I do not know if Faith is capable of going against her father's wishes enough to be mine. She is still so young and so very frightened of the world around her. I pray that she will grow to trust her own judgment enough to be the woman I know she could be. But growing up is hard and requires the pain of learning wisdom. She has not grown above a young girl, and I wish her to be a full grown woman, ready to handle the problems that come to a wife and mother. I need her to be my equal partner in life, not my daughter or playmate. So far she seems to be dodging the pain of growth in favor of the pleasures… but I should not write so of my beloved. I, too, have faults that I must learn to live with and learn from. Only with Faith I am not sure that she even wants to learn. She seems to love the idea of loving me more than loving me for myself. Four nights from now will tell the tale. We will meet at midnight outside Port Huron. If she is there, then I will know that she is ready for the responsibility of marriage and all it entails. If she is not, then I will also have an answer. I pray that her answer and mine are the same all the rest of our lives.
But it was the last line, written on a page all its own by a shaky hand that reached out to her, touching her with Armand's presence. No love ever remains the same. With living comes growth. And if love does not grow, it withers and dies. But the one ingredient love must have most of all is hope. Nothing is worthy without it.
Her mind exhausted, she set down the last page. Tears filmed her eyes. When had he written that last page? Before he died, or after he had left this earth?
One thing rang true. He had been right. Faith had been too young to cope with a love that was both a thrill and a threat to her.
There were so many parallels in Faith's life and hers. Faith had lost her mother at an age when she needed her, just as Hope had. Faith had wanted to fight against her father's domination, but hadn't had the courage. Hope had managed to escape and then come back and make peace. But Faith had not. Even their birthdays were within two days of each other. She wiped away a tear. They had also loved the same man. Hope much more than faith, but then Hope was older and wiser.
She smiled at that thought. If that were the case, why was she sitting here, still contemplating her love of a ghost? Usually there were no second chances with death. Once life was over, it was finished. Armand had to be the exception to life after death, or ghosts would have crowded the living off the earth!
Without Armand, her life would be lonely. But she had things to do, even if she no longer had the one person she had longed to share life with. She still had her job, a career that commanded respect even from the men of today. It wasn't everything, but it would have to be enough.
She had to go on. “But not here,” she muttered. “Never again here.” She stared at the scenery she had once loved so well. There wasn't a time in her life when she hadn't found peace in this majestic wilderness. Silver-leafed aspens, oaks bigger than houses, tall, skinny pines that waved gracefully at the deep blue skies. Fish that darted through clear waters, jumping with the pure joy of living. And her island, remote, yet on the verge of civilization.
She loved it all, but now it reminded her too much of what she had lost. There weren't any memories here that didn't contain some trace of Armand.
So it was back to this. Full circle. She had to have faith in Armand. He had said he would come back to her, somehow, some way. Someday. If that were true, then he could find her anywhere, not just here. He wasn't landlocked anymore.
Without looking back at the boulder, she walked down the path to the house and dropped the typewritten pages on the kitchen table, then headed toward the dock. She filled the tank with gas, then took off across the lake toward her car. She knew now what she had to do. When she reached the country restaurant, she pulled in and ordered lunch. Then she made a phone call.
“Mr. Haddington, please,” she said with a thread of steel in her voice.
When he came on the line, she held her breath for a second, chiding herself for listening for Armand in every male voice. “Mr. Haddington, this is Hope Langston. I want to sell Teardrop Island, and I thought you might be interested in the listing,” she said, getting right to the point.
“Oh, I am, Ms Langston. Very much.” His voice was warm and reassuring. “When may I see it?”
“Whenever you like.”
The line was silent for a moment. “If you don't mind the rush, I'll be by later this afternoon.”
With a grim smile, she replied, “A little anxious, aren't you?”
He chuckled, and his tone surprised her. She closed her eyes suddenly.
“It's only because I've wanted to see the place for a long time. I was there once when your mother was alive, and I've thought about it ever since. As a matter of fact, I may even want to buy it for myself.”
She vaguely remembered a tall, skinny boy staring at the hill, hands in his pockets, while his mother visited hers. The memory came and went, leaving no permanent impression. “Very well,” she said quietly. “I'll see you this afternoon.”
“By the way, Ms Langston. It was nice of you to uncover that piece of information about the cigar-box-mahogany chaise longue. Perhaps your mother should have named you Charity, since it was so charitable of you to pass along the information.”
“I beg your pardon?” she asked, her mind a total blank. That dark, impish quality in his voice had closed out everything else.
“I believe you remarked that my ancestor might have had one exactly like it?” His tone still held a hint of devilish teasing.
The Picard House. She had told the women that Jeff Haddington thought his ancestors might have had a chaise like that one. “One never knows, Mr. Haddington,” she said smoothly, for the first time permitting a small smile to tug at her lips. “One simply never knows.”
“How right you are. I'm looking forward to hearing about your other finds. You certainly impressed the volunteer women at the Picard House.”
“It wasn't hard,” she quipped softly, earning a chuckle from him. “I'll see you later, then,” she said before hanging up, the smile tilting her lips a bit higher. How ironic that Faith's descendant should be the one to buy an island that really belonged to Armand. Somehow it felt right.
The trip back to the island was uneventful, except for dark, roiling clouds that appeared to be settling right over the island. Did this part of the country do nothing but thunder and lightning, or had all that begun only when Armand arrived on the scene? She couldn't remember such a stormy summer. She bit her lips in agitation. Lightning had given to her and taken away from her. If she never saw it again, it would be no loss.
For more than an hour she sat quietly in the living room, hands in her lap as she contemplated the summer that had just passed. Silently she was saying goodbye to the island. To Armand. Her eyes traveled to the open windows as the late-afternoon breeze gently ruffled the old-fashioned lace curtains.
Slowly the vacuum she had lived in since Armand's disappearance was beginning to lift. With each passing moment she was realizing how her perspective on life had altered.
She had been harshly tested in Central America, and she had survived. She had learned to adapt, to face each day and take what it had to offer. She had made it. Just as she would make it through this. Armand would have told her the same thing, she was sure.
She and her father stood a chance of beginning a new relationship. Not as father and daughter; it was too late for that. But as friend to friend.
Her thoughts leaped quickly back to the present at the far-off drone of a motorboat. She walked to the window, pushing aside the curtains just enough to catch a view of the small cove.
Jeff Haddington docked the rickety rental boat and tied it to the pier. He gave it a disdainful look that plainly said it could sink to the bottom for all he cared, and his expression made her grin. She watched him walk up the short path to the house, his broad shoulders back, his thick, dark hair windblown from the boat ride. He looked so hauntingly familiar in some ways. She frowned, then forcibly sho
ok off that feeling, but it wouldn't go away. Funny but she felt closer to Armand right this moment than she had felt in the past week. She could almost hear his deep, husky laughter… And she could hear his words. “No matter how or where, we will be together again. I swear it, my Hope.”
She tensed, ready to bolt. Had she remembered the words, or had someone just whispered them in her ear?
From the dark cloud that had settled just over the island, a jagged bolt of lightning erupted and seemed to strike just behind the spot where Jeff Haddington stood. She jumped, her heart stopped, her breath caught in her lungs. Bile rose in her throat as she watched tensely, expecting him to drop to the ground, fried to a crisp. The hair at her nape was stiff from the electricity in the air.
Instead of falling, he merely glanced toward the sky and continued to walk up the path to her door, totally oblivious to the bolt that must have hit only inches behind him.
She stared, her eyes widening as she watched his long gait eat up the earth between them. Suddenly she smiled. Then she laughed joyously. Her feet were lighter than air as she ran toward the door.
He was whistling an old French lullaby…
The Ivory Key Page 18