Whitefern (Audrina 2)

“Now, you listen to me, Audrina—”

“No, you listen. You put the idea in Sylvia’s mind that we’d both have to be pregnant. You set it all up, planning ahead for when the baby was born. Are you proud of yourself?”

“It was all part of the plan.”

“Yes, the plan. I should have wondered more why you conceived it.”

He sighed deeply and looked pathetically weak, wobbling and struggling to come up with a good response. “I did what had to be done,” he said. “And yes, it was a clever plan, and I am proud of how well it was executed. Now, stop this indignation. You have a child to raise, and the world believes she’s yours. You have a family. You should be thanking me.”

“Thanking you? I have a family? Yes, I have a family, a family born of lies and deceit.”

“That’s not unusual for you, Audrina, or for Whitefern,” he said, smiling. “Look at what your father planned and how well he planned it. Everyone in this house, including your own mother, followed his design. It was all a lie. They even had me and my mother believing it. To go as far as to install an empty grave with a tombstone . . . Don’t try to make it look like your family was any better than I am.”

“You’re right, Arden. This home is hospitable to lies, but I don’t intend for them to go on.”

“So what are you going to do? Tell everyone Adelle is really Sylvia’s baby? We both thought that would hurt the child and how she will be perceived.”

“She’ll remain our child, Sylvia’s and mine,” I said. “But someday she’ll know the truth.” I straightened my shoulders, just the way Papa would when he was going to make one of his definitive proposals. “I think it would be best if you left Whitefern, Arden. I don’t want to share meals with you, much less my bed.” I started to walk away, then stopped. “And as far as the company goes, it will remain as it is—in my control.”

“What?”

“Go sleep in one of the downstairs bedrooms tonight,” I told him.

“Like hell I will. And I won’t leave here, either. You’ll do what I say with those legal documents,” he vowed, shaking his fist at me. “I’m your husband. You’ll obey your husband.”

“I won’t,” I said. “In fact, I’ll be calling Mr. Johnson tomorrow and advising him of the same, so he’ll know that if you try to forge anything, it will be a crime that he will be associated with, too. Good night.” I started up the stairway.

“Audrina!” he screamed. “You’re part of this. You can’t escape it by sending me away or going to sleep or rocking in that damn chair!”

I ignored him and kept going.

“Audrina!” he shouted from the foot of the stairway. “Don’t you dare walk away from me!”

Sylvia came out of her room and hurried to the stairs. “Adelle is crying,” she said, looking down at me and at Arden. “She heard the screaming.”

“Yes. Well, she won’t have to hear it much longer. Arden is going to move out,” I said.

“Damn you!” he screamed. He rushed up the stairs. “You won’t tell me what to do. And you will sign those papers.”

I was nearly to the top.

He lunged at me and grabbed my arm. “I’m Papa here! I’m Papa!” he bellowed. He shook me hard.

“Stop hurting Audrina,” Sylvia ordered. She sounded just like Momma telling Papa to stop hurting me or Vera.

Arden let go of my left arm to push her away from us, and I turned, freeing myself from his right hand. Before he could reach out to grab me again, Sylvia came forward with her arms out and pushed at his shoulder.

He tottered, looked at us both with surprise, and fell backward, his arms flailing out, his hands grasping air as he dropped onto his back and then flipped over, his legs flying over his torso and giving his body the momentum to flip again, this time coming down hard, his neck hitting squarely on the edge of a step. His body slid a little and stopped.

He didn’t move or cry.

Sylvia and I didn’t move, either.

“Arden fell,” she said.

I held out my hand to keep her from following me and walked down to him slowly. As I approached, I was experiencing déjà vu. This was how I had approached Aunt Ellsbeth’s body when she had fallen down the stairs. She’s not dead, I’d kept telling myself, not dead, not dead, only hurt. She had been facedown, and I’d had to turn her body to look at her face. I remembered her head had lolled, unnaturally loose, and I had shaken her to wake her up, but she never did.

Arden was lying faceup. His eyes were wide open, already two orbs of lifeless glass. He had carried his expression of surprise all the way down and died with it. I knelt beside him and felt for a pulse nevertheless. There was none.