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Chapter 18

We drove home in oppressive silence. By the light of passing cars I saw that John held himself tense, his jaw firmly set, his hands clenched on the wheel. I saw no trace of the gentle, loving man who had so recently held me as John returned me to David Richards's house.

Now I had to admit, if only to myself, that making love had probably been a mistake, but it was a mistake I couldn't regret. Because love was what John had shown me; love, and gentleness, and passion.

In spite of his earlier words, John really didn't believe in what I was going through, but he believed in me. And while he was relieved I no longer saw him as Owen Markham, he knew I still had many unresolved questions about David. "I've been fighting him all my life," John had told me. "Why should I expect the most important part of my life to be free from him?"

Now in the car on the way home, I wanted to do something to comfort John, but there was nothing I could do. I had not asked him to love me; I had only, selfishly, asked him to express that love.

On the road up the hill, John stopped once and peered sharply into the pines.

"What is it?" I asked, glad to have anything to distract my thoughts, to help ease the screaming silence between us.

"Nothing," he said tersely. "I thought I saw something."

Soon we would be at the top. Soon he would be leaving me, going off, alone, into the night. I searched for something to say to him, but everything I thought of carried the reminder of John's last words to me before we left his house. "You're going to have to resolve this, Elizabeth. I don't care how, but you're going to have to do it soon. You're going to have to choose: Life. Or a dead man. Put him to rest. Set us all free." So I sat in silence until we passed through the gates and rounded the still bare elm.

I gasped in amazement. Every light in the house was on. The front doors stood open, and, outlined in the light flooding from those doors, I saw two sheriff's cars.

"No," I whimpered, clutching at John's arm. "Turn around. Take me away from here. I can't go with them."

John stopped beneath the elm, and for a moment the only sound I heard was the groaning of the branches above us.

"I don't think they're here for you," John said softly. "Will you let me find out? I won't tell them you're with me."

I nodded. In this, as in so many other things, I now trusted him.

He drove to the side of the house and parked in shadow. "I won't be long," he said, squeezing my hand.

Even though I expected him to return, when I heard the sound of the car door opening, my heart lurched sickeningly.

"It's all right," John said. "It's safe for you to go in."

He held his hand out to me, but I couldn't move. "Why are they here?"

"You've had another burglary. This time Mack and Martha caught the burglar."

What else could happen before this day was finally over? I took John's hand and let him help me from the car. I needed the strength of his arm as we entered the house. Two brown-uniformed deputies stood at the end of the hall, near the library door. Between them, turned away from me, stood a man. A tall man in a black frock coat, with long black hair tied at the nape of his neck. I recoiled, reaching for John.

Martha came out of the library. She saw me and ran down the hall. "Elizabeth," she said breathlessly, "Mack caught him!" But I couldn't listen to her. I was staring at the figure at the end of the hall, the figure I had seen and said nothing about, the specter in the night that had disappeared when I called out to him.

They turned and started toward us, and I saw his face, the reddened eyes, the bloated features. John's arm tightened on my waist.

"Well, Rustin," John said as they stopped in front of us, "this seems a little sophisticated for you. Who thought up the costume? It is convenient, though. If anyone sees you where you aren't supposed to be, it's a guarantee that nothing will be said. And it's almost as convenient as having a telephone up here and someone at the foot of the hill to warn you if anyone comes up."

The deputy who had come after me was on one side of Rustin. "So far he hasn't said anything." The deputy nodded to me. "But he was carrying a pillowcase full of your things out the back door when Mack tackled him."

"Can I talk to you before you leave, Wade?" John asked him.

"Sure. Henry?" Wade said to the other deputy. "Do you want to take him on in? I'll be right behind you."

The other two left, and Wade looked from John to me. "If it's about this afternoon—" he began hesitantly.

"No. It isn't," John said, interrupting him. "Martha, Elizabeth needs some coffee." He gave me a little push toward her. "And I still haven't fed her supper."

I resented his pushing me away. I resented his not letting me hear what he told the deputy. But Martha advanced on me, taking my arm, chiding John for not feeding me, scolding me for not taking care of myself, and led me to the kitchen, bubbling over with stories of coming back over the top of the hill after supper and surprising the "ghost." It seemed hours before John joined us in the kitchen, alone.

Martha poured a cup of coffee, handed it to him, blushed a deep, mottled red, and then hurried from the kitchen.

John stared after her. "Did you say anything to her?"

"No," I told him, as puzzled by her actions as he was. But there was something more important on my mind. I studied my cup before I spoke. "He took more than that pillowcase full, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"What will happen to him?"

"I suspect that he will be out of jail on bond by morning and out of the state soon after."

"Just like that?" The unfairness of it brought unwanted tears to my eyes. My voice trembled as I spoke. "He can just run away? He can leave people thinking that he was a small-time burglar who got caught, never dreaming he was the tool of an evil man?"

"Stan isn't really evil, Elizabeth. He's greedy and he's weak."

"Don't argue semantics with me, John. The effect is the same. I'm having to fight for my life because of him, and you're telling me there's nothing I can do about him."

John took my hand. "Stan will have to file the complaint on the burglary and give them a list of what was taken from the trust property. He will never mention the Ward. Because of what happened earlier today, you can't mention it. If you were to report the theft of a Stephen Ward painting, he'd deny it, probably replace the painting, and use it as further evidence of your instability."

I tried to pull my hand free from his, but he refused to let me break the contact.

"Wade is a good deputy," John said. "He ought to be sheriff. He wants to be. I told him pretty much what I told you this afternoon and then I walked down the hill with him to the place we had stopped earlier. What I had seen was Rustin's truck. The painting wasn't in it, but a number of other things were. I don't think they'll show up on the report, either. I think Rustin did the job he was hired to do and came back later for himself. I think he's probably done that several times in the past, which would explain more than anyone other than us cares to question right now. I hope he still has the painting hidden, but it doesn't matter. The truck will be watched, Rustin will be watched, and Stan will be watched. It's just a matter of time before one of them makes another mistake.

 

Time. It was something I had in abundance. With orders from the court not to leave the county without permission, I couldn't go back to Fort Smith. I didn't need to go back. I was sure I wouldn't find any more proof on a return visit than I had the first time. And with an empty gas tank and no money unless I asked McCollum's secretary for it, I was under virtual house arrest. John recommended an attorney, and I talked with him about my defense, but I couldn't yet submit myself for psychiatric examination, although I knew it would be necessary before I faced a jury.

I could leave. I confronted that thought one night in the dark. I had a little money in the bank in Columbus. Not much. But enough to take me far enough away that Stanley McCollum could never carry out his threat. Far enough away to make a fresh start. But running wouldn't help. I admitted that as the morning sky lightened. I'd be running away from too much more than Stanley McCollum ever to find peace.

As John had predicted, the only items McCollum listed as stolen on the burglary report were those found on Rustin when Mack caught him. No one was surprised when Rustin disappeared after being released from jail the next day, but, according to Martha, there was a lot of talk when Louise closed the store and left, too.

Joannie visited less often than before. As her time grew near, she became more awkward and uncomfortable. I understood her not wanting to be away from home. I didn't understand the tension that existed between her and Martha. Martha denied there was any tension, and Joannie did, too, at first.

"Please, Joannie," I said to her one morning when Martha had left us alone. "Enough people are trying to tell me that I imagine things. Don't you be one of them."

"I can't not tell you, can I?"

"No." I grinned at her. "You can't not."

She smiled ruefully. "I lost my temper. I said some things I shouldn't have."

"I can't imagine you saying anything to hurt anyone," I told her.

"But I did!" Joannie shook her head as though she couldn't believe it, either. "After your hearing, after John called to tell Aunt Martha that you had fallen asleep, she and Mack started talking about going to his house to get you. I told them to leave you alone, that you were where you ought to be. Mack was real upset. He told me that I didn't know what I was talking about, that John was a ruthless man and had probably even had something to do with causing the hearing, and Aunt Martha, bless her heart, Aunt Martha had to remind me that he had foreclosed the mortgage on their farm and put her and Jim out of their home."

"You defended John?"

Joannie nodded.

"But what did you say? What could you have said that was so bad?"

She nibbled on her lip before answering. "I broke my promise to John. I told Mack what he had done for me and what I thought he had done for him, and then . . ."

"Then what, Joannie?" I prompted softly.

"And then I asked Aunt Martha where Jim had gotten all the money he had in the last few months before he died, and . . . and she didn't know about it."

"Oh, Joannie."

"There were a lot of things she didn't know about Jim, but I didn't realized he hadn't told her he had that money. She had signed the deed to John, but Jim had told her it was just to keep them out of court. That hurt her, Elizabeth, and I wouldn't have had that happen for the world. I love her."

"And she loves you," I said. "She knows you wouldn't hurt her intentionally."

"I don't think it matters if I meant to hurt her or not. I did, and I don't know what to do about it."

I had no answers for her. I hadn't meant to hurt John either, but I had, and I didn't know how to change that. No. I knew what to do. I just couldn't do it.

"Martha wants your love," I told Joannie. "She wants you to need her."

"I do," Joannie said.

"Then why don't you tell her."

 

John no longer came to the house. I understood why. I realized he was doing the right thing by staying away. I should have been grateful, but I wasn't.

I found his music books in an upstairs bedroom where they'd been stored all along; I just had never looked. Beginner's books, exercise books, books with the notes so closely spaced that only an accomplished musician could read them, all bearing his name, from the neat block print of the beginner to the bold scrawl of the young man. On each of them, even the earliest, I read in his signature the struggle he'd gone through to assert his identity. In each of them it was John that stood out boldly. Not Richards.

I felt myself drawn more often to the piano, the sound of John's music still echoing in my heart. I carried the books downstairs, found an early one with the melody I needed so desperately to hear, and began trying to find the notes on the piano that would bring it once more to life.

Why had John practiced out here? Why not at his own home? Bits of our conversations kept flashing through my memory at the most inappropriate times. I kept returning to thoughts of the night at his house, thoughts of our picnic on the tree over the river. What had John said? We were talking about my grandmother, and he had said, "At least she didn't blame you for your parents' deaths." Was that what had happened to him? Had his father blamed him for his mother's death?

John wanted me to choose. Why was that so difficult for me to do? John loved me. And I had made love with him. Not David. Not, thank God, Owen. David had become for me the haunted picture in the Stephen Ward book. Even the memory of Owen's cruelty had faded; all I could remember was the anguish in his eyes when he said, "I want you to want me."

It was hopeless. I was I a quagmire of conflicting thoughts, conflicting desires, conflicting needs. Perhaps I was mad. Eliza had prayed for madness. Perhaps I was just fulfilling that prayer. But if that were so, then I couldn't be mad; for if Eliza was real, I was sane.

I crashed my hands on the keyboard. Enough! I would not wallow in these thoughts any longer.

I stormed out to the kitchen just as Martha entered from the outside with a bag of groceries.

"Are there more?" I asked.

She nodded as she put the bag on the table, and I went outside and got the remaining two bags from her car.

"You shouldn't be doing that," she chided when I carried them into the kitchen and began tossing their contents into the pantry.

"I have to do something," I told her. "I can't just sit around and wait."

Martha sighed and sank into a kitchen chair. "It's about time you realized that. I'm going over to Mack and Joannie's this morning. Do you want to go with me?"

"Oh, yes," I said.

 

Martha refused to use the road across the top of the hill. She said it was fine for a truck or a tractor but not her car. As we drove through Richards Spur, I glanced at the boarded-over general store. Now the town was really dead. A ghost in stone. Only the church with its leaning bell tower and the squat, ugly little post office had any purpose for being. When we turned off the highway and onto the gravel road around the base of the hill, we passed at least a dozen pieces of earthmoving equipment parked along the side of the road near the bright orange survey flags.

"It looks as though you were right," I told Martha. "They are going to fix the road. But I wonder why they'd even bother, now."

 

Martha opened the door to the bungalow and called out as we entered.

"In here, Aunt Martha," Joannie answered from the kitchen, where she stood in front of the stove tending the bubbling contents of three large pots.

"I thought I told you I'd take care of that," Martha chastised gently.

"You did. I just thought I'd get it started for you." Joannie turned, and a smile brightened her face as she saw me. "Elizabeth! I'm so glad you came."

"Out," Martha said. "Both of you. Out of the kitchen, out of my way."

I walked with Joannie into the living room and took her crutches from her as she eased herself into a chair.

"How are you?" she asked.

"Just between the two of us?"

She nodded.

Oh, how nice it was to be able to say it and not be afraid of how it sounded. "Sometimes, Joannie, I wonder if I'm not really going crazy. Sometimes I wonder if I need to see a psychiatrist."

"I'm not surprised," she said softly. "With all you've been through in the last few months, what does surprise me is that you've managed to hold yourself together so well. Can I help?"

I sighed and leaned back in my chair. "You do, already."

"Sometimes you just have to talk things out, Elizabeth, to understand them, to put them in perspective. If there's no one you can do that with, maybe seeing a psychiatrist wouldn't be so bad."

"Maybe not," I admitted, to myself as well as to her. "I just can't bring myself to do it yet."

"How's John?" she asked.

I glanced up in time to surprise an impish grin playing across her face. "You never give up, do you?"

"Never," she admitted. "How is he?"

"I don't know," I told her. "I haven't seen him. And," I added, "I'm not going to talk about him. How are you?"

"I'm fine," she said with a contented smile. "But I'm going to be better. I asked Mack to take me over to your house at noon so I could tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"My doctor wants to go ahead and take the baby and not run the risk of my going into labor. I'm checking into the hospital today. Tomorrow morning, I will be a mother.

"I made it," she said, then laughed with joy. "I carried this baby."

 

The rain started as Martha and I drove home, huge drops that cascaded from low-hanging clouds, overpowering the windshield wipers and making sight of anything past the hood ornament of the car impossible.

The rain continued through most of the night, accompanied by jagged flashes of lightning that lit up my bedroom with their brilliance, and thunder that seemed to rumble from the center of the earth to rattle the windows in the house.

By morning the rain had stopped, but the sky was a dull grayish green. Martha cast a wary glance outside. "I hate to go off and leave you in weather like this," she said.

"You have to be with Joannie and Mack at the hospital, Martha. You can't stay home on a day as important as this one is, and you know it."

"I suppose not," she admitted. "You promise me something, though."

"What?"

"You promise me that if the weather gets worse you'll go to the cellar and stay there."

"Martha." I was both pleased and a little irritated by her concern. "This house has been here over a hundred years without being blown away. It will be here when you come home."

She pointed outside. "That's a tornado sky, young lady. You haven't seen the destruction one of those storms can wreak, so you don't know to be afraid of it. I'm telling you, if it gets worse—"

"If it will make you feel better, Martha, I promise. Now go, and call me just as soon as you know anything."

I wandered into the drawing room. The beginner's book still sat on the piano. I hurried past it to the window. The mountains were dark blue in the distance, but darker still was the sky behind them, a dull blue-black, rent by flashes of lightning. I dropped the curtain in place and faced the piano. It was a simple melody. If a ten-year-old could play it in recital, surely I could pick out the first few notes. I finally found the first nine notes, and I repeated them, time after time, hearing not the noises coming from this piano but Eliza's voice humming them and the music John made when he played them. I found myself being drawn deeper and deeper into the morass of confusion. There was no answer. There was no escape.

"No," I moaned, burying my head in my hands. "I can't go through this again."

Sometimes it helps to talk about it. Joannie's voice sounded in my mind. How's John? Sometimes it helps to talk about it. How's John? Sometimes it helps to talk about it. How's John?

I ran from the room. I ran from her voice. I ran from the music still playing in my mind. I ran from me. To Martha's room, where I found myself with the telephone in my hand.

"I have to do this," I told myself, told the room, told the storm outside as I searched through the telephone book. It was too late for John to be at home. The listing for the ranch headquarters stood out in boldface type. I dialed it before I lost my nerve. When a man's voice answered, I forced myself to speak calmly.

"John Richards, please."

"He's not going to be in this morning."

But I had to talk to him. "Can you find him for me? Please? This is . . . I'm Elizabeth Richards. Would you ask him to call me at home? It's important."

A bolt of lightning struck somewhere nearby as I hung up the telephone, and the accompanying clap of thunder shook the lamp on the table in front of me. The room grew dark while I waited with the telephone in my hand. It seemed hours before it rang.

"Are you all right?" John demanded without preamble.

"I don't know. Yes. Yes, I'm all right." I had to say this while I still could. "John, I have to talk to your friend in Fort Smith."

Another bolt of lightning struck nearby. The line cracked and hissed. Only after the static cleared did John speak. "I'll set up a time. I'm coming to see you," he said. "I'm on my way now, but it will take about an hour to get there. I have something to tell you." The line hissed again and then went dead.

John was coming. Wasn't that what I had really wanted? To throw myself in his arms and have him make everything all right? But he couldn't do that for me. I knew, deep down, that somehow I had to make things right for myself.

The air in the house closed in on me and the rooms seemed to grow smaller. I ran down the hall, threw open the front doors, and breathed deeply of the heavy, humid outside air. The mountains loomed in the distance, and to the east I saw the storm raging, but here no rain fell.

I strode across the lawn, splashing through little puddles of collected water, to the low rock wall to the south. I scrambled onto the wall and sat looking over the valley, needing the harsh caress of the rough wind that washed over my face and through my hair.

The problem, I decided as I watched the storm cloud roiling over the mountains, once trimmed of all but the basic issues, was simple to state. Either I had created a fantasy world to fill a need I once had and had let that fantasy consume me, or, by some quirk of fate, I was remembering a life that had really happened. If I had created Eliza's world, I could put it aside. If I had created her pain and her love, then I could be free of them. I watched a distant bolt of lightning spear through the sky. If I were free of them, I could let myself love John, and, oh how I wanted to do that.

I let my gaze wander over the familiar surroundings, feeling as though I had to see them one last time with Eliza's eyes—the dead elm by the gate, the bright green of the scattered pines along the roadway. I searched the south slope. Only because I had watched so often could I even pick out the solitary pine, hidden now by the clutter of foliage surrounding it. How different from the winter when it had stood as a dull green banner in a jungle of browns.

Dull green? I looked back at the pines. They were bright, with moisture glinting from them. Wasn't it a pine tree? And yet, it had stayed green all winter. The only other tree on this hill—I swiveled around on the wall and looked back at the house. The magnolia gleamed a dull, deep green beneath its garland of ivory blossoms.

No, I told myself as I turned back to the valley. It's a stray, one of the pines that came up from the first ones. They were all over the hillside by the roadway. But that one stood alone.

Marie LeFlore's words played through my memory. "My doll is in the ground. Under the magnolia." What else?

"I'd go to the top of the hill. To the graves."

"No," I moaned, but I was sliding down the hill on the rain-slicked grass, scrambling through briars that tore at my clothes, pushing through the branches of young trees that slapped at my face, denying—denying all the time that it could be.

I saw the blossoms first, creamy cups of ivory against the dull green foliage. I stopped, afraid to go any farther, knowing that I must.

Wild roses and fruit-laden blackberry vines covered a mound beneath the tree, hiding something that glowed a soft white between their leaves. I stumbled toward them, seeing nothing but the dull white gleaming in front of me, calling to me.

"No." I tore at the briars, ripping my hands and my clothes, pushing the vines away until I saw the three marble boxes, placed above ground, one alone, two side by side. All were old and weathered, but the engraving on one was almost worn away. I traced the outline of the word with my fingers. One word. Only one word. ELIZA. The engraving on the adjacent vault I could read. It said simply, DAVID. There were no dates. A stone at the head of the two graves united them. I scraped away the accumulation of dead leaves and dirt, and, knowing that this had to be a dream, traced the familiar words, words that tied them together for all time. NOR DEATH WILL US PART.

"Oh, God." A shudder ran through me as I collapsed against the marble slab, clutching the edge.

 

Eliza

Eliza felt other people in the room, working over her, tending to her. She was so tired, so tired. The pain no longer tore through her, but she was spent. She had no strength left, not even the small amount needed to open her eyes.

"You saved her," she heard Jane say.

"I don't know why," a man answered dully. "There's no chance he'll send her away now, is there?"

"None," Jane said.

"Then he's ruined. And for what?" The bitterness in the man's voice sliced through the fog surrounding Eliza. "Another man's woman and a bastard child. Someone whose every need it going to have to be tended to, someone who will never be whole or normal."

"Could you be wrong?" Jane asked.

The man laughed derisively. "He's going to ask the same question. I was wrong four months ago when I told him she couldn't live through the beating she had taken. I was wrong when I told him the child couldn't survive. God, I wish I hadn't been wrong about that. But no. This time I am not wrong. The damage has been done. There can be no improvement. And I have to be the one to tell him. Will you finish up in here?"

Eliza lay stunned as she listened to footsteps leaving the room. What damage? She forced her eyes open.

"Jane?"

The woman was gathering soiled linens. She stopped and walked to the bedside. "Yes, dear?"

"My baby? Is he all right?"

Jane smoothed the hair back from Eliza's face. "He's fine," she said. "I found a nurse for him. He's with her now."

"I can't even do that?"

Jane's eyes misted. "You used up too much of yourself in giving him life. Rest now, and get your strength back. Someone else can take care of him for you."

"I want to see David."

"Let me finish cleaning up in here," Jane said. "Then I'll get him for you."

"Leave that." Eliza's voice broke. "I want to see him now."

Jane looked down at her, a frown creasing her forehead. "Yes, I suppose you do," she said gently. She deposited the pile of linens near the chair and left the room.

At least God had let her baby live. Eliza thanked Him for that and remembered her promise to leave if He would.

He's ruined, she heard again in her mind. No chance he'll send her away now. He's ruined.

"No," she moaned. She couldn't let that happen to him.

 

David leaned over Eliza and brushed a light kiss across her forehead. He smiled at her, but she saw the anguish in his eyes.

"Have you seen him?" she asked.

He nodded without speaking.

"How is he?"

David raised her arm and kissed her wrist. His face was turned from her and his voice muffled by her arm when he spoke. "He's beautiful, Eliza. A perfect little boy."

She closed her eyes and breathed a silent thank-you. "God heard my prayer," she whispered.

She reached for David's hand. "Sit beside me."

He eased himself onto the side of the bed, facing her. She traced the planes of his face with her fingers, memorizing the feel of his skin beneath her touch. No, he wouldn't send her away. He wouldn't let her leave. He'd keep her with him until he was broken and bitter, until the nation he loved was dead, until the love he now felt for her was choked out of him by what it had cost. Had she always known they could not be happy together in this lifetime? It seemed that she must have.

"Remember," she whispered, "years ago, when we went hunting for squirrels?"

"How could I forget? That was the day I learned that you loved me."

She touched his lips with her fingers. "We talked that day about living a life we had already known, in another time, another place. I wonder how many lifetimes we do have that we can spend with each other."

"We have this one," he said. "Years more of this one."

"I want nothing more than to spend the rest of this life with you," she said softly, "but I have to believe that there will be another time for us, another life for us. And you'll love me then, too. You promised." A wave of longing washed through her as she let her fingers slip from his face. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could spend that other life here, in the home you've made for us, where I've known happiness that I only dreamed existed?"

"We'll spend all of them here, if that's what you want," he said gently.

"Just one," she whispered. She resented the weakness that dragged her down, drawing her away from him.

"I'm tired," she told him. "So very tired. I don't want to, but I have to rest now."

He touched his fingers to her lips and rose from the bed.

"Kiss me good-bye," she asked.

He bent over her, touching his lips to hers, and she grasped him, holding him to her, needing his strength. "I love you," she told him. "More than life itself, I love you."

He left, reluctantly, and she was alone. She lay quietly, gathering her strength. "God will understand," she said. "He must understand. It's the only way I can leave."

She slipped from the bed and made her way slowly across the room, holding on to the furniture for support, until she reached the dressing table. David's razor still lay beside her hairbrush. She touched it tentatively, and then clutched it in her hand as she stumbled to the chair by the window. A breeze played through the open window, rifling the curtains. In the distance the mountain loomed, hazy, mist-covered, violet shadows.

"Please, God," she whispered, "let me see them again. Please let there be another time for us."

She thought of her baby. She longed to call for him, to hold him just once. "No," she moaned, knowing that if she once held him she might never be able to leave him, and leave she must, for his sake as well as David's.

She glanced around the room, perfect except for the unmade bed and the pile of linens at her side. She drew a sheet from the linens across her lap.

It can't hurt much, she told herself. After what she had been through, the pain couldn't be much. She did it quickly and lay back in the chair, her wrists resting on the crumpled sheet. She looked at the valley below as her strength and her life drained from her. "There will be another time," she murmured. "We will be together again."

 

Elizabeth

A violent clap of thunder shook the earth. "Oh, God," I moaned, still clutching the edges of the marble slab. "No. No! She couldn't have done that. She couldn't have!"

I staggered away from the graves and stumbled blindly up the hillside. It hadn't ended that way. I wouldn't let it end that way!

I was still trembling by the time I reached the house, unable to unlock my mind from the horror of what I had just learned.

"Why?" I cried. What had happened to the girl who had defied the Yankee captain? What had happened to the woman who finally stood up to Owen Markham? What had happened to let her get to that point of desperation? There was no need for her to have quit. "Eliza?" I screamed at the ceiling. "Why did you give up? You didn't have to!"

Her song kept running through my head, mixed with memories of her, laughing, happy. My breath came in ragged moans. I couldn't think. I couldn't feel. I could only question. "Why did you do it?" I wanted to hit something. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry, but no tears would come. Her song kept playing through my heart, louder and harsher and more insistent each time it repeated.

"Why?" I cried, flailing out at nothing, at everything. My fist crashed against the piano. I stumbled to the bench and collapsed on it, unable to do anything else, and still her music tormented me.

The music book on the piano mocked me with the silly nine notes I had learned. I had to do something. Eliza was dead—not over a hundred years ago, but now, just now—and I had to do something. Raggedly I began picking out the notes. Her death was so senseless. I felt a blind anger at the injustice of it, but my fingers pounded the keys mechanically, repeating those notes, until the discord deafened me, until it drowned out the other music in my head.

A tanned hand covered mine, stilling it.

"Never with anger," John said softly. "With sadness, compassion, love, sometimes laughter. But never with anger."

I swiveled on the bench and buried my face against him, sliding my arms around him, holding on to him, needing him.

"She killed herself," I told him. "And she didn't have to. They lied to her about the baby. She heard them talking, and she thought—she thought she was the invalid, that she was the one who would be the burden on him."

"So that's what changed him," John whispered. His hands clenched on my shoulders, then moved over my hair, comforting me until I stopped trembling, until I once again breathed evenly. I pulled away from him, shaken, but for the first time in weeks in control of myself.

I looked up at him. "I'm not crazy, John. I didn't make her up. She was real."

"I know," he said, and I heard a sadness, a finality in his voice. "That's what I came to tell you." He picked up his briefcase from the floor and set it on top of the piano. He opened the briefcase and took out a document. There was no life in his voice when he spoke.

"I only got this this morning. I've had my attorneys and both abstract companies searching for any reference to Eliza in Fort Smith. They finally found one."

"What is it?"

John crumpled the document in his hand. "It's an old lawsuit. An 1885 quiet title suit involving ownership of the house we visited in Fort Smith. There are a lot of names, and a lot of dates, but only a few that matter to us."

He handed the papers to me. "The house was deeded to Eliza Griffith in August of 1870. She divorced an Owen Markham in October of 1871. She died March 30, 1872, in Indian Territory, survived by an infant son who was also dead by the time of this lawsuit, and her husband, David Richards."

I stared blankly at the papers. A month ago all I had wanted was a scrap of proof. Now I held documentation of her last year and a half of life in my hand, and it was a burden pulling me down into a place from which I couldn't escape.

"How did I know?" I whispered. "Why do I know?"

His voice droned on. "Gail is coming over Saturday."

"Gail?"

"The psychologist I told you about. She's eager to meet you. She sent you some things to read." He pulled books from the briefcase. "It seems that there has been a lot written about past life recall, through hypnosis, but she has never heard of anyone who has involuntary recall. And there has been a lot written about hypnogogic reverie—that's the term for your intense remembrances—but not in connection with a past life."

His voice broke. "Elizabeth, damn it, even if everything did happen the way you remember, you still have the right to a life of your own."

"Do I, John? I've lived before, here in this house—"

"Not you. Eliza. Another woman, another time, another life—"

I heard what he was saying, and I wanted to believe him. God, how I wanted to believe him, but how could I? "I loved here. I died here. I promised to come back, and David knew I would. He made it possible for me to be here, with him, again."

John groaned, and then he had me in his arms, lifting me from the bench, holding me to him. "Look at me," he said, "and tell me you don't care for me."

I tried to do that, but when I opened my mouth to speak, the words stuck in my throat and refused to be said. I couldn't look at him any longer. I buried my face against his shoulder, and tears I had no right to shed slid from my eyes. I felt his fingers on my cheek as he raised my face to his and held it imprisoned. He bent toward me and kissed my tears away with gentle, teasing touches. When his lips met mine they were questioning, pleading, and I couldn't lie, I couldn't refuse. Tears streamed down my face as I surrendered to my need for him, my love for him, knowing that this kiss was the last there could ever be.

He pulled away and looked down at me. He knew. I saw in his eyes that he knew. "Tell me you don't love me."

I wanted nothing more than to reach up and touch his face and tell him how much I did love him, but now I could never do that.

"I—I can't!" I cried. "Don't you see? I promised to come back to him, and he's brought me here. I don't know where he is now, but I'm not free to love you. I deserted him once before. I can't do it again!"

He caught my face in his hands and bent toward me as though to kiss me again. "Please go," I whispered. "Please. Go."

"He's won, hasn't he?" John asked bleakly. "All my life I've fought against him, hating him for the failure I knew him to be, and I suppose I always knew it was a futile war. But he hasn't failed in this. Elizabeth, I can't go on fighting a dead man, not without hope, not without help."

I closed my eyes against the defeat I saw in his face. "Please," I repeated. "Go."

He dropped his hands from my face and without another word he turned and left the room. I heard his steps down the hallway and the sound of the kitchen door slamming shut. I sagged against the piano as a sob tore from me.

I saw him in my mind as he left the house, as he got in his car, as he started around the barns. I had to have one more glimpse of him, even from a distance. I ran to the front door. The wind tore it out of my hands as I opened it. John's car was just rounding the barn, leaves and twigs and dead grass thrown by the wind swirling around it. Soon he would be gone. Gone.

And I couldn't let him leave. I couldn't. No more than I could let myself die when I thought that was the only way to be with David. No more than I could have taken a razor and ended my life. I had to live! And what kind of life would I have if I sent John away? An empty one. As empty as most of Eliza's had been.

"I'm sorry, Eliza," I sobbed. "I can't do this. Not even for you." I felt the weight of my rejection pressing into me. "I'm sorry, David. I love him. Please understand. Please."

And then I was running, feet sliding on the wet lawn, being buffeted by the wind and debris, calling for John, screaming his name. He couldn't hear me. There was no way he could hear me. He was almost to the elm tree. Once past that he would never see me. "Please look back!" I prayed. "Please don't leave."

There was a deafening clap of thunder as a bolt of jagged light speared from the sky in front of me. I slid to a stop and watched, disbelieving, as the car skidded across the wet grass, as the elm, in slow motion, drifted downward, ever closer to the oncoming car.

The crash of metal and blare of the car's horn released me from my paralysis. I stumbled across the lawn, fought through the branches overhanging the car, and yanked the door open.

John slumped over the steering wheel, his chest pressing the horn. A trickle of blood flowed from a gash on his forehead. I had to get him out of there. "Help me, John," I repeated as I tried to pull him from the car. "You have to help me."

The noise around us was deafening. The roar came from hell itself. I couldn't hear myself; how could he? "Oh, please!" I whispered against his ear.

I breathed a silent prayer of thanks as I saw his eyes open. I helped him struggle from the car, the wind whipped branches beating against both of us. He stumbled when he put weight on his right leg, and I took his arm and put it over my shoulder. "We have to get to the house!" I screamed against the wind.

John shook his head, clearing it. "It's too late for that," he yelled back. "Look."

I looked in the direction he pointed. Between us and the mountains a whirling cloud advanced on us across the valley, black roaring death sucking up trees and fences and even cattle from the valley floor, spitting out some of them, keeping others.

He shook me back to awareness. "Through the gates," he yelled. "To the left. There's a ditch. We have to get to it."

We ran as fast as his injured leg allowed, through the gates, into the trees, to a small ravine. We threw ourselves into it and stretched out, flat along the bottom, while the debris whistled over our heads. John's body shielded mine, but I still felt the pricks of twigs and stones being thrown against me.

I knew we were going to die. We couldn't die yet! I had just chosen to live. And I hadn't told John. I touched his face with my fingers and yelled at him over the wind, "I love you, John Richards. I love you!" We held each other while the forest screamed in protest above us, as the tornado roared through the sky with the noise of a thousand freight trains.

 

Silence. Wonderful silence. Until nearby a bird began to chatter. Another joined it. Soon the forest was alive with sound. I felt John's body relax against mine and sighed in relief. We were still alive. We were together, and we were still alive. John brushed the twigs from my hair and plucked a leaf off my face. His hand lingered on my cheek. "Thank you," he said softly.

"Thank God," I whispered. I was spent. I had no strength left to do anything but lie there in the ditch holding John, feeling him holding me, until from the highway below rose the sound of sirens.

John stirred. "Let's go see what you have left," he said.

We helped each other to our feet, and, with him leaning on my shoulder, we made our way to the gates.

There was no sign of the elm tree, but John's car lay in a mangled heap blocking the road. I shuddered at the thought of what would have happened to him had he remained unconscious, and felt his hand tensing on my arm as he urged me away from the car.

The house still stood, although draperies hung outside some of the windows, and one of the front doors leaned against the fountain.

One of the barns was gone, but the roomful of smudge pots sat intact in the place they had occupied inside the missing barn.

The cloud had dipped down at the north side of the hill, taking out a portion of the stone wall and cutting a swath through the trees. With the trees gone, we could see what was left of Richards Spur.

As capricious below as it had been on the hilltop, the cloud had taken some buildings completely, left others intact, and damaged still others. The bell tower had finally separated from the church and lay in splinters across the cemetery. The post office was gone. The store didn't appear to have been touched.

"What will you do?" I asked as we looked down at the ravished town.

"Save what I can," John told me. "Rebuild what I can't save."

"Why, John? The town was dying. Why would you want to rebuild?"

He spoke slowly, groping for words. "God only knows. For years I wanted nothing more than to squeeze what life there was left from that town. It was a challenge, like destroying the house. But I couldn't do it."

John settled onto the edge of the wall. "We broke ground in the new addition east of town yesterday," he said. "I've already closed the sale on several of the acreages. There will be new families moving in, new life for the town. They'll need a place to shop." He looked toward the church. "A place to worship."

So it had not been highway department equipment after all. I squeezed his shoulder. "Do you need to do down there?"

John rested his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. Then, in a gesture to me as old as time, as familiar as my heartbeat, with strong, tanned fingers he massaged the furrow of his forehead. My breath caught in my throat, trapping my voice and keeping me silent.

"Not now," he said finally. "Help me to the house, Elizabeth. It's time we went home."

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Framed