Casteel - Dark Angel Part 13

I didn't want to leave him, even though he had the best of care, with private-duty nurses around the clock, and time and again I protested. Still, he kept insisting I should have what I'd wanted for so long, my chance to see Keith and Our Jane again. And as he urged me, and a.s.sured me he'd be fine, something kept insisting that I hurry, hurry, before it was too late.

"You're leaving him?" Tony shouted, when I told him I was planning a short trip. I didn't want to tell Tony the truth about where I was going, fearing he'd try to stop me. "Now, when he needs you, you are shopping in New York for a trousseau? What kind of idiocy is that? Heaven, I thought you loved my brother! You promised me you would be his salvation!"

"I do love him, I do, but Troy is insisting I go ahead with our wedding preparations. And he's out of danger now, isn't he?"

"Out of danger?" Tony repeated dully, "No, he will never be out of danger until the day his first son is born, and maybe then he can give up his belief that he will not live long enough to reproduce himself."

"You love him," I whispered, awed by the pain I saw in his blue eyes, "really love him."

"Yes, I love him. He's been my responsibility and my burden to carry since I was seventeen years old. I have done everything I can to give my brother the best life possible. I married Jillian, who was twenty years older, though she lied to me about her age and said she was thirty, not forty. I believed with boyish naivete that she was what she pretended to be at that time--the sweetest, kindest, most wonderful woman in the world. Only later did I find out that she disliked Troy on first sight. But by that time it was far too late to change my mind, for I had fallen in love, stupidly, madly, insanely in love."

His head bowed down into the cradle of his hands. "Go on, Heaven, do what you feel you have to, for in the end you will anyway. But remember this, if you hope to marry Troy, you hurry back and don't bring with you even one member of your hillbilly family." His face lifted to show me the knowing look in his eyes. "Yes, silly girl, I know everything, and no, Troy did not tell me. I am not gullible or stupid." He smiled at me again, devilishly mocking. "And what is more, dear child, I was aware all the time that you were slipping through the maze to visit my brother."

"But . . but," I stammered, gone confused, awkward, and embarra.s.sed, "why didn't you put a stop to it?"

A cynical smile quirked his lips. "Forbidden fruit is the most compelling. I had a wild hope that in you, someone totally different from any girl or woman he'd met before, someone sweet, fresh, and exceptionally beautiful, Troy would find, at last, a good reason for living."

"You planned for us to fall in love?" I asked, astonished.

"I had hopes, that's all," he said simply, appearing for the first time totally honest and sincere. "Troy is like the son I can never have. He is my heir, the one who will inherit the Tatterton fortune and carry on the family tradition. Through him and his children I hope to have the family Jillian couldn't give me."

"But you are not too old!" I cried.

He winced. "Are you suggesting I divorce your grandmother and marry a younger woman? I would if I could, believe me, I would. But you can sometimes trap yourself so deeply there is no way out. I am the keeper of a woman obsessed by her desire to stay young, and I have feeling enough for her not to shove her out into the world where she wouldn't survive two weeks without my support." Heavily he sighed. "So go on, girl. Just make sure you come back, for if you don't, what happens to Troy will give you such terrible guilt to carry for the rest of your life, you may never be happy again."

Fourteen Winners and Losers .

THE SECOND FLIGHT OF MY LIFE TOOK ME FROM Boston's Logan Airport to New York City, and there I changed planes and headed straight to Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. My veneer of sophistication was pitifully thin. I wanted to appear cool and controlled while underneath I was ridden by anxiety, terrified of doing everything wrong. The bustling activity of LaGuardia confused me. I had hardly reached my gate when pa.s.sengers began to board. I wanted a window seat and was grateful when a young businessman eagerly stood up and offered me his. Soon I found out there was a price to pay for the seat, for he plied me with too many questions, wanting me to meet him later, and share a drink, and keep him from being lonely. "I'm on my way to meet my husband," I said in a cool, forbidding voice, "and I don't drink." Shortly after that, he abandoned his seat and found another unaccompanied young woman to sit beside. I felt much older than I had when I flew away from West Virginia last September.

From September to August, not quite a year, had graduated high school, been accepted to college, and found a man to love, a man who really needed me, who didn't pity me as Logan had. I looked around at the other pa.s.sengers, most of whom were dressed far more casually than I was in my pale blue summer pants suit that had cost more than the Casteels used to spend on a year's supply of food.

High above the ground, with only the billowing white clouds to see, I felt the strangest sensation of waking from an enchanted sleep that had begun the day I arrived at Farthinggale Manor. This was the real world, where sixty-one-year-old women didn't appear to be thirty. No one looked fastidious and impeccably elegant, even those seated with me in the first cla.s.s section. Babies were crying back in the tourist section. And for the very first time I realized that not once since I entered Farthinggale Manor had I really left its influence. Even at Winterhaven its tentacles had reached out 4o let me know who was in full control of my life. I closed my eyes and thought of Troy, silently praying for his swift recovery. Had Troy spent too much of his life in that huge house, where the invention and selling of make-believe dominated? For now that I was away from the influence of Farthy, his cottage beyond the maze seemed but an extension of what could seem to some a make-believe castle.

When I arrived in Baltimore, I felt grateful to Tony, who had called to make hotel reservations for me.

So this was not truly an unmapped quest. Not when a limousine with a driver waited for me. Even on this journey to find my long lost brother and sister, the control and influence of Farthinggale Manor still pulled the strings of Heaven Leigh Casteel.

"You will have to make your own arrangements for visiting the Rawlingses," Tony had warned early this morning, "and I antic.i.p.ate you are going to meet with a great deal of resentment from two parents who won't want you bringing back the past to children who may have adjusted to their new lifestyle very well. And you must keep remembering that you are one of us now, no longer a Casteel."

I would always be a Casteel; I knew this even as I pulled in my breath, rose from my luncheon table, and made my way to a telephone booth. In my mind I had pictures of just how it would be. Keith and Our Jane would be thrilled to see me again.

Hev-lee, Hev-lee, Our Jane would shriek, her pretty, small face lit up with happiness. She'd then race into my welcoming arms and cry from the relief of knowing I still cared and wanted her.

Behind her would come Keith, much slower and shyer, but he'd know me. He'd be thrilled and happy, too.

Beyond that I couldn't plan. The legal fight to take Keith and Our Jane from those subst.i.tute parents would take years perhaps, according to what the Tatterton attorneys had said, and Tony didn't want me to win. "It won't be fair to Troy to saddle him with two children who may resent him, and you know how sensitive he is. When you are his wife, devote yourself to him, and the children he will father."

Holding the receiver tight to my ear, I grew nervous and apprehensive as the telephone rang and rang. What if they had gone on vacation? Breathlessly I let their phone ring and ring, waiting for someone to respond. I waited for the swept voice of Our Jane. I didn't expect Keith to respond to a telephone, not that is, if he was still the reticent little boy I used to know so well.

Three times I called the number Troy had given me, and no one was home. I ordered another slice of blueberry pie to remind me of the pies that Granny used to make on rare occasions, and sipped my third cup of coffee.

At three o'clock I left the restaurant. An elevator took me to the fifteenth floor of the magnificent hotel, the very kind of posh hotel that Tom and I used to dream about when we lay on mountain slopes and planned our exceptional futures. I was planning to stay in Baltimore only over the weekend, and yet Tony had thought it absolutely necessary that I have a suite of rooms instead of only one. There was a pretty sitting room, and adjoining that, a fully equipped small kitchen where everything was black and white and very s.h.i.+ny.

Hours pa.s.sed. It was ten o'clock when I gave up on the Rawlingses, and put in a call to Troy.

"Now, now," he soothed, "perhaps they took the children on a special outing that lasts all day, and tomorrow they will be home. Of course I'm all right. In fact, for the first time I'm really excited by the future, and all it holds for both of us. I have been a fool, darling, haven't I? Believing that fate planned, even before I was born, to kill me before I reached the age of twenty-five. Thank G.o.d you came into my life when you did, just in time to save me from myself."

Dreams of Troy filled my sleep with restlessness. Time and again he shrank to child size, and drifted away from me, calling out as Keith used to do, "Hev-lee, Hev-lee!"

I was up early the next day, impatiently waiting for eight o'clock. And this time when I called, a woman's voice answered. "Mrs. Lester Rawlings, please." "Who is calling?"

I gave her my name, saying I wanted to visit my brother and sister, Keith and Jane Casteel. Her sharp intake of breath communicated her shock. "Oh, no!" she whispered, then I heard the click of her phone. I was left with the dial tone. Immediately I called her back.

On and on the phone rang, until Rita Rawlings finally answered. "Please," she begged with tears in her voice, "don't disturb the peace of two wonderfully happy children who have adapted successfully to a new family and new lives."

"They are blood-related to me, Mrs. Rawlings! They were mine long before they were yours!"

"Please, please," she begged. "I know you love them. I remember very well how you looked that day when we took them away, and I do understand how you must feel. When first they came to live with us, it was you they were always crying for. But they haven't cried for you in more than two years. They call me Mother or Mommy now, and they call my husband Daddy. They are fine, mentally and physically . . . I'll send you photographs, health and school reports, but please, I beg of you, don't come to remind them of all the hards.h.i.+ps they had to endure when they lived in that pitiful shack in the w.i.l.l.i.e.s."

Now it was my turn to plead. "But you don't understand, Mrs. Rawlings! I have to see them again! I have to make sure they are happy and healthy, or else I can't find happiness myself. Each day of my life I vow to find Keith and Our Jane. I hate my father for what he did, it eats at me night and day. You have to allow me to see them, even if they don't see me."

The reluctance expressed in her delayed reply could have turned aside someone less relentless than I was.

"All right, if you must do this thing. But you have to promise to keep yourself hidden from my children. And if after you see them they don't appear to you to be healthy, happy, and secure, then my husband and I will do everything within our power to see that we remedy that situation."

I knew at that moment that this was a strongwilled woman, determined to keep her family intact, and through h.e.l.l she'd fight to keep them hers and not mine.

All that Sat.u.r.day I prowled small shops, looking for just the right gifts to give f.a.n.n.y, Tom, and Grandpa. I even bought several things for Keith and Our Jane to add to the others I was saving for that day when we would be a family again.

Sunday morning I awakened with high hopes and great excitement. At ten the limousine and driver put at my disposal drew to a slow, careful stop before an Episcopalian church that was almost medieval in design. I knew just where the two children I longed to see would be, in their Sunday School cla.s.s. Rita Rawlings had given me detailed instructions on how to find their cla.s.sroom, and what to do once I was there. "And if you love them, Heaven, keep your promise. Think of their needs and not your own, and stay out of sight."

The church was cool and dim inside, the many halls long and twisting. Well-dressed people smiled at me.

Somewhere in a back hall I grew confused, not knowing which way to turn . . . and then I heard children singing. And it seemed, above all the other voices, I could hear the sweet, high-pitched voice of Our Jane, as she tried earnestly to duplicate the soprano tones of Miss Marianne Deale, when she had sung hymns with us in Winnerrow's one and only Protestant church.

Their sweet singing voices led me to them.

I paused in the doorway that I cracked open to listen to the song of wors.h.i.+p sung so joyfully by many children, with only a piano for accompaniment. Soon I stepped inside the large room, where at least fifteen children, aged approximately ten to twelve, were standing, holding hymn books, and singing loudly.

The children of Winnerrow would have been shamed by this a.s.sembly in their pretty pastel summer clothes.

The two I sought were standing side by side, Keith and Our Jane, both supporting the same hymn book, both singing with rapt expressions, more for the pure delight of expressing themselves than from holy fervor, I thought, as I stood and silently cried, even as I delighted in their obvious good health and prosperity. Oh, thank G.o.d I had lived long enough to see them again.

Once skinny little legs and arms were now strong and tanned. Pale, small faces had developed into radiant, glowing faces, with rosy lips that knew now how to smile rather than pout and droop, and eyes that weren't haunted by hunger and cold. Oh, to see them as they were now sent light through all the shadows I had deliberately kept in my mind.

The song ended. Quietly, I moved to the thick square post beside which I was to sit and s.h.i.+eld myself from their view.

The children sat and put their hymn books in the back pocket of the chairs in front of them--front chairs where no one sat. My tears were chased by a smile when I saw Our Jane fuss with her pretty white and pink dress. Each accordion pleat had to be arranged carefully so it wouldn't later on be crinkled and fall out of place. She took great pains to see that her short skirt covered her tanned knees, which she kept together in proper, ladylike fas.h.i.+on. Her bright hair was artfully styled so it fell to barely brush her shoulders before it flipped upward in charming casual curls. And when she turned her head to profile, I could see the feathery fringe of bangs across her forehead. Her hair knew the kind of professional care that mine and f.a.n.n.y's had never known at the age of ten. Oh, how lovely she was! How flushed with good health and vitality, so much that she appeared to glow.

Seated beside her, Keith stared solemnly ahead at the woman teacher who began to tell the story of the boy David, who had slain a giant with a stone hurled from a slingshot. Straight and true that stone had flown to find its mark, because the power of the Lord was with David, and not Goliath. It had always been one of my favorite Bible stories. But I forgot to listen as my eyes scanned over Keith, who wore a bright blue summer jacket with long white summer trousers. His dress s.h.i.+rt was white, and his small tie was blue. Several times I had to get up and move just so I could see them both better. He radiated the same kind of good health and vitality that Our Jane did.

The years since I'd seen them last had added inches to their heights and given both their faces more maturity and character, and yet I would have known them anywhere, for time had not changed some things. Repeatedly Keith glanced at his younger sister, checking on her comfort, on her happiness, showing a remarkable amount of manly concern for her welfare, while Our Jane habitually held on to her babyish mannerisms that had won her so much attention in the past. It was not likely she would abandon them.

Oh, Granny would be so happy to know her beauty hadn't been permanently sacrificed in the hills, for Annie Brandywine lived again in Our Jane! And beside her Keith had to resemble Grandpa more than he did any of Sarah's large, rawboned family. Once I had thought the shadowed hollows beneath both sets of their eyes would never go away, and such small, pale faces would never look as they did now, happy to be alive.

Several children just in front of me turned to stare quizzically my way. I held my breath until their stares were satisfied, and once again they pivoted to listen to their teacher. If either my younger sister or brother turned to look back in my direction, I intended to hide quickly. I prayed that no one would come to question why I was there.

The story of David ended. I listened to the question-and-answer period that followed and heard the sweet, small voice of Keith as he hesitatingly responded only after he had been directly prompted. However, Our Jane was constantly waving her small, shapely hand, eager to pipe her question or answer. "How could a tiny stone kill a huge giant?" she asked. I didn't listen to the teacher's answer.

Soon the children were standing, and prissy little girls adjusted their clothes. Our Jane clutched her small white purse more securely.

The excited chatter of the departing children might have hidden what Our Jane said next, but my ears were keened for her voice.

"Hurry, Keith!" she urged, "We're going to Susan's party this afternoon, and we don't want to be late."

I followed at a distance behind the two little ones that I dreamed of, and jealously I watched Our Jane fling herself into Rita Rawlings's waiting arms. Slightly behind his wife, Lester Rawlings stood, as fat and bald as ever. He laid a possessive hand on Keith's shoulder before he turned his head and looked directly at me. More than three years had pa.s.sed since he had seen me, backed up to the wall in that mountain shack, my dress dirty and ragged, my feet bare. And yet it seemed he recognized me. I had changed a great deal from that waif, but still he knew me. It could have been the tears streaming down my face that betrayed me. He said something to his wife, who hustled the two children into a Cadillac, and then he smiled at me with genuine sympathy.

"Thank you," he said simply.

For the second time in my life I watched that lawyer and his wife drive off in a Cadillac, taking with them two parts of myself. I stood staring after them until the drizzle of rain evaporated into steam, and the sun came out hot and brilliant, and a rainbow arched in the sky, and only then did I stroll toward my own waiting car. Not yet, not yet, some small voice in me warned. Later on you can claim them.

Still, I instructed my driver to follow the dark blue Cadillac ahead, for I wanted to see the house where the Rawlingses lived. After a ten-minute drive, the Cadillac ahead turned onto a quiet, tree-lined street, then pulled into a long, curving drive. "Stop across the street," I ordered my driver, thinking that the heavy shade and many thick tree trunks would s.h.i.+eld the limo if the Rawlingses just happened to check and see if they were followed. Apparently they didn't check.

Theirs was a nice, colonial-style house, large, but not huge like Farthinggale Manor. The red bricks were old and partially covered with ivy, and the lawns were wide and well tended, with flowers and shrubs in full summer bloom. Oh, indeed, this was a palace in comparison to that listing shack perched high on a mountainside. There was no reason for my heart to hurt. They were better off here, they were, they were. They didn't need me. Not now. A long time ago they'd stopped speaking my name, stopped having bad dreams. Oh, the cries of hunger in the night that I used to hear coming from the floor pallet of the two small children that once I'd considered mine!

"Hev-lee, Hev-lee, are ya goin somewhere?" they had asked, after their own mother abandoned them, their shadowed eyes pleading with me never to leave them.

"Will you be driving back to the hotel now, miss?" asked my driver after half an hour had pa.s.sed. I couldn't tear myself away.

On impulse I opened the door and stepped out on the shady sidewalk. "Wait for me here. be back in a few minutes."

I couldn't just drive off without seeing and knowing more, not after all the heartache I'd suffered since that horrible day when Pa sold his two youngest.

Furtively I slipped into the side yard where a colorful, heavy-duty gym set seemed to wait for the children who used it. I stole quietly onto a broad, flagstone patio where chairs and a table with a pretty striped umbrella jostled each other for closest position to the kidney-shaped swimming pool. Keeping so close to the house I was beneath the level of the many back windows, and I was soon rewarded with the sound of children's voices coming through the open windows of one room.

Soon I was crouched low behind huge masonry pots holding living shrubs, staring through the gla.s.s of French doors that opened into what had to be an enclosed sun porch.

The beautiful room was full of sunlight, and chairs and a sofa sported soft, fat cus.h.i.+ons covered with pretty flowered chintz. Houseplants in macrame holders hung from the ceiling in healthy array, and the floor was covered with rich, sea blue rugs. On the largest blue rug Keith and Our Jane were seated, playing with gla.s.s marbles that they had arranged inside the main center oval of the rug. Both children had changed from their church outfits into dressier clothes. From the meticulous way they moved, they were obviously trying to keep themselves clean and neat for the upcoming party.

I couldn't stop staring.

The tiered and ruffled skirt of Our Jane's white organza dress fell from a high, smocked bodice, and fastened to the right of where the tiers met the bodice were pale green satin ribbons that fell to the hem of her skirt. Tiny, pink silk rosettes formed a bouquet from which the ribbons streamed. She had taken great pains to arrange the skirt around her so it formed a flattering circle. Her red gold hair had been brushed back from her face and was held high on the crown of her head with another green satin ribbon tied into a bow, and the ribbon streamers were finished off with the same tiny, silk rosettes. I had never seen a child's dress that was more beautiful or becoming to its wearer than the one Our Jane now wore.

Directly across from Our Jane, sitting crosslegged, his feet in s.h.i.+ny new white shoes, Keith's fresh suit was white linen, and his bow tie matched exactly the pale jade green of the ribbons decorating Our Jane's dress and hair. It was very apparent that a great deal of thought had been given to their clothes.

When finally I could skip my eyes away from them long enough to see the appointments of the room, I saw a long table that held a small computer. Nearby was another table with a printer. A radio was playing. In a corner was an artist's easel, and a table and taboret. I knew who the easel was meant for--it was for Keith, who had inherited his grandfather's artistic talent! Any paint that Keith might drop or spill would fall on tile that could easily be wiped up. And everywhere there were dolls, as if Our Jane wasn't reaching maturity as swiftly as other girls ten years old.

Then, to my dismay, low on the bottom door panel in front of me appeared two small paws and the friendly face of a small puppy. His tail wagged furiously as he saw me down on my hands and knees, my nose almost pressing on the gla.s.s. He whined, opened his mouth to yip several times--and the children, whom I had not expected to turn their heads my way, fixed their wide, surprised eyes directly on me!

I didn't know what to do!

The wiggling puppy began to yip louder, and afraid now that the Rawlingses would be alarmed, I quickly rose to my feet and stepped through the unlocked door.

Neither Keith nor Our Jane spoke.

They seemed frozen as they sat on the floor before their colorful ring of marbles.

It was too late now to slip away unseen. I tried to smile rea.s.suringly. "It's all right," I said softly, standing just inside the doorway. "I'm not going to do anything to disturb your lives. I just wanted to see you both again."

Still they stared, their rosy lips parted, their eyes huge and growing darker, as shadows came into the clarity of Our Jane's turquoise eyes and deepened the amber in Keith's. The puppy frolicked about my feet, sniffed at my ankles, then stood on hind legs to paw at my skirt. My brother and sister seemed terrified. It pained me to see their expressions.

Softly, softly, lest I frighten them more: "Keith, Our Jane, look at me. Surely you haven't forgotten who I am?"

I smiled, still antic.i.p.ating their cries of delight when they recognized me, as many a time in my dreams I'd heard them say, "Hev-lee! You've come! You've saved us!"

But neither one said that. With some awkwardness Keith slowly rose to his feet. The pupils of his amber eyes enlarging with each beat of his pulse. He glanced with concern at Our Jane, tugged at his green bow tie, tightened his parted lips, looked again at me, then wiped a hand across his face. All his life he'd done that when he was confused or disturbed.

Our Jane had no such reticence. She jumped to her feet in one lithe movement, scattering the marbles everywhere. "Go away!" she cried, throwing her arms about Keith and hugging close. "We don't want you!" Her mouth opened to scream.

I couldn't believe the fear they both showed. Couldn't believe either one knew who I was. They thought I was a stranger, perhaps a door-to-door salesperson, and they had been warned not to let anyone in.

Stunned, I started to speak and tell them my name. The thickness in my throat almost caused my voice to fail so that my name came out hoa.r.s.e, strange, unintelligible.

Our Jane's lovely face turned alarmingly white. Her pale, frightened face took on an expression of hysteria. For a dreadful moment I thought she was going to throw up, as she used to do so often in the past. Keith, glancing at her face, turned several shades lighter. He glared at me with small, angry lights flickering on and off in his eyes. Did he know me? Was he trying to remember?

"Mommy!" Our Jane wailed in a high, thin voice, cringing against Keith. "Daddy . . . !"

"Shhh!" I warned, putting my forefinger before my lips. "You don't have to be afraid. I'm not a stranger, and I won't hurt you. You used to know me very well when you lived in the mountains. Do you remember the mountains called the w.i.l.l.i.e.s?"

I swear to G.o.d Our Jane paled even more. She seemed on the verge of pa.s.sing out.

My emotions were in turmoil. I reeled with indecision. This was not the way I had antic.i.p.ated they would react. They were supposed to be delighted to see me! "A long time ago you both had a mountain family, and every weekday we trudged to school and home again through the woods. We went to church on Sundays. We had chickens, ducks, geese, and sometimes a cow. And always lots of dogs and cats. It's me, your sister you used to call Hev-Lee! I just want to see you and hear you say you're happy."

Our Jane's wail was loud, full of even greater panic!

Before he stepped forward, Keith protectively shoved his sister behind him. "We don't know you," he said in a gruff boy's voice that trembled.

Now it was my face that went pale. I felt his words as slaps, one two three four.

"Make her go away!" loudly cried Our Jane. It was the worst moment of my life.

To have yearned for them for years and years, and dreamed of finding and saving them, and now they didn't want me. "I'm going," I quickly said, backing toward the open door. "I have made a terrible mistake, and I'm sorry. I have never seen either one of you before!"

I ran then, ran as fast as my high heels would allow, heading for the limo that waited, and once I had thrown myself on the back seat, I burst into tears. Our Jane and Keith had not lost the day Pa sold them. They had been winners in that game of chance.

Fifteen Family Support .

I COULDN'T BEAR TO SPEND ANOTHER HOUR IN THAT CITY, SO I collected my things from the hotel, and the limo took me to the airport, where I boarded the next plane to Atlanta. I felt desperate to cling to the past I'd always been in such a hurry to escape--for I didn't want to begin my new life with Troy only to find I'd lost my family. To Tom I would go and there find the welcome I longed for and the loving brother who'd promised always to be my true-blue brother.