Heaven (Casteel 1)

Footsteps were following. I didn't look around.

"Hey," called a familiar voice. "I waited for you yesterday."

Why did my steps quicken when all along I'd hoped he'd seek me out? "Heaven, don't you run. You can't run fast enough and you can't run far enough to escape me."

I spun around and watched Logan approach. He'd grown to be everything I'd ever dreamed he could be--and it was too late to claim him now for my own. Much too late.

"Go away!" I flared. "You don't want me now!"

"Now, you wait a minute," he growled, catching up and grabbing me by the arm, forcing me to walk with him. "Why are you acting like this? What have I done? One day you love me, the next day you push me away. . . what's going on?"

My heart ached so much I felt weak. Yes, I loved him, had always loved him; would always love him; and yet I had to say what I did. "Logan, I'm sorry, but I keep remembering how you ignored me that last Sunday before Pa sold me to the Dennisons. I wanted your help, and you looked right through me, and you were all I had after Miss Beale went away. You were my white knight, my savior, and you did nothing, absolutely nothing! How can I ever really trust you after that?"

Pain was in his eyes as he reddened. "How dumb can you be, Heaven? You think you're in this world all by yourself with your problems, while nobody else has any. You knew I had trouble with my eyes that year. What do you think I was doing while you were starving up there on your mountaintop? Down in the valley I was almost going blind, so I had to be flown to a special hospital to have eye surgery! That's where I was! Far from here, stuck in a hospital with my head held in a clamp, my eyes heavily bandaged until they healed. Then I had to wear dark glasses and take it easy until my retinas were securely attached again. That day when you thought I saw you in church, I was only trying to see, and all I got were blurry images--and I was looking for you! You were the reason I was there at all!"

"Do you see all right now?" I asked with a lump in my throat.

He smiled, then stared into my eyes until my vision blurred.

"I'm seeing you with twenty-twenty eyes. Say I'm forgiven for that long-ago Sunday?"

"Yes," I whispered. I swallowed all the tears that wanted to come again, bit on my lip before I bowed my head and rested my forehead briefly on his chest. I said a silent prayer for God to let him forgive me when or if I ever had to tell him. Useless to him now that I wasn't what he believed me to be-- untouched, no longer a virgin. Yet I couldn't bring myself to tell him, not here.

With resolve I began to lead him toward the woodsy area of Winnerrow.

"Where are we going?" he asked, his fingers intertwining with mine. "To see your cabin?"

"No, you've already gone there by yourself and discovered all I wanted to hide from you. There's another place I should have shown you years ago."

Hand in hand we strolled on toward the overgrown trail that would take us up to the graveyard. I glanced at him from time to time; several times our eyes met and locked, forcing me to tear my eyes away. He did love me. I could tell. Why hadn't I been stronger, shown more resistance? I sobbed and stumbled, and quickly he reached to balance me. I ended up in his arms. "I love you, Heaven," he whispered hoarsely, his warm, sweet breath on my face before he kissed me. "All last night I lay awake thinking about how wonderful you are, how faithful and devoted you stay to your family. You're the kind of woman a man can trust; the kind you can leave alone and know will stay faithful."

Gone numb from the misery I felt, I tried not to let too much sunshine come into the shadows of my heart as he rambled on and on, making me familiar with his parents, his aunts and uncles and cousins, until we came to the riverbank where we'd sat for so many hours a long time ago. Here time had stood still. Logan and I could have been the same adolescents falling in love for the first time. We sat again, perhaps in the very same place, so close our shoulders brushed, his thigh next to mine. I stared at the water that rippled over the stones. And only then did I begin the most difficult story of my life. I knew he'd hate me when it was over.

"My granny used to say my real mother came to that spring over there," I said, pointing to the water that jetted from a crack in the rock face, "and she'd fill our old oak bucket with the spring water since she thought the well water wasn't as good for drinking, or for making soup, or for the dyes Granny used to make to color old stockings she'd braid into a rug to fit under a cradle and keep out the drafts. She was fixing up the cabin as best she could for my birth . . ."

He sprawled on the grass at my side, playing idly with long tendrils of my hair. It was romantic sitting there with Logan, as if we were both brandnew, and nobody had ever loved before but us. I could see us in my mind's eye, young and fresh, unwrinkled and bright, in the prime flowering of our lives--but other bees had already flown to me. . . . He played with my hands, first one, then the other, kissing my fingertips and palms before he folded my fingers on the kiss gifts he'd put in my hands. "For all the days when I wanted you so much, and you were gone." He pulled me down so my upper half lay on his chest, and my hair was a dark shawl that tented both our faces as we kissed, and then I lay with my cheek on his chest, his arms enfolding me. If only I were what he thought I was, then I could really enjoy this. I felt like a dying person on the last picnic of my life; the sun in all its glory couldn't keep the rain from my conscience.

I closed my eyes, wishing he'd talk on forever and wouldn't give me the chance to ruin his dream-- and mine.

"We'll marry while the roses are still in bloom, the year I graduate from college. Before the snow falls, Heaven."

I shook my head, half caught up in his fantasy. My eyes closed, my breath regulated to coincide with his. He was caressing my back, my arms--and then, tentatively, my breast. I jumped, cried out as I jerked away and sat up. My voice shook as I said, "Let's go now. You have to see, if you're to understand who and what I am."

"I already know who and what you are. Heaven, why are your eyes so wide and frightenedlooking? I wouldn't hurt you, I love you."

He wouldn't, not when he knew the truth. It was Cal who knew what I'd been through and Cal who understood. I was a Casteel, born rotten, and Cal didn't care, not the way the perfectionist Stonewalls would. Time and again Logan had turned from Fanny because she was wild and too free with herself.

Logan's bright eyes clouded with worry, seeming to sense I had a secret that wouldn't make him happy. I felt so small, so tainted, so alone.

"I've got a strange desire," I said in a small, quivery voice. "If you don't mind, Logan, I'd like to see my mother's grave again. When she died she left me a portrait doll I couldn't save from a fire, and I needed it to prove who I am when I return to Boston to find my mother's family!"

"You plan to go there?" he cried in a deep, troubled voice. "Why? When we marry, my family will be your family!"

"Someday I've got to go there. It's something I feel I have to do, not only for myself but also for my mother. She ran from her parents and they never heard from her again. They can't be too old, and must have worried about her for so many years. Sometimes it's better to know the truth than to go on forever wondering, speculating . . ."

He drew away from me

now, though he matched his steps to mine as we climbed upward.