Seidel, Kathleen Gilles (17 page)

"Of course." The biggest surprise of the picnic had been Brad. This reserved, awkward man adored his grandchildren. He had held Taffy's baby most of the time she had been there, and during the battle he had gone behind the line of spectators to play with the children. He had played soccer with a beach ball and three toddlers. He had gone down on his hands and knees to be their horsey. Upright again, he had given airplane spins... and yes, he had held the children by their upper arms.

He was at his best with the little ones. With Allison, nine-year-old Steve, and the twins, who were a pair of smart-mouthed seven-year-olds, he grew more cautious. It was only in the uncritical company of the youngest that he relaxed.

"I'm afraid," he was saying to Jill, "that I need to get home and help Louise get ready for tomorrow, and this is Dave and Ginny's bridge club night. But the girls are all going over to Carolyn's. She says they'll get a movie for the kids and order pizza. Does that seem satisfactory?"

What could Jill say? It sounded like a fine arrangement, and at any other time she would have gone happily. But right now she wanted to stay here and wait for Doug. He said he would come back, and she wanted to be here when he came.

It was like in the movie when Sheridan and the Yankees came to burn Briar Ridge. Phillip rounded up the horses that the Confederate cavalry needed so desperately and drove them into hiding, knowing that he was leaving Mary Deas to face an invading army alone. He came back as soon as he dared, running through the ruined garden, calling her name, hunting for her, desperately hunting for her, fearing that the Yankees had killed her or taken her with them.

A shadowy figure appeared at the cellar steps. Phillip stepped behind a tree, drawing his gun. It might be a Yankee. Then the shadow took shape, a woman's shape. It was Mary Deas. With heart-stopping joy he ran to her.

It was like that. Doug would came back hot and tired, his uniform ripped and stained. She had to be here. She couldn't let him return to an empty meadow.

"Oh, please, Aunt Jill. Do come." Allison was at Brad's side, her hazel eyes pleading. "You'll be able to see Belle. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

Yes, Jill would like that. She forced herself to think clearly. This was nothing at all like
Weary Hearts.
The worse danger either she or Doug had faced this afternoon was a sunburnt nose. He had borrowed his uniform; he wouldn't have let it get ripped or stained. Even if she spent the evening with the family, she would be back at the motel tonight. He had found her this morning. He would find her again.

She now became Allison's special property, riding with her in the back seat of Carolyn and Brian's Volvo station wagon. Brian was the doctor son-in-law, and as they were waiting in a long line of cars inching their way out of the grassy parking area, he reached into the glove compartment and handed Jill a map so that, while listening to Allison's equestrian chatter, she was able to orient herself. Luray, where Carolyn and Brian lived, was east of New Market. Courthouse, where most of the Caslers lived, was to the north. Winchester, where the Ringlings were from, was still farther north.

Carolyn and Brian had recently built a house on twenty acres outside Luray. It was a big house, nearly six thousand square feet, and they were clearly quite proud of it. As soon as the children were settled in front of the television and drinks had been offered to the adults, Jill was taken on a tour.

She didn't particularly like the house. It was certainly liveable. The three-car garage led into a pretty laundry room that led into a large kitchen, which, in turn, opened into a family room with a rough-hewn stone fireplace. There were six bedrooms, a finished basement, closets everywhere, and a pool out back. It was an upper-middle-class dream.

But it had no character. The front half of the house was traditional Georgian with an arching, airy foyer flanked by a formal living room and dining room. The back half was Californian, full of light and glass and cathedral ceilings. Atrium doors and Palladian windows were stuck in every available place.

"I suppose you live in some sort of mansion," Carolyn said as they were standing in her eleven-by-fourteen marble bathroom, the defensiveness in her voice reminding Jill that she was Louise's daughter.

"Oh, no. Not at all," Jill assured her. "My house is so much smaller than this. I have two bedrooms and less closet space in the whole place than Allison has in her bedroom."

Jill's house had been built back in the twenties as the guest cottage for an estate long since razed. It had been a funny little timber-and-stone fake-Cotswolds thing, and as it had been designed as a guest house, it had originally had no kitchen. One had been added later, but to reach it, you had to go through what had been the coat closet. Nor had the house had a dining room; the first floor had been given over to a double parlor with built-in glass-fronted bookcases and—

And it was gone, lost, carried away by the mud. Jill had to blink and hold her eyes open wide.

What was wrong with her? She wasn't going to cry about her house, was she?

She had given Carolyn the wrong impression; she had let Carolyn think that she still lived there. She should tell her... not from any grand commitment to the truth, but because self-disclosure was a building block in relationships. Jill had learned that in group, and she believed it. She wasn't any good at it, but she did believe it.

She wasn't looking for a new house partly because she didn't know what she wanted in a house. Carolyn had obviously spent a long, long time thinking about what she wanted in her house; maybe something in her experience would help Jill. Such a conversation would certainly bring the two of them closer.

But the step between learning something in group and applying it to your own life was a big one. Alice had always said,
Don't worry other people with your problems.
Her mother had begged,
Talk to me. Tell me what you're feeling.
Between these two extremes, Jill had felt paralyzed.

So she said nothing.

As they came down the steps, the tour over, they saw Brian closing the wide front door with his foot, his arms full of pizza boxes. Carolyn hurried over to take them from him, and as she took them back to the kitchen, he spoke to Jill. "I hope you don't think we're insensitive."

"Insensitive?" She didn't know what he was talking about. What was insensitive about carry-out pizza?

"About the money, your father's money. You must have been thinking about it when looking at the house."

Jill hadn't been. It rarely occurred to her to ask how people could afford their possessions. "Is that what you did with the money he left you, put it into the house?"

"Some of it... although we all, except Randy, set aside college money first. I tell you, Jill, I'm a doctor, and I do fine. But even so, college for four children... that's something to worry about. Then, all of a sudden, because of your father, I didn't have to worry about it anymore. I remember lying in bed the night after we had a financial planner work it all out for us, thinking 'I don't ever have to think about the college thing again.' It was heaven."

"That's really nice. I know Cass would be glad to hear that." Cass might have pretended that he had left money to his grandchildren only to make Ellen mad, but Jill had never believed that.

"It was such a surprise." Brian was shaking his head, remembering. "Brad had always made it clear to Randy and the girls that there wouldn't be anything. When Carolyn and I got engaged, he sat down with me and said that if I had heard anything about a rich grandfather—which I hadn't—not to count on it, that he and Dave had been taken care of years ago and that was the end of it. Then he came home from the funeral with this news... I can't tell you how stunned we all were. Even Louise didn't know what to say."

That must have amazed the family as much as the unexpected legacies.

"Anyway," Brian went on, "we put away the college money, got Allison her horse, and the rest we put into the house. We already had bought the land and had had a set of plans drawn up—as I said, my practice does all right. So we used your father's money for the frills—the marble in the foyer, the pool, the Corian in the kitchen, the stable. All that adds up fast."

"What did the others do with their money?" Jill asked, genuinely curious.

"Randy put his into his business, and the others had babies."

"I beg your pardon?"

"My kids have three one-year-old cousins, and your father died two years ago. Put it together. Everybody but us was committed to two-kid families, and then all this extra money turned up, for college, bigger houses, full-time cleaning ladies. All of a sudden, everyone except Carolyn was pregnant. Taffy's on her second post-money baby."

"That's wonderful." A delicious little shiver ran down Jill's arms. A business was good, a new house and a horse were nice too, but what finer thing could extra money be used on than a baby?

Some people in her therapy group believed that all that stood between them and happiness was money. Sometimes Jill was tempted to say, "Look, I'll pay for you to have that housekeeper, that car, that trip, and you'll see, it won't make any difference. You'll still be you." But, clearly, money had made a difference in the lives of these people. Probably because they were happy to begin with.

It also sounded like her father had willed his grandchildren exactly the right amount—not enough to tempt them into idleness or a changed life-style, but enough to make their already chosen lives measurably more comfortable.

Brian continued. "Carolyn and the others all grew up hearing that you aren't supposed to talk about money, so they probably won't say anything to you... even though they are dying of curiosity to find out what it's like to have as much as you do. But I wanted to say something, to let you know that we haven't taken it for granted. I know that none of us knew your father, and we didn't have any particular feelings when he died. But it does mean something to me that this man who might not have even known my name, who my wife only remembers meeting once, that he must have wished me well."

Jill was almost in tears. She had loved her father so. "Oh, he knew your name. Don't doubt that for a moment."

The saddest thing Jill had found when cleaning out the Bel Air house had been a small, leather-bound calendar on her father's nightstand. It was a diary-type calendar, listing dates without assigning them to days of the week so that it could be used year after year. Only one kind of information had been recorded on its pages, and all of it had been in Cass's own hand—the birthdays of all his grandchildren, and then of their children. The girls' wedding anniversaries had been marked along with their husbands' names.

It had been right next to the lamp. It hadn't even been inside a drawer. Cass must have looked at it every morning and given a few moments' thought, perhaps even said a prayer, for whoever was having their special day, even though in many cases he had never met that person. Until she had seen that book, Jill hadn't had any idea how strong Cass's feelings were for this family in Virginia. He had chosen between them and his career, and a part of him must have always regretted that choice. It had been forty years, and the pain had never fully eased.

"Oh, I'm sorry." Brian put his arm around Jill's shoulders. "I've made you cry."

"It's all right," she said, sniffing, taking his handkerchief. "I'm sorry. I don't usually fall apart like this."

"It's me. Someone should have warned you. I make people cry. My patients look like raccoons because they've got their mascara all over everywhere."

He talked lightly for another moment, giving Jill a chance to collect herself, and then, his arm still around her, took her back into the family room, now crowded with people eating pizza.

It was as if her tears had cleared her eyes, and suddenly she could see among them signs of her father. Christa and little Matthew had his high forehead. Carolyn and Stacey had had to choose their earrings carefully; they both had his sharply tapering earlobes. Two of the little one-year-olds had those ears as well. The twins and their cousin Steve had Cass's eyes, deep-set and grey-blue. Yet none of them were thinking about him. None of them knew anything about him.

Yesterday she had thought it would be hard to share Cass with her two brothers. Now she realized that this was harder, the knowledge that no one wanted what she would find so difficult to share. "Grandfather Casler" was a stranger who had given them money. They appreciated that. But the important things about him, his charm, his quiet warmth, his remarkable talents, they knew nothing about.

"Aunt Jill?" It was Allison, and Jill looked down at her, searching her face for Cass's mark. "Do you want to come see Belle now?"

"I'd love to."

Out beyond the swimming pool Carolyn and Brian had built a small stable. It was a well-designed little building, picking up some of the architectural detail from the main house. Inside were a small tack room and two roomy box stalls. Allison unlatched the gate to the stall on the right and cooed to her horse.

Jill followed her into the stall. Belle was a bay, finely built, pretty, and small without being at all pony-like. Her face was dished, her ears delicate, her mane and tie flowing. Jill guessed that she had some Arabian ancestry.

Jill held out her hand. Belle smelled it, and Jill spoke to her in a low voice. Then, in a moment, she moved closer and ran her hand down the horse's sleek, muscled neck.

What a marvelous horse. In fact, it was a little surprising how good she was. Brian did not seem like the type who would over-buy. Allison must have tremendous potential as a rider if her parents had bought her such a good horse.

"She's magnificent." Jill looked back at Allison. "You must love her."

"Oh, I do. I really do. Would you like to ride her?" Allison asked. "Or we could go out together. I could ask Emily if you could take Dodger." Allison gestured over her shoulder at the other box where a friend of hers kept a horse. "I know she wouldn't mind. What about tomorrow? Could you do it tomorrow?"