by Jule McBride
Ariel’s gaze shifted to her mother. “And you told Eli….”
Her mother shook her head. “No. I sat on the information. I wanted to ask Angus about everything first. So, I left the papers.”
“And then Eli found them?” Ariel guessed.
Her mother nodded. “He drove through Bliss like a bat out of hell, telling everyone who’d already sold land that they’d been conned, and everyone who was considering selling not to do so. Then he headed to Charleston and brought back a good attorney.”
“When your mother asked, I told her everything I knew. Like I said, I still believed my father’s lies.” He shook his head. “My father believed his own lies, you see.”
“Rationalizations,” put in her mother.
He nodded. “So, to me, it seemed natural that we might have a change of heart and mine the land first. I’d grown up in a business-oriented family, and from our point of view, such development always looked like positive growth. In terms of revenue, it would have been good for the town, but the land would have suffered.”
“So, I told him to get out.” She flashed him a quick look. “But I didn’t know I was carrying you then, Ariel.”
“So he left….” Ariel prodded.
“That woke me up,” he said. “I understood what we were really doing here, how it could affect people. But it was too late. Your great grandfather and great grand mother were fighting like cats and dogs. Gran, who’d just lost her husband, that’s your grandfather, to a hunting accident—”
“A hunting accident?” asked Ariel.
“You knew that,” said her mother.
Yes, but that had been only one of so many rumors about her family. Sure, her relatives had told her that her grandfather had died while hunting deer one autumn.
“People in town blamed me,” her mother put in.
“She was the prettiest girl in town,” Angus clarified.
“A homecoming queen. Everyone loved her.”
“But they thought I’d fallen in love with someone who wanted to harm them.”
Angus’s voice hardened. “And she did.”
“But you didn’t know, not really,” said her mother, then added, “after that, I left town for a couple years and lived down in Charleston. By the time I came back, Gran and Great-gran had sort of started keeping to them selves. And I guess with no men around, we got a little stranger and dowdier, only going into town once a week, or when we absolutely had to do so, for odds and ends.”
“But people in town knew…”
Her mother shrugged. “Older people probably suspected you were Angus’s child, but they weren’t sure.
And because he was the wrong sort, as far as they were concerned, I suppose I got a reputation. You know how people can be around here,” she said. “They don’t have the benefit of running an inn, so they don’t meet so many fascinating people from other places.”
Ariel had never thought of it that way. She swallowed hard. Her own mother had been the victim of gossip, just like her. “You’d think I would have heard the stories,” she said.
“About you belonging to Angus?”
Belonging. The word made her heart turn slowly over in her chest. Suddenly she wouldn’t believe this was happening. She nodded.
“People were put off by us after that. Like I said, we kept to ourselves. And I guess, as often happens in such experiences, everyone made a silent pact just to keep quiet about whatever they suspected.” Her voice softened. “I didn’t really want to talk about the whole or deal,” she explained. “I believed then that Angus had meant to fool me, that he thought I was a stupid country girl who could be taken in by his lies.”
“I told her differently,” he said.
“But I didn’t know what to believe.”
“So, I just took off,” Angus said. “Left the country.
I had to think things through on my own, without my father’s influence. I’ve always loved him. I always kept in touch. But after losing your mother, I…well, I can’t say I blamed him. But I learned that I had to chart my own course.”
“He’s worked all over the world,” her mother said.
“Saving rain forests and trying to slow development that would ruin the earth.”
Really, Ariel thought, no one was at fault. And yet she wanted someone to be. Maybe that was the worst kind of tragedy, she decided, when at the end of the day, there was really no one to blame. Angus had grown up in such a way that he’d bought into his father’s rationalizations, and her mother was only trying to get the whole story from her lover before telling anyone. And Angus had seen the error in his ways and relented.
“So, you didn’t know about me?”
Angus shook his head quickly. “Of course not. And don’t blame your mother for not telling me. I married a few years after that. She was trying to forget the past.”
Of course he’d been married. Her mother would have had every right to move on, also. “How did you…”
“I was in Peru when I got a call from Jack Hayes a little over a week ago,” he said.
Ariel was shocked. “My boss?”
He nodded. “We were at Harvard together. So, when you said you wanted to—”
“Do a story that might involve you and Core Coal,” she finished, the pieces falling into place, “he called you.”
“Yeah. I recognized the name Anderson, got your age and I…”
“Came?”
He nodded. Tears suddenly stung her eyes. He’d come running the second he’d suspected he had a child.
He hadn’t seen her mother for years, but he’d come where he’d heard about her. He’d come for her!
A silence fell. Everyone took a deep breath, then ex changed glances, as if wondering where to go from here. Ariel felt wrung out, since all this was overwhelming. Moments ago, when she’d come through the door, she’d had no idea how things would play out. She’d imagined tearful accusations, or maybe furious explosions, but not finding her mother blushing and in bed with Angus Lyons. “Will you come up to the house for dinner?” she asked.
He glanced toward her mother. She nodded. Then he said, “Okay. But only if your mother calls Great-gran first.”
“I will,” said her mother, looking tremendously relieved to have the encounter over with. No doubt, she’d been concerned about how things would go from the moment Ariel had knocked on the door. “And we’ll see you there.”
Leaning, Angus Lyons touched her shoulder and his eyes sought hers. “We’ll get to know each other,” he promised.
Ariel almost smiled as she turned away. After all these years of wondering, the whole scene felt absurdly anticlimactic, and yet it was the wondering, perhaps, that had made it so. She’d imagined meeting her father so many times that there were few scenarios for which she hadn’t prepared herself. And what had just occurred was the very best—a normal, sane, mature conversation and a promise to talk again.
“Angus Lyons,” she said as she stepped into the sun light. How could she have imagined the identity of her father? Hugging her to his side, Rex headed for the car, and he must have sensed her mood because he silently opened the door, then circled to his side and simply drove away, letting her process everything.
As they climbed up Mountain Drive, she blew out a shaky breath. She really did feel weak from the past hour. Studs had gone to jail, the rumor mill had been in formed that she and Studs had never really been an item, and she’d found her mother in bed with Angus Lyons, who just so happened to be her father. If she received just one more realization, she’d doubtlessly go right over the edge. Her nerves felt wired tight. Wound up but with nowhere to go…except bed. Yes, she wanted to go straight upstairs, rip off her clothes and Rex’s, then fall onto the mattress.
Definitely, that would break through this strangely surreal feeling that was haunting her. When he pulled into a parking spot at the house and turned off the motor, she said, “Wait a minute. I’ve got to get my jean jacket.
It’s in the back.”<
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As he got out, shut his door and locked it, she ske daddled into the lab area and lifted her jacket from the back of the roller chair. And then she frowned. The slide. It was still settled in a tray in a wire-mesh wall pocket. Lifting it, she read the label. Ariel Anderson. AB Negative. Squinting, her heart suddenly missing a beat, she rifled her fingers through the tray and found what she was looking for. Lawrence Nathan. AB negative.
And then…Angus Lyons. There was a slide smeared with blood, labeled with her father’s real name.
All the pent-up emotion she’d been holding back came to the surface, and she gripped her jacket and charged toward the open passenger side door. She stepped down, right into Rex’s waiting arms, but she pushed him away, barely able to believe what he’d done.
Hurt recoiled inside her. She’d been so open with him.
And not just with her body. “You knew,” she accused softly. Why hadn’t he told her? So, that’s what he’d been withholding earlier, on the drive to the Outskirts.
His lips parted, as if in protest, but none came out be cause he was guilty. And scared. She could see that in his eyes now. He was afraid of losing her, and he should be, she decided. As much as she’d loved their sexual relationship, she didn’t go out with liars.
“I…did,” he finally said.
How could he! She hauled off and hit him with the fist gripped around her jean jacket. The muffled thud fell ineffectually against his shoulder, and he grasped her arm when he felt the punch, as if to steady himself, even though it had clearly hurt his heart, not his body.
“How long?” she demanded, staring into his eyes.
“When did you suspect?”
“The first day—”
“The first day!”
“You both took blood tests. The blood type’s unusual, but that doesn’t mean much. Still, there was something about him that was…” His voice trailed off and he shrugged. “Suspicious. He was the only visitor who wasn’t with his family, and when I checked with the motel owner, he’d taken a room that wasn’t finished, paying extra for it, insisting he had to come to Bliss immediately.
“I checked the records for his flights, and since he’d come from Peru, I realized he’d been close to Szuzi. So, I checked back through all the records for Americans who’ve been to Szuzi, from the year of the outbreak on. The CDC has pretty intensive access to records for things such as flight information. I found no Lawrence Nathan listed, but there was an Angus Lyons. He looks different from his pictures in the old Bliss papers, but I did a Google search for him, and…”
“But you didn’t interview him again until today.”
“I was still researching the facts, and I didn’t want to confront him. I wanted to see what he said. That’s how we’re trained to research. Sometimes, we have to play people a little, to find the truth. I’m an investigator, Ariel.
I didn’t know how much he knew, whether he came to see your mother, or knew you were his daughter.”
He was so clinical about all this, she thought. That was the most unnerving thing. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“I was going to,” he said, leaning nearer, his breath hot on her lips, his eyes turning more intense.
“When?” She was reeling again, just as she’d been on the drive to the Outskirts. How could he have lain so close to her and listened to her talk about the past, knowing she’d never known the identity of her father.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
“Sorry?” she repeated, stunned. “That’s all you have to say? You knew what I’d been through in this town as a fatherless kid, and you know how people saw my relatives, but when you found out what was really at the root of it all…”
“I wanted to check my facts.”
“Bull,” she said, leaning forward, almost on her tiptoes, to better look straight into his eyes. “Look at me,” she demanded. “And tell me you had any doubts.”
His silence said it all.
“You knew it was true,” she said again.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Sex,” she found herself biting out before she could think things through; the end of the week was looming and tomorrow the weekend festival was beginning. “That’s all this was to you.”
His grip tightened on her arm. “That’s not true, and you know it.” The settling of his mouth on hers seemed to say otherwise. His tongue followed, a burst of heat that flashed like the sun in her eyes before she shut them, giving in only momentarily to the sensations. She had to fight not to stretch her arms around him, because she didn’t want this kiss…no, she didn’t want it at all.
But it went deeper. He drove his tongue down, hard, thrusting over and over, as if he was afraid to let her have a breath. Maybe she’d walk away, so he had to use desire to hold her. He was drinking her in as if drowning. He was kissing her, as if for the last time, and she felt almost faint from the assault.
“If anything,” he murmured, “I didn’t tell you because I thought I might ruin our time together.”
“That’s so selfish,” she whispered, looking for the right words. “I…let you in.” She emphasized the word in, as if to say how deeply.
“I let you in, too,” he said, his voice husky, his eyes glinting with answering anger and hunger, his lips just inches from hers.
“Oh, right,” she muttered, nodding her head up and down, still furious that he’d kissed her like that, so possessively. This was the wrong time. “You let me in by knowing my father was in town all week at the Outskirts Motel. But then…” Her throat constricted. She eyed him a long moment. “You have to play people some times, don’t you, Rex?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“How did it feel to play me?”
“You’re angry right now,” he said.
“Maybe so. It’s been a long day. But withholding in formation from me on that level…” She shook her head.
“It’s just not right, Rex.” In fact, this was feeling like the worst kind of replay; during a similar summer, her mother had fallen in love, only to find she’d been played for a fool. Just like this, it had been no accident. The lover, who’d come into her life during what had probably been an outbreak in seventy-seven, really had lied to her. He’d come into Bliss with every intention of selling out the townspeople.
“Dammit,” he muttered, hauling her nearer. “I didn’t know what to do. I had a job to do here, can’t you understand?”
“Your job’s done now.”
“And I didn’t feel right intervening in family matters.”
That hurt the most. It shouldn’t have, and she tried to fight the feelings, but she felt a knife of pain slice into her. He hadn’t wanted to intervene? And here she was, the whole week, letting go of herself with him, feeling closer and closer….
Until she’d fantasized that he was her family. She could admit that now. They hadn’t talked about what would become of their relationship after the festival, but she’d imagined them moving to the same city soon; she’d wondered if she could get a job in Atlanta. She hadn’t realized how attached she’d become to him, not really.
But it was only a fantasy. A week of pure bliss.
“I want you to go,” she said.
“Fine,” he muttered, glaring at her. “But not without this.”
His mouth settled on hers again, the firm, implacable lips forcing hers open. The touch was too much and her arms did lift this time, circling his neck while she wondered if this was really goodbye. Memories of how he’d held her, that first night on the dock, came racing back as his hand found her jaw. Using it to steady her, his tongue plunged. She tried to tell herself they lived in different cities and that he traveled all over the world, so he wasn’t even on the continent most of the time. No, it never would have worked, anyway, she told herself as his tongue teased out feelings and heat, making her arch.
She released a moan against his lips, but the kiss captured it. Her mind tumbled into somewhere too dark to fathom. They whirled like
stones in a polishing cylinder, brightening until they glowed like midnight moon. One moment, they’d been fighting. Now she wanted Rex in bed. And yet he’d lied to her. She twisted away. His eyes looked glazed, his mouth damp and slack. “I gave you my body,” she found herself whispering thickly. “Everything,” she repeated.
“I gave you my heart,” he said, dragging a frustrated hand through his hair, thrusting it away from his face.
“By lying to me?” She shook her head. “What we had was great, Rex, but you should go,” she said.
And then she watched him wordlessly circle the front of the mobile lab, get in and start the motor. A long, tanned arm stretched and he grasped the door handle, slamming shut the passenger-side door. That was the thing about Rex Houston, she thought, as she watched him drive away. He was used to traveling light, which meant he could leave things behind, such as his suit cases. Or a woman he’d met.
She pictured him in the driver’s seat then. She was sure he never glanced into the rearview mirror as the lab unit lumbered over the top of Mountain Drive. No, Rex Houston would never look back.
16
“WELL, AS YOU CAN IMAGINE, we were scared half to death when Matilda’s book was stolen,” Great-gran said. She was standing behind a shelf in the Andersons’ booth at the Harvest Festival, wearing a pale blue dress and talking directly into the camera, which Don held steady.
“Then to find out the sheriff had stolen it!” exclaimed Gran, smoothing down the skirt of her airy yellow dress, the hem of which was blowing in the wind. She circled a row of jars containing mixtures of tea leaves, then glanced at the rows of booths dotting the crowded fairgrounds, containing everything from cotton candy to prize goats and pigs. “Why, we were up all night long,” Gran continued, “putting the finishing touches on all our jars.”