them was dealing with the tragedy.

  Julie, almost overnight, had seemed to grow up. Even on the morning of Anne’s funeral there had been a maturity about her he’d never seen before. Without anyone asking her, she’d begun looking after her brother, making sure he took his bath each day, seeing to it that his room was reasonably clean and finishing the job herself, just as her mother had. At the funeral she’d stood next to Jeff, holding his hand, kneeling beside him to comfort him when his tears had finally gotten the best of him. And that night, when Kevin went upstairs, he’d found Julie coming out of Jeff’s room. She’d just tucked him in, she’d told him, and read to him. Forcing a smile, she’d added self-consciously that she hadn’t done it just for Jeff—it made her feel better too. And yet, sometimes when he watched Julie covertly as she sat quietly reading a book or watching television, he’d been able to see the hurt in her eyes, the grief she was trying so hard to control. Once, when they were alone together in the library, he’d tried to talk to her, but after only a few words she’d shaken her head.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she’d said. “Not right now. Maybe in a few days. But right now, if I talk about Mom, I’ll cry, and if I start crying, I won’t be able to stop. And then Jeff will start crying, too, and I won’t be able to take care of him.” Her eyes had met his. “I have to take care of him, Dad. Mom would have wanted me to.”

  Now, as he started up the stairs in search of Marguerite, Kevin knew that Anne would have wanted him to take care of Jeff too. And in that he’d failed. But he didn’t know what to say to Jeff. How could he explain to his son that he’d let the boy’s mother go out into a storm that he knew was dangerous, that he, Kevin, had let her die? Jeff would hate him for that—almost as much as Kevin hated himself—and he couldn’t bear the idea of that. And so he’d found himself almost avoiding his son, and watched the child retreat within himself. In the last few days, in fact, Jeff had said practically nothing to Kevin, only telling him where he was going when he left the house and what he was going to do. But it’s going to change, Kevin told himself as he knocked on Marguerite’s door. The real work on the house is going to start, and all of us are going to begin a new life. And it’s going to work.

  “Come in,” Marguerite called softly, and Kevin pushed her door open to find his sister still in her dressing gown, sitting by the window with a book in her lap. She looked up and smiled at him apologetically.

  “I know I should have been dressed hours ago,” she said. “But it’s so hot, and I don’t really have anything to do that I can’t put off for a day, and I just thought—”

  “I’m afraid I have something that can’t be put off,” Kevin broke in, perching on the edge of Marguerite’s bed. “It’s the renovations. They have to begin in two weeks.”

  Marguerite gazed at him blankly. “Only two weeks? But I thought—well, I suppose I thought it would be months.”

 
Kevin’s shoulders moved in a helpless gesture. “I can’t wait for months. But I have a problem.” He explained his plans to her, leading her through the changes he envisioned for the first floor and the new construction on the third. “The problem is this floor,” he finished. “I’m not asking you to give up this room—at least not yet—but I have to start doing something with the rest of it.”

  Marguerite blinked. “But there’s the Rose Room, and the Green Room—”

  “And the nursery and Mother’s rooms,” Kevin broke in, deciding to confront the issue head on. Marguerite paled slightly, and Kevin could see her body tense. “I can’t do it one room at a time. The expense would be astronomical. Which means that we’re going to have to clean out Mother’s things. As for the nursery …” he began, then deliberately let his voice trail off. Not once since their mother had died had Marguerite been willing to discuss the ruined nursery. But it could be put off no longer.

  Marguerite was silent for a moment, then winced as a burst of pain shot from her hip down the length of her crippled leg. She did her best to ignore it, then finally came to a decision and stood up, her leg threatening to give way beneath her. “I know you’ve been wondering about the nursery,” she said at last. She took a deep breath, and when she spoke, her eyes avoided her brother. “I did it. I … well, I suppose I always hoped that someday I might get married and have a baby, and … well, I guess that room was my way of keeping my hopes alive. I—I just started working on it one day. First I was just going to paint it, but then it just kept on going, and after a while I’d made curtains and furnished it and gotten it all ready.” Her eyes suddenly came to rest on him, glistening. “And then Mother destroyed it. She said it was just a fantasy and I had to forget about it. So she ruined it one day.” Her voice began to tremble. “She broke all the furniture and shredded the upholstery and smashed the pictures. And then she locked it up and forbade me ever to go into it again.”