Blue Willow (51 page)

When Artemas halted the car, the animal ignored Lily’s hard tugs and shuffled over to the passenger door, then thrust its snout over the doorframe, snuffling and grunting.

Artemas pulled a paper bag filled with apple turnovers out of the animal’s range. Yes, he’d take any excuse to talk to Lily. This obscenely grunting conversation piece wouldn’t be in front of him if fate intended otherwise. He cut the engine. “Nice pig.”

Lily was silent. Behind the glasses, her eyes were unreadable. Finally she said, “It’s a hog. Pigs are smaller.” Thank God, she was able to pretend, as he did, that they could speak to each other casually. “Is it yours?” he asked.

She exhaled, as if concluding that they couldn’t escape each other and might as well attempt nonchalance. “As of today. Name’s Harlette. She’s a pet. The old boy who owned her is moving to Michigan to run a florist’s shop with his cousin. I was the only person he could find who’d promise not to sell her or eat her. I traded him a couple of pounds of ginseng roots.”

“Ginseng? It grows wild around here?”

“The old folks call it man root,” she said dryly. “It’s worth about a hundred dollars a pound in the health food stores in Atlanta. And yes, if you know what to look for, it’s here.”

“I’m taking a large risk to say this, but why is it called man root?”

“It’s shaped like a gnarly little man with his legs spread.” She removed her glasses and did a slow scan of his car. “Nice pig.”

“It’s a vintage ’57 Chevy. I’m going to restore it. I bought it for five hundred dollars.”

“I thought you Colebrooks had an inborn aptitude for making smart business deals.”

“I’m an expert at recognizing potential.”

There were subtle implications in that. It seemed impossible not to communicate on a deeper level with her, no matter how inane the subject. The look she gave him was pensive but gentle. “I like your old junk heap. You need some toys in your life. What you have to do next is get this thing fixed up with a sound system, play some vintage Elvis real loud, and cruise for babes.”

“Its working already.” He nodded toward Harlette, who was rooting a torn place in the seat back. “The babes can’t resist.”

Lily pushed the hog’s head aside. “Sorry.”

“How’s Lupa?”

“Doing fine. She’s limping a little, but almost as good as new.” She paused, her eyes somber. “How are things with your family?”

“Polite.”

She winced visibly. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“I don’t want to discuss it. Since I can’t change anything except my taste in cars, I’ll—” He halted, knowing he was only upsetting them both. Rubbing his forehead with one hand, he nodded toward the passenger seat. “Be brave. Accept a ride back to your driveway with me.”

“I have a hog here, not a speedwalker.”

“I’ll drive slow. It’s only about a hundred yards.”

“Artemas, if anyone saw us—”

“They’d probably be too stunned by the sight of a hog with a Harley-Davidson tattoo to gossip about you and me. Come on. I want to talk to you about my sister and Dr. Sikes.”

She hesitated, then nodded. His eyes gleamed. “You’ll have to climb over. The passenger-door latch is broken.” He leaned toward her and held out a hand. Grasping it slowly, she climbed over the door and settled next to him. His fingers pressed briefly into her palm before he let go.

Her heart pounding, she laid one arm on the rusty doorframe with the hog’s leash wound around her hand.
Artemas cranked the engine and let the car inch forward. Harlette walked dutifully beside it, tail twitching. “John Lee is a respectable hellion,” Lily offered.

“Do you know that Cass has spent a lot of time with him in the past few weeks?”

“I’ve seen her with him when I’ve been working on the yard at his clinic.”

“What does she say to you?”

“Not much. We keep our distance. She asked me why I told him so much about her.” Lily related the conversation she’d had with John Lee about Cassandra’s childhood. Pulling her cap off and running a hand through the errant red curls feathering her forehead, she added, “He wanted to know all about her. I guess I wanted to see sparks fly.”

“Mission accomplished?”

Without missing a beat, Lily drawled, “Well, the last time I saw them together, he was showing her how to examine a pregnant mare, and she had her arm up an equine vagina. If that’s not romance, I don’t know what is.”

Artemas wanted to laugh. He wanted to put his arm along the grimy seat back and rest his hand companion-ably on Lily’s shoulder, as if they were people who were free to enjoy each other, and the hot summer day, and an old convertible. Instead, he could only say with somber disbelief, “You’ll have to get affidavits from a dozen witnesses before I can accept the image of my sister playing horse gynecologist.”

“For better or worse, I’m responsible for her meeting Dr. Sikes.”

“If that means Cassandra has finally met someone she can’t abuse and can’t discard, you’ve done something that none of us has ever been able to do.”

Artemas turned the old convertible onto the farm’s road and stopped. The woods were shadowy, weighted by the summer heat, throbbing with the slow music of insects and birds. He cut the engine again and twisted toward her. “Why don’t I drive you the rest of the way to the farm?” His voice was gruff and deceptively casual. His large gray
eyes never shifted from her face. “For once let’s just be together without regretting everything.”

“Mr. Estes is at my place. He’s building tables for the greenhouse. He’d see us.” The dejection in her tone softened the words. “I’m sorry.”

Artemas leaned back. His face became shuttered. “How is he, these days?”

“There’s a kindler, gentler Mr. Estes somewhere under all the grizzle. I catch glimpses of him more than I used to. I cook dinner for him a lot of days, and Little Sis comes over to ogle him. She brings him bran muffins. He claims she’s got a fixation on whether or not he has healthy bowels.”

Artemas laughed.

Lily shook her head and smiled thinly. “For now, we’re building our stock, buying plants from wholesalers, and talking about a mail-order brochure and ads for next spring’s gardening magazines.” She studied Artemas again, searching his eyes. “When I was working at Dr. Sikes’s last week, a retired couple stopped by on the way out of the clinic with their cat. They were curious about my work, and me—looking for someone to landscape the yards around their vacation home up here. They took one of my cards.”

He brightened a little. “You’re saying you’ve got your first design job then?”

“I don’t know.” Measuring every word, she added, “I may have insulted them. I grilled them for personal information until they probably thought I was an undercover loan officer running a credit check.” She paused, holding his intense scrutiny and returning it. “I was afraid they were another one of your secret offerings.”

“No, but I’ve considered doing that.”

“Don’t.”

“But I know you’re living hand-to-mouth, and it makes me crazy.”

“I have a huge garden. Mr. Estes gave me an old freezer he had in his basement. I’m freezing and canning everything in sight. I’ll never go hungry, and I have enough
money for necessities. I’m happy this way. It’s basic, and it takes all my energy to keep things going, so I don’t have much left over to think about Stephen. And Richard.”

Richard’s name sounded like an afterthought, and that upset her. She repeated it in a stronger voice. There was the slightest flinch around Artemas’s eyes. Casting his attention into the woods—thin air, hidden territory—his expression was troubled.

As she looked at him, the woods’ heavy, sweet melancholy settled in her chest. It couldn’t be wrong to want him, to want to remind this old car of couples who had been seduced by its deep, wide front seat on summer days such as this one.

It wasn’t wrong to think of that, and him. It was only wrong to hope for it, or indulge blind selfishness. He was thinking the same thoughts, she suspected.

Lily wanted to stroke his dark, windblown hair, or feel his hand in hers, or kiss him very slowly and lightly on the mouth. None of that was possible, but she knew it showed in her eyes. She was locked on him, sad and wishful.

But reality was a rusty hulk of a car with torn, faded seats, a hog tugging impatiently on the thick leather leash, and an estate security guard who would drive by on patrol sometime soon. Reality was the wall of problems in their lives.

The rumble of a vehicle approaching on the public road snapped the tension. Lily glanced back and stiffened with dread as Mr. Estes’s battered truck pulled in behind them. Mr. Estes sat still for a long second, staring at them. Then his face compressed in anger, and he shoved his door open.

Artemas got out of the convertible before she could and faced his furious advance. “Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon, hell,” Mr. Estes replied. His accusing gaze latched onto Lily. “I go to town to get some more lumber, and I come back, and what do I find? You sitting here with
him
like you’re on a picnic.”

She held Mr. Estes’s outraged gaze firmly as she
climbed over the convertible’s passenger door and stood. “Mr. Estes, are you telling me I can’t even
speak
to a Colebrook? That’s not fair, and it does nobody any good.” Harlette snuffled her hand noisily. Dark, giddy humor rose in Lily’s throat. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation. Everything seemed ridiculous, frustrating, and bitterly out of kilter.

He pointed at her. “I’m telling you that I don’t want no dealings with any of ’em, and you work for me, and you better remember it. And he”—Mr. Estes jerked his head toward Artemas—“he may act like he wants to be friendly, but he’s a snake in the grass. A snake in the grass waiting for you to look the other way, so he can strike! Just like he did to Joe! You trust me, Lily!”

Her shoulders sagged. “I can’t fight you and everyone else. If the day comes when you don’t trust me, you can tell me to leave.”

Mr. Estes sputtered. His anger had a current of distress in it that bewildered her. “You don’t understand. You just don’t understand what this man is like!”

“I understand very well,” she answered. “He’d be a lot happier if he never had to deal with either you or me again.” She met Artemas’s eyes. The flicker of communication was private and sympathetic. He shrugged elaborately.

“She’s absolutely right,” he told Mr. Estes. “Excuse me. I have better ways to waste my time.”

He slid back into the old car, backed out past Mr. Estes’s truck, and left. Lily felt as if every muscle in her body were being drawn after him. When she and Mr. Estes were alone, frowning at each other, he flung out his hands. An odd brand of anxiety radiated from him. “He takes what he wants, and he don’t care who he hurts. He’ll ruin you, and if you help him do it, it’ll be your fault, not mine. You hear me?
It’s not my fault.
”

The bizarre conversation made her head swim. “You go on to the farm. Harlette and I’ll take a while to get there.”

Mr. Estes stammered, coughed, and finally blurted,
“You been better to me than I deserve. I wish I could do more for you. But I
can’t
, you hear? I just can’t—except I can try to keep you away from Artemas Colebrook. I’m right. You’ll see.” He climbed into his truck and drove off down the lane in a cloud of dust.

Twenty-five

Labor Day weekend was caught between the sleepy heat of late summer and the faint scent of autumn in the air. People filled the mansions loggia and the terraced garden of the fountains. From her quiet sitting place among the trees beyond the lake Lily strained to catch glimpses of Artemas. While his guests moved incessantly from the canopied bar and buffet to the small tables set up around the fountains to the dance area in front of the band, he kept to a spot near the terrace’s stone balustrade.

He didn’t have to mingle. People came to him.

The band played bluegrass music, which drifted to her in soft snatches when the wind was right, like a mountain ghost who couldn’t decide whether to visit her or not. The trio of fountains gushed into the bright afternoon sun.

She felt forlorn in her rumpled khaki shorts and brogans and T-shirt, her hair stuffed into a knot of tangled, fuzzy curls at the back of her neck, her face, arms, and legs sticky with sweat and bug spray. It hurt to be an outcast, an unwelcome witness to others’ pleasure at the house she had loved and defended during all of her childhood.

She was startled when Elizabeth’s two small boys and a stout, efficient-looking young woman in a white skirt and
blouse walked down the hill, following the lake path. The woman, who must have been their nanny, carried the three-year-old and led the older boy by the hand. A colorful beach blanket and a cloth tote bag hung from her shoulder.

Lily parted the huckleberry shrub next to her and watched as the nanny spread the blanket on a shady spot behind a clump of laurel. A small white beach curled around the lake’s edge. The nanny pulled off the older boy’s shirt and tennis shoes. Dressed in bright print swim trunks, he ran to the water and waded in. The nanny helped the younger child undress as well, then carried him to the water, kicked off her sandals, and sat with him between her feet in the shallows. The boys squealed and splashed.

Lily propped her chin on one hand and stared at the scene through slitted eyes, paralyzed with misery She’d never yearned for children before Stephen, had never been one of those women who loved to be around children in general or thought she needed to have a child to feel complete. But watching Elizabeth’s boys brought the barely submerged grief back to the surface, and she would have given anything to cuddle them and pretend she had Stephen back.

Long, leaden minutes passed. Her heart sank when the nanny took the boys back to the blanket and began patting them dry with a towel. The younger boy curled up beside her, and yawned. She stripped off the five-year-old’s trunks and began dabbing the towel at his groin.

The woman curled one hand between the boy’s legs and massaged him, smiling as she did. Lily’s head snapped up. Shock and disbelief froze her. The boy frowned and tried to twist away. The nanny slapped him on the back, pulled him to her, and gave him a long kiss on the mouth, cupping his small, bare bottom in both hands and holding his wriggling body against her side. Finally she let go of him, brought a dry pair of shorts from her bag, and helped him dress.