If You Ever Tell (21 page)

“Gosh, you must be the happiest girl in the world to get to live with all these horses,” Celeste told Teresa after she’d given ample attention to each horse. “I love horses. Teri, where’s your horse you kept at the other stables? The one you let me ride a long time ago.”

“I’m afraid he died a couple of years ago.” Celeste’s smile immediately faded. “But he was old, Celeste, and he’d had a very good life. Of course I miss him, but he died suddenly and the vet said probably without pain. I guess it was just his time to go.”

“Oh,” Celeste said tremulously. “Then he didn’t get hurt or killed or anything.”

He didn’t get killed, Teresa thought. He didn’t get killed like her mother and Hugh. “No, nothing like that,” Teresa reassured the girl fervently. “He wasn’t even sick before he died. He just acted tired. Then he lay down one day and didn’t get up. He’s buried here on my farm. There’s a beautiful flowering crabapple tree overhanging his grave and he has a headstone. I put flowers on his grave every August seventh, his birthday.”

Celeste still looked heartbroken. “I know everybody has to die sometime, but I don’t like it. Still, it’s nice that you to put flowers on his grave. Could I help you this year?”

Teresa glanced at Jason, who nodded. “Of course, Celeste. He’d appreciate that.”

Celeste turned to Gus and to Josh, who were both trying to look busy while they watched the tenuous encounter between Teresa and Celeste. “Don’t you wish horses could live forever?”

Gus looked startled but answered immediately, “Why, we sure do, don’t we, Josh?”

Josh obediently nodded. “Yeah. Forever. But they have long lives compared to—” Teresa knew he was about to say “dogs,” then caught himself and said, “Some other animals.”

“I know.” Celeste paused and stared into the distance for a moment. Abruptly she asked, “Teri, do you remember Snowflake?”

Teresa stiffened at the mention of the night-light left at her door by a hooded figure just last night. She tried to relax and smile casually. “Of course I do.”

“I wish I still had Snowflake,” Celeste said wistfully. “Snowflake and my teddy bear Yogi were full of good luck. Snowflake’s light showed me where my toy chest was—the toy chest I hid in the night when Mommy got killed. Yogi helped, too. The doctor said I would’ve been killed if the knife hadn’t gone into him first so it couldn’t go all the way into me. But Yogi’s gone for good. He got thrown in the trash.”

A wave of sadness shadowed Celeste’s face and Teresa said, “I’m sorry about Yogi, but he would have been glad he saved your life.”

“That’s what Daddy says.” Suddenly, Celeste looked at Teresa fiercely. “I hope Snowflake isn’t gone forever, though. We really need Snowflake for good luck
now.
”

“Oh?” Teresa was taken aback by the girl’s unexpected vehemence. “Why do we especially need good luck now?”

Celeste stepped closer to Teresa, her blue eyes huge in her pale face, and said intensely, “’cause what killed Mommy wanted to kill me. It didn’t because of you, but it still wants to kill me, and I know it wants to kill you, too.”

E
VERYONE IN THE BARN
seemed to freeze at the sound of Celeste’s pronouncement. Although Teresa merely stared at the girl, her mind churned with questions. Who? Why? How do you know? But she didn’t trust herself to open her mouth. The questions would come out loud and shrill and terrified.

Jason finally broke the silence, walking toward his daughter and putting his arm around her tense, slender shoulders. “Sweetheart, that’s a very dramatic and scary thing to say. Is it what you think?”

“It’s what I
know
,” Celeste said definitely.

Jason asked calmly, “And how do you know such a thing?”

“Death wanted to kill me before but didn’t get me because of Yogi and Snowflake. And because of Teri. I know some people think Teri tried to kill me—people said all kinds of things around me because they thought I couldn’t hear just because I didn’t talk—but Teri didn’t stab me. That’s silly. Teri kept Death away from me. So now Death is mad and wants Teri to die, too. It just makes sense.”

Finally Teresa spoke. “Honey, a
person
stabbed you and maybe the person isn’t around anymore. Maybe it was just a stranger who got into the house that night or someone who was afraid of getting caught and ran away or…”

Teresa ran out of words as Celeste shook her head violently. “No, Death is still here. I know because of a smell and a sound and something about a face. It’s still sort of jumbled, but I’ll remember it better in a few days. I
know
I will.

“Anyway, I didn’t talk for so long because I just didn’t want to talk about that night. Everybody kept asking me about that night and I didn’t want to think about it. But I started talking again when I knew Death was here. At first I was mad at myself for talking. Then I was glad because I had to warn you to be real careful and I had to tell everyone who wants us to stay alive so they can help us.” Celeste looked at her father, then whirled and looked at Gus and Josh. “You have to protect Teri or Death’s gonna kill her!”

Shaken to the depths of her being, Teresa tried to assure Celeste that she would be as careful as possible. Ten minutes later, she bade the girl and her father a pleasant good-bye when Jason—white-faced and taut—said he must get back to the office. After they left, Gus looked unsettled and asked Teresa if she was being threatened or had reason to be afraid. She lied, telling him everything was well with her, which she could tell he didn’t believe. Before he could ask more questions, though, Teresa fled back to her house, Sierra running along beside her, then running circles around her, trying and failing to draw her mistress into an exciting game of chase.

When they got in the house, Teresa closed the front door firmly behind her, locked it, then went into the kitchen and gave Sierra a fresh bowl of water and fixed herself a tall glass of lemonade. She then meandered back into the living room, flopped down on the couch, and moaned, “Can this day get any worse?”

She quickly learned that it could.

Teresa hadn’t even finished her lemonade when the phone rang again. Reluctantly, she rose from the couch and picked up the handset from the receiver next to a wing chair. Before she could say a word, Sharon asked caustically, “Well, proud of yourself?”

“What?” Teresa asked. “Proud of what?”

“Of tattling, of meddling, of generally causing as much trouble as you could between my husband and me?”

“But I didn’t—”

“You didn’t do what? Get right on the hot line to tell Kent I’d taken Daniel away from his lesson early? Whine and moan and make him mad that your half-crazy sister-in-law had hurt your feelings?”

“Sharon, I swear that is not what I meant to do. You know me better than that!”

“Oh, do I? Let’s see what I know about you. I know that you’ve always leaned on your big brother, even when you were a teenager, causing trouble at home and then expecting Kent to take your side against Hugh for you, which he did, making Hugh hate Kent as much as he hated you.”

A flame of anger was beginning to lick its way through Teresa. “I don’t know that my father actually
hated
me
or
Kent, but if he did, it wasn’t because Kent took up for me sometimes. It’s because my father didn’t know how to love anyone. He only knew coercion and intimidation.”

“He loved Wendy.”

“Oh, he did not and you know it! Sharon, what is wrong with you? Are you so mad at me for telling your husband you left the lesson early that you can’t even look at the past with clear vision, now? Wendy was a sexy toy for Dad—someone to make him feel young and manly. And poor little Celeste meant nothing to him. My mother meant nothing to him.”

“And
you
meant nothing to him, so you decided to make him feel the same way about Kent. That’s why he gave us so much trouble about getting married. That’s why Kent almost didn’t… oh, never mind.”

“No, finish your sentence.” Teresa suddenly felt an icy calm wash over her. “That’s why Kent almost didn’t… what? Marry you? That’s why he almost left you single and pregnant?”

“Teresa!”

“Oh, don’t sound so appalled, Sharon. I don’t know why you and Kent think no one knows you were pregnant with Daniel when you got married. People can count, for God’s sake, and women aren’t pregnant for six months and then deliver seven-pound babies.”

Teresa felt that now was the time to cut this conversation off, but the stress of the morning seemed to have loosened the cap she usually kept tightly shut on her emotions, and she could not make herself stop talking. She closed her eyes as she heard herself going on in a quick, cutting voice.

“Kent standing up for me a few times against Dad had nothing to do with our father threatening to cut Kent out of his will to make Farr Coal Company completely mine,” she continued. “Dad did that because he had this ridiculous idea you weren’t good enough for Kent. And notice that I said
ridiculous.
Also, Wendy had plans for Farr Coal to eventually go to the child she was going to have with Dad. Anyway, I admit Kent dragged his feet about the marriage when Dad said he was going to change his will if Kent married you.

“I understand my brother,” Teresa continued, unable to stop herself. “I know he’d worked most of his life to be the best at everything he did so he’d be worthy in my father’s eyes of taking over the company. When he saw the carrot he’d been chasing most of his life about to be snatched away, he wavered.”

“Teresa!” Sharon choked out again.

“Yes, he wavered. I didn’t know why Kent was so jumpy that last month before Dad was killed, but the night after Daniel’s birth, when Kent had drunk a little too much celebratory champagne, he admitted to me what Dad had been promising to do if Kent married you. Dad had pressured, and bullied and threatened, and in return, all Kent had done was falter slightly, but Kent couldn’t forgive himself even for that. Good heavens, Sharon, Kent is human. He loved you but—”

“He loved Farr Coal Company more?”

“That is not what I said,” Teri said in complete annoyance. “If you would just settle down and listen to me for a minute—”

“I have listened to you all I intend to for today. Maybe for a whole lifetime. You’re just like your father, Teresa. You are bossy, interfering, and a troublemaker. You think everything and everyone is yours. You’d like nothing better than to tear my entire family apart. You have never liked me, and you’d connive with anyone to ruin my happiness. Well, let me warn you now that no one is going to take away from me the people I love.
No
one, no matter what I have to do to prevent it!”

Sharon slammed down the phone. Teresa held the receiver a moment, shocked and too shaken to move. She slowly hung up, thought about calling back, then decided Sharon needed time to cool down. Lots of time to cool down, because she wasn’t just upset over Kent being angry with her for dragging Daniel away from his lesson. She was upset over things that had happened eight years ago, things that had happened right before the murders, when she’d been young, in love, and pregnant, and thought her dream of being Mrs. Kent Farr and proud mother of his beloved son was going up in smoke, all because of one irascible, selfish, downright cruel man the world would never miss.

Teresa couldn’t say she blamed Sharon for feeling so resentful and angry when it came to Hugh. Teri felt the same way. The problem was that Sharon seemed to be attributing some of Hugh’s awful personality faults and his worst manipulation tactics to Teresa. A year ago Sharon hadn’t seemed to feel this way about her, Teri thought. But now, Teri believed Sharon was on her way to hating her almost as much as Sharon had hated Hugh Farr.

The afternoon was miserable for Teresa. First, she’d lost one of her best students, for she was under no delusion that Mrs. Bailey was ever going to let Polly resume her lessons. Next, Sharon had jerked a crushed Daniel away from the lesson he’d been looking forward to for weeks. Then Teri’d had a long upsetting talk with Kent. Next, Celeste had paid an unexpected visit to tell Teri someone still wanted both of them dead. Finally, she’d had a brief, fiery call from Sharon, to whom she’d said things that Sharon would probably hold against her forever.

“I had high hopes for today,” Teri said aloud to her reflection in the mirror. “What the hell went wrong?”

Unable simply to brush bad encounters away, Teresa had a habit of dissecting scenes and conversations that had gone wrong, trying to find out where things had begun to deteriorate, determined to discover what she’d done to make things worse. In the past, Mac had teased her about the habit, telling her it was a useless form of self-flagellation, but she’d never been able to stop. She certainly wasn’t able to stop on this chaotic day.

For the rest of the afternoon, Teresa wandered around the house, going over and over her conversation with Kent, then with Sharon, then picturing the trouble that would ensue between the two that evening. Teresa kept telling herself it wasn’t her fault. Kent had asked her about the lesson. Was she supposed to lie to him? No. But she could have said he’d just have to wait and hear about it from Sharon and Daniel. The truth would have come out, but she wouldn’t have had a hand in it.

And not only had she caused trouble between Kent and his wife; she’d also insulted Mac yesterday when all he’d done was come to offer his support. How presumptuous of her to suppose he’d wanted to do any more than tell her he was sorry about Byrnes’s new bid for attention and that he still believed in her. Her face almost burned at the memory of how certain she’d been that he was trying to re-establish their old romance. She’d humiliated herself and she’d hurt him. My God, she thought, she’d told him his own mother believed her son might be capable of violence!

She felt bad for any trouble she’d caused between Kent and Sharon, but as much as Teresa hated to admit it, she was more miserable about the hurt she might have caused Mac. By eight o’clock, she was nearly writhing in shame over what she’d said to him last night. Just because she was going through a hard time didn’t give her the right to lash out at him, she reprimanded herself. “I have to apologize to him,” she told Sierra, who’d faithfully followed her mistress’s constant pacing throughout the afternoon. “I’m going to his club tonight and I’m going to apologize!” She’d almost added, “And you’re not going to stop me!”