Deep South (Naive Mistakes #4)

by Dunning, Rachel

  Edmond made a loud frustrated sound.

  There was another beat.

  Behind me, I heard footsteps. I turned. Horace appeared, tray in hand, looking straight ahead. He walked past me, even though I was impossible to miss, and headed for the parlor. Not my business, I guess he was thinking. I wondered how many things he’d walked past in this house throughout his life...

  Edmond now. “One day you will learn. One day you will come crawling to me, to the friends you refuse to acknowledge—”

  “They are your friends. Not mine. I have my own. And I will have them even if my fortune dwindles to nothing.”

  “Oh, but my dear boy!” Edmond chuckled heartily. “This is where you are wrong! The only friends worth having are the wealthy ones!”

  “And that is where you and I differ in opinion—and always will.”

  “I’ve tried everything. You flout the spirit of your family name. You are in the gossips!” I heard newspapers being slammed on a desk. “That...girl...is in them as well, having punching matches at a civilized school! You have no interest in running a going concern, a concern which would support you and your...wife...for generations! Without having to lift so much as a finger!”

  “I enjoy lifting my fingers. I enjoy hard work. And my children will learn the value of money before they get given fortunes of it without lifting their fingers. Give the business to Francis. I’m sure he’s interested in not raising any fingers.”

  “Oh, don’t insult me! Francis would embarrass this family even further. And he’d run the business into the ground in less than a year!”

  “I doubt it. He seems to have some common...interests...with your, ahem, friends.”

  “What they do behind closed doors is none of my concern.”

  “Sometimes the doors are not closed.”

  “You are insinuating again,” Edmond said.

  “I insinuate nothing. You know as well as I do that Francis’s introduction to the high life and...all that comes with it...was made in this very house.”

  “That was one time!”

  “No, it was several. You only caught him one time. We knew about the tunnels. We frequented them. And we saw a lot more than you ever knew.”

  I heard a loud sigh. Wow, sound travels in here!

  “So they did a few drugs. What harm is there in that?”

  “When those drugs are being done by men who are supposed to uphold the law, it connotes some fearful things about the kind of influence your friends have in society.”

  “And here it is again—your naïveté. This is the way the world is, child!”

  “No, this is the way you allow the world to be!”

  “Utterly disrespectful! No wonder you have partnered with...an American!” He basically spat the word out!

  Horace was standing outside the parlor, looking dead ahead, hands folded in front of him. It was as if he wasn’t even there...

  Another loud sigh. I heard a drink being poured, guzzled down rapidly, then an exhalation. Yip, whiskey... Or some other hard liquor.

  “Think about it, son. I’ll put this...farce...of a wedding aside if you...take over the business!”

  I couldn’t believe Conall’s reserve.

  “I don’t need your blessing to marry the woman I love, father.”

  I would have added a few more words to the end of that. Suddenly I was glad Conall was dealing with this and not me.

  “Woman!” That sounded like a curse-word the way he said it. “She is a child!”

  “You’ve mentioned that already. Nine minutes left. Do you really wish to repeat yourself when time is running out?”

  “Oh, the insolence!”

  Silence.

  I heard steps inside the den, then a chair moving. Then I heard it moving again, as if someone had pulled it to sit on and then was moving it forward (or back.)

  “Sit, son. Please.” Edmond’s tone was more defeated now.

  I heard another chair, similar sounds.

  “Drink?” Edmond said.

  I heard nothing, but I didn’t hear a drink being poured either.

  A beat or two passed.

  “Have you heard...from your brother?”

  “I saw him yesterday.”

  “And?” The question was instantaneous.

  “It was not a friendly encounter.”

  “Is he well? Is he still...?”

  “Yes, clearly.”

  A loud sigh.

  “Where is he now?” Edmond asked.

  Conall said nothing.

  “You know I can find him myself if I want to,” Edmond said.

  “Your friends.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then do it.”

  “You two, always looking out for each other as if I were the bad person. As if I were the one who ‘ruined’ your lives!”

  Conall said nothing!

  “Perhaps I will bring him into the business.”

  Conall said nothing.

  I again heard a drink being poured and finished, then another one being poured.

  More silence, except for my heart which I could hear thumping madly inside my ears.

  Horace didn’t move even an eighth of an inch!

  “How is mother?” Conall finally asked.

  Edmond said nothing at first. Then: “You saw how she is.”

  “Doctor Gehrig could help her.”

  “Oh, bother! Doctor Gehrig is violently opposed to medication of any sort! Your mother is depressed! She needs drugs!”

  “The drugs haven’t made her any less depressed in almost ten years. And you’ve never tried his methods.”

  The only ‘method’ I knew of Dr. Gehrig’s was the one he’d used on me: He’d ordered me to Switzerland to soak up the air in a non-threatening environment until I was chilled out enough to return to ‘normal’ life. That, and my friends, were all I’d needed after my own ordeal.

  “His methods are unusual. He’s a brilliant family doctor, but a terrible head doctor.”

  “Nothing else has worked with her.”

  “Your sister’s death was hard on her.”

  “It was hard on all of us.” Vivienne had died bleeding in Conall’s arms. It was probably hardest on him.

  “Yes, it was,” Edmond said.

  The pauses were getting longer, as if Edmond had run out of steam. (Or maybe the whiskey had gone to his head and he wasn’t seeing straight anymore.)

  “You’re really going through with this wedding? Shouldn’t you wait longer—just to make sure?”

  “I am sure.”

  “The years have convinced me that you won’t take over the family business, Conall, but please hear me on the subject of marriage. You don’t want to be stuck in one...when the love is gone.”

  Conall said nothing.

  Several eerie moments of wall-cracking silence went past...

  “You know I have put those days behind me, don’t you?” Edmond said.

  “Which days are those, father?”

  “Oh, son, don’t make me spill it out! You’re well aware of what I’m referring to!”

  “No, please, enlighten me.” Conall maintained his cool, deliberate manner.

  A loud exhalation. Somehow I was pretty sure it was Edmond’s.

  Edmond: “What you saw. What you heard. That night. It’s over, I promise you.”

  “Which night, father?” Something told me Conall knew damn well what night!

  “The...woman, Conall. The...woman.” I’m not sure if Edmond meant “woman” or “women.”

  Conall said nothing.

  “You mentioned...the tunnels?”

  “Yes.”

  “So then...you saw...more?”

  “We did.”

  “Oh, bloody hell. That is precisely why you should take great pains as to whom you marry, son!”

  “So you are saying my mother was not worthy of marrying you?”

  “No, no, no! I’m saying...we weren’t right for each other.”

  Conall
said nothing.

  “Look, son—it’s life. Life is ugly. This is the truth of it. You need to drop your gallantry and your ideas that we live in a chivalrous, honest, loving world. We don’t! And the sooner you accept that, the sooner you will be happier. Grasp your destiny! You have Williams blood in you! You were meant to command wealth simply because you can!”

  Conall said nothing.

  “I don’t feel I should apologize to you for any of this,” Edmond said.

  “And yet you’re doing it.”

  A beat. “I appreciate you never telling your mother.”

  “I only did that because I was sure she knew it anyway. And I chose to save her the embarrassment of letting her know that her sons also knew.”

  “Smart, aren’t you?” The words came out as an angry sarcasm. I could only imagine Edmond’s face.

  “I believe I am, yes. I believe I’m the smartest in the family.” OK, that was a dig. I’m sure of that!

  “You know that we will only be at your wedding—if it goes forward—because not being there would reflect even worse on the family than being there. The press are wolves. We need to show solidarity on the outside, Conall. Otherwise they’ll eat us alive.”

  “Yes, the show is the most important, isn’t it, father? How things look. How things seem! Never mind the cancer which has festered and eaten away at this family’s insides since the very first day you fucked that woman in the bedroom while a charity gala was running—”

  “I will not tolerate you taking that attitude with me!” A chair scraped and fell! Then another!

  “And I will not tolerate being spoken to like some delinquent child! I—”

  “You think—”

  “NO! YOU LET ME FINISH NOW, OLD MAN!” Conall’s voice rocked the entire mansion.

  I think Horace even blinked.

  “You lost! The game is over for you! You cheated on mother...dozens...of times and with dozens of women!”

  “I—”

  “I know it! I saw it with my own eyes! So don’t carry on with your lies!”

  It was now Edmond who stayed silent.

  “Your ‘business partners’ did cocaine in our very own home! You had sex orgies here! Booze-ups! Whores! You exposed your children to it! Even little Vivienne saw it—”

  “You know I’m sorry for that night.”

  “Oh, you are!? But you’re not sorry about Francis?”

  “Francis was older.”

  “HE WAS BARELY A TEENAGER!! You’ve lost. You’ve failed. Do you know why I give you the time of day? Do you know why I bother to talk to you in your ‘den’ every time you invite me over?”

  “I think you’ve said enough!”

  “Oh, no, I’ve barely said anything! Do. You. Know?”

  “Tell me.”

  “To see if you’ve learned anything at all in the last sixty years. I don’t need your money. I don’t need your blessing. I don’t need your approval. I was raised by good men.” Smokey’s older friends, like “Clint Eastwood” and others, I recalled. “I don’t judge you for what you do! I don’t judge your infidelity! I don’t judge your philandering! I know why mother drugs herself every day, and I know why you let her. It has nothing to do with Vivienne. Vivienne died. We suffered. We mourned. But that came to an end. She takes those drugs to numb her mind because her life with you is more painful than being half-dead herself—”

  “This is enough!”

  “No, it is not enough, goddamnit!”

  “Oh, my, your language! Is that what that...American...is doing to you?”

  Sudden silence.

  I figured there was probably some fiery staredown happening right now!

  “If I were the same age as you,” Conall said, “and if you weren’t so damn frail and weak, I’d take you outside and knock your block off.”

  “What impudence.”

  “And what bigotry! It was the same type of people you associate with that led to Vivienne’s death!”

  “Oh, that’s hogwash!”

  “It is not! Corruption. Drug dealing politicians! Different players, but it’s the same game! And yet...you continue to associate with them, continue to host parties for them, continue to do business with them!”

  “It’s not that easy to leave them, Conall. Once you’re in—”

  “Of course it’s easy! But you’d have to let go of your billions, because you know damn well your money isn’t yours. Your money is tied up in the hands of ‘friends’ who have the power to crash a currency so suddenly, of selling shares so rapidly, and keeping you out of the picture, that you’d lose everything!”

  Edmond said nothing.

  “And yet,” Conall said, “knowing your own daughter died at the hands of such men—”

  “It wasn’t the same men!”

  “IT MIGHT AS WELL HAVE BEEN! It was the same character! The same type of person! And that is all we need to know about it! You know damn well that Senator Gregory had his own cliques, his own ‘friends’ who let him get away with what he did. You know darn well that corrupt cops get ignored by the very kinds of people you host and entertain in your own home! How many other Viviennes are out there, dying, their cases getting hidden under a rug because someone’s ‘friend’ was sniffing cocaine at a party and—”

  “ENOUGH!!! GET OUT! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!”

  Loud footsteps! Coming my way! And then the door was open!

  Conall was suddenly in front of me, looking huge and angry and crimson with rage! Behind him was his father, whiskey glass in hand, a chair on the ground. The man looked small, frail. Furious!

  And then I saw it.

  And my heart went into my throat:

  Behind Edmond Williams was something I hadn’t expected to see, something which made the small man look large and menacing and deadly. Something...foreboding.

  He was standing between two large windows, and just behind him, in the center of the windows, about ten feet wide, was a large, imposing tapestry. It looked old—ancient. Magnificently woven.

  The tapestry was mammoth in size. Its main color was a scarlet red, dark oranges.

  And its main subject—was a dragon.

  The red dragon breathed flames down on a burning city. I could swear it was smiling by the look in its eyes and the tilt of its lips.

  People were running from its fire, but one person didn’t make it. One person was burning, engulfed by it.

  It was a woman. A witch, dressed in black.

  And she looked like she was screaming.

  -3-

  Edmond took one look at me, rolled his eyes, and said, “Oh, of course you’d be listening! How absolutely...classic of you! Let me tell you something, little missy!” Edmond started walking toward me! “This family will not tolerate—”

  And then it happened:

  Conall turned. He looked like a massive werewolf suddenly, a fantastical creature—like he’d suddenly grown wings and muscles and huge claws!

  His back was huge under his suit jacket, and I know it was the mood in the air that made up the optical illusion, but it still looked freaking scary!

  Just ahead of Conall, I saw his father. He looked suddenly smaller. Afraid.

  What happened was this: Just one word. And the word was deadly. It had undertones that could be felt in the very foundations of this stone castle.

  The word, spoken by Conall, with a finger held up and his gaze locked on Edmond’s like a hawk, was this: “Don’t.”

  The world went silent.

  His father’s mouth stayed open, mid-sentence. The glass in his hand looked just about ready to fall. I actually saw the liquid in it shake.

  Conall didn’t move.

  Eons went by as this tableau froze in front of me.

  And then I heard something else—a hollow, echoing footstep at the top of the stairs.

  I looked up.

  Backlit by gray windows, her hair a mess, her eyes red from crying, was Madeleine Williams. She took a step on the first stone step at t
he top. It echoed like a TNT bomb in the grand canyon. Then another step. The two men only stared at each other, their mutual breathing loud.

  And then she was next to me.

  When Edmond saw his wife, the rage and fury and hatred and anger in his eyes changed to something else. His shoulders slumped, his head bowed. The emotion had changed to...shame?

  “Madeleine,” he whispered.

  She grabbed my hand. Her own hand was fragile, old. “Thank you for coming, dear,” she said. And then she kissed me on the cheek. “Do come again,” she whispered in my ear.

  She turned to Conall who was still looking at his father, his back turned to us. Her hand reached meagerly for his. Conall’s shoulders also slumped, his rage easing. “Thank you for coming, son. It is always lovely to see you.” Conall turned, hugged his small mother, rubbed her back.

  She turned away, walked up the stairs.

  And then she was gone.

  Edmond was now at the door to his den. He closed it quietly. And with that silent click, Conall and I were out in the hall.

  Alone.

  We walked out.

  The wind blew strongly outside. I held my hat to my head while Horace fetched the car. Nothing was said. I held Conall’s hand and he stared straight ahead, looking at nothing.

  Horace appeared with the car.

  When we got to it, Conall let my hand go and I saw his hand shaking on the door handle. “Babe,” he said, looking at his hand, “I think you’d better drive.”

  I put my hand on his and held it firmly. “No problem.”

  -4-

  Conall talks with his fists when he's worried.

  Those had been Trey’s words to me the first time I’d met him at that dingy gym in London, the same gym the rest of us girls would later learn how to poke an attacker’s eyes out and break his knees—all taught to us by Trey.

  We drove in silence for a while—a good thirty minutes. Conall had put on some heavy metal on the radio. I noticed he’d stopped shaking.

  I clicked the GPS and changed the route from Crawley Down to London. (It was Sunday, the only day a person can safely drive into London without getting stuck in traffic half the day.) Then I called Trey.

  “What are you doing?” Conall asked.

  “I’m going to the gym with you.”

  “Trey’s busy. He and Alex have planned a day out.”