Fallen Hearts (Casteel 3)

But I knew that tomorrow it would all begin again.

Right from the morning after Jillian's funeral, a dramatic change came over Tony. He suddenly seemed much older, even though he was twenty years younger than Jillian had been and shouldn't have been showing such signs of age. His hair looked grayer, his eyes looked darker, the wrinkles in his forehead looked deeper, and he seemed to mov

e more slowly. That aristocratic posture I had always seen somehow seemed stooped.

He didn't dress as impeccably, either. Before, he rarely came downstairs without a jacket and tie. Now he wore an open shirt and trousers that needed pressing. He didn't brush his hair or shave, and he was consumed with a desire to rifle through old documents, old pictures, all sorts of memorabilia. Immediately after breakfast, which now for him consisted of little more than coffee, he cloistered himself in his office and spent hours and hours going through old cartons and old files. He could not bear to be interrupted by anyone or anything and was very short with both me and Logan.

Calls were coming in from the Tatterton stores and offices, but he neglected them. Logan did what he could, but he didn't know anything about the business and he had his own responsibilities in Winnerow. I knew he was champing at the bit to get back to the project. Finally I told him to return.

"But I hate-To leave you here the way things are now," he said. "Can't you come with me for a few days? I want you with me. It's important to me and--"

"I don't think I should go anywhere just yet, Logan. Don't worry about me. be all right. It's Tony who is going through the hard time."

Logan nodded silently. "Don't I know it. I went in to talk to him about some of the decisions that have to be made in Winnerow and do you know what his response was?" I shook my head. "He acted as if he'd never heard of the project. Which project is that? he said. I didn't know what to do. A moment later he was back at those cartons. I wouldn't have thought Tony was a man comfortable living in an illusion," he said. "He's too much of a realist; he's too practical."

"Maybe when it came to others, but not himself. We all have our private illusions, Logan."

His eyes widened. "Oh?" He stared at me for a moment, a rather strange look on his face. Then he shrugged. "I guess I'm just going to have to make all the decisions that have to be made, myself."

"Tony expected you would anyway," I said. "He wouldn't have given you the responsibility if he hadn't trusted you."

"I suppose you're right. Yes. Okay, I'll be back by the weekend," he said. "I'll call every night and you don't hesitate to call me if there are any problems."

"I will. Don't worry," I told him. He made his arrangements to return to Winnerow and then went up to pack his bag. I was sitting in the living room by myself when he stopped to say good-bye. We kissed and he left. I couldn't blame him for wanting to leave this gloomy house right now.

I stopped in to see Tony a few times, each time finding him absorbed by a document or a photo album.

"You've got to start eating regularly again and get back into the swing of things as soon as possible, Tony," I told him the last time I looked in on him. "It's the only way to overcome grief."

He stopped reading and looked up at me as if just realizing what had taken place. The curtains on all his windows were shut tightly, so that the bright afternoon sunlight couldn't warm the dull, dark, and dismal room. The only light on was the lamp on his desk and it cast a pale, yellow glow over him. He looked about the office, down at his documents and pictures, and then back at me. Then he sat back in his chair and pushed his reading glasses up over his forehead

"Well," he said. "What time is it?" He looked at the grandfather clock in the corner to answer his own question. "I guess I've been in here quite a long time."

"Yes, you have. And you've not eaten anything substantial."

"I like it when you worry about me," he said, smiling, suddenly animated. "Your mother never really worried about me," he added.

"My mother?" Why would he even bring up such a thing? I wondered. My mother had been too young to have such concerns. She ran away when she was barely old enough to bear mature responsibilities. "My mother?" I repeated.

The half smile on his face slowly faded and he sat forward, shaking his head as he did so. Then he scrubbed his cheeks with his palms and rubbed his eyes with his fists as if wiping away tracks of sleep made by the sandman. He took a deep breath and looked up at me.

"I'm sorry," he said finally. "I lost myself in time for a moment there. You're standing in the shadows and I was retrying a moment when Leigh had come through that door. I guess I am concentrating on the past too much. You're right. I should shower and dress and eat a decent meal. I don't know what I'm doing or why I'm doing it. Heaven, I feel so guilty about what happened to Jillian," he added in a confessional tone.

"But Tony," I said, "you shouldn't feel responsible. You provided everything she could need . . . Martha Goodman, doctors, medicines . . . you made her comfortable . ."

"And kept her in a world of insanity," he said. "For my own benefit, hoping, always hoping she would somehow snap out of it and return to me. It was wrong. Perhaps if I had given in and put her in an institution . ."

"Tony, she wouldn't have been any happier. Maybe she wouldn't have taken the pills, but she would have died in so many other ways."

He looked at me, considering my words. Then he nodded.

"You have become a remarkable young woman, Heaven. As I sit here looking at you, I can't help but remember our first discussion in this office, when you told me the truth about your past and about Leigh's death and I dictated all those rules and commands to you. I thought you were something wild,

undisciplined, backward. I wanted to make you over into my kind of person, to bend you and mold you.

"As it turned out, you had a firm spine and a strong mind of your own. You would be what you were destined to be, what you wanted to be, and nothing I gave you or told you changed that absolute fact. I misjudged you." He laughed. "I should have had more faith in my own genes, eh? I should have told you the truth about your parentage then."

"Maybe," I said. And then I thought, in this house the truth is often misplaced. I was tempted to tell him that I knew Troy was still alive, but I held back. It was still too tense and too emotional a time. Wounds were still raw. Anyway, I couldn't help but be angry at him for keeping it a secret from me, no matter what his reasons were, and I thought it would be unfair to accuse him and express anger now.