When Heaven Weeps (25 page)

“She's possessed me, Dan. I feel like I'm falling apart when she's not with me.”

“Then you should get some help. The wrong woman can bring a man down, you know. You're going too far with this.”

Glenn had not responded.

“How can one woman do this to you?” his friend pressed. “There's a hundred women waiting for you out there.”

Glenn had glared at the man and effectively cut him off.

Now he lifted the bottle and chugged at its mouth. The liquid burned down his throat but he didn't flinch. He would suck it dry, he thought. Tilt it up and suck at the bottle until it imploded. Or just stuff the whole thing into his throat. No pain, no gain. And what was paining now? His chest was paining because Helen had driven a stake through his heart, and regardless of what that old witch Beatrice told him, he did still have a heart. It was as big as the sky and it was burning like hell.

He yanked the bottle from his mouth and hurled it against the mirrored wall. It shattered with a splintering crash.
Don't be such a melodramatic lush, Lutz
.

The phone shrilled in the dead silence and he bolted upright. He scrambled for it, grasping for the tiniest thread that it might be Helen.

“Lutz.”

“Glenn.” It was the witch. Glenn slumped on the bar.

“I've got a phone call for you. You may want to take it.”

“I'm not taking phone calls.” The phone clicked in his ear before he could slam it in the witch's ear. She'd disconnected him. That was it! He was going to walk over there right now and— “Hello?”

The voice spoke softly in the receiver and Glenn's heart slammed up into his throat. He jerked upright.

“Hello?”

His voice wavered. “Helen?”

“Hi, Glenn.”

Helen! Glenn's heart was now kicking against the walls of his chest. Tears flooded his eyes. Oh, God, it was Helen! He wanted to scream at her. He wanted to beg for her.

“You're mad at me?” she said quietly.

Glenn squeezed his eyes and fought for control. “Mad? Why did you leave? Why do you keep leaving?”

“I don't know, Glenn.” She paused. By the sound of her voice she was near tears. “Listen, I want some stuff.”

“Who are you with?”

“No one. I'm staying in this man's house with the lady I told you about, but she went home to water some flowers or something. She'll be gone for a few hours.”

“You think I don't know? You think I'm useless here, waiting for you to come crawling home!”
Easy, boy. Play her. Lure her
.

He took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “I miss you, Helen. I really miss you.”

She remained silent.

“What did I do to make you leave? Just tell me,” he begged.

“You hit me.”

“You don't like that? You don't like being hit like that? I'm sorry. I swear, I'm sorry. I thought you liked it, Helen. Do you?”

“No.” Her voice was very soft now.

“Then, I'm sorry. I swear I won't do it again. Please, Helen, you're killing me here. I miss you, sweety.”

“I miss you too, Glenn.”

Really? Dear Helen, really?
Tears slipped down his cheek.

“I want to come, Glenn. But I want you to promise me some things, okay?”

“Yes, anything. I'll promise you anything, Helen. Please just come home.”

“You have to promise me that you'll let me come whenever I want.”

“Yes. Yes, I swear.”

“And you've got to promise me that I can leave whenever I want. Promise that, Glenn. You can't force me to stay. I want to stay, but not if you force me.”

He hesitated, finding the words difficult. On the other hand, she already had the power. And what was in a promise but words? “I promise. I swear you can leave whenever you wish.”

“And I don't want you to hit me, Glenn. Anything else, but no hitting.”

This time everything within him raged against the absurdity of her request. Letting her go was one thing, but she wanted to castrate him as well? He was slipping, he thought. “I promise, Helen.”

“You promise all of those things, Glenn. Otherwise I don't think I can come.”

“I said I promise! What else do you want? You want me to cut off my fingers?”
Easy, easy.
He lowered his voice. “Yes, I promise, Helen.”

She hesitated and he wondered if he'd lost her on that last one. He felt panic swell in his chest.

“Can you send a car?” she asked.

“I'll have a car there in two minutes. I have one just down the street.” She didn't respond. “Okay, Helen?”

“Okay.”

“Okay. You won't be sorry, Helen. I swear you won't be sorry.”

“Okay. Bye.” The phone clicked off.

Glenn set the receiver in its cradle with a shaking hand. Exhilaration coursed through his veins and he gasped for breath. He uttered a small squeaking sound and skipped out to the middle of the room and back. When he went for the phone to call Buck, his hands were shaking so badly he could barely dial the number.

She would be here in fifteen minutes! Oh, so many preparations to make. So many, so many he could hardly stand it.

THERE WERE three flowers now, each the size of small melons, brilliant white and edged in red, twice as large as any other flower in the greenhouse. Joey inspected each part of the plant with delicate fingers. He'd always reminded Ivena of a jockey, very lean and short, hardly the type you might figure for a renowned horticulturist. He looked more the average gardener than the scientist with his frumpy slacks and cotton shirt.

“What do you make of them?” Ivena asked.

The small man pried through the petals and grunted. “Boy they sure do put off their aroma, don't they?”

“Yes. Have you seen anything like them?”

“And you're saying that you didn't make this graft? 'Cause this is definitely a graft.”

“Not that I remember. Heavens, I'm not that forgetful.”

“No, of course not. Has anybody else had access to this greenhouse?”

“No.”

“Then, we'll assume that you made this graft.”

“I'm telling you—”

“For the sake of argument, Ivena. It certainly didn't just appear on its own. Either way, I've never seen a graft like this. We're looking at several weeks' worth of growth here and—”

“No. Less than a week.”

He dipped his head and looked at her over his wire-frame glasses. “This from the woman who doesn't even remember grafting the plant? I'm just telling you what my eyes see, Ivena. You decide what you want to believe.”

She nodded. He was wrong, of course, but she let it go.

“Even with a few weeks' growth, these flowers are extraordinary. You see there the stamen reminds of the lily, but these white petals lined in red—I've never seen them.”

“Could they be tropical?”

“We're in Atlanta, not the tropics. I did my thesis on tropical aberrations in subtropical zones, and I've never come across anything like this.”

He touched and squeezed and
humphed
for a few minutes without offering any further comment. She let him examine the bush at his pace and searched her memory again for the grafting he'd insisted she must have done. But still she knew that he was wrong. She'd no more grafted the vine into the rosebush than she'd won the Pulitzer recently.

Joey finally straightened and pulled off his glasses. “Hmm. Incredible. Would you mind me taking one of these flowers to the Botanical Gardens Lab? It has to exist. I'm just not placing it here. But with some analysis I think we can. May take a couple weeks.” He shook his head. “I've never even heard of a vine like this taking off from a rosebush.”

“You want to cut one off ?”

“Just one. You have plenty more coming along behind these. They are flowers, not children.”

“No, of course they aren't. Yes, you may. Just one,” she said.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE LONELINESS had struck Helen after two hours with Glenn while Ivena was off attending her flowers. Thing of it was, she was even high at the moment, but the emotion still swept through her bones like an unquenchable tide. Sorrow.

Somehow things had gotten turned around in her mind. This wasn't the Palace as Glenn liked to call it. This was feeling like a dungeon next to Jan's house. She had left the white palace for the dirty dungeon—that's how it felt and it was making her sick. Worse, she had left a prince for this monster.

She'd rolled on the bed and thought about that. The preacher wasn't her prince. He couldn't be. They were like dirt and vanilla pudding; you just don't mix the two. And it was clear who was who.

Not that Jan wasn't a prince—he was; just not her prince. He could never be her lover. Imagine that. What would they say to that? Helen winning the heart of a famous writer who drove around in a white Cadillac. A shy, handsome man with hazel eyes and wavy hair and a real brain under those curls. A real man.

Given just the two of them without all this mess around them, she might even have a shot with him. She might not be Miss Socialite, but she was a woman, and one who had no problem reading the look in a man's eyes. Jan's looks were not the roving kind she was used to, but there was light there, wasn't there? At times she thought it might be pain. Empathy. But at other times it had made her heart beat a little faster. Either way, each time they had been together his looks had come often and long. That much was enough, wasn't it?

He likes you, Helen.

He's married.

No, he's not. He's engaged.

Goodness, just imagine having a man like that on your arm! Or imagine someone like that actually loving you. That last thought felt absurd, like the drugs were talking, and she pushed the nonsense from her mind.

But the sorrow wouldn't budge, and the thoughts returned five minutes later
. But what if, Helen
.

What if ? I would die for a man like that! I'd be happy to just sit with him and hold his hand and cry on his shoulder. And I would love him until the day I died, that's what if. And not just a man like that, but Jan.

But then again, she was the dirt and he was the vanilla. She'd never deserve a man like that. There was no mixing the two.

She'd stayed another hour and then left the big pig facedown on the floor, passed out next to a small pool of his own vomit.

She'd returned still intoxicated, and to her relief Ivena was still gone. She climbed under clean sheets and passed out without removing her clothes.

Ivena was upstairs cooking breakfast when she awoke. It gave her time to shower and change before presenting herself with as much confidence as she could muster. If Ivena knew anything about her little escapade to the dungeon, she didn't show it.

Helen spent most of the day walking around the house in a daze and for the most part Ivena let her be. Jan's home really did feel like a palace, and in a strange way she felt like dirt on its floor. But she could clean up, couldn't she? The notion brought a buzz to her mind.
What if ?

And Jan was coming home tonight.

JAN PARKED the Cadillac on the street and walked up the path to his home two days later, on Sunday evening. Darkness had quieted the city, bringing with it a cool breeze. The cicadas were in full chorus, chirping without pause, ever-present but invisible in the night. The oak cross hung undisturbed above his door.
In living we die; In dying we live
.

The trip to New York had come off as well as they had planned in most regards and better than they had imagined in others. They'd signed the deal on Saturday, deposited the million dollars with some fanfare, and decided to stay in the Big Apple through Sunday. Jan had called Ivena and been informed that nothing had happened. At least nothing that he should concern himself about. Ivena had not elaborated. She'd made some flower deliveries on Friday evening—a few late customers to catch before the weekend—but otherwise she and Helen had mostly sat around talking and growing tired of remaining in a house that was not her own.

He withdrew his key and opened the front door. Dim light glowed from the far hall leading to the bedrooms, but the rest of the house lay in darkness. He flipped the switch that controlled the entryway lights. They stuttered to life.

“Hello.”

Silence.

“Ivena!”

Jan walked into the living room, still holding his overnight bag. Had they left? He flipped another switch and the room stuttered to life. No sign of the women. “Ivena!”

“Hello, Jan.”

He whirled to the voice. Helen stood, arms crossed, leaning on the wall in the hall's soft light with one leg cocked like a stork. Immediately his knees felt weak, as if she'd injected him with a drug that had gone for his joints.

“Good night! You scared me,” he said.

“I'm sorry,” Helen returned. But she was smiling.

“Where . . . where's Ivena?”

“She left an hour ago. Said she couldn't spend the rest of her life here while her flowers died at home. She's pretty excited about some flowers that she says are going nuts over there. We haven't heard a peep from anyone so we figured it would be safe enough.”

“She just left? Is she coming back?” Helen lowered her arms and walked into the light. He saw the difference immediately and his heart jumped. She wore a strapless white evening dress with a sheen, and it flowed with her small frame like a fluid cream. She wore sandals and a pearl necklace that sparkled in the kitchen light. But it was her face that had pricked his heart. She was smiling and staring at him. The bruises had vanished, either under the hand of God or with the careful application of makeup, and honestly he thought it must have been the hand of God, because her complexion appeared as smooth as new ivory. Her hair lay just below her ears, bending in delicate curls.

Jan's hand released the travel bag he'd carried in. It landed with a distant
thump
. Goodness, he'd all but forgotten about the madness.