by BJ Hoff
His tone was distant, impersonal when he replied. “You should insist that Paul take the buggy instead of the carriage. It is a most pleasant day.”
On impulse, Susanna said, “Would you like to go with us?”
He was very still, and for a moment Susanna thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then, averting his face slightly, he said, “No, you should be alone, I think.”
Susanna waited, but he offered nothing more.
“Mrs. Dempsey will check on Caterina from time to time,” she told him. “I won’t be long.”
He turned back to her. “Take as long as you like, Susanna,” he said quietly. “I will be here until later this afternoon. Just so you know, I may stay in the city overnight, depending on how late we rehearse.”
He hesitated as if he might add something more, but instead turned and started down the hall toward his office.
Susanna watched him walk away. Part of her seethed at his seemingly unshakable self-control. Another part tried in vain to ignore a stab of disappointment at the reminder that he would be leaving later.
What sort of madness was it, she wondered, to be continually torn by these opposing feelings about a man who, even after two months of living under his roof, remained a mystery? Was she ever to learn whether he was indeed the saint those closest to him believed him to be…or the fiend his wife had made him out to be?
The graveyard rested at the very top of a high hill, no more than a mile distant from the house. It was one of the loveliest pieces of ground Susanna had ever seen. And one of the loneliest.
So this is how the wealthy bury their dead…
An unexpected swell of resentment rose up in her as she regarded the broad expanse of land, the ornate monuments, the grave sites decorated with extravagant floral arrangements or even objects of art. The hillside itself was rich and unmistakably fertile ground, planted with thick grass, its color now dulled by the approaching end of autumn. Broad, rolling reaches of land lay totally unused, but obviously well cared for.
Susanna found the place offensive, almost as if it had been desecrated by pagan symbols. In Ireland, land meant survival. At home, a piece of ground this large and opulent would have fed countless starving families. With such land as this, her parents could have made a comfortable living for a lifetime! Here in America, it was left to lie fallow, its only purpose to serve as burial grounds for the dead.
At one corner of the cemetery, just ahead, there was a small chapel that looked as if it would hold no more than thirty people. Either the services held there must be limited to a very few mourners, or else the building was used only as another empty memorial.
“This way, Susanna.” Paul took her arm and led her to a grave near the far side of the cemetery.
Susanna stumbled on the uneven ground as they approached the monument. It had been hewn from marble, with an inset of an intricately embellished Celtic cross.
She was somewhat surprised to find a solitary grave rather than a family crypt. Given Michael’s apparent wealth, she had half expected a more imposing burial site. Her sister’s grave was one of the least pretentious she had seen so far. Not that she would have favored a more ostentatious stone; to the contrary, she found Deirdre’s resting place more tasteful than many of the other more elaborate grave sites.
Paul continued to support her with his arm as they stopped beside the grave. Susanna’s eyes locked on the words engraved at the base of the cross:
DEIRDRE FALLON EMMANUEL
WIFE AND MOTHER
1843–1874
Something about the stark simplicity of those few words, so utterly lacking in emotion or sentiment, tore at Susanna’s heart. For the first time, the reality of her sister’s death struck her full-force, and like a string under the tension of a tuning peg, she felt herself grow tight, tight to the point of snapping. Then the trembling began, a brittle, spasmodic shaking she couldn’t control. She would not have been surprised if her very bones had fractured under the force of the tremors quaking through her.
Paul tightened his grasp on her arm. Offering no words, he simply stood beside her, lending his support in silence.
“The flowers?” she questioned, pointing to the simple arrangement of wildflowers decorating the grave.
“Michael sees to it that there are always flowers here. Dempsey maintains the grave at his direction.”
There it was again, one of the many inexplicable contradictions that seemed to make up Michael Emmanuel’s character. The man who could not bear to mention Deirdre’s name was the same man who saw to it that fresh flowers adorned her grave.
She shook her head as if to clear away the confusion.
Until this moment Deirdre’s death, although all too real in Susanna’s mind, had never actually penetrated the depths of her emotions with its dreadful, irrevocable finality. But now, standing here beside this lonely mound of earth, beneath which rested the lifeless body of her only remaining family member, she seemed to hear, for the first time and the last, the thud of the coffin as it closed, signaling the end of her sister’s all too brief life.
Deirdre…Wife and Mother…
Dead at thirty-one years of age. Survived by a husband who seemed hard-pressed to speak her name, and a daughter whose childish memory of her would soon wither and drop away like the flowers that adorned her mother’s grave.
“If you like, I will leave you alone,” Paul said quietly, giving her arm a reassuring squeeze. “Take as much time as you want.”
Susanna nodded, and he walked away, turning down the path from which they had come. For a long time, she stood staring at Deirdre’s monument. Finally, she knelt in the soft grass, warm in the afternoon sun. Her throat swollen, her heart heavy, she whispered a prayer for her sister.
When she got to her feet, she stood looking around the graveyard, then turned her attention back to the monument. Why hadn’t Michael made more of an effort to personalize the stone? Had he cared so little that he hadn’t even bothered to have a more loving memorial engraved—if not for his own consolation, then for Caterina’s sake? Was this austere inscription yet another sign of his indifference to Deirdre?
The gravestone seemed too cold to Susanna, too austere. And yet wasn’t it somehow in keeping with Michael’s obvious resistance to Deirdre’s memory, his attempts to shut out all evidence of her existence and their life together?
In the midst of her musings, Susanna searched for her own grief. What, exactly, did Deirdre’s death mean to her? How did she really feel about the loss of the sister she had never known all that well?
With so many years between them, they had never been close. They had been sisters, but never friends. Susanna had been little more than a child when Deirdre had left home to pursue her dream of becoming an important singer. She’d returned some months later, discouraged and without further hopes, only to leave again, this time as a member of a small traveling musical company out of Dublin.
She had gone on to become a part, albeit a rather insignificant part, of the opera world. After that, she had never come home again to stay, only to visit, and then for a few days at most. When she did visit, it was always in the midst of a whirlwind of rapturous accounts of her latest role, or her latest male conquest—or, on occasion, in the throes of depression because a role was not going well or because there was no recent male conquest.
She had met Michael in London, married him in Italy, and from there accompanied him to New York. Long before then, any real affection or closeness she and Susanna might have shared had eroded during the long periods of separation. Only when her marriage began to go bad had Deirdre renewed her letter writing, penning one grim post after another to Susanna, each filled with her growing unhappiness and despondency—as well as tales of her husband’s bad temper and selfishness.
Susanna surveyed the forlorn grave and the cemetery, its rows of solemn monuments and crypts so at odds with the bright, sunny afternoon. Most of the grief she was now experiencing, she realized, was due less to any re
al affection she might have once held for her sister than to a bitter sense of all that had been lost. The fleeting years apart, the hours and moments wasted, the irretrievable opportunities for growing closer. All the times they had never had…and now never would.
The sad reality was that she missed Deirdre more for what they had not been to each other than for what they had been.
In any event, all she could do for her sister now was to take care of her child and, at the same time, continue her search for the truth behind Deirdre’s tragic death. That much she could do, would do.
The sun-swept graveyard had begun to darken with lengthening shadows. Finally, with unshed tears stinging her eyes, Susanna touched her gloved hand to the stone cross. “Good-bye, Deirdre,” she murmured. “God give you peace.”
29
AN UNVEILED TRUTH
Even the truth may be bitter.
OLD IRISH SAYING
Does Michael bring Caterina to visit her mother’s grave?” Susanna asked as they drove away from the cemetery.
Paul glanced at her, then turned quickly back to the road. “No, not often.”
“Does he come at all?” Susanna pressed.
Paul’s face took on a pinched expression as he clicked his tongue to step up the horse’s pace a little. “No…I do not really know, Susanna.”
“I see,” she returned evenly. She was not in the least surprised that Paul would equivocate. More than likely, Michael didn’t visit the cemetery at all.
They drove on, the silence between them thick with tension. Paul seemed different from his usual self this afternoon: quieter, more sober, as if he had much on his mind, and none of it pleasant. She wondered if he was still disturbed by his earlier argument with Michael.
As for herself, she felt completely drained, and her earlier melancholy had returned in force. She would have to shake off this dreary mood before going home to Caterina. It wasn’t easy to conceal her feelings from her precocious niece; the child was uncommonly sensitive for one so young.
First, however, there was one last stop to make—this one, perhaps, even more difficult than the visit to Deirdre’s grave.
The buggy slowed as Paul turned into a clearing on the left side of the road, just inside the turn.
Susanna looked around, a chill brushing the base of her neck. “This is where it happened?” she said, her voice low.
Paul nodded, and she started to get out.
“Wait,” he cautioned, jumping down and hurrying around the buggy to help her.
Taking her arm, he led her across the road, where Susanna stood looking down the deadly drop. The rock-faced bluff pitched straight down for at least twenty feet or more before leveling off onto a kind of shelf, from which the ground again fell away to nothingness.
Instinctively, Susanna stepped back, and Paul’s hand tightened on her arm. “The road was very muddy and slick that night, because of all the rain we’d had,” he said, his voice tight. “Part of it had already washed away in a mud slide. The buggy went over here”—he inclined his head—“and landed there.” He gestured to the shelf below.
“The ledge was enough to keep the buggy from going the rest of the way over the cliff, but even so—”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. Susanna could imagine the rest. She could almost hear in her mind the clatter of the wheels, the shriek of the terrified horse, the sickening crunch of metal, Deirdre’s screams…
The horror of that night came roaring in on her, and she shook her head as if to throw off the nightmare. Feeling ill, she turned and walked quickly away.
Paul followed. Back inside the buggy, they sat in silence, both of them staring straight ahead. The sun had slipped behind thickening clouds. No longer bright, the afternoon was tinged by what her mother had called “the long light,” that wistful lengthening of shadows that hints of autumn’s passing and winter’s lurking.
A shudder seized Susanna, and for a moment she thought the same trembling that had gripped her back at the cemetery would overcome her again. She sat up straighter, stiffening her back as she tried to force from her mind the image of the cliff and what had happened there.
“They were very unhappy together, weren’t they?”
He glanced at her, then looked away, his expression clearly uncomfortable. “That is not for me to say, Susanna.”
“Apparently, it’s not for anyone to say,” Susanna shot back, provoked by the inevitable resistance that greeted any question she might ask about Deirdre.
“I’m well aware that Deirdre wasn’t happy, Paul,” she persisted. “She wrote to me often. Especially the last year, before…the accident. There was no mistaking her misery.”
Paul sat in stony silence, his gaze straight ahead, as if he hadn’t heard her.
“Why won’t anyone tell me what happened?” Frustration pushed Susanna to the edge of her composure. “Deirdre died in an accident as inexplicable as it was tragic. She left her home—and her child—in the middle of the night in a terrible rainstorm! Something happened that night, something that must have made her take leave of her senses!”
She leaned toward him even more, and finally he turned to look at her as she went on. “She was my sister! I have a right to know what happened, yet no matter who I ask, I’m made to feel guilty because I ask! No one will tell me anything. Her own husband seems to choke on the very mention of her name! Why, Paul? Why should that be?”
His dark eyes behind the glasses were plainly troubled. “Susanna, I am so sorry,” he said. “I know you must have many questions, but it should be Michael who answers them, not I. Still, it is so very difficult for him. Please try to understand.”
By now Susanna’s pulse was thundering, her head throbbing. “Understand?” she burst out. “I’m supposed to understand that it’s difficult for Michael? Deirdre is dead, but I’m supposed to feel sorry for Michael, even though he refuses to tell me the truth about what happened to his own wife—to my sister!”
She heard the shrillness in her voice and groped for restraint, but she was shaking so badly her words spilled out in a staccato stammer. “I already know their marriage was troubled. You’re not going to shock me. Deirdre told me in her letters how difficult Michael was to live with, how unreasonable he could be—”
Without warning, Paul swung around to stare at her, and whatever else she might have said froze on her lips. His face was white with fury, his eyes blazing.
“I should have known!” he ground out. “So—Deirdre told you that Michael made her unhappy?”
Momentarily stopped by this lightning change in him, Susanna could only sit and stare in astonishment.
“She said this?” he demanded.
“I…yes,” Susanna admitted. “She was…wretchedly unhappy.”
“Because of Michael,” Paul repeated, his voice like that of a stranger in its hardness.
“Yes.”
“And did she—”
Unexpectedly, he broke off, turning away from her. Susanna watched him drag in several long, uneven breaths and knot both hands into fists, bringing them to his temples as if to squeeze out some unbearable emotion as he stared mutely down at the floor of the buggy.
Her own anger temporarily deflected, Susanna managed to keep her tone level, even calm, when she spoke. “Paul, I understand your loyalty to Michael. He is your cousin, and you’re very close, I know. But can’t you try to understand what this is like for me? All I’m asking for is the truth. Not just bits and pieces of it, which is all Michael has ever offered me, but the entire truth. I’m not trying to pry. I don’t mean to intrude on anyone’s privacy. But is it really too much to ask that someone tell me what happened to Deirdre? And why it happened?”
At last he raised his face to look at her, and in that moment the pain she saw reflected there made Susanna question if she had gone too far.
“Michael has suffered, too, Susanna,” Paul said, his tone quiet now. “He has suffered more than you can ever imagine. More than he would ever wa
nt you to know.”
Susanna looked at him, wanting him to be right. She wanted to believe that Michael had indeed suffered because of Deirdre’s death. She wanted to believe that he had cared enough to grieve for her, to agonize over his loss of her.
And yet how could she believe it, when everything Deirdre had written in her letters contradicted Paul’s words? And when Michael himself seemed so intransigent in his silence?
She clutched at the rough wool of her skirt. Obviously, there was nothing more she could do to sway him. Like everyone else, Paul was determined to protect Michael.
She was about to suggest they leave when his voice cut through the quiet.
“I can see that I must tell you,” he said, his tone heavy with resignation.
Susanna caught her breath at his words. A bleak, solemn look settled over his countenance. All light seemed to have fled his usually animated features as he faced her.
“God forgive me,” he said, “for no doubt Michael will not. But this has gone on long enough. Too long. I think I must tell you, not only for your sake, but for Michael’s sake as well.” He paused, studying her. “But how much should I tell you, Susanna? How much do you really want to know?”
“Everything,” she said firmly. “I want you to tell me everything.”
He shook his head, and an expression of sorrow passed over his face. “No, I cannot do that. There are things of which only Michael can speak. But I will tell you what I can, and I warn you, Susanna, that even that may be more than you will want to hear.”
30
IN THE EYE OF THE STORM
When words are scarce, they’re seldom spent in vain;
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
From the difficulty Paul seemed to have framing his words, Susanna was beginning to think that whatever he was about to say held the potential to either confirm her worst suspicions—or replace them with an entire set of new ones.
She watched as he removed his glasses and rubbed a hand over his eyes in a gesture of infinite weariness. When he finally spoke, even his voice sounded tired and leaden. “So…you knew the marriage was not good, that there was trouble between them—”