Casteel - Dark Angel Part 21

"I understand," I crooned, kissing her again and again before I turned to hug Keith close, and that's when I really began to bawl. At last, at last, I had my two little ones in my arms again. And they were looking at me with love and adoration, just as they used to do.

The voices of Rita and Lester Rawlings drifted to me from where they were sitting beneath one of our green-and-white-striped umbrellas, both sipping cool drinks and telling Tony about the wonderfully compa.s.sionate letter that had come to them one day about two weeks ago. "It was a letter from your brother Troy, Mr. Tatterton. He wanted to mend some bridges, and when we finished reading his letter, we were both in tears. He didn't tell us we had done a terrible thing, he just thanked us for taking such good care of Heaven's younger brother and sister, for she loved them very much. And we had to contact you, just had to, for it was wrong of us to have tried to separate brothers and sisters, we know that now."

"Call me Tony," he said charmingly, "since we are almost family now."

"This letter from your brother made everything so clear, just what Heaven's circ.u.mstances were."

Troy had done this for me! Troy was still thinking of me, and doing what he could to give me happiness, and I had to have his letter, just had to have it, even if it were but a photocopy. "Of course, of course," agreed Rita Rawlings. "It was so beautifully written I was going to keep it forever, but my dear, you can have the original, and keep the copy."

In the ten days that the Rawlingses stayed with us that summer, Jane (who didn't want to be called Our Jane anymore) and Keith and I found each other again. They asked questions about Tom and f.a.n.n.y, and about Pa. They didn't seem to have the resentments against Pa that I did. "And Mommy and Daddy said we could visit you once or twice a year! Oh, Hevlee, it's going to be so wonderful. Maybe one day we can even see Tom, f.a.n.n.y, Pa and Grandpa again. But we don't want to leave Mommy and Daddy, not ever."

All that was easily arranged. Farthinggale Manor made its impression, as did Tony--and if Jillian gave them a few weird thoughts they were much too polite to express them. "We'll keep in touch," promised Rita Rawlings, as Lester shook Tony's hand like they were the best of friends. "Christmas would be a nice time to get together for we do want our children to enjoy the pleasures of a large family."

Yes, it was all right for my brother and sister to know me now. I no longer lived in a shack stuck high on a mountain hillside. I was no longer a starving, bedraggled, object of their pity, though they didn't mention Tom, or f.a.n.n.y, or Pa. Or Grandpa, as Jane and Keith had.

When Rita Rawlings kept her word and mailed me the letter that Troy had written, making such a strong and pa.s.sionate appeal on my behalf, tears poured from my eyes. He loved me. He still loved, me! He still thought about me. Oh, Troy, Troy, come home, come home! Just live somewhere close by and let me see you now and then--that will be enough, enough.

I dated, off and on, some young man that pa.s.sed Tony's inspection. I never found anyone as unique as Troy, nor anyone as loyal and devoted as Logan. I had to presume Logan had met someone else. Just as I would have to . . . someday. And when I gave Logan long and considered thought, I knew I wanted to see him again, and when I did, I'd have to make all the overtures to patch up our relationship.

Tom wrote often, telling me that the money I was sending had finally worn down his resistance, and he was attending college courses and still helping our Pa during the day. "We're reaching our goals, Heavenly, despite everything, we're going to make it!"

Twenty-two Dreams Come True .

IN THE YEAR THAT I TURNED TWENTYTWO, ON A beautiful day in late June when all the flowers were in bloom, I received my degree. Both Tony and Jillian were there to represent me, and though I searched the audience hoping to see Troy, he was not there. All along I'd hoped and prayed that he'd be in the audience, applauding. But I did see Jane and Keith sitting with their parents not far from Jillian and Tony . . but Tom wasn't there, nor was f.a.n.n.y, and I had mailed them both invitations.

"Be smart and do all that you can to keep f.a.n.n.y out of your life," Tom had warned in his last letter. "I'd come if I could, really I would, but I'm snowed under trying to pa.s.s my own exams, and I still have to help out Pa. Forgive me, and know that I am with you in thoughts."

After the graduation party, we drove back to Farthinggale Manor. Parked before the front door was a white Jaguar that Tony had ordered customdesigned for me. "It's for that day when you drive back to Winnerrow. If your clothes and jewelry don't impress them, this car certainly should."

It was a fabulous car, all my graduation gifts were fabulous. But oddly, now that I was no longer a student, I had so much time on my hands I didn't know what to do with myself. I had reached my goal. I could become, if I so wished, another Miss Marianne Deale. Now I wasn't sure that was what I wanted. A restlessness grew within me that summer, a terrible itchiness that kept me awake at night, and made me more than a little irritable. "Take a drive off on your own," suggested Tony. "That's what I used to do when I was your age and unable to find peace within myself."

However, even a trip up the coast to Maine, where I stayed ten days in a fishing village, didn't put my itchy feet at rest. There was something I had to do. Something important I had to do.

This time, as I returned from my vacation and drove once again under the ornate gates of Farthinggale Manor, I came again as a stranger, with new eyes, to that long, curving road that led to that huge house of enchantment.

It was just the same. Just as impressive, frightening, and beautiful. And I could have been sixteen again for all the changes I saw. For some intuition was whispering loudly that Troy might be here. Tony had said he couldn't stay away forever.

My heartbeats quickened; my soul seemed to wake up and stretch before it took a deep breath and reached again for the love it had found in this house. I could almost see Troy, feel Troy, sense Troy somewhere near. For long moments I just sat and inhaled the special, flower-scented air of Farthinggale Manor, before I stepped out and approached the high stone portico.

Curtis responded to my impatient jabbing at the doorbell, smiling warmly when he saw who it was. "It's so good to see you again, Miss Heaven," he said in his low, cultivated voice. "Mr. Tatterton is strolling on the beach, but your grandmother is in her suite."

Jillian was shut away in her rooms in that glorious mansion that had again retreated into silence almost as deep and thick as a grave.

She sat as I'd seen her sit many times before when she was less than happy with herself, crosslegged on her ivory sofa, wearing another of those loose-fitting ivory floats that was trimmed this time with peach lace.

The sound of the door opening and closing as I entered made soft clicking noises that seemed to wake her from some deep meditation. The spread of solitaire cards on the coffee table before her was precise, even, the cards in her hands held loosely, forgotten. Her unfocused blue eyes turned to gaze at me almost sightlessly. As Jillian stared at me, almost with fright, I tried to smile. If my appearance had shocked her, hers shocked me even more.

Her complexion now was cracked porcelain, unhealthily white. And as she stared at me, I was appalled at the disorientation in her eyes, at the way she wrung her pale hands, at the way her hair hung about her face, unclean and uncared for.

Only as I turned away so she wouldn't see my distress did I see sitting in a distant corner, quietly making lace, a woman in a nurse's white uniform. She looked up to smile my way. "My name is Martha Goodman," she informed me. "I am very happy to meet you, Miss Casteel. Mr. Tatterton told me that you were due back any day."

"Where is Mr. Tatterton?" I asked, directing my question to her.

"Why, he's off prowling on the seash.o.r.e," she answered in a very thin, small voice, as if she didn't want Jillian's attention drawn to her presence in the room. She stood up to point the direction, and I turned to leave.

Jillian jumped to her bare feet and began to twirl around and around, making the wide skirt of her garment flare out. "Leigh," she called in a lilting, childish voice, "say h.e.l.lo to Cleave for me when you see him next! Tell him sometimes I am almost sorry I left him for Tony. Tony doesn't love me. n.o.body has ever loved me, not ever enough. Not even you. You love Cleave better, you always have . . . but I don't care. I really don't care. You are so very much like him, nothing at all like me except in appearance. Leigh, why do you stare at me like that? Why is it you always have to take everything so d.a.m.ned seriously!"

My b.r.e.a.s.t.s rose and fell in heavy gasps. I backed out of the room; her insane laughter followed, shivering the air.

When finally I reached the door, I couldn't resist taking one more glance at her; I saw her framed before her arching bay windows, the sunlight pouring through her hair, silhouetting her slender form through the transparent film of her long, loose dress. She was old, and paradoxically she was young; she was beautiful and she was grotesque; but more than anything, she was insane, and she was pitiful.

And I walked away knowing I intended never to see her again.

On the rocky sh.o.r.e of the beach I strolled where Troy had never wanted to walk at my side, so afraid he'd been of the sea and its portent. There were rocks and huge boulders feet higher than I was, and walking here wasn't easy. At that time I, too, had been terrified of the sea with its relentlessly pounding surf, its towering high waves that crashed on the sh.o.r.e and made of human time but a pinch of sand.

Bits of gravel slipped into my shoes, and soon I took them off and ran to catch up with Tony. I planned to stay only an hour or so. For I had a destination in mind now.

Rounding a curve in the beach, I came upon him suddenly. He was standing on a high pile of boulders, staring out over the sea, and it was with some difficulty that I climbed to stand beside him. I told him what I planned to do.

"So you will return to Winnerrow," he said dully, without turning his head. "I have always known you would go back to those G.o.dforsaken mountains that you should hate so much you should never want to see again."

"They are part of me," I replied, brushing dirt from my feet and legs. "I always intended to go back and teach there, in the same school where Miss Deale used to teach Tom and me. There aren't many teachers who want that poverty area, so they'll take me, and I'll have my chance to carry on the tradition started by Miss Deale. My grandpa Toby is expecting me to stay with him while I teach. And if you still want to see me, I'll spend some time here with you. But I don't want to see Jillian again, ever again."

"Heaven," Tony began, and then he stopped and just stared at me with so much pain in his eyes. I tried to deny the twinge of pity I felt when I noticed the hollows under his eyes, and the dark shadows. He was thinner, less than elegantly dressed. His trousers, which had been so sharply creased before, had no creases at all. It was obvious the best years of Townsend Anthony Tatterton were behind him now.

He sighed before he asked, "You didn't read about it in the newspapers?"

"Read about what?"

He sighed deep and long, still staring out to sea. "As you know, Troy has been flitting about the world. Last week, he came home. He seemed to know you were gone."

My heart jumped. "He's here? Troy is here?" I was going to see him again! Troy, oh Troy?!

Tony smiled crookedly. The kind of smile that twisted my heart and made it hurt.

His shoulders hunched to shorten his neck, and still he stared out to sea, forcing me to glance that way to find what big eyes kept watching. And with some difficulty I saw a wreath of flowers bouncing on the waves far out in the ocean. Golden glints of sunlight on the deep sapphire water made it exceedingly beautiful. The flower wreath was just a tiny, bright speck. Again my heartbeats quickened. The sea, always the sea had chased Troy. A sudden weight formed in my chest.

Tony sighed with the cool wind that blew always from the ocean. "Troy returned home very depressed. He was happy to hear that you and Jane and Keith had been reunited. But he was approaching his twenty-eighth birthday. Birthdays always depressed him. He believed, sincerely believed, that thirty was his cut-off day. hope it's not a painful illness,' he said a few times, as if that disturbed him more than anything. 'It's not that I'm afraid to die, it's only the road to death that terrifies me, for sometimes it can be so drawn out.' You have two more years, I kept reminding him, if your precognition is true. If it is not, you have fifty, sixty, or seventy. He'd look at me as if I knew nothing. I stayed close by just to see him through, fearing something would happen. We used to sit in his rooms and talk about you, and how strong you were when you cared for your brothers and sisters after your stepmother and your . . . your father went away. He told me that during the past semester he used to visit your college and hide on the campus just so he could see you.

Again his eyes swiveled to the sea. And by this time the wreath had disappeared, and I was scared, so terribly scared.

"I'm telling my story knowing you still love him. Please indulge me, Heaven. To take Troy's mind off that dreaded birthday, I planned a party to last over the weekend. I made everyone promise not to leave him alone for one second. There was a girl there that he had dated once or twice. She'd been married and was divorced. The kind of laughing, bright, and breezy girl I thought would lift his spirits, and perhaps help him to stop thinking about you. She had all kinds of tall tales to tell, about the celebrities she'd met, and the clothes she'd bought, and the huge mansion she was going to build on her own South Sea island . . . if only she had the right man to live with her. And she looked at Troy then. He didn't seem to see or hear her. No woman likes to be ignored like that, and that's when her humor ended. She became derisive, ugly acting. Finally Troy could bear no more of her taunts, and he jumped up, and left the house. I saw him head toward the stables. I didn't want him to go there, and if this idiot girl hadn't raced to follow me outside, I would have caught up with him in plenty of time to prevent what he did. But she seized my hand and she teased me about being my brother's keeper.

"And when I finally got away, Troy had saddled Abdulla Bar, according to a stable boy, and on horseback Troy raced through the maze, over and over through the maze. It was not a place that a sensitive horse liked and soon he leaped the last hedge hurdle, driven insane by the twists and turns of the maze he'd never been in before--and the horse headed for the sh.o.r.e!"

"Abdulla Bar . . ." I repeated, the name almost forgotten by this time.

"Yes, Jill's favorite stallion. The one n.o.body but her could ride, I saddled my own horse and rode to catch up with him, but the wind here on the sh.o.r.e was wild. Ahead of me about a hundred feet, a sheet of trash paper flew into Abdulla Bar's face. He reared and whinnied as if terrified, and he whirled about and ran straight into the ocean! It was crazy to sit on my horse, who refused to run into the wind, and watch my brother fight to bring that crazy horse back to sh.o.r.e! The sun was red and low on the horizon behind us . . . and the sea turned to blood . . . and then both horse and rider disappeared."

My hands fluttered to my forehead and hovered there. "Troy? Oh no, Tony!"

"We called the Coast Guard. All the men at the party put out in the boats I have, and we searched for him. Abdulla Bar swam back to sh.o.r.e with an empty saddle, and then, toward dawn, Troy's body was found. He had drowned."

No! No! It couldn't be true.

He went on, wrapping my shoulders with his arm and pulling me against his side. "I tried desperately to find where you were staying in Maine, but I never was able to. Every day I have held my own small memorial service for him, waiting for you to return, and say your own goodbyes."

I thought I had cried all the tears I could cry for the love I'd had for Troy. Yet, as I stood there and gazed out to sea, I knew that throughout my life I would cry many more tears for him.

Time pa.s.sed as I stood with Tony and waited for that floating wreath to reappear. Oh, Troy, years we could have had together! Almost four years that would have given you a fair share of life, and love, and normalcy, and maybe then you would have loved life enough to have stayed!

I was numb now, blind with tears I didn't want to share with Tony. On the walk back to the mansion I said goodbye to Tony quickly, though he clung to both of my hands and tried to force from me the promise that I'd return again.

"Please, Heaven, please! You're my daughter, my only heir. Troy is dead. I need an heir to give purpose and meaning to my life! What good is all of this that we have acc.u.mulated through the centuries if our line ends now? Don't go! Troy would want you to stay! Everything that he was is here in this house and in his cottage that he left to you. He loved you . . please, don't leave me here alone with Jill. Please stay, Heaven, please, for my sake and for Troy's! All that you see around you will be yours. It's your legacy. Take it if for no better reason than you can pa.s.s it down to your children."

I tugged my hands away. "Why you can go anywhere you want without Jillian," I said ruthlessly, stepping into my fine car. "You can hire help to take care of her, and not come back until she is dead. You don't need me, and I don't need you, or the Tatterton money. You have now exactly what you deservenothing."

The wind fanned my hair. He stood and watched me drive away, the saddest-looking man I'd ever seen. But I didn't care. Troy was dead and I had graduated from college, and life would go on, despite Tony, who needed me now, and Jillian, who had never needed anything but youth and beauty.

Twenty-three Revenge .

I WAS GOING BACK HOME, BACK TO WINNERROW. AT last it was time for me to put the past to rest, and to become that person I always wanted to be. For I knew now that our childhood dreams are often the most pure ones; I wanted more than anything to follow in Miss Marianne Deale's footsteps, to be the kind of teacher who could give a child like me a chance in life, who could open up the world of books and knowledge that provided a way out of the narrowness and ignorance of the hills. And it was not really hard to risk my Tatterton legacy--for I was no longer a sc.u.mbag Casteel, cowering on the fringes of society. No, I was a Tatterton, a VanVoreen, and even if I planned never to tell anyone in my family the truth of my parentage, still, I was now ready to confront the man whose love I had needed so desperately as a child, who had denied me so relentlessly and brutally. For I didn't need him at all now. And I wanted him, and only him, to know just who I was.

It took me three days to drive to Winnerrow, and on the way I stopped in New York City, at one of the best hairdressers, and did something I'd wanted to do for years. All my life I'd wanted my mother's silvery blond hair color. All my life I'd been the dark angel, betrayed by what I had thought was my Indian Casteel hair. Now I would be the true, bright, shining angel, the rich girl from Boston who no one ever looked down on. I emerged from that salon a different woman--a woman with shining, silvery blond hair. No, I wasn't a Casteel anymore. I was my mother's true daughter. And I knew that to at least one man I would no longer appear to be the Heaven Leigh Casteel he hated--no, he would see how much like Leigh I was, he would finally understand how much he loved me. I would be a Heaven Leigh he loved-- for at last he would see in me his beloved Angel.

Grandpa almost didn't know who I was when I first arrived at the-new cabin in the woods. He seemed almost afraid when he first saw me, as if a ghost had truly come back from the dead. It was then I realized that if he ever really did catch sight of his "Annie" he'd probably have a heart attack. "Grandpa," I said, hugging his frightened, rigid body, "It's me, Heaven. Do you like my hair?"

"Oh, Heaven child, I thought ya was a ghost!" he heaved a mighty sigh of relief. And when I told him I was coming to live with him he was overjoyed. "Oh, Heaven chile, ever'body comin' home at once. Ya know Luke's circus is comin' to town next week. All the Casteels comin' back to Winnerrow. Ain't it grand tho!"

So, I wasn't the only Casteel come back to show who I was now. Now I could get on with my plans much sooner than I expected. Now I knew just what I had to do.

The circus was all that people in Winnerrow talked about. They stood on street corners, and in the pharmacy, and in the beauty shop and barber shops, and cluttered the one and only supermarket with their many speculations on whether or not it was "G.o.dly" to attend a circus where so many performers wore so few clothes. Everyone was so busy with the circus, they barely had time to gossip about me and my white Jaguar driving through town.

I was busy that week before the circus was due to arrive--busy making the cabin as cozy and pretty as possible, busy washing an old dress that had to be carefully bleached so it would turn truly white. Then the dress had to be ironed, and I'd had no experience ever with handling an iron, even the best new one that money could buy. It just so happened that the day I was setting up the contraption called an ironing board, Logan dropped by to bring Grandpa his weekly supply of medications. He sucked in his breath when he saw me. "Oh," he said, looking uncomfortable, "I almost didn't know who you were."

"You don't like it?" I asked lightly, determined to keep my distance.

"You look beautiful, but you looked even more beautiful with your own dark hair."

"Of course you'd say that. You like everything as G.o.d gave it to us. But I know nature can be improved upon."

"Are we going to start off again fighting, and over such a silly thing as the color of your hair? I quite honestly don't care what you do to your hair."

"I didn't think you really did."

He set down his bundle on the middle of the kitchen table, and looked around. "Where is your grandfather?"

"He's down the hill, bragging about Pa and his circus. Why, you'd think Pa had become the president of the United States from the way he's carrying on."

Uneasily Logan stood in the center of the kitchen, looking around, obviously not wanting to leave yet. "I like what you've done to this cabin. It seems so cozy."

"Thank you."

"Are you going to be staying awhile?"

"Maybe. I'm not sure yet. I've filed my application at the Winnerrow's school board, but so far I haven't heard a thing."

I began to try and iron my dress. "You didn't marry Troy Tatterton, why not?"

"It's not really any of your business, is it Logan?"

"I think it is. I've known you for many years. I took care of you when you were sick. I loved you for a long time . . I think that gives me a few rights."

It was several minutes before I could say thinly, with tears in my voice, "Troy died in an accident. He was a very wonderful man who had too many tragedies in his life. I could cry for all he should have had, and didn't."

"What is it the super-wealthy can't buy?" he asked, with a certain mocking tone in his voice, and I whirled to confront him, still holding my iron in my hand. "You're thinking as I used to think, that money can buy everything, but it doesn't and never will." I turned and began to iron again. "Will you please leave now, Logan? I have a thousand things to do. Tom will be staying here with us, and I want the house to be perfect in time for his arrival--I have to make it feel like home.

For the longest time he stood behind me, so close he could have leaned forward and kissed my neck, yet he didn't. I felt his presence, almost as if he were touching me. "Heaven, are you going to find time in your busy schedule to fit me in?"

"Why should I? I hear you are as good as engaged to Maisie Setterton."

"Everyone is telling me that Cal Dennison returned to Winnerrow just to see you!"

Again I whirled around. "Why are you so eager to believe anything you hear? If Cal Dennison is in town, he's made no effort to contact me, and I hope never to see him again."

Suddenly he smiled. His sapphire eyes lit up and made him seem a boy again, the boy who used to love me. "Well, it's nice seeing you again, Heaven. And I'll get used to your blond hair, if you decide to keep it that way." And then he was turning and walking out the back door, leaving me staring after him, and wondering, wondering.

As the day of the circus dawned, Grandpa was so eager to see his youngest son and Tom that he was almost hopping with excitement as I tried to knot the first tie he'd ever worn. He grouched and complained and said I was worse than Stacie, who was always trying to make him look like what he wasn't. "Ya kin't do it, Heaven chile. New clothes won't do it . . jus' get ya gone. I kin brush my own hair!"

It was my intention to make him look like a gentleman as much as possible and to show all those pseudo-sn.o.bs in Winnerrow that even Casteels could change. Grandpa was wearing, also, the first real suit of his life. I tucked a colorful handkerchief in his pocket, fiddling with it for a few minutes, while Grandpa itched for me to get on with it.

"Why, durn iffen ya ain't gone an' made me look like some big city gent," he proudly said, eyeing himself up and down in the full-length mirror that had been ordered for the bedroom that I was using. He preened like a bird in bright plumage, touching tentative fingers to his hair, the little he had left.

"You be careful with yourself, Grandpa, until I'm dressed."

"But I don't know now what to do wid myself."

"Then I'll tell you what to do. You won't go farther from this house than the front porch, and don't start whittling or you'll cover your good suit with sawdust and shavings. Sit in one of the rockers next to Grandma, and tell her all about what's going to happen today. And sit there until I come out, ready to go."

"But Annie not gonna want to stay here widout us!" he said in shrill objection. "Luke's her son, too."

"Then Grandma will go with us." He smiled when I said that. He touched his withered old hand to my face. "Yer gonna dress her up fancy, too?"

"Of course."

Grandpa stared at me almost struck with awe, and then teary wonder came to his eyes. "All yer life ya've been a good girl, chile Heaven. The best kind of girl t'have."

Oh, oh, it hurt more than I'd ever expected to be complimented by someone at this place in the mountains where no one had ever loved me enough.