“My mommie did. She cried and cried. She ran away and then she was dead. Please don’t be dead, Kaseybelle. I love you.”
“There, there. I won’t be dead, and I love you too. I promise.”
“Yes, you will.”
This time DeeDee wouldn’t be comforted. She continued to cry as though her heart would break. Why had her mother cried? And what made the child associate her crying with death?
Shannon finally reassured DeeDee, but the next morning her steps were less certain and she began to complain about the braces. Clearly something was happening that Shannon’s tears had triggered. Only something equally dramatic would undo the damage.
It was time she talked to Jonathan Dream again, even if he didn’t want her around.
But that idea proved to be impossible to carry out. Jonathan had left the castle with Lawrence and wouldn’t be back until the next day. Whatever Shannon did had to be done quickly and without consulting DeeDee’s father.
The therapist was working with DeeDee in the pool when Shannon made up her mind. After the session was over, Shannon joined DeeDee in the study where she usually watched The Kissy Chocolate Cartoon Show.
“May I join you?”
“Sure.” But DeeDee’s answer was listless, and she paid little attention to Shannon.
“DeeDee, you were right. I was crying because I’m very sad. I need your help.”
She’d caught DeeDee’s attention with her request.
“What’s wrong, Kaseybelle?”
Since DeeDee had found her with tears in her eyes, she’d changed from Shannon back to Kaseybelle. As if DeeDee was getting ready for Shannon to leave, as if she knew that the interlude was over and the fairy was becoming her playmate again.
“I don’t want to go back to Atlanta.”
“You don’t?”
“No, I don’t. But I’m going to have to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because your father brought me here to help you walk and it isn’t working. There really isn’t any reason for me to stay.”
Stark realization washed over DeeDee’s face. “You mean my daddy is sending you away?”
“Yes. He will. Unless—”
“Unless what?”
“Unless he’s convinced that you’re trying. And I think the best way to convince him is for us to go and talk to Santa about this.”
“Oh. But I wanted to walk into his magic kingdom. And I can’t.”
“I think you can, DeeDee. And I think if you learn to walk, your father will be very happy.”
“And if he isn’t sad, he won’t send you away?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to ask Santa to grant my own special Christmas wish. Will you come with me?”
“Oh, yes. When can we go?”
“We’ll get Lawrence to take us into town tomorrow.”
“But I want Daddy to come. He will come, won’t he?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart, I’ll ask.”
“He’ll come,” she said with a sudden confident smile. “He won’t want to miss me walking to the magic castle.”
The music that signaled the cartoon show began, and DeeDee turned to the program.
“Look, Shannon, Kaseybelle is writing a letter to Santa to tell him what the Chocolate Stars want in their Christmas stockings.”
Jonathan stood at his study window and felt the rage simmer inside. He’d never learn. Always he was doomed to repeat the same mistakes. At seventeen he’d destroyed the first girl he’d ever loved. She’d been taken from him by her family and sent away from the poor boy who would never be able to give her the kind of life she deserved.
For years he’d worked and struggled to become successful enough to go after her. When he’d finally accomplished it, he’d learned that she was happily married, to a good man who’d given her children to replace the child he’d given her, the child she’d lost.
Then Mona had come into his life, just a beautiful face, a woman who’d taken away the loneliness for a while. He hadn’t understood how the pregnancy had happened, until the night of the accident when his life had ended. Three years later, just when he’d begun to believe that he could live again, the phone call had come.
The call that had destroyed all his foolish plans and plummeted him into a different kind of hell.
Shannon was up there, in her turret, directly above where he was standing. He could feel her. He could always feel her presence, and it ripped into his heart and pierced it with pain.
“If you don’t level with her about Mona, Jonathan, I’m going to.” Lawrence had entered the study and was standing by the door. “Mrs. Butterfield tells me that DeeDee has stopped trying to walk, that she’s regressing. And Shannon looks like hell.”
“You are not to tell her anything.”
“All right, then I quit.”
“You can’t quit. I won’t let you.”
“You can’t stop me, Jonathan. I don’t intend to see people I care about destroyed. I’ve watched you isolate yourself from the world for six years. You were doing it for your wife and child. But since the accident you’ve tried to kill yourself too. When I saw you with Shannon, I thought that was over. But I was wrong. I won’t watch you anymore.”
“Then go, damn you. I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody!”
The silence behind him told Jonathan that Lawrence was gone. Lawrence, who’d been with him for nearly fifteen years, who’d been his trusted friend, his able business associate, and his family. Now all he had left was DeeDee. And he was about to lose her.
He heard the sound of Lawrence’s truck moving off down the mountain. There was a distant slam of another door. Hap was barking. Mrs. Butterfield had already retired. Someone had left the castle. Who?
Shannon. It had to be her. Where was she going in the middle of the night? He didn’t want anything to happen to her. He couldn’t handle that. Without a thought Jonathan went after her, pausing at the kitchen door to pull on a jacket and gloves.
There was little snow to mark her path. He could only guess her direction. There’d been a full moon, but now dark clouds were looming up from the south. Shannon wouldn’t know how violent a storm could be on the mountain. He had to hurry. He whistled for Hap, hoping the dog would tell him where she’d gone. But the dog didn’t respond.
“Shannon? Shannon! Where are you?”
There was no answer. Only the whistle of the wind as it rose. There were only two directions a walker was likely to take, and after a time he decided that he was on the wrong path, turning back to try the other.
“Shannon! Please answer me!”
Shannon heard him the second time he called. She stopped her headlong plunge through the woods and considered what she had done. Dare she tell him what she’d arranged, tell him that she was forcing DeeDee to attempt to walk, to make her request to Santa with the possibility that she’d be disappointed again?
She couldn’t be sure what his reaction would be. But she realized that she had no choice.
“I’m here, Jonathan.” She stopped in an open space along the path and waited. Hap had run on ahead and was ranging through the underbrush. Behind her she heard Jonathan’s approach.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked angrily. “Don’t you realize there’s a storm coming?”
“I guess I didn’t notice. I’m surprised that you care.”
“Of course I care. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“I’m touched.”
There was bitterness where there’d once been warmth, the kind of uncertainty that came from being hurt and the loss of the connection that had been between them from the first.
Overhead clouds boiled up from behind the trees and covered the moon. Suddenly the woods became a scary place, and Shannon whirled around, ready to return to the castle.
“Where are you going?”
“Back inside. I don’t like storms.”
“Shannon, wait!” Jonathan reached out and took her a
rm, holding her back.
“Why? What could you possibly have to say to me?”
“Lawrence believes that I owe you an explanation.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Jonathan. But you’re right, we do need to talk about DeeDee.”
“What’s wrong with DeeDee?”
“I may have made a mistake.” This time Shannon’s voice cracked, and she gulped in a deep breath of cold air. At that moment the rain started, half sleet and half icy droplets.
“Run,” Jonathan instructed, taking her hand so that he could help her along.
Minutes later they reached the castle, thoroughly soaked and breathless. Outside, a bolt of lightning creased the sky, and the lights of the castle went out.
“Come with me,” he said.
She followed him, shivering both from her damp clothes and from the thawing of the tension that had been between them. Jonathan led her through the darkness to the study. Inside, the fire still blazed, giving a rosy glow to the dark room.
“Come to the fire,” he said.
She stumbled as she tried to walk toward the warmth.
“You’re frozen,” he said, and carried her to the hearth. “And the heat is off now since the electricity is out. Take off those wet things.”
He pulled blankets from a chest beneath the window and handed her one, then began to add logs to the fire. She stood watching him. She felt numb, as if she were moving through some kind of slow-motion scene from that same Gothic novel she’d fallen into the first night she’d arrived.
“Take off your clothes, Shannon,” he directed without turning. “I won’t touch you. I promise.”
Resolutely Jonathan continued his efforts to build up the fire, while listening for a sound that told him she was complying. None came. He stood and turned, Shannon was just where he’d left her, her eyes wide and frightened, her stance stiff and unyielding.
“Shannon,” he said gently, “let me, please.”
She raised her gaze as if she were waiting to be punished, and the full knowledge of how much he’d hurt her crashed over him. The part of him that had hoped he’d been imagining what he felt died. He was in love with this gentle woman, and he was destroying her.
His deep cry of anguish tore from his body as he pulled her into his arms. Moments later he’d removed her clothes and his own. He lifted Shannon and carried her to the easy chair by the fire, covering them with the blankets.
He didn’t speak, only held her, allowing their bodies to create and absorb the warmth of their closeness. Her shivering slowly ceased, and she began to breathe evenly. The feel of her head pressed against his chest was right and good.
“Shannon, I never meant to hurt you. I’m so very sorry. I thought I was protecting you.”
“By pushing me away?”
“By keeping my punishment from touching you. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, Jonathan.” She raised her head and touched his face with her fingertips. “Really it is.”
“No, it isn’t. I should have told you the truth to begin with. You should have known what you were getting into. You should have had the choice.”
“Tell me now, Jonathan.”
And he told her about two seventeen-year-olds who fell in love and made a child. About the parents who refused to recognize their love and forced the girl to do away with the baby and leave the boy behind.
“Oh, Jonathan, I’m so sorry. How did you survive?”
“I didn’t. A part of me died. So I created another Jonathan, one who couldn’t be hurt. Eventually I became very successful, and the women came to me. They were temporary. And my image as Jonathan the dream maker grew. My company and my image became so integrated that I lost Jonathan Drew completely.”
“But what about DeeDee?”
“I was always very careful to make certain that there would never be another child. But something happened. When Mona told me that she was pregnant, it was as if I’d been given a second chance. I didn’t know that mistake would get even worse.”
“DeeDee wasn’t a mistake, Jonathan. When someone loves you enough to give you a child, that love and that child must be good.”
“Mona never loved me, Shannon. She only used me.”
“But she gave you a child.”
“A child I nearly killed.”
“No, Jonathan, that was an accident. Accidents happen. People do terrible things to children in the name of love, but not you.”
She wasn’t talking about DeeDee. She was talking about a little girl named Shannon, a little girl who’d been treated badly. Perhaps if Jonathan knew her story, he might see what he’d given to his little girl.
She told him about her mother’s terrible insecurities, about how she had used her love to manipulate the child she’d never wanted. About Shannon’s being left alone, punished, and abandoned in her mother’s pursuit of men and fame. Then, when the star, Sofia, began to lose her beauty, her little girl had become the caretaker and finally, when Sofia had turned to drugs and alcohol, the jailer.
“DeeDee knows she’s loved, Jonathan. You’ve given her security. You must know how very important that is to—anyone who loves you.”
“Anyone who loves me?” He saw the trust in her eyes and knew that she was talking about herself. He couldn’t let her believe in dreams that would never come true.
“I understand what you went through with your mother, Shannon. I saw the same thing happening to Mona. The difference is that I was responsible for her drug use. Oh, I never took them, but I should have realized what was happening. When I discovered she was doing coke, I found her supplier and fired him.”
“But you tried to help her. I know you did.”
“Don’t make me more than I am, Shannon. Yes, I brought her here and provided medical care for her until after DeeDee was born. But then I insisted that she stay.”
“And she didn’t want to?”
“By that time she wanted the drugs more than she wanted me. If I had let her go, the accident would never have happened. She might still be alive and DeeDee would be a normal, happy little girl who could walk.”
“She can still be, Jonathan. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“I’m listening, Shannon, though I don’t know that I want to let myself hope anymore.”
“I’ve done a risky thing. You have every right to be very angry with me.”
Anger was the last thing he was feeling toward Shannon. Holding her in his lap, touching her, feeling the gentle whisper of her hair against his cheek, he sensed that an unwanted web of warmth was being spun around them. He could feel the gentle swell of her breast resting on his arm, the softness of her silk underthings caressing his thighs. All the feelings he’d locked away came rushing back, and he tensed.
“What have you done, Shannon?”
“DeeDee found me crying and she became very upset. She said that everyone who cried died and went away.”
“I didn’t know she knew about the crying.”
“Mona?”
“Yes, she managed to find new supplies of drugs. Toward the end she switched over to crack. It was pretty bad. Sometimes she’d become psychotic and would go on crying jags. She’d cry and scream, accusing me of … pretty awful things.”
“And DeeDee heard her.”
“I thought DeeDee was too young to understand.”
“I think she was. She misinterpreted what she was hearing. Maybe you ought to talk to her about what happened.”
“Tell her that her mother was so strung out on drugs that she tried to kill herself by driving off a mountain?”
Shannon sat up.
“Mona was driving the car?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But she was, wasn’t she? Not you—Mona.”
“Yes.”
“Then you didn’t kill her and you aren’t responsible—”
“Yes, I am. I told her to get out. That I was tired of trying to help her. That she was on her own. And she l
eft.”
“You let her take DeeDee?”
“I never wanted her to. That was her final vengeance. She laughed when she told me, laughed at me. She said that DeeDee wasn’t mine.”
“Not yours?”
“I was a fool. I believed that the child was mine because I wanted her. The truth was, she was sleeping with everybody on my staff.”
“I’m so sorry, Jonathan.”
“I wasn’t. I wanted the baby.”
“But—your face? How did that happen?”
“I was so shocked and hurt that I let her drive away. I didn’t know she had DeeDee until I heard her screaming, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ ”
Shannon stared at the man in disbelief. She was shaking her head, murmuring, “No. I don’t believe you meant it to happen. It was an accident, Jonathan, an accident. You didn’t mean for her to die.”
“But I did. For that one moment I did. Then I realized what she was doing and went after her. Just at the point that I almost caught up with her, she looked back and lost control. The car sailed off the road and landed in a ravine. The car caught on fire. I could hear DeeDee shrieking.”
“Oh, Jonathan. How terrible.”
“I had no choice. I tried to climb down the ravine. It was too steep. I never would have made it down if I hadn’t fallen. When I came to a stop, I’d landed in a tree. That’s how I lost my eye. I managed to get DeeDee out of the car, but I couldn’t save Mona.”
“How sad. How very sad for her. But DeeDee survived and you love her, I can see it. So don’t tell me that anything Mona said about that child matters.”
“But Mona was lost forever, and DeeDee’s legs were broken. I never should have let it happen.”
“And you’ve spent the last three years making amends.”
The gentle assurance he’d come to depend on was there for him. She pulled his head against her breast and held him, as if he were the child and she were the parent.
“I’ve tried. The doctors said she should be able to walk after the last operation, but she stopped making the effort. I wanted so badly to create a pure world for DeeDee, a happy place where nothing evil could touch her. But it didn’t work.”
“It still can, Jonathan. All you have to do is show DeeDee that you’re here for her, always, no matter what.”
Night Dreams Page 10