Heaven (Casteel Series #1) Read online

  "She wouldn't like me doing this," I said with a worried frown, then chewed on the end of a ballpoint pen. "You should be doing this, Cal."

  "I don't have time, Heaven."

  He took the stack of bills from the small desk that had been Kitty's and put them back in a filing cabinet. "Look, it's a beautiful summer day, and it's been almost a month of constant caring for Kitty. We need to do some serious thinking about what to do with Kitty. Paying those nurses to help you is costing a fortune. And when you go back to school, I'll need another nurse . . . around-the-clock nursing. Have you heard from her mother yet?"

  "I wrote and told her Kitty was very ill. But she hasn't replied yet."

  "Okay . . . when she does, I'll call and talk to her. She owes Kitty a great deal. And perhaps before school starts, we can work out some permanent solution." He signed and glanced at Kitty before he said, "At least she does seem to enjoy the TV." I'd never seen him look so miserable.

  Was this retribution—did Kitty deserve to be stricken with whatever she had? She'd asked for it, and God in his mysterious ways did prevail after all.

  And my own exhaustion made me say yes, going back to Winnerrow and turning Kitty over to her mother was a fine idea, and it would give me the chance to see Fanny, check on Grandpa . . . and hunt up Tom, to say nothing of Logan. Beyond that I couldn't think.

  For how could I even look at Logan now?

  Finally a letter came from Reva Setterton, Kitty's mother.

  "I hate going-back there," he said after he read the short letter that showed no real concern for a sick daughter. "I can tell from the way they look at me they think I married her for her money, but if we don't stay with them, they'll think you and I have some kind of relationship going on."

  He wasn't looking at me when he said this; still, I heard something wistful and yearning in his voice that made me feel guilty again. I swallowed, quivered, and tried not to think about what he might be implying.

  "Besides, you need a break. You work too hard waiting on her, even when the nurse is here. If we stay I'll go broke from paying for nurses. And I can't let you quit school to tend to her. The worst thing is, nothing at all seems wrong with Kitty but her desire to stay home and watch TV."

  "Come back to life and love him before it's too late,"

  I yelled at Kitty that day, trying to make her understand she was losing her husband. She'd driven him to me with her coldness, her cruelty, her inability to give.

  Later when he was home: "Cal," I began in a low, scared voice, not wanting to desert him now when he had no one, "Kitty wouldn't want to be there all day and night without moving if something weren't terribly wrong."

  "But I've had the best doctors in the country look at her. They've made every test they can think of, and found nothing."

  "Remember when those doctors gave you their diagnosis? They did admit sometimes the body is as much a mystery to them as it is to us. Even though the neurologists said she seems perfectly healthy, they don't know what's going on inside her brain, do they?"

  "Heaven, taking care of her is ruining both our lives. I don't have you as much as I need you. I thought at first it was a blessing in disguise." He laughed, short and hard. "We've got to take Kitty back to Winnerrow."

  Helplessly I met his eyes, not knowing what to say.

  Kitty was in her bed, wearing a hot-pink

  nightgown under a hot-pink bedjacket trimmed with row upon row of tiny pleated ruffles. Her red hair was growing longer and longer, and appeared remarkably healthy.

  Her muscle tone didn't seem as flabby as it had, nor did her eyes seem quite as stark or apathetic as they turned our way when we entered together.

  "Where ya been?" she asked weakly, showing little interest.

  Before one of us could answer, she fell asleep, and I was stricken with the pity of such a strong, healthy woman lying still all the remaining days of her life.

  I was also filled with excitement, with relief, with a rare kind of anticipation, as if Winnerrow had once given me something besides pain.

  "Cal . . there are times when I think she's getting better," I said after we left Kitty's room.

  His brown eyes narrowed. "What makes you think that?"

  "I don't know. It's nothing she does, or doesn't do. It's just that when I'm in her room, dusting the things on top of her dresser, I feel she's watching me.

  Once I glanced up and I could swear I saw some fleeting emotion in her eyes, and not that blank look she usually wears."

  Alarm sprang into his eyes. "That's all the more reason to move fast, Heaven. Loving you has made me realize I never loved her. I was just lonely, trying to fill the void in my life. I need you; I love you so much I'm bursting with it. Don't pull away and make me feel I'm forcing you." His lips on mine tried to give me the same kind of passion he experienced; his hands did what they could to bring me to the pitch of excitement he reached so easily—why couldn't I let go of the sense I was drowning myself? Going under each time we made love.

  He possessed me with his body, with his will, with his needs, so much that he began to frighten me as much as Kitty once had. Not that he'd ever hurt me physically . . . only mentally and morally I felt damaged beyond repair. Regardless, I loved him, and I had that same insatiable, aching hunger to be cherished tenderly.

  Going home would save me, save him, save

  Kitty, I convinced myself.

  I'd find Tom, see Grandpa, visit Fanny, find Keith and Our Jane. I brainwashed myself with this litany I repeated over and over. I made of Winnerrow a kind of refuge, believing it held all the solutions.

  PART THREE

  Return to Winnerrow

  .

  eighteen

  Winnerrow Family

  .

  CAL AND I MADE A BED FOR KITTY IN

  THE BACKSEAT, loaded our suitcases in the trunk, and set off on a fine sunny day in mid-August, a few days before her thirty-seventh birthday. Kitty had been incapacitated for two months, and seemed likely to stay that way from the vacant way she acted.

  Yesterday her "girls" had shampooed and set her hair, had given her a fresh manicure and pedicure, and this morning I'd given her a sponge bath, put on her pretty pink bra, then dressed her in a brand-new pink summer pantsuit. I'd styled her hair as best I could, and done a pretty good job before I put on her makeup so she looked pretty. But for the first time during a trip, Kitty didn't say a word. She just lay as if dead, like the doll she'd burned so ruthlessly.

  All the things we should have said on this return to West Virginia remained unsaid as Cal and I sat in the front seat with enough room between us to have put Kitty, if she could have sat up. Soon Kitty and Cal would be established with her family and no longer could he come to me with his needs. Pray God that the Settertons never learned about what we had done together. It troubled me so much I felt almost ill.

  Was Cal thinking the same thing? Was he regretting now his declarations of love for a hill-scum girl?

  This was our moment of truth, or soon would be. His eyes stayed on the road ahead, mine on the passing landscape. In another few weeks school would be starting again, and before that we had to decide what to do with Kitty.

  I couldn't help but compare this summer's trip with the winter one, more than two years ago. All that had been impressive then had now become

  commonplace. McDonald's golden arches no longer commanded my awe or admiration, and hamburgers no longer pleased my palate since I'd eaten in the best restaurants in Atlanta. What was Cal going to do with me now? Could he turn off his love and need, as Kitty could so easily turn off what she used to be? I sighed and forced myself to think of the future, when I'd be on my own. I had already taken my SAT exams and applied to six different universias. Cal had said he'd go with me to college, and acquire his own degree while I began my higher education.

  It wasn't until we were halfway to Winnerrow that I knew why Miss Deale had come to our range of mountains, to give the best of her talents to those who needed
it most. We were the forgotten, the underprivi-leged of the coal-mining regions. A long time ago I'd told Tom in jest I'd be another Miss Deale; now, looking around, I knew I wanted more than anything to be her kind of inspiring teacher. Now that I was sixteen, Logan would be in college, home for summer vacation, but soon to leave. Would he see guilt and shame on my face? Would he see something to tell him I was no longer a virgin? Granny had always said she could tell when a girl was "impure." I couldn't tell Logan about Cal, could never tell anybody, not even Tom. I sat on and on, feeling heavy with the burden of shame I carried.

  Miles and miles and miles slipped by. Then we were in the hill country, steadily climbing, winding around and around. Soon the gasoline stations became more widely spaced. The grand new sprawling motels were replaced by little cabins tucked away in shadowy dense woods. Shoddy, unpainted little buildings heralded yet another country town off the beaten track, until those too were left behind us. No fast expressway to take us up into the Willies. How scary that name sounded now.

  I was seeing the countryside as my true mother must have seen it seventeen years ago. She'd be only thirty-one if she'd lived. Oh, what a pity she had to die so young. No, she hadn't had to die. Ignorance had killed her, the stupidity of the hills.

  How had my mother had the nerve to marry

  Luke Casteel? What insanity had driven her away from a cultivated place like Boston, so she'd end up here where education and culture were scorned, and the general opinion was who eheck kerrs . . life's short

  . . . grab what ya kin an run, run, run. Running all through life, trying to escape poverty, ugliness, brutality, and never succeeding.

  I glanced back at Kitty. She appeared to be sleeping.

  A fork in the road ahead. Cal made a right turn that took us away from the dirt road leading to our small, pitiful cabin in the high country. How familiar everything seemed now, as if I'd never left. It all came rushing back, filling me with memories, tingling my nostrils with the familiar scents of honeysuckle and wild strawberries, and raspberries ripe on the vine.

  I could almost hear the banjos playing, hear Grandpa fiddling, see Granny rocking, Tom running, hear again Our Jane wailing, while Keith stayed in close, loving attendance. Out of all this mountain ignorance, all this stupidity, still came the gifts of God, the children, not blighted by their genes, as some might have thought, but blessed in many ways.

  Mile by mile I was growing more impatient, more excited.

  Then came the broad green fields on the

  outskirts of Winnerrow; neat farms with fields of summer crops that soon would be harvested. After the farms came the houses of the poorest in the valley, those not much better off than true hillbillies. Beyond them, higher up, were the shacks of the coal miners dotting the hills along with the moonshiners' cabins.

  The deepest part of the valley was reserved for the affluent, where all the richest mountain silt was driven downward by the heavy spring rains, to end up eventually in the gardens of Winnerrow families, providing fertile soil for those who needed it least, producing lavish flowers and gardens, so the rich grand houses of Winnerrow could grow the best tulips, daffodils, irises, roses, and every other flower to flatter their beautifully painted Victorian homes.

  No wonder they called it Winnerrow. All the winners in this area lived on Main Street, and all the losers in the hills. On Main Street, long ago, the owners of the coal mines had constructed their lavish homes, and the owners of the long-ago gold mines that had stopped producing. Now those homes were owned by the cotton-factory owners or their superintendents.

  Down Main Street Cal drove carefully, past all the pastel homes of the richest, backed by the lesser homes of the middle class, the ones who worked in the mines, holding down some overseer or manager position. Winnerrow was also blessed, or cursed, with cotton gins that made the fabric for bed and table linens, fancy knobby bedspreads, carpets and rugs.

  Cotton mills with all their invisible airborne lint breathed into many a worker's lungs, so they coughed up their lungs sooner or later (as did the coal miners), and no one ever sued the mill owners or the mine owners. Couldn't be helped. A living had to be made.

  Was just the way things were. Ya took yer chances.

  All this was in my mind as I stared at the fine homes that had commanded my childhood admiration, and in some ways, I had to admit, they still did. See all the porches, the remembered voice of Sarah was saying in my head. Count the floors by the windows, the first, second, and third. See all the cupolas, some houses with two, three, four. Houses pretty as picture postcards.

  I turned again to check on Kitty. This time her eyes were open. "Kitty, are you all right? Do you need anything?"

  Her pale seawater eyes moved my way.

  "Wanna go home."

  "You're almost there, Kitty . . . almost there."

  "Wanna go home," she repeated, like a parrot speaking the only phrase she knew. Uneasily I turned away. Why was I still afraid of her?

  Cal slowed, then pulled into a curving driveway leading to a fine home painted soft yellow and trimmed with white. Three levels of gingerbread grandeur, perhaps built around the turn of the century, with porches on the ground and second level, and a small balcony on the third that must be the attic. The porches went around the house on four sides, Cal explained as he drew the car to a slow stop, got out, and opened the back door so he could lift Kitty from the backseat and carry her toward the high porch where her family stood motionless and waiting.

  Why didn't her family come running to

  welcome Kitty home? Why did they just stand up there, bunched together, watching Cal with Kitty in his arms? Kitty had told me they'd rejoiced when she ran off and married at the age of thirteen. "Neva did love me, none of em," I could remember Kitty saying more than once. And apparently from their lack of enthusiasm, they were not glad to see her again, especially sick and helpless—but could I blame them, could I? If she could do what she had to me . . . what had she done to them? They were very generous to agree to take her back, more than generous.

  Hesitatingly, I just sat there, reluctant to leave the cool isolation and safety of the car.

  Up the five broad steps of the porch Cal carried Kitty, to stop at the top between the white balustrades.

  That family stared at Kitty as I finally made up my mind that Cal needed some support, and it seemed I was the only one he was going to get it from.

  'It was like the story Granny used to tell of how she and Grandpa had just waited when Pa brought home the bride he called his angel, and they hadn't wanted her .. . not at first. Oh, Mother, how painful it must have been for you. How painful it could be for Kitty.

  I ran to catch up, seeing the way they flicked their eyes at me. They weren't friendly eyes, nor were they hostile; all four stood staring as if Cal carried some unwanted alien in his arms. It was clear they didn't really want her, but still they had agreed to take her in and do their best . . . "until it's all over, one way or nother . . ."

  The large, formidable-looking woman whom

  Kitty resembled had to be her mother, Reva Setterton, dressed in tissue-thin bright green silk, with huge gold buttons parading single file down to her hem. Her shoes were also green, and of course, foolishly, that impressed stupid me.

  "Where can I put her?" Cal asked, shifting Kitty's weight, as Kitty stared at her mother with a blank expression.

  "Her old room is ready an waitin," said the woman, who quirked her thin lips in an imitation smile, then thrust forth her strong, reddened hand and briefly shook mine in a limp halfhearted way. Her auburn hair had wide streaks of white, making it appear that a peppermint stick had melted and formed a fat blob on her head. The short, portly man at her side had a horseshoe ring of gray hair around his pinkish bald pate. Cal introduced him as Porter Setterton, "Kitty's father, Heaven."

  "I'm going to take her right up to her room,"

  said Cal. "It's been a long trip. Kitty had to be uncomfortable and cramped in the backseat. I hope
I sent enough money to rent all she'll need."

  "We kin take kerr of our own," said Kitty's mother, giving her daughter another hard look of contempt. "She don't look sick—not wid all that gook on her face."

  "We'll talk about that later," informed Cal, heading for the house while I was eyed up and down by Kitty's sister, Maisie, a pale, insipid imitation of what Kitty must have been when she was seventeen.

  The pimply-faced, sandy-haired young man named Danny couldn't take his eyes off of me. I guessed his age to be about twenty.

  "Ya must have seen us lots of time," said Maisie, stepping up and trying to act friendly. "We sure did see ya an yer family. Everybody always stared at t'hill—I mean t'Casteels."

  I stared at Maisie, at Danny, trying to

  remember, and couldn't place them anywhere. Whom had I ever seen in church but the Reverend, his wife, and the prettiest girls and best-looking boys? Miss Deale . . . and that was about it. The best-dressed had also drawn my eyes, coveting what they wore for myself. Now I was wearing clothes much better than any I'd ever seen in Winnerrow's one and only church.

  So far Danny hadn't said one word. "I've got to go and help Kitty," I said, glancing back at the car.

  "We have our things in the trunk of the car . . . and we'll be needing them to take care of her."

  "I'll bring em up," offered Danny, finally moving, as I turned to follow Reva Setterton into the house, closely followed by Maisie, as Mr. Setterton followed Danny to Cal's car.

  "Ya sure got some dilly of a name," Maisie said as she trailed up the stairs behind me. "Heaven Leigh.

  Sure is pretty. Ma, why'd ya go an name me somethin so dumb as Maisie? Ain't ya got no imagination?"