Beyond All Dreams (3 page)

A low murmur and a little foot stamping greeted his state
ment, but all the congressmen immediately returned to their work.

Except for Mr. Callahan, who still watched her with that curious glint in his eyes. Anna glanced away in mortification, heat flushing her body. She would happily go to her grave without this sort of attention.

The meeting stretched on for hours, but against her will her attention kept straying to the congressman from Maine. For the most part he was an active participant in the meeting, though every few minutes he glanced back to smile at her again. They were always fleeting smiles, but they made energy race across her skin. Did he just
wink
at her?

He did!

Anna looked away and fumed. Women could get fired for flirting with members of Congress, and the last thing she wanted was some arrogant congressman she'd never met winking at her in public. Winking! That was how rumors got started.

The moment the gavel banged to end the meeting, she bolted from the room.

T
he weight of every eye was pinned on Luke as he left the committee room. Reporters crowded around, shouting questions and demanding answers. There was nothing better than watching the mighty fall, and Luke Callahan had plummeted a long way in the past week, but all he wanted was to escape this swarm of reporters and find that librarian before she disappeared.

He'd been stunned when she'd whispered that reprimand in his ear. Was snapping his fingers really so offensive? Everyone snapped fingers like that back home. Bangor was far from the marble halls of Washington, and Luke grew up in a rowdy world of sailors and lumberjacks, where people didn't take offense at such things. Yet he liked that Miss O'Brien had the backbone to call him on the carpet over it. When she returned to her seat and looked at him with a combination of intelligent humor and good-natured challenge, he was poleaxed.

She was a fetching little thing, with a winsome face and sparkling brown eyes. He wanted to catch her before she escaped, except there was a crush of journalists shouting questions in his face.

“Sir, would you care to comment on Speaker Jones's new legislation regarding the tariff?”

He didn't care. All he wanted was to find the librarian.

A congressional page ducked beneath the reporters and held a card aloft. “You have a telegram from Bangor, sir.”

Luke froze. He had plenty of constituents in Bangor, but only one who sent him telegrams. His mouth tightened, though he refused to let the tension show. Journalists were like bloodhounds. If they scented anything amiss in Bangor, they'd sink in their teeth and never let go.

Forget the librarian. For pity's sake, he knew better than to indulge these reckless impulses. Since getting elected to Congress eight years ago, he'd lived like a virtual monk to preserve his reputation, and his sister's telegram was probably heaven-sent to stop him from reverting to the wild behavior of his past.

He took the telegram and headed toward the congressional retiring rooms, where no journalists were allowed. Guards parted to allow Luke through, then closed ranks as soon as he entered the private corridor. Journalists still hollered questions as he strode down the hallway, their voices echoing off the vaulted ceiling, but he ignored them.

Because the Capitol had few private offices, congressmen like Luke used the retiring rooms to work, socialize, or sometimes sleep during the long hours between meetings. The rooms had the comfortable luxury of a gentleman's club, smelling of beeswax, old leather, and raw power. Floor-to-ceiling windows were flanked with maroon velvet panels, and Turkish rugs covered the parquet floors. Boston ferns in brass planters helped demarcate groupings of chairs and tables. There were curiosities as well, such as a suit of armor from a Spanish conquistador, and a floor globe the size of a small pony.

Luke moved to the far windows, where he could read in private
whatever his sister had to say. His jaw tightened as he scanned the first line of her telegram.

His brother had been arrested.
Again
.

He shoved the telegram into his coat pocket without reading the rest. Could he ever get far enough from his family so that their scandal didn't reach out to follow? Gamblers. Drunkards. Wife-beaters. All he had to do was look at his family history to find a trail of self-destruction so blatant it was a miracle any of them were still alive. He would give his eyeteeth if he could turn his back on them forever, and yet that was impossible.

He loved them. Every lousy, drunken, loose-living one of them.

There was a dangerous beauty to his family. The Callahans were like comets streaking through the sky, burning brightly with a passion that lit the night, but destined to flame out quickly, leaving a cold path of destruction behind. His father had already drunk himself into the grave, and it looked like Jason wasn't far behind.

Steeling his resolve, Luke pulled out the telegram to finish reading it. Jason had been arrested yesterday after a brawl with a sheriff's deputy. His sister needed four hundred dollars to bail him out of jail and wanted Luke to arrange a telephone call the following morning to discuss a solution.

He headed to the basement, where a telephone switchboard had been installed for members of Congress. Arranging a telephone call to Maine would require the cooperation of a dozen switchboard operators to patch the call through a network of connections all along the East Coast and up to Bangor. It was complicated, but people made allowances for members of Congress. Aside from the White House, telephone calls placed from the US Capitol got the highest level of service anywhere in the country. Even if the subject of all the trouble was some hothead from Maine.

A rush of heat flooded Luke's face. He hadn't exactly cured himself of that hotheaded impulse. Wasn't he about to dash upstairs in search of a fetching librarian, who had sparked his interest merely because she dared to whisper a clever, well-deserved setdown in his ear?

Even worse than his momentary slip with the librarian was his loss of temper last week. Why had he let himself get drawn into a shouting match on the floor of Congress? He knew better than to let the Speaker of the House goad his temper, and now he was paying the price for it.

He couldn't afford to give in to these impulses. He wanted to keep his seat in Congress, because quite frankly it was
fun
to be there, but he also needed to provide a stable home for Philip. One of the benefits of life in Washington was getting his nephew away from Maine, where on any given day his family home swung between the poles of exuberant joy and alcohol-fueled rages. His nephew was flourishing in Washington, but if Luke lost the next election, they'd both be plunged back into that chaotic household.

Luke dragged his nephew down to breakfast early the next morning so they could be on time for the telephone call to Julia. For a man born into a three-room house with no running water and oiled parchment for windows, the opulent breakfast room of the Willard Hotel was a palace. With a wall of arched windows, white table linens, and a high ceiling to accommodate the palms imported from Florida, it was the height of elegance and a little uncomfortable for a fourteen-year-old boy.

But anything was better than leaving Philip in Maine. Schoolyard taunts could leave wounds that lingered for years, and as the illegitimate son of an unmarried woman, Philip had endured his share of teasing.

A waiter brought their breakfast, setting down two platters of eggs, cubes of melon, and piping hot bacon.

“You can have my bacon,” Luke said after the waiter had left. He passed his plate to Philip, averting his face so he wouldn't have to smell it.

Philip pounced. “I can't believe you don't like bacon,” he said as he wolfed down a slice. “Everyone loves bacon.”

“Don't talk with your mouth full.”

Luke loathed everything about bacon, especially the smell of it. All it took was the scent of bacon to stir an avalanche of bitter memories. Luke was fifteen and had been helping his mother smoke bacon the day his life changed forever.

They were in their brand-new house, the one his father began building after a fortune in gemstones had been found on their land. The kitchen had polished hardwood floors and real glass in the windows. A fireplace dominated one side of the kitchen, where they smoked the bacon that filled the house with the scent of hickory.

“Where's that no-good son of mine?” his father had roared, striding into the kitchen and waving a stack of papers above his head. “What's this, boy? Am I raising a sissy in this household?”

Luke wanted to throw up at the sight of his poems clutched in his father's fist. In a world of logging, dirt, and sweat, Luke found salvation in the passages of Byron, Keats, and Coleridge. Poetry triggered fires of his imagination, and he'd been compelled to mimic the soaring verse of his heroes by trying to write his own poems.

“Give me those,” he demanded.

Rather than being angry, it seemed Edgar Callahan was amused by his fifteen-year-old son's attempt to write poetry. Edgar sprang to the far side of the kitchen, tilting the pages to the light streaming through the window. “‘Oh noble sun,
cleanse my sorrows with the sweet kiss of morning dew,'” he mocked.

The jeering rendition made Luke's fledgling efforts sound overwrought and trite. He tried to grab the pages, but his father danced away, hooting with laughter as he read more of Luke's poetry in that obscene tone. His brothers and sister gathered to listen, their faces somber.

Edgar finally came to the end of the first poem, and the sneer fell from his face, replaced by rage. “Am I raising a sissy?” he bellowed. “Have you got so much free time on your hands that you spend it writing love poems?”

His father wouldn't know a love poem from a sonnet, elegy, or epic. Luke had spent months emulating the epic style, and he was proud of his work. “They're epic poems, sir.”

“
Epic
, are they? I say they're epic trash, and there is only one thing to do with trash.”

Edgar strode to the fireplace. Luke lunged after him, but the thick stack of poems was already on the fire, filling the room with a hickory-laden stench as the pages blackened and curled. Luke kicked them out of the fire, some of the kindling spilling onto the floor as well. He stomped on the burning pages, scattering bright orange sparks across the floor.

Edgar's fist caught Luke in the mouth and sent him sprawling, his head smacking against the wall. He rolled into a ball and covered his head.

“You want to stomp cinders on my new floor?” Edgar kicked the burning kindling at him. Luke covered his face, but cinders scorched the back of his hands, and flecks of ash stung his eyes. He curled tighter, grunting from the swift kicks into his ribs.

“Back off!” his brother said. Two thuds sounded as Gabriel's booted feet landed on either side of Luke, daring their father to continue. Gabe was the oldest and almost as big as their
father. Luke remained frozen on the floor, holding his breath and praying Gabe wouldn't take a beating for defending him.

Edgar shoved Gabe aside and squatted down to grab Luke's shirt, hauling him up until they were nose to nose.

“Promise you will quit writing that flowery garbage,” he ordered. “You're a fine lad, but I won't tolerate that girly rubbish in my house.”

Luke's ribs hurt with each breath, but he looked squarely at his father. “I'm not quitting,” he said, a rush of salty blood filling his mouth.

“Oh, yes you will. I want your word you'll quit wasting time with that rubbish and grow up to be a man I can be proud of.”

He emphasized each word with a shake, causing fresh waves of pain in his ribs. It would be so easy to lie and make this problem go away. When his father was this drunk, he rarely remembered anything afterward.

But he wouldn't lie. Not about something this important. “I won't quit writing poetry—”

“Careful, lad,” his father warned, drawing a fist back and holding it poised above Luke's head.