Dark Angel (Casteel 2)

"And what about my gifts?" questioned Tony. He had given me extravagant costume jewelry, and a heavy box that was lined with blue velvet. "They don't make toilet items today like they did in the Victorian era. That dresser set you have is antique and very valuable."

On my lap I carefully held the tapestry box with a heavy silver hand mirror, a hair brush, a comb, two crystal powder boxes with ornate silver tops, and two perfume bottles that matched the set. Staring down at them I was taken back in time to when I'd first opened my mother's suitcase at the age of ten. Upstairs, hidden deep in one of my closets was the old suitcase that my mother had carried with her into the Willies, and inside it, another silver dressing set, though not as complete as the silver set I held.

I felt suddenly helpless, snared in a time warp. Surely Tony had noticed the dresser set that Jillian had already given me. I didn't need another. The most peculiar thought came to my mind, for at that very moment I realized how very unfair it was of me not to listen to what Troy had to say. Unfair to him, and to myself.

Late that very night, long after dinner was over and Jillian and Tony had retired, I stole back through the maze to the cottage, to find Troy moodily pacing his living room floor. His welcoming smile shone bright and immediate, lifting my heart. "They're back," I informed breathlessly, closing the door and leaning against it. "You should see all the things they brought me. I have enough clothes for a dozen college girls."

He didn't appear to listen to what 1 said, only appeared to hear what I left unsaid. "Why do you look so disturbed?" he asked, holding out his arms so I could run into them.

"Troy, I'm ready to listen to what you have to say, no matter what it is."

"What did Tony say to you?"

"Nothing. He asked a few questions about how I'd spent my time while he and Jillian were gone, but he didn't mention you. I found it strange that he didn't ask where you were, and if we had met. It was almost as if you didn't exist, and it scared me."

He pressed his forehead to mine briefly, then pulled away, his expression totally unrevealing, and now that I was more than ready to hear him out, he seemed reluctant to begin. With gentleness rather than passion he kissed me and touched my hair. He traced his forefinger over my cheek, and then, holding me close he turned toward his huge picture window that overlooked the sea. His arm slipped around my waist so he could draw my back tight against his front. "Don't ask questions until I've had my say. Listen with an open mind, for I'm serious."

As he began to talk I sensed every molecule of his being was striving to reach out and force me to understand even what he himself must have found inexplicable.

"It's not that I don't love you, Heavenly, that I kept persisting in saying what I have to. I love you very much. It's not that I'm trying to find an excuse not to marry you, it's only my frail attempt to help you find a way to save yourself."

I didn't understand, and yet by this time I knew I had to be patient and give him his chance to do what he considered "the right thing."

"You have the kind of character and strength that I both admire and envy. You are a survivor, and everything that has ever happened to me tells me I am not. Now don't tremble. Lifestyles shape and mold us when we're youthful, and I know for a fact that you and your brother Tom will prove to be made of much hardier stuff than I." Turning me toward him, he gazed down at me with his eyes deep, dark, and desperate.

I bit down on my tongue to keep from asking questions. It was still summer; autumn hadn't even tinged the trees with deep green. Winter seemed a lifetime away. I'm here, You'll never have a lonely night again if you don't want it--but I said none of this.

"Let me tell you about my boyhood," he continued. "My mother died shortly before my first birthday. Before I was two years old my father died, so the only parent I can remember in my life was my brother Tony. He was my world, my everything. I adored him. For me, the sun set when Tony went out the door, and rose when he came in again. I thought of him as a golden god, able to deliver anything I wanted, if I wanted it badly enough. He was seventeen years older, and even before my father died, he'd assumed the responsibility of seeing to it that I stayed happy. I was a sickly child from the very beginning. Tony has told me my mother had a very difficult labor giving birth to me. Always I was on the verge of expiring from one thing or another, giving Tony so many anxious moments he'd come into my room at night just to check and see if I was still breathing. When I was in the hospital ne visited three or tour times a clay, bringing me treats to eat and toys and games and books, and by the time I was three, I thought I owned every second of his life. He was mine. We didn't need anyone else. And then came that horrible day when he found Jillian VanVoreen. At the time I knew nothing about her. He kept her a big secret from me. When finally he told me he was going to marry Jillian, he made it seem he was doing it only so I'd have a new and loving mother. And also a sister. I was both thrilled and angry. A child of three can feel very possessive of the only caring person in his life. I was jealous. He's told me since, laughingly, that I threw temper tantrums. For I didn't want Tony to marry Jillian, especially after she met me. I was sick and in bed, and he thought she'd be touched by such a frail and handsome little boy who would really need her. He didn't see what I saw. Children seem to have some special insighL into adult minds. I knew she was appalled by the idea of taking care of me . . . and yet, she went through with her divorce and married Tony, and she moved into Farthy with her twelve-year-old daughter. Very vaguely I can remember the wedding, no details, just impres

sions.

"I was unhappy, and so was your mother. I have other impressions of Leigh trying to be a sister to me, and spending a great deal of her free time at my bedside trying to keep me entertained. However, what embedded itself deepest in my brain was Jillian's obvious resentment of every moment that Tony dedicated to me, and not to her."

For an hour he talked, making me see it all; the loneliness of a small boy and a young girl, thrown together by circumstances beyond their control, so they grew to need each other, and then one day something dreadful happened that he never understood, and the new sister he'd grown to love ran away.

"Tony was in Europe when Leigh ran from here. He came flying back in response to Jillian's desperate calls. I know they hired detective agencies to try and find her, but Leigh disappeared as if from the face of the earth. They both expected her to show up in Texas where her grandmother and aunts lived. She never showed up. Jillian cried all the time, and I know now that Tony blamed her for your mother's disappearance. I knew Leigh had died long before you came here with your news. I knew it the very day it happened, for I dreamed it, and you have only confirmed that my dream was true. My dreams always come true.

"After Leigh left, I fell ill with rheumatic fever and was confined to bed for almost two years. Tony ordered Jillian to give up her social activities and devote all her time to taking care of me, even though I had a British nanny named Bertie that I adored, and I'd ten times rather have been left alone with Bertie than with Jillian. Jillian frightened me with her long fingernails and quick, careless movements; I sensed her impatience with a little boy who just didn't know how to stay well.

"I've never been sick a day of my life,' she used to say to me. I began to get the idea that I was, indeed, a flawed and inadequate child, who was spoiling the lives of others--and that's when the dreams began. Sometimes they were wonderful, but more often they were terrifying nightmares that led me to believe I'd never really be happy, never really be healthy, never really have anything that others find easy to obtain-- ordinary things that everyone expects to come about in their lives, such as having friends, dating and falling in love, and living long enough to see my own children grown. I began dreaming of my own death-- my own death as a young man. And as I grew older and began school, I pulled away from those who made attempts to befriend me, afraid in the end I'd be hurt if ever I made myself too vulnerable. Alone and different I heard my own drummer, made up my own music, dedicated to my lonely course through life until it was all over. I knew it would be over in not so many years. I wasn't going to involve anyone in my misery so they could be hurt as I was hurt by knowing fate was against me."

Unable to hold back, I flared, "Troy, certainly a man of your intelligence doesn't believe fate rules everything!"

"I believe what I've been forced to believe. Nothing that was foretold in my nightmares has failed to come true."

Summer winds from the ocean blew cold and damp through his open windows. Sea gulls and gannets shrilled plaintively as the waves of the sea crashed on the shores. My head lay on his chest and through his thin pajama jacket I could feel the thump of his heart. "They were only the dreams of a sick little boy," I murmured, knowing even as I spoke that he'd held his beliefs far too long for me to change them now.

He didn't seem to hear me. "No one could have had a more devoted brother than I did, but still there was Jillian, who used her grief for the loss of her daughter to pull Tony from me more and more. She had to travel to forget her grief. She had to shop in Paris, London, Rome, and escape the memories of Leigh. Tony would mail me postcards and small gifts from all over the world, instilling in me the determination that I, too, once I was an adult, would see the Sahara, climb the pyramids, and so forth. School was no real challenge for me. High grades came much too easily, so the friends I might have made were turned off by what the teachers considered a child prodigy. I sailed through college without ever being accepted by anyone. I was years younger, and an embarrassment to older boys. The girls teased me for being just a kid. I was always on the outside looking in, and then at age eighteen, I graduated from Harvard with honors and straight from my graduation I went to Tony and told him I was going to see the world as he had seen it.

"He didn't want me to go. He pleaded for me to wait until he could accompany me . . . but he had business to attend to, and time was pushing at me, telling me to hurry, hurry, for soon it would be too late. So in the end I rode, perhaps, the same camels over the same sands of the Sahara as Tony and Jillian had, and climbed the same rugged steps of the pyramids, and I discovered, much to my chagrin, that the exotic trips I made in my imagination, while I lay on my bed picturing how it would be, were by far the best voyages."

By this time his voice held me in a tight bind of fear. When he stopped talking, I came back to myself with a startling jolt. I was disturbed by all that he'd left unsaid. He had everything at his fingertips, a huge fortune to share, intelligence, good looks, and he was letting childish dreams rob him of hope for a long and happy future! It was that house, I told myself, that huge house with its many rambling halls and unused spooky rooms. It was a lonely little boy with too much time on his hands. Yet, how could that be, when the sibling Casteels, who had so little, had always clung tenaciously to the belief that the future held everything?

I lifted my head and tried to say with kisses everything I didn't know how to put into words. "Oh, Troy, there is so much we both haven't experienced. All you needed was a companion with you when you traveled, and you would have found every place just as exciting as you imagined, I'm sure that's true. I'm just not going to believe that all the dreams Tom and I had when we were growing up about exploring the world will be disappointing when realized."

His eyes turned into dark forest pools, holding the infinity of the ages. "You and Tom are not doomed as I am. You have the world ahead of you; my world will always be shadowed by the dreams I've had that have already come true, and by my

knowledge of the others that are about to come true. For I have dreamed of my death many times. I've seen my own gravestone, though I can never read more than my full name etched on it. You see, Heavenly, I was never really made for this world. I've always been sickly and melancholy. Your mother was like me-- that's why we became so important to one another. And when she disappeared, when I dreamed of her death and knew my dream told the truth, I couldn't understand why I went on living. For I, like Leigh, long for things that can never be found in this world. Like her, I shall die young. Truly, Heaven, I have no future. How can I take someone as young, bright, and loving as you down the dark path that is mine? How can I marry you only to make you a widow? How can I father a child who I will soon leave fatherless, just as I was left fatherless? Do you really want to love a man who is doomed, Heaven?"