Wicked Forest (4 page)

I took a deep breath and looked away. Was he right about it all and the way he had behaved? I wanted him to be right. I needed him to be right. Did that make me weak? Was I willing to delude myself, accept lies so I could be happy, just like so many people here, so many people I knew, especially my adoptive mother? If there was anyone I didn't want to resemble, it was she.

I hated how I continually analyzed myself, but I couldn't help thinking I would always be weak when it came to facing a strong, confident man. Analysts would tell me I was constantly searching for a father figure.

Thatcher stepped closer, practically touching me. I turned away from him, afraid of looking into those beautiful eyes and weakening.

"You've got to believe I suffered, knowing that you were alone out there, dealing with all your problems without me at your side." he said in a soft, low voice.

I spun on him.

"Then why didn't you just call... just call me once!"

"I thought you would be on your way back sooner," he said. "Especially with Linden still in the hospital and all."

'That's such a lot of... hooey, Thatcher," I snapped back at him.

He stared at me.

"You're just fishing for excuses to rationalize your inaction. Your objections are too flimsy, counselor. They're overruled."

He nodded, then pressed his lips together and took on a different look, a darker look.

"You're right," he said. "There's more.‖

"What more?" I asked, taken back by his abrupt surrender. "Something else happened very soon after you left.‖

"What?" I repeated with more demand.

He looked away, and the expression on his face made my heart skip a beat. What else could have happened that was more difficult to accept or understand than all that had happened to me and to Linden and my mother?

"My sister realized how serious I was getting with you," he began.

"So? Why did that matter? You never let her opinions sway you before, did you?" I practically screamed at him.

He glanced toward the house as if afraid we would be heard and took a few steps farther down the beach so our voices would definitely not carry back there. I walked a little behind him, now almost as neryous as I was angry.

"No. You're right. Her opinions wouldn't matter. I don't adjust my life or change my plans to satisfy Whitney's view of the world. That's for sure."

he said. "We're as different as a brother and a sister can be. but..."

He turned to me quickly. "But what?"

"But that's the point, or at least the point she was making in her revelations,"

"What revelations? What are you talking about, Thatcher? You're not making any sense to me and—"

"I was hoping not to have to tell you any of this yet, not until I investigated it for myself and either confirmed or disproved it." he said. "My sister is not above using a trick like this to get me to do something she wants or not do something she doesn't want."

"Like what?" I practically shouted at him.

He took a deep breath, bit down on his lip, and then brushed back his hair.

"You know, of course. who Kirby Scott was."

he began.

"Yes. My mother's stepfather, the one who seduced and raped her. Linden's father. I know about all that," I said, waving away the words like so many sand flies.

Of course. I knew. The story was practically engraved on my heart. After my grandmother's husband, a naval officer, was killed in a helicopter accident, she and my mother, who was about twelve at the time, moved to West Palm Beach, where my grandmother. Jackie Lee Houston, worked in upscale restaurants until she met Winston Montgomery, a very wealthy widower twenty-five years her senior. He fell in love with my grandmother and married her, bringing her to Joya del Mar. After Winston died, my grandmother fell in love with a debonair Palm Beach playboy named Kirby Scott. They were married, and Kirby eventually took advantage of Jackie Lee. In practically no time, he gambled and spent my grandmother's fortune and left her nearly bankrupt.

Before that, he had seduced my mother and she had become pregnant with Linden. It was a well-hidden pregnancy. My grandmother tried to convince the world that Linden was her child. For a long time, she even had Linden convinced of it.

"We've been through that sordid tale, Thatcher.

I don't see how that matters at the moment."

After a moment more of hesitation. Thatcher said. "Your mother wasn't the only one he seduced, apparently, or at least according to my sister."

"What is that supposed to mean? Who else did he seduce, and what does it have to do with us.

Thatcher? You're not making any sense and frankly—

"

"My mother," Thatcher blurted.

I stared at him. Was this a dream? He was telling me his mother was seduced? And by the same man who had started this whole mess?

"What?" I asked. Surely the devil wind had been playing with our words, twisting and turning them to suit its impish pleasure.

"Let's continue to walk a bit." he suggested, as if he had to put more distance between us and his parents with every small revelation.

"Thatcher—"

He put up his hand.

"Let me explain. Immediately after you had those nasty words with my mother, she called Whitney, She's closer to Whitney than she is to me.

They have more similar goals in life, share values, are more sympathetic to each other's little

disappointments."

"So?"

"My mother poured her heart out, which really means her fears, poured that into Whitney's receptive ears, complaining to her about the whole sitnation.

Whitney claims she then told my mother she had to take me aside and tell me the truth. Apparently. if I am to believe any of this, it is something my mother shared with her many years ago, but kept from me.

"Right after that conversation, my mother had one of her more serious breakdowns. Let me quickly explain what that means. She goes into a deep depression, won't get out of bed, won't eat, sobs uncontrollably.... My father calls me whenever that happens, and we get her over to what's best described as a spa, where she is given exaggerated tender loving care, the works—mud baths, facials, massages, you name it.'

"How fortunate for her that it takes so little to restore her happiness," I said dryly.

He nodded, but looked at me with a critical sideward glance.

"You know. Willow. if I can offer you some constructive advice for a moment... I'm sure what made your father the great success he was had a lot to do with his tolerance and compassion. I never denied my mother's weaknesses, and still don't. but I don't hate her for that. In fact, even though I'm not a professional therapist. I sympathize and treat her as you will someday treat a similar patient. I'm sure. I humor her, cajole, reason with her.

"Yes, there are people here who are so wealthy, they make kings and queens in other countries look like paupers, and they can buy and own and do almost anything they want, but they still suffer depression, disappointment, doubt, whatever, and all their wealth doesn't make it go away forever. In short, you have to leave a little room in that heart of yours for the well-to-do as well as the unfortunate and poor,

"A doctor who treats a rich person with less compassion than he or she does a poor person isn't really a good doctor, right?" he asked me.

"Sometimes what you're saving is very right.

Thatcher. and I would not be happy with myself if I couldn't offer compassion to everyone who needed it, but there are people who are simply spoiled rotten and just need a bit of discipline more than they need extra tender loving care. Their loved ones don't do them any good catering to their whims and moods. They just prolong the misery for everyone. I wouldn't send your mother to a spa. I'd make her work for a week in the supermarket packing groceries," I said.

He laughed.

"Okay. That's a debate we'll put on hold for now. Whether she should have been whipped or embraced, my mother went into one of her

depressions after you left. and I was coping with that as well as helping your mother and Linden.

"One night after she returned. I visited her in her bedroom. She was better. but I could see she was still very distracted, especially for her. There were piles of unopened party and dinner invitations on the nightstand. I asked her what it was that was bothering her so much. I suspected it had to do with you and me, of course. but I was prepared to discuss it reasonably.

I was planning, in fact, to call you that night, explain what was going on, and find out how you were doing and when you were returning.

"My mother took the wind out of my sails. She started with her concerns that you were the daughter of Grace Montgomery, that your half brother was Linden, that all of the dark mental problems could be passed on to our children... on and on like that. I didn't agree and I talked about your father and did about as good a job on her as I had ever done. In fact, I could see from her face that I was crushing her arguments like bugs on the loggia.

"Finally, she sat back on her fluffy pillow, looked up at me, and told me what Whitney had wanted her to tell. It was like I was a priest in a confessional booth. Willow. I was so stunned. I couldn't speak. My own mother was admitting to adultery, and admitting it to me!

"The upshot of it all was she was telling me that Linden's father and my father were one and the same.

that Linden is my half brother. too. She was telling me that there would be even a greater chance of our having a disturbed child— not only was your mother passing on mental problems to you, but my father, as evidenced by Linden, could be passing on his abhorrent behavior to me. That was her crreat fear.

Understand?"

I started to shake my head, to shake the words back out of my ears.

"No," was all I could barely utter.

She described Kirby Scott as a very romantic, seductive man who took her one night when she had been drinking too much champagne. Shortly afterward, she became pregnant with me. She said the doctor gave her a ballpark time of conception, and she knew without a doubt that I was Kirby Scott's son.

She and my father hadn't had any relations during that period. Or so she claimed,"

He paused and, with great effort, as if there were a weight on his chest, took a deep breath, But you look like your father. I can see

resemblances to him," I said. I shook my head. "It's not true. It can't be true."

"I know, but after she told me. I dug up some old newspaper photographs. I've looked at pictures of Kirby Scott. and I see resemblances between us as well. They aren't so strong that there are no doubts, but they are strong enough to make it seem possible."

"Even if such a story proves to be true, Thatcher, it wouldn't affect us. We still don't have any blood relationship." I pointed out. "My mother didn't inherit any illness. She was abused. There's no concrete evidence that a mental problem caused by social or environmental conditions will be passed on through some genetic strain. That's all ridiculous."

"I know, but all of it is a scandal nevertheless and it would create all sorts of complications. I just might have to kiss my legal career down here goodbye if such a story ever got out."

"What of it? You can have a legal career anywhere you want.

Thatcher," I countered.

"So you would marry me and leave your mother and Linden the next day?"

I started to reply, and stopped.

"You see what I mean, Willow? It's not a black and white issue and not something we can decide instantly."

"Your mother would reveal all this, tell the world about her disgrace?" I asked. incredulous. "Just to prevent you from being with me?"

"If this were twenty years ago. I would say never, but what was once embarrassing and devastating has become socially accepted dramatic fodder now. People are on television revealing deep family secrets every day. Shame is like a vestigial organ, no longer necessary. In short, maybe my mother wouldn't do it. but I wouldn't put it past my sister"

"Maybe it's all not true. Maybe it's a fabrication just to keep us apart. Maybe..."

"Yes," he said. "Maybe so. I need time to confirm all this for myself. In the meantime. I am asking you to be understanding and patient with me.

For everyone's sake, not just mine or yours," he added. "Why risk the unnecessary critical attention and gossip? Some of us aren't strong enough to endure any more of that sort of thing."

I knew he meant my mother and Linden. He

was right. What they certainly didn't need at the moment was more scandalous baggage placed on their shoulders. What's more, how would Linden react to such news? He despised Thatcher. How would he like to learn that Thatcher and he were related, were brothers!

And what would such a star,' do to my mother, whose mental problems had once put her in my father's clinic? These were very fragile people who could stand no added weight. What good would I have brought to their lives? Should I be selfish and tell Thatcher I didn't care about any of that? Should I be like his mother and insist on my own pleasure and satisfaction first?

"This isn't fair," I muttered. "None of this is fair, especially if it's true. Why do we have to suffer for their indiscretions, their weaknesses?"

"Sometimes there is a lot of wisdom in the old biblical sayings... the sins of the parents lie on the heads of their children," Thatcher said.

Now he was the one gazing at a commercial jet lifting toward the horizon and another world, somewhere far away from all our pasts.

"Wish you were on that?" I countered. He smiled.

"Very often, yes— but," he said, drawing closer, "only if you were sitting beside me."

"Maybe we'd all be better off if we didn't have the ability to dream." I said.

"Then where would you psychiatrists bier Thatcher kidded,

I laughed, and he reached out to take my

shoulders firmly. For a moment we looked into each other's eyes.

No matter what the truth is or what obstacles are placed in our way, we'll be together eventually.

Willow. I swear," he said with such confidence and determination, he took my breath away. He brought his lips to mine. We kissed softly at first, then hard and long, as if we both wanted it to last forever and ever. I couldn't stifle a moan of pleasure, and he let his lips glide over my cheeks and around again to my lips.