Carolina Moon (7 page)

They’d both take time to settle, Cade decided as he got to his feet. And then they’d deal with each other. Then they’d deal with Hope.

He walked back to his truck, drove out to check his crops and his crew.

He was hot, sweaty, and dirty by the time he turned between the stone pillars that guarded the long, shady lane to Beaux Reves. Twenty oaks, ten on either side, flanked the drive and arched over it to make a green and gold tunnel. In
between their thick trunks he could see the flowering shrubs in bloom, the wide sweep of lawn, the ribbon of a bricked path that led to garden and outbuildings.

When he was tired, as he was now, this last stretch never failed to reach out to him, to stroke at his fatigue like a loving hand. Through drought and war, through the ripping apart of one way of life and the making of another, Beaux Reves stood.

More than two hundred years the land had been in Lavelle hands. They had tended it, nurtured it, abused it, and cursed it, but it survived. It had buried them, and it had birthed them.

And now it was his.

Perhaps the house was one huge eccentricity in the center of elegance, more fortress than house, more defiant than graceful. The stone caught sparks from the dying sun, and glinted. The towers lanced arrogantly into a sky going the color of a fresh bruise.

There was a huge pool of flowers in the oval centering the circular drive. Some long-ago ancestor’s attempt to soften the arrogantly masculine lines, Cade had always thought. Instead, the sea of flowers and shrubs served as a sharp contrast to the massive front doors of deeply carved oak and the straight spears of windows.

He left the truck at the far curve of the drive and walked up the six stone steps. The veranda had been added on by his great-grandfather. A bit of civility, Cade mused, with its shading roof and twining vines of clematis. He could sit, if he chose, as those of his blood had sat for generations, and look out over grass and tree and flower without smudging the view with the vicious and sweat-soaked work of the fields.

Which was why he rarely sat there.

He scraped the soil off his boots. Inside those doors was his mother’s domain, and though she would say nothing, her disapproving silence, her cool-eyed stare at any trace of the fields on her floors, would be worse than a blistering lecture.

Spring had been kind, so the windows were open to the
evening. The scents from the gardens spilled in to mingle with the perfumes of the flowers that had been selected and arranged indoors.

The entrance hall was massive, the floor marbled in sea green so it felt as though his feet would simply sink into cool water.

He thought of a shower, a beer, and a good hot meal before he tackled the evening’s paperwork. He moved quietly, listening, and felt no guilt at the hope he could avoid any contact with his family until he was clean and refueled.

He’d gotten as far as the bar in the main parlor, had just popped the top on a Beck’s, when he heard the feminine click of heels. He winced, but his face was composed and relaxed when Faith swirled into the room.

“Pour me a white wine, darling, I got some rough edges need smoothing.”

She stretched herself out on the sofa as she spoke, with a fussy little sigh and a finger brush of her short bob of blond hair. She was back to blond. There were those who said Faith Lavelle changed her hair color nearly as often as she changed men.

There were those who relished saying it.

She’d been divorced twice in her twenty-six years, and had gathered and discarded more lovers than most cared to count. Particularly Faith. Yet she managed to project the image of the delicate southern flower with camellia-white skin and the Lavelle blue eyes. Moody blue eyes that could well up with tears on command, and were skilled at making promises she might or might not intend to keep.

Her first husband had been a wild and handsome boy of eighteen with whom she’d eloped two months before she graduated from high school. She’d loved him with all the passion and capriciousness of youth and had been devastated when he’d left her flat, and broke, less than a year later.

Not that she let anyone know that. As far as the world was concerned, she’d dumped Bobby Lee Matthews and had come back to Beaux Reves because she’d grown bored playing house.

Three years later, she’d married an aspiring country-western
singer she’d met in a bar. That she had done out of boredom, but she’d stuck it out for two years before she realized Clive had also aspired to live the cheating, beating lyrics of the songs he scribbled in a haze of Budweiser and Marlboros.

So once again, she was back at Beaux Reves, edgy, dissatisfied, and secretly disgusted with herself.

She sent Cade a sweet and melting smile when he brought her a glass of wine. “Honey, you look worn out. Why don’t you sit down and put your feet up for a while?” She grabbed his hand, gave it a little tug. “You work too hard.”

“Anytime you want to pitch in …”

Her smile sharpened, a blade turned to the keen edge. “Beaux Reves is yours. Papa made that clear all our lives.”

“Papa’s not here anymore.”

Faith merely moved one careless shoulder. “Doesn’t change the facts.” She lifted her wine, sipped. She was a lovely woman who took great pains to exploit her beauty. Even now, for an evening at home, she’d added soft color to her cheeks, painted her sensuously wide mouth a poppy pink and had draped herself in a silk blouse and slacks in soft rose.

“You can change anything you want to change.”

“I’ve been raised to be decorative, and useless.” She tossed her head, then stretched like a cat. “And I’m so good at it.”

“You irritate me, Faith.”

“I’m good at that, too.” Amused, she nudged his leg with her bare foot. “Don’t be cross, Cade. Arguing’s going to spoil my taste for this wine. I’ve already had words with Mama today.”

“A day doesn’t go by you don’t have words with Mama.”

“I wouldn’t if she wasn’t so critical of every damn thing. She’s been in a mood most of the day.” Faith’s eyes glittered. “Since Lissy called from town, anyhow.”

“No point in it. She knew Tory was coming back.”

“Coming’s different from being. I don’t think she likes the idea of renting the Marsh House to her.”

“If she doesn’t live there, she’ll just live somewhere else.” Since he was tired, he lay his head back and tried to
will the tension of the day out of his neck and shoulders. “She’s back, and it appears she means to stay.”

“So you did go see her.” Faith drummed her fingers against her thigh. “I thought you would. Duty first for our Cade. Well … What’s she like?”

“Polite, reserved. Nervous, I think, about being back.” He took a sip of beer. “Attractive.”

“Attractive? I remember tree-bark hair and knobby knees. Skinny and spooky.”

He let it pass. Faith tended to pout if a man, even her brother, commented on another woman’s good looks. He wasn’t in the mood for her sulks. “You could make the effort to be nice to her, Faith. Tory wasn’t responsible for what happened to Hope. What’s the point of making her feel as though she were?”

“Did I say I wasn’t going to be nice to her?” Faith ran her fingers around the rim of her glass, she couldn’t seem to keep them still.

“I imagine she could use a friend.”

Faith dropped her hand, and her silky voice went flat. “She was Hope’s friend, never mine.”

“Maybe not, but Hope’s not here anymore, either. And you could use a friend yourself.”

“Honey, I’ve got plenty of friends. It’s just that none of them happens to be a woman. Fact is, things are so dull around here, I might go into town tonight after all. See if I can find me a friend for a few hours.”

“Suit yourself.” He pushed her foot aside and rose. “I need a shower.”

“Cade,” she said before he got to the door. She’d seen that flare of derision in his eyes, and it stung. “I got a right to live my life as I choose.”

“You’ve got a right to waste your life as you choose.”

“All right,” she said evenly. “And so do you. But I’m saying maybe for once I agree with Mama on one thing. We’d all be better off if Victoria Bodeen went back to Charleston and stayed there. You’d sure as hell be better off keeping your distance from whatever trouble she’s carrying with her.”

“What are you afraid of, Faith?”

Everything, she thought, as he walked away. Just everything.

Restless now, she uncurled herself and paced to the tall front windows. Gone now was the languorous southern belle. Her movements were quick, almost jittering with nervous energy.

Maybe she would go into town, she thought. Go somewhere. Maybe she’d just leave altogether.

And go where?

Nothing was what she thought it would be when she left Beaux Reves. No one was how she thought they would be. Including herself.

Every time she left she told herself it was for good. But she always came back. Every time she left she told herself it would be different. That she would be different.

But she never was.

How could she expect anyone to understand that everything that had happened before, everything that had happened since, all hinged on that one night when she—when Hope—had been eight?

Now the person who connected the night with all the others was back.

Standing, looking out over the lawn and gardens going silver with dusk, Faith wished Tory Bodeen to hell.

It was nearly eight when Wade finished with his last patient, an elderly mixed breed with failing kidneys and a heart murmur. His equally elderly owner couldn’t bring herself to put the poor old dog down, so Wade had once again treated the dog and gently soothed the human.

He was too tired for the diner and thought he’d just slap together a sandwich or open a can.

The small apartment above his office suited him. It was efficient, convenient, and cheap. He could have afforded better, and so both of his parents continually reminded him, but he preferred to live simply and shovel the profits of his practice back into it.

He had no pets of his own at the moment, though he’d
had quite a menagerie as a child. Dogs and cats, of course, and with them the prerequisite wounded birds, the frogs, the turtles, the rabbits, and once a runt pig he’d called Buster. His indulgent mother hadn’t drawn the line until he’d wanted to bring home a black snake he’d found stretched across the road.

He’d been sure he could talk her into it, but when he’d come to the kitchen door with a plea in his eyes and four feet of wiggling snake in his hands, his mother had screamed loud enough to bring Mr. Pritchett from next door leaping over their shared fence.

Pritchett had sprained his hamstring, Wade’s mother had dropped her beloved milk glass pitcher on the kitchen tiles, and the snake had been banished to the river outside of town.

But bless her, Wade thought, she’d tolerated everything else he’d dragged in with hardly a word of complaint.

Eventually he’d have a house and yard and the time to indulge himself. But until he could afford a larger staff, most of his workdays ran ten hours minimum, and that didn’t count the emergencies. People who didn’t have the time to devote to pets shouldn’t have them. He felt the same way about children.

He headed into the kitchen first, grabbed an apple. Dinner, such as it was, would wait until he’d washed the dog off him.

Crunching into the apple, he flipped through the mail he’d carried up with him as he walked to the bedroom.

He smelled her before he saw her. That hot wave of woman hit his senses, scattered his thoughts. She stirred on the bed, a rustle of silky skin against the sheets.

She wore nothing but an invitational smile.

“Hello, lover. You worked late.”

“You said you’d be busy tonight.”

Faith crooked a finger. “I intend to be. Why don’t you come over here and occupy me.”

Wade tossed the mail and the apple aside. “Why don’t I?”

I
t was a pitiful thing, Wade supposed, for a man to be hung up on one woman all of his life. More than pitiful when that woman insisted on flitting in and out of that life like a careless butterfly. And the man let her.

Each time she came back, he told himself he wouldn’t play the game. And each time she hooked him in until he was too deep into the pot to fold his hand and walk away.

He’d been the first man to have her. He had no hope of being the last.

He was no more able to resist her now than he’d been over ten years before. That bright summer night she’d climbed in his window, and into his bed while he slept. He could still remember what it had been like, to wake with that sleek, hot body sliding over his, that hungry mouth smothering him, devouring him, clamping over him until he was rock hard and randy.

She was fifteen years old, he thought now, and she’d taken him with the quick, heartless efficiency of a fifty-dollar whore. And she’d been a virgin.

That, she’d told him, had been the point. She didn’t want to be a virgin, and she’d decided to get rid of the burden with as little fuss as possible, and with someone she knew, liked, and trusted.

Simple as that.

For Faith it had always been simple. But for Wade, that
summer night, weeks before he’d gone back to college, had layered on the first of many complicated tiers that made up his relationship with Faith Lavelle.

They’d had sex as often as they could manage that summer. In the backseat of his car, late at night when his parents slept down the hall, in the middle of the day when his mother sat on the veranda gossiping with friends. Faith was always willing, eager, ready. She’d been a young man’s wet dream sprung to life.

And had become Wade’s obsession.

He’d been sure she’d wait for him.

In less than two years, while he’d been studying fiercely and planning for the future, their future, she’d run off with Bobby Lee. Wade had gotten drunk and stayed drunk for a week.

She’d come back, of course. To Progress, and eventually to him. With no apology, no tearful plea for forgiveness.

That was the pattern of their relationship. He detested her for it, nearly as much as he detested himself.

“So …” Faith climbed over him, tugged a cigarette from the pack on the nightstand, and straddling him, lighted it. “Tell me about Tory.”

“When did you start smoking again?”

“Today.” She smiled, leaning down to give him a little nip on the chin. “Don’t give me grief on it, Wade. Everyone’s entitled to a vice.”

“Which one have you missed?”

She laughed, but there was an edge to it, an edge in her eyes. “If you don’t try them out, how do you know which ones fit? Now, come on, baby, tell me about Tory. I’m just dying to know everything.”

“There’s nothing to know. She’s back.”

Faith let out a huge sigh. “Men are such irritating creatures. What does she look like? How does she act? What’s she up to?”

“She looks grown-up, and acts very much the same. She’s up to opening a gift shop on Market Street.” At Faith’s cool stare, he shrugged. “Tired. She looks tired,
maybe a little too thin, like someone who hasn’t been altogether well just lately. But there’s a sheen on her, the kind you get from city living. As for what she’s up to, I can’t say. Why don’t you ask her?”

She trailed her hand over his shoulder. He had such wonderful shoulders. “She’s not likely to tell me. Never liked me.”

“That’s not true, Faith.”

“I oughta know.” Impatient, she rolled off him, off the bed, graceful and contrary as a cat, drawing deep on her cigarette while she paced. The moonlight shimmered over her white skin, lending it a faint and exotic blue cast. He could see fading smudges on her, the shadows of bruises.

She’d wanted it rough.

“Always staring at me with those spooky eyes, hardly saying boo, except to Hope. She always had plenty to say to Hope. The two of them were all the time whispering together. What’s she want to move back into the old Marsh House for? What’s she thinking?”

“I imagine she’s thinking it’d be nice to have a familiar roof over her head.” He rose, quietly closing the curtains before one of the neighbors saw her.

“You know what went on under that roof as well as I do.” Faith turned back, her eyes glittering when Wade switched the bedside light on low. “What kind of person goes back to a place where they were trapped? Maybe she’s as crazy as people used to say.”

“She’s not crazy.” Weary now, Wade tugged on his jeans. “She’s lonely. Sometimes lonely people come back home, because there’s no place else.”

That hit a little too close to the heart. She turned her eyes away from his, tapped out her cigarette. “Sometimes home’s the loneliest place of all.”

He touched her hair, just a light stroke. It made her yearn to burrow in, cling tight. Deliberately she lifted her head, smiled brilliantly. “Why are we talking about Tory Bodeen, anyway? Let’s fix ourselves some supper, and eat in bed.” Slowly, her eyes on his, she drew down the zipper
of his jeans. “I always have such an appetite when I’m with you.”

Later, he woke in the dark. She was gone. She never stayed, never slept with him in the most simple way. There were times Wade wondered if she slept at all, or if that internal engine of hers forever ran, fueled on nerves, and on needs that were never quite met.

It was his curse, he supposed, to love a woman who seemed incapable of returning genuine feelings. He should cut her out of his life. It was the sane thing to do. She’d only slice him open again, and every time she did, it took longer to heal. Sooner or later there’d be nothing left of his heart but scar tissue, and he’d have no one but himself to blame.

He felt the anger building, a black heat that bubbled in the blood. Leaving the lights off, he dressed in the dark. His fury needed a target before it turned inward and imploded.

It would have been smarter, more comfortable, God knew more sensible, to have booked a room in a hotel for the night. It would have been a simple matter to have accepted her uncle’s hospitality and slept in one of the overly fussy, decorated-to-death bedrooms Boots kept ready in the big house.

As a child she’d often dreamed of sleeping in that perfect house on that perfect street where she’d imagined everything smelled of perfume and polish.

Instead, Tory spread a blanket on the bare floor and lay awake in the dark.

Pride, stubbornness, a need to prove herself? She wasn’t sure of her own motives for spending her first night in Progress in the empty house of her childhood. But she’d made her bed, so to speak, and was determined to lie in it.

In the morning there would be a great deal to do. Already that evening she’d gone over her lists and made a dozen more. She needed to buy a bed, and a phone. New towels, a shower curtain. She needed a lamp and a table to put it on.

Camping out wasn’t quite the adventure it used to be, and having simple tastes and needs didn’t mean she didn’t require basic comforts.

Lying there in the dark she used her lists, in much the same way she had used the sheer white wall. Each item mentally ticked off was another brick set in place to block out images and keep herself centered in the now.

She’d go to the market and stock the kitchen. If she let that go too long she’d fall back into the habit of skipping meals again. When she neglected her body, it was more difficult to control her mind.

She’d go to the bank, open accounts, personal and business. A trip to the
Progress Weekly
was in order. She’d already designed her ad.

Most of all, while she set up the store in the next weeks, she needed to be visible. She’d work on being friendly, personable. Normal.

It would take time to weather the expected whispers, the questions, the stares. She was prepared for it. By the time she opened for business, people would be used to seeing her again. More, much more important, they would become used to seeing her as she wanted to be seen.

Gradually, she’d become a fixture in town. And then she would begin to explore.
She
would ask questions. She’d begin to look for the answers.

When she had them, she could say good-bye to Hope.

Closing her eyes, she listened to the night sounds, the chorus of peepers, so cheerfully monotonous, the sharp and jarring screech of an owl on the hunt, the soft groans of old wood settling, the occasional sly riveting of mice making themselves at home behind the wall.

She’d have to set traps, she thought sleepily. She was sorry for it, but she didn’t care to share her space with rodents. She’d put mothballs under the porches to discourage snakes.

It was mothballs, wasn’t it? It had been so long since she’d lived in the country. You put out mothballs for snakes and hung soap for deer and protected what was yours, even though it had been theirs first.

And if the rabbits came to nibble at the kitchen garden, you laid out pieces of hose so they thought it was the snakes you shooed away with the mothballs. Else Daddy’d come home and shoot them with his .22. You’d have to eat them for supper, even though you got sick after because you could see how cute they were twitching their long ears. You had to eat what God provided or pay the price. Getting sick was better than getting a beating.

No, don’t think about that, she ordered herself, and shifted on the hard floor. No one was going to make her eat what she didn’t want to eat, not ever again. No one was going to raise a strap to her or a fist.

She was in charge now.

She dreamed of sitting on the soft ground by a fire that snapped and smoked and burned the marshmallow she held into the flame on a stick. She liked it burnt so that the outside was black and crackled over the gooey white center. Lifting it out, she blew on the fire that came with it.

She singed the roof of her mouth, but that was all part of the ritual. The quick pain, then the contrast of crisp and sweet sugar.

“Might as well eat charcoal,” Hope said, turning her own candy so that it bubbled gold. “Now, this is a perfectly toasted marshmallow.”

“I like them my way.” To prove it, Tory got another from the bag and stabbed it onto the pointy end of her stick.

“Like Lilah says, ‘To each his own, said the lady as she kissed the cow.’” Grinning, Hope nibbled delicately on her marshmallow. “I’m glad you came back, Tory.”

“I always wanted to. I guess maybe I was afraid. I guess I still am.”

“But you’re here. You came, just like you were supposed to.”

“I didn’t come that night.” Tory looked away from the fire, into the eyes of childhood.

“I guess you weren’t supposed to.”

“I promised I would. Ten thirty-five. Then I didn’t. I didn’t even try.”

“You have to try now, ‘cause there were more. And there’ll still be more until you stop it.”

The weight was lowering again so that her eight-year-old chest strained under it. “What do you mean, more?”

“More like me. Just like me.” Solemn blue eyes, deep as pools, looked through the smoke and into Tory’s. “You have to do what you’re supposed to do, Tory. You have to be careful and you have to be smart. Victoria Bodeen, girl spy.”

“Hope, I’m not a girl anymore.”

“That’s why it’s time.” The fire climbed higher, grew brighter. The deep blue eyes captured glints of it, specks of wild light. “You have to stop it.”

“How?”

But Hope shook her head and whispered, “Something’s in the dark.”

Tory’s eyes shot open. Her heart was thundering in her chest, and in her mouth was the taste of fear and burnt candy.

Something’s in the dark.
She heard it, the echo of Hope’s voice, and the rustle, like a tail of the wind through the leaves, just outside her window.

She saw it, the faint shifting of the light as someone stepped into the path of the moon.

The child inside her wanted to curl up, to cover her face with her hands, to will herself invisible. She was alone. Defenseless.

Whoever was outside was watching, waiting. Even through the fear she could feel that. She struggled to blank her mind, to bring the face, the form, the name into it. But there was only the sheer glass wall of terror.

Not all the terror was hers.

They’re afraid, too, she realized. Afraid of me. Why?

Her hand trembled as she slowly reached out for the flashlight beside the blanket. The solid weight of it helped her beat back the worst of the fear. She would not lie helpless. She would defend herself, she would confront, she would take charge.

The child had been a victim. The woman wouldn’t be.

She swung up to her knees, flicked at the switch, fumbled, nearly screamed when the beam flashed on. She aimed it at the window like a weapon.

And there was nothing there but shadows and moon.

Her breath came in pants, but she got to her feet. She rushed to the door, slapped on the overhead lights. Whoever was outside could see her now. Let them look, she thought. Let them see she wouldn’t cower in the dark.

The beam of light bobbed as she hurried from the bedroom into the kitchen. Again, she switched on the overheads. Let them look, she thought again, and grabbed a carving knife out of the wooden block she’d unpacked. Let them look and see I’m not defenseless.

She’d locked the doors, a habit she’d developed in the city. But she was well aware how useless such a precaution was here. One good kick would spring the locks.

She stepped out of the light, into the shadows of the living room. With her back to the wall, she willed herself to regulate her breathing, until it began to come slow and quiet. She couldn’t see if her thoughts were tumbling, couldn’t concentrate if her blood was screaming.

For the first time in over four years she prepared to open herself to the gift she’d been cursed with at birth.

But lights stabbed through the front window and washed across the room. Her thoughts scattered wild as blown petals at the sound of a car driving fast up her lane.

Tires sent the thin layer of gravel spitting, an impatient, demanding sound. Her breath came harsh again as she forced herself to the door. She jabbed the flashlight in the pocket of the sweats she’d slept in, gripped the knife firmly in one hand and turned the lock.