it depends on what you tell me.”
Philip wished he could go to her, touch her shoulders. But she wouldn’t welcome him now. He wished he could sit, bury his face in his hands. But that would be weak, and useless.
More, much more, he wished he could go back twenty-three years and do something, anything, to stop fate from running recklessly over his life.
But that was impossible.
“It isn’t a simple matter, Kelsey.”
“Lies are usually complicated.”
She turned then, and his fingers clutched reflexively on the lead crystal. She looked so much like Naomi, the bright hair carelessly tumbled, the eyes dark, the skin over those long, delicate facial bones flushed luminously with passion. Some women looked their best when their emotions were at a dangerous peak.
So it had been with Naomi. So it was with her daughter.
“That’s what you’ve done all these years, isn’t it?” Kelsey continued. “You’ve lied to me. Grandmother lied. She lied.” Kelsey gestured toward the desk where the letter lay. “If that letter hadn’t come, you would’ve continued to lie to me.”
“Yes, as long as I continued to think it was best for you.”
“Best for me? How could it be best for me to believe my mother was dead? How can a lie ever be best for anyone?”
“You’ve always been so sure of right and wrong, Kelsey. It’s an admirable quality.” He paused, drank. “And a terrifying one. Even as a child, your ethics were unwavering. So difficult for mere mortals to measure up.”
Her eyes kindled. It was close, much too close to what Wade had accused her of. “So, it’s my fault.”
“No. No.” He closed his eyes and rubbed absently at a point in the center of his forehead. “None of it was your fault, and all of it was because of you.”
“Philip.” After a quick knock, Candace opened the study door. “The Dorsets are here.”
He forced a weary smile onto his face. “Entertain them, dear. I need a few moments with Kelsey.”
Candace flashed a look at her stepdaughter. Disapproval mixed with resignation. “All right, but don’t be long. Dinner’s set for seven. Kelsey, shall I set another place?”
“No, Candace, thank you. I’m not staying.”
“All right, then, but don’t keep your father long.” She eased the door shut.
Kelsey drew a breath, stiffened her spine. “Does she know?”
“Yes. I had to tell her before we were married.”
“ ‘Had to tell her,’ ” Kelsey repeated. “But not me.”
“It wasn’t a decision that I made lightly. That any of us made lightly. Naomi, your grandmother, and I all believed it was in your best interest. You were only three, Kelsey. Hardly more than a baby.”
“I’ve been an adult for some time, Dad. I’ve been married, divorced.”
“You have no idea how quickly the years go.” He sat again, cradling the glass. He’d convinced himself that this moment would never come. That his life was too staid, too stable to ever take this spinning dip on the roller coaster again. But Naomi, he thought, had never settled for staid.
Neither had Kelsey. And now it was time for truth.
“I’ve explained to you that your mother was one of my students. She was beautiful, young, vibrant. I’ve never understood why she was attracted to me. It happened quite quickly, really. We were married within six months after we met. Not nearly long enough for either of us to understand how truly opposite we were in nature. We lived in Georgetown. We’d both come from what we could call privileged backgrounds, but she had a freedom I could never emulate. A wildness, a lust for people, for things, for places. And, of course, her horses.”
He drank again, to ease some of the pain of remembering. “I think it was the horses more than anything else that first came between us. After you were born, she wanted desperately to move back to the farm in Virginia. She wanted you to be raised there. My ambitions and hopes for the future were here. I was working on my doctorate, and even then I had my eye set on becoming the English department chairman at Georgetown. For a while we compromised, and I spent what weekends I could spare in Virginia. It wasn’t enough. It’s simplest to say we grew apart.”
Safer to say it, he thought, staring into his scotch. And certainly less painful. “We decided to divorce. She wanted you in Virginia with her. I wanted you in Georgetown with me. I neither understood nor cared for the racing crowd she ran with, the gamblers, the jockeys. We fought, bitterly. Then we hired lawyers.”
“A custody suit?” Stunned, Kelsey gaped at her father. “You fought over custody?”
“It was an ugly business, unbelievably vile. How two people who had loved each other, had created a child together, could become such mortal enemies is a pathetic commentary on human nature.” He looked up again, finally, and faced her. “I’m not proud of it, Kelsey, but I believed in my heart that you belonged with me. She was already seeing other men. It was rumored that one of them had ties to organized crime. A woman like Naomi would always attract men. It was as though she was flaunting them, the parties, her lifestyle, daring me and the world to condemn her for doing as she pleased.”
“So you won,” Kelsey said quietly. “You won the suit, and me, then decided to tell me she’d died.” She turned away again, facing the window that was dark now. In it she could see the ghost of herself. “People divorced in the seventies. Children coped. There should have been visitation. I should have been allowed to see her.”
“She didn’t want you to see her. Neither did I.”
“Why? Because she ran off with one of her men?”
“No.” Philip set the glass aside, carefully, on a thin silver coaster. “Because she killed one of them. Because she spent ten years in prison for murder.”
Kelsey turned slowly, so slowly because the air was suddenly thick. “Murder. You’re telling me that my mother is a murderess?”
“I’d hoped never to tell you.” He rose then, sure he could hear his own bones creak in the absolute silence. “You were with me. I thank God you were with me rather than on the farm the night it happened. She shot her lover, a man named Alec Bradley. They were in her bedroom. There was an argument and she took a gun from the drawer of the bedside table and killed him. She was twenty-six, the same age as you are now. They found her guilty of murder in the second degree. The last time I saw her, she was in prison. She told me she would rather you believe her dead. If I agreed, she swore she wouldn’t contact you. And she kept her word, until now.”
“I can’t understand any of this.” Reeling, Kelsey pressed her hands over her eyes.
“I would have spared you.” Gently Philip took her wrists, lowering her hands so he could see her face. “If protecting you was wrong, then I’ll tell you I was wrong, but without apology. I loved you, Kelsey. You were my entire life. Don’t hate me for this.”
“No, I don’t hate you.” In an old habit, she laid her head on his shoulder, resting it there while ideas and images spun in her brain. “I need to think. It all seems so impossible. I don’t even remember her, Dad.”
“You were too young,” he murmured, rocked by relief. “I can tell you that you look like her. It’s almost uncanny how much. And that she was a vibrant and fascinating woman, whatever her flaws.”
A crime of violence being one of them, Kelsey thought. “There are so many questions, but I can’t seem to latch on to one.”
“Why don’t you stay here tonight? As soon as I can get away, we’ll talk again.”
It was tempting to give in, to close herself into the safe familiarity of her old room, to let her father soothe away the hurts and the doubts, as he always did.
“No, I need to go home.” She drew away before she could weaken. “I should be alone for a while. And Candace is already annoyed with me for keeping you from your guests.”
“She’ll understand.”
“Of course she will. You’d better get along. I think I’ll go out the back. I’d just as soo
n not run into anyone right now.”
The passionate flush had died away, he noted, leaving her skin pale and fragile. “Kelsey, I wish you’d stay.”
“I’m all right, really. All I need to do is absorb it. We’ll talk later. Go see to your guests, and we’ll talk more about this later.” She kissed him, as much a sign of forgiveness as to hurry him along. Once she was alone, she walked behind the desk and stared at the letter.
After a moment, she folded it and slipped it back into her purse.
It had been a hell of a day, she decided. She’d lost a husband, and gained a mother.
CHAPTER
TWO
SOMETIMES IT WAS BEST TO FOLLOW YOUR IMPULSES. PERHAPS NOT best, Kelsey corrected as she drove west along Route 7 through the rolling Virginia hills. But it was certainly satisfying.
Speaking to her father again might have been wiser. Taking time to think things through. But it was much more satisfying to simply hop into the car and head to Three Willows Farm and confront the woman who’d played dead for two decades.
Her mother, Kelsey thought. The murderess.
To distract herself from that image, Kelsey turned up the radio so that Rachmaninoff soared through the half-open window. It was a beautiful day for a drive. That’s what she’d told herself when she’d hurried out of her lonely apartment that morning. She hadn’t admitted her destination then, even though she’d checked the map to find the best route to Bluemont.
No one knew she was coming. No one knew where she’d gone.
There was freedom in that. She pressed down on the gas and reveled in the speed, the whip of the chilly air through the windows, the power of the music. She could go anywhere, do anything. There was no one to answer to, no one to question. It was she who had all the questions now.
Maybe she’d dressed a bit more carefully than a casual drive in the country warranted. That was pride. The peach tone of the silk jacket and slacks was a good color for her, the breezy lines flattering to her slim frame.
After all, any woman who was about to meet her mother for the first time as an adult would want to look her best. She’d fixed her hair into a neat and intricate braid, and spent more time than usual on her makeup and accessories.
All the preparations had eased her nerves.
But she was beginning to feel them again as she approached Bluemont.
She could still change her mind, Kelsey told herself as she stopped the car in front of a small general store. Asking for directions to Three Willows didn’t mean she had to follow them. She could, if she wanted, simply turn the car around and head back to Maryland.
Or she could just drive on. Through Virginia, into the Carolinas. She could turn west, or east toward the shore. One of her favorite indulgences was hopping in her car and driving wherever the whim took her. She’d spent an impulsive weekend at a lovely little bed-and-breakfast on the Eastern Shore after she’d left Wade.
She could go there again, she mused. A call in to work, a stop at a mall along the way for a change of clothes, and she’d be set.
It wasn’t running away. It was simply leaving.
Why should it feel so much like running away?
The little store was so crammed with shelves and dairy cases and walls of tools that three customers made a crowd. The old man behind the counter had an ashtray full of butts at his elbow, a head as bald and shiny as a new dime, and a fresh cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He squinted at Kelsey through a cloud of smoke.
“I wonder if you could tell me how to get to Three Willows Farm.”
He stared at her another minute, his smoke-reddened eyes narrowing with speculation. “You’d be looking for Miss Naomi?”
Kelsey borrowed a look from her grandmother, one designed to put the questioner firmly in his place. “I’m looking for Three Willows Farm. I believe it’s in this area.”
“Oh yeah, it is.” He grinned at her, and somehow the cigarette defied gravity and stuck in place. “Here’s what you do. You go on down the road a piece. Say ’bout two miles. There’s a fence there, a white one. You’re gonna wanna make a left on Chadwick Road, and head on down another five miles or so. Go on past Longshot. Got a big wrought-iron fence with the name on it, so’s you can’t miss it. Next turn you come to’s got two stone posts with rearing horses on ’em. That’s Three Willows.”
“Thank you.”
He sucked in smoke, blew it out. “Your name wouldn’t be Chadwick, would it?”
“No, it wouldn’t.” Kelsey went out, letting the door swing shut behind her. She felt the old man’s eyes on her even as she pulled the car back onto the road.
Understandable, she supposed. It was a small town and she was a stranger. Still, she hadn’t liked the way he’d stared.
She found the white fence and made the left out of town. The houses were farther apart now as the land took over, rolling and sweeping with the hills that were still caught between the haze of winter and the greening of spring. Horses grazed, manes ruffling in the breeze. Mares, their coats still thick with winter, cropped while their young gamboled nearby on spindly, toothpick legs. Here and there a field was plowed for spring planting, squares of rich brown bisecting the green.
She slowed the car at Longshot. It wasn’t a road, as she’d assumed, but a farm. The curvy wrought-iron gate boasted the name, and through it she could see the long sweep of a macadam lane leading up to a cedar and stone house on the crest of a hill. Attractive, she mused. Commanding. Its many levels and terraces would afford breathtaking views from every inch.
The lane was lined with elms that looked much older and much more traditional than the house itself, which was almost arrogantly modern, yet it perched on the hill with a territorial pride.
Kelsey sat there for some time. Not that she was terribly interested in the architecture or the scenery, as compelling as it was. She knew if she continued down this road, she wouldn’t turn back.
Longshot, she decided, was the point of no return. It seemed ironically appropriate. Closing her eyes, she willed her system to level. This was something she should do coolly, pragmatically. This wasn’t a reunion where she would launch herself weeping into the arms of her long-lost mother.
They were strangers who needed to decide if they would remain so. No, she corrected. She would decide if they would remain so. She was here for answers, not love. Not even reasons.
And she wouldn’t get them, Kelsey reminded herself, if she didn’t continue on and ask the questions.
She’d never been a coward. She could add that to her list of vanities, Kelsey told herself as she put the car in gear again.
But her hands were cold as she gripped the wheel, as she turned between the two stone posts with their rearing horses, as she drove up the gravel lane toward her mother’s house.
In the summer, the house would have been shielded by the three graceful willows for which it had been named. Now, the bowed branches were just touched with the tender green of approaching spring. Through their spindly fans she could see the white Doric columns rising up from a wide covered porch, the fluid curves of the three-story plantation-style house. Feminine, she thought, almost regal, and like the era it celebrated, gracious and stately.
There were gardens she imagined would explode with color in a matter of weeks. She could easily picture the scene heightened by the hum of bees and the chirp of birdsong, perhaps the dreamy scent of wisteria or lilac.
Instinctively her gaze lifted to the upper windows. Which room? she wondered. Which room had been the scene of murder?
A shiver walked down her spine as she stopped the car. Though her intention had been to go straight up to the front door and knock, she found herself wandering to the side of the house where a stone patio spilled out of tall French doors.
She could see some of the outbuildings from there. Tidy sheds, a barn that looked nearly as stately as the house itself. Farther out, where the hills curved up, she could see horses cropping and the faint glitter of sun striki
ng water.
All at once another scene flipped over the vision. The bees were humming, the birds singing. The sun was hot and bright and she could smell roses, so strong and sweet. Someone was laughing and lifting her up, and up, until she felt the good strong security of a horse beneath her.
With a little cry of alarm, Kelsey pressed a hand to her lips. She didn’t remember this place. She didn’t. It was her imagination taking over, that was all. Imagination and nerves.
But she could swear she heard that laughter, the wild, free seduction of it.
She wrapped her arms around her body for warmth and took a step in retreat. She needed her coat, she told herself. She just needed to get her coat out of the car. Then the man and woman swung around the side of the house, arm in arm.
They were so beautiful, staggeringly so in that flash of sunlight, that for a moment Kelsey thought she was imagining them as well.
The man was tall, an inch or more over six feet with that fluid grace certain men are born with. His dark hair was windblown, curled carelessly over the collar of a faded chambray shirt. She saw his eyes, deeply, vividly blue in a face of angles and shadows, widen briefly in what might have been mild surprise.