Heaven (Casteel Series #1) Read online

  . . . and if that fails, she says she is ready to 'meet her Maker." " He paused, and something that I couldn't read flickered through his eyes. "In all honesty I have to tell you that her tumor has gone beyond the size that can be treated by radiation . . . but since that's all she'll do to help herself, we have no alternative but to do our best—unless you can convince her otherwise."

  Cal stood up and seemed to quiver. "I have not once in my life convinced my wife of anything. I'm sure I can't now, but try."

  He did his best. I was with him when he

  pleaded at her bedside. "Please, Kitty, have the operation. I want you to live." She clammed up again.

  Only when she glanced at me did her pale green eyes shimmer, with hate or something else, I couldn't tell.

  "You go home now," ordered Cal, settling in the only chair in her room. "Even if it takes me a month, I'll convince her."

  It was three o'clock on Monday, and my heels made clicking sounds on the pavement. I wore blue button earrings Cal had given me only a week ago. He gave me so much, everything he thought I could possibly want. He'd even given me Kitty's jewelry box, but I couldn't force myself to use anything that belonged to her. The sweetness of this beautiful afternoon made me feel younger and fresher than I had since that first day Kitty had made me feel like hill scum. Whatever happened to Kitty would be of her own making, in a way, for she could have saved that breast if she'd acted sooner, and ended up with only a tiny scar that no man would ever notice.

  With every step I took I prayed Cal would

  convince Kitty to have that operation. I prayed, too, that she'd see him for the fine man he was, and when she did, I knew he'd let go of me. It was Kitty he loved, had always loved, and she'd treated him so poorly, as if she couldn't love any man after what Pa had done to harm her.

  Pa! Always full circle back to Pa!

  Footsteps were following. I didn't look around.

  "Hey," called a familiar voice. "I waited for you yesterday."

  Why did my steps quicken when all along I'd hoped he'd seek me out? "Heaven, don't you run. You can't run fast enough and you can't run far enough to escape me."

  I spun around and watched Logan approach.

  He'd grown to be everything I'd ever dreamed he could be—and it was too late to claim him now for my own. Much too late.

  "Go away!" I flared. "You don't want me now!"

  "Now, you wait a minute," he growled, catching up and grabbing me by the arm, forcing me to walk with him. "Why are you acting like this?

  What have I done? One day you love me, the next day you push me away. . . what's going on?"

  My heart ached so much I felt weak. Yes, I loved him, had always loved him; would always love him; and yet I had to say what I did. "Logan, I'm sorry, but I keep remembering how you ignored me that last Sunday before Pa sold me to the Dennisons. I wanted your help, and you looked right through me, and you were all I had after Miss Beale went away.

  You were my white knight, my savior, and you did nothing, absolutely nothing! How can I ever really trust you after that?"

  Pain was in his eyes as he reddened. "How dumb can you be, Heaven? You think you're in this world all by yourself with your problems, while nobody else has any. You knew I had trouble with my eyes that year. What do you think I was doing while you were starving up there on your mountaintop?

  Down in the valley I was almost going blind, so I had to be flown to a special hospital to have eye surgery!

  That's where I was! Far from here, stuck in a hospital with my head held in a clamp, my eyes heavily bandaged until they healed. Then I had to wear dark glasses and take it easy until my retinas were securely attached again. That day when you thought I saw you in church, I was only trying to see, and all I got were blurry images—and I was looking for you! You were the reason I was there at all!"

  "Do you see all right now?" I asked with a lump in my throat.

  He smiled, then stared into my eyes until my vision blurred.

  "I'm seeing you with twenty-twenty eyes. Say I'm forgiven for that long-ago Sunday?"

  "Yes," I whispered. I swallowed all the tears that wanted to come again, bit on my lip before I bowed my head and rested my forehead briefly on his chest. I said a silent prayer for God to let him forgive me when or if I ever had to tell him. Useless to him now that I wasn't what he believed me to be—untouched, no longer a virgin. Yet I couldn't bring myself to tell him, not here.

  With resolve I began to lead him toward the woodsy area of Winnerrow.

  "Where are we going?" he asked, his fingers intertwining with mine. "To see your cabin?"

  "No, you've already gone there by yourself and discovered all I wanted to hide from you. There's another place I should have shown you years ago."

  Hand in hand we strolled on toward the

  overgrown trail that would take us up to the graveyard. I glanced at him from time to time; several times our eyes met and locked, forcing me to tear my eyes away. He did love me. I could tell. Why hadn't I been stronger, shown more resistance? I sobbed and stumbled, and quickly he reached to balance me. I ended up in his arms. "I love you, Heaven," he whispered hoarsely, his warm, sweet breath on my face before he kissed me. "All last night I lay awake thinking about how wonderful you are, how faithful and devoted you stay to your family. You're the kind of woman a man can trust; the kind you can leave alone and know will stay faithful."

  Gone numb from the misery I felt, I tried not to let too much sunshine come into the shadows of my heart as he rambled on and on, making me familiar with his parents, his aunts and uncles and cousins, until we came to the riverbank where we'd sat for so many hours a long time ago. Here time had stood still.

  Logan and I could have been the same adolescents falling in love for the first time. We sat again, perhaps in the very same place, so close our shoulders brushed, his thigh next to mine. I stared at the water that rippled over the stones. And only then did I begin the most difficult story of my life. I knew he'd hate me when it was over.

  "My granny used to say my real mother came to that spring over there," I said, pointing to the water that jetted from a crack in the rock face, "and she'd fill our old oak bucket with the spring water since she thought the well water wasn't as good for drinking, or for making soup, or for the dyes Granny used to make to color old stockings she'd braid into a rug to fit under a cradle and keep out the drafts. She was fixing up the cabin as best she could for my birth . . ."

  He sprawled on the grass at my side, playing idly with long tendrils of my hair. It was romantic sitting there with Logan, as if we were both brand-new, and nobody had ever loved before but us. I could see us in my mind's eye, young and fresh, unwrinkled and bright, in the prime flowering of our lives—but other bees had already flown to me. . . . He played with my hands, first one, then the other, kissing my fingertips and palms before he folded my fingers on the kiss gifts he'd put in my hands. "For all the days when I wanted you so much, and you were gone." He pulled me down so my upper half lay on his chest, and my hair was a dark shawl that tented both our faces as we kissed, and then I lay with my cheek on his chest, his arms enfolding me. If only I were what he thought I was, then I could really enjoy this. I felt like a dying person on the last picnic of my life; the sun in all its glory couldn't keep the rain from my conscience.

  I closed my eyes, wishing he'd talk on forever and wouldn't give me the chance to ruin his dream—and mine.

  "We'll marry while the roses are still in bloom, the year I graduate from college. Before the snow falls, Heaven."

  I shook my head, half caught up in his fantasy.

  My eyes closed, my breath regulated to coincide with his. He was caressing my back, my arms—and then, tentatively, my breast. I jumped, cried out as I jerked away and sat up. My voice shook as I said, "Let's go now. You have to see, if you're to understand who and what I am."

  "I already know who and what you are.

  Heaven, why are your eyes so wide and frightened-looking
? I wouldn't hurt you, I love you."

  He wouldn't, not when he knew the truth. It was Cal who knew what I'd been through and Cal who understood. I was a Casteel, born rotten, and Cal didn't care, not the way the perfectionist Stonewalls would. Time and again Logan had turned from Fanny because she was wild and too free with herself.

  Logan's bright eyes clouded with worry,

  seeming to sense I had a secret that wouldn't make him happy. I felt so small, so tainted, so alone.

  "I've got a strange desire," I said in a small, quivery voice. "If you don't mind, Logan, I'd like to see my mother's grave again. When she died she left me a portrait doll I couldn't save from a fire, and I needed it to prove who I am when I return to Boston to find my mother's family!"

  "You plan to go there?" he cried in a deep, troubled voice. "Why? When we marry, my family will be your family!"

  "Someday I've got to go there. It's something I feel I have to do, not only for myself but also for my mother. She ran from her parents and they never heard from her again. They can't be too old, and must have worried about her for so many years. Sometimes it's better to know the truth than to go on forever wondering, speculating . . ."

  He drew away from me now, though he

  matched his steps to mine as we climbed upward.

  Soon the leaves would flame into a witch's brew of bright colors, and autumn would flare briefly in the mountains. Down in the valley where the wind didn't blow, two Stonewall parents would resent this Casteel girl who wasn't worthy enough for an only son. I reached for his hand, loving him as only the very young can love. Instantly he smiled and stepped closer. "Must I say I love you ten million times before you believe me? Should I go down on my knees and propose? You can't tell me anything that would make me stop loving and respecting you!"

  Oh, yes, there was something I could say, and everything would change. I held his hand tighter, leading him on, always ascending, curving around tall pines, thick oaks and hickories, until all the trees turned to evergreens . . . and then we were there, in the cemetery. Room for only a few more now. Newer, better graveyards down lower, where it wasn't so much trouble to haul up machines to mow the grass, and men to dig the graves.

  No one mowed the grass where my young

  mother lay, all alone and off to one side. Just a narrow mound that was beginning to sink, a cheap headstone in the form of a cross.

  Angel

  Beloved wife of Thomas Luke Casteel

  I released Logan's warm hand and sank to my knees, and bowed my head and said my prayer that someday, some wonderfully kind day, I would see her in paradise.

  Along the way here I'd plucked a single red rose from the garden of Reverend Wayland Wise, and this I put in a cheap glass jar I'd buried at the foot of her grave years ago. No water nearby to put in the jar to keep the rose alive and fresh. A red rose left to wither and turn brown. As she had withered and died before I ever had a chance to know her.

  The wind whipped up and lashed the long arms of the evergreens as I knelt there and tried to find the will to say what I had to.

  "Let's go now," Logan said uneasily, glancing up at the late-day sun that began a swift descent behind the mountaintops.

  What was he sensing?

  The same thing I was?

  All the little evening sounds bounced back and forth, echoing across the valleys, singing with the wind through the canyons, through the summer leaves, whispering the tall grass that hadn't been cut in years.

  "It looks like rain . . ."

  Still I couldn't tell him.

  "Heaven, what are we doing here? Did we come just so you could kneel and cry, and forget the pleasures of being alive and in love?"

  "You're not listening, Logan. Or looking, or understanding. This is the grave of my real mother who died when I was born, died at the tender age of fourteen."

  "You've told me about that before," he said softly, kneeling beside me and placing his arm over my shoulder. "Does it still hurt so much? You didn't know her."

  "Yes, I do know her. There are times when I wake up and I feel as she must have felt. She's me, and I'm her. I love the hills, and I hate them. They give so much, and they rob you of so much. It's lonely here, and beautiful here. God blessed the land and cursed the people, so you end up feeling small and insignificant. I want to go, and I want to stay."

  "Then I'll make up your mind for you. We're going back to the valley, and in two years we'll be married."

  "You don't have to marry me, you know that."

  "I love you. I've always loved you. There's never been anyone but you. Isn't that reason enough?"

  Tears were streaking my face now, falling to make raindrops on the red rose. I glanced up at the storm clouds swiftly drawing closer, shuddered, and started to speak. He drew me against him. "Heaven, please don't say anything that will spoil what I feel for you. If what you're planning to say is going to hurt, don't say it, please don't say it!"

  And I went and said it, as I'd planned all along, to say it here, where she could hear.

  "I'm not what you think I am—"

  "You're all I want you to be," he said quickly.

  "I love you, Logan," I whispered with my head bowed low. "I guess ever since the day we met I've loved you, and yet I let another—"

  "I don't want to hear about it!" he flared hotly.

  Because he jumped to his feet, I jumped to mine, and then we faced each other. The wind snapped my long hair so it brushed his lips. "You know, don't you?"

  "What Maisie's been spreading around? No, I don't believe anything so ugly! I can't believe gossip!

  You're mine, and I love you . . . don't you try to convince me there's a reason I can't love you!"

  "But there is!" I cried desperately. "Candlewick wasn't the happy place I wanted you to believe when I wrote those letters. I lied about so much . . . and Cal was—"

  He wheeled about and ran!

  Ran for the path to take him back to

  Winnerrow, calling back, "No! No! I don't want to hear more! I don't want to hear—so don't tell me!

  Never tell me!"

  I tried to catch up, but he had much longer legs, and my little heels dug into the mushy earth and slowed me. I headed back up the trail, to visit again the cabin that stunned me with its bleakness. There on the wall was the pale place where Pa's tiger poster used to hang, and underneath, when Tom and I were babies, our cradle had sat. I stared at the cast-iron stove covered with rust where it wasn't green with fungus, and gazed with tears in my eyes at the primitive wooden chairs fashioned long ago by some dead Casteel. The rungs were loose, some were missing, and all the little things we'd done to pretty this place were gone. Logan had seen all of this! I cried then, long and bitterly, for all I'd never had, and all I might still lose. In the silence of the cabin the wind began to howl and shriek, and the rain came down. Only then did I get up from the floor to make my wet way back to Winnerrow, which was no home at all.

  Cal was on the porch of the Setterton home, pacing back and forth. "Where have you been that you come back wet, torn, and so dirty?"

  "Logan and I visited my mother's grave . ." I whispered hoarsely as I sat wearily on the top step, not caring that it was still raining.

  "I thought you were with him." He sat beside me, as heedless of the rain as I; he bowed his head into his hands. "I've been with Kitty all day, and I'm beat. She won't eat. They're putting intravenous tubes in her arm, and beginning the radiation treatments tomorrow. She didn't go to a doctor as she told you she had. That lump has been growing steadily for two or three years. Heaven, Kitty would rather die than lose what represents her femininity to her."

  "What can I do to help?" I whispered.

  "Stay with me. Don't leave me. I'm a weak man, Heaven, I've told you that before. When I saw you walking with Logan Stonewall, it made me feel old. I should have known that youth would call to its own, and I'm the old fool caught in my own trap."

  He tried to sit beside me. I jumped up, a wild panic in
my heart. He didn't love me, not as Logan did. He only needed me to replace Kitty.

  "Heaven!" he cried. "Are you turning away from me too? Please, I need you now!"

  "You don't love me!" I cried. "You love her!

  You always have! Even when she was cruel to me, you made excuses for her!"

  Wearily he turned, his shoulders sagging as he headed for the front door of the Setterton home.

  "You're right about some things, Heaven. I don't know what I want. I want Kitty to live, and I want her to die and get off my back. I want you, and I know it's wrong. I should never, never have let her talk me into taking you into our home!"

  Bang!

  Always doors were being slammed in my face.

  Twenty-one

  Without A Miracle

  .

  A WEEK PASSED. EVERY DAY I TENDED

  TO KITTY IN THE hospital. I hadn't seen Logan since the day he ran from me and left me in the rain, and I knew that in just one more week he'd be returning to college. Many a time I strolled by Stonewall Pharmacy, hoping to catch a glimpse of hini;'even as I tried to convince myself he'd be better off without someone like me. And I'd be better off without someone who'd never forgive me for not being perfect. Too flawed, Logan must have been thinking—too much like Fanny. If Cal noticed I was miserable from not seeing Logan anymore, he didn't say anything.

  Hours spent in the hospital at Kitty's bedside made all the days seem exceptionally long. Cal sat on one side, I on the other. He held her hand most of the time, while I kept my hands folded on my lap. As I sat there, almost feeling her suffering as my own, I pondered the complexities of life. At one time I would have rejoiced to see Kitty helpless and unable to deliver slaps and insulting words to take away my self-esteem. Now I was full of compassion, willing to do almost anything to ease her pain, when there was little enough I could do to make her comfortable. Still, I tried, thinking I was redeeming myself, forgetting, as I struggled to find myself worthy and clean again, just what Kitty had done to make me hate her.