Wicked Forest (DeBeers 2)

"Once, she told me that she had pursued my first stepfather. Winston Montgomery, with a vengeance. Marrying him and marrying into all this was her way of getting even with an unfair fate. She would show the world she would not be defeated."

"Then she went and defeated herself by getting involved with Kirby Scott," Linden said sharply, She brought all the evil into the house. I'd rather not have been born." he added quickly.

Mother's joyful look of contentment quickly faded.

"I would go through all the pain and suffering again to have you with me. Linden."

He scowled, and glanced at me to see my reaction,

"Good things can come from bad experiences. Linden," I said softly.

"How do you know I'm a good thing?" he challenged. "He was my father, wasn't he? Something of him passed into me."

'There's more of Mother in you, and that's stronger," I said. "And your grandmother. Jackie Lee," Mother said. "That's why I want you to know about her. Think of her as your heritage. and not him."

"I feel like I have a disease in me and I have to keep my immune system strong."

"You'll never be like him," Mother promised. Linden gazed at me again.

"Maybe some of what he was isn't so bad. Women seem to go far that."

It seemed as if he meant Thatcher and me.

"He was a good-looking man." Mother said. "I'll give him that, and a charming man-- but let's not talk about him. That's the painful past. Let's just talk about our future, our hope."

Linden grunted a reluctant agreement. I was beginning to understand him and what had turned him into the introverted man he was. For him, it was like being told the devil was your father. You were Satan's son and there were streams of evil flowing through your veins, evil that would take over and turn you into something terrible. He must have grown up looking for signs of that every time he gazed into a mirror.

How oddly different Linden's reaction to Kirby Scott being his father and Thatcher's were Thatcher didn't feel personally threatened at all. Of course, if it was even true. Thatcher had learned about it at a much later stage of his life. His personality was already fanned and solid. Such revelations were shocking, but easily tossed overboard.

Linden had carried the burdens of this knowledge from the moment he had learned what the word father meant. Just as I had grown up longing- to have a real mother, he had grown up longing to have a real father. I understood some of his pain. I could empathize, and that gave me more confidence in my efforts to help him.

The ringing of the phone interrupted all our reveries. I rose first and went in to answer it.

"It's been arranged," Thatcher said as soon as I said hello and he recognized my voice.

"When?"

"Tomorrow about midday. I'm going to meet with him privately. Will you be at the beach house by seven?"

"Yes," I said.

"Good. You'll be wearing that ring sooner than you think." he predicted. "Willow Eaton. I like the sound of that, don't you?"

"I like what it promises." I said, and he laughed.

Mother took one look at me when I stepped back outside and knew I had spoken with Thatcher. Linden seemed to know it as well,

"I'm going for a walk," he said sullenly, and practically leaped off the loggia.

"He has such dramatic mood swings," Mother said, shaking her head and looking after him. "Even with his medication. I remember going through that same mental turmoil, and I vividly remember what it was like to see it in the other patients at the clinic, especially after your father had succeeded in making me well enough to have clear eyes. There was one suicide while I was there, you know,"

"No. I didn't know that. Daddy never brought home his work experiences, and certainly wouldn't have mentioned something like that to me or in front of me. I kind of doubt he would have told my adoptive mother either. She wasn't very sympathetic when it came to his work-related problems."

"I know," Mother said. "He told me about her-- or. should I say. complained to me about her-- often. We all stumble into little traps here and there. he said."

"It was more than a little trap. at least to me. It was more like a pool of quicksand.'

She laughed, but looked worriedly after Linden. "I'll ao walk with him," I said.