Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (38 page)

 
          
But
even while her body concentrated on the food, her mind refused to stop
spinning. Something inside her wanted her to understand everything she'd
refused to face for all those wasted years.

 
          
Parents
were supposed to love their children. But love didn't necessarily make someone
wise.
God knows I'm living proof of that.
. . .
And anger at their own missed choices had become anger for its own
sake, anger that, like the serpent, was willing to strike at any target.

 
          
Even
at their own children.

 
          
So no one could be allowed to escape.
Because if someone did manage to break free, it proved there was another way,
another life possible, and all the sacrifice and pain would have been for
nothing. . . .

           
There was a sound behind her. Winter
turned around just in time to see
Wycherly
walk
through the dining room into the kitchen.

 
          
He
was rumpled and disheveled, his hair as wet as if he'd been walking outside in
the storm. His jacket was gone and his feet were bare; with a small
disinterested part of her mind Winter wondered what he'd been doing. He glared
at her balefully before seeming to recollect that she was his sister and there
was no particular cause for enmity between them.

 
          
"What
are you doing here?" he asked ungraciously. Without waiting for an answer
he crossed to the enormous built-in refrigerator and pulled open one of the
doors.

 
          
"Leaving,"
said Winter, and as she said it, it was true. The mistake that had led to
everything that followed had been lack of faith. She would not make it twice.
It wasn't too late; she could still change, take back the life she'd
relinquished.

 
          
And
even if she couldn't, at least she could keep from hurting anyone else. She
could stop the rage, the hunger. . . .

 
          
"I
doubt it." Malice gleamed in
Wycherly's
eyes—the
only honest expression of his feelings she'd seen since she'd come back. But
without the poltergeist-gift, the expression of
Wych's
anger would be controlled by his conscious mind. He made a mocking salute with
the bottle of orange juice in his hand, and drank.

 
          
"Believe
it. I have what I came back for," Winter said.
Even if I didn't want it very much.
"I have nothing more to
say to any of. . . them." She hesitated on the last word, mentally absolving
Wycherly
of any part in the events of that horrible
summer. He'd been eighteen, then, on the verge of his own life.

 
          
And
was still, fourteen years later, on the verge of his life.

 
          
"
Wych
, get away from here," Winter said impulsively.
"I know it seems like staying is the only way, but it isn't. If you—"

 
          
"That's
rich coming from you, sister dear. Isn't it supposed to be the cuckoo that
throws the other chicks out of the nest? But you're a true-born Musgrave, right
enough: our motto, 'Expediency
uber
Alles
.'"
He closed the refrigerator with a
careless slap and strode over to her. This close, she could see the faint
red-golden stubble along his jaw.

 
          
"You
haven't had much use for us while you were feathering your Wall Street nest,
but now I suppose you think it's time to make amends in order to be on hand
for a favorable redrawing of the will. Well, go ahead!

           
Let Mother pick you out a trophy
husband—something chic, a thirty-eight-long in legal sharkskin—and Pats can
sell you a
crackerbox
palace nice and close, so Mommy
Dearest can manage your life, too—"

 
          
Wycherly
stopped, but more from lack of breath than because
he'd run out of things to say.

 
          
Winter
shook her head, holding up her hand as if she were calling a time-out. Somehow
the venom in
Wych's
words only strengthened her faith
in her choice. They carried no pain with them—it was as if they were addressed
to someone else.

 
          
"No."
/
had a lover, once, and I threw him
away.
"
Wych
, I think you should leave, but
I'm not going to run your life for you. But I'm leaving. Things happened
here—"
And I can't forgive my
parents for them, even though they're partly my own fault.
She shrugged.
"I'm leaving first thing tomorrow morning and I'm never coming back here
again. That's all."

 
          
"I
don't believe you,"
Wycherly
said uncertainly.

 
          
Winter
laughed, and felt the crushing weight on her heart ease slightly at last.
"Oh,
Wych
! As the man said about life after
death, sooner or later you'll
know,
so
why fret about it? Believe me or don't—I don't care."

 
          
She
watched doubt and sullen anger chase each other across
Wycherly's
face until he settled on a guarded blankness.

 
          
"Mother
will have a fit," he pronounced with faint satisfaction.

 
          
"Let
her," Winter said.
It'd be a shame
to waste all that practice.

 
          
When
Winter finally returned to her room, her sleep was too deep for dreams; the
felled coma that followed an emotional purging. The alarm clock she'd set
jangled her awake at 5 A.M.; moving with machinelike precision Winter dressed
quickly in the clothes she had worn on the airplane yesterday, made one quick
phone call, and then hurried downstairs.

 
          
As
she had believed, her parents still had morning coffee together before the car
came to bring Kenneth Musgrave into the city. As Winter stepped into the
breakfast nook, she saw that this morning they were not alone;
Wycherly
was with them.

 
          
Well, what did you expect?
she scolded
herself, sighing. Theirs was not a family for loyalty;
Wych
had been right: "Expediency
iiber
Alles
"
would be an appropriate family motto.

 
          
"Winter!
Come in, dear," Miranda Musgrave cooed.

           
A less suspicious person than Winter
would have heard the tension in Mrs. Musgrave's voice. Her mother's rings
flashed as she twisted her hands nervously.

 
          
Winter
took a deep breath.

 
          
"Mother,
Father. I have something to say to both of you. It won't take long, but I'd
rather it was private.
Wych
, you really ought to pick
a side and stick to it; it's much less confusing. Now go away."

 
          
"I
think he should stay," her mother said tightly.

 
          
Winter
looked at her father. Kenneth Musgrave glowered back, his baleful eyes
piercing.

 
          
"I
don't think you have anything to say you can't say in front of your
brother," he rumbled. Only last night his displeasure would have
terrified her, but not now. Never again.

 
          
"All
right." Now that she was committed, a curious peace settled over Winter,
akin to that which she'd once felt on the Street, on the trading floor. It was
almost as if she was being reminded that some good things could be salvaged
from even the worst mistakes. She took another steadying breath.

 
          
"Fourteen
years ago I came to you for advice. I was pregnant, as you'll remember. I will
not speculate about your reasons for the choices you made then; I will only say
now, as I did then, that Grey was willing to marry me and help me raise the
baby. I loved him then, and I still love him. If I find him, I will ask his
forgiveness for what I did.

 
          
"I
am to blame for giving in to you; I'll take responsibility for that. But I
trusted you, and you betrayed me. I have no intention of giving any of you that
kind of power over me or my life ever again. So, good-bye."

 
          
Wycherly
was staring at her, stunned. Looking at him, it
was impossible to believe he'd known. She glanced at her parents. Her father's
face was bland, but her mother's was a mask of fury startling in its intensity.

 
          
"How
dare
you come into my house and speak
to me like that?" she hissed.

 
          
"Now,
Randa
." Her father's voice was unhurried; in
control. "Winter. Sit down, sweetheart. Nobody's going to hurt you. I'll
call a friend of mine and you can be back at
Fall River
by this evening. You'd like that, wouldn't
you?"

 
          
His
voice was steely and soothing, with an undercurrent of threat:
Whether you'd like it or not, you're going
back there until you learn to behave.

           
"No," Winter said simply.
"I'm not crazy and I'm not having a nervous breakdown. I'm just angry.
And if institutionalization is your idea of how to deal with family
problems—"

 
          
She
stopped, looking at
Wycherly
, and with sudden
intuition knew more than she'd ever wanted to know about her family's way of
dealing with family problems.

 
          
"I'm
leaving now. Good luck,
Wych
. Good-bye Father.
Mother."

 
          
She
turned and walked out.

 
          
"Winter!"
her father shouted after her, showing anger at last. But neither of her
parents followed her—all the anger and the veiled threats were only bluster:
They lacked the will to act.

 
          
The monsters only have the power you give
them.
Dylan and Truth had both said that, and they'd been right. Now she'd
taken back her power.

 
          
She
was free.

 
          
Winter
picked up her purse from the table in the front hall and walked down the drive
to the waiting taxi. Just as she'd walked up the drive, fourteen years before.

 
          
It
was a good twenty minutes before the three locks on her
Upper East Side
apartment door yielded to Winter's keys.
The set she'd remembered keeping in her purse had been gone when she'd looked
for them, which had necessitated a quick stop at her lawyer's to pick up her
spare set. She made a mental note to stop by her accountant's as well—after a
year and a half her emergency financial arrangements were in desperate need of
an overhaul, but even at her most overwrought she had not wanted her parents
to have control of her money, and now Winter blessed that stubborn paranoia.
She suspected it was the only thing that had made her able to leave
Fall River
.

 
          
Winter
pushed open the apartment door—it seemed to be stuck—and walked in, locking the
door behind her. After so long an absence she saw her expensive apartment as a
stranger might: a sterile place of gray carpet, white walls, white leather
sofa. White vertical blinds masking the view of
West Seventy-first Street
. Chilly modern art for the walls.

 
          
Only
now the art wasn't on the walls anymore, nor was the sofa on its legs. Winter
stepped cautiously into the living room. Her shoes grated on broken shards of
glass. She flipped the switch that should turn on the track-lighting. Nothing
happened.

           
The sofa—what was left of it—was
lying on its back in the middle of the room. The arms had been yanked from the
frame, the springs pulled out, and the leather shredded. Cotton batting was
everywhere. She didn't see the cushions at all.