It was with as much relief as pride that Ollie first inspected the child brought to suckle at his mother’s breast. Rather than the blond hair they both had tacitly feared, the infant’s curls were as black as Mary’s own, his teal blue eyes suggesting the green they would become. The faintest depression could be detected in the middle of the tiny chin, and all who saw him remarked at the way his hair grew to a decided peak on his forehead—“so like his mother’s.”
“Well, my dear, you’ve got yourself a Toliver,” Ollie pronounced, his face wreathed in happiness.
He became an instant slave to the child and could hardly bear having him out of his sight. One evening as Mary watched him rock the small bundle, cooing and patting, forever brushing his lips to the soft little head, she wondered if the supreme irony of his situation had yet occurred to him. He had lost his leg and the ability to sire children to save his friend’s life for the woman whom he himself had wound up possessing, along with her child.
Somerset was rarely out of her mind. She mailed letters of instructions weekly to Hoagy Carter. Before she left, they had struck a deal. If, upon her return, Mary found that he had run the plantation with care and efficiency, monitored by Emmitt Waithe, she would allow him to keep all the profits from his cotton crop for three years. If she returned and found fault with his management, she would turn him and his family off the land with nothing.
One evening as they watched Matthew sleep, Ollie said, “Mary, I can’t help but still wonder if we are wrong to keep the child all to ourselves.”
Feeling a moment’s panic, Mary drew him away from the bassinet. “It is not wrong to protect this baby from a mistake that Percy and I made. You are his father now, and you needn’t feel guilty because you believe you’ve taken Matthew from him. Percy will have many sons. You and I will have only Matthew. Think of what it would do to Percy, knowing the child was his.”
She had struck the right chord. His hand closed over hers. “We will not bring the subject up again. It was only a passing thought.”
On this, their second stay in Paris, eight weeks after Matthew had supposedly been born, they tracked down Miles and arranged a meeting. Ollie left Mary to finish dressing for their luncheon date while he went downstairs to answer a summons by the concierge. He returned with two letters, one unfolded in his hand. His expression was grave. “These are from my father,” he said. “They’ve followed us around Europe. This one is four months old.”
“What’s wrong?” Mary asked.
“It’s Percy. He’s… married.”
She was still at her dressing table. The necklace she was fastening fell from her hands and clattered onto the dresser top. “Who?” she whispered, staring stunned into the mirror.
“Lucy.”
The blood drained from her face so fast, she thought she would faint. “Lucy? Did you say Lucy?”
“Yes. Lucy Gentry.”
“Oh, my God! Lucy?” Mary gripped the table and let out a short, hysterical laugh of disbelief. “Percy married Lucy? How could he? How could he?”
“I wouldn’t doubt but what Percy had the same thing to say about you,” Ollie remarked with a rare frown of disapproval. He opened the second letter, postmarked two months later. After a quick perusal, he met her eyes in the mirror. “Perhaps you’d better prepare yourself for another shock. Lucy is pregnant. She and Percy are expecting the baby in April next year.”
When they met Miles later, Mary found it difficult to concentrate on their conversation and barely touched her food. Ollie did most of the talking. Marietta was not with Miles. She was “incapacitated,” he explained briefly, his eyes constantly shifting away from Mary’s. He looked worse than when he had left Howbutker. His complexion was sallow, his teeth the color of tobacco. Flakes of dandruff from his thin, dry hair spotted the shoulders of his shabby suit.
When Ollie excused himself to go to the men’s room, Miles looked at his sister directly for the first time. “I always thought it would be you and Percy, Mary.”
“Well, it’s not, is it?”
Her brother shook his head. “You and Ollie. Percy and Lucy. It doesn’t make sense. What happened?” Receiving no reply, he bared his bad teeth. “Let me guess. After the hail wiped you out, you saw Ollie as a way to save Somerset. Knowing how Percy feels about the plantation, he wouldn’t have given you a cent, but he would have married you. Fool that you are, you chose Somerset.”
“Let’s change the subject, shall we?” Mary said, her jaw tight.
“To what? To Mama? I know in my gut she didn’t die in her sleep from heart failure.”
“If you’d been there, you could have seen for yourself.”
Miles combed a bony hand through his hair in the familiar gesture that Mary remembered. “I’m not accusing you of anything, Mary. It just sounds so unlike her, getting out of the bed she wallowed in for years to give you a birthday party.”
“I thought so, too, but she did. The effort was obviously too much. And I certainly hope you’re not accusing me of anything, Miles. A brother who ran out on a mother and sister who needed him is hardly in a position to point a finger at anyone else’s dereliction of family duties.”
They tried as best they could, but the family bond was broken. Miles was a stranger to her, and Mary wished they’d never tried to locate him. He looked the perfect down-and-out picture of the failure he was. It was not an image she wished to carry home, most likely the final one of her brother. Courtesy, and the last shred of sisterly attachment, dictated that she invite Miles back to their hotel to see his nephew, but she hoped he would decline.
Ollie was returning. Seeing his brother-in-law deftly wending his way toward them with the use of his crutches, Miles said, “See that you’re good to Ollie, little sister. That one comes from the gods. You won’t find any better. I hope you appreciate that.”
“I do,” Mary assured him.
Miles did not accept the invitation to be introduced to his nephew, and the DuMonts left Europe without seeing him again. They sailed for home within the week, in time for the last pass of the fields at Somerset. It was the end of September. Their son was almost five months old, but none who cooed over the small infant on the return ocean voyage doubted the parents’ assertion that he had lived eight weeks short of that time upon the planet Earth.
ON THE VERANDAH, MARY TOLIVER DuMont opened her eyes. The sun had edged beyond the roof, and the glare had lessened. The skirt of her green linen suit was damp and wrinkled across her lap. For a confusing moment, she had no idea where she was or in what year. On the table next to her was a champagne bucket and nearly empty bottle of Taittinger’s sweating in melted ice. The lipstick-imprinted flute told her she’d been drinking—and by herself.
Nineteen eighty-five, she recalled. It was August 1985. She was sitting on the front verandah of her house and had been reminiscing about the past.
It had been a long journey back. Only the remembrance of her son’s birth had brought her spinning back to the present—that and a strange sensation along her spine. The magic carpet ride was definitely over. She wanted off. She felt a painful twinge beneath her sternum, but there always was when she thought of Matthew. Stupid little chit she’d been not to have known when he was conceived. Girls knew so little about their bodies in those days, especially girls without mothers, and she’d been virtually motherless for a long time by then.
If only she had known, how different her journey into the past would have been. How different their lives. Percy had arrived on the inbound train the day after she and Ollie had pulled out. If only he had called to let his parents know he was on the way, she would have canceled the wedding, and she and Percy would have had time to make things right. If only she hadn’t stopped by the cabin that particular afternoon, hot for his flesh against hers, his mouth, his hands. If only he’d agreed to lend her his signature. As it turned out, he wouldn’t have lost a dime. The next year produced a bumper crop that enabled her to get Fair Acres out of hock. The following year
she paid off the mortgage, and Somerset was hers free and clear.
But, of course, it hadn’t been about the money. They’d both understood that.
It proved a successful cover, everybody believing that she’d married Ollie to bail out Somerset. The town had expected him to be her puppet, but he surprised them. Ollie was nobody’s puppet, for all his amiable ways, his willingness to please. They’d had a good marriage, based on respect, humor, boundless understanding, and support. She remained faithful to him, even when he was gone and she and Percy could have been together, but by then, of course, it was too late.
Mary shook her head sadly. So many if onlys, and their consequences had affected them all. Percy and Lucy. Matthew and Percy’s son, Wyatt. Miles and Mama. William and Alice. And Mary Toliver DuMont. All impoverished because of Somerset.
Well, there was one life that she would save from the Toliver curse—one that she would spare the regrets she was taking to the grave. It had taken her long enough to see what must be done, but she had in the end, and before it was too late. Tomorrow, she’d fly to Lubbock and relate the real history of the Tolivers to Rachel, tell her the stories Amos never read, reveal the truths the lies had hidden all these years. She would make Rachel understand. She’d get her to see that she was making the same mistakes, taking the same wrong turns, offering up the same sacrifices to the Toliver altar as her dear old great-aunt, and for what? She had once read: “It’s not the land that’s important, but the lessons learned from the land.” She had scoffed at the notion, but now she believed it. Somerset had been a good teacher, but she hadn’t listened. She’d get Rachel to listen, and maybe she’d learn.
But first she must attend to one final task, and then she could leave this earth in peace. She must get up to the attic, to Ollie’s army trunk. She’d come down afterward and have a bite of Sassie’s good dinner. Not that she was hungry. She felt nauseated, in fact. The pain persisted under her sternum and was radiating to her jaws. Thank goodness Sassie was coming.
She rose unsteadily to her feet. “Miss Mary! Miss Mary!” she heard from far off as another pain, wickedly sharp, cut deep into her jaws. She grabbed for the porch rail.
“No!” she gasped, realizing fully what was happening. “I must get to the attic, Sassie. I must—”
Her legs gave way, and for a few seconds, as she strained to keep the light, she thought she saw the outline of a familiar face taking shape in the gray mist rolling toward her. Ollie! she thought, but it was Rachel’s features that emerged—beautiful, outraged, and unforgiving. “Rachel!” she cried, but the vision disappeared in the darkening fog, and she felt the return of the arrows she had slung.
PART II
Chapter Thirty-one
With briefcase in hand, Amos was adjusting the thermostat in his office prior to leaving for the day when the phone rang. Let the answering machine get it, he thought. He was in no mood to take a call, and besides, he was slightly drunk.
“Amos, if you’re there, pick up,” he heard Percy say.
Immediately, he plucked up the receiver. “Percy? I’m here. What can I do for you?” There was a pause, the kind that made his heart lurch. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
“It’s Mary. She… she’s suffered a heart attack.”
He edged around his desk, groping for his chair. “How bad is it?”
“She died, Amos. Right out on her verandah a little while ago. Sassie sent Henry to get us. Matt’s here, but I thought I ought to be the one to tell you—” His voice cut off with a strangled sob.
Amos pressed his palm to his throbbing forehead. Holy hell! Mary dead? It wasn’t possible! My God, where did that leave Rachel? Now she’d never hear Mary’s reasons for the codicil.
“Amos?”
“I’ll be right there, Percy. Are you at Warwick Hall?”
“Yes. The EMS has just taken the body to the coroner’s. There won’t be an autopsy. Cause of death was obvious. You’ll have to let Rachel know.”
Amos’s despair sank deeper. “I’ll call her from your house.”
SWINGING HER DARK GREEN BMW into her reserved space in the parking lot of Toliver Farms West, Rachel was surprised to find her foreman and indispensable right-hand man of eight years sitting in the shade of the awning, apparently waiting for her. He had been scheduled to take delivery of a new compressor out at the south sector while she was at her noon business meeting. Another odd feeling of unease rippled through her. The New York representative of the textile mills with whom Toliver Farms had dealt for years had arrived at their meeting with no contract. Out of courtesy to their long association, he had shown up merely to offer apologies but no explanation.
“What’s wrong, Ron?” she called as she got out of the car and knew immediately that something was amiss from the reluctant way he got out of the chair, pushed back his straw hat, and stuck his fingertips into his jeans pockets.
“It may be nothing,” he said in his West Texas drawl, “but when I came for the invoice, I took a call from Amos Hines. He sounded agitated. You’re to call him soon as you can. I thought I better hang around… well, in case it’s bad news. I’ve contacted Buster to take care of the delivery.”
She gave his arm a squeeze as she rushed past him. “Is Amos at his office?”
“No, at the house of somebody named Percy Warwick. The number’s on your desk.”
Rachel threw down her handbag and grabbed the phone, steeling herself for the likelihood that something had happened to Percy. If so, she’d fly immediately to be with her great-aunt. Aunt Mary would have a terrible time adjusting to life without Percy.
Amos answered the phone before the ring was completed. “Rachel?”
“I’m here, Amos. What’s happened?” She locked eyes with Ron’s and held her breath to await the impact of Amos’s answer.
“Rachel, I’m… afraid I’ve got bad news. It’s about Mary. She died a couple of hours ago from a sudden heart attack.”
It was as if she’d taken a gunshot to the chest. She felt the numbing shock, then the spread of pain like the slow seepage of blood from a wound. Ron caught her arm to help her back into her desk chair. “Oh, Amos….”
“Dear girl, I can’t begin to tell you how deeply sorry I am.”
She heard the break in his voice and the struggle with his own pain and tried to get a grip on hers. “Where was she? Where did it happen?”
“On her verandah around one o’clock. She’d come in from town and had been sitting in one of the porch chairs. Sassie found her in her… death throes. She lived maybe a minute longer.”
Rachel closed her eyes and pictured the scene. Just in from town, probably dressed to the teeth, her lovely old great-aunt had died on her verandah with her last view on earth the street where she’d lived all her life. She’d have preferred no other place to breathe her last. “Did… she say anything?”
“According to Sassie, she… said something about needing to get to the attic. Earlier she’d had Henry go up there and unlock a trunk. It must have contained something she wanted. She… also cried your name, Rachel… there at the end.”
Tears began to course from beneath her tightly squeezed lids. Quietly, Ron retrieved a box of tissues from the coffee table and laid it within reach.
“My dear child,” Amos said. “Is there anyone who can be with you?”
She pressed a tissue to her streaming eyes, knowing that he asked because he knew of the strained relations between her and her family and that they were not likely to be a source of comfort. “Yes, my foreman is here and my secretary, Danielle. I’ll be all right. I’m so glad you and Matt are there for Percy. How is he?”
“Taking it pretty hard, as you can imagine. Matt has sent him upstairs to have a rest. He sends his love, though, and Matt asked me to tell you he’s at your disposal when you get to Howbutker.”
Matt… His name sent a shock of remembrance through her—a comforting one. She hadn’t seen him since she was a teenager, when she’d cried on his sho
ulder. “Tell him I’ll gratefully take him up on that,” she said. “And you, Amos? How are you?”
There was a moment’s silence while he seemed to be groping for the right word. “I am… devastated, child… especially for you.”
Kind, loving Amos, she thought, swallowing down a fresh surge of tears. “I’ll be all right,” she said. “It will just take time. Aunt Mary used to say that the only thing time was good for was to get past bad times.”
“Yes, well, let us hope it will not fail its one attribute,” he said, and cleared his voice loudly, as if a huge obstruction were in his throat. “Now, do you have any idea of the time of your arrival? I ask because I can make preliminary arrangements for you—set up appointments with the funeral director and florist, that sort of thing. The plane is gassed and ready to go. Mary had planned to fly out to see you tomorrow, you know.”
Her surprise momentarily stanched her tears. “No, I didn’t know.”
“Then I’m afraid she died before she could inform you, but I know she planned to see you. She told me so in my office this morning when she came for… a visit.”
“You saw her today? How wonderful for you to have seen her one last time, Amos. I wish she could have made it here. Did she say why she was coming? It’s not… it wasn’t like her to surprise me.”