Dark Angel (Casteel 2)

Puzzled by his voice, by his tone, I turned questioning eyes on my grandmother. For some reason she blushed, and the flood of color into her lovely face made her even more beautiful.

"Yes, Heaven dear, I am one of those shameful modern women who will not put up with a marriage that isn't satisfying. My first husband didn't deserve me. I loved him in the beginning of our marriage, when he gave me enough of himself. Unfortunately, that didn't last long. He neglected me in favor of his business. Maybe you've heard of the VanVoreen Steamship Line. Cleave was inordinately proud of it. His silly boats and ships demanded all his attentions, so even his holidays and weekends were stolen from me. I grew lonely, just as your m

other did . . ."

Tony interrupted: "Jillian, look at this girl, would you! Can you believe those eyes? Those incredible blue eyes, so like yours, so like Leigh's!"

She leaned forward to flash him a cool, chastising look. "Of course she's not Leigh, not exactly. It's more than just her hair color, too. There's something in her eyes . . . something that isn't, well, as innocent."

Oh! I had to be careful! I should think more about what my eyes might reveal. Never, never should they even guess what had happened between Cal Dennison and me. They would despise me if they knew, just as Logan Stonewall, my childhood sweetheart, despised me.

"Yes, you're right, of course," agreed Tony with a sigh. "No one is ever duplicated in every detail."

Those two years and five months I spent in Candlewick, just outside of Atlanta, with Kitty and Cal Dennison, had not given me the kind of sophistication I needed now, not as I had previously thought. Kitty had been thirty-seven when she died, and she'd considered her advanced age intolerable. And here was my grandmother, who had to be much older than Kitty, and she didn't appear even as old as Kitty, and as far as I could see she had a strong hold on confidence. Truthfully, I'd never seen a

grandmother who looked so young. And

grandmothers in the hills came in very young ages, especially when they married at twelve, thirteen, or fourteen. I found myself speculating on just how old my grandmother was.

In February I'd be seventeen, but that was still months away. My mother had been only fourteen the day I was born; the same day she died. If she'd lived, she'd be thirty-one. Now I was rather well read, and from all the facts I'd learned about Boston bluebloods, I knew they didn't marry until they finished their educations. Husbands and babies weren't considered essential to the lives of young Bostonian girls as they were back in West Virginia. This grandmother would have been at least twenty when she married the first time. That would put her in her fifties, at least. Imagine that. The same age as I remembered Granny best. Granny, with her long, thin white hair, her stooped shoulders with her dowager's hump, her arthritic fingers and legs, her pitifully few garments drab and dark, her worn-out shoes.

Oh, Granny, and once you'd been as lovely as this woman.

My intense and unrelieved study of my youthful grandmother brought two small tears to shine in the corners her cornflower blue eyes so much like my own. Tears that lingered without falling.

Made brave by her small, unmoving tears, I found a voice: "Grandmother, what did my father tell you about me?" My question came out tremulously low and scared. Pa had told me he'd talked to my grandparents, that they would welcome me into their home. But what else had he told them? He'd always despised me, blamed me for killing his "Angel" wife. Had Pa told them everything? If so, they'd never learn to like me, much less love me. And I needed someone to love me for what I was--less than perfect.

Those shining blue eyes swung my way, totally void of expression. It bothered me how empty she could make her eyes, as if she knew how to turn all her emotions off and on. Despite those cool eyes and those tears that defied gravity, when she spoke her voice was sweet and warm; "Heaven dear, would you be a darling girl and not call me 'Grandmother'? I try so hard to retain my youth, and I feel I have been successful in my endeavors, and being called 'Grandmother' in front of all my friends who think I am years younger than I actually am would defeat all my efforts. I'd be so humiliated to be caught in a lie. I confess I always lie about my age, sometimes even to doctors. So please don't be hurt or offended if I ask that from now on you just call me . . Jillian."

Another shock, but I was growing used to them by now. "But . . but . . ." I sputtered, "how are you going to explain who I am?--and where I come from?--and what I'm doing here?"

"Oh my dear, sweet dear, please don't look so hurt! In private, maybe on rare occasions, you could call me . . . oh, no! On second thought that just won't work. If I allow you . . you'd forget and thoughtlessly call me 'Grandmother.' So I am right to start us off like this. You see, dear, it's not real lying. Women have to do what they can to create their own mystique. I suggest you start right now lying about your own age. It's never too soon. And I will simply introduce you as my niece, Heaven Leigh Casteel."

It took me a few moments to take this in and to find the next question. "Do you have a sister whose surname is the same as mine, Casteel?"

"Why no, of course not," she said with an efficient little laugh. "But both of my sisters have been married and divorced so many times no one could possibly remember all the names they've had. And you don't have to embroider anything, do you? Just say you don't want to talk about your background. And if someone is rude enough to persist, tell that hateful someone your dear daddy took you back to his hometown . . . what did you say the name was?"

"Winnerrow, Jill," supplied Tony, crossing his legs and meticulously running his fingers down the sharp crease of his gray trouser leg.

Back in the Willies most women competed to become grandmothers at the earliest age possible! It was something to boast about, to be proud of. Why, my own granny had been a grandmother by the time she was twenty-eight, though that first grandson had not lived a full year. Yet, still . . . that granny at age fifty had looked eighty or more.

"All right, Aunt Jillian," I said in another small voice.

"No, dear, not Aunt Jillian, just Jillian. I have never liked titles, mother, aunt, sister, or wife. My Christian name is enough."

Beside me her husband chuckled. "You have never heard truer words, Heaven, and you may call me Tony."

My startled eyes swung to him. He was grinning wickedly.

"She may call you 'Grandfather' if she wishes," said Jillian coolly. "After all, darling, it does help for you to have family ties, doesn't it?"

There were undercurrents flowing here I didn't understand. From one to the other my head turned, so I paid very little attention to where our long car was headed until the highways broadened into freeways, and then I saw a sign that said we were heading north. Uneasy about my situation, once again I made my feeble attempt to find out what Pa had told them during his long-distance telephone call.

"Very little," answered Tony, as Jillian bowed her head and seemed to sniffle, from a cold or from emotion, I couldn't tell. Her lace handkerchief delicately touched her eyes from time to time. "Your father seemed a very pleasant fellow. He said you had just lost your mother, and grief had put you into deep depression, and naturally we wanted to do what we could to help. It has always pained us that your mother never kept in touch with us, or let us know where she was. About two months after she ran away, she did write us a postcard to say she was all right, but we never heard from her again. We tried our best to find her; even hired detectives. The postcard was so smeared it couldn't be read, and the picture was of Atlanta, not Winnerrow, West Virginia." He paused and covered my hand with his. "Dearest girl, we are both so very sorry to hear about your mother's death. Your loss is our loss as well. If only we could have known of her condition before it was too late. There is so much we could have done to have made her last days happier. I think your father mentioned . . . cancer . . ."

Oh, oh!

How horrible for Pa to lie!