Casteel - Dark Angel Part 20

Troy will get over you. I'll be here to support him. I'll see to it that he recovers. And the best way to do that is through work. Once Troy accepts the fact that you love someone else and won't be marrying him, he'll make subst.i.tutes for your love. I'll do what I can to see he finds another girl he wants to marry." It hurt so much to hear him say those things that I wanted to bay at the sun like a wolf did at the moon, like Sarah had once done when her last baby died. In my chest was a living pain. And beside me was the man who had started everything. "What a detestable person you are, Tony Tatterton! By G.o.d, if I knew it wouldn't hurt Troy, I would tell him exactly what you did to my mother! And he'd hate you! You would lose the one person who is most valuable to you!" He threw me a pitiful look. "Please . . .

remember, you would destroy him. Troy lives on faith and belief. He isn't like you or me, able to survive no matter what the circ.u.mstances."

"Don't ever compare me to yourself again!" I yelled.

He didn't respond, only reached for another melon to slice.

"Promise, Heaven, promise to say nothing to Jill about any of this."

I got up and stalked by Tony's chair without promising anything.

"All right!" Tony yelled, abruptly out of patience, jumping up and seizing my arm and whipping me about so I saw his usually pleasant and handsome face turned monstrous with anger. "Go back to Troy! Go on! Destroy him! And when you're done with him, run to Jill and destroy her! And when you've finished off everyone in Farthy, run to your father and ruin his life! Ruin Tom's and f.a.n.n.y's, and don't leave out Our Jane and Keith! You want revenge, Heaven Leigh Casteel! I see it in your eyes, those incredible blue eyes that speak of a devil inside more than they speak of an angel!"

I slung my balled fist at him blindly, striking nothing as he released me so suddenly I fell off balance to the floor. Quickly I scrambled to my feet, to spurt ahead so fast he wasn't able to say another word before I was running up the stairs to the safety of my bed again. My crying place.

At one o'clock I was again in the cottage, and this time Troy was out of bed, looking a bit stronger as he smiled at me. "Come," he said, beckoning, "I want you to see this train set-up that has just been finished, and then we'll eat."

What he had to show me filled one huge corner of his workshop. It was a tiny stage-set with soft lights glowing, and hidden spots lit up the sets, and miniature trains picked up pa.s.sengers and let them off, only to pick them up again, repeatedly taking them around mountains steep and dangerous; I thought, as I watched the tiny Orient Express chuggity-chug, chuggity-chug, starting slowly, gaining speed, forever climbing, forever taking risks, daring everything only to reach the heights, only to descend much more quickly than it had ascended, that Troy was trying to tell me something through his tiny trains.

What was it that Troy tried to say with these three little trains that wove such intricate paths through different territory, yet always reached the same destination? Didn't the whole human race ride trains throughout life, reaching highs, sinking to lows, riding the plateau between extremities more often than they soared or fell. I chewed thoughtfully on my lower lip, pressed my forehead with my fingertips . . and stared at a little girl who had been added to the pa.s.sengers. A dark-haired little girl wearing a blue coat with matching blue shoes. She was enough like me to cause me to smile. For the trains that apparently led nowhere still gave the pa.s.sengers thrills. The little girl didn't get off the train at the destination, only an old woman wearing another blue coat with matching blue shoes. And eagerly I went back to the train depot, and saw again the little girl in her blue coat boarding another train . . .

Oh, but he was good at this toy making, giving it meaning, imparting without words his beliefs, and as I turned away from the trains, I felt the familiar fascination gather me into its arms. "Troy, Troy!" I called. "Where are you? We have a thousand plans to make!"

He was seated on one of the window seats again, his long legs pulled up, his skilled and graceful hands loosely locked below his knees--and all the windows were wide open and the cold, damp wind swept through his bedroom!

Alarmed, I ran to pull at his arm, trying to bring him out of the nowhere he had lost himself in. "Troy!

Troy!" I yelled, shaking him, and still he gazed straight ahead without blinking. Even as I shook him, the wind gusted in so strong it blew a table lamp to the floor. I had to use all my strength to pull the windows down, and when I had them all closed, I ran to gather up blankets which I swatched about Troy's shoulders and legs; still he had not moved nor spoken. His face was pale and cold when I touched him, but soft, and that made me cry out in relief. He wasn't dead. Yet the pulse when I felt for it was so faint I hurried to his telephone and dialed Farthy. Over and over again the telephone rang and no one answered! I didn't know what kind of doctor I could call directly.

My fingers trembling, I picked up Troy's Yellow Pages and was thumbing through them when I heard him sneeze.

"Troy!" I cried, hurrying to his side. "What are you doing, trying to kill yourself?"

His eyes were unfocused and blurry, his voice weak when he spoke my name. When he could see me, he seized me as a drowning man reaches for anything, and I was pulled hard against him so his face could bury deep into my hair. "You came back.

Oh, G.o.d, I thought you'd never come back!" "Of course I came back." Kisses I rained on his face. "Troy, I stayed here with you last night, don't you remember?" More kisses on his face, on his hands. "Didn't I tell you I'd returned so we could marry?" I stroked his arms, his back, smoothed down his wild hair. "I'm sorry I came back late, but I'm here now. We'll marry and build our own traditions, make every day a holiday . . ." And I stopped talking because he wasn't really listening.

The chilly room brought on fresh a.s.saults of sneezes, from both of us, then I was drawing him to the bed, so we could both snuggle under mounds of covers and wait for our shivering to end. Even as we lay there, wrapped tightly in each other's arms, the many clocks began all those subtle grinds and movements that would tell the chimes to toll.

Some errant wind managed to come in and tinkle the crystal prisms of his dinette chandelier. "It's all right, darling, darling," I crooned, smoothing his dark, rumpled hair. "I came upon you just now during one of your . . what do I call them?

Trances, would that be the right word?"

His arms tightened so much my ribs began to ache dully. "Heaven," he breathed; "thank G.o.d you are here. His voice broke and he sobbed, gently pushing me from him. "However much I am grateful, I can't pretend any longer that I can live with you. Or marry you. Your absence gave me the chance to think over what we were doing; your presence deludes me into thinking I'm a normal man, with normal expectations. But I'm not, I am not! I'll never be! I'm warped and unable to change. I didn't think you'd come back, once you got out into the real world and discovered you'd been asleep. This isn't a real house, Heaven.

Not one lived in by real people. We're all fakes, Heaven, Tony, Jillian, me; even the servants learn the rules and play the game."

An ache that had begun when I entered thickened and grew. "What rules, Troy? What game?" Laughing in a way that chilled my blood, he rolled over, holding me still, rolled again and again until we fell to the floor, and he ripped off my clothes wildly, and his warm kisses soon turned hot. "I hope we both made a baby," he cried when it was over, and he turned away and began to pick up the pieces of my torn garments. "I hope I didn't hurt you. I never want to hurt you. But I'd like to leave behind something real, made of my flesh and blood." Then, crushing me to him, he began to sob--deep, harsh, terrible sobs. I held him, caressed him, kissed him a thousand times before we both fell onto the bed and covered ourselves from the harsh cold.

As I lay there beside him and heard him choke back his sobs and Whatever anguish he suffered, I realized Troy was far too complex for me ever to understand. I'd just love him as he was, and maybe one day when he woke up from a dreamless sleep he'd smile before dawn and throughout the day thoughts of dying young would be forgotten.

And I slept. From time to time I woke up slightly, enough to feel air moving around me.

Enough to feel warm arms embracing me.

Then it was another day, and I was in my own room and there was a note on my night table. A short note from Troy.

I didn't like notes. I'd not known one yet that came unposted that hadn't brought sad news. .

My own true love, You found me in the wind last night, just sitting, just trying to figure out what my life is all about.

We can't marry. And yet last night I took you and did my best to make you conceive. Forgive me for my selfishness. Go to Jillian. She'll tell you the truth.

Make her tell you. She will if you push her hard enough, and call her Grandmother, and force her to abandon her disguise.

The love I have for you is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I thank you for loving and giving me so much, even knowing all my weaknesses.

And my greatest flaw has been my overwhelming love and devotion to my brother. 1 have been blind, deliberately blind.

Jillian came and told me everything. To save you I have to accept what could have saved your mother. For Jillian had to admit that Tony was wild with his infatuation to possess your mother. I know now, after you have goaded me into thinking backward, that she hated him, and he was the one she ran from. Heaven, you are Tony's daughter, and my own niece!

I'm going away until I can learn to live without you. Even if you weren't Tony's daughter, and my niece, I'd ruin your life. 1 don't know how to live complacently and accept each day as it comes. I have to make every day meaningful and important, for each day I live seems always the last one.

He signed that note with a huge TLT.

This morning brought back sharply the horrible day I'd bitten into an apple, then wandered into the room 392 where Sarah had left Pa a note saying she was leaving him and never coming back. In leaving Pa, she left all of us to fend for ourselves. Here I was again having to fend for myself in a house that no longer wanted me.

The unbearable pain of my shattered love turned into fury! That fury gave me racing legs. I went to Jillian's rooms and banged on her door, shouting her name, demanding to be let in, when it was only nine o'clock and Jillian always slept until noon or even later.

But Jillian was out of bed, exquisitely dressed, as if ready to go out but for adding the jacket to her dressy, pale suit. Her hair was pulled softly back from her face, and I'd never seen it that way before. She looked older, and at the same time, lovelier, or more correctly, less like a haunted, life-sized doll. "Troy has gone away," I said accusingly, glaring at Jillian. "What did you say to make him decide to go?"

She didn't reply, only turned to pick up her suit jacket and put it on, then, slowly she turned to stare at me. What she saw on my face made her eyes widen in alarm. Her blue, startled eyes flicked as if to find refuge in Tony's arms. Again came that bewildering, brilliant happiness that lit up her eyes. "Troy's gone! Really gone?" she whispered, her joy so great I felt sickened.

Unexpectedly Tony came into Jillian's rooms without knocking. He ignored her and addressed me.

"How is Troy this morning? What did you tell him?" "Me? I told him nothing! It was your wife who felt he had to know the truth, the ugly truth!" Jillian's radiance died. Her eyes went blank.

Whirling about, Tony's fire blue eyes lashed at his wife. "What did you tell him? What could you tell him? Your daughter never confided anything to the mother she despised!"

Jillian stood in her lovely suit in unwrinkled perfection, seeming about to open her mouth and scream. "Did my mother come to you, Jillian, and tell you why she had to run? Did she, did she?"

"Go away. Leave me alone."

I persisted. "What made my mother run from this house? You've never adequately explained. Was it a five-year-old boy? Or was it your husband? Did my mother come to you with tales of her stepfather's s.e.xual advances? Did you pretend you didn't know what she was talking about?"

Her pale hands pulled at her loosely fitting rings, on and off, on and off. I'd never seen her wear rings before. Mindlessly she dropped three rings into an ashtray. The small clatter of the rings striking crystal caused her eyes to widen. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Grandmother . . ." and I said this clearly, sharply, causing her to shudder as she went dead white. "Was Tony the reason my mother ran from this house?"

Her cornflower blue eyes, so like my own, went wide, stark, bleak, as if I'd s.n.a.t.c.hed the floor from beneath her feet. Gossamer strands of sanity seemed to shred before they snapped behind her eyes, and her hands fluttered helplessly to her face. Her palms pressed tight on either cheek, so tightly her lips parted and from them came screams, terrible, silent screams that tortured her face--and suddenly Tony was there, yelling at me!

"Don't you say one more word!" He stepped forward to sweep Julian into his arms. Go to your room, Heaven. Stay there until I come and have a chance to talk to you." He carried Jillian to her bedroom, and I watched him lay her carefully on her ivory satin spread, and only then did her mute anguish find its voice.

Over and over she screamed! Hysterical rising and falling screams that buckled her back and flailed her arms, and as I stood there almost paralyzed by what I'd brought about, I watched the youth peel from her face as if all the time she'd worn a mask of onion peelings.

I turned away, appalled by what I'd done, overwhelmed with grief to have destroyed what had been so carefully cultivated.

In my rooms I paced the floor, forgetting everything but Troy and his welfare. On occasion my thoughts flitted to Jillian and what havoc I'd wrought.

Then Tony was rapping on the door and coming in without waiting for my response. He saw that I was packing my suitcases and winced. "Jill is asleep now,"

he informed. "I had to force her to swallow a few sedatives."

"Will she be all right?" I asked worriedly. He sat with a certain kind of indifference on the frailest of my silk brocaded chairs, elegantly crossing his legs, taking pains to tug up his trouser legs and keep the creases sharp. And only when he'd seen to all the little details only a man of impeccable taste thought important did he smile in a crooked ironic way. "No, Jill will never be 'all right.' She hasn't been right since the day your mother ran away. She had always refused to talk about that last day . . and only now do I have all the pieces together."

Quickly I sat down in the twin chair to his, placed opposite him, and I leaned forward with breathlessness, when already I'd heard the worst--or so I thought. But then, I was still an innocent, not accustomed to the complexities of human nature and all the devious ways it had of maneuvering to salvage its self-respect, when some things could never be salvaged.

He began, lowering his eyes as if ashamed now, now when it was too late. "In the year when your mother ran from this house, I had flown to Germany to confer with a manufacturer there who does some of our small-part mechanical work."

"I don't care about your toys at a time like this."

I intervened.

He flicked his eyes upward. "I'm sorry, I'm digressing, but I wanted you to understand why I was away. Anyway, your mother had tried to tell Jillian a number of times that I was making improper advances. And on this day, she screamed at Jillian, who didn't want to listen, that she had missed one of her monthly periods. 'Does that mean I'm pregnant, Mother, does it?' Jill whipped around and tore into her, refusing to believe anything she'd said. 'You filthy-minded little s.l.u.t,' she shouted. 'Why would a man like Tony want a girl like you, when he has me, me? If that's the way you're thinking, I'll send you away."

"You don't have to bother,' whispered Leigh, her face gone dead white, go and you'll never see me again! And if I'm pregnant, I'll be the one to have the Tatterton heir!"

I was caught unprepared for those words. "How did you find out, how?"

Tony's hands bowed into his hands. His voice came out wretched and torn. "I knew a long time ago Jillian envied Leigh's beauty, which needed no makeup or other enhancements . . but it was only when she broke a few minutes ago that she screamed the truth at me. Leigh was pregnant when she left here, driven out by her own mother's failure to understand and help. And in loving Leigh, I not only destroyed her, I have destroyed my brother." I sat on and on, reeling with the full knowledge.

I wasn't Pa's daughter. I wasn't a sc.u.mbag Casteel, no daughter of the hills. But what good would it do me now, now that Troy was gone?

Twenty-one Pa.s.sing Time .

TROY WAS GONE. I WAITED EACH DAY FOR A LETTER from him. None ever came. I walked through the maze each day to his cottage, hoping against hope that he'd come back, and we'd be close friends if nothing more. The cottage and its lovely gardens began to look neglected, so that I sent Farthy's gardeners over to bring it back to order. Then, one day at breakfast, with Jillian still upstairs asleep, Tony told me he'd heard from one of his plant managers that Troy was visiting each European factory one by one. "That's a good sign," said Tony brightly, struggling to smile. "As long as he goes out and sees the world it means he's not lying in a bed somewhere, waiting to die."

Tony and I were allies of a kind, united in a common cause, to bring Troy home again, to help him survive. Despite the terrible thing Tony had done to my mother, whether or not she had led him on, each day it lost some of its importance, as I fought the routine of going to college and studying so hard sometimes I fell into bed exhausted. That's when Tony was very helpful to me, a.s.sisting me over scholastic hurdles I couldn't seem to climb alone.

As for Jillian, she became a ghost of her former self. Bringing the full truth of her daughter out of the closet and into the light put Jillian in the closet. All the parties and charity affairs she had loved to attend were forgotten in the self-abuse that keep her in bed, so she no longer cared how she looked. She cried constantly for Leigh to come back and forgive her for not listening, for not understanding, for not having cared enough. But of course it was too late for Leigh to come back.

Yet life went on. I shopped again for new clothes. I wrote letters to Tom and to f.a.n.n.y, and always included a check for both. Striving for the top grades became my main objective in life. Often when Tony and I were forced to join each other just to feel we weren't alone-in a huge house, I found his blue eyes riveted on me, as if he wanted to say something that would knock down my wall of hostility, but I was reluctant to let that wall down. Let him suffer, I'd think. But for him my mother wouldn't have run away. She wouldn't have ended up in a mountain shack where poverty killed her. Then, contrarily, I'd remember the sweet days in the w.i.l.l.i.e.s when all five of the Casteel children and Logan Stonewall had found a great deal of happiness just in being together.

One cold November day when the sky threatened another snowfall, a letter arrived from f.a.n.n.y.

Dear Heaven, Your selfishness forced me to marry with my rich old man, Mallory. Now I don't need your stingy ole pin money. Mallory's got a big house, pretty as one in them fancy house magazines, and he's got a mean cranky ole ma who'd like to see me dead. Not that I kerr. Ole fishface is about ready to kick off any day, so her not liking me don't matter much no how. Mallory is trying to teach me to act like a lady, an talk like one. I wouldn't waste my time with nothing so silly if one day I didn't think I'd run into Logan Stonewall agin, an if I could talk and act proper, maybe this time he'd love me. Love me as I always wanted him to love me. An you can kiss him off as gone ferever, once he's mine.

Your loving, caring sister f.a.n.n.y .

f.a.n.n.y's letter disturbed me. Who would have ever thought that f.a.n.n.y, who had played the field far and wide, and had treated all males more or less like machines whose b.u.t.tons she knew only too well how to push, would have fallen so for Logan, the very one who scorned her most.

If f.a.n.n.y wrote just one letter, Tom wrote many. I found that roll of bills that you gave to Grandpa. Really, Heavenly, where was your good sense? He had it shoved down in his whittling box, underneath all the wood. He's a pitiful old geezer, always wanting what he hasn't got, so that when he's here, he's yearning for the hills, where Annie wants to be. And then when he's in the hills about two weeks, he then wants to be with his "chiluns." 1 think he gets lonely there with only that old woman who comes in the morning and fixes enough food to last the day. Gosh, Heavenly, what do you do with someone like that?

Without Troy, Farthy became just a place to stay on the weekends. I said as little as I could to Tony, and yet sometimes I felt sorry for him, prowling alone the long empty halls of a huge house that no longer resounded with the laughter and gaiety of many house guests. Yet I went on about my business, reminding myself each day that I had come to Boston with a goal in mind, and on that I concentrated, thinking somehow, at some point in time, I would find the happiness that was due me.

The years pa.s.sed swiftly after that tragic day when Troy decided it was better to put miles and miles between us. Only once in a great while did he write home, and then it was always to Tony. Grief and unhappiness were mine for the longest time, but when the sun shines, and the wind blows, and the rain freshens the gra.s.s, and you see the flowers you planted in the fall coming up in the spring, bit by bit grief and unhappiness slips away. I had my dream now, my college days. The beautiful campus, the boys who asked me for dates, all that helped. One very quiet, una.s.suming, but nice-looking boy I took home for Tony to meet. Yes, the son of a state senator was perfect, even if I did find him more than a bit boring. Once or twice I saw Logan near the university, and he'd smile and say a few words, and I'd smile and ask him if he'd heard from Tom, but Logan never asked me for a date.

Feeling sorry for Jillian, I made a point of visiting her as often as my hectic routine allowed. I began to call her Grandmother. She didn't seem to notice. That alone was enough to tell me some drastic change had taken place within her. I brushed and styled her hair, and did many small things for her that she also didn't notice. And seated always in a far corner, as discreet as possible, was the nurse that Tony had hired to see that Jillian did no harm to herself.

During each of my summer breaks, Tony planned something special for us to do together. London, Paris, and Rome, finally I had my chance to see them. We traveled to Denmark, Iceland, and Finland so he could show me the small Danish town that had been Jillian's mother's birthplace. Not once did we ever make the journey to that Texas ranch where Jillian's mother and two older sisters still lived. Often I had the feeling that Tony was trying to make up for my deprived youth. I think both of us kept up a constant hope of finding Troy during our European vacations.

Many a time I thought about visiting Grandpa, who had made several round trips from Georgia to the w.i.l.l.i.e.s, but there was always the threat that Pa would be with him, and I wasn't ready to face Pa. When I thought of Stacie, I thought of that handsome little boy named Drake, and to him I mailed all sorts of wonderful gifts. Each time Stacie wrote back in a few days to thank me for remembering Drake, who thought he was very lucky to receive toys all through the year, and not have to wait for Christmas.

"You could be a huge help to me at Tatterton Toys," said Tony time and time again. "That is, if you've lost your ambition to become another Miss Marianne Deale." He gazed at me steadily. "It would be quite wonderful for me if you had your surname legally changed to Tatterton."

Strange how I took that. I'd never been proud of being a Casteel. And yet it was as a Casteel that I wanted to return to Winnerrow with a college degree, to prove to them that, at last, a sc.u.mbag Casteel was not so ignorant and stupid they had always to end up in prison. As I thought over Tony's proposition, I realized I didn't know now exactly what I wanted for myself. I was changing, changing in all sorts of subtle ways.

Tony was trying so hard to make up for the damage he'd done in the past. Doing for me all the things I used to dream that Pa would do. Tony made me the center of his life, gave me all the attention, love, and charm that I used to think Pa owed me. During one cruise to the Caribbean, I relaxed enough to smile and flirt with several good-looking young men, and for a moment or so--I didn't worry about Troy. Whatever happened to him, it wasn't my fault, wasn't my fault at all.

But when I dreamed, I dreamed of Troy. Troy somewhere needing me, still loving me, and tears would be on my face in the morning. When I could put worries about Troy behind me, I found a certain kind of acceptance about life, and how much you could do to control it. And then one wonderful day, Tony delivered, to me something totally unexpected, and wonderful.

It happened on July the fourth. I had one more year to go in college. "We're going to have a fabulous poolside picnic, with weekend guests I more than suspect you are going to enjoy very much." Tony's smile was very broad. "Jillian seems a bit better, and she'll be there--and other special guests as well," "Who are the special guests?"

"You'll be pleased," he a.s.sured me, smiling his secret smile.

The flags came out, all the red, white, and blue party decorations. j.a.panese lanterns were strung from tree to tree, from lamppost to lamppost, additional servants were hired as waiters, and Tony, who could not stand rock 'n' roll music, hired several Hawaiian musicians to play in the background.

Twenty or more guests were at the poolside when I came down from my room, wearing a bright blue swimsuit that made me feel a bit embarra.s.sed because it had such high-cut legs. Over this I wore a short white eyelet jacket. Some guests were already in the pool, others sunbathing, and all were laughing, talking, having a wonderful time. A few swimmers had even dared to brave the ocean's rough waves. I went first to Jillian to kiss her cheek, and she smiled at me in a vague, disoriented way. "What are we celebrating, Heaven?" she asked, staring at old friends as if they were strangers.

On another part of the s.p.a.cious pool terrace, I spied Tony standing and talking to a rather plump little woman, with an even plumper husband. They were more than familiar to me, and my heart began a nervous pounding. Oh, no, no! He couldn't have brought about this kind of reconciliation without warning me in advance.

And yet he had.

Here at Farthinggale Manor, where I could reach out and touch them, if I wanted, were Rita and Lester Rawlings from Chevy Chase. And if they were here . . then Keith and Our Jane had to be here as well. My heart flip-flopped. Eagerly I looked around for the two youngest Casteels. I soon spied Our Jane and Keith standing apart from other children, and then, as I watched with utter fascination, Our Jane threw off her beach coat, kicked off her rubber sandals, and ran toward the pool, with Keith close at her heels. They knew how to swim very well, and how to dive, and how to make friends out of strangers.

"Heaven!" called Tony from across the terrace. "Come, we have special guests that I think you already know." I approached Lester Rawlings and his wife Rita with caution, visions of that horrible Christmas Day in the w.i.l.l.i.e.s flashing in and out of my mind. Memories of that terrible night after Our Jane and Keith were gone putting tears in my eyes. And I had fresher guilts and memories to make me feel nervous, for I had betrayed my promise that time in Chevy Chase when I gave my word not to speak to Our Jane or Keith, or let them see me. And then there was the way my two youngest had denied me, that pain was still there, aching.

Rita Rawlings immediately opened her arms and drew me into her motherly embrace. "Oh, my dear, my dear, I am so sorry the way things turned out the last time. Lester and I were so afraid that seeing you again would set our darlings back, so they'd have nightmares and crying spells again. And even without seeing you that Sunday, they did subtly change, so they no longer seemed as happy and contented to be with us. If only you had told us how your circ.u.mstances had changed. That day when you so unexpectedly showed up, we thought you had come to take our children back to the hills and that awful shack. But Mr. Tatterton here has made it all very clear. She paused to clasp her plump, beringed fingers together and catch her breath. "Lester and I just didn't understand what happened to our two happy children after that rainy Sunday afternoon. They changed as if by magic. That very night their nightmares came back. They woke up screaming, calling for Hev-lee, come back, come back! We didn't mean it, we didn't! It took weeks and weeks before they would tell us what had happened--that they had denied knowing you--and had ordered you out or they would call the police. Dear Heaven, it was cruel of them, but they were terrified of having to return to that pain, poverty, and hunger that they remembered only too well."

All about me people were having a wonderful time, diving in and out of the pool. Servants carried trays of food and drink from here to there . . . and then I found my eyes meeting with those of the loveliest teenage girl I'd ever seen. Our Jane stood about ten feet away, her turquoise eyes fastened on me in the most pitiful, pleading way. She was thirteen now, her small, hard, burgeoning b.r.e.a.s.t.s just beginning to thrust forth her suit top. Her red gold, fiery hair flamed about her small oval face, even as her darkly fringed eyes pleaded with me for forgiveness. Close to her side was Keith, just a year older. He had shot up inches taller, and his amber hair was deep and rich. But he was staring too, and trembling. They were obviously afraid of me now, not in the same way as when I'd approached them in their own home. Now they seemed afraid that I'd hate them for denying me.

I didn't know what to say. I just held out my arms and smiled, and felt my heart pounding like crazy, then watched them hesitate, glance at each other before both came running to hurl themselves into my embrace.

"Oh, Hev-lee, Hev-lee," cried Our Jane. "Please don't hate us for what we did! We're sorry we drove you away. We were sorry the minute we saw your face look so sad and disappointed." She pressed her face against my chest and really began to cry. "It wasn't you we didn't want. It was going back to the cabin, and the hunger and the cold. We thought you would take us back to all that. And we'd no longer have Mommy and Daddy, who love us so much."