A Place to Call Home (32 page)

“
No.
”

“Then get up. You can do it.”

I gripped his hands. My legs felt like a lead weight under me. I struggled. Sweating, breathing hard, my eyes never leaving his, I wavered on my knees, got one bare foot under me, and swayed desperately. My nightshirt tangled between my thighs. Roan’s grip tightened on my hands, I felt his calluses, his thick, gentle fingers sliding down to my
wrists. He clamped firmly and pulled. I shoved myself upward with every ounce of strength.

I stood. I
stood
. No crutches, wobbling, light-headed, my teeth gritted, but I stood. Some unspeakable devotion and challenge moved between us. “I want those letters you wrote to me,” I said. “I want you to bring them here right now and sit with me while I read them. All of them.”

He arched a brow. “If you want the letters you’ll have to come to Ten Jumps.”

I stared at him. He wouldn’t give an inch. Amanda bolted to us. “Ask him to stay and visit! Ask him, Aunt Claire!”

“He’s been asked, sweetie.” I braced my knees. “He understands that I don’t move around very well. He’ll come back to sit with me and visit.”

Roan smiled thinly at my ploy, but he bent to my niece with gentle regard. That subtle but stunning shift had an effect on all of us. I know it nearly broke me. “Has your aunt ever told you how to
sugar
people?” he asked Amanda.

For a second she clamped her hands to her mouth, too overwhelmed to answer him. The legendary Roan Sullivan, cool and powerful—he not only deigned to notice her, he did it with great charm and kindness. “Yes, sir,” she said in a small voice. “She says tell ’em what they want to hear and they’ll eat right out of your hand.”

“Yellow jackets used to light on her hands,” he murmured. “She was scared, but she’d never admit it.”

“Because she sugared ’em,” Amanda whispered back.

He nodded. “I think she’s practicing to sugar yellow jackets again. You keep an eye on her and let me know.”

“Oh! I will!”

Roan looked at me. “I’ll be nearby. You can find me if you want to.”

“That’s something new, anyway,” I said. “Being able to find you.”

Watching him drive away was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. Behind me, my parents said nothing, individually
or in unison, and when I turned to them they looked shaken but resolute.

“We’ll work on him,” Daddy said.

“He expects too much from you,” Mama said, “and not enough from us.”

“He thinks you’re sweet.” Amanda sighed. “He thinks you’re full of sugar.”

She’d missed his point, thank God.

Turned thirty this year, Claire, and put my first million in the bank. What would you think of that? I think you’d expect it. Money is power. I hope you’d be proud. I’m writing this on fine linen stationery. Twenty-five dollars for a little box. I use it to write thank-you notes for the parties they invite me to. Big business. Big parties. Money. Land. Opportunity. Women …

The women. I hope to tell you about them someday. Whatever you want to know. You’ll tell me about the men you’ve been with
.
And
then we won’t talk about that part of our past again, either of us, because it was only loneliness and plain human need
.

I’m learning to play golf. Picture that! It’s a ritual, Claire
.
A
way of fitting in. I learned about rituals with your family. You play a certain way, you fit in. You don’t play, you don’t fit. Human nature, I guess
.

Golf’s a sucker’s game. It looks easy but winning is hidden in the fine points. I respect that, don’t get me wrong. I like the game. It’s precise. But my God. Me dressed in golf shirts and khakis and shoes with cleats. Spending thousands of dollars to play a game. I look at it as a business investment. Everything is business to me. I’d put on a goddamned monkey suit if that’s what it took to make deals with the other monkeys.…

Strange stuff, these letters. I talk to you on paper and lock the letters in a box. Nobody who knows me now would believe I do anything this sentimental. But then they don’t really know me. What a damned
waste
.
Twenty-five dollars for writing paper
.

But I would write to you on pure gold if I could
.

I
was barely able to move for several days. The knee and ankle of my healing leg swelled, were hot to the touch; every muscle in my body punished me for sleeping on the air mattress at Ten Jumps, for falling twice in less than one day, for standing on the leg too much. Emotionally, I felt as I once had when I was assigned to cover a hurricane in Florida. Scared, excited, and holding on as hard as I could in high winds.

“Roan’s come back for revenge,” some in the family said.

“He deserves to take revenge on us,” others replied.

Lurid, uneasily recalled stories resurfaced in the family and among the oldest friends—about Big Roan and Jenny, the Hollow, Roan and the McClendon sisters at Steckem Road, Uncle Pete and Sally, Roan and my family, Roan and me. People sorted rumors and tidbits of truth about us as they lounged on their front verandas in the rose-scented spring air, and over their morning biscuits and cream gravy at the diners, and in the shops and the fields and the offices. And I heard that Roan had made his money in drugs or in gambling; I heard he planned to build a public park and dedicate it to his mother and that he had bought Ten Jumps to develop condominiums, apartments, industrial warehouses, a shopping mall, or a horse farm.

I heard he had taken me away from Dunshinnog against my will the first night, that he had offered me a lot of money to leave town with him, that Mama and Daddy wouldn’t let him set foot on the farm, that my brothers had threatened him if he tried to see me, and that his homecoming had caused me to have a nervous breakdown, which was why I was pale and nearly sleepless and had kept to myself since Roan returned.

The gossip was as good as any story I’d ever written.

During my newspaper career I’d picked through countless strangers’ lives, presenting their heartaches and hopes and failures for other strangers to read. Journalism is a noble but cruel right in a free society. I’ll always defend the principles behind it, but theory doesn’t sink in like the reality of knowing your own life is the object of rabid scrutiny. I wanted to spare Roan all the lies and speculation that swirled around me.

And I wanted to make him come to me because I was furious and hurt. For twenty years he’d let me suffer, worry, and hunt for him while he watched me neatly from a distance. He owed me explanations.

Josh arrived from the legislative session in Atlanta, where he leased an apartment in a downtown high-rise. Brady came, and Hop and Evan. The family gathered in the living room one evening after Amanda was in bed. Josh said brusquely, in the strange way he had of turning other people’s misery into his own problem, “I can understand how a person can search for someone he cares about and not forget the loyalty and not give up, but Roan’s always known where you were. Why did it take him twenty years to come back?”

That was the excruciating question on everyone’s mind.

I felt my face growing hot. “I don’t know.”

Josh pursed his mouth. “He wants to prove a point to the family. He could have contacted you—a phone call, a letter. What stopped him? Instead he spies on your life, and when you’re vulnerable, he bulldozes his way back in. Just
when you’ve come home, when you’re getting settled. Because alienating you from the family again would be the ultimate payback. I understand how he might have worried about a reunion—always wondering if you’d want to see him, if he’d done the wrong thing when he left here as a kid—but on the other hand, you may just be some kind of trophy to him, sis.”

“Not much of a trophy,” I said wearily.

“He came to see you at the hospital but waited two more months to see you again. I think you’re hurt and mad as hell about that, and I think you want answers he won’t give. Tell me what you think he wants from you and the family, sis, since nobody else has been forcing you to consider the issue.”

“
I don’t know yet.
”

Josh leaned forward, his ruddy hands on his finely trousered knees. His general intensity bordered on rabid determination at times. It was as if he were always after something. He would have made a good reporter. “I’m not trying to cause trouble for him,” Josh went on, “but I know too many men who’ve clawed their way out of the gutter by means they won’t admit, and their biggest ambition is to punish all the people who kicked them when they were down. It’s standard philosophy in politics, and not much different elsewhere: Help your allies, hurt your enemies; compromise to get what you want,
and never admit your true intentions.
”

Daddy scowled. Mama drew up tightly. “Son,” she said in a low, even gentle voice, “you should spend less time with politicians and more with decent human beings. I think you see ugly motives and conspiracies behind every rock.”

This interrupted the flow of conversation temporarily as everyone waited for the angry moment to fade.

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Brady said finally. “Maybe Roan’s interested in the investment opportunities around town. I could talk to him about that.”

“Brady, for God’s sake,” Evan retorted. “Have you got a dollar sign tattooed on your—”

“Roan has no reason to give any of us so much as the time of day,” Hop put in gruffly. “But I can’t believe he’s come back to cause trouble. I believe he’s got Claire’s interests at heart.”

“I go along with that,” Evan added, stroking his beard.

I listened dimly as the family launched into a discussion of the situation, my brothers and father arguing my business like a clan of old-world patriarchs, and on a stronger day in my life I’d have accepted it politely from my father, as was his due, then rounded up my brothers in private and scorched the piss out of them with a few choice words. But I had no strength for small battles.

“One thing’s clear—Roan’s never let go of Claire any more than she’s let go of him,” Mama concluded.

I limped outside to the veranda and sat in a rocking chair with the first fireflies of the season blinking yellow around me, gazing toward the Hollow and Ten Jumps, separate from everyone and alone.

I watched Dunshinnog for the lure of another light. There wasn’t any. I was almost relieved. He expected me to follow him everywhere, just as I had when we were kids. Away from the family this time, away from home, never resolving the betrayals and regrets on either side. I was afraid he’d ask me to leave with him.

And that he already suspected that sooner or later I’d go.

Claire, I’m very aware of what I was. That’s why I try to make a strong impression on people
.
A certain one. There can’t be any doubt they’re dealing with someone to take seriously
.

When I was a kid, you were the only one who looked at me without seeing only what I came from
.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how your parents treated you and your brothers. The teaching, the discipline, the respect. I try to decide how to do it the way they did. Or how your Grandpa Joe would. Strange thing, Claire. I try to see the world the way they did, to learn from them. I learned more than I thought
.

I’m trying to pass it along to my boy
.