Hidden Places (34 page)

‘‘Now look what you’ve done, you slut! This is God’s judgment for our sin! The son of David and Bathsheba died for their adultery and now my son has died for ours!’’

I had silently entered through the kitchen door and heard Frank’s shouts coming from the parlor. I hurried inside, terrified that he might beat my sister, yet knowing that I was helpless to stop him if he did. I heard the sound of glass shattering and froze in the doorway at the sight of Lydia huddled on the floor, while Frank pelted her with her favorite china knickknacks as if stoning her for adultery.

‘‘God says, ‘Vengeance is mine! I will repay!’ ’’ Frank yelled, ‘‘and I have paid dearly for my one moment of weakness with you! The devil used you to bring me down, Lydia! I should have seen your harlotry for what it was and rebuked you the first time you tempted me!’’

He picked up a porcelain teacup I had bought for her, decorated with violets, her favorite flower, and he hurled it with such force it shattered into dust in front of her. Lydia’s hands bled from tiny cuts as she tried to scoop the fragments of her treasures together again. Frank smashed the matching saucer next.

‘‘The child of David and Bathsheba’s sin is the one who died!’’ he shouted. ‘‘But that would be too small a price for us to pay! God demands justice, and my punishment is that the innocent son had to die! Now I’ll have to look at our bastard every day for the rest of my life—to see the fruit of our sin, in the flesh!’’

Frank scooped up a framed studio portrait of Lydia and the three boys, taken two or three years earlier, and flung it to the floor. He stomped it with the heel of his shoe until the frame, the glass, and the photograph were pulverized. I still hadn’t moved from the doorway, paralyzed by Frank’s violence. Frank never even saw me as he swept from the room, blinded by rage, and ran up the stairs, his shoes crunching on the broken glass that littered the carpet.

I crept into the room and whispered my sister’s name. ‘‘Lydia...Lydia, come with me, honey, I’m taking you home now.’’

She didn’t move, didn’t look up. Nor did she weep. Her beautiful, haunted eyes stared, unseeing, at the carpet. Only her hands had life in them as they idly fingered the broken shards of her keepsakes.

I crouched carefully in front of her, lifting her chin until she faced me. ‘‘Lydia? Honey, listen to me. Frank’s wrong. Everything he said just now is wrong. God didn’t take Willie’s life in order to punish you. It was an accident...a terrible, tragic accident. That’s all.’’

Lydia gave no sign that she had heard me. She stared as if looking straight through me. I wrapped my arms around her and tried hugging her, but she still didn’t respond. Finally I stood and tried pulling her to her feet. She was a dead, lifeless weight.

‘‘Lydia, please...come home with me. The boys are already there, and none of you will ever have to return to this horrible house again. You don’t need to stay with Frank any longer. You’ve paid your debt, Lydia...you’ve more than paid it. Please let me help you.’’

Her lifeless eyes finally met mine. ‘‘You want to help me,’’ she said in a flat, hoarse voice, ‘‘then go home. Leave me alone.’’

‘‘I’m not leaving unless you come with me,’’ I said, taking her bleeding hands gently in mine. She yanked them free.

‘‘No. Go home and take care of my boys. That’s how you can help me.’’

I felt torn. I wanted my sister out of this house, away from her monster of a husband, but I also didn’t want to leave young Matthew alone for too long. He suffered under an even greater burden of guilt than Frank or Lydia did, believing that Willie’s death was his fault, and I worried that he might try to harm himself. I pleaded with Lydia in vain until we both heard the sound of Frank’s footsteps upstairs. He had probably changed from his good suit into his work clothes and he would be thundering down the stairs again at any moment. Terror filled Lydia’s eyes.

‘‘Leave!’’ she begged. ‘‘Keep Matthew out of his sight!’’

I did leave, but I watched from a distance until Frank also left the house and went out to the barn. I needed to be sure that he wouldn’t harm my sister. I needn’t have worried. She told me later that after they laid Willie in his grave Frank never touched her again—not even so much as the brush of his hand on hers. They occupied the same house, slept in the same room, the same bed, but lived thousands of miles apart.

When Lydia finally emerged from her shock, the depression lifted temporarily. She was still a beautiful woman, though deeply troubled. She was also starved for love and affection. About a year after Willie died she began traveling to the city by train on the pretense of seeing a doctor for ‘‘female troubles.’’ But she later confided in me that she was having an illicit love affair—the first of many that followed. I watched helplessly as she tried to bury her pain by becoming the very thing Frank accused her of being. Yet how could I condemn her? Who knows what I might have become if I had been the unfortunate woman to have married Frank Wyatt?

To the outside world Wyatt Orchards must have seemed like the Garden of Eden. The trees flourished, the land prospered, and Frank became one of the wealthiest fruit growers in the county. He purchased the latest in modern farm machinery, experimented with new grafting procedures, hired extra farm laborers in addition to his two sturdy sons, and even employed domestic help for his wife. Proud of all he had built, he began the tradition of hosting an annual fall open house so that everyone in the county would see and envy his realm. And envy him they did.

One of the saddest ironies of the whole tragedy was that Matthew was a natural-born farmer. Frank couldn’t have asked for a more perfect son—one so in love with the land, so in tune with the rhythms of the seasons and with the animals and the trees under his care. Yet Frank remained totally blind to the great gift God had given him.

At twenty-one, Matthew had become a handsome man, pursued by nearly every eligible girl in Deer Springs. He’d inherited Lydia’s haunting beauty in a masculine form, with her dark, hypnotic eyes and alluring smile. And if his natural father, Ted Bartlett, had possessed half the charm Matthew did, it was little wonder that Lydia had fallen so hard for him. All the girls in Deer Springs flocked to the open house in droves each fall, hoping to catch the eye of Wyatt Orchards’ crown prince. With each passing year, Matthew’s love for Wyatt Orchards grew stronger—and his hatred for his father grew stronger as well. The two rival emotions simply could not coexist in Matthew’s heart indefinitely.

The open house of 1916 set the final disaster into motion. The day had been a huge success, with hundreds of people paying homage to Frank’s accomplishments. Lydia had set up serving tables in the backyard for food and cider, and once the festivities ended and the last few stragglers had gone home, I helped her clean up. Suddenly we heard a terrible uproar coming from the barn, with Frank hollering and Matthew shouting. We couldn’t imagine what had provoked such a clamor. We dropped everything and ran inside.

One of the Peterson girls cowered in a corner of the barn by a mound of hay, and Matthew stood with his back to her, protecting her and defending himself from his father at the same time. Frank had a buggy whip in his hand and threatened to lash out at both of them with it.

‘‘Don’t you dare stand there and deny it!’’ Frank roared. ‘‘I caught you in the act!’’

‘‘We weren’t doing anything! Just kissing, nothing more!’’ Matthew stood his ground, holding his father at bay with his hands outstretched. When he signaled over his shoulder for the girl to escape, she ran from the barn, weeping with fright.

Frank took advantage of the distraction to charge forward, scourging Matthew with the whip. ‘‘I’ll teach you not to carry on your lewd acts! Maybe this will drive the lust out of you!’’

At first Matthew simply held his arms above his face, defending himself from the onslaught as he backed toward the hay mound. But as the whip cracked across his forearms, his hands, and his scalp, leaving savage welts, something inside Matthew finally snapped. Years of stored-up rage suddenly exploded. He lunged at his father and wrestled the whip from his hand, throwing it to the ground. Then Matthew turned on Frank with murder in his eyes.

‘‘I swear before God that I’ll kill you before you’ll ever lay another hand on me!’’ He sank his fist into Frank’s gut, and before the older man could recover, Matthew began pummeling him, raining blows on him until Frank staggered backward against the wall. Matthew kept after him, beating him relentlessly. Lydia and I watched helplessly, screaming in vain for him to stop, unable to get close enough to intervene without risking injury ourselves.

Frank tried fighting back at first, landing a few blows to Matthew’s jaw, but the boy wrapped his hands around Frank’s throat and wrestled him to the ground, choking the life from him. Frank’s eyes bulged and his face turned red, then blue, as Matthew straddled him, pounding his head against the floor. I believe Matthew would have killed him then and there if Sam hadn’t rushed into the barn just in time. He grabbed his brother from behind, breaking his grip, and pulled him off their father.

But rage still fueled Matthew’s strength. He wouldn’t quit. He tossed his brother backward into the hay, then scooped up the buggy whip and lashed Frank mercilessly with it, just as Frank had scourged him.

‘‘You sorry excuse for a man!’’ Matthew shouted. ‘‘This is for all the years you tortured me with your cursed strap! How does it feel to be helpless? How does it feel? I was a child! I couldn’t defend myself against you back then, but I swear you’ll pay for everything you did to me all those years!’’

The whip shredded Frank’s shirt into rags and sliced his face and arms with bloody gashes as he tried to defend himself. Again, Sam came up from behind and seized his brother.

‘‘Stop it, Matthew! Stop it! Don’t kill him! He isn’t worth hanging for!’’

‘‘I’d rather hang than grow up to be like him! I hate you!’’ he cried as he spit in Frank’s face. Matthew wrestled to free himself from Sam’s grip so he could finish Frank off. ‘‘I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to kill you! How many times I’ve wished to God you weren’t my father!’’

‘‘He isn’t!’’ Lydia screamed. ‘‘He isn’t your real father, Matthew! You won’t ever be like him because Frank isn’t your real father!’’ She was desperate to stop Matthew from killing him.

Her words finally penetrated Matthew’s murderous rage. He stopped struggling long enough for Sam to wrest the whip from him. Sam shoved him backward into the hay, away from Frank, then planted himself between the two men, pleading with Matthew as tears streamed down his face.

‘‘Don’t kill him, Matt,’’ he begged. ‘‘I hate his guts as much as you do, but I don’t want you to hang for giving him what he deserves.’’

Matthew turned to his mother, his chest heaving. His handsome face twisted with the force of his hatred. ‘‘Is it true? What you just said?’’

‘‘It’s true,’’ she wept. ‘‘I should have told you the truth years ago. Frank isn’t your father. I deceived him because I was already pregnant with you and your real father was married to someone else.’’

‘‘My
real
father?’’ he murmured. ‘‘You mean this worthless piece of...
dirt
is no relation to me?’’ He swung his boot at Frank, kicking straw and manure on top of him. Frank lay prone, breathless and bleeding, unable to raise himself with a broken wrist and three cracked ribs.

‘‘He’s no relation, Matthew,’’ Lydia said soothingly. ‘‘Leave him be. You’ve paid him back enough, already.’’

Matthew looked like a man who has suddenly awakened to find that his long nightmare was simply a dream. He laughed out loud. ‘‘You mean—you mean there’s not one drop of his stinking blood in my veins?’’

‘‘No, Matthew. Not one drop. You’ll never be like him. You couldn’t be.’’

But then his smile faded as the full meaning of what his mother had done also sank in. He shook his head in bewilderment, a wounded child who has been cruelly betrayed. ‘‘But...but if he isn’t my father, then
why
? Why did you let him beat me all those years when he had no right to? I thought you loved me....’’

Lydia swayed when she realized what she had just done. ‘‘I do love you, Matthew...Ido,’’ she cried. ‘‘But a fatherless child would have nothing, he would be nothing. I wanted the very best for you. I wanted you to have all of this.’’

‘‘So...so you let him beat me? You thought
that
was best for me?’’

I saw what was happening and I quickly wrapped my arms around Lydia to hold her up. I was terrified for her—and for Matthew. She had confessed the truth to save her son, to prevent him from committing murder, but she had lost him all the same. I had to get Matthew away from both his parents so I could reason with him.

‘‘Come with me, Matthew, come in the house with me,’’ I said, releasing Lydia and gently taking his arm. ‘‘You’re bleeding. I’ll fix your cuts.’’

‘‘Not my house!’’ Frank wheezed. My heart froze at the hatred in his voice. ‘‘That boy will never step one foot in my house again!’’ Frank winced in pain as he propped himself up with his uninjured arm. His eyes met Lydia’s and stabbed through her. ‘‘What you did...lying to me all these years...Is unforgivable! You thought you could steal my orchard from me? Well, your son will never own so much as a clod of dirt from my land! I’ll see John Wakefield tomorrow morning and I’ll write your bastard out of my will! Now get him out of my sight and off my land...Tonight! I don’t ever want to see his face again!’’

I quickly hustled Matthew out of the barn while he was too numb to resist. Lydia followed and so did Sam, but I turned to Sam as we reached the door and stopped him. ‘‘Go back and help your father,’’ I told him.

He shook his head. ‘‘No. I hate him, too!’’

‘‘I know, Sam. But you’re all he has left. He’ll treat you differently from now on, you’ll see.’’

‘‘I don’t care! I want to go away with Matthew!’’

‘‘You can’t, son,’’ I said gently. ‘‘Your father needs you. Drive him into town now. Tell the doctor...Tell him Frank got trampled by one of the horses...Tell him the reins lashed him.’’ Sam reluctantly did as he was told.