Twilight's Child (Cutler 3)

"Yes, because I didn't tell you."

"No," he said. "Because I was afraid I would lose you to him again."

"Really, Jimmy?" He nodded. "You will never lose me, Jimmy. Never, never, never. When you ran out of my office before, I thought I was going to lose you."

"I don't ever want to feel that way again, Dawn," he said. "We must promise never to lie to each other again. Will you promise?"

"Of course I will, Jimmy."

He looked around and smiled.

"I can remember every moment in here with you. I remember our first kiss, how long it took for me to bring my lips to yours."

"And then we pretended to be meeting each other for the first time," I said.

"We were, for the first time as boyfriend and girlfriend."

"And now we're here as husband and wife," I said.

He shook his head and smiled again, tenderly.

"What am I going to do with you? I guess I'll just have to keep a closer eye on you," he said.

"There's nothing I want more," I told him, and we kissed. He guided me up and moved over on the cot, coaxing me in beside him.

"Jimmy . . . here?" I said when he drew me to him. "What could be more romantic than for us to make love where we had our first kiss?" he asked.

I answered with another kiss, a longer and more passionate one, and then I slipped in beside him and welcomed his caress.

Jimmy and I behaved like teenagers sneaking about as we came up the stone steps. We didn't want to have to answer anyone's questions. Jimmy peered out first to be sure no one was nearby.

"I'd better get back to work," Jimmy said, and we parted by the duck pond, him rushing off to join the construction team at the south end of the main building and me walking back to my office. The afternoon sunshine was weak, but still strong enough to feel like a warm caress on my cheeks and forehead. In the distance two enormous puffy clouds looked like mountains of white cotton rushing toward each other over a sea of blue. The winter wind made a burlap bag caught on the handle of a lawn mower flap like the flag of some unknown country.

Nature had a way of making me pensive and philosophical. How close I had come to losing Jimmy, I thought, and how lucky I was that he loved me so much. Would I eventually have told him about Michael? I wondered. Thinking about it reminded me of what Fern had done. Why did she dislike me so much? Why did she want to drive a wedge between Jimmy and me? How sad it made me feel to think that the little baby I had once loved and cared for almost as much as my very own child had grown into a spiteful and mean little girl. How much could we excuse because of what had happened to her? I wondered. And what damage were Jimmy and I doing by overlooking and forgiving?

Instead of going directly to the hotel I marched across the grounds to our house. Before dinner tonight I wanted to have a private conversation with Fern so she understood that what she had done was wrong. I wanted to impress upon her how deeply and completely Jimmy and I loved each other, and that nothing she could do would change that. She should be happy she is living in a house of love, I thought. Wasn't that what she wanted? Wasn't the absence of that what she despised?

When I arrived at the house I went directly upstairs, expecting to find Fern working on her homework as usual. I knocked on her closed door and waited, but I heard nothing. I knocked again and then opened the door. She wasn't there. Looking around the room, I realized she wasn't keeping it very neat these days. Some of her clothing was strewn about, draped over the backs of chairs, on the vanity table and on the poorly made bed. One half of a pair of sneakers was in front of the bed while its mate rested on its side near the closet, which was opened wide, the garments dangling precariously on hangers, some clothing already fallen.

My gaze moved to the pile of blouses and skirts on the closet floor and settled on a partially opened shoe box. Something in it caught my eye, and I walked forward slowly, knelt down and opened the box completely. Inside there was a pile of money. The missing petty cash? I wondered, and I began to count. After I went over eight hundred dollars I knew it must be so. I wasn't surprised. I wasn't sure what I should do. Surely she would claim this was the money she had brought with her, I thought, even though it was a great deal more than I had seen in her pocketbook in New York.

As I rose and turned to leave I noticed one of her older romance magazines opened on the bed. What made this particular one odd to me was the way Fern had underlined some passages. I turned the pages back to get to the beginning, and when I saw the title of the story my face flushed so from the blood that rushed into it, I was sure I was feverish. As if I needed to hear the words spoken to believe them, I read the title aloud.

" 'My Stepfather Raped Me, but I Had No One to Tell.' "

Slowly, my fingers trembling, I lifted the magazine and began to read.

For as long as I can remember, my mother was too busy to really look after me. She was a clothes designer and was always involved in her work. It was my stepfather who would look after me, dress me and even feed me. He did it so often and so casually, I never thought much about it until I was in fourth grade and happened to mention to a friend of mine that my stepfather usually came in while I was taking a bath to make sure I washed the "important places."

My friend looked at me strangely and asked, "What important places?"

I giggled and simply said, "You know. Your important places."

She still looked confused, so I pointed. Now she looked frightened and stopped talking to me about it, but I soon realized why she was uncomfortable. No one else's father did what my stepfather was doing.

I lowered the magazine to my lap. My heart was pounding, and I felt the beads of a cold sweat break out down the back of my neck. For a moment I couldn't move. I looked at the magazine again and shook my head. Then I went to the telephone quickly to call the hotel. I asked for Robert Garwood.

"Robert," I said frantically, "please go out and get Jimmy. Tell him I need him at the house immediately. Please."