Heaven (Casteel 1)

His hand cupped my head, treasured it, slid down my back, shaping it to fit his need, and then it was on my hip, hesitating there before he moved it to caress my buttocks, fleetingly, lightly, his hand darting to briefly touch my breasts, discovering me again, trying to wake me up as his lips found mine.

I shoved him away.

"Stop!" I slapped his face. Cried out "NO, NO!" and ran up the stairs, slamming my door behind me, wishing again it had a lock, wishing I had more of what came naturally to Fanny, and despising myself for even thinking that. For I loved him now.

Loved him so deeply, so much, it hurt to think of my hand striking his beloved face. A tease, the boys in Winnerrow would call me, or much worse. Cal, I'm sorry, I wanted to scream out. I wanted to go to him in his room, but I was held back by all the words Kitty had said to make me feel foul, unclean, unwholesome.

Again, some powerful force pulled me to the top of the stairs. I looked down. He was still there, glued like a statue to the floor in the living room, the same music still playing. I drifted down the stairs, caught up in some romantic notion of sacrificing myself to please him. He didn't turn or speak when I reached his side. My hand slid into his tentatively, tightened around his fingers. He failed to respond. I whispered, "I'm sorry I slapped you."

"Don't be. I deserved it."

"You sound so bitter."

"I'm just a fool standing here and thinking of my life, and all the stupid things I've done--and the dumbest of all was to allow myself to think you loved me. But you don't love me. You just want a father. I could hate Luke as much as you do for failing you when you needed him; then maybe you wouldn't be needing of a father so much."

Again my arms went around him. I tilted my head backward, closed my eyes, and waited for his kiss.. . and this time I wasn't going to run. It was wrong and I knew it, but I owed him so much, more than I could ever repay. I wasn't going to tease him, then scream no, as Kitty had been doing for years. I loved him. I needed him.

Not even when he swept me up and carried me into his room and laid me on his bed and began doing all those frightening wrong things did I realize what I'd started, and it was too late to stop him this time. His face was smeary with bliss, his eyes glazed, his actions making the bedsprings creak, and I was bounced, my breasts jiggling with the pure animal force of his lovemaking. So this was what it was all about. This thrusting in and out, this hot, searing pain that came and went--and if my conscious mind was shocked and didn't know how to respond, my unconscious physical side had innate knowledge, moving beneath his thrusts as if in other lives I'd done this ten thousand times with other men I'd loved. And when it was over, and he was curled up on his side holding me clutched tight in his embrace, I lay stunned with what I'd allowed him and myself to do. Tears were on my cheeks, streaming down to wet the pillow. Kitty had burned the best of me when she burned my doll in the fire.

She'd left only the dark side of the angel who went to the hills and died there.

He woke me up in the night with small kisses on my face, on my bared breasts, and asked his question. NO, NO, NO, I could almost hear Kitty yelling, as she'd screamed at him so many times when he must have asked her the same thing. I nodded and reached for him, and again we joined as one. When we finished I, again, lay stunned and sickened by my actions, by my too-enthusiastic response. Hill scum! I could hear Kitty shouting. Trashy no-good Casteel, I heard all of Winnerrow shouting. Just what we expected from a Casteel, a no-good scumbag Casteel.

The days and nights swiftly passed and I couldn't stop what had begun. Cal overrode all my objections, saying I was being silly to feel guilt or shame when Kitty was getting what she deserved, and I was doing no worse than many girls my age, and he loved me, really loved me, not like some rawboned boy who'd only use me. Nothing he said took away the shame, or the knowledge that what I was doing with him was wrong, totally wrong.

He had two weeks alone with me that seemed to make him very happy, as I pretended to have let go of my shame and guilt. Then one morning Cal drove off early to bring Kitty home. I had the house sparkling and filled with flowers. She lay on her bed blankly staring at all I'd done to make the house pretty, and she showed no signs of recognizing where she was. Home was where she'd said she wanted

to be . . . perhaps just so she could pound on the floor overhead with a walking cane, and demand our attention. Oh, how I learned to hate the sound of that cane pounding on the floor that was the living-room ceiling.

Once every week one of Kitty's beauty-salon operators came and shampooed and set her red hair, gave her a manicure and a pedicure. I suspected Kitty was the best-looking invalid in town. At times I was touched by Kitty's helplessness, lying in her pretty pink nightclothes, her hair long and thick, and beautifully groomed. Her "girls" seemed devoted to Kitty, coming often to sit, chat, and laugh while I served them treats I made on Kitty's best china, then raced about trying to keep the house clean, be a companion to Cal, and also keep his books and, using Kitty's checkbook, pay household bills.

"She wouldn't like me doing this," I said with a worried frown, then chewed on the end of a ballpoint pen. "You should be doing this, Cal."

"I don't have time, Heaven."

He took the stack of bills from the small desk that had been Kitty's and put them back in a filing cabinet. "Look, it's a beautiful summer day, and it's been almost a month of constant caring for Kitty. We need to do some serious thinking about what to do with Kitty. Paying those nurses to help you is costing a fortune. And when you go back to school, I'll need another nurse . . . around-the-clock nursing. Have you heard from her mother yet?"

"I wrote and told her Kitty was very ill. But she hasn't replied yet."

"Okay . . . when she does, I'll call and talk to her. She owes Kitty a great deal. And perhaps before school starts, we can work out some permanent solution." He signed and glanced at Kitty before he said, "At least she does seem to enjoy the TV." I'd never seen him look so miserable.

Was this retribution--did Kitty deserve to be stricken with whatever she had? She'd asked for it, and God in his mysterious ways did prevail after all. And my own exhaustion made me say yes, going back to Winnerrow and turning Kitty over to her mother was a fine idea, and it would give me the chance to see Fanny, check on Grandpa . . . and hunt up Tom, to say nothing of Logan. Beyond that I couldn't think. For how could I even look at Logan now?

Finally a letter came from Reva Setterton, Kitty's mother.

"I hate going-back there," he said after he read the short letter that showed no real concern for a sick daughter. "I can tell from the way they look at me they think I married her for her money, but if we don't stay with them, they'll think you and I have some kind of relationship going on."

He wasn't looking at me when he said this; still, I heard something wistful and yearning in his voice that made me feel guilty again. I swallowed, quivered, and tried not to think about what he might be implying.

"Besides, you need a break. You work too hard waiting on her, even when the nurse is here. If we stay I'll go broke from paying for nurses. And I can't let you quit school to tend to her. The worst thing is, nothing at all seems wrong with Kitty but her desire to stay home and watch TV."

"Come back to life and love him before it's too late,"

I yelled at Kitty that day, trying to make her understand she was losing her husband. She'd driven him to me with her coldness, her cruelty, her inability to give.

Later when he was home: "Cal," I began in a low, scared voice, not wanting to desert him now when he had no one, "Kitty wouldn't want to be there all day and night without moving if something weren't terribly wrong."

"But I've had the best doctors in the country look at her. They've made every test they can think of, and found nothing."