Could I Have This Dance? (17 page)

“I’ll get you a blanket.” She walked to the hall closet and retrieved a well-worn comforter. “Here,” she said, tossing it onto the couch beside him. “You can use the bathroom down here.” She tussled his hair and kissed his forehead. “Thanks for surprising me.”

His response was less than enthusiastic. “Sure.” He waited a moment and kept his eyes on the faded rug in front of the couch. “For the record, I know you’re right about this.” He paused. “I don’t like it, and I don’t like admitting it, but I know you’re right.”

Her reply was soft, barely above a whisper. “Thanks.”

She left him sitting on the couch and retreated up the stairs to the bathroom to prepare for bed. A few minutes later, she went to her bedroom and slipped off her clothes, donning John’s jersey as a nightshirt. She flipped off the light and stood by her open door listening to John’s preparations downstairs. He’d obviously left the bathroom door open. She listened as he undressed, his belt buckle striking the old hardwood floor. Water ran for a moment, and then she heard vigorous sounds of a thorough toothbrushing.

Claire pushed the door partially shut, enjoying the sounds of having a man in the house, comforted by the familiarity of the noises he made, the knowledge that she wasn’t alone. She pushed the door shut but didn’t lock it, then collapsed into bed. There, in the darkness, she listened as John prepared to sleep. She imagined his well-muscled chest and arms, and more, as she nestled her head into her pillow. She turned on her side and reached out toward the empty space beside her. Oh, how she longed for him to be near her, holding her, bathing her with kisses, massaging her with searching hands.

Her heart beat faster. This seemed like torture. He was so close, and she knew he wanted her fiercely. It would be so easy to invite him up.

She stared at the ceiling before whispering a prayer, wanting to be strong but feeling so very weak.
This is crazy, God. I just made such a strong stand with my lips, but now everything in me wishes he would ignore my plea and come to my bed.

One moment I’m strong. The next minute I desperately want to fall.

Help me. I’m so confused about my feelings.
She twisted the ring around her finger.
I know I love him, but now I find myself afraid. Where is the thrill I’m supposed to feel?

She drifted into a restless, intermittent sleep, as if stepping across a pond of slumber by jumping from stone to stone. She looked at the clock at midnight, one-thirty, and three. At three, she heard John rise to use the bathroom, and found herself again longing for his arms, her heart quickening as she listened intently for the footfalls on the stairs that never came.

She must have fallen asleep sometime before her alarm at five, as she startled at the sound of music blaring from her clock radio.

“Ugh,” she groaned, as her feet hit the floor. “The Mecca beckons.”

Chapter Ten

E
lizabeth Bunker McCall hadn’t slept a complete night since her husband’s death the previous summer. Not that sleeping with her husband, John McCall, had been particularly peaceful. He snored like a child with heavy tonsils, snorting and gasping his way through the night, drowning out any other noise that could possibly disturb her. But now with him gone, she found herself alert and alone, conscious of every creak of the old mansion, and even with her hearing aid on the bedside table, imagined noises nudged her from slumber every few hours.

Often, she replayed memories from her youth, mostly happy with the emotions they invoked.

Tonight, she tossed with restlessness, replaying a memory a half-century old, a remembrance of pain, a secret, stimulated by her thoughts of her son’s deterioration. Each time she remembered, her heart quickened, the emotions of the moment experienced anew. With each recollection, a guilt long buried grew fresh, almost palpable, threatening to engulf her again.

It was supposed to have been one of the happiest events of her life. She’d left the rehearsal dinner only thirty minutes before, planting a kiss on the cheek of her fiancé, John McCall. It was a kiss that capped an exhaustive evening of rehearsal, getting everything in proper order. A McCall wedding, she’d come to understand, would be done properly, a wedding everyone would admire. It was a dinner rich with delicacies most of Stoney Creek would never taste again, and wine in abundance.

Tomorrow, she would marry up, join the one family in the Apple Valley that seemed to thrive in spite of economic hardship around them. For this moment, in spite of her need for sleep, she found herself invigorated, entranced in the magical thoughts of her wedding night, in anticipation of sex for the first time. She pinched her eyelids shut and nestled beneath a worn quilt.

It was then, in the middle of a restless night, that
he
came. She heard the rhythmic
peck … peck … peck
of a creek pebble tossed against her window. The sound had been his signature during their tumultuous courtship.
It was not an announcement befitting the arrival of John McCall—this was the clandestine frivolity of a country boy, a moonshiner’s grandson whose heart had never recovered from the loss of his sweetheart.

Steve Hudson had been scorned, rejected by a family who had set their sights on higher social standing. In her heart, Elizabeth, Steve’s Lizzy, had cherished him. But under pressure from her mother, and with a fear of the insanity rumored to plague Steve’s family, she had pulled free, at least from the visible ties that linked them. But sometimes, the unseen bonds drew her.

She jumped from the bed and struggled with the old window, yanking it half open. Peering out, she knew where she’d find him. Beneath the maple tree, he stood gazing up, his face reflecting the moonlight, his body straight and strong. His shirt was open, as he often wore it in the summer months, a social faux pas that John McCall’s mother would have pointed out in disgust.

His voice was pleading, almost a whisper. “Lizzy! We have to talk.”

“Go away. Don’t do this.”

He didn’t budge. She saw his hand close into a fist over his bare chest. “Lizzy!”

She shook her head, her mind telling her to push the window down and ignore him.
Just go back to bed, pull the covers over your head, and he’ll go away!

But her heart wouldn’t let her obey.

“Give me a minute,” she whispered. She cast a worried glance over her shoulder into the darkness of the room. “Meet me at the barn.”

She pulled an old coat over her nightgown and studied her reflection in the mirror. She primped for a moment, then sighed and tiptoed to the door.

Walking barefooted across the stepping-stones leading away from the back porch, she whispered her resolve. “There is nothing to talk about. Our relationship is over.” She skipped ahead, jumping a small puddle. “It’s over. It’s over,” she whispered again. And again.

He was pacing like a caged animal, under the window of the hayloft. How long had he practiced this encounter? Dozens of times? Hundreds?

She decided to begin. It was best to take control, to not let him get started. “There is nothing to discuss. Go back home, Steve.”

“Lizzy,” he whispered.

Why did he use that name? Only he called her that. It had been her playful name, one that he’d used to break the ice when they’d first met.

“You can’t go through with this.”

“Steve, it’s too late for us. We’ve been through this before.”

“I love you more than life.” His words were slow and practiced. “Lizzy, I need you.”

His voice quivered, and she felt her heart in her throat. “Stop.” She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have come.” She turned away and stepped toward the house.

She felt his hand grip her arm. His strength both frightened and allured her. She pulled away, her jacket slipping from around her. She clutched at her nightgown and turned forcefully toward him again.

“This isn’t what’s in your heart,” he said. “I know you want me too.”

She grabbed the jacket from his hands.

“This is about my family, isn’t it?” he asked. “You’re afraid of the curse, aren’t you?”

“I never believed it, Steve. You’re the one living under your grandfather’s shadow.”

She studied him a moment in the soft light of the moon. He was a lost puppy, eyes wide with unimaginable hurt. She lifted her hand to his cheek, her heart touched by a tear just released. It struck her in a tender way.
John would never cry for me.

“Good-bye,” she said, attempting a firmness she didn’t feel.

He nodded slowly, his jaw clenched. “Good night, Lizzy.”

She leaned toward him, then halted in indecision, then forward again as he lowered his face to hers.

A good-bye kiss was all she’d intended. Quick. Then pull away, and walk—no, run—back to the house and her plans for her life and her future with John McCall.

The jacket in her hand was lowered for a second, and the thin nightgown offered little barrier between them.

She broke away once, then surrendered again, her emotions on edge, her resolve and her jacket falling to the ground.

She pushed him away, her hand on his chest, but he held her tightly behind the small of her back.

His eyes were locked with hers, intense and full of fire. “You always promised that I would be the one. That I would be your first.” His eyes were scaring her, his countenance changing. He was no longer pleading, but demanding, his face no longer filled with love, but revenge.

The transformation caught her off guard, and in a moment, he was pulling her into the barn. She stumbled up the steps to the loft, his grip a vise around her. Suddenly, he was on her, moaning and ripping her gown.

Why didn’t she cry out? Why didn’t she yell for her parents for help?

She remembered resisting, but never calling out.

She remembered the hour she spent crying in the hayloft alone.

But mostly she remembered her kiss that had initiated it all. That alluring kiss, the one she’d willingly given, the one that sparked his desire … and hers.

Elizabeth McCall sat up, clutching her flannel nightgown with one hand and rubbing her thinning white hair with the other. She slipped from bed, troubled by the memory, and driven by the thought of her own guilt. She moved slowly to the library and pulled a dusty book from the shelf, agonizing over a partially remembered phrase, one she’d heard a hundred times before, preached from the pulpit of a legalistic country church.
What was it? The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third generation?

She opened the King James Version of the Bible. It was the only one her mother would allow. In the back, she ran her finger through the concordance, then turned to the verse for which she searched.

“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.”

Her hand began to tremble as she counted the generations from Harold Morris, a man who bore the Lord’s curse declared by Eleazor Potts for rebuilding the devil’s still. Beginning with Harold, and ending with her own son Wallace, she whispered, “One, two, three … four.”

Her hand went to her throat. “Maybe this will be the end. Wally’s the fourth generation. Margo, Claire, and Clay are the fifth.”
Hopefully, they will be spared.

She thought again of Steve Hudson.
It was a rape, pure and simple.

Wasn’t it?

But why did I kiss him like that? I must have wanted him, just like he said.

“Oh, God, can you ever forgive me?”

She thought of her son Wally and his shocking behavior at the graduation. And before the graduation, it had been months since she’d seen him. He had become a hermit, hiding away in his little house, making it clear that he would see her only when he cared to. That he’d agreed to have her along in the car seemed a minor miracle.

He’d gone into such a decline. How long had it been since she’d really looked at him with open eyes? She had suppressed the fear of the curse, never wanting to believe it to be a reality. For years, her secret had been successfully hidden. No one needed to know. No one seemed affected. But seeing Wally at the graduation had unearthed the buried fears.

Wally looks so much like Steve Hudson did shortly before his death.

The reality of the thought struck her again.
Could it be? I thought my secret would affect only me.

“Oh, Wally, could you ever forgive me if you really knew?”

Della McCall awoke early to a jabbing pain in her side. “Come on, Wally, stay on your side.”

She looked at her husband’s face. He was snoring, sound asleep, yet still his arms were as busy as during the day. This was ridiculous, Della thought. Wally had always been the nervous type, always tapping, frequently pacing, never standing still, but this was new, even for him. He couldn’t seem to stop moving even when he was sleeping.

And his temper! Sure, he’d blown up at the kids before, but to strike a nurse the way he did at the hospital? That was definitely out of character.

The evening before, she’d confronted him about it. He’d broken down and cried like a baby, saying he didn’t mean to do it, that it was all an accident, something he couldn’t control. She wanted to believe him, but she’d seen it with her own eyes. He’d landed a square punch right on the bridge of the nurse’s nose.

All evening, she’d fretted about a possible police investigation, watching the driveway through the window, expecting a police cruiser to show up at any moment. And after her conversation with Claire, she’d worried even more, contemplating the possibility that her husband suffered from some rare disease.

Now, in the faint light of morning, her anxieties returned full force. Something was robbing her husband of life. He was losing control, sinking without a life vest, and Della felt like she was going down with him.

What options did she have?

The doctor in Carlisle had been no help.