Echoes of Dollanganger (12 page)

“They wouldn't do this,” I told him. I knew it was a strange thing to say the second after I said it.

He smiled. “Right, right. We'll continue this downstairs. I think we've done enough today, anyway,” he said, and rose. He looked down at me to see if I would follow, if I wanted to continue. The candles he had lit inside me were still flickering and did not go out. So many places on my body still longed to be touched. Now it felt like I had suffered sunburn. My skin tingled.

I nodded and started to get up. As he dressed and then began to put everything back to the way it was, I dressed, too, and rehung my mother's nightgown. I closed the windows, and then we left the attic, both of us pausing first to look back at it, me to be sure it didn't reveal what had been happening in it and him looking back with the expression of someone who was remembering having been there for years and finally leaving.

He took my hand. The passion that had blossomed between us was still as heavy as honey on our lips. My body still tingled, and both of us were as flushed as the moment we had touched and caressed. Neither
of us spoke. We were hurrying down to my bedroom, where I was almost certain now I would do what my girlfriends and I jokingly referred to as “crossing the Rio Grande.”

We had just gotten down the stairs and started toward my room when I heard the front door open and close. We both froze for a moment. Without speaking, I hurried him to my room.

“Does anyone else have the key to your house?” he asked.

“No. It has to be my father,” I said, slipping the diary under the pillow and flopping onto the bed with my history text open to where I was actually supposed to be reading.

Obviously frustrated, Kane reluctantly took his books out of his bag and slapped his math text onto my desk. “If there's anything that could keep you from feeling romantic, it's studying math,” he muttered.

We could hear my father coming up the stairs. I brushed back my hair and gave my clothes a once-over just before he knocked.

“Hey,” I called, and he opened the door.

He peered in at us. Kane turned as if he hadn't heard him coming because he had been so entranced with his intermediate algebra.

“If this keeps up, you'll both be competing for valedictorian,” my father said.

I could tell from the look in his eyes, the way he tightened his lips and moved his ears slightly back, that he really didn't believe what he was seeing. I imagined
we looked too perfect, too innocuous, or perhaps our faces were still flushed. We hadn't had time to throw cold water on them. He didn't look angry as much as he looked a little more concerned this time.

Seeing the knowing expression on his face made me wonder why any teenager, boy or girl, believed he or she could completely fool parents, anyway. My father wouldn't tell me, I'm sure, but in his youth, he was surely in some similar circumstance. Yes, teenagers today were probably more sexually active than they were in my dad's time, I thought. Eighth-graders were getting pregnant. The attitude about virginity seemed completely upside down. Once, a girl could be proud she had held out until she met the man she loved and who loved her, but now, girls even considered carrying virginity into their late teens to be some sort of failure.

My father worked hard. He didn't socialize as much as everyone else's parents did, but he wasn't oblivious to the way things were today. Just because he trusted me not to get into trouble, that didn't mean he would never worry that I would, maybe especially now that I was dating a boy as carefree and privileged as Kane Hill.

“Hey, Mr. Masterwood,” Kane said. “No worries. Kristin is so far above me in grade point average, I need a telescope to see her scores.”

Dad smiled. “I bet.”

“What are you doing home so early? I thought you said you would be late all week,” I said.

“I have to change and put on some formal duds. I've been invited to dinner at Spencer's.”

“Spencer's?
Très
top-notch,” Kane said. “My father goes there to close deals.”

Dad nodded.

“Who invited you?” I asked him.

“Mr. Johnson. He wants me to meet someone,” he added. I knew he didn't want to say any more in front of Kane.

“Your blue suit was dry-cleaned a month ago,” I said. “It's on the right side in your closet.”

“I was thinking about that. Good.”

“And wear the light blue shirt with that tie I bought you last Christmas,” I added as he started to back up.

He glanced at Kane, a little embarrassed, but nodded and backed out, closing the door softly.

The look on Kane's face made me laugh.

“Yes?”

He shook his head. “You really take care of him, don't you?”

“We take care of each other, Kane.”

He looked very sad for a moment and then turned back to his math homework. “Let me know when you're hungry,” he said. “I'll order and go pick it up.”

“I can just throw something together here, but you had better remember to call home and tell your mother this time,” I warned. “Stay on your homework. I'll be back,” I told him, and went down to see what I could make us for dinner. I was pretty good at
pasta with olive oil, cheese, and some eggplant. Everything was there, so I started.

I heard someone coming down the stairs about twenty minutes later and saw my father standing in the doorway.

“Well?” he asked, gesturing like a six-year-old boy waiting for his mother's approval.

“You look very handsome, Dad.” I walked over to him and brushed his hair back a little before kissing him on the cheek.

“I always feel a little awkward in a jacket and tie, especially after a day in the field.” He looked back at the stairway. “Staying for dinner, I see,” he added, glancing at my preparations.

“Yes, I thought I'd do a nice pasta, some salad. Defrost and heat up that Italian bread we have in the freezer. Nothing fancy.”

“You'll probably eat better than I will. I don't like dinner meetings. Everyone waits for the right pause in chewing and drinking to say the important things after the mandatory small talk.”

“You and Uncle Tommy are really different, from the sound of how he runs his business. He says the better the deal, the better the restaurant, or vice versa.”

“He was spoiled from the get-go.”

“So who is going to be at this dinner?” I asked, and then held my breath to see if he would tell me.

“Someone who flew in just for it, apparently. I don't know whether to be flattered or nervous.”

“You don't know his name?”

“I was simply told it was a major stockholder in
the trust involved. I'm beginning to think I'm deep in some tax-avoidance scheme. I was starting to suspect that this whole sweet deal was too good to be true. Anyway, don't worry about it. It will all work out.”

“You used to say it would come out in the wash.”

“Yeah, but no one's doing any washing in particular right now. Enjoy your dinner,” he said, then kissed me and started out.

He did look handsome, as handsome as I could ever remember him being, but I didn't have to be a sophisticated, mature older woman to realize there was still something very important missing. There was a light, that joie de vivre that a truly happy man had. He had carried his sorrow too long. It had lost no weight and still put darkness in places where there should be none. It kept his enthusiasm for almost everything contained, chained to a sense of guilt, perhaps. How could he be happy without her? The moment he laughed, felt a smile break out on his face, let something exciting quicken his pace, he felt his loss, remembered she wasn't there beside him to share in the joy. Every laugh, every smile, gave birth to another tear. He went to sleep apologizing for being alive.

I knew all this, and it broke my heart. Right now, it made me feel even guiltier about what Kane and I were doing. I had never kept anything this serious a secret from him. How was I going to explain it to him afterward? My fear was that I would not only hate myself for having done it but also hate Kane for
encouraging me with his own obvious interest and excitement. Could I explain this to him and stop? Had we gone too far to stop? And would the effect on our relationship be the same? Would he now feel betrayed? Already, he had confided in me about himself and his family more than he had confided in anyone else.

I returned to preparing dinner, these thoughts like little pinpricks on my heart. I cut some onions for our salad, but the tears that came to my eyes were not a result of that. I tried to pull myself together when I heard Kane descending.

“You didn't come back up,” he said.

“I thought I had better get started on dinner. I'm hungry, aren't you?”

“Yeah, for lots of things.” I smirked, and he smiled. “I left a message on my mother's cell and a message with Martha, the maid who looks after her things, which include me,” he added. “Your father left?”

“Yes. He hates business dinners.”

“My father has business breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. He once even had a business New Year's,” he said, and leaned against the doorjamb.

“Oh, c'mon.”

He raised his right hand. “I kid you not. He invited all these car company executives and their wives to our home on New Year's Eve, and they talked about business right up to the clock striking twelve. I was only eleven at the time, but I remember it well, because my sister and I were spying on the party just the way Christopher and Cathy were spying on their
grandparents' gala. We got bored, however, and returned to our own rooms. I remember thinking that if that's what adults did to celebrate, I was going to remain a kid.”

“And you have,” I said.

He laughed. “I'll set the table this time.” I looked at him, surprised. “Hey, I'm not spoiled. I'm corrupted but not spoiled,” he said. “I think I was two when my mother had me instructed on how to place silverware, fold a napkin, and organize the wine and water glasses.”

“Not two.”

“Well, close to it. I had to live up to being a prince, didn't I?”

He went for the dishes and silverware, and I continued preparing our meal. Occasionally, we gave each other a look that reminded us of the passion that had just passed through us, but neither of us said anything. It was just dinner now and more discussion about what we had read of the diary.

“I really have to get to my homework this time,” I said, when we were cleaning up. “I have a test in history and a quiz in English tomorrow.”

“Don't throw me out. I promise I won't touch you,” he said. “I'll just work on my own.”

“Why is it I get the impression you're in no rush to go home . . . ever?”

“Maybe because I make it so obvious,” he said.

We returned to my room, and we did do our homework. Close to nine o'clock, he closed his books and declared that I was turning him into a better
student. He couldn't stand it any longer. We both laughed, and I let him kiss me, but he could feel that we were going no further. I was anticipating my father returning any moment, anyway.

“I'm off,” he said. “I'll be in your driveway waiting for you in the morning.”

“I'm going to forget how to drive.”

“If you would agree to bring the diary to my house . . .”

“No,” I said sharply. He put up his hands and then, with that cute smirk on his face, began to back up toward the doorway.

“Don't shoot. I'm going, I'm going.” He threw me a kiss and disappeared.

I went to the window and watched him leave. Literally seconds later, I saw my father pull into the driveway. I could tell from the way he came into the house and started up the stairs that he was tired. I stepped out to greet him in the hallway.

“Hey,” I said. “How was your dinner?”

“It was okay. The steak was a little overdone for me.”

“I don't mean the food, Dad,” I said.

He stood there looking at me.

“So?”

“Remember how I once told you that getting to know someone is like peeling an onion?”

“Yes.”

“Well, getting to know what's behind the building of a new mansion on the foundation of Foxworth Hall is like peeling an onion, too.”

I thought he was going to leave it at that, but it was just a long pause as he put his own thoughts about it together. I waited.

“The man I met tonight still isn't the man behind the project. Arthur Johnson was one layer of onion, and the man I met tonight is another. You know how I feel about navigating through mazes.”

“Who did you meet tonight?”

“A Dr. Martin West,” he said.

I saw that he was waiting to see if I knew that name from reading the diary. I shook my head. “What kind of a doctor is he?”

“He's a psychiatrist.”

Again, he waited for my reaction. Again, I shook my head. “How is he involved in all this?”

“He didn't come right out and say it, but I'm sure he worked in the clinic Corrine Foxworth was taken to after the fire here,” he said.

“Corrine was his patient?”

“My guess is that's how Arthur Johnson and his wife know so much about the interior of Foxworth Hall. Dr. West knew it all from what she told him during whatever they call that treatment psychiatrists do. You know, patient on a couch or something, babbling.”

“So Arthur Johnson works for this psychiatrist?”

“Not exactly. I mean, he's not on the title document. As I've told you, it's a trust, and the owners or partners, or whatever they call them, aren't mentioned.”

“But the doctor is a wealthy man?”

“I don't know if he's the one who's wealthy. Although he didn't say it, I had the feeling he was working for someone else, someone who's a major investor in Johnson's hedge fund. That's all I can tell you. My head's spinning with all the intrigue. I'm going to sleep,” he said.