Casteel 03 Fallen Hearts (18 page)

"Ya don't hafta ask him," she said quickly. "I'll tell ya. He always wanted me, but he jus' thought I wasn't as good as you. Well, yer good, yer smart, and yer refined, but yer not with him when he wants ya to be. A man likes his woman at his side, don'tcha know that? Funny thing is yer suppose ta' be smarter than me and ya don't know half as much as I do when it comes to men."
"I don't believe you," I said weakly.
"Don'tcha? He told me all about yer wonderful

"Shut up," I said. "I don't want to hear any more of this."
"Okay, I'll shut up, but only fer now. I'm havin' Logan's child and he's gonna be responsible, ya hear? I want him ta take care of me forever and ever." She paused. I could hardly breathe. "He didn't even ask me if I had any protection that night. He jus' took me inta his arms and--"
I slammed the phone down, but I imagined that instead of being angry about it, Fanny was probably laughing. For a few moments I just sat there staring up at the picture of the Willies hanging above the bed. Then I crumpled on the bed and cried. My body shook so hard with the spasms of grief and pain, the whole room seemed to be vibrating.
Betrayed again, by the one man I thought I could always believe. By the one man who was always there. He was just like the others! It was unfair. Why was I cursed to try and trust and believe in the men whose love I needed, when they always betrayed me in the end? Fanny was right--I was dumber than she was when it came to men. Oh, Logan, how could you! How could you!
Slowly my tears wound down until I sat up, sniffling and rubbing my eyes red with my fists until they actually burned. I took deep breaths until I felt my heartbeat slow down. Then, gathering my wits together, I chastised myself for permitting Fanny to get to me. There was still a good chance she had made it all up. I had to hope for that.
With my fingers trembling, I dialed the number of the cabin in the Willies. The phone rang and rang and rang, but Logan didn't answer. I called the factory site, but again, no one answered. He might be at his parents' I thought, and dialed their number. His mother answered.
"Why, no, dear," she said, "he's not here right now. We invited him for dinner, but he's at the diner, having dinner with his foreman and one of the contractors. Is something wrong? Can we be of any help?"
"Tell him I want him to call me as soon as he returns," I said. "No matter what time."
"I will. Right away, dear."
Not more than five minutes later the phone rang. It was Logan calling me from the diner in Winnerow.
"What's wrong, Heaven? Something with Tony?"
"No, Logan. Something with Fanny," I said coldly.
"Fanny?" I heard him swallow deeply on the other end of the phone, heard the hesitation in his voice. My heart closed like a clam shell. "Ah . . ah . . . what are you talking about?"
"You know what I'm talking about."
There was silence on the other end of the phone. "Heaven, I don't. What's wrong with Fanny?"
"You had better come right home, Logan," I said.
There was another long pause. "Heaven, what has Fanny been telling you? You know she wants to poison things between us."
"She's pregnant," I said. I wasn't going to add anything more.
"Pregnant? But--"
"I'm not going to discuss this over the phone, Logan," I said.
"All right," he said and sighed. "I'll start out immediately."
It was as good as a confession. I cradled the phone gently, as if it were a fragile baby bird and then turned and saw myself in the wall of mirrors. My neck and chest were covered with red blotches, a rash that had broken out because of my nerves. My face was so flushed I looked as though I had a terrific fever. My eyes were bloodshot and my hair, still wet from my shower and shampoo, drooped down the sides and back of my head. I looked like Jillian during one of her moments of madness.
As I sat there staring at this strange image of myself, my feelings raced from anger to outrage to self-pity. My husband had slept with my sister Fanny had at last found some satisfying revenge and given voice to her aching jealousy. I was hurt, mortally wounded. How much could love withstand? How much? People who came to Farthy would take one look at my face and see that I was a woman whose husband had betrayed her. Imagine what such information would be in the hands of someone like Amy Luckett. I imagined the vicious and arrogant girls of Winterhaven gathering around me to chant: "Heaven was betrayed! Heaven was betrayed!"
And then, as suddenly as it had come, the selfpity slipped off my image like a cellophane wrapper on a forbidden chocolate and was replaced with the heavier, darker wrapping of guilt. Troy. My beloved, beautiful, passionate Troy. I had betrayed Logan with Troy. But it wasn't the same, no, not at all. For I loved him, truly loved him with all my heart and soul even though he was more specter than flesh and blood. How could I refuse him, how? And it wasn't wrong, wasn't the same, it wasn't, because he was only a ghost of my love come back for a precious fleeting moment. My love was his life blood, and to have denied him that would have been to have denied who I was, the spirit that was purest and noblest in me. He had come back and then had returned to that unknown, unclear, mysterious world of oblivion, never to be heard from or seen again. Surely that made what I had done different from what Logan had done. I couldn't believe that Logan had any deep feelings for Fanny. It was lust, simple lust that drove him to her, and it was not love, but revenge and hatred that drove her to him She was merely an object of pleasure, a sexual distraction, a sorceress. At this moment I hated her for making my life tawdry, for turning what was pure into something soiled and base, and my hate for her gave me the strength to face the crisis.
No, I decided, I would not equate my love with Troy with Logan's carnal act. Logan was a man of flesh and blood, Troy a man of spirit and dreams Fanny was right--she knew more about men than I did. But I knew more about survival.
I said nothing about the situation with Fanny to Tony that night at dinner. I decided to let Logan explain his sudden return to Farthy himself. In any case I didn't want Tony ever to know. At dinner that night, as I tried to remain composed and seemingly serene, I saw that Tony looked somewhat revived, dressed in one of his light blue summer suits, his hair neatly brushed, but he made little conversation and from time to time simply stared across the table at me, his eyes taking on a glazed, far-off look like someone whose eyes had turned inward and who was really looking at some image or memory from his past. Between courses he sat with his elegant, wellmanicured hands templed under his chin, saying nothing, and then he lowered those fingers and drummed a mindless beat on the lace tablecloth and on my nerves.
The little I ate, I ate because I didn't want to draw any attention to my state. Our longest
conversation came when I suggested Tony consider taking a short vacation.
"A change of scenery might do you a world of good," I insisted.
"Would you come, too?" he asked quickly.
"Oh, I couldn't," I said. "Not with Logan so involved with the new factory in Winnerow. I'll have to spend more time with him Just like any man, he doesn't know when he's working too hard or too long."
Tony smiled and nodded.
"Jillian used to constantly complain about that. She was always after me to take her on a special honeymoon and if I protested about the work I had, she would tell me to leave it to Troy. Troy was creative; he was a creative genius, but he was no administrator, no manager.
"Still, if it hadn't have been for Jillian, I probably wouldn't have taken the holiday trips I did take, or gone to the parties, or held the dinners here. She could be such a bright spot, such a jewel, so full of energy, moving through this house with a trail of laughter behind her, her jasmine scent left lingering in the air.
"Oh, I know she doted on herself far too much, but it was nice to have something soft and beautiful, and even if only illusionary, someone forever young. Funny," he said, sitting back and smiling to himself, "but even when she was shut away in her suite, caking herself with makeup and dousing herself with perfume, I felt good knowing she was there. I could walk past her doors and inhale her scent, and remember." Then his voice became mournful, and his faraway eyes focused on me, the pain returning to them, bright and piercing.
"Now the doors are shut, the hallway smells like any other hallway in this big house, and there is only the silence." He shook his head and looked down.
"Tony, this is why I think you need a change of scenery, if only for a short while. Tell me some of the things that have to be done over that time, and I'll look after them for you. I can do it," I assured him.
He looked up, smiling. "I know you can. I don't worry about that anymore." He took a deep breath and sighed. "I'll see," he said. "Maybe."
After dinner he retired to his office to work. I tried to distract myself by reading, but Fanny's laughter kept echoing in my memory and pulling my eyes from the pages and lines. Finally I went upstairs to wait for Logan in our suite.
It was very late when he finally arrived. I had fallen asleep in my clothes, but my eyes snapped open instantly the moment he walked into the suite.
He stood there looking at me. He looked like he had run all the way-His eyes were bloodshot, his shoulders sagged, and his hair was disheveled. It looked as if he had been put through an electric mixer. He hadn't shaved and his full-faced beard looked scraggly. His suit was wrinkled and his tie loosened, the collar unbuttoned. It was as if Fanny's hold on him was still visible.
For a moment we just looked at each other. Then I sat up, brushed back my hair with the palms of my hands, and took a deep breath.
"I want you to tell me the truth, Logan," I said, my voice seemingly devoid of emotion. "Did you make love with my sister?"
"Make love," he repeated, sneering. He took off his suit jacket and draped it over a chair by his closet. "I'd hardly call what happened between us love."
"I don't want to play word games with you, Logan. Fanny called to tell me she was pregnant and to tell me the child was yours. Is the child yours?"
"How would I know? How could any man be sure when it comes to Fanny?"
"Tell me what happened, Logan," I said, turning away. I looked down at the floor. I felt stunned. My whole body became as numb as if I had slipped and fallen into one of the forest ponds in the Willies when they had only a paper-thin sheet of ice on the surface. How deeply were Logan and I about to sink now? I wondered.
"It happened when we first started work on the factory," he began. "I was just so wrapped up in everything, I didn't think clearly. She came there a few times and just hung around, watching me work, talking to the laborers. I didn't think much of it. I certainly wasn't going to chase her away, although once or twice I did ask her not to distract the men when they were busy."
"Go on," I said. He walked across the room and stood by the mirror, his back to me.
"One day she said she was going to come over to the cabin with a hot home-cooked meal. She said she only wanted to make up for some of the trouble she had caused us; she only wanted to be thought of as a sister again, to be part of the family." He spun around.
"I believed her, Heaven. She was very convincing and seemed very pathetic."
"Fanny is a wonderful actress," I said.
"She cried to me about her lost child, talked about how hard it was to live in the same community with her, seeing her from time to time, but unable to be a mother to her. Then she talked about Jane and Keith and how they won't have anything to do with her. She told me about her marriage of convenience to old Mallory, how she got a nice house and some money out of it, but how she was all alone, how she was without any family. She seemed so sincere that I thought maybe she was changing. Maybe time and maturity had made her see things."
"So you made love to her?" I asked, turning on him. He shook his head.
"Not because of that. That's not what happened. She did show up with the hot meal and we were having a good dinner together. She had me laughing at stories about the old days, about some of the naughty things she had done in school." He stared at me a moment, as if deciding whether or not to go on. I would be spared no ugly details, I thought.
"And?"
"Well, she had brought a few bottles of wine along. I didn't think anything of it. We had them at dinner and kept talking and drinking and talking. I guess I got a little intoxicated. And I'd been missing you so. But I'm not going to make that my excuse," he added quickly. "I know that's not a justifiable excuse . . I just want you to understand what happened and how it happened."
"I'm listening," I said. I was cold-eyed, stern, and determined. He had to look away.
"Well, it was a hot night to start with, and as usual Fanny was wearing this very loose, off-theshoulder thin, cotton dress. I didn't realize it at first, but as we were talking and drinking, that dress slipped lower and lower until . . ." He shook his head. "I don't know how it actually happened. One moment we were sitting by the table and the next she had her arms around me and she was half naked.
"She kept talking about how lonely she was and how lonely I must be and how much she needed to be loved and how one night wouldn't matter. The wine had made me dizzy. Before I realized it, we were in bed.
"I tell you, it was more like I was raped than I made love to her," he pleaded.
"Oh, how you must have suffered," I said sarcastically. He pulled his hands back and nodded slowly.
"I know. You're not wrong. I can't make up any excuse that would justify what happened, but believe me, it was that one time only. After I realized what was happening and what we had done, I felt terrible and I demanded she leave the cabin and not come around the site anymore.
"I thought that was the end of it . . . a one night's indiscretion. I put it out of my mind, convincing myself it was a nightmare. I thought that if I thought of it that way, I could live with it and eventually forget it.
"Please, Heaven, believe me. There is nothing more to it. I don't love Fanny. I don't even like her. But . . . but I'm only a man and she knew how to take advantage of that fact, just as the devil would," he added quickly.
"I've avoided her like the plague ever since. She came back to the site a few times, but I wouldn't even look at her." He sat down beside me. "I know it's asking a lot to ask you to forgive me, but I am asking you to do that," he said. He reached for my hand. I let him take it, but I didn't look at him. "I don't know what I can do to make it up to you. I can only tell you that you are my life now, and if you turn from me or want to leave me, I don't know what I'll do. I mean that."
I didn't say anything. He lowered his head. He couldn't know it, but there was a war going on inside me. It was as if there were two of me. One wanted to be hard and mean, wanted to say all sorts of vicious and angry things and chase him from the suite. Men, I thought. How false they could be. They never stopped being little boys, selfish little boys. This part of me knew Logan was trying to twist and connive events, trying to make himself out to be the real victim here. As if it could be all Fanny's fault.