"Don't," she pleaded, "please don't. Have mercy on me, Christopher. I did the best I could under the circumstances. I swear I did my best!"
"Your best?" He laughed and sounded like Momma when she poked mean fun. "When your father's younger half brother walked into Foxworth Hall at age seventeen, did you immediately seize hold on an inspiration?--the supreme way to punish your father for making you dislike yourself? Did you set out to make our father fall in love with you? Did you? Did you hate him in a way too, because he looked like Malcolm? I think you did. I think you schemed and plotted to wound your father in the one way that would shatter his ego most, so it might never recover. And I think you succeeded! You eloped and married the younger half brother he despised, and you thought you'd won in two ways. You had stung him where it hurt most. Now you had power to gain his tremendous fortune through our father!--but it didn't work, did it? I haven't forgotten those days when we lived in Gladstone, when I overheard you pleading with my father to sue, to get what was rightfully his. But our father refused to cooperate. He loved you and married you for what he thought you were, and not for the money you couldn't keep from dreaming about."
Stunned again, I stared at my grandmother. She was crying, her frail body shaking; even her rocking chair seemed to quiver. I was quivering too, crying too-- inside.
"You're wrong, so wrong, Christopher!" she sobbed, her chest heaving. "I loved your father! You know I loved him! I gave him four children and the best years of my life--the best I had in me to give to anyone."
"Your best is so poor, Mrs. Winslow, so very, very poor."
"Christopher!" she cried out, getting to her feet painfully. She spread her hands in a helpless way, stepping closer to look up into his face. The black shroud she wore fluttered as she shook. She threw a fearful glance around the room, forcing me to shrink smaller into the dim shadowy corner. Her voice lowered.
"All right, we've said enough about the past. Live with Cathy, but accept me into your lives. Let me have Bart as my own son. You have Jory and that little girl you adopted. Let me take Bart and go away, so far away you'll never see or hear from me again. I swear I'll never let anyone know about you and Cathy. I'll do what I can to protect your secret--but let me have Bart for my own, please, please!"
She fell to her knees and clutched at his hands, and when he quickly moved them out of reach, she pulled on his jacket.
"Don't embarrass me further, Mother," he said uneasily, but I could tell he was touched. "Cathy and I don't give away our children. He is not our pride and joy at this moment, but we love him, we need him, and we will do what is necessary to see that he is mentally healthy again."
"Tell me what to do, and I'll do it," she pleaded, tears streaking her cheeks as at last she caught hold of his evasive hands and she crushed them to her breasts. "Tell me what to do--anything but leave. I need to see him, and watch and admire as he pretends. He's wonderfully gifted." She began to kiss his hands as he tried to pull them away, but he must not have tried too hard, for she was able to retain them both with her fragile strength.
"Mother, please . . ." he begged, looking away before he sat down and hid his face.
"He needs me, Chr
istopher, more than any of my own children have ever needed me. He loves me too . . . I know he does. He sits on my lap and I rock him, and I see a look of contentment on his face. He's so young, so vulnerable, so bewildered by things he can't understand. And I can help. I know I can help him.
"Something inside of me says I won't be here too
much longer," she whispered, and I had to strain my ears to hear. "Let me have him until then . . . please, as one last gift to the mother you used to love very much . . . the mother of your youth, Christopher . . . the mother who cared for you when you had the measels, the chicken pox, all those colds from staying outside in the snow too long. Remember? I remember. Without my memories of the good times, I could never have lived through the bad . . ."
She was getting to him. He was staring down at her, his eyes soft.
"You said a while ago I seduced your father and deliberately schemed to hurt my father by marrying him. You are wrong. I loved your father from the first moment I laid eyes on him. I could no more have held back from loving him than you held back from loving Cathy. Chris, I have nothing left of my past. I've lost everything. John's the only one from my past," she murmured low, like she was scared. "He's the only one I have left from the days at Foxworth Hall."
"He must know who I am then! And who Bart is!"
Leaning forward, she stretched to put her pale hand with all the rings on his trousered knee--I saw him shudder at her touch. "I don't know what John knows. He thinks all my children ran off and were lost somewhere in the world. As far as I know, he doesn't know Bart's middle name is Winslow . . but then again, he's so sly, he may know everything." She trembled and withdrew her hand as if she knew it offended him. "All this land around here belonged to my father. So he thinks it's only natural I would come out here and settle down on an estate that's been in our family for years and years."
He shook his head. "And you did arrange for me to buy my land cheaper?"
"Christopher, my father owned land
everywhere. Now I own all of it. But I would give it all away just to have you and Cathy back as my family. No one knows about you and Cathy but me, and I'll never tell anyone who you are. I promise not to shame and hurt you--just let me stay! Let me be your mother again!"
"Get rid of John!"
First she sighed, then bowed her head. "I wish to God I could."
"What do you mean?"
"Can't you guess?" she asked, her graying head lifted so her eyes could search his.
"Blackmail?"
"Yes. He doesn't have any family either. He pretends not to know about you and Cathy, but I can't be sure. He's sworn to help me keep my whereabouts a mystery, for there are news reporters who would be hot on my heels if they knew where I was. So I give him a good home and plenty of money to keep me safe."
"Bart is not safe. Jory has seen John Amos whispering to him. I think he knows who we are."
"But he won't do anything," she cried. "I'll talk to him, make him understand. He won't tell . . . I'll pay him off."