I didn't argue with Martha's admonitions the next morning not to get up, not to get dressed, not to overtire myself. It seemed much easier just to lie in bed, staring at nothing, thinking of nothing. When Martha came back for the breakfast tray, she rewarded my good behavior with a smile. "That's much better," she said before reaching for the tray.
Her smile faded. "You didn't eat your breakfast."
"I don't want anything."
"But you didn't even drink your coffee."
"I don't want anything."
She clucked her disapproval but left me alone.
When the covers became oppressive and I slipped out of bed, the hairbrush fell to the floor at my feet. I picked it up and carried it with me to the wing chair. There, my feet tucked under me, I looked at the long, pine-bordered drive. The young trees that had sprung up sprawled in a disordered jumble on each side of the drive. They were visible now, dark green against the lighter greens of the hardwoods that were just starting to leaf out, but in a few weeks, perhaps in a few days, I would not be able to distinguish one tree from the next at this distance. Strange that they were the only pines on the hillside, except for the one that stood alone in isolated splendor on the south slope, its color the only thing marking its location for me.
I let my glance wander back up the hillside, to the bare elm guarding the gate to the drive. No color showed on it—even the clumps of mistletoe hanging from its branches were brown. At some level I knew the tree was dead, that it had probably been dead for a long time.
I swiveled in the chair, leaned back, and stared at the bright spot on the wall.
"Did you do this, Eliza?" I spoke in a tone that was half musing, half conversational, not really seeing the wall, not really seeing anything. "Did you sit and watch the seasons change and wonder about the trees? Did you plan? Did you dream?"
A sadness welled within and threatened to choke me. I felt an overpowering need to cry for her and yet no tears would come.
"You had so few moments of happiness. Was it worth it? Why did you go on?" I asked her—asked myself.
Martha brought me fresh coffee and saw that I took what medicine I still required, but soon she left me in silence.
I sat there, hearing nothing but the gently rhythmic whish of a branch against my window, seeing nothing but my fingers tracing and retracing the E on the back of the hairbrush.
"You might find this more interesting." John stood beside my chair, holding an oversized book toward me. I hadn't even heard him come in.
A retort was too much effort, even if I had wanted to make one. I took the book. "You came back."
"Martha told me you had a bad case of the dismals," he said as he lifted the lid to the coffeepot beside me, "but I didn't realize how serious it is. You've got a full pot of cold coffee and you didn't greet me with an insult or a verbal attack."
Martha must have decided he was the lesser of two evils, I thought, and John must have thought so, too, but he didn't say anything, as he had never said anything derogatory about Martha in my presence.
He brought the dressing table stool over and sat in front of me, looking steadily at me. "What's caused this?"
I turned the pages of the book idly, not looking at them, but not able to look at him either. "Nothing is wrong."
He leaned over me, closed the book, and grasped my hands. "Elizabeth . . ."
I couldn't face any questions now. I stared down at the cover of the book, seeing it for the first time. "Stephen Ward," I whispered.
John released my hands and I once again opened the book, this time seeing the lavishly illustrated art book containing color plates of the work of Stephen Ward.
My hands trembled as I turned the pages, only scanning Ward's beautiful landscapes, to the section of portraits. I stopped at the picture I knew so well, a portrait of the young David, painted before the war. He had posed informally, leaning back slightly, at easy attention. A suggestion of a smile softened his mouth, as though he were enjoying a secret joke. His eyes were fixed on something to his right, off the canvas, and they glowed with an eagerness, an anticipation seldom seen in real life, much less in oil on canvas.
Reluctantly I turned the page. David's face stared back at me from the next page, too, but what a changed face. I must have made some sound, for I felt John lean forward. I searched the page for the date of the portrait. 1885. I couldn't believe the face I saw. The hair was liberally laced with silver, the face aged, but it was the eyes, sunken, shadowed, and unseeing, which tore at my heart. They bore no trace whatsoever of his zest for life. An expression of my grandmother's floated through my memory and as I touched the face I spoke without thinking. "Burnt to the socket."
"Explain," John prompted softly.
I let myself glance at him, but the contrast in the too similar faces was too great—too painful. I tried to soothe the face in the portrait with my fingers, but, of course, the picture couldn't change. "It's an expression used to describe a candle that has so completely consumed itself that there's nothing left in the holder," I whispered.
"It's strange you should say that. At the time that portrait was painted, he was already the wealthiest man in the Choctaw Nation and well on his way to becoming disgustingly rich."
"But at what cost?" I asked.
"At the cost of his honor, for one thing," John said bitterly. "He sacrificed his nation, everything for which he had once fought, for his own greed."
"No," I told him. "His problem was much more complex than that. There was a time when the nation forced him to make a choice. I think that was what killed him."
"Elizabeth, he didn't die until 1925."
"Oh, yes, he did." I looked directly into John's eyes, willing him to understand what I said. "He was dead when this portrait was painted, only no one but he knew it."
Sometime during the early morning I gave up any hope of sleeping and curled into the chair, watching the cloud-shadowed moonlit hillside.
"What happened, Eliza?" I asked the night. "What finally brought about that change in him? Did you die giving birth? Did you leave again, thinking that would help him?" I shuddered at the next thought. "Or did Owen find you?" My words were mere whispers. "And why don't I know?"
Martha found me in the chair when she brought my breakfast. She set the tray on the table beside me and stood over me, her arms folded.
"Eat," she said.
"In a while, Martha. I'm not very hungry."
"Eat now," she said firmly, "or I will feed you."
After I had forced down a few bites of egg, a piece of toast, and the orange juice, she relaxed. "Would you like to get dressed and maybe come downstairs for a little while today?" she asked with a hesitant smile.
I just shook my head. No, what I wanted most was to sit where I was and do nothing.
"I know you're not through in the library. You could tell me what to do and I'd finish for you."
"No," I said. "There'll be plenty of time to do that later."
She ran her fingers across my forehead. "Well . . ." she said before she reluctantly left me alone, "you let me know if you need anything."
I didn't need anything but some answers, and they didn't come that morning. Who had cried out against dying? Had it been done in the past, or in the present? Had I been given my one chance to be with David again and refused it?
The art book lay on the floor at my feet. I picked it up and took it with me to the fireplace, where a few coals still glowed from the night's fire. Absently I added another log and settled myself on the rug, prodding the fire to life. I sat with my arms around my knees, idly turning the pages of the book on the floor in front of me. Inevitably I returned to the portraits, but I couldn't bear to look at the two faces of David Richards. I flipped past them, deeper into the book, not seeing what was in front of me until a familiar pose captured my attention. It was a painting of a woman standing in front of a fireplace, her arm along the mantel, light and shadow playing across her. The woman was exquisitely beautiful, and blond, and seemed vaguely familiar. I read the caption. "Amanda Carmichael—1871."
"Am painting the second most beautiful woman in world," Stephen's telegram had read. Now I knew. Or did I? Although the fire now blazed beside me, I was suddenly very cold. The pose was identical to the one I thought imbedded deep in Eliza's memory. I tried to push the doubt away, but it refused to go. Had I at some time seen this portrait and forgotten it? Had I used it, built on it, created something that never existed?
I looked at the bright spot on the wall. If I looked hard enough, maybe I would see what I knew ought to be there. Nothing. The paper gleamed in the morning light, once again mocking me. I looked back at the book, turning the pages mechanically, seeing the faces—laughing, tragic, hopeful, despondent, and I realized that they were all faces of persons long dead.
I rested my head on my knees and turned my face so that I faced the glowing coals, hoping their brightness might chase away the shadows inside me.
"Enough of this!" John's voice boomed through the room, startling me. He grasped my wrist and pulled me to my feet, tugging at me and leading me to the wardrobe. He opened the door and began pulling out clothes—jeans, a turtle-necked sweater—tossing them at me, and I caught them as best I could with my one free hand.
"Put these on," he said, releasing my wrist, "and warm socks and boots and a scarf, and be downstairs in ten minutes or I'll come back up and get you.
"Where are your car keys?" he added, almost as an afterthought.
In my confusion, I answered automatically. "On the mantel, beside the others."
He crossed to the mantel and I heard the jingle of keys. "I don't see any others, but these must be the ones," he said as he walked back across the room. He stopped at the door. "Ten minutes. And comb your hair. You look awful."
I don't know why I did it, unless it was because I knew he meant what he said about coming back for me. The forbidden excitement of seeing him again had nothing to do with my actions, did it? I dressed, I brushed my hair, and I even hurried downstairs.
Discordant sounds from the piano in the drawing room told me where he waited. I stopped in the doorway, a little breathless but also more alert—more alive—than I had been in days.
John stood by the piano picking out a melody with his left hand, a vaguely familiar melody that sounded flat even to my untrained ear.
I didn't mean to start anything—I wasn't sure I'd be able to finish what I started—but he was so confident, so at home in my home, but most of all so vibrantly . . . alive . . . that the words just erupted from me.
"Well, Cousin, if you'd kept up your music lessons you'd now be able to dazzle me with a private performance."
His hand crashed against the keys, but when he faced me he wore a rueful grin. "Beethoven himself couldn't dazzle you on this piano. Do you play at all?"
"No." Grandmother's income hadn't stretched to include what she considered frivolities, but I saw no reason to tell John that.
"Then you can't know how badly out of tune this piano is. It ought to be a criminal offense to neglect a fine instrument like this."
The house was deteriorating around us, and he was concerned about a piano? I felt a flash of anger shoot through me. "It ought to be a criminal offense to neglect a house like this."
His eyebrow lifted slightly as he studied me. "Perhaps it is."
Then he grabbed my wrist again, leading me down the hall into the kitchen, where he snatched my jacket from the hook. Martha stood up from the table when we entered the room, but she didn't say anything, just watched us with an expression that warred between concern and confusion, with outrage never far behind.
"Martha," I asked, "are you just going to let him drag me out of here?"
"Dr. Carouthers called," she said. "He says it will be good for you."
"What?"
A jingle of keys meant to hurry me reminded me of the others. "Have you seen my keys?"
"I have the car keys," John said.
"No, the others. Martha. They're not in my room."
"Why, I have them," Martha told me. "You must have left them in my room the day of the—" Remembering John's presence, she bit off her words. "The day we went to Mack's. Do you need them now?"
As I shook my head, trying to remember taking the keys to Martha's room, John lifted my hair, draped my long scarf around my neck, and took me by the arm.
"Come on, Cousin. Fresh air and sunshine await you. And if you're really good, I might even let you pick a fight with me."
"Go along," Martha said slowly but firmly.
I was outnumbered. John led me past his pickup truck—pausing long enough to retrieve a paper bag from it—to my car, where he opened the passenger door.
"Get in."
I balked at that. "How far are we going?"
"Not far."
"Good, because the gas tank is almost empty. Besides," I said, feeling my back stiffen, "if we must take my car, I prefer to drive."
"Oh, no," he said, laughing. "I've wanted to drive this toy far too long to miss an opportunity like this. Will you get in?"
With a sigh I slid into the car. John closed the door firmly, walked around to the other side, and placed the bag behind the seat. It was almost funny watching him trying to bend his tall body into my car. In any other circumstance I might have laughed, but I hid the smile I felt building as he maneuvered himself into a space that was barely adequate for my own much smaller frame.
He drove well, without the jerks and stalling I expected because of his cramped posture. We went east from Richards Spur, past the survey stakes, past the turnoff to Mack's. In silence. And it wasn't an easy silence. Soon the lack of words played on my nerves. I spoke more to make noise than for any other reason.
"I understand this is all your land."
"Yes. Are you impressed?"
It was a cynical answer, and it deserved a cynical response.
"That depends on how you got it."
I felt his eyes on me. "Except for what I inherited, I bought it."
I couldn't stop. I remembered Martha's bitterness and Joannie's attempts to excuse him. "All of it? Even the land south of the hill?"
His reply came clipped and cold. "Every acre."
I made a checkmark on my mental scoreboard and leaned back in the seat, my lips compressed and my mind closed. One lie for John Richards. How many more would I catch him in this day? Why was it so important that I do so, and why was I so disappointed when I did?
"I've been approached to sell some of it," he said with a hint of a question in his voice.
"At an enormous profit, I assume."
He laughed softly. "Hardly. A developer wants to subdivide it into ten-acre tracts and build moderately priced homes for people who want to raise their kids in the country but can't get very far from their jobs in Fort Smith or Fairview."
"You refused, of course." I turned around in the seat to face him. "It's probably the last chance Richards Spur will have to be a real town again. How does it feel, John, to watch a town die, to own all those empty buildings and know that you can strangle the last bit of life from a community that has been here since territorial days?"
Unbidden, David's words floated through my memory. I promise you, when I have finished what was started today, there will be no community to need your church. He hadn't meant it! Only the stress of the moment had caused him to lash out in anger—as the stress I now felt and didn't completely understand caused me to lash out at John.
His jaw clenched, and I saw a muscle jump in his throat, but when he spoke he did so evenly and quietly. "I said if you were good, I might let you pick a fight with me, Cousin. I didn't issue an invitation for a full-scale attack."
His underlying message was, of course, that I hadn't been good. I didn't need him to tell me that. Gran would have been dismayed at my lack of manners. I was dismayed.
John ground the gears as he turned south onto a gravel road and pressed his foot against the accelerator. He drove with a grim determination, and I could tell that he had no intention of slowing or turning around.
"I told you the gas tank is almost empty," I said, a far cry from the apology I had meant to offer. "Don't force us to walk home."
"Maybe I should have left you sunk in the slough of depression. At least then you were halfway civil to me." His voice was edged with self-derision which, surprisingly, hurt me—hurt me far more than a scathing attack would have.
"I wasn't depressed—"
He braked the car so hard I had to hold on to the dash as he pulled into a drive. I thought he was going to turn around, but he circled a small, white frame house and drove to a large metal barn surrounded by an array of farm equipment and stopped in front of three elevated tanks.
I opened my mouth to speak a belated apology, but he silenced me. "Just hush for a minute, will you?" he said as he took the keys from the ignition and began extricating himself from the car.
A thin, elderly man in mechanic's blues shuffled toward us from the barn, the frown on his face fading as he saw John unfolding from the car.
"Hello, Mr. Richards. Didn't recognize the car. Can I help you with something?"
"Thanks, Andrew, but I just stopped for some gas."
Andrew noticed me then, and bobbed his head in my direction. Then with a speed he didn't seem capable of, he lifted the hose to one of the tanks as John was reaching for it. "How much do you want?"
John shrugged. "Oh, go ahead and fill it. It can't take much."
The old man nodded as he worked with the hose. "The missus took an apple pie out of the oven about an hour ago. She'd be right pleased if the two of you would stop by the house for a while."
John smiled and shook his head. "Not today. Tell her I'm sorry, but my cousin and I only have a short time. I need to go down to the river. How's the trail?"
"Not too bad," Andrew told him as he replaced the gas cap.
"Your own private gas station?" I asked as we bumped along the pasture trail. If the road wasn't "too bad" today, I'd hate to see it when it was.
John grinned. "One of them."
This time my words weren't malicious. I was genuinely interested. "He seems awfully old to be still working."
"Andrew? I suppose. But he's the best mechanic in the county, and I think it would kill him to quit altogether."
He swerved to avoid a deep rut. I couldn't think of anything else to say, so I sat quietly, and as I did I found myself enjoying the smell of pasture grasses drifting through the open window, watching the tree line marking the river growing closer.
John stopped the car at the edge of the trees, grabbed the bag, crawled out, and pocketed the keys. "Come on."
"What now?" I asked resignedly.
"Don't fight me every step of the way, Elizabeth." Was there a wistful sound to his voice, or was I imagining it because I, too, was tired of the fighting? "I'm going to share something with you."
I groaned inwardly. I didn't want John sharing anything with me; I didn't want to like him any more than I already did. But I stepped from the car. There seemed nothing to do but play this out.
I joined him at the front of the car, and he put his arm around my shoulder, leading me toward the trees. I could have broken the physical contact. A step to the right, a step back would have done that easily. I did neither, because, God help me, I liked his arm around me.
"Watch your step," John told me as he guided me through the briars at the tree line, looking up sharply as I choked on a guilty giggle.
Once through the briars and down a short, steep embankment, we were in another world. Large trees filtered the sunlight. Our feet sank into a mattress of leaves, dry and crumbling but soft by the very number of them. The sounds were different, too: a rustle of water, but except for the distant call of a bird, nothing else but the crunch of our feet on the leaves. Gnarled old vines hung from the branches of the taller trees, and young trees grew straight and slender, stretching toward the sun with no ragged outcroppings of lower branches. Discolorations on the trunks of trees and an occasional bit of flotsam lodged in the crotch of a tree showed old high-water marks. The river was low today, and peaceful, and it seemed to sing to me as we walked through a fairy-tale world in which no one else existed.
The tree was ancient. I knew it was our destination the moment I saw it. Sometime, years before, the current had undermined it, and it fell toward the river. But it had held and twisted as it grew so that its upper branches now reached for the sky, while its trunk appeared to grow out from the side of the bank, over the water.
I glanced at John and found him watching me with a wary look in his eyes. "It's wonderful," I whispered, for in the silence surrounding us, whispering seemed right.
His eyes softened. "Yes, it is. Come on."
He jumped up on the trunk and helped me up. Then I held on to his hand for balance as I walked out over the river. Where the tree curved upward I settled myself on the trunk with a contented sigh. John eased down on the trunk in front of me, his long legs dangling, his toes just inches above the water.
"If we're very quiet," he said softly, "the river creatures will forget we're here. Listen."
I leaned back into the curve of the tree and closed my eyes, feeling the play of filtered sunlight on my face, hearing nothing but the hypnotic rhythm of the water beneath me. It was as though the water were drawing all my tension and frustration from me and whisking it downstream. I felt my muscles loosening and my body growing limp.
A loud slap in the water nearby startled me. I started to speak, but John shook his head quickly. He mouthed the word soundlessly, beaver, and pointed upriver. I looked but couldn't see anything. A few seconds later I heard another slap from the same direction. Before long the river was alive with sounds—the noises of birds alighting in the trees nearby or searching the soft bank, the rustle of leaves as small creatures ventured forth, the splash of fish breaking water. I watched breathlessly as a raccoon emerged from the woods and scurried to the edge of the water, and then I spoiled it all by coughing.
Once again there was only the sound of the water to break the silence.
"I'm sorry."
"That's all right," John told me. "Sometimes it is so perfect down here that it takes an interruption to remind you there is another world waiting." He reached into the bag he had set in front of him. "I hope you're not very hungry."
I was suddenly aware that I was hungry. I leaned forward and asked suspiciously, "You didn't bring a picnic lunch?"
"No," he said innocently. "I just knew that if you were in your usual good form, you'd need coffee. And since I had to bring that, I thought I might as well bring a couple of sandwiches."
I felt the chuckle growing within me and tried to stop it. It was impossible. "All right," I said. "Coffee. And food. In that order."
John juggled the thermos and plastic cups, and we balanced them before us as we unwrapped sandwiches and picnicked over the river like a couple of kids who had escaped from school. I had never in my life felt so young. As he gathered the wrappings and refilled the cups, I studied his face. He seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself, but there was a watchfulness about him that I hadn't noticed before.
I didn't want to have to say it, but I knew he deserved some word. "Thank you."
For an instant, he seemed almost surprised. "But we're not through yet," he said, reaching back into the bag. "We still have dessert. Were you serious about liking these?"
He handed me a familiar box of candies, and as I held it I could see myself as a child, hiding in the downstairs hall to finish the last piece before tossing the box into the incinerator, licking the sticky sweet filling from my lips, knowing there wouldn't be any more for at least a month.
"Does that dreamy expression on your face mean yes?" John drawled.
"Yes." I laughed. I tore the cellophane from the box and opened it, exposing the candies in neat rows in their molded plastic tray. Remembering my manners, I held them out to him. "Bonbon, Mr. Richards?"
"After you."
I closed my eyes as I bit into the first one. The chocolate tasted strongly of paraffin, the syrup was cloyingly, toothachingly sweet, and the cherry a little tough. It was just as I remembered, and it was wonderful. I held the taste in my mouth, savoring it, and then unconsciously licked my lips to remove all traces of this forbidden treat. I know that I gave a little moan of pleasure as I opened my eyes.
John was watching me with a satisfied smile on his face. "It's been a long time, hasn't it?"
"Umm. My grandmother didn't approve. Proper young ladies did not indulge in such improper foods."
I took another candy before handing the box to John and leaning back into the curve of the tree. I nibbled at the candy, licking the syrup from inside before popping the whole thing into my mouth, all the while wondering about this new side of John.
He looked skeptical. "Well, perhaps not a box at a time."
I had to laugh. "If she had ever found out about that," I told him, "I would have been in serious trouble."
His skepticism faded; his smile faded. "You didn't have a happy childhood, did you?" he asked, but it wasn't a question.
Happy? I thought of the years of being lonely, and confused, and wanting so desperately for my grandmother to show me the kind of love my schoolmates talked about.
I shrugged my shoulders in an attempt to convey indifference. "Not particularly. But then happiness is relative. My childhood was something I had to go through. I got through it as quickly as I could, and now it's behind me."
"That bad, was it?" John's comment was too perceptive for comfort.
I took another candy, not because I wanted it but because toying with it gave me time to avoid answering. And yet I answered.
"Not that bad, John. I was raised by a woman who was almost sixty when I was born. I was all that she had left to remind her of her only child. She blamed my father for causing their deaths and was afraid that I would be more like him than her daughter. She wanted—demanded—that I be perfect. I wasn't."
He studied a leaf floating down the river. "At least she didn't blame you for their deaths."
"No. She didn't do that."
He face me abruptly. "Elizabeth," he asked with an intensity that surprised me, "why was it so important that you have that hairbrush?"
Now I studied a dead leaf floating in the water. What should I tell him? What could I tell him? He waited for an answer.
I spoke to the river. "David gave it to Eliza."
"Do you know that?" he asked, no less intensely.
The leaf swirled beneath me now, torn and half submerged in the water. I shook my head. "No. I know she used it while she was here. I know that she didn't bring anything with her when she came. I know that she thought of it as his gift."
"How do you know?"
The leaf spun madly, caught in a crosscurrent. An inner voice warned me not to trust John, but I had hidden this so long, kept it such a tightly guarded secret, and the events of the last few days had shaken me so much, left me so confused, I felt I had to tell someone or lose all grip on reality.
I looked straight into his eyes as I spoke, half defying him to laugh. "I remember."
His eyes widened slightly, but other than that he showed no reaction. He didn't laugh. Instead, he said softly, "Will you tell me about them?"
I realized that I was holding my breath. I let it out in a long sigh, thankful that at last I could share this story with someone.
"They met during the Civil War. She was only fifteen when she hid him from a troop of Yankee cavalry. He had been wounded, and she nursed him back to health."
The words did not come easily. Even though I wanted to share their story, telling parts of it seemed an invasion of their privacy. I struggled through it, though, groping for a way to convey to John how much they had meant to each other, until the moment after Eliza had fallen in the orchard. I buried my face in my hands.
"And then what happened?" he prompted gently.
I shook my head. "I don't know."
I looked at him and attempted to smile, but I couldn't. "I know the child was born; you've told me his condition. You've told me that she left because—because—" My voice broke. "John, that is not true. If she left, she did so because she thought she could help him by leaving."
He didn't say anything for a while. He poured the last of the coffee into our cups and sat staring into his.
"Can you make yourself remember?" he asked finally.
"I've tried! These last few days I have tried so hard." My coffee splashed on my hand. I concentrated on the slight burn until I felt I could speak calmly. "I can remember things I've already been through, but I've learned nothing new. I can't seem to force it. It has to be triggered by something. A person I recognize, an incident, something tangible like the hairbrush will unlock whatever it is that lets me see these things, and then I can't stop it. I may delay it for a short period of time, but I can't stop it."
"Earlier, when you were eating the first piece of candy, you remembered something. Is that the kind of episode you're talking about?"
"No. No. I knew I was here, with you. I was remembering how it felt to be nine years old, not reliving it, not feeling the incinerator door in my hands or the texture of my dress or the twist of apprehension I always felt when I was late. I know those things existed, I can recall them, but I can't go through them as though they are happening now, the way I can—the way I could in the story I just told you."
I wanted so much to be able to explain clearly, but I didn't know how. "There's no way you can understand." I didn't understand it myself.
"I'm trying," he said. "This may not be a fair question. You said that recognizing a person could trigger . . . remembrance. Does this mean that you see in the people around you now persons Eliza knew?"
I had gone this far. There was no point in denying it. I nodded.
Now he was the one having trouble finding words. "And when you called Martha by the name Jane, it was because you were seeing her as you think she . . . once was?"
The expression in my eyes must have answered him. He paused, but he wasn't waiting for an answer, he was groping for words.
"Do you recognize everyone as someone in . . . Eliza's life?"
"No." I could answer that question. "Sometimes I am very drawn to a person, and I feel that I must have known that person before, but I don't know when. It's that way with Joannie. If she was there, I don't know who she was. My grandmother had no part in Eliza's life. Strangely enough, Louise Rustin was . . . she was the housekeeper. She hasn't changed much."
"Stan McCollum?"
"My—He must have been Eliza's father."
He looked at me sharply. "Doesn't this get confusing?"
"Not usually." I could say that truthfully. "Usually there is a clear definition between what I do and think and feel and what I learn about Eliza. Only once . . ." The confusion of that night haunted me. "John, I don't know who I was that night. I don't know who called out. I don't even know who cried. I don't know who you held. I—I don't even know if it was you. Was it you?"
"Yes."
"Why? Feeling about David the way you do, why did you let me—" There were no other words to describe what I had done. "Why did you let me use you?"
John studied his coffee cup for a long while without answering. When he did answer, his voice was as troubled as my thoughts. "I don't know. My first reaction was to try to make you understand who was really with you, but I knew from what you said to Martha that I probably couldn't. You wanted David at that point, not anyone else. Certainly not me."
He tossed the last of his coffee into the river. "In spite of the resemblance, you don't see David when you look at me, do you?"
I shook my head.
"But you do recognize someone," he said intently. "That's the only thing that can explain your actions toward me. Who do you see?"
It had been such a perfect afternoon that I had almost forgotten. Now Owen's possessiveness and cruelty invaded our innocent interlude, forcing me to remember what I knew about the man facing me, and yet it all seemed so far removed from the tranquility of the river and from his attitude of the last few days that I couldn't tell him.
As I looked at him, unable to speak, seeing each familiar beloved feature, wanting at that moment what I knew was not so, he read the answer in my silence.
His mouth twisted. "You see Owen, don't you?"
I could no longer bear to look at him. I stared into the trees, not seeing them, either.
"Of course you do," he said.
How different the silence between us now from that of only a few short minutes before. I felt the too familiar ache at the back of my throat and the heaviness behind my eyes warning me that I was close to tears.
"I don't understand," John said finally. "I am trying. But . . . there has to be some explanation for what you go through. Have you ever talked with anyone else about this?"
Still staring into the trees, I shook my head. "Except . . . once. But I had hidden that so far away, I didn't even remember it. Until after I came here."
"Your grandmother?"
"Yes."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him run his hand through his hair. "You said that these incidents have to be triggered by something. Is it possible that what triggers them is actually what causes them? I mean . . . you saw the hairbrush and then you remembered the hairbrush. You knew of Joannie's miscarriages and then you remembered a disastrous pregnancy. You saw a picture of David Richards in a book then he was a part of your life. Isn't it possible that your mind has taken these instances and woven them into a complicated romantic fantasy?"
His question was so close to the one I had asked myself only that morning that I felt I had to deny it, but all I could manage was a slow shake of my head and a murmured "No."
"Elizabeth, listen to me. Sometimes a lonely child has to create a world in which there is love, romance, and adventure. How old were you when you first saw David Richards's picture?"
"Twelve," I told him, suspecting and hating the direction his words were taking me. "I was twelve."
"Don't you see? When you saw his picture, you had none of those things in your life. It would be natural to build a fantasy on a picture like that. I know. I've done it myself."
I looked at him then, trying to understand what he was saying.
"When I was a boy, I found a picture of a lovely young woman. I invented stories about her, and I endowed her with all sorts of virtues and charms." He laughed reluctantly. "I suppose I even fell in love with her. For a long time she was my world. I talked to her, and in my fantasies she talked to me. I dreamed about her. I made plans including her."
"What happened?" I whispered.
He clenched the cup in his hand. "I grew older. Other things filled my life." He shrugged his shoulders. "And I realized that she was just a picture and that had she been a real person, she wouldn't—couldn't—have lived up to my idealization of her. No one could have. Just as no one can live up to the idealization you have created from a picture and a few pieces of fact about David Richards."
He reached for my hand. "I want you to talk to someone—someone who can help you with this—because I don't think I can. I have a friend in Fort Smith who is a psychologist—"
I jerked my hand away. I wanted to back away from him, but the tree trunk was pressing into my spine. I stared at him in dismay, feeling suddenly very vulnerable. "You think I'm crazy," I whispered.
"No! I didn't tell you to see a psychiatrist. I said I wanted you to talk to a friend who has studied psychology, who understands fantasies and dreams, who may even be familiar with the type of thing you're going through. Wouldn't it be nice to know that you're not the only one who has ever gone through this?"
I struggled to my feet, still staring at him, afraid to take my eyes from him. I held on to the tree for support, but I felt myself swaying.
John swore under his breath. "Why can't I ever say the right thing to you?" he asked.
"Just say you'll take me home, John," I said stiffly. "Our picnic is over.
"Yes, it is, isn't it?" He gathered the remnants of our meal and stuffed them into the bag, then scrambled to his feet and held out his hand to me. If I'd thought I could walk off the tree without his help, I'd have refused to take it, but, inwardly, I was shaking so badly I knew I had to have support. Reluctantly I reached out to him, and he guided me toward the bank.
He jumped down from the tree, dropped the bag into the leaves, and reached up for me. I started to jump, but he caught me about the waist and lifted me down. He didn't let me go. Instead, he tightened his arms around me and in spite of my resistance pressed me ever closer to him. I felt his heartbeat and his words reverberating in his chest as he spoke.
"Please don't think I believe you need medical help."
Again I tried to pull away, but still he refused to release me.
"I guess I said what I did for selfish reasons."
The rhythm of his heart against my cheek, the rush of the river current, the soft forest noises all conspired against me. I felt myself yielding to him, enjoying—relishing—the feel of his hands on my back and the warmth of his body against mine.
He spoke softly. "It's just that when you look at me, I don't want you to see someone else, either good or bad, who failed in his life a hundred years ago. He had his chance. It's my turn now, and I have to live the best way I know—the only way I know. I can't be shadowed by someone already dead. I have to be who I am."
He held me away from him and the expression in his eyes kept me still and quiet.
"When you look at me," he said softly, "I want you to be able to see me."
I was still hypnotized by his eyes as he bent toward me, until his eyes closed and he touched his lips to mine, gently at first, almost as though waiting for me to push him away. I couldn't refuse him. I sensed a longing in him, a need that I could only wonder at, as I could only wonder at the answering need welling within me.
I swayed against him, a sound catching in my throat. My arms moved to hold him to me. I felt my heart beating violently as his mouth moved against mine, testing, searching, claiming, and without knowing how, or why, I found myself answering the longing I felt in him with my mouth, my hands, my body, not wanting the moment to end.
For that moment there were only the two of us, reaching out for each other, not bound by the past. For me there was only the feel of his hair under my hands, the taste of his skin, the exquisite agony sparked by his touch. I was lost in those sensations, surrendering to them, wanting more, demanding more. My hands moved from the back of his head to his face, my fingers outlining the planes of his cheeks, his jaw. It seemed so right, so natural. I opened my eyes to look once more . . . but when I did, I remembered who I was and where I was and knew that I had to stop.
Reluctantly I tried to push away from him, moaning in protest. He released my mouth slowly but continued to hold me in his arms, and when he pressed my face against his chest, I felt his heart beating as wildly as my own. We stood that way until I was able to breathe almost normally, until my heart resumed a rhythm only slightly faster than usual.
I pulled away and looked up at him. At John. Who was he? I could find no trace of Owen in the eyes that returned my own intense search. Could I have been wrong?