Fox River (48 page)

J
ulia stared sightlessly at the flames. “My father was a large man.” She cleared her throat, as if she were fighting tears. “I had forgotten, but now I remember how I felt when he carried me. His grip was firm, but I would look down at the ground, and it seemed a million miles away. If I cried, he held me higher. He hated for me to be afraid.”

Maisy sat silently. She was trembling, and now that she had finished reading, her breath was coming in uneven spurts.

“He tried to teach me to ride,” Julia said. “He threw me to the ground when I cried.” She put her head in her hands.

Maisy gathered herself for what was to come. “How long have you known this was our story?”

“I don’t know. Not at first. Gradually. There’s been so much going on besides this. And I guess…I guess I didn’t want to know.”

“You stored it away deep inside you. You haven’t wanted to remember.”

“He was a bastard!”

“Your father could be a cruel man. He could also be funny and kind and charming. I was kept off balance.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me straight out? Why did you make the whole sordid drama into a novel? How much of what you’ve written is true and how much is fiction?”

“Too much is true. I loved a man. I married him. He had a demon inside him that few people ever saw, but I saw it all too often. You don’t need all the facts.”

“You weren’t married at the beginning of the twentieth century, like Louisa. You weren’t a stranger without friends. You were a modern woman from Baltimore. You could have gotten away.”

“That’s so easy to say now. But I wasn’t that different from Louisa. I was alone. My parents died when I was a child. The aunt who raised me died just after my marriage. I was pathetically young and innocent, and I loved Harry past believing. By the time I realized what I’d done to myself, the trap was set.”

“You could have left him.”

“I had no useful education, no financial resources, and little by little, step by step he convinced me and everyone who knew me that I was useless. Silly Maisy, foolish Maisy. It’s a terrible thing, an unbelievable thing, but it happens more often than anyone realizes. It happened to me. I believed him when he said I would never make it on my own, Julia, and he made threats. He had a priceless gun collection. He would take out each gun and make me sit there while he cleaned and fondled it, aiming it at me and pretending to pull the trigger. Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.”

“Why have you kept his memory sacred, then? Why tell me the truth about him this way? And now?”

“When you were growing up I couldn’t see the point. Why tell you that your father had hurt you? You couldn’t remember it. Why make you hate him? Then I began to block it out, too. I asked myself if it had really happened. Everyone knows how silly I am, how flighty. Maybe I had imagined the worst parts. Maybe there were other explanations. I couldn’t bring myself to believe I had settled for nothing in my marriage except fear and self-loathing.”

“And now?”

“There have been too many lies and too many secrets. Look what they’ve done to you. I watched your marriage to Bard and realized that, in some ways, you had picked a man like your father. Sometimes we accept what’s familiar, even if it’s not good or safe. Bard tried to control you, not in the same ways, but with variations on the theme. I finally faced the fact that I had been part of a conspiracy, and I had allowed you to repeat the same patterns because you didn’t know better.”

Maisy got up and went to sit beside her daughter. “I’ve wanted to tell you for years. I just didn’t know how to do it.”

“So you put it in a novel.”

“Julia, Yvonne knows the truth. She told me to take this slowly. We agreed you should see the truth a little at a time.”

“And the ending?”

Maisy wrung her hands, ineffectual hands covered with sparkling rings. Hands that had not, despite her best efforts, been able to shield her beloved daughter.

“It’s true,” she breathed. “I whipped Harry’s horse across that final jump.”

Julia shook her head. “I remember a scream.”

“Only mine.” Maisy stretched out her hand, withdrew it, stretched it out again, but she didn’t touch Julia. “Your father died instantly, I think.”

“And was he glad that the demons would be stilled at last? Or is that fiction, too?”

“I don’t know. He was a tormented soul. I don’t believe he wanted to be the man he was.”

Julia reached out, and Maisy took her hand. “I don’t expect forgiveness,” Maisy said.

Julia clasped it hard. “Have you forgiven yourself?”

“It’s taken most of my life.”

“I was so afraid of horses, so afraid of learning to ride. And still, I loved them.”

“You came by the love naturally. You came by the fear at your father’s knee. You have Harry’s good qualities and none of his bad. You overcame your fear with his tenacity. You wear it well.”

Julia brought her mother’s hand to her cheek. “I have to be alone now.” She stood. She started across the room as Maisy watched; then she turned. “Maisy, does Jake know the truth?”

“No. I’ve never told anyone except Yvonne.”

“Are you going to let him read your…novel?”

“I’m going to feed it to the flames.”

“I think that’s a good idea.” Julia hesitated. “But you should write another.” She hesitated again. “Are you going to tell Jake?”

“Yes. I’m going to tell him tonight. Jake’s waited nearly as long as you have to hear the truth. I think he’s run out of patience.”

“You said you didn’t expect me to forgive you.”

“I don’t.”

“Is that my father’s legacy, too?”

Maisy couldn’t answer.

“You were always there for me, Maisy. Always. But until tonight I never realized how much.”

Maisy watched her daughter find her way out of the room, Harry Ashbourne’s only child. Maisy wanted to believe that the Harry she had fallen in love with, the man deep inside the raging beast, would be proud of the woman he had sired.

But she was proud enough for both of them.

Half an hour later she was still sitting in an armchair, watching flames die in the fireplace. Tomorrow she would clean out the ashes and sprinkle them in Jeb Stuart Creek. Fox River, Harry had nicknamed the creek, because of the multitude of dens near its banks.

“Fox River. The place where the hunt always begins…”

She began to cry.

“Maisy?”

She heard Jake before she saw him. She opened her eyes and saw he was kneeling beside her chair. “Maisy, are you all right?”

“I’m going to be. I’m really going to be.”

He took her hand. “Come to bed.”

“I have a story to tell you.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes. Will you listen?”

He put his fingertips under her chin and lifted it. Jake had the kindest eyes. The first time she’d looked into them, she had thought that perhaps she had found a man who could love her at last.

Now his eyes were filled with concern. “I’ve just been waiting to listen. I can wait as long as it takes.”

“You already have.”

He got to his feet and held out his hand. She took it and held it against her cheek, the way Julia had held hers.

Sometime during a sleepless night the door to Julia’s room opened and bare feet scurried across the floor.

“I can’t sleep. Can I sleep with you?”

No request had ever been more welcome. Julia moved to the edge of the bed and opened her arms to her daughter. “Sure, sweetums. But what’s wrong?”

“Maisy and Jake are talking.”

“They are?”

“I hear whispers. It’s weird.”

“I guess it is.” Julia pulled Callie against her and kissed her hair. She thought of Christian and cuddled her closer. “You had fun at the cabin?”

“Uh-huh,” Callie said sleepily. “I love you, Mommy.”

“I love you, too. Sleep tight.”

Julia didn’t know what time it was, and she didn’t expect to fall asleep herself. She had cried away all her tears, but fragmented memories still paraded through her head. She no longer had the luxury of opening her eyes to ward off bad memories. Darkness was her companion, and with it now, the past.

The warmth of Callie’s small body began to seep inside her. She thought of Maisy, who had risked so much, suffered so much. And Callie, whose challenges were still ahead. She thought of the father she’d known so briefly and the terrible impact he’d had on her life.

She had witnessed Harry Ashbourne’s death, although she still couldn’t remember anything except Maisy’s scream. But “Alice” had been silenced for months, and Julia was afraid that that part, too, wasn’t fiction.

As a child she had been mute, and now she was blind. She had a body that acted out the dramas locked inside her head, and still, despite all her flaws and turmoil, she was loved. By Jake. By Maisy. By Callie.

By Christian.

She slept at last, and in her dream she was in familiar woods far behind the stone cottage, riding unwillingly toward Jeb Stuart Creek. A giant on a horse in front of her turned and shouted something that made her cower in her saddle. Suddenly the giant sailed off the back of his horse and through the air, soaring with the wings of a great black vulture, until the sun was blocked by his immensity.

Then he was gone, and the world was a brighter place.

She woke with a start, frightened and breathing hard, until she heard Callie’s soft breathing beside her. She was afraid it might still be night. She opened her eyes, as she did every morning, as if opening them might make a difference.

The room seemed unfamiliar. She stared, refusing at first to believe what she saw.
That
she saw.

Callie slept on beside her, beautiful Callie, with sunshine-colored hair, like her father’s. Callie with rosy cheeks and dirt under her fingernails. Callie, her perfect little daughter.

She sat up and realized that light was streaming through a window. She heard birds singing and something else. The
clip-clop
of a horse’s hoofs on the driveway.

She rose, such an easy task for the sighted, afraid she was still dreaming. Her gown was pale blue and tumbled to her feet. She’d thought it was yellow. The floor was heart of pine, the bed frame maple. She took a step, disoriented at first, but she didn’t fall. She took another, clasping her hands to her cheeks.

She opened the window to a rush of cold air, but it couldn’t wake her, because she
was
awake. She leaned out and closed her eyes, and the sunshine disappeared. Open again, the world was light, filled with blue sky and the last autumn leaves clinging to spidery branches waving in a morning breeze.

A man was on the road outside, a man on a huge gray horse. His hair shone in the sunshine. The face was older but every bit as dear as she remembered. His shirt was blue, his jeans faded.

She could never know the future, and the past was gone, but that moment, that priceless, perfect moment, was everything. He looked in her direction, head proud and high.

“Jules?”

“You look wonderful! I’m going to paint you just that way. Wait for me!”

She didn’t linger to witness his surprise and joy as he realized she could see again. She simply ran through the house to meet him.