Beverly Byrne

by Come Sunrise

  Amy found the theology obscure, but she was grateful to Luke for making the decisions.

  She went through the funeral with quiet dignity, a small but erect figure behind her black veil. There were many people present at both the church and the cemetery. Most weren't true mourners. They were voyeurs come to see the end of a man who had "made a name for himself," and managed to die as dramatically as he lived. It occured to Amy that Diego was perhaps the only person present who felt sincere, un-mitigated grief. He had seen it all happen and been beside Tommy from the beginning. Amy had already asked him to remain as foreman and manager of the ranch. "It will belong to Tom Junior and Kate someday," she told him.

  "But only you can preserve it for them. You know exactly what Tommy planned." Diego had nodded solemnly and agreed.

  Rick had tried to persuade her to take the children to the funeral. "At least Kate," he'd insisted. "She needs to see the end, Amy. Unless she does there can never be a finish to her grieving."

  Stubbornly Amy refused. It struck her as a monstrous idea.

  "You told me how desolate you were when your parents died," Rick reminded her. "You said it was worse because they never had a funeral."

  "I was seventeen," she insisted. "Kate won't be four until November."

  In the end he couldn't convince her. She took both children to the nuns who looked after Estella and asked the sisters to keep them for a week or ten days. Las Carmelitas had come to know Amy, since she frequently visited Rick's daughter. They did not refuse her this charity.

  After the burial Amy and the three men returned to the house. It was silent and cool and beautiful. Amy was surprised to find how much a refuge it seemed. She put away her widow's weeds and changed into a denim skirt and a white blouse. She had gone through the formalities required; she would not descend into hypocrisy.

  She made a pitcher of lemonade and took it and a tray of glasses to the patio. Rick was there alone.

  "I want you to have these tablets," he said, handing her a vial of small yellow pills. "They'll help you sleep for the next few nights. Don't take one unless you need it, but don't hesitate if you do."

  "You won't be here, then?" She asked the question in a small voice.

  "I can't be away from my practice any longer, querida," he said softly. "And I think you need to be apart from me for a time."

  Amy didn't answer. She busied herself pouring the lemonade, but when he took the glass from her hand Rick didn't drink it. "I love you," he said. "Nothing has changed, but everything is different. Once more all the decisions are yours."

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "Yes, you do. I had one rival for a long time, mi amor. I don't propose to spend the rest of my life fighting another one. "

  She started to say something, but Rick put his finger over her lips. "Father Luke tells me he and his companion will remain here for a few days. You and your brother-in-law have much to discuss." He looked at her closely when he said, "There's one thing that won't wait. Do you plan to do anything about Rosa?"

  Amy looked at him blankly, then understood his meaning. "Please see that she has a lawyer. Not Lopez, a good criminal lawyer. She was acting in self-defense. I'm sure of it."

  "Yes," Rick agreed. "I'll get someone from Albuquerue."

  "Make sure all the bills come to me," Amy said.

  "I will, querida. And I'll see the sheriff and get word to Pedro, the cacique at San Felipe. I doubt you'll have to testify or become involved in the proceedings."

  Wilkins would be kind to the widow, Rick knew. And it would satisfy Pete's sense of justice to finish the drama Beatriz had inaugurated. Westerman was dead, all the loose ends were neatly tied. Ibanez sighed and rose to go.

  Amy waited for him to kiss her good bye, but he left without doing so.

  Amy went to her room and took one of Rick's pills and slept until the following morning. When she came downstairs it was after nine. Luke was waiting for her. "I'm sorry to press you, Amy, but James and I can only stay a short while. I need to talk to you."

  She suspected something of what he wanted to say. She'd worked it out, along with a number of other truths, in the days since Tommy died. The thought of discussing it was unpleasant. "Perhaps tomorrow," she said listlessly.

  "No," Luke insisted. "Today."

  "Very well, I'll meet you in the study in an hour."

  The study was the square spacious room in the rear of the quadrangle that formed the house. It had one window that looked out to the patio, and another that faced the corral. It was furnished with a big desk and a long oak writing table. The chairs were all hard-backed. They had curved arms and wide red leather seats and looked as if they might have come from the governor's palace in Santa Fe, or some Spanish library. It was a room for solitary thinking or serious talk; an appropriate setting for the business which Amy and Luke discussed.

  "What bothers me," Luke said, "is that you may misjudge Uncle Donald. He robbed both our estates, yours as well as mine and Tommy's, I'm not denying that. But at the same time he tried not to see any of us hurt. "

  "I figured out that the reference in your letter had to mean that. But I don't understand what it signified, or how you found out. I don't even know when he died. Tommy never told me."

  "Three years ago," Luke said. "In 1918."

  "That's the year Tom Junior was born." Amy said.

  "Well, small wonder Tommy didn't name him for Donald." It was a weak attempt at humor, but they both managed a smile. "If he hadn't died just then. nothing would have been discovered," Luke continued. "When the lawyers were sorting out his estate they found the papers relating to the purchasing of the Norman mines from you. At the same time the war had ended, and your father's attorney had written from Africa to say that he'd had an offer of half 8 million dollars for the diamond mines and the house. He thought that you still owned them." He paused and looked at her, but Amy didn't say anything.

  "It was obvious that the sixty thousand Donald paid you was patent robbery. They probed further and discovered the banker who'd helped with the swindle. It turned out that the bank wanted to make private restitution rather than risk a scandal, and Tommy and I agreed. There wasn't much point in dragging the whole family through the dirt." He peered at her. She was pale and wide-eyed and she sat very still. "You must know all this. You had to sign the papers."

  "No," she said. "This is the first I've heard of it. Tommy never told me." She was repeating that phrase so often it sounded like a litany.

  "But that's impossible! Your signature was on all the documents. The loans from the bank in Albuquerque were made on the strength of them. I know that. It was all so intertwined that I had to sign a lot of things too."

  She shook her head. "I never signed anything. If my name was on any papers, then Tommy forged it." She didn't wait to see his reaction to that. "This bank loan you speak of, what year was it made?"

  "Nineteen-eighteen. Everybody knew it would take a while to get the capital out of Africa. And Tommy said you needed the money right away."

  Amy stood up and gripped the back of the chair. "He needed it. He wanted to get exclusive rights to the waterhole, and buyout two other ranchers. That's why he agreed to sell the mines, and Jericho. That's why he didn't mention it to me. All his hopes and dreams were tied up with this place. He was afraid that mine were still in Africa."

  "And he never gave you the chance to prove otherwise," Luke said quietly. "I'm sorry," he added, as if it were his fault and he must still defend his little brother.

  "So am I," Amy said. She was not referring to Jericho. That wound had healed long ago, at least as much as it ever would. But somehow Tommy had not realized that. So he had cheated her, and his guilt had been the bitter finale to whatever remained of their union.

  "There was one thing that wasn't sold," Luke said. "In the light of what you've told me I don't know what to make of that fact." He reached below his scapular and brought forth a chamois bag tied with a drawstring. "Tommy has been negotiat
ing to get this from Dar es Salaam to New York for nearly three years. It arrived a few months ago, and he asked me to bring it out here. That's why I came."

  Amy took the offering with trembling fingers. She felt its weight, and the familiar texture of the velvety leather. She had held this bag before. "This belonged to my mother," she said. "It was usually kept in the bank vault in Dar es Salaam, but sometimes she had it at home."

  "I see," Luke said. He had opened the bag earlier, but now he was going through the experience with Amy, seeing it with her eyes. It seemed entirely possible that some new and mysterious thing would be revealed when she looked inside.

  They didn't speak while she unloosed the drawstring and spilled out the contents. Four stones tumbled silently onto the leather-edged blotter on the desk. Three of them were overshadowed by the fourth. Even in the casual heap in which they lay the Jericho diamond announced its presence as with a fanfare of trumpets.

  When Roland Norman found the stone thirty years earlier it created a furor. Since then, larger diamonds had been discovered, but the Jericho remained one of the wonders of the world. It was a flawless blue-white gem. Norman had taken it to Antwerp for cutting. When the artisans were through it was seventy-two carats of fiery perfection. Amy held it. She gazed into its depths and saw all her childhood, and all that had happened since.

  The only sound in the room was the ticking of a grandfather clock. Seconds passed. The clock chimed the hour. When the sound had died away Luke said. "Its extraordinarily beautiful." It was an absurd understatement, but he felt he must say something.

  "It's more than that to me," Amy said.

  She put the Jericho diamond down and picked up the three that had accompanied it. In the company of the great stone they were only handmaidens to glory. Seen by themselves each would have the power to excite.

  They were of graded size; ten, eleven, and twelve carats. Jessie had shown them to her daughter numerous times. "When you grow up we'll make these into a necklace for you, or maybe a tiara," she'd said. Amy had wondered where she would wear a tiara in the African bush, but she had taken part in the game with glee. "Yes, and I'll have a satin gown with a long train."

  She savored the memory for a few moments, then set it aside. "Did Tommy tell you what he intended to do with these?" she asked.

  Luke shook his head. "No, but I can guess. They weren't mentioned in his will. He didn't consider them his. He meant to give them you."

  "I think perhaps he did," Amy said slowly. "It would have meant telling me about the whole thing, the sale of the mines and the house, and what he'd done with the money. But I think he planned to do it. And he meant to give me the seeds of the flame tree at the same time. That's why he saved them."

  Amy did not talk to Luke again that day. When she came downstairs the following morning it was after nine. The two men had already breakfasted.

  "The padre says his prayers," Maria told her. "The other one I do not understand."

  Maria found Brother James's English too rich with brogue to be comprehensible. Besides, she didn't approve of him. He spent his time drawing pictures in an oversized book. To Maria that somehow smacked of witchcraft. Amy placated the woman by having a cup of coffee in the kitchen, though she refused anything to eat. Finally she went to look for Luke.

  He was slowly pacing the length of the patio. He held an open leather-bound breviary with colored ribbon markers, and he was muttering softly to himself in Latin. Amy waited until he looked up and noticed her.

  "I'm sorry, am I interrupting? I can come back later. "

  "No, don't go away. I was saying my office. I just finished." He closed the book and made the sign of the cross. Then they sat together under the gum tree.

  "Where's Brother James?" Amy asked.

  "He went out to make more sketches of the local flora. He's a remarkable botanist and a fine artist. That's one of the reasons Father Prior selected him as my companion."

  She had spent many hours thinking of Luke, and the incredible fact of his presence. "Were you sorry to have to come here?" she asked.

  He didn't look at her. "Not sorry. Frightened, maybe. Things were pretty bad between you and Tommy, weren't they?"

  "As bad as they could be." She took a deep breath. "I want you to know the truth. The day they brought him home, after he'd been wounded, I was getting ready to leave him. If they had come an hour later, I would already have gone."

  "I'm not surprised," Luke said. "Tommy wrote me a little bit about it. Then, when I got here, it was obvious you weren't grieving in the ordinary sense."

  "I had done all my grieving for Tommy a long time before," she said quietly.

  "He'd changed that much?"

  "Yes. I suppose we both had."

  He turned to her. His smile was as sad and as devastatingly beautiful as it had always been. "You've grown up, little Amy, but if you're changed, it's for the better."

  "Not really," she said. "A lot of our trouble was my fault. "

  "No," Luke said. "It was mine. I've never forgiven myself for going to see you that day in New York. Or for the things I said."

  She rose and walked a few steps away. A branch of the eucalyptus hung by her head and its gray green softness brushed her cheek. She could no longer postpone the question most in her mind. "If I had agreed," she said. "If I had said I'd leave Tommy and go away with you, would you have gone through with it?"

  His reply was so low that she had to strain to hear. "Yes, God help me, I would have." He gripped the breviary and his knuckles were white. "It would have been a choice I regretted the rest of my life. I don't think I'm much of a priest, but it's what I was born to be."

  She nodded. "Thank you for being honest. I needed to know." There was no reason to tell him that Tommy had found out about the clandestine visit, or that it put the seal of doom on their marriage. She had decided earlier to keep that secret. Nothing Luke said had changed her mind.

  They were silent for a while. Finally Luke spoke. "We'll be leaving tomorrow. Unless you need me for anything more."

  "No." she smiled gently. "I don't need you anymore."

  She felt a deep longing to be by herself, and she turned and left the patio. Luke let her go without a word.

  Amy wandered the house, but it seemed suddenly confining and oppressive. She changed her clothes and went to the corral and saddled Sheba. The gray was getting old, but she remained Amy's favorite mount.

  When she rode out the gate she saw Brother James sitting beside a cactus. He was sketching, and he wore a wide sombrero. It made a queer contrast to his black and white habit. He looked up and waved when she passed him, but Amy didn't stop

  In a few minutes the ranch buildings were a speck on the horizon behind her. She was alone and free and at one with the tawny earth and the blazing sky. She rode hard and fast, confident of her skill and her knowledge of the countryside. The wind whistled past her face, and the distant mountains filled her eyes. She did not think. She allowed herself only to feel, and to be healed.

  It was nearly nightfall when she returned. The two Dominicans were nowhere to be seen. Maria had left a cold supper for her. She ate it, then went up to bed, and she did not need Rick's tablets to send her to sleep.

  Amy's bedside clock said 5:00 A.M. when she woke. Dawn was only a promise in the gray night sky. Suddenly she knew that she could wait no longer. She had intended going to Santa Fe after Luke and James left, but there was an urgency in her blood now. She bounded from the bed and showered, and washed her short black hair. Her hands were trembling when she rifled through her clothes closet, but it was the quiver of joy and anticipation, not fear.

  She chose a yellow silk dress because it was Rick's favorite color, and because the rippling pleats of the skirt and the deep ruffle at the neck were intensely flattering. It wasn't a widow's dress, not a sign of mourning. For Rick's sake, and the children's she would be discreet in the next few months. But not today.

  The Model-T started without hesitation. Amy covered t
he distance to town in two and a half hours. The car would probably never be the same. It was just eight-thirty when she arrived at Rick's, and there were no patients waiting in the office. She tried the front door and found it unlocked.

  The smell of fresh-perked coffee filled the house, and there were sounds of occupancy coming from the kitchen, but the dining room was empty. So was the sitting room and Rick's small study. She raced up the stairs. Her feet were encased in patent leather pumps with high thin heels, but they made no sound on the carpeted floor. Rick's bedroom was at the end of the hall and the door was ajar. She caught sight of him buttoning his shirt in front of the mirror over the dresser. Amy pushed the door open wider, and stepped into the room. "Good morning, my love," she said softly.

  He looked up and saw her reflection in the mirror, then turned and opened his arms. Amy rushed to them, and when they closed around her, everything in her world came into harmony.