The hellion

CHAPTER ONE

It was well known around Russellville, Alabama, that Tommy Lee Gentry drove like a rebellious seventeen-year-old, drank like a parolee fresh out, and whored like a lumberjack at the first spring thaw. He owned a four-wheel- drive Blazer for his hunting trips, a sixteen-foot runabout for his fishing trips, and a white Cadillac El Dorado to impress the town in general. He was rarely seen driving any of them without an open beer or an on-the-rocks glass in his hand, more often than not with one arm around some carmine-lipped floozy from up Muscle Shoals way, his left hand dangling limply over the steering wheel and a burning cigarette clamped between his strong white teeth.

And all this in a county that was dry and strongly southern Baptist.

He'll kill himself one day, they all said, and one of his whores right along with him!

On that mellow February afternoon, Tommy Lee was living up to the town's expectations of

him, all except for the tinted blonde he was currently seeing. After the news he'd just heard, he had some thinking to do, and he couldn't do it with Bitsy under his arm.

The El Dorado rolled beneath him like a woman just short of climax, and without removing his glowering brown eyes from the road he reached across the front seat, found another can of beer, and popped its top. As he tipped it up, his shaded glasses caught the reflection of pine trees whizzing past at the side of the road he knew by rote. He scarcely looked as if he was aware of the wheel beneath his hand, or the tires spinning beneath the heavy automobile.

From his office on Jackson Avenue to his house on Cedar Creek Lake it was precisely 9.8 miles, and he knew every one of them as intimately as he knew a woman's body. Unconsciously he avoided the rough spots, driving on the left when it suited him, straddling the center line for stretches of a half-mile or more at a time to avoid the ruts and ridges that put rattles into his status symbol. Blindly he reached into his breast pocket, withdrew a pack of cigarettes,

tipped one out, and lipped it straight from the 3 wrapper. Lifting his hips, he found the lighter in his trouser pocket and squinted above its flame before drawing deep, then taking another pull of beer.

Rachel. Staring at the white center streaks as the car chewed them up, he remembered her face. Rachel.

She's a widow now.

He could make this lousy run in nine minutes flat, and had done it on occasion in eight and a half. Today, by God, he'd do it in eight. The pines looked as if they were poured now, one into the next. Beneath his hand he felt a slight tremor in the wheel, but stared fixedly, guiding the car with a single index finger-still cold from the beer-while taking another draw on the cigarette. He glanced at the speedometer. The damn thing had a high of only eighty-five, and the needle quivered between the two digits. He took a sharp right curve with a heavy braking and the long complaint of rubber squealing on tar. Ahead twisted a second curve. He tested his mettle by negotiating it with the beer can cutting off half his vision. On the straightaway again he smiled.

Good job, Tommy Lee. You still got it, boy. When he hit a sharp left and gave up blacktop for gravel he lost her in a skid, braking sharply and swearing under his breath. But his heart didn't even lurch. Why the hell should it lurch? If a man had really lived, he didn't have to be scared of dying.

And Tommy Lee had really lived.

The car came out of the skid as he cranked sharply on the wheel, ignoring the fact that his driving idiosyncrasies made no sense at all-avoiding jars on the tar, then beating the hell out of the car on these gravel washboards. He reached the turnoff into his place, depressed the button for the power window, and tossed the dead soldier into the underbrush. Thirty seconds later when he careened to a halt in his circular driveway, he nearly stood the car on its hood ornament.

He laughed aloud, raising his face at a sharp angle. Then he fell silent, staring out the windshield at his front door. Rachel Talmadge. He hooked his thumbs loosely over the top of the steering wheel, and as he rested his forehead on them his eyes sank closed.

Hollis, he reminded himself. Her name 5 is Rachel Hollis now, and you'd best remember it, boy.

He left the key in the ignition and walked unsteadily toward the house. Nobody within a radius of a hundred miles would steal Tommy Lee's cars, not the way he drove them.

His front door was unlocked. If anybody wanted anything, let them come in and take it. Hell, if it came down to that, all they had to do was ask, and Tommy Lee would deliver it!

His bloodshot eyes traveled across the shadowed room-richness everywhere, enough for three wives and some left to spare, he thought. If there was one thing Tommy Lee knew how to do it was live. And if there were two things he knew how to do it was to live rich. Making money was child's play. Always had been.

His house showed it. He'd hired an architect from Memphis to design the contemporary structure that fell just short of being futuristic. Outside it was wrapped diagonally in rough-sawn cedar, and its steeply canting roof sections were shingled in cedar shakes. It appeared as an asymmetrical study in geometrics, a

staggered cluster of unexpectedly pleasing sections reaching high, then higher, then higher still toward the Alabama sky from between the pines and broadleaves of the surrounding wooded shoreline. A railed catwalk stretched from the driveway to the double front doors, which were glossy black and windowless. Above them a single outsized hexagonal window looked out over the landward side of the property.

Crazy boy, half the town had said when they'd seen the house going up five years ago, after his third divorce. Crazy boy, buildin' a house with no windows that looks like three Cracker Jack boxes got caught in a paper cutter.

But the crazy boy now took three loose-kneed bounds up into the living room of a house that had more windows than most. All the windows, however, faced the lake or were tucked coyly amid the junctures of wall and stair to give unexpected splashes of light that surprised when come upon by the first-time visitor.

There wasn't a curtain in the place. Instead, the endless windows were clothed with blue sky and plants potted in glazed earthenware tubs of browns and blues. But the plants looked

lifeless and drooping, many with curled, brown 7 leaves that showed how the landlord watered them: with an occasional ice cube dumped from a cocktail glass.

Tommy Lee stopped beside a sickly looking shoulder-high schefflera and stared through a sheet of glass at a lake that wasn't there. Damn, he thought, I wish it would hurry and rise. Pushing back his leather sports coat, he threaded his hands in his pockets and stared out disconsolately.

If I could get in my boat and open it up, I could drive her out of my mind.

But the Bear Creek Water Control System and the Tennessee Valley Authority controlled the flooding of the 900-square-mile Bear Creek Watershed System on which Tommy Lee lived, so Cedar Creek Lake wasn't really a lake at all but the backwash of man's whims, controlled by a series of four dams and reservoirs. And right now, man's whims dictated that Tommy Lee look out over nothing but lake bottom exposed to the sunset sky, a flat, muddy expanse of sticks, stones, and logs with nothing but a damp spring-fed creek

running up the middle of what would be the deepest channel of the lake in midsummer.

Turning from the depressing sight, Tommy Lee faced another that did little to cheer him. The waning sun spilled across plush navy-blue carpet, revealing a three-week collection of lint and ashes. It exposed glass-topped tables, which should have been lustrous but were filmed with dust and blighted by rings from sweating glasses, long dried. Twenty-dollar ashtrays whose blue and brown ceramic artistry had been carefully chosen by an interior decorator were buried beneath a stale collection of dead butts. Clothes were strewn along the back of a sprawling sand-hued conversation pit, which faced a limestone fireplace.

Tommy Lee stood, staring, for a full minute. Then he swiped up a yellow cotton-knit shirt, whipping it off the back of the sofa. Damn them! Damn them all! He sliced the air with the shirt as if driving a golf ball, then his hand fell still and his chin dropped disconsolately to his chest. He rubbed his eyes, opened them, and mechanically dropped the shirt onto the floor.

Hungry. That's what he was. Should've had

a steak in town, but food had been the last 9 thing on his mind after hearing the news.

He leaned against the back of the sofa and pulled off his loafers, then padded in stocking feet around the fireplace to a deep, narrow kitchen. At the lake end of the room a table and chairs of chrome and cane sat in the embrasure of corner windows. The tabletop was dusty and held a motley assortment of articles: several days' mail, a jar of instant coffee, a cup holding pitch-black dregs, a fingernail clipper and, oddly out of context, a spool of thread. On the opposite side of the room the countertops were bare of all but an electric blender, a coffee maker, and a sea of dirty glasses.

Tommy Lee draped an elbow over the open refrigerator door, tugging at his tie while studying a can of tomato juice with thickened red showing at the triangular tears in its top. He contemplated it for long minutes, trying to remember when he'd opened it. Sighing, he reached for it, swirled the contents, took a mouthful, then lunged to the sink to spit it out. He backhanded his mouth, turned on the water full force, and searched for a clean glass. Finding none,

he lowered his mouth to the running stream, rinsed, and spit again. Turning, he found the refrigerator door still open, slapped it shut so hard the appliance rocked, then stared at it.

"Goddamn," he whispered, still staring, disassociated again from all around him. In time he moved back to the living room, where his stocking feet halted at the yellow shirt he'd dropped earlier. He studied it until it became a blurred puddle, and the silence roared around his ears. The sun was warm on his back as he dropped his chin to his chest, slipped his fingers beneath his glasses to press his eye sockets. Suddenly he snapped backward and roared at the ceiling, "Where is everybody!"

But, of course, nobody was expected. Only Tommy Lee. And he was home.

The funeral was held on a flawless golden day, the Alabama sky a clear blue bowl overhead. Tommy Lee Gentry was the last to arrive at Franklin Memory Gardens, pulling the white Cadillac up behind the long line of vehicles, then quietly slipping into the outer fringe of mourners circling the grave.

He picked out Rachel immediately, 11 studying her back as she clung to her daddy's arm while from all around came the sound of soft weeping.

Rachel. My Rachel. I'm still here… waiting.

It had been twenty-four years since he'd been this close to her. He'd been a boy then, green and seventeen, and though he was no boy now, even at forty-one being in her presence made him feel like one again, uncertain and vulnerable.

After all these years, all these mistakes, the sensation swept back with unkind intensity.

A pain lanced his heart as he studied her; she had grown so thin. But there were appealing changes, too, ones he'd intrinsically sensed happening through the years, living in the same town as they did. She had acquired style, a thin-boned chic that had perhaps looked healthy until the last half-year had turned it nearly emaciated. Even so, the pearl-gray fabric of her designer dress draped upon her shoulders with a look of understated elegance few could manage, given that thinness. Unlike his own, her hair had gained a reprieve from grayness. It was still as rich as black-belt loam, and equally as dark. She

wore it shorter now, but with an elegant flair that spoke of costly professional attention. Watching her, Tommy Lee felt the old familiar ache in his heart.

Rachel Hollis stared at a spray of white roses bound by an enormous satin bow with gilt letters on its streamers. Beneath the bouquet, the polished bronze of the coffin caught the afternoon sun and sent it scintillating along a gleaming crease in the metal, like a white laser. A lone mockingbird perched on a nearby headstone, running through its repertoire. A soft breeze, scented with camellia, caught a streamer and sent it tapping against the coffin cover: Beloved Son and Husband.

But Rachel shut it all out, all the draining ordeal of the past two years, clinging to her daddy's arm until some faint movement of his elbow brought her back to the present. The service was over. Hands squeezed hers, cheeks were pressed to hers, murmured condolences were offered, and finally the mourners drifted toward their cars. Everett's steadying hand turned her toward the waiting black limousine.

Suddenly his fingers tightened on her 13 elbow as he demanded in a vehement undertone, "What's he doing here?"

Rachel lifted mournful eyes and for the first time saw the man standing some fifteen feet away. Her feet became rooted and her heart seemed to come alive.

Tommy Lee. Oh, God, Tommy Lee, you came.

She felt herself blanch, and she became slightly light-headed. Her father's thumb dug into her elbow, ordering her to turn and leave, but her body remained riveted, eyes drawn to the man who studied her from such a short distance away. After twenty-four years of avoiding each other at every possible turn, there he was. Deliberately.

Like characters in a ballet they stood poised, gazes fixed, seeing nothing beyond each other.

She could make out his eyes only partially. He now wore glasses, the rimless type with only a strip of gold winking across his eyebrows. The shaded brown lenses hid his upper eyelids and left only enough iris visible to intrigue. Beneath a rich brown leather sports coat the oyster-colored collar of an expensive shirt

had been drawn up tightly by a raw-silk tie.

"Rachel, come," her father commanded sternly. "We have to go." He might as well have ordered a stone carving to move. Rachel's body had gone stiff, captivated by Tommy Lee as he slowly, deliberately crossed the space between them. She held her breath and felt her heart knocking out a warning.

He didn't stop until he was so close she had to raise her chin to meet his gaze.

"Hello, Rachel." His voice was deeper, gruffer than she remembered, and his eyes held a sadness reaching far beyond sympathy. She didn't realize she had pulled away from her father until Tommy Lee captured her icy hand in both of his, squeezing slowly, slowly, but too tightly for the handclasp to be merely consoling. She felt a tremor in his fingers, became aware of how much thicker they were, how much fuller his palms. They were a man's hands now, and it struck Rachel that in the intervening years he'd grown perhaps two inches taller.

But there were other changes, too. He had grown heavy. Even his stylishly tailored sports

coat couldn't quite conceal the extra weight 15 at his midsection, and his constricting collar pressed a bulge of skin upward, revealing the fact that his neck had lost much of its firmness. There were deep grooves running from his handsome nose to his well-remembered lips, and lines of dissipation about his eyes. His coloring was not the healthy brown of their youth but tinged with a telltale undertone of pink. Apparently all they said about him was true.

"Hello, Tommy Lee," she answered at last, trying to keep her voice steady.

Of course they'd seen each other many times over the passing years. It was unavoidable in a town the size of Russellville. But never this close. Always, one of them had crossed the street or become politely engaged in conversation with some passerby when the other approached.

But now their eyes clung… for longer than was prudent. Suddenly Tommy Lee became aware of Everett Talmadge's scowl and dropped Rachel's hand reluctantly.

"Sir," he greeted with a curt nod.

"Gentry," Talmadge acknowledged coldly. The animosity between them was palpable and made

Tommy Lee take a single step back. Still, he could not resist returning his attention to Rachel for a moment longer.

"I hope you don't mind that I came, Rachel. I heard the news and wanted to offer my condolences personally."

"Of course I don't mind. We…" She glanced guardedly at her father and amended, "I'm so glad you did. Thank you, Tommy Lee." The name sounded ill-suited now that the boy had become a man, yet the years had schooled her till she could think of him by no other.

"I didn't know Owen personally, but everyone around town says he was a wonderful man. I'm sorry. If there's anything I can do…"

The tears brightened Rachel's deep brown eyes, making them gleam and appear larger, childlike in their threat of full-scale weeping. He reached for her hand again. "Rachel, I shouldn't have come," he said hoarsely.

She felt her control slipping and her heart thrusting heavily in her breast. A blink brought the tears pooling as she rose on tiptoe to press her cheek briefly to his. "No… no, I'm glad you did. Thank you, Tommy

Lee." Then she spun around, linked her 17 arm through her father's, and strode hastily toward the waiting black limousine.

Her scent seemed to linger at his jaw as his eyes followed the car along a row of bare forsythias, around a bend, until it was obscured by a line of gnarled cedars. He sighed, hung his head and stared at the toe of one shiny Italian loafer, then removed his glasses and wearily rubbed his eyes. But her face remained, revived.

What good are regrets? Almost angrily he replaced his glasses, reached for his cigarettes, and lit up with the unconscious motions of the seasoned smoker.

The mockingbird was still singing. The click of the lighter was the only other sound in the deserted stillness. The smell of roses became cloying, and his nostrils flared, drawing in a diaphanous line of gray to obliterate the floral scent. Absently he studied the silver-spindled branches of a nearby crepe myrtle bush. Its leafless limbs appeared pearlescent, like the color of Rachel's mourning dress. Drawing on the cigarette, he turned back toward the

coffin of her husband.

Owen Hollis. What had her life been like with him? Had she been happy? Had he been good to her? What had she suffered during Hollis's bout with cancer? Why had they never had children? And, above all, had she ever told her husband about Tommy Lee Gentry?

He swung toward the only other stone in the Talmadge plot: Eulice, Rachel's mother, dead four years now. He hooked a shoe on the polished curve of marble, braced an elbow on his knee and squinted as the smoke drifted up, unheeded. Why did you do it, Eulice? You and that husband of yours… and my own mother and father?

He took one last deep drag, but the taste of the cigarette had grown acrid, so he withdrew it from his lips and with a fillip sent it spiraling through the air.

I never should have come here today. What the hell good did it do? He dragged his foot from the tombstone, slipped his hands into his trouser pockets, and turned sadly toward the car.

Nothing is changed. Nothing.

Rachel had been running on sheer willpower for

days now, months-for two years, 19 actually, ever since Owen had learned he had cancer. Though she'd kept herself from breaking down during the graveside ceremony, she was perilously near it as the black limousine pulled up before the house on Cotako Street where she'd grown up.

Stepping from the car, she raised her eyes to the familiar beige limestone on the double-gabled structure. The entry and portico were fronted by a deep overhang behind wide limestone arches that supported the arm of the house holding her upstairs bedroom. The diamond-shaped framework of the small casement windows matched the diamond pattern of the dark shingles. Her mother's narcissus still bloomed gaily out front, and the azalea and holly bushes were carefully tended, though by a gardener these days. The same English ivy climbed the side chimney. The same cedars flanked the north side of the house. And the same sweetgum tree dropped its spiked artillery on the high-pitched roof and sent it rolling earthward. How many times had she and Tommy Lee, barefoot, stepped on those sweetgum balls and gone howling to one of their mothers in pain?

Either mother. Whichever one happened to be nearby. In those days it hadn't mattered-the families were so close.

Unable to resist, Rachel glanced next door, but the view of the Gentry house was almost completely obscured by the high boxwood hedge that had been allowed to grow along the property line, untrimmed, for twenty-four years now.

Tommy Lee. But he wasn't there. He hadn't set foot on the place for years. As if he'd been watching, Everett took her elbow to guide her up the sidewalk, discouraging her from dwelling on the past.

Inside, the funeral party was gathered. Voices hummed and the scent of expensive cigars drifted above that of fresh-brewed coffee. The faces were those of people Rachel had known all her life: the town's elite. Half were close to her age, the other half closer to her father's.

When she'd weathered what seemed like hours of well-meant condolences until she felt she could stand no more, she slipped upstairs to her old bedroom. It was tucked beneath the gables, its ceiling following the roof peaks, creating a pair of cozy niches. The walls were papered with the same pink

daisies she'd chosen at age thirteen. 21 Her hand trailed over the flowers as she recalled that she had brought Tommy Lee up here to show him, the minute the paper was hung. That was in the days when they'd felt free to spend brief, innocent minutes in each other's bedrooms, where they'd often played as toddlers.

The bed was a girl's, a four-poster with a canopy of airy white eyelet to match the tiered spread and the tiebacks at the recessed windows. Though the room was cleared of mementos, the fixtures remained as they'd been years ago, dredging up memories of the days when her mother was alive and everybody on both sides of the boxwood hedge was happy.

At the south window Rachel held back the folds of white eyelet, studying the house where Gaines and Lily Gentry still lived. It was brought clearly to view from this high vantage point several feet above the hedge.

The shared history of the Talmadges and the Gentrys went back even further than Rachel's memory allowed. But what she couldn't remember was kept alive in old photo albums her father could never quite bring himself to throw

away.

The two couples had settled into these houses as young up-and-coming pillars of the community. The men had played golf, the women tennis, and together they'd made up a foursome at bridge. Then, in the same year, both Lily and Eulice had become pregnant. They'd compared their discomforts and hopes and, together with their husbands, the names they'd chosen even before their babies were born.

Rachel and Tommy Lee came into the world only two months apart. Side by side they'd had their diapers changed, been plunked into the same playpen while their mothers drank coffee, and into the same backyard splash pool-naked- while their mothers sipped iced tea and talked about their children's future. When one of the youngsters inadvertently hurt the other with a careless toss of a toy, the mothers taught them to kiss and make it better, and sat back to watch their offsprings' rotund bodies grow healthy and vigorous.

At six, Rachel and Tommy Lee had toddled bravely, hand in hand, up Cotako Street Hill to begin first grade at College Avenue Elementary. In second grade they'd lost their front teeth simultaneously, and in

third Tommy Lee, while trying to string 23 a tin-can telephone between his bedroom window and Rachel's, had broken his arm falling out of the pecan tree that intervened between the two houses.

Both dark, brown-eyed beauties, blessed with good health and sunny dispositions, Tommy Lee and Rachel had grown up knowing the pride of their parents' eyes each time they achieved the next plateau of maturity, and sensing their parents' approval as they ran off together to whatever pursuit called them at any given age.

The memories struck Rachel like an assault-so many of them.

Her eyes dropped to the hedge. From above, it was clearly visible where the single boxwood had been left unplanted to create a walk-through between the two yards. Not even twenty-four years had disguised its original intent; it seemed to be waiting for one of them to breach it and cross again into the neighboring yard.

She'd been reminiscing for long minutes, her head leaning against the window frame when Callie Mae found her there.

"Miss Rachel?"

At the sound of the familiar voice, Rachel

turned to find wide arms waiting to gather her in and tears glittering in the kind eyes.

"Callie Mae." The black woman was shaped like a wrecking ball, her skin the color of sorghum syrup, and she smelled of the kitchen, as she always had. "Oh, Callie Mae." For a moment the two women comforted each other; then Callie Mae drew back, holding Rachel's arms tightly in her broad hands.

"What you doin' up here, hidin' away?"

Rachel sniffed and ran a hand beneath her eyes. "Exactly that, hiding away."

"Your daddy lookin' for you."

"I just needed to come up here for a while. To think."

Callie Mae's eyes roved to the window briefly. "'Bout Mr. Owen?"

Rachel turned aside guiltily. "Yes. Among other things."

"I seen you standin' there lookin' across the yards. Can about imagine what other things." But there was no note of scolding in the older woman's voice. Instead it was reflective and sad. "Don't seem right they don't come and pay their respects on a day like this. But then it's the

second time somebody died in this family 25 and they was too stubborn to do what they knew was right."

"It's not only them. It's Daddy, too."

"Yes. Stubborn fools."

For a moment Rachel tried to repress the words, but in the end could not hold them back.

"Tommy Lee came to the cemetery today."

Callie Mae silently rolled her eyes, folded her hands, and said, "Halleluja." Then she caught Rachel's chin with one imperious finger, forcing it up while she noted, "So that's why you're cryin'.was

Callie Mae had been the Talmadges's maid when Rachel and Tommy Lee were growing up, and in the years since Eulice's death had divided that duty between Rachel's house and Everett's. There were no secrets kept from Callie Mae.

"Partly."

Again Rachel was wrapped in a motherly hug. "Well, you go ahead, get it all out o' your system. You just cry it out, then you'll feel better. And when you're done, you come down to the kitchen." She backed away and smiled down at

the woman she would always look upon as a girl no matter how adult and refined she'd become. "Got your favorite down there, cream cheese pound cake."

That at last brought a wan smile to Rachel's face. Food was Callie Mae's panacea for all the troubles in this world.

"Not today, Callie Mae. I just don't think I could hold anything down."

"Hmph! You nothin' but skin and bones, Miss Rachel. It's time you started eatin' right again." She turned toward the door with a sigh. "Well, time I got back down there."

When she was gone, Rachel listened to the sound of voices from below. Lord, she was so tired. If she waited a few more minutes, maybe the last of them would leave.

She crossed to the bed, tested the mattress with five fingertips, and fell across the white eyelet spread with an arm thrown above her head. She closed her eyes and for a moment was fourteen again, a blushing fourteen, lying in bed quaking with disbelief because Tommy Lee Gentry had just kissed her in the break of the boxwood hedge. For the first time- really kissed her. Then his eyes had widened with

wonder and he'd walked backwards to his 27 side of the yard while she'd stood staring, amazed, for several heart-thumping seconds before spinning to her own yard and racing, as if a ghost were chasing her, up the stairs to this room, to this bed, to flop on her back and stare at the white canopy in the moonlight and feel herself begin to change from girl to woman.

Rachel rolled to her back, eyes closed, soul shot with guilt for dredging up dreams of Tommy Lee within hours after burying her husband. Where were the memories of Owen? Did nineteen years of happy marriage count for nothing? She thought of their childless house, and emptiness clawed upward through her body. If only there were children- someone to comfort her now, to help her through the days ahead. Instead, Rachel faced the dismal prospect of returning to the empty house alone.

"Oh, here you are, Rachel."

At the sound of Everett's voice, Rachel coiled off the bed as if caught perpetrating an indecent act upon it.

"Daddy… I'm sorry. I must have drifted off."

"Marshall was looking for you."

"Oh. I'll go down in a minute. I just needed to get away."

Everett's eyes slowly circled the room. "Finding you here in your room this way… it brings back memories of when you were a girl and your mother was alive." Absently he wandered to the south window, drew back the curtain and gazed at the view beyond. "Times were so happy then." As if suddenly realizing what he'd been staring at, he dropped the curtain. "I wonder if I'll ever stop missing her."

You could have friends, she thought. Two more than you've got. Two who meant so much to both of you at one time. She glanced at the top of the Gentry house beyond her father's shoulder, then at his back. It was slightly stooped now-funny, she'd never noticed it before. But then, the weight of guilt rested heavily; it was bound to weigh him down in time.

But he was still her father, and in spite of everything she loved him. At times when she remembered, when she thought of all she'd missed, she found it possible to hate him. But he was human, had needs, perhaps even regrets, though these he never revealed.

Very quietly she asked, "Do you ever 29 see them?"

His shoulders stiffened. "Drop it, Rachel." But his stern tone only forced her on.

"I've heard that Tommy Lee doesn't talk to them anymore."

"I wouldn't know. And it's none of my business."

You made it your business twenty-four years ago, Daddy, she thought. But aloud she only observed in the quietest of voices, "I was looking at the hedge you and Gaines Gentry planted all those years ago. You can still see the break where-was

"Rachel!" he barked, swinging around. "I fail to understand how you can be preoccupied with thoughts like that on a day when you've just buried Owen."

She flushed, standing before him with fingers clasping and unclasping against her stomach. Guilt came creeping over her, and she upbraided herself for speaking of the Gentrys today of all days. She studied Everett's face, noting how gray and shaken he was. "I'm sorry, Daddy. Owen's death has been terrible for you, hasn't it?" It was an odd question from a widow, but they both knew her

relationship with Owen had been staid, comfortable at best, and the past six months had been hell for her. His death had come as somewhat of a relief, so Rachel had her guilt, too.

"I had such plans for him," Everett sighed, prowling the room, avoiding his daughter's eyes.

"I know you did." Owen had been his hope, the son he'd never had, his right hand in business. But Everett's shoulders lifted in a fortifying sigh, and he turned again to his daughter.

"I guess we'd better go back down. I left the Hollises there, visiting with Marshall."

"Yes, I guess we'd better." But she wondered how she'd tolerate any more of Pearl Hollis's noisy weeping, or Frank Hollis's dolorous looks, which seemed to say, if only Owen had had children.

But children, like boxwood hedges, were never mentioned; both were taboo subjects in this house.

Downstairs Marshall True was waiting, gallant and accommodating as always. "Rachel dear, I was worried about you." He came forward quickly, reaching for her hands. She gripped his fingers, relying upon him once again for emotional

support, while Marshall's kind gray 31 eyes rested upon hers reassuringly. "Whenever you're ready I'll take you home."

An hour later, as the two of them rode toward Rachel's house in Marshall's car, she slumped back against the seat with a sigh. His understanding eyes moved to her, then back to the street. "I know the feeling well. I remember when Joan died, how difficult it was to dream up responses to all the well-meaning phrases friends came up with."

Rachel closed her eyes. "Am I ungrateful, Marshall? I don't mean to be."

"No, dear, I don't think so. Just tired. Tired of it all, and glad it's over."

She rolled her head to look at him and asked quietly, "Am I really allowed to be glad it's over?"

"You shouldn't have to ask that question of me, of all people."

She smiled wanly, remembering how Marshall had seen them through the worst of it, cheering Owen through the depressions, bolstering Rachel's courage when bleakness threatened to beat her down, remaining steadfast until the end, just as they had done for him

when his wife had died four years ago.

"But I feel so guilty because I… I'm relieved he's gone."

"That's natural, when the death has been lingering."

Was there another person in the world who always knew the precise thing to say, at the precise time it was needed, the way he did?

"Thank you, Marshall. I simply don't know what I'd have done without you."

He pulled up in Rachel's driveway and reached for her hand. "Well, perhaps we're even, then. You and Owen were the only ones who saved me from breaking down after Joan died. And I intend to hang around and do the same for you." As if to illustrate, he turned off the engine and solicitously came around to open her door. "Now, what's this I hear about you taking a trip?"

"Oh, so Daddy told you."

"Yes. St. Thomas, he said. I think it's a wise idea." They went in the front door of a house that could only have been described as gracious. Rachel led the way through a slate-floored entry, which came alight beneath a

brass and crystal chandelier. Then she 33 switched on a lamp in a living room decorated in ice blue and touches of apricot. A quilted floral sofa was fronted by a pair of bun-footed Victorian chairs, the grouping centered around a marble-topped table holding five blue candles on five gold candlesticks of staggered heights, a pair of brass giraffes, and a brandy snifter filled with potpourri. Every piece of furniture in the room looked as if it had just been purchased that day. The regal tiebacks on the windows were hung so perfectly they might have been advertisements for an interior decorator. The carpeting was so lush their footsteps left imprints in its ice-blue nap.

And the house smelled delicious. Rachel not only scented it with crystal snifters of potpourri, but left tiny open cedar boxes of crushed rose petals on end tables, hung pomander balls in her closets, tucked stems of herbs into gold cricket boxes in the bathrooms, and hid delicate organdy sachet pillows of Flora Danica fragrance amid her personal garments in the bureau drawers.

That lavish touch was repeated in the careful selection of each item in each room. It was the home of a woman accustomed to luxury.

Marshall studied Rachel as she stood in the middle of the painfully neat living room, rubbing her arms.

"You know, Rachel, you don't have to worry about money. The check from Owen's life insurance policy should be here by the time you get back."

Marshall was an insurance broker, and he had seen to protecting both Rachel and Owen with adequate coverage years ago. Also, he was that kind of man-careful, a long-range planner, one who did things at their appointed time and kept life's business affairs in impeccable order. He would, he had assured both her and Owen before Owen died, keep an eye on Rachel's affairs and be there to advise whenever she felt she needed him. Having made the promise, he was certain to keep it.

"I'll drop by now and then to make sure things are working okay-the pool cleaner and the air conditioner. You know how things have a way of breaking down when you're gone," he offered. That was Marshall, all right. He kept everything of his own

in sterling condition, from his clothing to his 35 grass, and it was often joked about in their social circle that when and if he sold his property, he'd come back to reprimand anyone who dared let it fall into disrepair.

Rachel fondly placed her hands on his forearms. "You don't have to worry about me, Marshall. I can take care of myself."

"I know you can. But I promised Owen."

"But the furnace won't break down, and the pool will keep filtering, and… and…" Suddenly Rachel was immensely glad to have Marshall there, a living, breathing entity who knew how dreadful it would have been for her to face the empty house alone at this moment.

She bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling, but tears spilled, nonetheless. "Oh, Marshall… oh, God…" Her chest felt crushed as he took her into his arms, gently, consolingly. "Oh, thank you for coming home with me. I didn't know how I was going to face it alone."

"You don't have to thank me. You know that." His voice was gruff against her hair. "I loved him, too."

"I'll… I'll be all right in a minute."

"Take it from me, dear, you won't be. Not in a minute, or a week, or even a month. But whenever you need somebody, all you have to do is call, and I'll be right here."

Before he left, Marshall walked through the house to make sure everything was safe and sound. Watching his tall form walk away, she thought, Whatever would I do without him? He was as steady as Gibraltar, as dependable as taxes, and as sensible as rain. Owen said before he died, "You know, Rachel, you can rely upon Marshall for anything."

She had wondered at the time if Owen was hinting that he himself might choose Marshall for her… if and when. But Marshall wasn't that sort. Not steady-z-you-go, polite, socially adept Marshall. He was simply the kindest man she knew, and one with whom she'd shared the most devastating of human experiences not once, but twice.

But when he was gone, she still faced the desolation of going to bed alone. The house seemed eerie, especially the bedroom she and Owen had shared. When she'd donned her nightgown, she crept instead

to one of the guest bedrooms across the hall, 37 lying stiffly upon the strange-feeling mattress in the dark-unmoving, for a long time. Rachel had been propelled from one necessity to the next for so long, putting off the awesome need to cry. But there was little else she could have done, with no children to take over the burdens. It was the thought of children that did it at last. The dam cracked, then buckled, and when her tears came, they struck with the force of a tidal wave. She gripped the sheets, twisting in despair, sobbing pitifully into the dark. The racking sound of those sobs, coming back to her own ears, only made her cry the harder.

She cried for all the pain Owen had suffered, and for her own powerlessness to help him. She cried for the dream-filled girl she'd once been, and the disillusioned woman she now was. She cried because for almost two decades she'd been married to a man with whom she'd had a comfortably staid marriage when what she'd wanted was occasional tumult. She cried because in one split second she had looked up at a man's face across a quiet graveyard, and that tumult had sprung within her when it was her husband who should have caused it to surface all these years. She cried because it

seemed a sin to admit such a thing to herself on the very night of his funeral.

And when her body was aching with loss and desolation, she cried for Owen's child, which she'd never conceived.

And for Tommy Lee's child, which she had.