Cast a Pale Shadow

by Scott, Barbara

  "Don't say stop, Nicholas. Don't say anything."

  He took a deep breath to clear his head and smiled. "I don't want to. But we have to go downstairs. Augusta must be frantic by now." When he saw the disappointment that edged into her eyes, he said, "I know, but it will be all the sweeter for the waiting. When all our troubles are behind us. Trust me."

  He forced himself away from her and went to the bathroom again to get her brush. His yearning and his fear for her mingled in his heart so that there seemed no room there for the blood. It rushed to his ears and his head confusing him with its sound and heaviness.

  He was losing her. She would leave and they would both be lost if he was not careful. When her hand touched his as he handed her the brush, there were sparks that were more than static. "Brush your hair," he said, his voice sounding strangely muffled through the humming in his head, "And we'll go down. I have to change my shirt."

  Nicholas went to his dresser and pulled open a drawer. A wave of foreboding swept him, and he clutched the edge of the dresser and doubled over to rest his teeming head against the cool oak.

  He had never been one to pray, not wishing to acknowledge the power of a god who tainted lives with such grief that the gift of life seemed more like a deprivation. But he prayed now. He prayed for the strength and sanity to save her and himself. And more than that, he prayed for time.

  When he opened the bathroom door, Trissa stood a few footsteps away, a look of impossible hope in her eyes. She saw him again as her savior, her guardian angel. God, how he prayed he could be.

  In the kitchen, Hattie had already come home for the day and was in the midst of telling Augusta a fervent tale of a disgruntled parent. "Imagine the nerve to assume that the tuition he pays entitles his child, his lazy dolt of a child, to be wet-nursed through..." Sensing she had lost her audience, she followed Augusta's eyes to the source of her distraction. Trissa clutched Nicholas' hand tighter and tried to ignore her disdainful look.

  "Are you feeling better, dear?" Augusta greeted her warmly, stepping toward them to give her a hug. "Will you join us for dinner?"

  "Augusta, could Ruth just fix us a couple of sandwiches and wrap a few cookies? It's such a balmy night, we'd like to go to the park for dinner," said Nicholas. Trissa cast a surprised glance at him.

  "Of course! The fresh air will do you worlds of good."

  "Thanks. Trissa, you stay with Augusta. I forgot something upstairs." She let go of his hand reluctantly. "I'll be right back."

  "Now what kind of sandwich would you like?" asked Ruth. "We got some meatloaf here, or ham."

  "Ham, I guess."

  "Shoot, mizewell give you both. Balmy or not, it's only April and that spring night air can make you hungry. In fact, spring can get you hankering for all kinds of things. I wish I had some of that tonic my old Gram used to dose me with. You sure do look a worrisome bit peaky." She clucked her tongue and went to the refrigerator for the meatloaf and ham.

  When Nicholas returned, it was through the back door. "I had to put something in the car," he said. He brushed two fingers along Trissa's cheek to reassure her. "Augusta, may I speak privately with you a moment?"

  "Of course." She followed him through the pantry to the cellar landing. "Oh dear, Nicholas, I almost forgot. I have a message for you. A Doctor Fitapaldi called."

  "Who?"

  "Doctor Lorenzo Fitapaldi."

  Nicholas shrugged. "Never heard of him."

  "Well, it was puzzling. He asked for a Cole Baker first, and when I told him..."

  "Cole Baker," he repeated dully.

  "Yes, and when I told him he must have the wrong number, he asked for Cole Brewer.... What's the matter, Nicholas? You're as white as a sheet. Is it bad news?"

  The rushing blood had returned to his ears, muffling clear thought. "No one calls me that."

  "But it is you? I hope so because the man is coming here all the way from Michigan just to see you this weekend."

  "Here? To see Cole Baker?"

  "Brewer."

  "He's mistaken me for someone else. When he sees me, he'll know." He pushed the puzzle out of his mind. He could only worry about Trissa now. "I need your help tomorrow. Trissa must not go to school. I want someone to be with her at all times, and I can't be. She needs something to keep her occupied so she doesn't dwell on her troubles."

  "I've got the perfect thing. We're making the floral arrangements and decorating for May's piano students' recital tomorrow. She can help Roger, May, and me if you think she's well enough."

  "You were right, Augusta, it's not physical. Remember, I told you her family objected to our marriage? Her father is harassing her at school. He's pressing her to come home. She's very much afraid he will force her."

  "But she's eighteen."

  "That doesn't make any difference to him. He's a domineering man. There's no way to know what threats he has used or may use. I don't think he has this address but--"

  "Don't worry. I'll take care of her. And if he dares to come here, Roger will take care of him." Augusta had her fists clenched at her side, ready to fight.

  Nicholas smiled and took one fist and kissed her knuckles like a knight paying homage. "Thank you, Augusta. I knew I could count on you. One more thing, I may be late tomorrow night. I have some unavoidable business to attend to. If I am, cover for me with Trissa, will you? In her state, she's likely to think the worst."

  "I'll keep her so busy she won't even notice you're gone."

  Beverly, Roger and May had arrived home to join Ruth, Hattie, and Trissa in the kitchen. They were all laughing heartily as each in their turn tried to heft the bulging picnic basket Ruth had assembled.

  "Well, feed a fever, as they always say. Even if it is spring fever," grinned Ruth. Like clowns jammed into a circus car, the picnic goodies included sandwiches and potato chips, pickles, celery and carrot strips, chunks of cheddar cheese, cake, apples and grapes, a jug of lemonade and a bottle of wine. Ruth had thrown in napkins, utensils, paper plates, wine glasses wrapped in tissue, and a couple of handfuls of candle stubs.

  "There's enough to feed the lot of us," said Roger. "Maybe we should all eat in the open air tonight. Who votes yes?"

  May and Beverly raised their hands, and Hattie seemed on the verge of it when Trissa's small voice squelched the voting. "No! Umm, I mean, I'd love to have you join us some other day. You know you're better than family to me. But tonight is not a family picnic. Nicholas and I need some time alone." When she looked around the circle and saw their knowing smiles and saw Roger jab Nicholas in the rib with his elbow, she blushed and added, "To talk."

  "Roger is just teasing you, honey. Of course, this is a picnic for two only. Run along and enjoy yourselves."

  "Yes, enjoy!" Roger raised the bottle of beer he held in his hand, which set May, and Beverly to giggling. "There's a full moon tonight. You know what that does to lovers." He took a deep swallow of his beer. "And madmen."

  "Roger, behave yourself," said Augusta.

  "Get a jacket," Nicholas whispered in Trissa's ear. After she left, he pretended to struggle with the lifting of the picnic basket. "All of your kibitzing will be for naught, folks, if toting Ruth's dinner ruins me for life." When May wrinkled her brow in her effort to understand the joke that Roger laughed at with such a pained expression, Nicholas winked at her. "Don't wait up, gang," he said and banged out the back door.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Even the weather conspired to make up for the early cold Easter that year. The cold snap in the middle of March faded to a brief, bitter memory now. With Easter lost to cold and rain, spring was at last poised to attack in earnest. Clumps of daffodils nodded their agreement with the plan, and a warm, steady rain over the weekend had wakened the fields of grass for the battle for the green.

  But Trissa was blind to all this. She had lost the strand of hope she held so briefly and sank into silence for the short drive to the park. Nicholas tried to call her attention to a star magnolia ready to burst into flower
but her head came up too slowly to see it. She cast her eyes down again and studied her hands clenched in her lap. She did not even look up to count the brash pink flamingos that mobbed one corner of the giant iron birdcage marking the boundary of the zoo.

  Nicholas drove the winding roads in the park without apparent destination. Despite the many times he'd driven through, he'd never mastered the layout of Forest Park, but instead relied on getting where he was going by luck and chance. Trissa's navigation skills were better, but she was too absorbed in her thoughts to help.

  The weather had drawn walkers and bikers. Horses and their riders dotted the bridal path winding between bright, yellow slashes of forsythia, and golfers were hurrying through their last holes before the waning twilight failed them.

  "Spring is taking over, Trissa. It can get the best of you if you let it," he said with futile enthusiasm.

  "No, I don't think so," was her absent reply.

  The car swooped round the circle at the amphitheater of the open air Municipal Opera complex. Swans sent ripples of gold in the sunset-tinted lake across from its entrance. In honor of the holiday, someone had looped pastel streamers through the lacy grillwork of the Victorian band shell in the middle of the lake. They fluttered gaily in the slight breeze. Trissa didn't notice.

  Silently, Nicholas cursed her father and turned up the drive toward the Art Museum. In the pavilion that crowned the terraced hill near the zoo, picnickers basked in the glory of the patchwork quilt of red bud, pear, and crabapple blossoms stretched out below them in the glow of sunset as they had every spring since the 1904 World's Fair. Trissa didn't see them.

  Every site they had explored with cameras and laughter on other excursions melted in the long, sharp shadows of the melting sun. Trissa didn't care.

  "Are you getting hungry?" he asked.

  "If you are."

  Nicholas pulled through the small, stone gates at the rear garden of the Jewel Box and parked. She looked up at the Art Deco style conservatory, startled, as if waking from a sleep. "I'm sure it's closed. It's after five."

  "I thought we'd eat by the floral clock."

  "If you want to," she said, slipping the strap of her purse on her shoulder, and opening the door to get out.

  The clock was at the far end of the rose garden. The rose bushes still wore the mounded mulch of winter but tiny green leaves poked through here and there. Trissa walked quickly through the garden, with arms folded and head down, and Nicholas abandoned the picnic gear to catch up with her. He put his arm around her shoulder and she let him.

  Their pace seemed more a march than a lover's stroll. At its end, the pansies and grape hyacinth that formed the face and numbers of the clock still winked in the swiftly lowering sun. Below the clock, spelled out in flowers were the words "Hours and flowers soon fade away." Trissa raised her head to the sky and blinked back tears.

  "Hey, I thought you said pansies always made you smile."

  "Not today. Not here." Nicholas felt her shiver against him. "The army took my brother Lonny from me. A different war. He was in Viet Nam."

  Nicholas looked down at the stone and bronze marker at the base of the clock, a war memorial to honor fallen heroes and realized his stupid mistake.

  "I'm sorry, Trissa, I didn't know." His hapless efforts to cheer her were only making matters worse. Still, he refused to give up. "It's getting chilly. Let's get someplace warmer."

  Obediently, without spirit, she walked along beside him, back to the car. He turned her to face him and lifted her chin with one finger. "You be the lookout. If you see anybody coming, whistle like a whippoorwill. Let me hear you."

  "A lookout? What are you going to do?"

  He pressed two fingers lightly across her mouth. "Do not question orders. Let me hear you whistle."

  She wet her lips and puckered up, a fine strong whistle.

  "Good! Once more so I can attune my hearing to it."

  This time when her lips formed that tempting, moist circle, he kissed them quickly. "Excellent! Keep a sharp eye!" He hurried off toward the conservatory, searching his pockets as he went.

  "Nicholas?"

  "Shhh, don't use real names. Try Uncle Pete," came his stage whisper over his shoulder. He followed the shadow of the building until he reached the pink granite steps of its entrance. There the corner of the greenhouse blocked him from her view.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Quiet. Watch. Whistle."

  Before she had time to think of abandoning her post, he reappeared out of the shadows. "Success!" he grinned. "Grab something and follow me." He opened the trunk and took out the picnic basket. Next to it were her rescued record player and the extra blanket from their bed. He lifted the record player, and she got the blanket and pushed the trunk shut. Into the shadows again, he crept with her close behind.

  "Where are we going?"

  "Eternal Spring," he whispered.

  When they rounded the front of the building, Trissa saw that one of the doors was propped open with a rock. "Nicholas, you broke in!"

  He put his finger to his lips. "Hush, didn't I tell you to use my alias? Damn, looks like this may be my last caper. I broke my burglar's tool." He held out his palm to show her the broken tip of his old Boy Scout pocketknife. He ushered her through the door and entered after her. Kicking the rock away, he shut the door.

  Peace and darkness and the soothing tranquility of softly flowing water enveloped them. It took a few moments for their eyes to gather the available light in the stonewalled vestibule. Trissa's were owl-like with shock, and her mouth formed a perfect circle as she looked around her and back at him.

  Nicholas put down the record player and offered her his arm. "Shall we dine among the lilies, milady?" Arm in arm he led her through the portal into the green glow beyond.

  Nearly three stories above them, arc lamps suspended from the arch supports cast their dim light down. From the outside at night the glass walls and the verdigris of Jewel Box's framework gleamed with gemlike luster from peridot green at its heights deepening to emerald. The daytime roar of the waterfall and fountains was hushed to a soothing patter as water dribbled down a stone grotto on the back wall into a little stream that meandered the floor to a cedar mill where it was drawn up then splashed down the troughs to the floor again.

  The Jewel Box was a favorite place for bridal parties to come to use its seasonal backdrops for wedding pictures and receptions. Nicholas and Trissa had been here in the sparkle of daylight and taken photographs of each other posed against the waterfall, the old mill, on the stone bridge, and up the winding iron stairway to the balcony.

  But this night held a special enchantment, like walking on the floor of a rain forest where the only light that penetrated was the luminous emerald reflection like sunlight on leaves. Hundreds of Easter lilies, like tiny trumpet moons, beamed a ghostly white along the pathways.

  Nicholas set down the basket, took the blanket from her and tossed it across the ticket desk. He caught her around the waist and drew her close.

  "We can't stay. We--" was all she managed before her silenced her protest with a kiss.

  "We're the captives of spring now. She'll never let us go," he said against her lips, his promise and vow. The full moon Roger had promised showed its face through the green glass panes, casting eerie shadows in the leaves. They ambled the winding stone paths among the ferns, fichus trees, and trailing philodendron. The lilies smiled their approval when they paused to kiss again by the old mill, the rock bridge, and the grotto.

  When they circled back to where they had begun, they took up their basket, blanket, and the record player and carried them to a wide spot in the brick path near the waterfall. Nicholas spread the blanket on the ground and Trissa opened the basket and lay the dinner before them. He placed the candle stubs like soldiers along the rock rim of the grotto and lit them. They both groaned at the size of the feast and sat down to nibble at their sandwiches and pinch tiny morsels from the corners of the giant wedges of ch
ocolate cake Ruth had wrapped for them.

  "My stomach is so fluttery, I can hardly swallow."

  "Are you sick?"

  "No, it's not that." She looked up at him, her eyes veiled in a haze of fear. "I'm scared, Nicholas. I'm scared to have so much and know I'll lose it. I'm scared the price is too high for all of this, and I'm scared of how I'll have to pay."

  "There is no paying for it. You won't go back to him. Or think of running away. Promise me, Trissa. Promise."

  "I can't. I love you too much. He said -- my father swore he'd hurt you. I won't go back. But if I ran away, he'd have no reason. You'd be safer if I were far away."

  The stem of his wine glass snapped in Nicholas' hands, a shard of it piercing his wrist. A bright dot of blood sprang from the wound and trickled down his arm. She gasped and reached for him to press it with her napkin and stop the bleeding. He kissed the top of her head as she bent over it.

  "He can't hurt me, Trissa. And I won't let him hurt you. He's done with destroying your life. He lost you and I have you and I will never let you go." He pushed aside the broken glass and gathered her to his lap. "I need your promise to trust me in this. I have to have it."

  "I don't know. Leaving is such a simple thing. My bags are packed. Georgia Pulasky would help me. She said she would. I still have her card." Silent tears brimmed from her eyes, and he held her close and soothed her. "It will hurt. And I'll be lonely. I'd miss Augusta and Roger. And the others. Even Hattie. But I would survive. The worst. The worst of all is that you would not be there."

  "I can't lose you, Trissa. Don't leave. Promise me. I love you."

  "Then make love to me." His thoughtful silence brought a wistful smile to her lips and she scooted from his lap to get her purse. "Look what I brought." She reached in and withdrew the scallop shell he had given her after their first dinner out together. "Do you think it still holds its secret, potent powers?"