When Venus Fell (47 page)

He and I disappeared discreetly to his lodge at about three in the morning. The jeep’s tires were bolstered by tire chains; we rolled through a foot of sleet-crusted snow. A limb snapped off a pine tree and dropped with a loud crash on the jeep’s hood. Allegra yowled from inside my coat, where I’d tucked her.

“Just a twig!” Gib said tensely, around the butt of a cigar.

I opened my coat and said to Allegra, “Just a twig, the man says. Just an ice cube, the captain of the
Titanic
said.” Allegra looked up at me with green-eyed fury, and yowled again in terror.

The waterfall was beautiful in wintertime. It froze at its edges and the rocks shimmered as if covered in a diamond-like sheen. Inside the lodge, the logs of the walls in the big
main room were dark with smoke and carved with initials, including the names of Gib’s parents inside a heart. Every married couple in the family had a tradition of cutting their names into that wall. The wall was covered.

“One more name,” I’d said the first time I went inside, “and this wall turns into kindling.” The fireplace was massive, the chairs and couches heavily cushioned and so deep and worn they were like fat leather marshmallows on carved oak feet. There were water rings on the heavy tables and cigarette burns on the rugs. The smell of woodsmoke and stone and leather and
man
was in the air.

I built a fire in the fireplace while Gib got an oil lamp from a storage room and lit it. I went outside and used a hatchet to chop icicles into a bucket, because we feared the lodge’s creaky plumbing might freeze. A raccoon waddled across the yard and I tossed him food scraps from a pot on the kitchen’s scarred wooden countertop. A fox scurried across the edge of the porch and headed for the leftovers, too. He and the raccoon made noises at each other.

As I lugged my bucket of ice indoors, stomping snow from knee-high rubber boots and looking eagerly toward the warm light of the fire in the main room, Gib offered me a slice of cold grilled venison stuffed into a cold biscuit. I’d cooked the Bambi and made the biscuit with my own two hands. I sat down and chewed wearily as Gib took my coat and pulled my boots off. “I fed our pet raccoon. Spotted a fox, too. If they fight over the food scraps I’ll bet money on the raccoon. He’s huge.”

Gib rubbed his jaw and looked at me with such affection that I stopped eating and said, “What?”

“You’re turning into a mountain woman.”

“I doubt it.”

“But you’ve got one more test to pass. You’ve got to get in my bed with me and make love wearing a nightgown, wool socks, and a scarf, under five heavy quilts and six inches of goose-down comforter, and you
’ve got to make me forget how
this damned weekend is going
.” He stood before the fire, his shoulders slumping as he gazed into the flames. “Maybe I can’t manage the inn,” he added. “Maybe I can’t replace Simon as the leader of this family. Maybe Emory’s right.”

I went to him, wound my hands into his shirt, and stared up at him belligerently.
“I believe in you.”

He took me in his arms. “I wish I did.”

“Where’s Ella?” I asked at daybreak, when Carter met us at the Hall’s kitchen. Gib and I were sitting at the table with bleary-eyed Min, Isabel, and Ruth, all desperately drinking coffee. Carter scrubbed snow from his black hair and laughed hoarsely. “She’s asleep at the houseboat. Safe in bed,
this
time.”

I leaped to my feet. “What do you mean?”

“Whoa, whoa, Vee Nellie. She’s fine. I woke up about an hour ago and she was gone. I ran outside and tracked her footprints in the snow.”

“In the snow?” I sank down on the edge of my chair.

He chuckled. “She was sound asleep in the cab of my truck. Curled up like a kid with my coat around her shoulders. I woke her up and she said, ‘How’d I get out here?’ I swear, she looks so cute when she’s surprised at herself.”

Gib frowned. “She was sleepwalking?”

“Yep.”

I propped my head on my hands. “She does it occasionally when she’s under stress. But it’s been a long time since the last episode.”

Carter poured himself a cup of coffee. “She warned me she sleepwalks sometimes, but I never thought she’d traipse out in a snowstorm without batting an eyelash.”

I felt Min’s, Isabel’s, Ruth’s, and Gib’s gazes on me, and knew Ruth in particular was gauging this strange behavior of Ella’s. “But she’s all right?” I asked. “You’re sure?”

“I tucked her in and gave her a kiss right before I came back over here. I braced a chair under the outside doorknob for insurance.”

After Carter left Ruth stared at me and snorted. “How often does your nutty sister take nighttime hikes? Is this another peculiar Arinelli trait?”

Gib stood before I could say a word. The condemning stare he gave Ruth brought a tense hush to the group. “I’ve listened to you make remarks like that since Vee and Ella came here last fall. I’ve talked to you in private about your attitude, but you won’t listen. Vee shrugs it off, so I tried to let the two of you handle the problem yourselves, but not anymore. I’m ashamed of you. I expect you to apologize to Vee.”

“I don’t want Ruth to—” I began, but Gib held up a hand.

“I want her to,” he said.

Ruth gazed up at him with obvious chagrin that quickly became red-faced defensiveness. “Lately you’re oversensitive on the subject of Arinellis, big brother. I don’t appreciate being lectured to. Haven’t we got enough problems, trying to start up the inn without Simon’s help?” She got up and stomped out.

“I’ll go talk to her,” Isabel said. “She’s just worried about the way things are going with the guests.” She hurried after Ruth. Gib scowled as he sat back down.

Min looked at me somberly. “I apologize for Ruth. She doesn’t mean what she says. This horrible weekend seems to be getting to us all.”

I nodded vaguely, but I couldn’t care less about Ruth’s sarcasm. I was thinking of Ella’s sleepwalking episodes. They usually occurred when she had migraines.

Or when she was hiding something from me.

The snow began melting by noon on Sunday, but the sky threatened more. All of the guests packed quickly, paid their bills, told us they’d had a lovely experience, then left as fast as
their Mercedes and Beemers and Lexuses could travel without sliding.

The opening weekend was over. It was special and memorable only in the sense that no one had frozen in the storm, been eaten by a bear, or trampled by their fellow guests in the mad rush to leave. “We have the most hideous hangovers,” Sissy and Casper Manchester wrote in the guest ledger.

Gloom settled on us all when the last car disappeared from sight. “Debriefing. In the main dining room. Right now, please,” Gib announced.

We sat stiffly around the big table. Olivia wrote on her notepad:

I barely paid attention; I was busy scrutinizing Ella as she sat across from me. She’d laughed when I questioned her about her sleepwalking; she swore she’d never felt better, but she looked flushed and tired to me.

“Emory called this morning,” Min said. “He wants to meet with us all on Friday. We promised, remember? We said we’d meet with him the week after the opening. We have to vote on his proposal.”

“Stall him,” Gib said. “Everybody needs more time to analyze what went wrong, how we could have made the problems work out more smoothly, and then we’ll talk about what went
right
. Vee and Ella’s music, for one thing. I think that kept the guests’ mood a few notches higher than it would have been.”

“Oh, hell, Gib, the guests weren’t in a good mood. They were freezing and
drunk
most of Saturday night,” Ruth retorted.

Min steepled her hands to her chin. “Gib, I’m not trying to insult you. I’m just not sure there’s been enough time for you to realize the kind of responsibility you’re taking on.”

I looked away, my eyes burning. Gib exhaled wearily. “We’re getting off the subject.”

Min shook her head. “I can’t pretend I feel good about the weekend. I’m so sorry, Gib. We can’t risk the future of the Hall on wishful thinking. We nearly worked ourselves sick. I’m afraid it will always be like that without Simon in charge. We’ve run out of time.”

“I can’t promise you everything’ll go smoothly next time,” Gib admitted in a low, hoarse voice. “But I’m not going to give up just because we hit a few snags—”

“That isn’t what matters,” Ruth interjected. She looked neither happy nor victorious; in fact every word seemed to hang heavily on her tongue. “What matters is the publicity. We’re going to get mediocre reviews, Gib. There’s no use pretending otherwise. And those reviews are going to translate into lost bookings. We can’t wait and hope for the best. The inn could go bankrupt. We could lose the Hall and this valley.”

“What will we have if we turn over control of the valley to Emory?”

Isabel offered wistfully, “We’ll still have our home. Our heritage.”

“It won’t be a real home. And we won’t deserve to claim our heritage if we aren’t willing to fight for it.”

“I’m tired of fighting, Gib.”

Ella stood. “May I speak?” Surprised, everyone grew quiet and stared at her. I studied her closely. A stab of alarm went through me. She had the glazed look she got when she was on the verge of a headache.

“Of course you can speak,” Gib told her.

Carter looked up at her with mild puzzlement, but grasped one of her hands when she fluttered it in his direction. “You say whatever you feel like saying, darlin’.”

She rubbed her forehead. “Was I wrong to believe in the
safety Vee and I found here? The
sanctuary?
Are you all willing to let go of your dreams so easily?”

“We’re not going to lose anything you really care about,” Ruth snapped. “Money, for instance.”

Olivia slapped her hand on the table. She pointed to Ella then nodded vigorously. Bea interpreted. “Herself couldn’t agree more with dear Ella.”

Ella faltered. “I’m so … afraid it was all an illusion.” Slowly, her head lolled back and she collapsed. Carter caught her in his arms and lowered her to the floor. I ran to her side. Gib and the rest of the family crowded around us. “Ellie, Ellie?” Carter said frantically.

As I rubbed her ice-cold hands I crooned, “Come on, honey.” She moved weakly, gasped, then clutched her stomach.

“My baby,” she moaned.

I stared at her in horror.

She was pregnant again.

That afternoon, in a hospital in Knoxville, my sister lost her second child.

The small, new life that would have been my niece or nephew seeped away just as before. Ella was two months pregnant but hadn’t told anyone, not even Carter. I understood why she’d hidden the pregnancy in its early weeks, but he didn’t. Now her happy dreams of surprising us all were destroyed. Knowing how the first miscarriage had devastated her, I feared she couldn’t survive another one.

Quietly terrified, I sat on the edge of Ella’s hospital bed, holding her right hand. Carter sat on the opposite side, holding her left hand. We balanced her between us as if she might sink out of sight if we let her go. Carter watched her with his dark, hooded eyes filled with misery and shock. “Why didn’t you tell me about the baby?” he kept asking her.

“I wanted everything to be perfect this time,” she mumbled in a drugged daze. “I was only going to wait a little longer.”

“Sweetie, what do you mean, ‘this time’?”

I shook my head. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
Ella’s secret weighed on me along with my fears about her health. Her face was swollen from crying. Her fingers squeezed spasmodically against mine. Her eyes were glazed.

“Everything was so perfect,” she repeated in a small, breathy voice, blinking slowly. “I thought we were finally safe.” Her gaze shifted to me. “But you’re right not to believe in fairy tales, Sis. You tried to warn me.”

“Don’t make judgments right now. You can’t think straight. Try to sleep.”

“Why did this happen to
my
baby? Why me again?”

My eyes burned. I glanced at Carter’s bewildered expression and swallowed hard. “Listen to me. You’ll be all right. You’ll grieve and then you’ll go on with your life.”

“It will never be the same. What did I do to deserve this punishment again?”

“Don’t go Catholic on me. This isn’t a punishment.”

Carter’s subdued emotions surfaced in a low, frantically soothing murmur. He hunched over her, massaging her hand as he clasped it against his chest. “You didn’t do anything wrong, darlin’.” His voice shook. “Nothing. Whatever you think you did before—I don’t understand. Why couldn’t you tell me we were going to have a baby? I’d have been so happy. I wouldn’t have let you work so hard. I’d have taken care of you even more than I did. Maybe you wouldn’t have lost the baby.”

Her eyes widened. She opened her mouth and uttered a low shriek of agony. “I’m to blame,” she moaned. “It’s all my fault. I killed my baby. I’m not meant to be a mother. God doesn’t want to give me children.”

“
You didn’t do a thing
. Don’t talk like that. I promise you we’ll make us another baby as soon as you’re ready to try. It’ll be easy.”

She stared at him. “I wanted
this
baby. I loved this baby. Didn’t you?” Her voice was slurred.

“Of course I did! Shhh. Shhh.”

“Ella,”
I said in a strong, demanding tone. She looked at me groggily. “Stop it. Carter is grieving, too. Be fair to him. Shut your eyes and relax. You’ll be asleep in less than a minute. You and Carter can talk more when you wake up.”

“That’s right, darlin’,” Carter went on urgently. “I’m just tryin’ to make you feel better. This baby wasn’t meant to be.” He stroked her hand. I shook my head at him to stop talking. He didn’t understand how Ella’s mind worked. She did not want to hear practical assessments. She’d spent her entire life seeing beyond the practical. “The poor little thing,” Carter said hoarsely, “had something wrong with it. Nature takes care of mistakes like that. We have to try to be glad.”