Aly's House (18 page)

She sat down again, confused and sorrowful. Was she doing the right thing? Did she have the right to keep Marshall from knowing his child? Did she have the right to do this to her father and Lorne Junior? Her family would never forgive her. They would call her a traitor and a fool, a woman who not only lost her family and the bank, but lost the man for whom she had sacrificed them. But what else could she do? A little boy's happiness was at stake, his future, his life. None of their lives, their happiness were more important than his. Her father, Victoria, Marshall—they all had themselves to thank for the decision she was forced to make. Peter shouldn't be made to suffer for the mistakes that would drive a wedge between himself and the man he thought his father. He shouldn't have to bear the ridicule and scandal that would be sure to follow. He might never recover from such a trauma.

Slowly, Aly pulled out a drawer in the refectory table. She took out paper and pen. “Dear Marshall…” she began.

The Claiborne Public Library, its plain white stucco frame embellished by a decade's growth of climbing ivy and banks of bright yellow forsythia, had been spared so much as the disturbance of a leaf by the tornado. The building reposed on a lush lawn at the end of the residential street where her parents lived, and Aly hoped that her car would escape notice from someone in the house.

Miss Trudy Templeton, the aged librarian with whom Aly had been friends since she was old enough to read, greeted her visitor warmly. “Alyson, dear, I was so happy to hear that Green Meadows was spared. What a shame if that beautiful house had been destroyed and those lovely horses left homeless.”

“We were very fortunate, as were you, it seems,” said Aly, looking around at her childhood sanctuary. “I have a favor to ask you, Miss Trudy. I want you to witness and notarize something. You've still got your seal, haven't you?”

“Oh, dear me, yes. Wouldn't give it up for the world. How else would I be privy to half the secrets of Claiborne? Not that I ever tell them, mind you,” she twinkled conspiratorially.

A few minutes later, Miss Trudy was affixing her seal to a letter of proxy giving Marshall the right to vote her shares in the coming stockholders' meeting. The librarian glanced over it, then at Aly. “Lordy sakes, but this news would rival the tornado
were I to make it known.
” She emphasized the last heavily. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

Aly nodded, remembering how Trudy Templeton had disapproved the foreclosure of Cedar Hill. “By tomorrow at lunch everybody will know its contents anyway, so after that you might as well go ahead and add your earful.”

What's this?
Marshall asked himself, thinking he knew as he tore open the flap of an envelope bearing the return address of Cedar Hill. Before going to his motel room he had checked at the desk to see if Aly might have left him a note explaining her disappearance. They had not been worried about her out at Green Meadows until Victoria had appeared in the doorway of one of the barns exclaiming that she'd not been able to find Aly anywhere. Then they'd all been frantic until Aly called Willy to say that she was in Oklahoma City.

“Where is she staying in Oklahoma City?” Victoria had demanded when Marshall called her after speaking with Willy.

“I don't know, Victoria. She wouldn't say.”

“When will she be back?”

“She didn't say that either.”

“Marshall Wayne, you're the cause of all this!” The phone had gone down with a bang, and Marshall had felt a claw of fear rake his spine.

Now he drew out two sheets of paper. His eyes would not let him believe the first. It was a signed, witnessed, and notarized letter of proxy giving him the right to vote Aly's shares in the stockholders' meeting tomorrow. The note stated that the shares would be reissued in his name at one o'clock on one condition. The condition was explained.

Fatigue gone, every corpuscle alert to the significance of the terse wording, Marshall crumpled the note in his hand. So now she knew. She knew everything. And she had given him the means to destroy Lorne Kingston.

At nine o'clock the next morning while Marshall, she assumed, was dressing for the stockholders' meeting, Aly had finished a third cup of coffee in the restaurant of the motel where she had spent a sleepless night. No use dallying any longer, she said to herself. She had to get back and face all the music.
Where did the negative implication of that cliché come from
, she wondered irrelevantly.
Face the music.
She loved music. After today there would be little enough of it in her life.

Aly summoned the waitress for her bill. At the door, hand on its crossbar, she paused a moment, reflecting that from this exit on, her life would never be the same.

At five minutes until ten, Marshall Wayne strolled into the conference room of the Kingston State Bank where the rest of the stockholders had already assembled and were helping themselves to doughnuts and coffee. Marshall nodded pleasantly as he approached the refreshment table, seemingly unaware of the gradual silence falling at his entrance. He had never looked more urbane. Faultlessly attired in a gray suit and crisp blue shirt, silk tie and highly polished shoes, he appeared the ultimate New York banker.

“Good morning,” he said congenially as Lorne Senior, complacency sliding from his face like gray paint down smoothly weathered wood, cut through the group to confront him.

“What are you doing here? You're not a stockholder.”

“Today I am.” Marshall handed the banker Aly's proxy letter.

Lorne read the contents, then gaped at him in speechless incredulity for a full minute while Marshall casually munched a doughnut. “She—she—can't do this!” Lorne gasped at last. “She can't do this…”

Oh, Lord, not now
, Aly lamented silently, seeing Victoria's blue station wagon parked in the drive. Of all people she could do without seeing at the moment, it was Victoria. Immediately, she regretted the thought. After this morning, her sister might never set foot in her house again.

“Where have you been?” Victoria demanded, meeting Aly at the door. “We've all been worried sick about you. Why didn't you let us know where you were going?”

“I'm sorry to have worried you,” Aly said. “I—I just wanted to be alone for a while. It must have been a delayed reaction to the shock of the tornado, seeing your house and so many others destroyed—”

“Phooey! It wasn't that, and you know it. Nothing in this world has ever made you turn tail and run, Aly Kingston, nothing! Not even dear old Dad!” She yanked open her purse and pulled out the marriage license. “It was this, wasn't it, that made you leave so suddenly yesterday.”

Aly wanted to deny it, but she hadn't the strength. She nodded slowly.

“Well, let's go in here and talk about it,” Victoria said in a softer tone and took Aly's arm. “To tell you the truth, I'm relieved that you know, although I am a little surprised at your reaction. You've always been so broadminded and accepting. I'd have predicted that you'd simply shrug and say so what.” She led the way into the front parlor.

Aly stared after her. Victoria's brain power had not improved since her marriage, but her sensibilities had. Surely she had not missed all these years how much she cared for Marshall.

“Now let's just sit down and have a woman-to-woman talk,” Victoria suggested, patting the sofa. “I want to tell you about Peter's father.”

Reluctantly, Aly sat down beside her. “If you don't mind, Victoria, I'd really rather not know about Peter's father—”

“Well, I want you to know!” Victoria declared in a voice that echoed her old self. “I don't want you thinking badly of me.”

“I don't think badly of you, Victoria.”

“Well, you're acting like it,” she said, and added, “Aly, Peter will never know, so you don't have to worry about that.”

Aly swallowed. “I hope you're right.”

“I lied to you about not knowing Marshall in New York.”

“Yes, I know. He told me,” Aly whispered.

Victoria did not seem to notice the pain in her sister's eyes. Settling herself, she began her narrative. “He called me up out of the blue and asked me out. You can imagine how surprised I was. Here I thought he hated every one of us Kingstons after what Dad did to Cedar Hill. I'd always had as mad a crush on him as you did, I think. So I jumped at the chance to go out with him. I was rather glad to be burying the hatchet, at least between us. Dad could look after himself, as I saw it. Anyway, we went out a few times, and I…” Victoria flushed and looked away. “Well, you know how irresistible Marshall is.”

“Yes,” Aly said softly.

“So I—I fell for him, only he didn't fall for me. He was nice about it and all, nicer than he had to be, actually, but the plain truth was, he dumped me.”

“Victoria, you don't have to say anything more.” Aly laid a restraining hand on her sister's arm.”

“Yes, I do, Aly, or you won't understand everything fully.”

“All right, Victoria.”

“So after Marshall left my life, I went a little crazy, I think. Nobody had ever thrown me over before, and it was a strange and frightening feeling. There I was alone in New York and blue. I started eating. I gained weight. I began to lose my confidence. And that's when I met—” She stopped, looked at Aly covertly. “No names. I'm not going to tell you his name. But he was tall and dark-eyed and handsome as the dickens, and I was so in need of a man to bandage my ego.”

Aly withdrew her hand carefully, so as not to give away the surprise and relief beginning to course through her. Light glimmered through the darkness of her despair. “This man…looked like Marshall somewhat?” she suggested.

Victoria considered. “Well, a little, I guess. Both have the same kind of dark eyes and those long, lean frames that are so sexy. I had to prove to myself that just because Marshall didn't want me in
that way
didn't mean another ultraattractive man wouldn't.”

“I understand, Victoria,” Aly said, her profound relief giving way to the horrifying realization of what she had done. The rest of the story came to her ears as a garble. Her mind had jumped to the scene of Marshall in the conference room voting her proxy against the board…

“…And Marshall's sudden appearance brought back everything, panicked me so,” Victoria was explaining when Aly returned to her. “He—he—was so close to my secret, like a threat to it. He saw me one night with—with the man I was seeing. We were in a restaurant and I had to introduce them. I was afraid that somehow Marshall might guess…Peter looks so like his father. And then when you said what you did about my marrying Warren on the rebound—well, Aly, you can imagine how I felt!”

“Yes, I can imagine.” Aly swallowed.

“I lied about Marshall because I thought that might protect my secret. If I hadn't known Marshall in New York, how could he have met Peter's father, you see.”

“I see,” said Aly.

“But if I hadn't known…that man in New York,” Victoria caught herself, “I wouldn't have had Peter. And I might not have married Warren. And I might have stayed that stuck-up pain-in-the-you-know-what.” Victoria's laughter bubbled out as she hugged her sister. “And you and I might not have become such good friends, dear sister of mine.” She looked at Aly contritely, her mouth pursed in pretty appeal. “I'm sorry I lied to you, and I'm sorry we had to miss your Easter party. Forgiven?”

“Forgiven and the rest forgotten,” Aly said. A cold inertia had taken control of her limbs. “It's just as well you were in Duncan Sunday,” she managed to add.

“Well, I'm going to get out of here and let you get some rest. You look tired, Alyson. Oops, there's your phone. Want me to get it?”

“Uh, no,” said Aly quickly, getting to her feet. “I'll get it, Victoria. Thanks.” It was probably their father, and she wanted to spare Victoria the news of her betrayal as long as she could—to remember the moment between them untarnished.

“Toodle then,” said Victoria, going to the door. “I'm going to Duncan in the morning to pick up Peter. Okay if he stays with you tomorrow night? He's dying to.”

Aly smiled faintly. “I'll be here.”

Moving slowly, Aly reached the phone on its fifth ring. She lifted the receiver. “Alyson?”

Her heart clutched. “Yes, Dad?”

“My dear, you are indeed your father's daughter.”

“Yes, I come by certain of my…attributes honestly.” Pain shot across her chest. Her father's anger, over its first explosive phase, had settled into the smoldering, more deadly stage of a white-hot wrath. Those who did not know him had often mistaken the agreeable tone he was using now as friendly. Aly knew better.

“That was a stroke of genius if ever I saw it.”

“That's one way of putting it,” she said, beginning to get puzzled. Her father had given a hearty chuckle. This was a new touch.

“It was a hair-raising gamble, Aly, but I won't scold.” Lorne chuckled again. “I'd have done the same thing.”

In the short silence Aly struggled to make sense of his words. Something was askew here. “And just how did I gamble?” she asked, her voice neutral.

“Oh, come on now, Alyson. You couldn't have been one hundred percent sure that Marshall would vote your proxy in favor of the board. You couldn't have been that positive of his love for you!”

Aly stood up, pinching off an exclamation just in time. She battled to keep her voice steady. “How—er—exactly how did it happen, Dad?”

“Well, about five minutes before the meeting Marshall strolled in with your proxy letter. I nearly had heart failure when I read it, Aly. Naturally he kept us all in the dark until the vote was taken for retaining the board. You know what we were expecting. I can't begin to describe to you my feelings when Marshall's hand went up in our favor. I don't think I've ever known such a feeling. I doubt I ever will again…” He cleared his throat.