Finally, Percy could keep himself from her no longer. She was wasting away, turning to stone before the window. “Mary?” he said softly, laying a hand on her shoulder. To his surprise, as if she’d been waiting for him, she reached up and clutched it to her collarbone. They were alone in the house. Ollie was at the store and Sassie at the market. He’d come in at Sara’s behest only to drop off in the hall a basket of condolence letters written by Matthew’s classmates.
“I thought it was overexertion, Percy. You know how hard the boys practice and how drained they get the first weeks of football practice, playing in those uniforms in humidity and heat. I begged him to get more rest, to eat more, to drink plenty of water….”
His ears thrummed. What was her point?
“And in spite of what you no doubt think, I didn’t haul him out to Somerset to force-feed his heritage to him. I did it because it was the only way I could have him to myself. I lived for summers and Saturday mornings. I knew the time was coming when I’d have to give him up to… his own dreams. He talked of becoming a coach.”
Why was she telling him this? But he believed he knew. Yes, she’d perceived correctly that in the first crazed days of his grief, he’d asked himself if Matthew would have survived if she’d been home to notice his illness. But that had been unjust. She could have been around twenty-four hours a day and it wouldn’t have mattered. Matthew would have concealed his condition from her. It had taken him years to see it—to admit it to himself—but Matthew had belonged to Ollie. He’d loved Mary, but he preferred the man he thought was his father. Ollie had been his confidant, his friend, his pal. Mary had been almost like an interloper, no matter how hard she tried to create a bond between them. Matthew had shut her out, and—as always when alone—she had turned to the land. He only now realized how hurt she’d been, how lonely.
“Look at me, Mary.” He had misjudged her once in thinking she’d married Ollie to rescue Somerset. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
She released his hand and turned around. His heart turned over. Grief had sharpened her features, dulled her eyes, brought out the first threads of gray in the hair drawn back from her temples. Gently, he clasped her shoulders. “Matthew didn’t die because of anything you did or didn’t do. Forget that nonsense. None of us saw it coming.”
“You don’t blame me?” Her eyes were wells of despair. “I thought you might think it was the Toliver curse.”
At first, he’d considered that, too. How could it be a coincidence that Mary would marry a man who could give her no more children and lose her only child at sixteen, leaving William the single Toliver heir? He remembered that her father and brother had believed in the curse, and Miles had even predicted its evil would befall Mary. But he’d dismissed the brief thought as irrational. A curse was not responsible for the tragedy they’d made of their lives. They were their own curses. “Rot,” he said. “Utter rot. Matthew died of viral pneumonia, not some idiotic curse.”
“I’ve even thought”—she wrung her hands—“that we—I’m—being punished for selling you Miles’s land… that God is getting William’s own back by… by taking Matthew from us.”
We. Us. She meant her and Ollie, of course. “That’s utter nonsense,” he said sharply, annoyed now, frightened by the guilt-plagued look in her eyes. If these questions were the demons she was wrestling before the window, she was lost. She would never recover. “We did what we had to do for the welfare of all concerned.”
“Did we?” she asked.
Percy had the urge to shake her. What was she getting at? How could she question their motives now? “Don’t be absurd! We acted on behalf of Ollie. He would have lost his store otherwise, and you would have had to sell the plantation in order to eat.”
“It wasn’t Matthew you were thinking of?”
“Well, of course I was! I had to make sure he’d be left with something salvaged from his parents’ monumental stupidity.”
After a stunned instant, a new light flowed into her eyes. He let go of her shoulders and stepped back, his angry words something salvaged from his parents’ monumental stupidity resounding in his ears. Oh, God. He felt the secret he’d housed so long fall to pieces inside him like slowly breaking glass.
She said calmly, her gaze now serene, “You know, don’t you. I was sure of it.”
He could not have denied it. He could not have denied Matthew. “Yes,” he said, feeling the admission sawed from his heart.
“How long have you known?”
“Since I drove Ollie to Dallas to be fitted for a prosthesis. When I read his medical file and learned the extent of his injuries, I knew that Matthew could only be mine.”
Her mouth grew taut. “Then you know… everything.”
“Yes, Mary, I know everything.”
She closed her eyes and wavered slightly. “Oh, Percy, what a mess I’ve made of everything.”
He took her by the shoulders again. “What a mess we made of everything.”
“You’d gone to Canada when I found out,” she said. “I waited for you, pleaded with God to send you home. But when I didn’t know how pregnant I was and nobody knew where to reach you, I was forced to turn to Ollie….”
“I figured all that out in Dallas,” he said, folding her in his arms. “I want you to know, Mary, that I was coming home to tell you I couldn’t live without you. I didn’t care if Somerset came first, last, and always with you, as long as you married me.”
She relaxed with a sigh against him. “And I want you to know that I’d discovered I could live without Somerset, but not you. I promised to give the plantation up if only you’d come home and marry me and be the father of our child. It would have been enough, Percy. It would still have been enough.”
“I believe you,” he said, feeling the warmth of her tears through his shirt. “I know that, now.”
They held each other for a while longer, their heartbeats merging, and then their moment was over. It must never happen again. Mary withdrew a ready handkerchief from her sleeve, and Percy asked, “When did you suspect that I knew?”
“It came to me gradually,” she said, gesturing that they sit. “When I saw the way you looked at Matthew… in a way that you never looked at Wyatt. The love for a firstborn, I guess….”
“Is Ollie aware that I know?” He followed her motion, and they took chairs before the fireplace, a table apart.
“I’m sure he doesn’t. He’s always credited your devotion to Matthew as a result of how much like me he… looked.”
“That was part of it.”
“And Lucy?”
He sighed. “She knows. She discovered the truth about four years ago.”
She paused in wiping her eyes. “Good Lord, Percy, how?”
“It doesn’t matter. She knows, that’s all. That’s why she’s been rotten to you these past years… and why she hasn’t come down to pay her respects.” Actually, Lucy had been overcome when she learned that Matthew was dying, but she feared that any attempt to express her sorrow to Mary might betray the secret it was essential for her to keep. “She went to mass every morning on behalf of Matthew and lit God knows how many candles,” Percy said. “And to give her credit, she’s been exceptionally understanding of Wyatt and me throughout all this, as only Lucy can be.”
“Why didn’t she divorce you?”
Percy laughed roughly. “I offered, believe me, but Lucy is not about to divorce me. She hates me too much. If I try to divorce her, she’s threatened to tell the world about you and me—about Matthew. His death does not change that. There are still you and Ollie to think of, what the scandal would do to you and the memory of Matthew.”
“And Wyatt,” she said, pale from the shock of this new information.
“Yes, of course… Wyatt.”
“Why did you marry her, Percy? You could have had any girl.”
He gave her a twisted grin. “The stream was pretty well fished by then. I was lonely. She was there.”
“What in the
world happened? She worshipped you.”
“She discovered her idol had clay feet,” he said, his face closing on the subject. “Should we tell Ollie?”
“No,” she said immediately. “He deserves to be spared further pain. He’s already suffered from the fact that Matthew never knew you were his father. It would be too much for him to learn that you were aware of the truth all along.” She dabbed at her tears again. “Our stupidity has hurt so many people. We’ve kept them from the lives—and maybe the loves—they would have known if we’d married. Matthew was denied his real father and your parents their grandson. Wyatt has grown up the product of a marriage that never should have been. He might have turned out a different boy altogether if he’d been born of a loving union. And Lucy… poor Lucy.” Her look held fear that she was treading on dangerous ground. “Let me simply say this, Percy. Her hate is a cover. It’s the only way she can bear the love she still feels for you.”
He stood suddenly to end the discussion and poured a glass of water from a table still laid for those paying respects. “Regardless, Lucy would have been better off married to anyone but me,” he said. “I suppose all we can do now is to somehow deal with the cards we’ve been given.”
“How do we do that?”
He took a long quaff of the water. He wished to God he knew. All his days had a singed quality to them now, like the burnt corners of letters retrieved from the fire. He’d never know an unblemished twenty-four hours again. But if they could make the most of what they had left, they might enjoy a modicum of happiness along the way. He turned back to her with a tentative smile. “Maybe we should begin by forgiving ourselves for the pain we’ve caused,” he said.
She glanced down, toying with her wedding band as if considering that suggestion, the curl of her lashes reminding him achingly, unbearably, of Matthew. After a moment, she looked up. “Maybe we should start by forgiving each other.”
The next day, Percy made a visit to the family florist and ordered a single white rose to be delivered to Mary Toliver DuMont, enclosing a note that read: “To healings. My heart always, Percy.”
When he arrived at his office, a florist box awaited him on his desk. He opened it and drew out a lone white rose with a note attached that brought a small smile to his lips. Mary had written in her typically brief style, “From my heart to yours. Forever, Mary.”
Chapter Forty-four
Percy passed through the next two years like an automaton working of itself without conscious direction. He ran the company, made decisions, built his pulp mill on the bank of the Sabine, acquired more timberlands, and purchased additional subsidiaries without thought of why. The Depression ended. The economy surged forward owing to the newly declared war in Europe. America was on the move, building, building, building, and business boomed for Warwick Industries. The company could barely keep up with the orders flooding its salesrooms.
The distance lengthened between him and his family. For a while after Matthew’s death, Lucy’s attitude softened toward him, but when she saw how ineffectual his efforts were in comforting Wyatt in his grief, she turned from him once again. “You’ve lost him, Percy,” she said sadly. “You’ve lost him so completely you’ll never find him again. That boy is wandering lost and lonely, all by himself, and even if you should call, he wouldn’t answer. He’d never answer the voice of a stranger.”
The truth was, Percy did call. He needed Wyatt as much as Wyatt needed him, but there was no reclaiming the man if you’d lost the boy. For his son was a man now, as towering and powerfully built at seventeen as his father, responsible, quiet but cognizant, a presence to be considered in the company meetings Percy invited him to attend. Somehow, as he had emerged from boyhood, his shoulders had lost their loutish slump, his feet their sluggish gait. He walked tall and straight and if not proud, at least resolute, as if determined to reach a goal known only to himself.
Percy did his best to mend fences with his son. He arranged fishing and hunting trips for them, neither of which activity he himself particularly enjoyed. Since the war, he had no stomach for killing, not even a freshly caught trout for a campfire supper. The outings were designed for father and son to be alone together, and if they arrived back at Warwick Hall no more in touch than when they’d left, at least Percy was beginning to make certain discoveries about his second child.
Wyatt, he learned, had the natural instincts of a hunter and fisherman both. For all his bulky size and cumbersome feet, he had an uncanny ability to steal noiselessly and adroitly through tall grass, move surely upon his prey. Percy observed with awe the patience with which his son could wait, hour upon hour, in fishing boat or on riverbank, for his quarry to strike his line. He killed quickly and efficiently, taking in stride the moment of incurred death, an act that Percy always found embarrassing.
He took over the supervision of Wyatt’s homework, a duty that Lucy formerly was only too happy to share with Wyatt’s more nimble-minded half brother, Matthew. With equal relief, she now surrendered her chair at the kitchen table in the evenings to Percy. These sessions failed in their objective to reclaim the son he’d alienated, but they did provide insight into the makeup of his intellect. By no means did Percy find Wyatt as dull-witted as he’d formerly believed—a point Sara had tried to drill into him often. He was a plodder toward comprehension, certainly, and so deliberate in digesting information that Percy could understand how he’d thought him a dim thinker. But once he’d chewed and swallowed, his recall was complete, a mental ability, Percy explained to his son, that few people possessed. Lucy preened from this unexpected praise for Wyatt, but, as was his way, he merely shrugged, his stolid expression unchanged.
Wyatt continued to play football, serving as captain of his team the last two years of high school. Matthew’s gridiron number was retired. No one from Howbutker High was ever to wear number 10 again. His jersey was given to Wyatt at the DuMonts’ request, and Percy knew he stowed it away with the baseball glove that he never wore again after he’d destroyed Matthew’s, and a copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that Matthew had given him on his thirteenth birthday. The inscription inside had made Wyatt laugh, but he hadn’t offered to share its ribaldry with either of his parents. There were times following Matthew’s death that Percy had to refrain from stealing into Wyatt’s room to rummage for the mementos left of his first son, there to hold the jersey a moment, to read the only lines in Matthew’s hand he knew existed.
He never did. He contented himself with going to football games and watching “Bull” Warwick open holes in the defense, wondering if Wyatt ever felt his brother’s presence behind him, ever looked up from the ground and visualized Matthew sprinting across the goal line—if it was for him he blocked, making it possible for Howbutker High in his senior year to win its first state championship.
The town went wild. Victory celebrations were held all over Howbutker, but Warwick Industries hosted the biggest party in the company clubroom. Everyone who had been part of the championship dream attended—everyone but Wyatt. By now his mother had grown accustomed to these sudden, unexplained absences of her son. He was known as a loner, preferring his own company to that of his gregarious teammates and the dewy-eyed girls who draped themselves over his hard-muscled shoulders. He was well liked, but no one pursued his friendship, and since Matthew, he’d had no other buddy.
“Go find him, Percy,” Lucy said on the night of the celebration. “I want him here. He should be here, enjoying all this hoopla. He was the one who made it happen.”
“Keep everybody here until we get back. I think I know where I can find him,” Percy said.
It was another inexplicable conundrum concerning Wyatt that Percy could not figure out. He’d have thought that after meeting his father’s fist and being threatened with death in the cabin, the boy would have avoided the place like a den of cottonmouths. Yet Wyatt had introduced the place to Matthew, and it had become the boys’ private sanctum during the years of their friendship, as it was now for
William Toliver and his friends.
Wyatt had disappeared to the cabin for two days following Matthew’s burial. Tonight was colder than the last time Lucy had sent Percy looking for their son, but he found him where he’d suspected he’d be—out on the lake, hunched over a rod in the canoe, much the same way Percy had discovered him then. Like that other time, knowing he was entirely visible in the moonlight, he placed his hands on his hips and waited for Wyatt to notice him. Like then, he was conscious of the lost years between them, as impossible to traverse now as it would be to walk out there to Wyatt on the path made by the moon.
Presently, the silhouette moved, the strong shape of the hunched back turned in his direction. “Any luck?” Percy called.
“Nah, too cold,” Wyatt called back, and wound in his line. Percy heard the soft plop of the bait being tossed into the water. He observed Wyatt methodically stow the rod and reel, take up the paddle, and begin to row to shore.
As he watched, a memory floated to Percy.
Percy?
Here, Lucy.
He was hearing his wife’s voice again, the night she had found him in the library and asked him to go find Wyatt after his disappearance. Drawn to the corner where he sat in the moonlight, she had knelt quietly in front of him and placed her hands on his knees. You’ve been sitting here like this for two days, Percy. It’s night again.
Again? He had pondered the inaccuracy of her statement. The night had been constant since Matthew had died five days ago. His little boy had been lying in the cold, dark earth for two days and nights.
I feel so truly sorry, Percy. Please believe me.
I believe you, Lucy.
I can’t imagine losing a son. I pray to God I never do.
God, or one of His angels, must have pressed a finger to Percy’s lips, sealing them, thereby preserving the residue of their marriage. For he was about to say, I hope you never do, either, Lucy, and she would have taken him to mean that the loss of his second son would be exclusively her own.