Petals on the Wind (Dollanganger 2)

Paul had lost a great deal of weight; he looked gaunt. All his youth and vitality, held on to so valiantly, had disappeared almost overnight. Yet he'd never moved me more than when he smiled at me and held out his arms. "I just called to see if you'd come. I ordered you to get out of this house for a change."

"You're talking too much," I cautioned. "You know you aren't supposed to talk but a little." This was a sore point with him to only listen and not join in, but he tried to accept it. His next words took me by complete surprise. I could only stare at him, mouth open and eyes wide. "Paul, you don't mean that!"

Solemnly he nodded, his still beautiful iridescent eyes holding mine. "Catherine, my love, it's been almost three years that you have been a slave to me, doing your best to make my last days happy. But I'm never going to get well. I could live on like this for years and years, like your grandfather did, while you grow older and older, and miss out on the best years of your life."

"I'm not missing out on anything," I said with a sob in my throat.

He smiled at me gently and held out his arms, and gladly I went to cuddle on his lap, though his arms about me no longer felt strong. He kissed me, and I held my breath. Oh, to be loved again. . . but I wouldn't let him, I wouldn't!

"Think about it, my darling. Your children need a father, the kind of father I can't be now."

"It's my fault!" I cried. "If I had married you years ago, instead of Julian, I could have kept you well, and forced you not to work so hard and drive yourself night and day. Paul, if we three hadn't come into your life, you wouldn't have had to earn so much money, enough to send Chris through college and me to ballet classes. . . ."

He put his hand over my mouth, and told me but for us, he would have died years ago from overwork. "Three years, Catherine," he said again. "And when you think about it, you will realize you are very much a prisoner, just as when you were in Foxworth Hall, waiting for your grandfather to die. I don't want you and Chris to grow to hate me . . . so think about it, and talk to him about it--and then decide."

"Paul, Chris is a doctor! You know he wouldn't agree!"

"Time is running out, Catherine, not only for me, but for you and Chris too. Soon Jory will be seven years old. He will be remembering everything more clearly. He will know Chris is his uncle, but if you leave now and forget about me, he will consider Chris his stepfather, not his uncle."

I sobbed. "No! Chris would never agree."

"Catherine, listen to me. It wouldn't be evil! You are now unable to have more children. Though I was terribly sorry you had such a difficult time giving birth to your last son, maybe it was a blessing in disguise. I'm impotent; I'm not a real husband, and soon you will be a widow again. And Chris has waited for so long. Can't you think about him, and forget the sin?"

And so, like Momma, we'd written our scripts too, Chris and I. And maybe ours were no better than hers, though I'd never plotted to kill anyone, nor had I meant to drive her over the brink of insanity so the rest of her life she'd live in a "convalescent" home. And the irony of ironies, when all that she'd inherited from her father had been taken away, it had reverted to her mother. The grandmother's will had been read and her entire fortune, plus the remains of Foxworth Hall, now belonged to a woman who could only sit in a mental institution and stare at four walls. Oh, Momma, if only you could have looked into the future when first you considered taking your four children back to Foxworth Hall! Cursed with millions--and unable to spend a cent. Nor would one penny come to us. When our mother died, it would be distributed to different charities.

In the spring of the following year we sat near the river water where Julia had led Scotty, then held him under so he drowned in the shallow, greenish water where my own two small sons sailed small boats and waded in water that only reached their ankles.

"Chris," I began falteringly, embarrassed, and yet happy too, "Paul made love to me last night for the first time. We were both so happy, we cried. It was safe enough, wasn't it?"

He bowed his head to hide his expression, and the sun blazed his golden hair. "I'm happy for the both of you. Yes, sex is safe enough now, as long as you don't work him up to a great pitch of excitement."

"We took it easy." After four severe heart attacks, it had to be easy sex.

"Good."

Jory shrieked out then he'd caught a fish. Was it too small? Would he have to throw back another? "Yes," called Chris, "that's just a baby. We d

on't eat baby fish, only the big ones."

"Come," I called, "let's head for home and dinner." They came running and laughing, my two sons, both so much alike they appeared whole brothers, and not halfs. And as yet we hadn't told them any different. Jory hadn't asked, and Bart was too young to question. But when they did, we would tell them the truth, as difficult as it was.

"We've got two daddies," cried Jory, flinging himself into Chris's arms as I picked up Bart. "Nobody at school but me has two daddies and they don't understand when I tell them. . . but maybe I don't tell it right."

"I'm sure you don't tell it right," said Chris with a small smile.

In Chris's new blue car we drove home to the big white house that had given us so much. As we had the first time we came, we saw a man on the front veranda with his white shoes propped up on the balustrade. As Chris took my sons into the house I went over to Paul and smiled to see him dozing with a pleased smile upon his face. The newspaper he'd been reading had slipped from his slack hand to fan on the veranda floor. "I'll go in and bathe the boys," whispered Chris, "and you can pick up the newspapers before the wind blows them onto our neighbors' lawns."

As quietly as you can try to pick up papers and fold them neatly, somehow they will crackle and rustle, and soon Paul half-opened his eyes and smiled at me. "Hi," he said sleepily. "Did you have a good day? Catch anything?"

"Two small fish bit on Jory's line, but he had to throw them back. What were you dreaming before you woke?" I asked, leaning to kiss him. "You looked so happy--was it a sexy dream?"

Again he smiled, sort of wistfully. "I was dreaming of Julia," he said. "She had Scotty with her, and they were both smiling at me. You know, she very seldom smiled at me after we married."

"Poor Julia," I said, kissing him again. "She missed out on so much. I promise my smiles will make up for all she didn't give."

"They already have." He reached to touch my cheek and stroked my hair. "It was my lucky day when you climbed my veranda steps on that Sunday. . . ."

"That damned Sunday," I corrected. He smiled. "Give me ten minutes more before you call me in to dinner. I'd like to get hold of that bus driver and tell him no Sundays are damned when you are on the bus."