Wise Folly (25 page)

“Charles?” Dianna’s voice squeaked.

Jessie glanced up in surprise before smiling ruefully. “Boy, am I the one to let family secrets out of the closet
?" She gave a short laugh. "
B
ut you might as well know. I don’t think you’ll tell anyone, will you? I don’t want Noah to think I’ve been talking about him behind his back. Besides, even Noah doesn’t know some of what I’m going to say, and I’d hate for him to find out this way.” She smiled grimly. “The man is so closemouthed sometimes that you never know what he’s thinking or if he’s really an emotionless machine behind those steel-gray eyes and determined chin. For all the world knows, he may be a robot programmed for success.” She laughed at her own description of Noah. “But he’s really human, Dianna, and sometimes I think he’s more vulnerable than the rest of us.

Dianna didn't see Noah that way at all, but she couldn't discount the fact that Jessie knew him far better than she did.

Jessie took a deep breath and continued.
“Noah’s younger brother, Char
l
es, had all the advantages Noah and his older
si
ster missed. By the time
Charles
was five their father was already gone. He died of a heart attack out in the fields. Noah found him, hours later. He was almost fifteen at the time. His mother had always been frail and the shock of her husband’s death was too much for her. She passed away a few months after he did
.
She never had the strength to be a farmer and rancher’s wife
.
She was too gentle, Noah always said
.
”

Jessie paused
,
lit
a cigarette, and drew deeply, playing with the half-empty pack as she continued
.
“Noah’s sister raised Charles as if he were her own child
.
She was nineteen or twenty then, and literally gave up her youth for him, for all
the
good it did. Between Noah and a neighbor they kept
the
farm going, barely making a go of it until he graduated from high school. He won a scholarship and attended college, working at the same time. They had sold a small portion of the land by that time and were living on the invested money.

“Noah started up Wescomp to give his sister and brother the security of money. Only it didn’t work that way.” Jessie eyed Dianna’s white face through the haze of smoke. “I know—it sounds like something out of a novel, doesn’t it? But it’s all true, and Char
l
es grew up just as you’d predict
.
He was spoiled and expected all his demands to be met
.
Usually they were. Noah’s sister denied him nothing. Maybe she wasn’t strong enough to cope with him—I don’t know. Anyway, Char
l
es attended Baylor and was kicked out
.
He attended the University of Texas and was kicked out
.
Then he attended St Mary’s in San Antonio and got into a scrape with the law. Grades, behavior, morals: they were all listed as faults on his records.

“Noah threatened to cut off his allowance if he got into trouble one more time, and as luck would have it some young gir
l
friend of his accused him of being the father of her child. Char
l
es knew that Noah would not give him another penny if he found out so he went to Philip for help. When all was said and done, Philip couldn’t turn him down.”

Jessie waved the waiter away, checking with Dianna quickly. Neither was ready to order.

“Anyway, it turned out that a week before Charles died in that traffic accident
,
Philip learned that Charles was sterile. Something to do with having had mumps as a child.
He'd already moved on the Catherine and was getting into more trouble with that little witch.

Dianna’s ashen face made her hazel eyes stand out like two burned holes in an ivory tablecloth.
"Are you sure?"

“Oh, I’m sure. Philip and I talked and talked about it
.
I wanted him to tell Noah, but he was adamantly against it
,
saying he had problems enough to deal with at that time. Maybe he was right in retrospect
.
Besides, Philip was working with the young woman who had declared her child belonged to Charles, so Philip could make that go away. Then Charles died in the auto accident.
Shortly after Charles’s death, his sister had a stroke and Noah had his hands full
.
”

The crowd buzzed in monotones as Dianna sat silent contemplating this new piece in the puzzle of her life. Her face had lost all color—she could feel it
.
Yet as her mind digested Jessie’s words she absently realized that she felt no real shock. Had she always secretly known about Charles? Had these new facts only confirmed what she’d long ago suspected? Funny. She was so calm, so very calm. She turned away from Jessie’s sharp questioning eyes, her own darting around the large elegant restaurant furnished with old English paneling and deep red carpeting.

“Are you sure Noah doesn’t know?”

Jessie nodded her head in confirmation.
“
If he did, it wasn't from Philip.
As I said, Char
l
es came to Phil
ip
so that Noah wouldn’t find out and then Char
l
es died and Phil decided there was no point in telling him.”

“I see,” she said absently as she realized she had had the key to Charles’s behavior all along. She had blotted
out the
events of that night so well that she had instantly forgotten the mumbled drunken words Charles had muttered to himself.
He had obviously thought that he couldn't have kids so her rape held no consequences.
Why? She knew the answer but didn’t have the courage to dredge it up and put it into cohere
nt words. Better to forget completely...but she never had.

Jessie continued, calling her back to the present “I guess what I’m really saying is that Noah has always been a lonely man. He’s had to support a family since he was old enough to hold a job. Oh, he’s always had women— he’s the good-looking, mysterious type, and that alone draws them like bees to honey—not to mention his money. But until the other night at your apartment
I
have never seen him happily content
.
He deserves and has earned that contentment
. It's obvious he's in love with you.
Don’t let Catherine take that away from either of you. She’ll ruin your marriage if you let her—just for
the
fun of it!” Jessie’s eyes bored into Dianna’s, hate for Catherine glittering in them.

Dianna smiled. “Don’t worry, Jessie. He’s been kept so busy lately, I doubt if he’s had any free time for our siren.” She spoke with conviction, more to put Jessie’s mind at rest than to calm her own fears.

Jessie’s eyes lit with mischief. “You sly thing
! Letting
me rattle out this tale of woe and yet your plans were already mapped out!” She turned serious once more, her eyes showing the concern she felt “But be careful, Dianna. Don’t be taken in by that
little
-
girl
attitude of hers. She may look young and naive, but she’s at least eighty years old in experience.”

“I gather from our conversation that you’d put Catherine
as
number one on a blacklist?” Dianna asked dryly.

“Damn right! She tried her wiles on Philip once. And she
did
it just to pay Noah back for not giving her enough adulation!”

“Your Philip?”

“Yes, my Philip.” Jessie’s face mirrored the bitterness of her own story.

“Surely Philip didn’t take the bait?”

“Almost,” Jessie stated grimly. “Last year I thought I had the perfect life. I had my son, Philip, Junior, two beautiful daughters, a house on the right street in the right neighborhood, the right furnishings, the right clothes, and a husband who was moving up in the
world
. I played bridge on Tuesdays and Thursdays, tennis on Wednesdays, parties with the right kind of people and a few select friends, Noah included.” She glanced up to see Dianna staring at her, perplexed, then took another sip of her drink and continued. “Then one afternoon our son died in an auto accident on his way home from baseball practice with one of the car-pool mothers. It wasn’t her fault
,
but
P.J. and her son
were killed instantly.” She swallowed hard before she continued, ignoring Dianna’s muffled exclamation. “I moved like a zombie for
months
afterward. Philip, too.”

Now it was Dianna’s turn to console and she did
.
She couldn’t even begin to imagine holding together under such a tragedy. If it were Tabby . . .
her mind balked at the very thought.

“Somehow we made it through that first hellish month and everything began slipping into a day-to-day routine, except that there was a hole in our lives that couldn’t be filled

“One day I was going through Phil’s closet cleaning everything in sight just to keep myself from thinking. I pulled out two or three suits and began going through the pockets before sending them to
the
cleaners. In one suit I found a note and a key to a hotel room. The note was dated a few weeks before P.J. died. I read the note and everything seemed to click into place: Philip’s preoccupation at that time, his lack of attention. He had been seeing Catherine at her hotel room for at least two weeks previous to our son’s death.”

Jessie took another gulp of her drink as she blinked back a haze of tears.
Then she looked up and continued.
“My world had already turned topsy-turvy, but at that moment it just stopped. When Philip came home I was sitting on the bed, holding his suit, still wearing my robe. I didn’t know where the girls
w
ere. I couldn’t even cry.
I
think I had known that everything wasn’t
right
between us, but I thought I could close my eyes and ignore any unpleasantness. When I had to face two tragedies at once, I couldn’t cope.”

Jessie pushed her drink aside and continued, not wanting Dianna to stop
the
flow of words. It
had to be
a relief to bare her soul after all this time.

“
After several weeks
of therapy
,
I realized that Philip was only partly to blame for our growing apart
.
I helped too, by being too busy with my social life to work on our private moments together
. And
his career made him too tired to take an interest in my
life
. Catherine came along at just the right time in our lives, and now I believe that anyone would have done. But she was there, and she knows just how to build up a male’s slightly battered ego. Philip was so overwhelmed to think that someone like her would be interested in him that he fell right into her trap. He didn’t realize until later that she was using him to get back at Noah for neglecting her.”

“Are you sure
that'
s why Catherine chased him?” Dianna questioned kindly.

“Oh, yes. Catherine made that point very
clear
.
S
he hoped I would run to tell Noah and he would get madly jealous.
I
never did. ”

“And now both of you are punishing yourselves for something that neither was really to blame for,” Dianna mused. “The other night. . .”

Jessie
interrupted,
her voice firm. “The other night at your home we enjoyed the conversation,
the
food,
the
relaxation of being among friends. That doesn’t make a marriage.”

“Oh, Jessie
,
I'
m so sorry.” Dianna’s hand covered the other woman’s and gave a squeeze. “Please give it time and things will
even out again
—you’ll see.”

Jessie smiled “Pollyanna,” she retorted softly. “But I've come to my senses lately.
I've
made up my mind that if
I
can only keep Philip by holding guilt over him, then
I
don’t want him
and I don't want to hurt him.
” She spread her hands on the tablecloth and stared at her plain gold wedding band. “I may never get over the death of my son, but I can’t use a child’s ghost to keep my husband, and that’s what
I've
been doing.”

Dianna looked at Jessie, struck by how different she was today from the pert redhead she had met the other night
“Sometimes
something tragic happens
that makes such a big black mark you can’t see anything else
but that mark
, Jessie. Because of it
,
you miss all
the
other
wonderful things that come your way.” Dianna’s voice was slow, hesitant as if she were just discovering the reality of her words for herself. “Don’t you think that might be what you’re doing?” Now more than ever before she knew her words to be true
. She had been doing the same thing Jesse had done, but she hadn't re
cognized
it until just this moment.