When Venus Fell (40 page)

“Can you do that?”

“You’ll never know—and neither will I, nor anyone else—whether he meant to associate with killers or not, whether he knew what his friends intended or not. I can only tell you that you’ll be judged on your own merits here, and nothing but. You and Ella.”

I didn’t say so, but I knew I’d have to defend Pop one way or another for the rest of my life. Maybe Mom worried that he would need more help than other men to keep his path straight. “He adored my mother. He worried about her. She had a weak heart,” I said. “A heart valve that didn’t close right. And the wall of her heart was thin in one spot.”

Gib, who had leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, turned his head to look at me. “You’re saying she had a congenital problem? It caused her to faint here?”

“Maybe. Her heart is what killed her. Heart failure while she was under anesthesia during a hysterectomy. Pop always said she thought she’d die young.”

“That may be so, but there could be another explanation for why she fainted that day.”

“What?”

“She was already pregnant with you.”

After a long moment, I nodded. “She always told me I was born nine months after she and Pop got married here, but it was actually eight months. Maybe she just didn’t want me to worry that Pop only married her because she admitted she was pregnant.”

“I don’t buy the idea that he felt forced to marry her. I think he admitted how much he loved her that day.”

“I know he loved her.”

“Try to keep in mind that your mother had a lot of faith in the future. Maybe not her own future, or your father’s, but yours and Ella’s and mine. Try to stop worrying so much and have some faith yourself.”

“You think I’m cynical for no good reason?”

“No, a lot of people have let you down. Including me.”

“You? No. I had no expectations.”

“Then why did you keep the rock? And the wedding picture?”

I was silent. “Why?” he persisted.

“Because I liked to believe in you.”

“Then I did let you down. I should have come after you years ago. You and Ella. I knew more about your father’s arrest than most people. I could have found you, if I’d wanted to.”

I faced forward, staring blindly into the forest. “Thanks for the honesty.” I straightened automatically, trying to keep a show of pride.

“I’m sorry,” he said wearily. “I had a career to think about. There were friends you could have turned to. I thought you would. You disappeared too fast for me to have a chance.”

“I didn’t know who to trust.”

“So you’re human. You don’t have to explain anymore.”

“Fine. Neither do you.”

“Yes, I do.” He paused. “I was only about twenty-six. First-year rookie. And I lived and breathed for my work. I’d been meant for it since that day here at the spring, when I learned how it felt to keep someone else from dying or getting hurt. I didn’t want to risk losing my career. Plus I didn’t want to hurt my family’s reputation. Simon and Min had finally turned the Hall into a success. A moneymaker.”

Who was I to be disappointed by his failings, when I had my own to consider? “I doubt I’d have trusted you enough to accept your help,” I managed. “By then I’d learned not to trust
anybody
. Particularly if you were with the government. I still feel that way about government agents.”

“I’m the government. You’re the government. Every citizen of this country is the government. Your father only had legitimate reason to blame the people who made the Asian American policies when he was a boy, and the people on the street who treated him like dirt because he was mixed-race. That’s not ‘the government.’ ”

“Then I’ll tell you what the government is. It’s men who come into a house with two teenage girls who don’t have an
attorney yet, and they call in some beefy women in uniforms who take the underage girl to a juvenile jail because there’s no adult supervision in the house, and then they push the older girl around—literally
push
her into corners and yell at her and threaten to arrest her. It’s men who smile while they’re pawing through your lingerie or your high-school yearbooks or your jewelry box. Or personal diaries. It’s men old enough to be a father to you, men who are dressed well and supposed to be upstanding defenders of justice and the American way, men who know they can play a little grab-and-tickle with a girl who’s scared and has no one to turn to for help.”

He stared at me, and I watched the effect of my outburst settle in him. “I didn’t learn any of that in my research on you,” he said, in a low voice, and I knew he was shocked. But I didn’t want pity from him, not from him. I wished I hadn’t said a word.

“They don’t write it up in the official reports,” I said wearily.

“If you can remember any names, tell me. I’ll locate the bastards for you. I’ll make it possible for you to confront them face-to-face. I can do that for you.”

“I don’t remember names. What difference does it make now, anyway?”

“This kind of thing goes on because people won’t talk about it.”

“No, it goes on because the system is corrupt, and when the government comes down on people who have no money or power, nobody gives a damn about constitutional rights.”

“That’s not true. A lot of good people care. I care.”

“
Then listen to that tape I gave you
. Because obviously music is all I can give you—and all you’ll take from me—without both of us being scared of the future and fighting over the past.”

We sat in silence for a minute, struggling with the reality of mistakes and regrets. His shoulders hunched, his mouth set in resolute lines, he dropped the white pebble from his hand
into mine. Then, in a quiet voice, he said, “You think you can learn to love an ex-government man?”

I took a deep breath. I wanted so badly for him and his family to recognize the basic decency of me and my family. I wanted so badly to trust him with everything I held dear, the way my mother had.

The water of the spring was too warm, suddenly. I felt dizzy. But my heart was strong—I wouldn’t let myself end up heartbroken like Mom and Pop. I eased out of the water and sat on the spring’s grassy edge. When Gib reached out to help I drew back instinctively. “I can’t.” He stopped his hand in midair. “It’s nothing personal,” I promised quickly.

“The hell it’s not,” he said.

The next morning, around dawn, I walked to the river along an old path cushioned with fallen leaves. I went to the wooden-and-stone gazebo on a bank of ferns overlooking the water, and sank down in a willow chair. I listened to birds sing and the river burble seductively, and I prayed.

How do I deal with all of this?

Nothing came to me—not a whisper, not a thought, not a stray feather.

But suddenly there was Gib, cresting a pastured ridge against the gold-and-red morning, silhouetted like a tall earth-bound wizard in his old fedora and the cane gripped in his ruined hand. Walking the wild hills was a lonely, powerful habit Camerons seemed to take to heart like their Highlander ancestors. I watched him, fixated, as he crossed that space of open ridge. He halted and looked down at me.

I was sure he knew it was me there in the gazebo. We held each other’s distant scrutiny for a few seconds before he turned abruptly and walked into the forest, headed in the direction of his lodge by the waterfall. I had a bad feeling he’d been walking all night. Into the wilderness for my sake. And me for his sake.

The cusp of the sun lit up the ridge and colored him in gold. I found myself crying. I didn’t want to need him or his family because, like Gib, I didn’t want to need people I knew I’d have to give up. I didn’t want to lose anyone else in my life.

But I loved him secretly, without any doubt at all.

I stayed frantically busy to keep from thinking about Gib or at least to exhaust the temptation. He seemed to be doing the same. No task was too big or too demanding. He moved truckloads of hay into the barns for the winter; he mulched the gardens; he was constantly roaming about the Hall and the outbuildings doing some handyman chore with a toolbelt hanging from his waist.

I went to the Hall one day for rehearsals with Ella, piano lessons that I’d begun to teach Jasper, and singing lessons for Kelly. That day I had my head wrapped in a purple scarf. I felt like a grape. I needed to find some private time and tell Ella the story Gib had told me about Mom and Pop. I knew it would mean as much to her as it had to me.

Ella sat with her back to me in the music room of the Hall, playing guitar. Unfortunately, Carter lounged nearby. They were rarely separated, which made it nearly impossible for her and me to hold deep conversations. I knew she liked it that way.

She was wearing a large straw hat. I gazed at her in bewilderment as I placed a handful of sheet music on the piano. “Hello?”

“Hello,” she said, without turning around.

“You look real fashionable,” Carter said to me.

“No, I look like I belong to a gang that attacks wine stewards.”

“Well, that, too.” He grinned. “Anyhow, Ellie figured you and her could use a different kind of rehearsal today. You should do some songs with piano and guitar. I’m sure the guests will like it.”

“That would mean writing new arrangements. No, we’ll stick to piano and violin.”

Ella turned around. She removed the hat. She had cut her hair off down to the dark emerging roots. Now it was a soft black cap, maybe an inch long all over. I stared at her. “Isn’t she cute as a bug?” Carter asked.

Ella managed a teary smile. “I didn’t want you to be the only one with no hair. Now we’ll both grow out together.”

For the first time in weeks we shared something other than anger, disappointment, and sorrow. We were both nearly bald, like novitiates in some spartan nunnery.

I went to the piano and sat down. “Let’s improvise some duets with the guitar. Maybe that’s not a bad idea.”

Ella couldn’t stand it. She had to come over and sit beside me and hug me. “You don’t have to say anything,” she whispered.

“Birds of a feather go bald together,” I managed. “I love you.”

Carter cleared his throat. “I won’t ask you for a blessing on your sister and me—not yet—because I know you think I haven’t earned it, but I have to say that you are a classy lady who holds her opinions as gentle as a wren on the nest. When they’ve gotten too big for the circumstance you let ’em go.”

His analogy made about as much sense as a nineteenth-century German tone poem, but I nodded. “I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

“Something’s happened to you,” Ella said. “You’re different.”

“I’m hairless. It affects my brain.” I put my hands on the keyboard and cleared my throat. “Let’s get started. You pick and I’ll grin.” She laughed then reached for her new guitar.

What had happened between Gib and me was a sharp small stick jabbing me in the stomach. I didn’t know who I was anymore.

We were only weeks away from the Hall’s opening. The skies poured rain, and the wind coming down off the mountains was intoxicating, bringing a brisk scent like cold, wet granite and chimney smoke. Thanksgiving weekend had come and gone. The highlight was a flock of wild turkeys parading across the front lawn without a clue that a couple of their tame brethren were roasting inside the Hall’s kitchen ovens. After the turkeys wandered away Ella ran outside and picked up a dozen large feathers, proudly adding them to her collection.

The first day of December, all of us began putting up Christmas decorations. This went on, nonstop, for an entire week. Since the inn’s opening weekend followed closely on New Year’s Day, Gib and Min had decided the holiday decorations should be left up until then. Frankly, we wanted to dazzle the reviewers. Blind them to the reality of Simon’s absence, if necessary.

Ella went into Christmas overload. After years of glumly decorating only a tiny fake tree we anchored to the RV’s dresser, she was as excited as a child.

A spectacular Christmas tree now stood in the front foyer
of the Hall. It was easily thirty feet tall, and covered in hundreds of ornaments contributed by guests over the decades. Smaller trees were decorated in the music room, the dining room, and the sitting area at the end of the upstairs hall. Even the guest rooms had small Christmas trees, and elaborate wreaths were hung on each door.

But in the family wing, the Christmas atmosphere was fragile and poignant. A single delicate tree stood in the den, adorned with cherished heirloom ornaments and whimsical ones made by the family. Some were yellowed, papier-mâché angels with crumbling wings, made by Winny Cameron, Gib’s mother. They smiled quaintly from the green boughs.

When I was growing up, the nuns talked about finding the Holy Spirit in a home. I felt it, looking at that sentimental tree in the den. So much about the Camerons was gracious, kind, respectful, serene. There was an ingrained security among them, maybe a temporary security for Ella and me, but I craved it more every day.

I looked in my bathroom mirror in the mornings and watched a bristly, dark-haired stranger emerge. I continued to artfully braid and wrap scarves around my head and sock a floppy cloth hat over that, before I left the cottage. I wasn’t sure yet who this stranger might become, so I refused to reveal her to anyone else.

I wouldn’t say I coached Kelly to a level where she could win the Miss Teenage Eastern Tennessee beauty pageant, or even the pageant’s talent competition, but on a cold, clear night a week before Christmas, at a cheesily decorated high-school auditorium among the big-city lights of Knoxville, Tennessee, I can honestly say that Gib’s niece, my determined student, Kelly Cameron, was the best, the proudest, and certainly the
only
sixteen-year-old Evita Perón the audience had ever seen.

It was a major Cameron family event, requiring a caravan
of five cars for the long trip to the city. I went early with Kelly, Min, and Ruth as a backstage assistant. I led Kelly in relaxation techniques and voice warm-ups. Ruth counseled her to watch the other contestants for pageant violations like stuffing their dress bodices, which could get a girl disqualified.