The Unloved (17 page)

And in the end there was a good likelihood they would wind up broke, despite all of Kevin’s expertise. In the hotel business it happened all the time.

And on top of all that there was the heat, the humidity, the unending insects, snakes, alligators—

No!

She almost screamed the word out loud. It was impossible, all of it. But how was she going to tell Kevin? And how was he going to react?

She closed her eyes for a few minutes, letting her mind drift, unwilling to deal right now with the possibility that her marriage could be dealt a fatal blow.

And all because of a vicious old woman’s spiteful will. This was Helena’s fault—all of it.

The clock ticked loudly, then struck the half hour, and Anne knew she should go to bed. Her mind was beginning to get fuzzy, and her emotions were taking over.

She didn’t know at first why she was certain she was no longer alone in the room. It was just a feeling she had. She kept her eyes closed, listening.

Something creaked softly, something more than the constant shifting of the old house.

Whoever was in the room had come closer. But why didn’t he speak? Anne’s heart beat a little faster. She should open her eyes and look around.

She couldn’t.

She had to.

The floorboards creaked again.

Steeling herself, Anne opened her eyes.

A few feet away, a figure stood, clad in white, staring at her.

Helena!

Anne gasped, sitting bolt upright, her heart pounding. But then the figure moved and she heard a voice.

“Anne? It’s me. Marguerite. I—I thought you were asleep, and I didn’t want to wake you.”

Anne laughed weakly as her heart settled back into its normal rhythms. “Marguerite! I’m sorry. You frightened me half to death. I guess I
was
asleep, but all of a sudden I had this creepy feeling, and when I saw you, I thought you were Helena’s ghost.” She paused, giggling self-consciously. “Come back to haunt me, I suppose.” She swung her legs off the couch and reached over to turn up the lamp. “What are you doing down here? I thought you’d gone to sleep hours ago.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Marguerite admitted, stepping out of the shadows and settling into the chair opposite Anne. “I was lying up there, thinking about Mother’s will, and I kept getting more and more frightened.” She gazed at Anne, her eyes wide. “I can’t talk to Kevin about it—he already has so much to think about. But I’m scared, Anne. I don’t know what to do.”

“Scared?” Anne repeated. “Scared of what?”

Marguerite bit her lip and looked away for a moment, but then her eyes came back to Anne. “I’m afraid he’s going to go away again,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “And if he does, I don’t know what I’ll do. I won’t have anyplace to live, and no money. I—I just don’t know what to do. And I know it isn’t your worry—I know it
shouldn’t
be your worry. But—But—”

“But of course it is my worry,” Anne said immediately, her heart going out to her sister-in-law. “Whatever happens, it concerns all of us, and we all have to know how you feel too.”

Marguerite blinked in the lamp light. “But that’s just it, don’t you see? I don’t know how I feel. I can’t imagine living anywhere but here, but I don’t want you to do something you
don’t truly want to do. Oh, Anne! Kevin is all I have left. He and the children, and you. And I know how unhappy he used to be here. But if he goes now, and I lose the house—” Her voice broke and she buried her face in her hands. Anne moved to her side and put her arms around the distraught woman. When Marguerite looked up again, her face was streaked with tears. “I can’t lose it, Anne,” she said, her voice choked. “I just can’t. Please—you have to stay. You all have to. I—I need you!”

Anne tried to swallow the lump growing in her throat, and when she was finally able to speak, her voice was shaking. “We’ll work it out, Marguerite,” she promised. “One way or another, we’ll work it out. But you won’t be alone. All right?”

Marguerite hesitated, then nodded and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. Finally she got to her feet and moved unsteadily toward the entry hall and the stairs. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I feel like a perfect fool, really. But I couldn’t help myself. I just had to come down and talk to you. I—I hope you don’t mind too much.”

“Of course not,” Anne assured her. “Just go back to bed and try to get some sleep, and I’m sure that by tomorrow we’ll all know what we have to do. I’ll think about all of it, I promise.”

Marguerite smiled. “That’s good,” she said. “I used to do that myself sometimes.” She glanced around the large entry hall and shuddered. “Of course, sometimes I couldn’t even think straight, not with all the memories here. So sometimes I’d take the car and go away for a while. Just get off the island for a little while, do you know what I mean?”

Anne nodded, then waited while Marguerite slowly climbed the stairs, finally going back into the living room to turn off the lamp. But to her surprise, Ruby was standing in the dining room door, her fingers clutching at a robe she had put over her shoulders. The old servant stared at her for a long moment, then shook her head.

“She got you,” she said softly. “She got the whole lot of you, and she’ll never let you go.”

Instantly, Anne was certain she understood. “She’s dead,
Ruby,” she replied, “She’s dead and buried, and there’s nothing she can do to any of us. Whatever we do, it will be because we want to, not because of Miss Helena, or her will.”

But once again Ruby shook her head. “You’ll stay. You’ll all stay. That’s the way she wants it, and she’ll find a way to get what she wants.” Then, leaving Anne standing alone in the living room which was still dominated by the portrait of Helena Devereaux, Ruby turned and plodded heavily back through the dining room toward her own small room behind the kitchen.

The morning sky was slate gray, with thick clouds swirling up out of the southeast. Ruby, standing at the kitchen counter putting the finishing touches on a breakfast tray for Marguerite, glanced out the window and shook her head dolefully. “Seems like they might have warned us about this one,” she grumbled. “Looks like its gonna be bad today. Don’t expect Miss Marguerite will be down at all.”

Julie looked up from the magazine she was leafing through while she ate her breakfast. “But what about class?” she asked. “And she was up earlier, wasn’t she?”

Ruby shrugged dismissively. “Alls I know is that when it gets like this, her leg gets real bad. And if her leg gets bad, I don’t know how she can teach her class. Besides,” she added, nodding pointedly toward the storm brewing outside, “if this keeps up, nobody’s gonna get across the causeway anyhow.” She picked up the tray and started toward the kitchen door, but Julie promptly rose to her feet.

“I can take it up,” she said.

Ruby hesitated a split second, the wrinkles in her brow deepening slightly, then smiled and handed the tray to Julie. “Well, I ‘spose she might just like that.”

Balancing the tray carefully, Julie backed through the swinging door to the butler’s pantry, then went through the dining room and living room toward the main staircase. As she started up, she heard her mother’s voice from the library in the far wing.

“Kevin, you can’t expect me to make up my mind about something this important overnight! My God, first you spring this idea on me out of the blue, then you expect me to know how I feel about it the next day. It’s just not fair.”

“Honey, I’m not asking you to decide right now. I’m just asking you to let me explain it to you—”

“No!” Anne exploded. “You don’t have to explain it—I’m perfectly sure that whatever plan you’ve come up with is perfectly reasonable. What I’m not at all sure of is whether I can live here. And I’m almost positive it would be wrong for the kids.”

“But they
want
to stay—” Kevin began, but Anne cut him off.

“And Jeff would like it to be Christmas every day too! For God’s sake, Kevin—they’re
children!
You can’t expect them to know what’s right for them!”

Before her father could say anything else, Julie hurried up the stairs, unwilling to hear more. By the time she’d gotten to the top of the stairs and started down the hall toward Marguerite’s room, the orange juice had slopped over the top of the glass, splashing onto the pile of toast next to the two fried eggs Ruby had put on Marguerite’s plate. Her eyes stinging as she tried to control her emotions, Julie pushed the door to her aunt’s room open, and slipped inside. Marguerite, dressed in a red satin robe, was sitting in a chair near her bed, her lame leg propped up on an ottoman. She smiled at her niece as Julie came into the room, but when she saw the glistening in Julie’s eyes, her smile faded away. “Julie, what is it? What’s wrong?”

Julie sniffled as she set the tray on the table next to her aunt. “Nothing, really, I guess. I just heard Mom and Dad, that’s all. They’re fighting about whether or not we can stay here.”

Marguerite’s eyes closed for a second and her head swung sadly back and forth. “I knew it,” she said softly. “I knew there’d be trouble. I thought—well, never mind what I thought.” Then she smiled again. “Aren’t you nice to bring up my breakfast. But you didn’t need to do it—Ruby could have brought it.”

“I wanted to,” Julie protested. “I—I’m sorry your leg hurts this morning. Ruby told me it always gets worse when there’s a storm.”

Marguerite managed a resigned smile. “There’s nothing to
be done about it. But if I take it easy for an hour or so, I should be fine by the time my girls get here.”

Julie glanced nervously out the window. The wind seemed to have picked up, and the pines were starting to whistle, a low, keening sound that made Julie shiver. “Will they really come today? Ruby says—”

Marguerite brushed her words aside with an airy gesture. “Ruby’s a terrible worrywart who’s always sure the end of the world’s just around the corner. And this is just a little squall. You watch—by ten o’clock every one of the girls will be here. And my leg will be fine.”

Julie frowned uncertainly. “Maybe I should call Jenny and tell her not to come. She could call everyone else and—”

But Marguerite shook her head. “That’s absolutely ridiculous. If I didn’t think I could handle it, i’d tell you so. And I certainly wouldn’t want any of the girls to come out here if it were dangerous. But I’ll be fine, and the storm will pass through. You should get downstairs and finish your breakfast. You can’t dance right after you’ve eaten, you know. You’ll wind up with a cramp.” Julie started out of the room, but Marguerite stopped her. “And Julie? Don’t worry about your mother. I’m sure in the end she’ll do what’s right. We just have to let her work things out for herself. All right?”

Julie nodded uncertainly and left the room. As she started down the stairs, she braced herself for the angry sound of her parents’ voices, but all she heard from the library was silence. When she got to the kitchen, though, she found her parents on either side of the breakfast table, their faces stony.

Neither of them spoke to her when she came in, and when she looked at Ruby, the old woman shook her head warningly. Quickly Julie backed out of the kitchen and started retracing her steps. But as she got to the stairs, Jeff came hurtling down. Julie grabbed him as he started to dart past, swinging him around to face her. “If you’re going to the kitchen,” she said, “you better not. Mom and Dad are in there, and they’re having a fight. Right now they aren’t even speaking to each other.”

Jeff’s eyes widened in surprise. “Mom and Dad never fight!” he declared.

“Well, they’re fighting now,” Julie insisted. “And we better stay out of it. Okay?”

“But I’m hungry,” Jeff complained, jerking his arm free from his sister’s grip. “What am I supposed to do, starve to death?”

Julie rolled her eyes. “Do what you want. But if Mom and Dad start yelling at you, don’t come running to me.”

Jeff glared scornfully at Julie. “I won’t!”

But five minutes later he crept into Julie’s room, his face pale. “They’re yelling at each other,” he said, his voice quivering. “Mom says she won’t ever live here, and Dad says we have to. What are we going to do?”

Julie shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess there isn’t anything we
can
do, except wait and see what happens.”

“Well, it’s not fair,” Jeff replied. “All of us want to stay here except Mom. What’s wrong with her?”

All Julie could do was shake her head and shrug.

At ten o’clock, just as it began to rain, Alicia Mayhew pulled her station wagon up in front of Sea Oaks and four girls poured out of it, hurrying up the steps to the wide veranda that fronted the old mansion. Jenny was about to make her own dash for the front porch when her mother glanced apprehensively at the lowering sky. “Maybe I ought to wait,” she fretted. “It’s looking pretty bad.”

“What good will it do to wait?” Jenny asked. “If it gets much worse, you’d just have to stay here with the rest of us. And if it doesn’t get any worse, you can come and pick us up.”

Alicia reached over and squeezed her daughter’s hand affectionately. “I just want to be sure you don’t try to walk home in this. Or any of the other girls, either. Promise?”