When Venus Fell (54 page)

“I walked through the woods. It took a long time.”

“Weren’t you too tired? How did you walk that far?”

“I rested every few minutes. I know how to be patient.”

“Why didn’t you ask one of us to drive you?”

“I did not want an audience. I had plans.”

“What kind of plans?”

“To set a fire, of course.”

This stopped the progress for a second, as we looked at one another in shock. Gib shook his head slowly, frowning. He cleared his throat. “We’ll come back to that point in a minute.”

“I will only repeat it. Don’t be so shocked.”

“Let’s talk about
how
you set the fire.”

“I poured lamp oil on the rug. I set candles in the oil.”

“All right. Then you decided you could light the candles and leave? That you’d have time to walk back to the Hall before the candles burned down and set the oil on fire?”

“No. I planned to sit outside and watch the fire. I intended to tell everyone that I did it. That was the point.”

So far, her rationale had been impossible to fathom. Gib scrubbed a hand over his face and looked at her askance as each new answer was more astonishing than the last. “What happened next?”

“I lit one candle. Then I had second thoughts. I felt a presence around me. I sat down to consider it.”

“A presence? You mean Vee found you, then?”

“No. She came later.”

Isabel said eagerly, “Then you mean you felt a
spiritual
presence?”

Olivia glanced at Ella then looked straight at me. My heart raced. Oh, yes, it must have been a
spiritual
dilemma, having my sleepwalking sister glide in unannounced. I could imagine Ella sitting down on the floor, dazedly admiring the flames of the candles. Olivia must have been flabbergasted when Ella curled up on the floor and went to sleep.

“Yes,” Olivia said. “I believe an angel visited me.”

Gib rubbed his jaw and sighed. “What did you do after you sat down for a while?”

After I found Ella and hustled her away
, I added silently.

Olivia looked at everyone calmly. “I started to light more candles. But I dropped the match and the oil caught on fire. It
startled me. I moved away too fast. I slipped on the oil and fell. I hit my head.”

“Did you black out?”

“Yes. When I woke up, Venus was there.” She wheezed a little. Tears glistened in her eyes. “I was afraid we would both die. She wouldn’t leave me.”

“I guess I’m stubborn, like you,” I said.

“Now wait a minute,” Ruth interjected. “Aunt Olly, I’m sorry to pressure you, but we can’t avoid this
slightly
important point.
Why did you want to burn the chapel?
”

Olivia hesitated. Until then she’d been firm and sure. But now her eyes clouded and she seemed lost in troubled thought. “Emory’s investors,” she said slowly, “might not spend their money where a crazy old woman would start more fires.”

“Aunt Olly,” Min said in a low voice, “no matter what I considered doing before, let me tell you something now. I would
never
agree to Emory’s proposal now. Simon wouldn’t want a museum built in his name that way. It wouldn’t honor him at all.”

Olivia looked at Min tenderly. “I was only afraid we’d all forget what is important, the way we did after Simon died. We are no saints. But we are not victims, either.” She looked at Bea when she said that.

Bea gasped softly. She understood some implication that evaded the rest of us. Her face convulsed with tenderness and sorrow. “Were you trying to gather shame about yourself so I’d stop grieving over my own shame?”

“I love you,” Olivia said. “And if you are evil, then I will be evil, too. Now I am notorious again. Let Emory do what he likes with our letters. The world has changed. We shouldn’t be ashamed anymore.”

Letters
. This was new information. Everyone leaned closer. Bea and Olivia gazed at us stoically. Gib said carefully, “Are these mysterious
letters
what upset you two? Is
that what Emory whispered about the last time he was here?” Gib’s mouth tightened. “Is that what upset Bea so much that she had a stroke?”

Olivia looked at Bea. Their silent, poignant communication held a lifetime of shared joy and pain. A lifetime of shared strength. “Let me speak for us,” Bea said quietly. “It’s such a dear old habit.”

Olivia nodded wearily. Bea faced everyone. “When we were young, Herself’s husband—I will no’ call that monster by his name—Herself’s husband stole our letters. Letters I wrote to Herself before she married the bastard, and after, too. I was foolish and impulsive. Herself was so unhappy. She could no’ stay with me in Scotland—it just wasn’t done. She had to make a proper marriage. But she never meant to marry a
beast
. I wanted so much for her to run away from him. But she would no’ do it. She’d made vows, she said. She had her bairns to think of.”

“You wrote … indiscreet letters to her?” Isabel asked gently.

“I wrote
my love
to her,” Bea corrected firmly. She sighed. “Her husband found the letters and stole them to torment her. He used them to bully Herself.”

“You mean he threatened to tell the family about her relationship with you?” Ruth asked.

“Aye. What a shame it would have been. People had no sense. Herself worried that her children would be tormented if others knew about us.”

Min touched her shoulder. “How did Emory get the letters?”

“Old Raymond Cameron, Emory’s father, he was tight with Herself’s husband, up in Knoxville. They were thick as thieves. Did business together. Kept rooms at the Greenbriar gentlemen’s club. But they were no gentlemen.”

“I know about that place,” Min told us. “The Greenbriar Town Club. One of my grandfathers was a member. Bankers,
judges, politicians—you know, every man who was prominent in Knoxville society back then. The club bought the old Marker mansion. It was very elegant and very private. Some of the members kept apartments or offices there. I grew up hearing rumors that my grandfather went there to drink and gamble.”

“Aye,” Bea said, nodding. “Herself’s husband kept the letters locked up at that bloody club. And when the murdering bastard went to his bloody demise”—Olivia stared grimly at the floor when Bea said that, but Bea’s eyes glinted with sarcasm—“Raymond, Emory’s father, being a
dear
bloody friend and relative by marriage—Emory’s father went to the club and took our letters. Emory came into them later, by inheritance. We knew this, Herself and I, we’ve suspected for years he had them. But he ne’er quite had the bloody
balls
to admit it, before. Or to threaten Herself with them.”

Silence. The implications and innuendo needed very little time to sink in. I’d often watched Bea and Olivia together, and wondered. What I’d wondered about them was no secret to Gib, his sisters, or Min. I could see years of quiet acceptance on their faces.

Agony began to seep into Bea’s eyes. “I blame myself for provoking Herself’s husband to the worst of his mean nature.” Bea paused. “And so, when the jealous moods were on him,
he shook her wee bairns to death
.” She broke down then, and cried.

“There was no one to blame but
him
,” Olivia said. “And me. I stayed with him out of shame and vanity and fear. How silly I was! He hurt our children because he was a cruel man straight to his soul. If it hadn’t been about your letters it would have been something else.
I will not be afraid again
. I will not allow shame to condemn anyone else I love.
I will speak and be heard
.”

“I love you so dearly,” Bea said.

Olivia leaned close to Bea, kissed her cheek, then sang a
low, crooning sound to her. Such an odd, sweet, dovelike noise, the soft melody of old heartaches and redemption.

I knew it well.

While Gib and Bea helped Olivia back to bed, the rest of us looked at one another in quiet amazement. Ella sank onto the couch. “Lesbians,” she said gently. “We’ve certainly come full circle, haven’t we? There’s a symmetry in it. From playing a lesbian nightclub in Chicago to being taken underwing by two wonderful old ladies who love each other in that way.”

“Hon, it took you this long to figure it out?” Carter teased gently. “I thought you knew.”

“Yes, but all these years, Emory’s been trying to scare Aunt Olly into accepting his plan?” Isabel asked. “Isn’t that extortion?”

Ruth’s eyes narrowed to predatory slits. “That’s blackmail,” she said softly. “All this time I thought he was greedy but honest.”

“You’ve been known to be pathetically
wrong
about people,” I said.

“Is there any doubt that we’re finished with him?” Min asked. “I could never sanction any deal with him now.”

“We’re more than finished with him,” Ruth confirmed. She gazed at me. “And by the way, regarding that remark you just made,
kiss my ass
. Who are you to tell me I’m no judge of human nature? You’ve got so little sense you intended to take the rap for Aunt Olly. You’re supposed to hate us but you
love us
. You were going to run off into the night with Ella in tow, and donate all your inheritance to us. You’re a great one to lecture me about my judgment. Hell, there’ll even come a day when you’ll decide you like
me
.”

“Anything’s possible,” I said. “When pigs fly.”

•   •   •

Gib carried me down the hallway. “You tote well,” he said.

“You’re sure she wants to see me again tonight?” I fretted.

“Her voice is so hoarse she can barely talk, but she keeps drawing a V on her notepad.”

“Maybe she wants a vodka martini.”

He smiled. When he carried me into Olivia’s bedroom I gazed down into her somber blue eyes. She lay in her bed like a queenly elf in a pale ivory robe, revealing a nightgown collar of ivory lace and ribbons at her throat. Her gray hair streamed down her shoulders in frizzled waves. A fringe around her face stuck up in singed tufts, like a halo, and red burn splotches peppered her dough-soft complexion.

Bea sat in a chair at the foot of the bed. She patted my foot as I dangled in Gib’s arms. “Thank you for coming back, dearie. Seeing you is a comfort to Herself.” She gestured to Gib. “Just set Venus on the bed beside the old doll.”

Gib lowered me carefully.

“Hello,” Olivia said in a tired whisper.

“Hello,” I answered.

She began inching toward me. I watched speechlessly as she moved with painful determination, hunching down beside me until, finally, she laid her head on my shoulder. “Thank you,” she said.

“There’s nothing to thank me for.”

“The heart’s silence is a terrible burden,” she whispered. “Not a shield.”

I laid one of my bandaged hands on her head, stroking her hair. “I know,” I whispered back.

Allegra was curled like a black fur hat atop the delicate old lemon-colored chenille bedspread. It was so late the night felt ancient, and the room was shadowy. Outside the window there were no streetlights, no cars on any public road, no
pinpoints of airplanes moving high across the night sky. Darkness in the mountains of Tennessee whispered that wild, dangerous animals still lurked close by. That only the good spirits inside a house could fight off the evil spirits hiding outside in that blackness. I drew a tight breath until I heard Gib moving around the room. He switched on a lamp.

I was cocooned in pillows and swaddled in my mother’s gift. “You could lie down beside me,” I said to Gib.

“You’re a mind reader now?” He sat down then gently traced my lips with the tip of his finger. He looked so good in a soft blue shirt, open at the throat, with leather suspenders and faded jeans.

“I see all, I know all,” I whispered. “I am elevated to a high spiritual plane on narcotics and thousands of goose feathers.”

With him close above me, looking down at me while I looked up, we were suddenly just simply studying each other. He kissed me. “I’ve been answering E-mail from people who heard about the chapel. Media requests for information. Historical societies wanting to know how they can help. Ruth’s working on that part of it, too. The reaction is a helluva thing. It confirms how many people prize this valley just the way it is.”

“I could have told you that. The chapel didn’t have to burn to prove it. I’m so sorry.”

He tilted his head and eyed me curiously. “Why do you keep saying you’re sorry?”

“It seems a long time since you accused me of anything. I miss being a troublemaker.”

“I can honestly accuse you of changing my life for the better. Of making me happy. Of making yourself such a special part of this family that I don’t know what we’d do without you. What
I’d
do without you. If you want to talk about something, then let’s talk about this.” He cupped my face in his hands. “On the day we finish restoring the chapel, you marry me. Marry me in the chapel, that same day. That’s the best luck we can bring to it.”

“You may not want me, after I tell you the truth.”

He drew back, frowning. “What?”

I took a deep breath. In a slow, halting voice I told him about the fire, and Ella. What I’d seen, what I’d done, what I’d meant to run from. How I’d feared my own sister had set the fire that nearly killed Olivia and damaged the most cherished symbol of his family heritage. He watched me with no outward reaction. I was beyond tears. I wanted to touch him but felt I didn’t have the right to ask for or give simple sympathy.

When I finished speaking he reached into his pants pocket. “I meant to give this back to her tonight,” he said, “but in all the commotion, I forgot.”

He held up Ella’s wedding band.

I stared at the gleaming diamond-and-gold ring. I was afraid to ask, but finally forced the words. “Where did you find it?”

“I dug it out of a melted candle at the chapel.”

I shut my eyes. “You knew all along. You knew she’d been there. That she must be the one I was trying to protect.”

“Yes. I was afraid that was the case.”

I looked at him tearfully. “Why didn’t you say something, at least to me?”

“Because I hoped you’d tell me yourself. That you’d trust me. It took a helluva effort to keep quiet tonight when you started taking the blame.” He bent over me. There were tears in his eyes. “Did you really want to leave me?”