Casteel - Dark Angel Part 23

What could I say to a man I'd always wanted to love, but couldn't? What could he say to me now, now when it was far too late for words that might have brought us together. And yet he was staring at me. Through that small eye opening I could see the sadness in that single eye, and his hand, bandaged and bound, made a small awkward gesture, as if he'd reach for me if he could.

"I'm sorry," I managed to whisper. "So sorry about Tom." I wiped at the tears that began to slide down my face. "I'm sorry about everything that went wrong between you and me!"

I thought I heard him mumble my name, but by that time I was running out of the hospital. Running out into a day that was blazing hot, and flinging myself at a metal lamppost, I wrapped my arms around it and really bawled. How was I going to live without Tom in my life, how, how?

"Come, Heaven," said Logan, striding up with Grandpa stumbling beside him. "What's done is done and we can't undo it."

"f.a.n.n.y didn't even show up at Tom's funeral," I sobbed, glad that he could easily pull me into his embrace and forgive me for so much.

"What does it matter what f.a.n.n.y does or doesn't do?" he asked, tilting my teary face upward and staring gravely down into my eyes. "Weren't we always happiest when f.a.n.n.y was out of sight?"

As he stood there in the bright sunlight, how sensitive and caring he appeared, like Troy in some ways. I bowed my head against his chest and tried to stop my tears, and then we were walking, all three of us, toward the car.

"You were wrong when you said I didn't need you," said Logan when we were halfway home.

The whispering in the leaves, the songs of the wind in the gra.s.s, the wildflowers that scented the air with sweet perfume did more to heal me than any words could. Everywhere I looked I saw the green of Tom's eyes, and when I faltered in decisions, I heard him speak in my mind, encouraging me to go on, to marry Logan--but to leave the hills and the valley as soon as Grandpa was gone.

We laid my grandpa to rest on the sixteenth day of October, laid him to rest beside his beloved wife Annie. We stood all in a single row--the Casteels, Pa, Stacie, Drake, f.a.n.n.y, and every resident who lived in Winnerrow. It had been Tom's bravery, and not my wealth or my education or my clothes and new car that had won their respect.

I bowed my head and cried just as if Grandpa had really been flesh of my flesh. And before we walked away from that gravesite, Pa reached out and took my hand. "I'm sorry for a lot of things," he said in a kind of low, soft voice I'd never expected to hear from him. "I wish you great success and happiness in whatever you decide to do. And I hope more than anything, that every now and then you'll show up at our place."

Funny, only now could I stare at the man I'd thought I'd hate forever and not feel anything.

I didn't know what to say. I could only nod.

In a lonely, huge house another father waited for me to return. I knew as I stood on the hillside and looked around that someday I'd go back to Farthinggale Manor, and by that time I would be neither a Casteel nor a Tatterton.

By then, from the soft way Logan was looking at me, I knew he'd go with me, and I'd know for sure I was a Stonewall.

end.