“An accident? You expect me to believe that?”
“I’m telling the truth.” Dub looked up. His face had aged ten years in five minutes. His skin looked mottled, a vein throbbed wildly at his temple. He looked away, and when he spoke, David could barely hear the words. Dub stared into the flames as though he could see back in time. “I was upstairs getting ready for bed when I heard the bell. Ringing off the wall.” He shook his head. “I grabbed my robe. That time of night—I knew Jason was out. I was afraid something had happened to him.”
“It was Waneath?” David asked.
Dub nodded. “She was already in the front hall before I got to the head of the stairs. She knows—knew—where the spare key was.” He sighed and leaned back with his eyes closed. “I have never seen a woman that mad in my life. She was barefoot—no stockings. Her feet were all muddy. She was carrying her shoes—one in each hand.” He looked up at David, and his eyes pleaded with him for understanding. “She started screaming at me. At first I didn’t know what was the matter—thought maybe she was drunk and Jason was out there someplace hurt.”
“But she was angry at him.”
“Not just him. All of us—Jason, you and me.”
“What did she have to be mad at you about?”
“She was carrying my child.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Dub nodded. “I’m not proud of it. I sure as hell didn’t plan it.”
“Dub, she was nineteen years old. You’re what, sixty-three?”
Dub sat up straight. “I’m not dead yet, dammit. Those movie stars have babies a lot later than any damn sixty-three!”
“You’re not a movie star.”
“No, but I’m a rich man!” Dub snarled. “Rich, and prominent, and powerful.”
“I don’t understand any of this. Maybe you’d better explain it.”
“After Jason went to school, Waneath started dropping by sometimes in the evenings on her way home from school. Said she missed the boy the way I did. Gave us something to talk about. We were both lonely, both feeling the boy’d betrayed us by going off and leaving us that way. She kept saying she was gonna marry him in June, but I knew he wasn’t about to marry her, and I think she knew it too. We’d watch television together. Sometimes I’d pick up a movie. She’d make me a few drinks. Keep me company, you know, the way Melba used to.”
“Neva never found out?”
“Always after Neva’d gone home to her own husband and grandchildren.”
“Watching the occasional movie and having a couple of drinks do not add up to a baby, Dub.”
“Yeah, they do. Or they did. I told you I’m not proud of it. Damn stupid. One night she was over here, we was watching some historical movie about some English king with four rotten sons. She said that’s what I ought to do—get myself a new, young wife, have me a passel of kids and disinherit the lot of you. I’m not too old to father sons.”
David nodded. “No, you’re not too old to marry again or to father sons.”
“Damn right.” He looked away. “Looking back on it, I think she’d been making those drinks of mine stronger than usual. Had a couple herself—rum punches. Taste like fruit juice, but they don’t call ’em punches for nothing.
“Waneath said it would serve Jason right if she was the one to give me those sons. It started out being funny. Then things got out of hand. I didn’t intend for it to go that far. To this day I don’t know whether she planned it or not. Everybody always said she was a gold digger. Maybe I was a better bet than waiting for Jason to get out of college.” He took a deep breath, and continued.
“I was also a hell of a lot likelier to die sooner. Afterward, she cut out of here like a scalded cat. I called her the next day, said I didn’t think it was a good idea her coming over here at night like that anymore.”
“How’d she take it?” David asked.
“Acted snippy, but I think she was relieved. It was really Jason she wanted. I think she just got carried away thinking about being mistress of Long Pond and how pleased her momma would be.”
“I can just bet,” David said. He glanced up at the portrait above the fireplace. Didn’t Dub see the correlation between what Waneath had tried to do to him and what Melba had accomplished with David? He looked at Dub, who sat slumped in his chair. No, he hadn’t made the connection, and David wasn’t about to point it out to him.
“Can I have a drink? I’m spitting cotton,” Dub said. David went to the bar in the loggia and came back with a soda over ice. He noticed that Dub’s hand shook when he took the glass. “Tell me about that night.”
“I didn’t have the first notion she’d actually gotten pregnant, David, you’ve got to believe me!”
“What would you have done if you’d known?”
“Probably offered to marry her. She never gave me the chance. Not until that night.”
“So you killed her?”
“No. I keep telling you it was an accident. She didn’t want to listen to me. Just started running up those stairs with her shoes in her hands like hammers. She was hysterical. Said I’d ruined her life. I think she was gonna hit me with ‘em, but she never got the chance. You know what that damn marble is like when it’s wet—it’s like glass. I was standing there staring at her with my mouth open, and about halfway up, her feet slipped out from under her. If she hadn’t been holding those shoes maybe she could a’ caught herself. As it was, she dropped ’em at the last minute—I guess that’s when she tore that fingernail loose that dropped off in the car—and I heard her head smack the edge of the stair. Sounded like the crack of doom.”
“Why didn’t you call 911?”
Dub shook his head. “Because she was all right! She seemed fine. She slid down a couple of stairs, but by the time I reached her she was sitting up shaking herself. She’d stopped being hysterical—I guess the fall scared that out of her. I grabbed ahold of her and helped her down to the chair by the front door. There wasn’t any blood. She said she’d probably have a big goose egg and how was she going to explain that to her parents. Then I went back and got her shoes, put them on her. Her feet were all muddy. She was shaking her head and staring up at me kind of bleary-eyed. I told her I was taking her to Jackson to the emergency room.”
“To the hospital?”
“Yeah, she didn’t want to go, but when she stood up, she said she felt kind of dizzy. I brought the car around and got her into it and we took off. I drove like a bat out of hell. She was sitting beside me with her eyes closed and her head back on the seat. I kept talking to her, but after a minute or so, she didn’t answer me. I figured she’d passed out. I have never been that scared in my life, let me tell you.”
“When did you discover she was dead?”
Dub sighed deeply. “I stopped by the levee where there weren’t any trees. The moonlight was shining into the car. I leaned over and tried to get her to respond. I’ve seen death before, David, plenty of times. I know dead, and she was dead. Her eyes and her mouth were open, staring. She didn’t have any pulse.” He dropped his head into his hands. “She was so cold.”
“So you picked her up, took her to the top of the levee and left her there?” David asked. “Why didn’t you go to the hospital?”
“I couldn’t, don’t you see? What was I gonna tell them? This nineteen-year-old girl just fell down my front-hall steps because she’s carrying my illegitimate baby? I couldn’t be associated with any of this.”
“But it was all right for Jason to be associated with it?”
“I thought they’d think it was a hit-and-run, or—hell, I don’t know what I was thinking except to get as far away as fast as I could. But I swear to God it never occurred to me that Jason would get blamed, or that they’d think she was murdered, for God’s sake.”
“But once they did, you still didn’t come forward, did you?”
“I couldn’t. It had gone too far. Besides, I was sure they’d drop the charges.”
“You do live in a fantasy world where everything works out the way you want it to.”
“Hell, nothing in my life ever worked out the way I wanted it to!” Dub said. “I never wanted any of this. I wanted to see the world, not be some dirt farmer with a wife I didn’t love and a daughter I couldn’t control.” He reached out to David and there were tears in his eyes. “You were the only good thing to come out of all this—you and Jason. Now I’ve lost you both just the way I’m going to lose Long Pond.”
“Dub, we’ve got to fix this,” David said.
“You believe me?”
“Yes, I believe you, but that doesn’t mean anyone else will.”
“I’ll go to the police. I’ll tell them what happened.”
“It’s too late for that. They’ll say you’re confessing just to save Jason.” He leaned over and reached for the telephone. “We’ve got to get Kate over here. She’ll know what to do.”
“No!” Dub roared. “I won’t go begging to some woman to save my bacon.”
“You don’t have a choice any longer.”
“No!” Dub stood and took two steps toward David. His face was suffused and dangerously red. Then the anger was replaced with bewilderment, and a sudden spasm of pain. He reached out one hand and pressed the area under his rib cage with the other. “David?” he choked.
Then he collapsed, full length, facedown, narrowly missing the corner of the desk.
David reached him in a stride and turned him over. Dub’s face was contorted. His breath soughed in his chest.
“Oh, God, I’m dying,” he groaned.
“Don’t you dare die on me, Dub,” David snapped. He reached up for the telephone on the desk and dialed 911.
Dub gripped his hand so hard it felt as though it would break. David grimaced, and returned the pressure. Dub’s eyes were terrified, his breath came in shallow gasps. He pulled David down to him with surprising strength. “Promise me,” he whispered through his teeth. “Promise me you’ll never leave Long Pond.”
“Dub...”
“Promise me. Oh, God, it hurts!” Dub’s back arched.
“Please, promise me.”
David sighed. “All right, Dub, I promise.”
“Say the words.”
“I promise I won’t leave Long Pond.”
Dub closed his eyes. For a moment the pain seemed to subside. In the distance, David could hear the clang on the Athena fire truck and rescue squad.
Dub looked up. “Power of attorney.” Every word seemed agonizing. “For you.”
“Don’t talk.”
“Got to. Read my will. You must... Power. In safe.” His mouth opened, his eyes rolled back in his head and he stopped breathing.
“Damn!” David leaned over, crossed his hands over Dub’s breastbone and began to count as he started CPR.
“My word, David,” Neva said from the hall. “What is all that... Oh, sweet heaven! Dub!”
“One, two, three, four,” David counted. He had little breath left over. This was much harder work than he’d ever suspected. He bent down to blow into Dub’s mouth. “Lei them in, Neva.”
The sirens cut off, and a moment later David heard the stomp of heavy male feet in the front hall. “In here!” he called.
He felt himself shoved away and other quiet, quick mer took his place. “I think he’s had a heart attack,” Davic said.
“Sure looks like it,” one of the EMTs said and called over his shoulder, “He’s breathing. Let’s roll.”
Two minutes later David followed them out the front door. “Where you taking him?”
“Jackson Memorial. Emergency cardiac unit.”
David nodded. “I’ll follow.” From the gurney he saw Dub’s hand wave. He forced away the oxygen mask that covered his face. David went to him. “Relax, Dub, you’re going to be fine.”
“Remember. You promised,” Dub whispered. “Your responsibility now. Read my will.”
David nodded. “Don’t worry about it.”
He watched the trucks roll out the driveway. He knew Dub had a living will and a power of attorney naming him executor in case of emergency. He’d better take both along with him in case he had to make decisions about Dub for the doctors.
He opened the wall safe quickly and began flipping through the blue folders of legal papers. He found the power of attorney quickly, but not Dub’s living will. He took a stack of papers to the desk, all the while telling himself to calm down, relax, that Dub would be fine, and all the time growing more and more guilty. Had he caused Dub’s heart attack?
He opened a folder that said will. Dub’s last will and testament. Dub wanted him to read it. Because he thought he was dying? He couldn’t die. David had always thought the old man would go on until the end of time. He didn’t want to open Dub’s will now, but he’d promised.
He opened it, scanned the legalese of the first pages and came to the main part. Jason was left one hundred thousand dollars in trust to be handed over on his twenty-fifth birthday. Everything else—Long Pond, the house, land, barns, stock—everything—went outright to David.
For a moment he was too stunned to take in what he’d read. Then he carefully refolded the will. Beneath it lay the living will. He put it and the power of attorney aside, replaced the other papers in the safe, closed and locked it just as Neva rushed back into the room.