Gates of Paradise (Casteel 4)

Mommy and Daddy were gone, Luke was seemingly beyond reach, and I was shut up in this old house with only therapy and hot baths and medicine and doctors to look forward to. And for how long, I did not know, nor would anyone be able to say.

I snapped out of my self-pity when I saw Tony's Rolls-Royce approaching. When the car came to a stop near the cemetery, I wheeled myself as close to the window as I could get. I saw him get out and go to my parents' monument. He knelt before it and lowered his head. He remained that way for a long time, and then, suddenly, the mysterious man appeared again, approaching from the wooded area. Tony didn't seem to hear or see him approaching.

The figure stood beside him and then placed his hand on Tony's shoulder. I watched and waited, my heart suddenly thumping, but Tony didn't look up. After a few more moments the man left him and went back to the darkness of the woods. Then Tony got up and went back to his car.

It was as if only I knew the man had been beside him. I couldn't wait for Tony's arrival. I wheeled myself to the front of my bedroom and faced the door.

It was nearly two hours before Tony came to my room. I was dying to ask him about the man at the cemetery. I wanted to call for him, but I thought my curiosity was too trivial to justify making him come right up. He'll be here any moment, I kept telling myself, only the clock ticked and ticked and he didn't come. What was it Roland used to tell me whenever I was impatient--"A watched pot never boils"?

I tried to fix my mind on other things and looked over the books Tony had had sent up to my room. They were all novels by authors I had never heard of. Nineteenth-century writers like William Dean Howells. Some were described as "period pieces." Others were "novels of manners." It was as if Tony wanted me to live in a bygone age.

At last he appeared. Immediately, almost frantic with curiosity by this time, I asked him about the man in the cemetery.

"What man?" Tony's smile remained frozen on his face, but the warmth that had been under it momentarily slipped away.

"I saw him step up beside you when you were at my parents' monument."

He stood there in my doorway blinking as though he had to refocus on the real world. Then he released a deep breath and came forward, his smile warming again.

"Oh, I keep forgetting you can see the family cemetery from your window." He shrugged. "He was only one of the grounds people. To tell you the truth, I was so involved. with my sorrow at that moment, I can't remember which one he was or what he wanted."

"Grounds people? But Rye Whiskey said---"

"Anyway," Tony chirped, slapping his hands together, "it's time for your first tour of Farthy. Mrs. Broadfield says you have earned it. Are you ready?"

I gazed out the window again, looking in the direction of the cemetery and the woods. Clouds, as long and thin as witches' fingers, blocked the sun, laying shadows over my parents' monument.

"I should go to the cemetery, Tony."

"As soon as the doctor okays it. Hopefully tomorrow. In the meantime I'll show you something special, something nearby."

He came around my chair and grasped the handles. Why wasn't he telling me the truth about the man? Was he afraid it would disturb me? How could I get him to tell me the truth? Maybe Rye would know. I'd have to arrange it so Tony wouldn't know I had asked.

I felt his warm breath on my forehead, and he planted a soft kiss on my hair. The gentleness of that caress took me a bit by surprise. He must have seen it in my eyes.

"It's so good, so wonderful to have you here, and to be able to take you back through time with me."

"But I'm an invalid, Tony, a sick, crippled person." I don't think he heard me.

"To regain the beautiful memories, to seize happiness once again. Few men get such an opportunity once they have lost it."

He began pushing me out of the room.

"Where are we going?"

"The first thing I want you to see is the suite of rooms I had prepared for your parents when they came to Farthy for their wedding reception. They were so lovey-dovey, just as newlyweds should be."

I had often tried to imagine Daddy and Mommy as young people, newly discovering one another. I knew they had first met when Daddy moved to Winnerrow. Mommy told me they fell in love the moment their eyes met.

But she had never described her good memories at Farthy. I was sure there had to be some. So I listened keenly as Tony rattled on, describing how they laughed and clung to one another, how excited my father was to see Farthinggale, and how much Tony had enjoyed showing him around.

"When I first set eyes on your mother, I couldn't get over how much she resembled her own mother," he added as we turned out of the suite and headed down the long corridor. "Just as you do, my dear. Sometimes, when I close my eyes and hear you speak, I think I'm back in time and listening to Heaven, and when I open my eyes, there is a moment when I'm not sure. Have all the years since she left me been simply a nightmare? Can I return to the happier times? If you want something enough, pray for it enough, can't it happen?

"All of you run together in my mind sometimes. as if you are not three, but one woman, Leigh, Heaven, and now you, so similar in voice, in demeanor, in looks. You're like sisters, triplets, instead of mothers and daughters," he said softly, hopefully.

I didn't like the way he clumped us together. It was as if I weren't Ala individual, my own person with my own thoughts and feelings. Of course I wanted to be like Mommy, even look like her, but I wanted to be myself, to be Annie, not Leigh; Annie, Heaven's daughter, not a c

lone. Why was Tony so intent on ignoring that? Didn't he know how important it was for everyone to feel like her own person? How would he like it if people called him "just another Tatterton, like all the rest"? I made up my mind that later on I would bring up the topic. I wasn't the only one who could be taught new things.