by Sandra Brown
His exuberance reminded Caroline so much of the young man she had met in the woods that she almost ran to him and heedlessly threw her arms around him.
“Is it yours, Rink?” Laura Jane asked, hopping up and down happily and clapping her hands. “I like the color.”
“Cavalier blue,” he said, sweeping her a low bow. “I needed my own transportation as long as I’m here and I’d been giving some thought to a pickup. How I’ll get it and the airplane both back to Atlanta, I haven’t figured out yet.”
They all laughed and Caroline’s heart melted at the sight of him, hair windblown, eyes dancing.
“I’m starving. Is dinner ready?” He looped one arm around Caroline’s shoulders and the other around Laura Jane. “Let me escort you ladies into the dining room.”
Before they reached the front porch, Haney came running through the screen door shouting, “Caroline, Rink! Thank God you’re here. The doctor just called. Mr. Lancaster’s taken a bad turn. He said you two better get to the hospital fast.”
Chapter 7
Only one dim light over Roscoe’s bed illuminated the room. It was a directional fixture. The metal shade was pointed down so that the light fell harshly and eerily on the man’s pain-ravaged features. A nurse was bending over him when Rink and Caroline entered the room. With his arms trailing IV tubes, he waved her away querulously.
“Get out of here and leave me alone. There’s nothing you can do.”
“But Mr. Lancaster—”
“Get out,” he hissed nastily. “I want to talk to my wife and son.” The titles were slurred in a way that made them sound like insults.
The nurse left, the rubber soles of her shoes squeaking faintly on the vinyl floor. Caroline went to Roscoe’s bedside and took his hand. “We came as soon as the doctor called.”
Dark eyes, like iron pellets, bored into her from blackened sockets as intimidating as the barrel of a gun. His face was ugly. He had a look of decay about him that wasn’t physical but spiritual, a rottenness that had eaten at him for years from the inside and was only now making itself manifest on the surface. “I hope I didn’t drag you away from anything important,” he said snidely and snatched his hand from her grasp.
Caroline refused to be provoked. Calmly she answered him. “Of course not, Roscoe. You know I want to be here with you.”
He grinned maniacally. “So you’ll know the instant I’m dead? So you’ll know the very second you’re free of me?”
Her body flinched as though she had sustained a blow to the head. “Why do you say things like that? Do you truly think I want you to die? Didn’t I urge you to see the doctor long before you consented to? I’ve never given you any reason to doubt my devotion to you.”
“Only because you lacked the opportunity.” His eyes slid to Rink, who stood at the foot of the bed, his shadowed face giving away no emotion.
“W-what do you mean by that?” Caroline stammered, bringing Roscoe’s eyes back to her.
“I mean now that the man you really wanted is living under the same roof with you, you might be tempted to be unfaithful to the husband you claim such devotion for.”
All the breath left her body. She stared speechlessly at her husband. That sly grin was still riding his lips. His eyes were gleaming like the lights of hell.
“Are you talking about Rink?” she asked.
“Rink?” he repeated, mimicking her. “Rink, Rink. Yes, goddammit! Of course I mean Rink.”
She wet her lips with her tongue. “But Rink and I… we haven’t… we never—”
“Don’t lie to me.” He came to a sitting position and snarled at her like some fearsome demon chained to the bed by plastic tubes. “Don’t pretend with me, little girl. I know all about you and Rink.”
Caroline backed away from him, hunching her shoulders forward, folding her arms protectively across her midriff. Wildly her eyes sought Rink’s. He hadn’t moved. He was still standing rigidly at the foot of his dying father’s bed, his eyes glowing with hate. He was the first to break that terrible silence.
“You knew about Caroline that night you told me Marilee was pregnant, didn’t you?”
Roscoe collapsed onto the pillows. His breathing sounded like paper crackling in his chest. Physically it had cost him to shout his triumphant message, but his face was smug with satisfaction as he directed those malevolent eyes to his son.
He laughed. “I knew. Everything,” he sneered. “You should have known you couldn’t go sneaking off into the woods every day without arousing my curiosity. I gave you credit for being smarter than that.”
“So you followed me one day and saw us together,” Rink supplied in a quiet and level voice.
“Hell no.” Roscoe sounded amused. “I wouldn’t have troubled myself with anything to do with you. I just wondered what mischief you were up to. I sent some flunky after you and what he had to report was very interesting. You were meeting some trashy girl down by the river every day.”
Caroline made a pitiful crying sound. Roscoe didn’t even look in her direction. His fight was with his son, always had been. She had been a convenient pawn.
“This girl you were sneaking off to see was just a kid, the man said, but as juicy as a ripe peach.” Roscoe smacked his lips. Caroline closed her eyes and fought off nausea. Rink rocked back and forth slightly in an effort to control the rage that tore through him. “We had a good laugh when we found out your ladylove was ol’ Pete Dawson’s girl.” He winked at Rink. “But I had to admire that streak of lust in you, boy. She was jailbait, but you were willing to risk it, weren’t you?”
“Let’s get on with it,” Rink snapped. “You knew that wasn’t my baby Marilee was carrying, didn’t you?”
“I thought it was just as likely yours as it was anybody’s, and you couldn’t prove otherwise. Everybody in town knew she wasn’t all that discriminating as to whom she took to bed.”
“The child wasn’t yours?”
Rink’s head snapped around and his eyes met Caroline’s full on. Her voice had cracked with a combination of incredulity and… Something else. Joy? Her eyes were swimming with tears. “No, Caroline,” he said. “The child wasn’t mine.”
“You’d been with Marilee, though, hadn’t you?” Roscoe asked from his bed.
Rink kept his eyes on Caroline as he answered. “Yes. But it was long before she became pregnant. I wasn’t with anyone that summer after I met Caroline. Alyssa was not my child.” He turned back to his father. “And you damn well knew it. I told you the baby didn’t belong to me, that I hadn’t slept with Marilee for almost a year. But you forced me into marrying her anyway. Why?”
“How conveniently you forget that you chose to marry her.”
“Because you threatened to put Laura Jane in an institution if I didn’t!” Rink yelled, finally giving vent to the anger that had simmered until it had to boil over.
“Oh, my God.” Caroline covered her face with her hands. Would this nightmare never end? Roscoe had blackmailed Rink into marrying a girl carrying another man’s child? How could he have?
“Why was it so damned important to you that I marry Marilee? Why didn’t you laugh in her daddy’s face when he suggested that I was that baby’s father and send him packing? Surely you weren’t afraid of the scandal it might cause. You never cared a fig for social niceties. And I know you weren’t intimidated by old man George. Why did you make me marry her?” His voice had risen to a shout and the question hung in the air a long time after the words had left his mouth.
“Money,” Roscoe said laconically. “He had money. I needed it. It was as simple as that. I sold you, boy, for twenty-five thousand dollars.”
Rink was stunned. Even knowing the worst about his father, it had never occurred to him that something as commonplace as money had been behind the coercion. “But you didn’t stop the divorce once Alyssa was born,” he said, perplexed.
“There was no time stipulation to the deal. George only wanted a husband for that sorry gal of his and a da
ddy for her kid. He wanted a respectable name slapped on the birth certificate.”
“Respectable,” Rink scoffed, throwing his eyes toward the ceiling. He swore. “We reek of respectability, don’t we?”
“Besides,” Roscoe continued smoothly, “it seemed a convenient way to keep you from making a big mistake.”
“What kind of mistake?”
“Taking up with trash, that’s what.” Roscoe cocked his head in Caroline’s direction.
“Leave her out of this,” Rink said threateningly. “This has nothing to do with Caroline.”
Roscoe chuckled maliciously. “It has everything to do with Caroline. I couldn’t have you knocking up a little gal like her, now could I? That would have been one helluva fine mess.”
“It wasn’t like that.” The words were forced through Rink’s clenched teeth.
“From what my informant told me, it was getting close. He said you could barely keep your hands off her.” Roscoe’s eyes narrowed as he glared at his son. His lips curled with contempt. “You fool. Do you know how hard it was for me to keep from laughing when you said you’d met the girl you were going to marry?”
Caroline jerked in reaction and her eyes flew to Rink. He glanced at her, but this wasn’t the moment to dwell on the fathomless inquiry in her gray eyes.
Roscoe went on relentlessly. “Marilee was a hot little slut. She’d let just about anybody crawl between her legs, but at least she came from a respectable family.” His eyes slithered to Caroline. “At least she wasn’t the town drunk’s kid.”
“Then why did you marry me?” Caroline demanded, breaking her silence at last. Roscoe was responsible for all the heartache she had suffered. All this time she had believed that Rink had fathered Marilee’s child while he had been seeing her. Roscoe’s machinations had been skillfully executed. He had gotten away with deliberately ruining both their lives. She had nothing to lose now by fighting back.
“I married you because I wanted to make good on my investment,” Roscoe stated bluntly.
“What do you mean?” She had a sinking feeling that she didn’t want to know any more. But she had to know. This was a night of revelation. She didn’t think she could survive another encounter like this. It would be better to learn everything at once. “What investment?”
“I’ll be damned,” Rink said softly as the truth dawned on him.
“You figured it out, did you?” Roscoe cackled.
“Will one of you tell me what we’re talking about?” Caroline cried.
“I think you’ve been living with your mysterious benefactor, Caroline,” Rink said softly.
She stared at him until the fog of misapprehension began to lift and she saw what had always been apparent if only she had looked for it. “The scholarship?” she asked hoarsely, staring down at Roscoe.
“I wanted to keep you out of town in case Rink, once his divorce was settled, decided to come back for you.”
“You paid for my schooling?” She was trying to assimilate what was quickly unfolding. “It was that important to you that I not taint your son and his family name?”
“Oh, it wasn’t just that,” Roscoe drawled. “You had to be made suitable for the final step of the plan.”
“Which was?” she asked on a thread of air.
“Which was that you become Mrs. Lancaster. Mrs. Roscoe Lancaster.”
Clutching her stomach with both arms, she bent at the waist. Humiliation pumped through her with every agonizing beat of her heart. “You planned all this years ago? You made it happen?”
“How do you think you got that job at the bank so soon out of college? Did you think it was an accident that I met you there? I made available the job at the gin when the time was right. Want me to go on?”
“But why?” she cried. “Why?”
Roscoe said nothing, only slid his cunning eyes from her to Rink. It was Rink who answered. “Because I wanted you. And he knew it. And he would have done anything, no matter how unscrupulous, even marry you, to keep me from having you.”
“You always were a smart boy.” Roscoe leered.
“You told Laura Jane to write me that Caroline was married.”
“That was easy enough to do. She would do anything to please me and then forget it within hours. You could have learned a lot about devotion and respect from your simpleminded sister, my boy.”
“Respect.” Rink spat the word.
“For years you manipulated all our lives because of some grudge you had against Rink?” Caroline said, still not believing that a man could be so obsessed with hate. “I wasn’t good enough for him, but you married me. You gave me your name, brought me to live in The Retreat. I can’t understand it.”
“You were easily seduced, my dear. I knew that coming from your background, we Lancasters and The Retreat would represent all that you’d never had. The house and family name were bait you couldn’t resist, weren’t they? Even if that house and name belonged to your long-lost love. Actually there were times when I was grateful to you for making it so simple. You were articulate and clean, which was a bonus. You’re refined. God knows where that came from, but it was a benefit. You’re good to look at, which made it easy for folks to believe that a dirty old man like me could be taken with you. Yeah, Caroline, thank you for making it so easy.”
She turned her back in mortification. She had been used abominably. But oddly it was herself she blamed more than the twisted mind of her husband. If she hadn’t been so gullible. If she hadn’t been so quick to judge Rink. If she hadn’t been so ambitious in her own right. If, if, if… What could Roscoe have done to hurt her more than she had hurt herself?
The dying man’s eyes were lively as they darted between the two. “What’s it been like living in the same house? Torture? This week has been the most fun of all, watching you squirm. You thought no one knew, didn’t you? Oh, it’s been entertaining watching you trying to hide it, watching you trying to keep from looking at one another and giving yourselves away.”
His eyes lit on Rink. “You’ve been wanting her again, haven’t you, boy? Got a twitch between your legs you can hardly stand, hmmm? Have you been thinking about her in my bed and what we do there?”
Caroline whirled around, outraged and offended. “Stop this, Roscoe!”
“Look at her, sonny. She’s got a terrific body, doesn’t she?”
“Shut up,” Rink ground out.
“All woman. Every silky inch, female.”
“Don’t talk about her that way, damn you!”
Roscoe chuckled evilly. “I’m not saying anything you haven’t been thinking. Have you been thinking about how you’d like to kiss her? Hold her? Undress her? Sleep with her? Been wanting your daddy’s wife, boy?”
“Oh, God!” Devastated, Caroline ran from the room.
Roscoe laughed as he watched her go.
“You sonofabitch.” Rink addressed his father with deadly calm.
“You’re right about that.” With an effort Roscoe pulled himself up and propped his weight on his elbow. “I’ll burn in hell and love every miserable minute of it because you’ll be more miserable here on earth. Ever since you were born you’ve been a thorn in my side.”
“Because I saw all the ugliness in you. Because you killed my mother as surely as if you’d put a bullet through her brain.”
“Maybe, maybe. She was a weak woman. Never stood up to me. But you did. You did, all right. I never could stand your eyes looking at me with such righteous reproach. And the older you got, the worse it got. You appointed yourself my conscience and I didn’t want a conscience.”
He pointed a shaking, skeletal finger at his son. “Well, I got you back, son of mine. It took me years, but I’ve repaid you in full. You’ll never have that woman now, Rink. I know you. Your damned stubborn Winston pride won’t let you have her.” He paused significantly, then added, “Because I had her first. You remember that. She was my wife and I had her first!”
The four in the limousine were silent as it g
lided beneath the trees on the lane that led to the cemetery. Rink and Caroline stared out the windows by which they sat. Laura Jane, sandwiched between them, threaded her handkerchief between her fingers. Haney, on the jump seat, analyzed them all but kept her peace. At least as long as she could.
“Looks like a good turnout,” she commented, peering out the back windshield at the procession of cars following the hearse and limo.
No one spoke. Finally Caroline said, “Most everyone in town, I think.”
“I don’t remember much about Mama’s funeral. Do you, Rink?” Laura Jane asked timidly. When Rink’s eyes looked as hard as they did now, he frightened her.
“Yes,” he said bitingly, “I remember it.” Then, realizing he was speaking to his sister, he turned his head and gave her a soft smile. Taking up her hand, he kissed the back of it and clasped it warmly between his. “A lot of people came to it, too.”
“I thought so,” she said, smiling tremulously, glad that he wasn’t staring into space with that cold, foreboding expression on his face any longer.
“Folks are going to talk,” Haney said prophetically.
“ ‘Cause you aren’t holding a funeral service in the church. The preacher was shocked. Everyone else was, too.”
“Then they’ll just have to be shocked and I don’t care if they talk,” Rink said bluntly.
“You don’t have to live here,” Haney snapped. “We do.”
“No church service,” Rink said gratingly. “All right, Haney?” His spearing eyes and the imperious edge to his voice rendered her submissive.
“Yes, sir.” She drew herself up huffily. He turned his eyes out the window.
Caroline’s heart went out to Haney and Laura Jane. Innocent as they were to the true nature of Roscoe’s spirit, they couldn’t understand Rink’s remarkable coldness over the loss of his father. For herself, they thought that grief had stupefied her.
Haney had taken her hand and said, “You’re a brave soul, Caroline, but the crying will come. When you’re alone and all the hubbub is over, then you will cry.”
Haney was wrong. Caroline would shed no tears for the man who had been her husband. Her eyes had remained dry from the moment she had run from his hospital room in abject humiliation. Rink had followed her out a while later, looking like he had been in hell and visiting with the Devil himself. His visage had been terrible, stony. It had stayed that way.