Blue Willow (40 page)

Alise had pulled a chair up behind his—to leave room at the crowded table, she said, but her eyes were swollen as if she’d been crying before Michael arrived at the hospital to help her bring James here. Since James couldn’t see her from her position, he didn’t know that her gaze rarely left him, or that her expression alternated between anger and sorrow.

A heavily paneled door opened across the room. Marcus DeLan, the law firm’s senior partner, ushered a small, wiry, reluctant-looking man in a cheap blue suit to a place at the far end of the long table. “Sit here, Mr. Spencer,” DeLan told him. Spencer dropped quickly into the chair and fixed his gaze on the gleaming mahogany tabletop. His thin, heavily oiled brown hair was as shiny as the table.

“I expect Lily at any minute,” DeLan said, and left the room.

Artemas went to Spencer and shook his gnarled hand. A lifetime of heavy labor and skilled carpentry work was stamped on them. “Thank you for coming to yet another meeting filled with attorneys, Mr. Spencer. You won’t be asked to give another formal statement. Just tell Mrs. Porter what you’ve told the state investigators and my attorneys.”

“Yeah, this un’s for Mrs. Porter.” There was a defensive, anguished note in Spencer’s voice. “If it wadn’t a courtesy I owe her, I’d just as soon have all my fingers broke in a vise. She don’t deserve none of this. And I ain’t sure Mr. Porter does, neither. Him and her was awful nice to me over the years. They never acted like they was better than the workingmen.”

“I understand why this isn’t easy for you.”
Better than anyone else in the world
, Artemas added silently. He introduced his brothers and sisters.

The door opened again. Artemas’s chest constricted. DeLan entered and stood aside. Lily walked in. She was tall and stately in a dark suit, with her mass of red hair
pulled up. Large sunglasses covered her eyes. Her cheeks were gaunt. Michael stood, ignoring Cass’s snort of dismay at his etiquette. Spencer popped up and hurried to her. “I would never have said nothing to you or anybody else if Mr. Grant hadn’t put my name in that letter of his,” he told her poignantly, and when she took both of his hands in hers, his leathery face contorted with emotion. “I guess he heard I’d talked to Mr. Porter. I was scared to tell, scared I’d get in trouble somehow.”

“I know, Spence.” Her voice was a raw whisper. Her shoulders had a defeated slump to them. Artemas stood motionless, hating what this day was doing to her.

“But it weren’t just bein’ scared,” Spencer continued. “I didn’t want to lay nothing on Mr. Porter. He was always straight with me, and when he told me he’d do something about that bridge, I believed him. I reckon I still do.”

Delicate muscles flexed in her jaw. When she spoke again, she sounded stronger. “I wish we could know everything he was thinking, but we can always believe he did what he thought was right.”

“Yes’m. Yes’m.”

James made a low sound of anger. Artemas shot him a warning look, but James was staring vindictively at Lily. So was Cass. Michael sat down slowly. He and Elizabeth watched her with thoughtful frowns.

Marcus DeLan took over then, shutting the door then gracefully showing Lily to a chair and taking the one next to hers. Spencer returned to his chair and slumped. Artemas walked back to the window and stood where he could study her without being noticed by the others.

Lily removed her glasses and folded them carefully on the table. Her blue eyes were hollow as they rose to him, devoid of emotion. She turned slowly and looked at Spencer. “Tell me everything you know, please.”

The little man clenched his hands on the table’s edge. “I was building forms for the concrete crew, while they was pourin’ the support walls and bridge. I heard ’em talking—sayin’ Mr. Rutgers was ridin’ ’em too hard. They don’t like those quality-control snoops—the boys think nobody
knows their business better than them. Anyhow, I hear that kind of complainin’ all the time, so I didn’t pay much attention to it.”

“When did you hear all of this?” Lily asked.

“A couple of months before we turned the building over to the painters and all.”

“What do you mean, ‘painters and all’?” Cass asked sharply.

“The interior-decorating crews,” Artemas explained. “Carpet, tile, wallpaper, that phase of the building.”

Lily’s eyes had never left Spencer. “You didn’t say anything to Richard then?”

“No. Maybe Mr. Grant thought I’d heard something I shouldn’t, ’cause he sent me to work on a building across town. But maybe a couple of weeks before the Colebrook Building was all done, I come back to do some work on the molding in the big offices upstairs.”

“Why?”

Spencer ducked his head and glanced warily at Artemas and the others, then told her, “Miz Colebrook said she could see some of the nailheads. She wanted all the molding ripped up and new molding put down. I coulda fixed them nailheads so nobody’d notice, but Mr. Grant said
she’d
notice, so it had to be done all over.”

“Get to the point,” James interjected.

Lily swiveled slightly. Her fathomless gaze held James’s. The room seethed with silent confrontation. Artemas stepped forward. “Please continue, Mr. Spencer.”

Lily turned toward the carpenter and waited. Spencer sighed. “When I was doing that molding work, I seen Mr. Porter again. He stopped by to shoot the breeze with me, the way he always done. And I said, just talking about nothing, you know, I said, ‘When we was working on the bridge, I thought the concrete boys was goin’ to lay into Mr. Rutgers. He’s lucky he didn’t find no batch of wet mix in the front seat of his car.’ ”

Lily exhaled raggedly “This was only a week or two before the building opened?”

“Yes’m. Mr. Porter asked me what exactly I meant, and
I told him Rutgers had given the boys all sorts of grief about the concrete not being let to cure long enough, and Mr. Porter got this look on his face like, like he was going to have a heart attack. He was
mad
. And
scared
. I ain’t never seen him look that way before.”

Lily steepled her hands against her mouth. Her eyes were half-shut, a tortured expression in them. “What did he say?”

“He asked me if I’d told anybody else. I hadn’t. I said, ‘Mr. Porter, do you think Mr. Rutgers and Mr. Grant let something bad slip by?’ And he said—I remember exactly, because I was staring at him hard, and worried—he said,
‘If they did, this building isn’t going to open until it’s fixed
.’ That was all. We didn’t talk about it again. I didn’t see him no more, after that day.”

Lily’s eyes closed. She sat there, her hands almost in an attitude of prayer against her lips, misery seeping from every inch of her expression. Marcus DeLan touched her arm. She settled back in her chair and slowly lowered her hands into her lap. Exhaling, she opened her eyes and gazed at the tabletop, as if seeing nothing. Spencer bowed his head and mumbled, “He wanted to make things right. Maybe he just couldn’t, for some reason.”

One of the Colebrook attorneys said, “I’m afraid that what Mr. Porter and his partner did or didn’t do next is beside the point. It’s clear they knew there were questions concerning the bridge’s safety, and they either took no steps or inadequate steps to remedy it. They and Oliver Grant are responsible. That will have to be Colebrook International’s official conclusion on the matter.”

“Case closed,” James said, his voice curt. “I have some sympathy for you, Lily, I really do. I’m willing to believe you knew nothing about your husband’s lack of ethics. But you’ll have to live with what he did for the rest of your life.”

Artemas strode to the end of the table, planted both hands on it, and leaned toward his family, his fierce attention focused on James. “We’re not here to punish Lily. If
anybody here doubts that she’s suffered as much as we have, then leave the room. I don’t want to hear it.”

Cass pressed forward. “We may have some sympathy for Lily, but I, for one, want to hear her apologize for implying that our sister had anything to do with what happened.”

Lily lifted her chin. Her eyes glittered. “That fear is something all of
you
are going to have to live with. And you’re going to have to wonder if she knew about the bridge too and did nothing.”

Artemas heard the rattle of his own breath, the sickening implosion of the fear that had crossed his mind more than once, the fear he could never bring himself to voice. Cass was rising from her chair, furious. James clutched the arms of his wheelchair. Michael and Elizabeth looked stunned. Artemas met Lily’s gaze and said the only thing he could. “That’s not true. It could never be true. I don’t ever want to hear that from you again.”

She pushed herself up from the table, unsteady but stiffly erect, and shook her head. “God help you, you’ll never know for certain, and you’ll never have any more peace of mind than I will.”

Artemas watched in speechless despair as she left the room. She was right.

A few months later, as the home she and Richard had created so lovingly became a showplace of flowers and blossoming trees, Lily packed to leave. She would live with Aunt Maude for now, while she decided what to do next.

Almost everything she owned had been sold to settle legal fees and the debts tied to Richard and Frank’s architectural firm. Colebrook International had filed suit, as she’d expected. That was what Artemas had to do, a corporate decision he could not escape. She understood, but her bitterness was too deep to forgive it.

Artemas came to see her the day before she left. It was a terrible, grim visit, with Aunt Maude and her sisters refusing to budge from their presence, watching him warily. He asked if she’d accept help from him. He wanted to loan
her—hell, give her—the money to start over, somewhere else. Whether the offer was sympathetic or merely an attempt to keep her from moving back to MacKenzie—or both—she hadn’t cared. He had looked angry but not surprised when she turned him down.

She moved through the empty rooms, touching the woodwork, stooping to pick a bit of lint from the carpet or wipe distractedly at smudges on the walls.
If you can’t bend, you’ll break
, Mama would have said. She felt very close to breaking.

Part Three

Some parts of your small hill I will resign
,
For it is yours, but where your hill is done
I’d love to add new worlds for us to roam
,
For all my worlds have ended at your home
.

Georgia poet

Nineteen

January second. The new year was one day old, and the specter of next weeks anniversary darkened it.

Artemas threw a file of notes on his desk and swiveled toward his office window. The uninteresting parking lot and muddle of generic, glass-and-steel office buildings nearby only reminded him that this building they’d leased was a poor substitute for the neo-Gothic grace of the Colebrook Building, with its wooded, parklike surroundings and gardens.

He’d authorized his attorneys to sell the Colebrook Building to a group of real estate investors. They would renovate the lobby. There would be no bridge, no magnificent garden centered around a blue willow.

Artemas got up and paced. He could have kept the building and occupied it as planned. Maybe that would have been perceived as a courageous gesture. Not to him. It would only sicken his family and the families of the Colebrook executives who’d been killed. He knew he would have relived that night every time he walked through the lobby.

He halted to watch, with dull relief, as workmen took
They’d gathered at James and Alise’s new home, a brooding stone mansion set on the Chattahoochee River. The place had the medieval atmosphere James had always loved. Considering everyone’s mood, the holidays had been as pleasant as being held prisoner in a dark, sumptuous dungeon.

He wanted to know how Lily had spent her Christmas. He wanted to know her plans, and everything she’d done during the months since he’d last seen her. He had forced himself to give her the time and privacy to recover, as he was recovering. Tamberlaine called her regularly, but learned very little.

“Artemas? I need to speak with you. It’s urgent.”

Artemas turned and saw Tamberlaine standing in the doorway. The coincidence of thinking about him and then having him appear seemed uncanny to Artemas. “Come in. I was distracted. Sorry.”

“You were a thousand miles away.”

“Much closer than that.”
Fifty, perhaps. It’s fifty miles to Blue
Willow. He would be moving there in a few months. The fact that Lily was living nearby with her aunt meant they would have to deal with each other, and it must be done delicately. No confrontations, no aggression, no manipulation. Trust could only be rebuilt by slow, careful degrees.

“What is it?” he said, studying Tamberlaine’s grim expression.

Tamberlaine shut the door. “There is talk among the workmen at the estate.” Tamberlaine hesitated, then added, “They say someone has been cleaning up the MacKenzie place. As if planning to live there. I suspect it’s Lily.”