Box Set: The ArringtonTrilogy (70 page)

I sat up, and took his hand, and he stole me
away, out to where we agreed to meet every moonlit night.

“Abigail led me to you. She told me how you
have been suffering and that you had buried your grandfather,” he
said once we were under our tree.

“I have seen such sorrow, Warren, more than I
thought I could ever possibly endure,” I explained, as I leaned
against him. We had been apart for endless weeks, and reunited, it
felt tranquil, as if we were about to journey into new
beginnings.

“I have missed you terribly. I didn’t think I
could live another day without seeing you,” he said.

“I am sorry for all the time we have lost,” I
replied. He reached for my hand, then brought it up and allowed his
lips to linger. I rested my head against his shoulder, my long hair
spilled beside him, and I wondered how I had almost sacrificed his
love. While my grief consumed me, I had forgotten how exhilarating
his wonderful charisma was.

Warren took a deep breath of the moist, dewy
air and pulled me in, then rested his freshly shaven chin on my
head. Above, high in the trees, were the sounds of the barred owl,
and out in the marsh, the river frogs croaked in symphony. I felt
him inhale as he took in the scent of my hair; his heart pounded as
loudly as mine, adding to nature’s music all around us. He held my
hand, and I opened my fingers to let his intertwine with mine. I
thought it was time to make our plans and asked when we would
leave. There was nothing keeping us from going away and making a
new life together. Daddy was gone; the search was over. We had
allies; Abigail and Hamilton would risk their lives to help us get
away. We would be smart and not get caught.

Warren had nothing to fear. I pulled back,
and he released my hand staring at me in anticipation of what I was
about to say. I smiled and looked at him with soft, sheepish eyes,
the way Momma used to when she wanted something from Daddy, and
said to Warren, “I love you with all my heart, and I want to spend
my life with you. I will make you happy, Warren.”

“You’ve already made me happy by coming into
my life, Lillian. I am devoted to you,” he said.

“Then let’s go now, tonight. I can’t wait
another minute, not another second. Abigail will cover our tracks
until we can get far enough away that they will never find us. I am
sure of it,” I said excitedly, hoping he would whisk me away to
start our new life together.

Warren looked deep into my eyes and saw my
desperation, but he resisted my pleas for a new beginning. When he
turned away, I moved close and snuggled up to him, then began to
stroke his cheek and softly whispered in his ear how much I loved
him. I sensed he was afraid of my love; he feared I might leave him
the way his first love did many years before. I understood his
concern; he was afraid of having his heart broken. I wanted Warren
to believe I was not going to hurt him. He needed to trust me.

“I will never abandon you. Do you believe
me?” I asked, placing a kiss on the side of his neck. He closed his
eyes, his breathing became heavy, and just when I sensed his desire
growing Warren drew away and scrambled up, as if my innocent kiss
had burned his flesh. He towered over me, shifted his hat, and
looked bemused. I thought he might run from me, and my heart sank.
He must have thought me sinful, for only an immoral girl would
steal away for kisses with a man many years her senior. I didn’t
know what possessed me to be so eager; I knew better. I wanted him
to respect me and feared I had ruined that with one small kiss to
his neck.

“I’m sorry,” I said, jumping up and wiping
the dust from my dress with my hands. “I’m really not that kind of
a girl.”

I wanted desperately for him to believe that,
but there was so much doubt in his sea green eyes. I turned to run,
but he reached over, grabbed me, and pulled me into his embrace.
“Dear Lillian,” he muttered, stroking my hair, our faces pressed
against one another. “You just don’t understand.” Warren sounded
petrified; his body trembled with fear.

I tried to assure Warren that I was the right
woman for him; I promised him everything. “My heart and soul are
yours to keep,” I said. “Please, Warren, please, make me
yours.”

Above us, a branch broke off from the tree
and fell down beside me. Warren shifted his head; just enough that
his lips brushed mine. My whole body tingled, and I lost a breath.
Our eyes locked, and I stood frozen, waiting for him to make the
next move. Time stood still; the world all around us melted away as
Warren battled the overwhelming uncertainties in his mind. His eyes
grew dark, his nostrils flared, and his strong jaw tightened as he
tried to control his lust for me. It was painful to watch him
struggle with his yearning, and I decided to stop it before he
regretted anything.

“I must go,” I said, my voice quivering.

Everything about the way he looked at me
indicated an enormous conflict between his heart and his head.
Warren’s hesitations left me confused.

“Lillian, you don’t understand.” I could see
how he struggled for the answers to explain what troubled him so
fiercely.

“Then tell me, Warren,” I cried, touching his
hand.

“Not yet. I just can’t,” he said in
defeat.

I was left with great confusion, and we
parted ways and agreed to meet again, but I wasn’t able to shake
the overwhelming feeling that he would change his mind and never
come to see me again. I tried to put it all together, to decipher
what I was doing to make him doubt; if indeed, it was because of me
at all.

The last of the summer days were filled with
endless wondering, though Warren and I continued to steal away. To
my delight, his eyes filled with happiness when they fell on me,
but he kept his affections at bay, restrained. When the occasion
came that Grandmother went into Savannah, we walked along the
river, holding hands and Warren would tell me how beautiful I
was—the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. They were warm days
when the hot sun lit up the powder-blue sky and cicada sounds
surrounded the old plantation.

Warren’s resistance to the idea of taking me
away plagued me, but I refused to let him see how much it really
bothered me. Instead of dwelling on the answers he could never seem
to divulge, I was enraptured by secret thoughts he revealed to
me.

“Someday, I want to build us a house, a grand
house. There we will stay and grow old together. If you want, we
can even build one by the sea. You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
he asked as we sat in our favorite spot. He’d brought a basket of
corn pone and macaroni for lunch.

During the months of secret rendezvous,
Warren brought me extra food. I had gained enough weight to finally
look healthy. Grandmother insisted Abigail restrict my food; she
had noticed I had filled out. But when I didn’t lose weight,
Grandmother, knowing exactly how much food was allowed me and that
no extra food was missing from the kitchen, figured my growth had
slowed down and my body was storing what small amount of food I was
given. After all, I was locked away; my body had no exercise.
Luckily, that made sense to her.

I sat gazing at Warren, and noticed the sun’s
rays revealed the same color streaks of platinum as I had in my
hair, and replied, “I would love that.” His smile grew wide.
“Someday, I want you to meet Ayden and Heath,” I said, taking a
spoonful of macaroni. “You would like them very much.”

“Anyone you have a great fondness for, so
will I. It puts my mind at ease to know that when you were growing
up, there were people who loved you.”

It struck me odd. “Why does that put your
mind at ease?” I asked.

He had been digging through the basket for an
apple, and he suddenly stopped, thought intensely for a moment,
then looked up. “Well, it means, that—” He didn’t know how to
explain it. His eyes shifted away, then down to the ground. “Come,
Lillian; let’s walk.” He stood and reached for my hand.

I put out my hand and allowed him to lift me.
I tried to peer into his eyes, but he lowered the brim of his hat
to hide them. Warren led me along the grounds and talked of the
kind of house he wanted to build us. “I have been to Cape Cod. It’s
a perfect place to build a one-and-a-half-story house along the
beach, maybe even a house with a view of the lighthouse on the
peninsula.”

The idea appealed to me. He saw it in my
face; he knew the sea meant everything to me.

“Daddy thought I would make a good lighthouse
keeper.”

“I suppose you would. You’re a smart
girl.”

“Daddy taught me everything there is to know
about working the light. I could do it in my sleep.”

Warren listened as I talked about the many
nights, when Momma was sick in bed, that I was Daddy’s
assistant.

“As young as I was, I was a quick learner. By
the time I was six, I knew the entire workings of the light, and
when I was strong enough, he even let me oil the clockworks. He
never let Momma do that,” I chuckled.

“Your momma—was she as fond of living out at
sea as you were?” he asked.

I leaned down to pick up some wildflowers and
plucked their petals as we walked through the former plantation
fields. I remembered that Momma used to love to be alone with Daddy
up in the watch tower, and sometimes, when they didn’t see me
hiding in the shadows, they became passionately engaged with one
another. Daddy was enamored with her beauty, and she was aware it
made him lose his concentration. He could think of nothing but
taking her into his arms, kissing her neck, and whispering things
in her ear that made her flush.

“Lillian?” Warren had stopped and taken hold
of my arm.

“Yes?”

“Your momma—was she happy?”

I didn’t have to think about my answer and
quickly said, “Of course. She loved Daddy and the sea, and me.”

“So your daddy gave her everything? He loved
her up until the very moment she died?” Warren’s eyes burned with
intensity, so much so it made me quiver.

“Well—yes. I mean, she was in the asylum; he
wasn’t there when she died. But I know how broken he was. Life was
not the same the minute he had to send her away.”

“Why would he send her away if he loved her
as much as you say?”

I looked up at him and saw his skepticism and
doubt that a man that loved a woman as much as Daddy loved Momma
could just send her away to a cold institution far from his loving
arms.

“I would never have sent her away,” I thought
I heard him say.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I would never send someone I love
away, no matter what,” Warren said firmly.

“But you don’t understand,” I cried.

“I do, Lillian. He didn’t want her anymore;
she was a burden, a disgrace!” He was angry, mad at the thought of
Daddy rejecting her.

“No! It wasn’t like that.” I was filled with
tears, recalling the moment I heard Momma’s screams of pain and ran
to where she was lying on the floor in a pool of blood from the
stab wound she inflicted upon herself.

“Then what drove your daddy to leave her in
such a horrible place to die alone?” Warren demanded.

By now, the tears were streaming down my
cheek, but Warren was so overcome with anger that he didn’t see how
distraught I was.

“Momma tried to kill herself, more than once.
Daddy did all he could,” I shouted, sobbing. “Don’t you see? He had
no choice.” I choked back my cries.

He shook his head in protest then said, “Then
it was your own father that made her so miserable that she wanted
to end her life.”

He wasn’t hearing me; he was so engrossed in
his own distorted vision of what had happened.

“Don’t you dare say that!” I commanded.
“Don’t you ever say another bad thing about Daddy again, or I will
never speak to you again for as long as I live.” I ran off, leaving
him standing in the field, his hat in hand and a tear in the corner
of his eye.

I refused his letters for weeks after our
argument. I tore them up instead of sending them back unopened. He
even had Abigail plead on his behalf. “He is asking for your
forgiveness, Miss Lillian.”

“Tell him I won’t.” I sat on the bed, my arms
folded over my chest.

“He aint gonna stop trying,” Abigail said,
and then she smiled at me. “That man’s in love with you.”

For only a moment, I thought of how his love
had made me feel, how he filled me with so much joy, but then I
remembered how angry he was, and the mean things he said about
Daddy. I couldn’t forgive him.

Abigail sat beside me, and made me look at
her. “You need to remember, Miss Lillian; he is going take you away
some day, and he is your only way out of here.”

“Why don’t you go with Hamilton? Why do you
stay in such a horrible place when you have your freedom?”

Her eyes softened, and she placed my hand in
hers, then said with a heavy voice, “I can’t leave my boy.”

“But he’s gone. He died long ago.”

“No, Miss Lillian; Jacob-Thomas is sure here.
You haven’t seen him yet? You don’t hear him at night, when all is
still?”

I thought hard, but no, I hadn’t sensed a
ghostly presence, ever.

“Well, he is sure here. And I aint leaving
‘til it’s my time to go. Besides, Hattie knows I’m here. She gonna
come back here someday, and I’m waiting for her.”

I gasped and placed my hand over my heart.
Momma had thought I was Hattie, but I never knew who she was.

“Hattie? Who is she?” I asked, on the verge
of jumping off the bed in excitement.

“Hattie is my girl. She and your momma were
best friends. Like sisters.”

I was elated to learn that Momma didn’t have
a make-believe friend, but a girl she shared a real kinship with.
“Where is Hattie now?”

“I don’t know. But when she wants to see me
again, she knows where I am.”