The Sea Star (12 page)

     
“I’m sure your brother knows very well how much he means to you,”
Augusta
assured her. “Family quarrels are the worst, Susanna. Only those who love each other can hurt each other so deeply.”

     
She turned to Ford, who was watching Susanna with compassion. “Darling, would you have some tea sent out here?”

     
Darling
? Despite Susanna’s distress, the endearment caught her notice. Was
Augusta
forming a romantic attachment to a man whose only interest in her was to obtain information for his employer?

     
Ford went into the lobby.
Augusta
drew up a chair next to Susanna. “Now tell me everything about the quarrel.”

     
Susanna was oddly reminded of a day years ago when she had run into her mother’s arms, sobbing brokenheartedly over some childhood disappointment. She couldn’t recall what had troubled her at the time. She did remember, though, the sound of Augusta’s voice, gentle and comforting, the way a loving mother’s voice sounded, the way it sounded to Susanna now.

     
“It was awful,” Susanna began, then went on to relate the details of the quarrel. When she finished,
Augusta
said with a distress that was genuine, “Susanna, it breaks my heart to see you and Dallas at odds. When I first returned to
Atlantic City
and saw how close you two were, it mitigated my guilt for having left you. But now, hearing this....”

     
Her face behind her veil was bleak. For the first time since her return, Susanna looked at her mother with eyes undistorted by animosity and suspicion. “It breaks my heart,” she had said. And Susanna believed her. What pain of her own did
Augusta
harbor? What lonely torment had kept her separated for years from the children she so obviously loved?

     
“Mother,” she said hesitantly, forgetting for the moment her concern for
Dallas
, “why did you leave us? Was it Papa’s fault?”

     
Augusta
looked uncomfortable. “That’s a difficult question to answer, Susanna.”

     
“Why? Either it was his fault or it wasn’t.”

     
Augusta
gave her a melancholy smile. “If only life were that simple, darling. If only all problems could be solved by a yes or no answer. But I’m afraid that isn’t the case.”

     
Ford stepped out on the porch, followed by a waiter carrying a tray of tea and sandwiches.

     
“Set it down on the table, Frank,”
Augusta
said to the waiter. “We’ll serve ourselves, thank you.”

     
The waiter complied and left. Ford sat down and said to Susanna, “I hope you don’t mind. I’ve telephoned Jay and told him what’s happened. He’s coming right over.”

     
“You shouldn’t have bothered him,” Susanna said ruefully. But she was glad that he cared enough to come.

     
She felt cold all of a sudden, though the day was pleasant. “Mother, I’m going upstairs to get a wrap. When Jay comes, please send him up.”

     
“Of course, darling. Will you be all right? Do you want me to come up with you?”

     
“Thank you, no.” Her gratitude was sincere. “You stay here with Ford and have your tea.”

     
Up in her room, Susanna took a shawl from the peg hook and wrapped it around her shoulders. She wandered to the window and looked out into the distance where the sea surged and shimmered against a silvery blue sky. How clean and uncomplicated the scene looked, unlike the murky tangle her life had become.

     
Where had she gone wrong? What mistakes had she made with
Dallas
that had turned him into a hostile stranger? She kept hearing his harsh words. She kept seeing his face, an alien’s face. He had reached back into the past with a merciless hand and held up for Susanna’s view a distorted portrait of all the beautiful memories she held dear.

     
It wasn’t true, what he’d said about their father.
He loved nothing and no one but the Sea Star
. Matthew had been a bit insensitive where his son was concerned, but that was only because he’d been so profoundly hurt by
Augusta
’s abandonment. Surely that proved that he’d been capable of experiencing deep emotion.

     
A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts. She flew to answer it.

     
“Oh, Jay, I’m so glad you’re here!”

     
She flung her arms about his neck, nearly knocking him off balance. He closed the door behind him, then drew her close and held her tightly while she blurted out the morning’s events.

     
“I know,” he said soothingly as she rambled on. “Ford told me some of it over the telephone and your mother told me the rest when I arrived. Susanna, sit down. I want to talk to you.”

     
He directed her to the rocker, pulled up the vanity stool for himself, then took both her hands in his. His touch, his very presence, was a calming restorative. How had she ever survived without the rocklike foundation of his love?

     
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said again, drawing strength from the warmth of his hands.

     
“You should have telephoned me at once,” he said sternly.

     
“I didn’t want to bother you with a tedious family dispute.”

     
“Susanna, this is slightly more serious than a simple dispute. Do you realize what your brother’s gotten himself into? Peter’s Beach is an abomination that should have been razed twenty years ago. The house is the worst firetrap in
Atlantic City
. The piling it stands on is rotting. Drunken revelries go on there night and day. If someone is careless with a match, the place will go up like a tinderbox. Have you ever been involved in a fire?” His voice shook. “Have you ever seen someone burn to death before your eyes?”

     
His unexpected tirade took Susanna aback, but she understood what had prompted it. Her gaze was drawn to his hands gripping hers. The ridged scars stood out, white and taut, testimony to a tragedy he had not yet put to rest.

     
“By buying an interest in that property,” he drove on, “your brother has become directly responsible for endangering countless lives. I sensed when I first met him that he was a self-serving conniver, but I never dreamed he’d stoop so low as to—”

     
“Oh, don’t,” she cried softly, sympathetic to Jay’s reasoning but compelled to defend her brother. “Don’t misjudge him as everyone else does. I know he can be troublesome, but he can’t help himself. He had the most wretched childhood. My father wasn’t as...loving to him as he might have been. Sometimes he goes wrong because he’s haunted so much by the past.”

     
“That’s tommyrot,” Jay grated. “
Dallas
isn’t a child. Whatever he does now is in no way related to what happened in his youth. He’s a man who must answer for his actions, not blame them on events that occurred over a decade ago.”

     
“You don’t understand him, Jay. He
is
a man, but underneath he’s just an unhappy child.”

     
“A child?” Jay said contemptuously. “He’s older than Lucifer and twice more devious.”

     
“That’s a hideous thing to say!” She wrenched her hands from his. “You don’t know the first thing about him. How dare you sit there and hurl epithets when your own dealings with him are more devious than anything he’s done?”

     
“What the devil are you talking about?”

     
“About the Sea Star,” she accused him, her sudden anger shocking her even more than it did Jay. “For a paltry five thousand dollars, you
stole
his inheritance!”

     
“Five thousand dollars?” Jay’s eyes darkened dangerously. “Is that what he told you?”

     
“Yes! He told me everything. About how you’d always wanted the Sea Star, about how you approached him and offered to pay off his gambling debt.”

     
“By any chance,” Jay said, his voice deadly low, “did your brother mention an additional sum of money involved in that transaction?”

     
“What money?”

     
“The fifteen thousand dollars I gave him to seal the bargain.”

     
“I don’t believe you,” she said shortly, but her anger became integrated with doubt and confusion.

     
“Why should I lie about it, Susanna?”

     
“Why should
Dallas
?”

     
“Some people lie,” Jay pointed out, “when the truth is ineffective in achieving an end.”

     
“Not
Dallas
!” she said heatedly. “He would never lie to me. I don’t know about you, though. I thought I knew you, but it seems I don’t. What you did to my brother was low and underhanded, and I hated you for it. Now...now I don’t know if I still love you. I don’t know
what
I feel.”

     
She rose from the rocker, groping dizzily for stability in a chaotically spinning world. The comfort Jay had initially brought with him had turned to tumult. Tears stung her eyes, but she dashed them away. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of crying.

     
“Susanna!” Jay rose quickly from the stool, took her firmly in his arms and pressed her head to his chest. “Don’t cry, I beg you. Forgive me for upsetting you.”

     
His low voice was resonant with remorse. She tried to pull away, but he held her fast. She felt his lips in her hair, his hands caressing her back. Despite her anger, it felt so good being in his arms, where she knew she belonged.

     
How could she even for a moment have thought she might not love him anymore? Whatever he had done to Dallas, whether he had paid fifteen thousand dollars, five thousand, or even a Liberty nickel for the Sea Star, he had more than made up for it. He had lifted an onerous burden from Susanna’s shoulders. He had filled her empty life with joy and purpose. No matter how he had acquired the Sea Star, he was saving it from ruin. He, at least, loved the Sea Star as much as she did.

     
“Susanna, stop it now.” He fished in his pocket for a handkerchief and dabbed gently at her eyes. “What a brute you must think me. I came here to try to comfort you, and instead I’ve only distressed you more.”

     
“It’s not your fault,” she murmured guiltily, remembering the look in his eyes when he’d raged about Peter’s Beach. “You’re right to be concerned about what
Dallas
has done. I am, too. I shouldn’t have jumped down your throat the way I did. It’s just that nobody understands
Dallas
as I do. People are so quick to judge him without really knowing him.”

     
“You’re probably right,” Jay said evenly, which made her heart swell with gratitude. “I shouldn’t have spoken as I did. Will you forgive me?” He lifted her chin with a finger. “Will you, Susanna?”

     
She said nothing for a moment. There was a question still unanswered in her mind. “Jay,” she said hesitantly, “about that fifteen thousand dollars....”

     
“Forget about that,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re not angry with me anymore.”

     
“But, Jay—”

     
“Susanna, sit down,” he said, tacitly dismissing the subject. “I want to talk to you.”

     
She wanted to protest, but she was tired of arguing. Wearily, she sat down on the rocker. He sat opposite her on the stool and leaned forward, elbows on knees.

     
“Believe it or not,” he said, “I didn’t come here with the intention of haranguing you about
Dallas
. When Ford told me how distracted you were, I knew I had to get you away from here.”

     
“Get me away? What do you mean?”