Wild Heart (36 page)

The courtroom erupted. Judge Tallman banged his gavel and banged it again, but no one paid any attention. Sydney's rapt gaze raced back and forth between Michael and the man who looked so much, so heartbreakingly like him. Michael pushed back in his chair slowly, as if in a dream, and rose to his feet, never taking his eyes off his father.

"This court's in recess," Judge Tallman bellowed, giving up on restoring order. "Bailiff, escort the jury to the jury room."

Sydney stood, too. Philip gave her hand a pat, and she realized she was clutching his arm with all her strength. Everybody was standing now, but instead of crowding into the aisle they stood still, all eyes riveted on the dark, imposing gentleman and the woman, pale, trembling, lovely—Michael's mother?—beside him.

"Bailiff! Take the jury out, I said."

There was a girl behind them, tall and willowy, brown-haired, with Michael's mouth and his father's proud bearing. They made their way down the aisle, all three MacNeils, pulled like magnets toward Michael, whose face was . . . indescribable. At last the swinging gate in the low railing was the only barrier between them, but for breathless seconds no one moved. Lord Auldearn's hard, smooth face was ruddy with emotion; he seemed rooted to the spot. In the end, it was his wife who broke the spell. With a little sobbing cry, she pushed open the gate and rushed to her son, arms outflung.

"Bailiff!" the judge tried again, but the jury wasn't moving.

Michael's father hesitated for one more awkward second, then embraced his son and his wife at the same time. The girl, Michael's sister—oh, how pretty she was—stood apart at first, wonder shining in her face, and then gradually crept closer. Her hand on Michael's shoulder shook slightly and touched him so lightly he didn't feel it. His eyes were shut tight. He was crying—so were his parents. Sydney's vision clouded as she watched the jury file out. Some of them were blinking hard; all of them were moved.

At the prosecutor's table, Mr. Merck slid down, lower and lower, until the back of his head touched the back of his chair. He had his eyes closed, too, but he wasn't crying. He looked like a wilted balloon.

* * * * *

Thirty-seven minutes later, the jurors returned with a verdict. They found Michael MacNeil not guilty of all the charges except vandalism—he had broken a lock on the zoo's front gate—a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of eight dollars, plus court costs.

Chapter 18

Michael kept wondering what his family would think if they knew what he wanted to do with them: roll around on the floor. Time and again he had to stop himself from laughing out loud, imagining their faces if he told them. Kate might not mind—she might even do it!—but his mother probably wouldn't understand. And his father . . . stifled laughter overtook him again, just thinking about it. The Laird of Auldearn definitely wasn't a man to wrestle and play games on the floor with his pack. The Laird of Auldearn was top wolf; he was dignified. But he was tender inside, and kind, and full of love. Michael knew this, because he had seen him cry.

"How beautiful the lake is at night," Kate said from the balcony of their fifth-floor room in the Leland Hotel. "The moon's shining, and you can see the lights from the boats." She turned around to smile at him. "It's much bigger than our loch, Michael. Do you remember it? It's called Loch Rannoch."

"I remember watching you fish," he said to his father. "Throwing the line in. You caught a trout." He could see it perfectly, speckled brown and gray. He could see his father's hands working the hook out, and his father's black boots, the tweed trousers tucked inside.

"I remember that, too. You were too little to hold a rod, so you played with the net in the shallows. You caught a minnow. You didn't want to go home, even though it was pouring."

Michael didn't remember that, but the idea pleased him. He could add that now, the picture of gray rain pounding on the loch, the smell of wet wool and the feel of sodden clothes, to the other memories of his childhood.

They were sitting in the big room of the suite of rooms his family had taken at the hotel. They had come here after the verdict to get away from reporters, and all they'd done since they got here was talk. And look at each other. His sister couldn't stop staring at him, his mother couldn't stop touching him, and his father couldn't stop smiling. And he still wanted to roll around on the floor with them.

It was hard for him to talk; mostly he just wanted to listen. He thought of what Sydney had said this afternoon, after the foreman of the jury said not guilty and everybody had started clapping and cheering. She had held both of his hands and whispered to him, "Michael, I'm so happy." He couldn't even say it back—speech failed him; he couldn't match words to his feelings, and "happy" just wasn't enough. All the MacNeils had met all the Winters, but only for a minute. Newspapermen and photographers and strange people had gotten in the way, and before he knew it he was in a carriage with his new family, moving down Jackson Street to the Leland Hotel.

They had dinner sent up, and kept talking the whole time they ate. "We were having breakfast in the dining room of our
pensione
in Florence when the cable came," his mother said. She liked telling this story, and none of them had gotten tired of hearing it. "We didn't believe it at first—we'd had so many hopes ruined, years ago when we first employed people to look for you. I remember thinking, even here in this beautiful city, after all this time, it's followed us. The sadness. Your father didn't want to call the lawyer in England, but I told h'im he had to."

"I told him, too," Kate said, and his mother and father nodded that that was true.

"So I called him," his father continued, "and he said there was a boy, a man, who claimed he was Michael MacNeil, and that his aunt and uncle had drowned in a canoe accident in Ontario eighteen years ago."

"So we had to come," his mother said, smiling, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. "I was afraid to believe it could be true."

"She kept saying, 'It's just a trip, a chance to see America,' " Kate put in. "She wouldn't even talk about it, why we were going or what might happen when we got here."

His mother laughed. "I said, 'It won't be for nothing— at least we'll see the World's Fair.' " She leaned forward and pressed her small hand over Michael's, and her eyes filled up with happy tears again. She was so beautiful, he was almost afraid of her. He loved her with his whole heart; he didn't even know her, but he would die for her, and he knew she felt the same.

I
have a sister, I have a sister,
he sang to himself sometimes, staring and smiling at the beautiful girl. Katherine Mary Rose MacNeil, who looked like his father and his mother together. She was almost nineteen, born the year after he got lost. They were shy of each other at first, just watching and smiling, both interested but not saying much. Her shyness wore off first, and since then she had told him about her life—the ladies' school she didn't go to anymore, the names of her friends, the books she liked to read, the jumping contests she entered with her horse, whose name was Phantom. She didn't want to marry, she wanted to go to the university and study medicine. Or architecture, she wasn't sure. Then again, she might want to be a playwright. She dazzled him.

When they finished dinner, they moved back to the sofa and easy chairs and kept talking. Sometimes Michael didn't even listen to the words, just the sounds going up and down, soft and loud, and the laughter. They were all tired, so tired, but they didn't want anything to change, couldn't bear the evening to end. But Kate fell asleep curled up in a chair, and soon after that they woke her and told her to go to bed.

She came to him and kissed him on both cheeks. Her shyness had completely disappeared. She must have seen him blush because she said, "It's easier for me," with her hands resting on his shoulders. "I've known about you all my life. Poor you—you didn't know I existed until a few hours ago. But you'll get used to me, and then you'll be glad you have a sister. I hope."

She was laughing with her eyes, so he knew it was a joke. But he said anyway, "I'm glad now, Kate. I never could stop hoping that I had a father and mother, but I never even thought of a sister. You're a gift."

She gave him a strong hug and turned away quickly, calling good night as she sailed out of the room. He thought she might be crying. He hoped so; up to now Kate had been the only dry-eyed one in the family.

His mother and father had their arms around each other. She was so small and delicate, she barely came up to his shoulder. But she wasn't a weak woman. No—but how did he know that? He just knew. "It's late," she said. "We should all go to bed. And when we wake up, you'll still be here. I've had so many dreams . . ." She pressed her lips together and shook her head. "A miracle," she whispered. His father blinked his eyes and gave her his handkerchief—she had soaked all of hers.

"I have something to show you." Michael went closer. He took his book out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and held it on his palm. "Do you remember this?"

They shook their heads, staring at it so strangely that he saw for the first time what it really looked like. Nothing; a pulpy, black lump of nothing. He started to laugh, but it caught in his throat.

"Father," he said. That was for the first time, too. "It's a book. Was a book. You gave it to me on the day I sailed away.
Now I Am a Man
—that was the name of it."

"I remember." He put out his hand, and Michael gave him the book.

"You said, 'When I see you again, Michael, you will be a man.' And you shook my hand. I know it by heart still. I think if I hadn't kept it, I might have forgotten I was a man."

Nobody could say anything for a while, but it wasn't a bad silence. Finally his mother said, "Why did we ever let you go?" She leaned her temple against his father's arm and smiled. "I wonder how many times I've said that in the last eighteen years. You're here now, and I thank God for that, but I expect I'll still ask the question. Every day, for the rest of my life."

Michael felt as if he was standing in front of a locked door. His life on this side was perfect, except that he couldn't go forward. No matter how much it might hurt, he had to unlock the door, because it was dividing his past from his future.

"Why did you let me go?"

His mother touched his sleeve. She had such pretty green eyes. They went wide when she asked, "Don't you remember?"

He shook his head. He didn't want to say what he remembered.

"It was because I was pregnant. I kept miscarrying—I'd lost three babies after you were born, and we thought this might be our last chance. The doctors said I must have complete rest and quiet.
Complete
—I wasn't to be allowed out of bed for the whole nine months. We . . ." She looked at his father, as if she wanted him to finish it.

"My brother and his wife, your Uncle Duncan and Aunt Katherine, were going to Canada and America for two months on a holiday. They offered to take you with them, and the doctor said it would be a good idea. You were a normal six-year-old boy. Noisy and active, in other words. Rambunctious."

"Oh, but you were a lovely boy," his mother said in a rush, "the
best
boy. You were handsome and smart, you could read before you were four, and you never lost your temper, you had the
sweetest
disposition-—"

"Show him the picture."

"The—oh!" She laughed at herself as she pulled on a gold chain around her neck. Out of her dress came a locket—he knew that word because Sydney had a locket. It was gold, with a design on the front, a crest or a shield.

"Look," she said, opening it. "It's you. You were just five. You wouldn't sit still for a photograph, so I did this miniature. And this—" She folded back a little hinged piece of glass behind the picture. "This is a lock of your hair. Remember how I cried when you cut it the first time?" His father nodded, smiling at her with love in his eyes. "Undo it, please, Terence." She bent her head, lifting the hair from the back of her neck; and his father unfastened the chain. She caught the locket in her palms.

"It's yours, Michael. I never took it off in twenty years, but I don't need it now. Because I have you."

It wasn't just a locket she slipped into his hand, the smooth metal still warm from her body. It was a key, too. It opened the door to the rest of his life.

* * * * *

Midnight. Too late to call Sydney. He would see her tomorrow—his parents were inviting the Winters to dinner—but that was such a long time from now. He wanted to see her face, hear her voice. Show her a picture of himself when he was five and had a family who thought he was a "lovely boy."

Lying in his too-soft bed in a room next door to the MacNeils' suite, he stared and stared at the locket and wondered if the painting in it really looked like him. If so, he had been an angel, not a child, with his pink cheeks and sweet, happy face; all he needed was a halo and this picture could go on a church ceiling. He loved it, though. He loved
himself,
that little boy, because his mother and father had loved him. That one fact changed everything.

He felt so happy—so sad. The baby that his mother had tried so hard to have had died after all, she had told him; she lost it the same day they told her Michael was dead, drowned. But now there was Kate, and that was a miracle. How could he wait until tomorrow to tell Sydney these things?

She would like his family, and they would love her. And he'd give her this picture of himself that his mother had painted, so she would know that he had been a real boy, a good boy, and his parents hadn't thrown him away.

They had loved him. Because of that,
she
could love him, without hiding it. He would be worthy of Sydney. How could he wait until tomorrow to see her?

* * * * *

"Went to Scotland in eighty-eight, you know, Auldearn." Sydney's father raised his wineglass in a mini-salute to his host at the other end of the table. "Went to see the natural history collection at the Royal Scottish Museum. Stayed a week. Good show."

"Auldearn"—it was what they were supposed to call Michael's father. Sydney thought it sounded disrespectful, like calling her father "Winter," but Aunt Estelle insisted it was correct. She would know: she had spent all afternoon researching the subject in her collection of etiquette books. "Either 'Auldearn' or 'my lord' or 'your lordship,' " she had instructed them at length on the carriage ride into town—not the train for this grand occasion, needless to say; only the carriage would do.

"Oh, yes," his lordship returned agreeably. Everything he said was agreeable. He had a stern, even a severe version of Michael's face, but since Sydney had met him he had rarely stopped smiling. "Did you get up to St. Andrews, by any chance? The library at United College is very good in your field, you know. I've a bit of an interest there myself."

"Have you!" Papa couldn't have been more delighted. Across the table, Philip actually took time out from monopolizing Michael's sister Katherine to give Sydney a wink. She sent one back, silent acknowledgment that poor, unsuspecting Auldearn had just launched Papa into a monologue on his favorite subject.

"Your father is a genius, Michael tells us," Lady Auldearn said to Sydney in a soft voice, underneath Papa's louder one, with a humorous look that said she'd seen the wink. Sydney smiled at her, unexpectedly at ease. She had never met a countess before, much less had dinner seated next to one in a private dining room of the Leland Hotel. But it was impossible to feel intimidated by this petite, soft-spoken, serene-faced woman. "My father was a genius, too," she said, "or so I was frequently told. He was an amateur entomologist."

"Entomology," Sydney said slowly. She could never keep entomology and etymology straight. "That's ..."