Tomorrow's Dreams (51 page)

“Look, Mama,” he piped, his childish voice shrill with excitement. “I found a lucky bunny!” He ran toward her carrying a gray rabbit with a frayed pink ribbon tied around its neck.

Penelope pressed a kiss to Seth's smiling lips, then sat up, her heart soaring with perfect bliss as she held out her arms to welcome her son into her embrace. On and on Tommy ran, his sturdy legs pumping furiously. Yet he drew no nearer. It was if he were frozen in time and space, forever a heartbeat away.

Then she saw it, a dark, formless horror shadowing his steps. “Tommy!” she screamed, frantically trying to rise to her feet. Her legs were like rubber, weak and boneless, unable to support her. Calling his name over and over again, she tried to crawl to him, to save him from the nightmare swooping down upon him. But like her legs, her arms, too, failed her, and she fell, clawing helplessly at the ground. “Tommy …”

Then the blackness engulfed him, swallowing him until all that was left was the faraway echo of his voice as he cried for her one last time.

“Oh, please, no,” she sobbed. “Please …” Slowly her surroundings faded, leaving her alone and shattered in endless nothingness. “Tommy …”

“Shh. It's all right, dear,” said a soothing voice in the dark. There was something familiar about the voice, something kind and safe that was as comforting as a loving embrace. Someone grasped her shoulders then and gave her a gentle shake. “Open your eyes and look at me, Pen. Come on. It's time to wake up.”

With herculean effort, Penelope obeyed. Still foggy from sleep, she blinked up at the figure bending over her. She didn't have to wait for her hazy vision to clear to know who it was; she'd know that copper-penny bright hair anywhere. “Hallie!” she exclaimed, throwing herself into her sister-in-law's arms. “Is it really you?”

“In the flesh,” Hallie assured her, returning her hug.

“But how … when?” She pulled back to stare at the other woman's face, not quite daring to believe she was really there.

“Jake received a telegram from Seth asking us to come. The bartender at the Shakespeare told us you were here.”

Penelope groped anxiously at Hallie's arm. “Have you seen Seth yet?”

“Poor man. He's had an awful time of it,” Hallie clucked. “We spoke with him when we first arrived. Jake's still with him.”

“But he is all right now, isn't he?” If anything happened to Seth …

“He seems on the mend, but I'll know for sure after I've examined him. He asked me to speak to you first … alone.” She cupped Penelope's cheek in her cool palm then. “He told us about the baby. I'm so sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”

Penelope swallowed hard and pulled away, too ashamed to meet Hallie's compassionate gaze. Staring at the gray plush rabbit ears poking out from beneath the tangled blankets by her side, she murmured, “You must think I'm awful.”

“Awful?” She sounded genuinely surprised. “Of course not. Whatever makes you think that?”

Penelope bowed her head, too crushed beneath her guilt and sorrow to hold it up a second longer. “Because I killed my son and almost got Seth killed as well.”

There was a long pause, then Hallie sighed. “Look at me, Penelope.” When she didn't immediately obey, Hallie grasped her chin and raised it for her. “I want you to look at me so I can be certain that you understand what I'm about to say to you.”

Reluctantly Penelope raised her lashes to meet her sister-in-law's gaze. Hallie's golden-brown eyes were soft and warm, inviting trust. “None of what happened is your fault,” she said, enunciating each word with emphasis. “As tragic as it is, children die from the measles every day.”

“But it was my fault,” Penelope insisted, pulling her chin away. “Tommy was weak … sickly. He needed and should have had proper medical attention from the moment he was born. Because of my selfish mistakes, he wasn't attended by a real doctor until the very end. By then it was too late.”

“You didn't deny him care,” Hallie countered firmly. “Seth told us that that was the du Charme woman's doing,”

Penelope glanced back down at the rabbit ears. “If I'd swallowed my pride and come home to San Francisco when I found myself pregnant, he never would have fallen into Adele's hands in the first place. Then none of this would have happened.” She reached down and ran her finger down the velvety length of one ear. “He'd be alive today.”

“If you'd come home to San Francisco to have your baby, and I don't deny that that would have been the sensible thing to do, it's possible that he might have died of the measles there. A terrible epidemic of the disease swept the city last year and a great many children were lost. We almost lost our Reed.”

The rest of what she said faded away as Penelope slipped Tommy's bunny from beneath the blankets. Convulsively clutching it by the scruff of its neck, she slowly raised it before her. The sight of its cross-stitched nose and shiny glass eyes pitched her back to the day of her son's second birth day. As she recalled his delight in the toy, the fragile sound of his laughter, the feeble squirming excitement of his body, she thought she caught a glimpse his face reflected in the depths of the rabbit's eyes. He looked so happy … so very beautiful … like an angel.

“Oh, Tommy,” she whimpered, crushing the toy to her breast. “My darling. I'm so sorry. Please … please forgive me. I love you. I didn't mean to kill you … I …”

“For heaven's sake, Pen! Listen to me!” Hallie commanded, grasping her shoulders to give her a hard shake.

Penelope jerked away, hugging the rabbit tighter. “No, you listen to me,” she countered her words, coming out in a rasping whisper. “God took my baby because I'm selfish and wicked, because I'm undeserving of love. He tried to take Seth for the same reason.”

Hallie shook her head. “That's nonsense. God didn't take your baby to punish you, and you had nothing to do with what happened to Seth. He said that his injury came from being set upon outside of town.”

Penelope fixed her with a bleak stare. “Seth was attacked because of me. Adele sent those men to castrate and then kill him because he loved me.” She shuddered violently, as she always did when she thought of what the outcome of that episode might have been. “Don't you see? God is punishing me by taking everyone I love. He's cursed me.”

“No. I don't see,” Hallie retorted stoutly. “Seth is very much alive and nobody, not even God, can ever take away your baby or the special love you shared.”

Penelope's nails dug into the rabbit's back. “How can you say that?” she demanded, hysteria rising in her voice. “He did take him! Tommy is dead!”

Hallie smiled gently. “No. Not dead. He's very much alive … here,” she touched the place over Penelope's heart, “and he'll live there forever, growing in the love you share with Seth. He'll live and thrive through your memories.”

“Those memories are my torment … my punishment,” she choked out, drawing the rabbit up to her face to rest her cheek against it. “They remind me every second of the day what I've lost … and why. They make me ache with a longing so terrible that I want to die to escape the pain.”

“Penelope—” Hallie murmured, reaching out to draw her into her embrace again.

Penelope hurled away to the other side of the bed, crouching over the rabbit as if it were her son and she was shielding him from death. Peering wildly through her ropy tangles of hair, she demanded, “Do you know about Tommy's afflictions?”

Hallie nodded. “Seth told us.”

Penelope returned her nod. “I understand now that they were part of my curse.”

“Curses have nothing whatsoever to do with your son's infirmities,” Hallie countered in a no-nonsense tone. “There's a perfectly logical reason—”

“Oh, at first I didn't question why he was born different or really even care. I just loved him,” Penelope cut in as if the other woman hadn't spoken. “Then Seth told me about his tainted blood.” Her eyes narrowed as she met Hallie's troubled gaze. “I assume you know about that?” She paused just long enough for Hallie to nod before continuing.

“When he explained how that taint could mark his offspring, I began to think about Tommy and was certain his afflictions were a consequence of Seth's cursed blood. But then, two days ago, Mrs. Vanderlyn told me the real story of Seth's birth, and I saw the truth: it wasn't his curse that marked our baby, but mine.”

“You are not cursed.” Hallie practically shouted to be heard above Penelope's rising voice. “I know for a fact that Tommy's infirmities were caused by a birth accident.”

But Penelope was too deeply rooted in her guilt-ridden misery to listen to logic. “My poor baby,” she keened. “He was forced to suffer because of my wickedness … because I swore at God and told him I hated him when I found myself pregnant—”

“Damn it! You will listen to me!” Hallie exclaimed, flinging herself at Penelope to wrestle her onto her back and force her to look up at her.

Penelope whimpered and tried to roll away, but Hallie refused to let her. Pinning her firmly beneath her taller, stronger form, she pressed her face close to Penelope's, forcing her to meet her determined amber gaze.

“You are not cursed, Penelope,” she declared. “There is no such thing as a curse. Tommy's afflictions were due to a birth accident, nothing more.”

Penelope shook her head, tears streaming from the corners of her eyes. She was suddenly tired, so very tired. She didn't want to talk about Tommy, or Seth, or her curse anymore. She wanted Hallie to go away and leave her alone so she could sleep, so she could curl up with the rabbit and dream of Tommy, so she could escape the pain.

But Hallie wouldn't go away. “It's true! It was an accident,” she persisted, giving Penelope a shake that made her teeth chatter. “Seth told me about Tommy's difficult birth, how he was born with the birthing cord around his neck and was strangled. I've seen that happen before and seen the results. Those babies, if they don't die immediately, usually end up with infirmities such as those Seth described Tommy suffering. There's a name for what afflicted Tommy: it's called Little's disease.”

“But if he'd had medicine … a doctor …” Penelope sobbed, not yet ready to let go of her guilt.

Hallie shook her head. “The only medicine for what ailed your Tommy was love, and you gave him plenty of that. The fact that he lived as long as he did is testimony to how potent it was. So you see? You aren't cursed at all.”

“I've tried so hard to make sense of all this, to find logic in his death. But I can't! All I can think is that I must be cursed for something so terrible to happen to me … and to Tommy.”

Hallie rolled off her and drew her into her arms, patting her back as she held her close. “Terrible things happen everyday to all sorts of people. I've had terrible things happen to me. So has your brother, so has everyone else in the world. Does that mean we're all cursed? If so, then you have nothing to fear in visiting Seth or being around those you love, because we're all doomed anyway.”

She drew back a fraction to look at Penelope's face. Smiling gently, she added, “Bad things happen to everyone. But so do good ones … wonderful ones!… like Tommy and Seth. And I've always found that the good things outweigh the bad a hundred to one.”

Penelope lay very still, thinking about her words. Hallie was right, of course. Bad things happened to everyone. But then, so did good ones. And Tommy had been a good thing … the best. If given the choice, she'd rather suffer the pain of losing him than never having had the chance to love him at all.

“Perhaps you're right,” she finally choked out. “While losing Tommy feels like a curse, having him was a blessing, the greatest blessing I can imagine.”

“And that blessing will go on forever, long after the terrible pain of your grief has faded,” Hallie assured her.

“Will it fade? And the emptiness, too?” Penelope asked, wondering if her arms would ever stop aching to hold her baby.

“I'm not going to lie and tell you that it will go away completely, that your life will be the same as before. It won't.” Hallie shook her head. “There will be times when you'll feel a shadow of emptiness, times when you'll even cry. But in the years to come you'll see your tears as a good thing, because they'll mean you're remembering Tommy. And remembering means that a part of him is alive within you.”

She reached out and gently lifted a snarled tendril of hair from Penelope's wet cheek. “What I can promise is that someday his memory will make you smile instead of cry.”

Penelope sniffled, desperately wanting to believe her promise, desperately wishing that the day she spoke of was now. “But how do I go on living until then? My whole life has been Tommy. Everything I've done has been for him. I don't know what to do with myself, I feel so lost.”

“There's always Seth. He loves you and wants to fill your life. He's been in torment not being able to comfort you.”

Penelope sighed. “Poor Seth. I've been so stupid and selfish in my grief.”

“No. No more self-recriminations,” Hallie chided softly. “Your behavior was perfectly normal, and we all, including Seth, understand. You need to accept that, as well as the fact that nobody is perfect and that we all make mistakes. You also need to give thought to what you want to do now.”

“I know I want to take Tommy home to San Francisco,” she replied, almost breaking again at the thought of Tommy, so tiny and dear, left to lie alone in Denver, the city that held so much sorrow for her. “But that's all I know right now.”

“And what about Seth?” Hallie quizzed gently. “He wants to marry you, you know.”

“Seth.” She sighed. “I … I don't know. I love him, but we've been through so much together, so much sorrow. I'm afraid the pain will always be between us and shadow our future happiness.”