Cruel as the Grave (2 page)

Quiet for a moment, allowing the odd feeling of shock to pass over her, Maggie regarded her father. His reaction—or seeming lack of one—to the situation puzzled her. He was usually laid back about almost everything, but surely he ought to be more upset about his father, even if they hadn’t spoken in twenty-five years.

Maggie stood up, lunch forgotten. “Shall I start calling the airlines?” She moved toward the kitchen phone.

“No!” The word came with the force of a quiet explosion from Gerard, and she whirled in astonishment.

“I mean,” he continued in a more level tone, “there’s no need. I’ll take care of it. And there’s really no need for you to go. You’ll be better off staying home and getting ready for your exams.”

Maggie felt her mouth beginning to slide open in amazement. “What do you mean? Of course I’ll go.”

Gerard’s jaw took on the same stubborn line which she had seen many times before. “There’s really no need,” he repeated firmly. “I’d rather you stayed home.”

Suddenly irritated and not sure why, she snapped back, “And I'd rather go!”

He stood up, grasping his pipe. “There’s no point in your going. I can deal with this on my own.”

“Has it ever occurred to you,” Maggie said, struggling to keep her temper in check, “that I just might want to have a chance to meet my grandfather at least once before he dies?”

Gerard’s hand clenched around his pipe. “Even if I tell you I’d rather go by myself?”

“Dad,” she said, trying hard to keep from clenching her teeth in response, “I’m going with you. Or I’ll go by myself. Either way. I’m going to Jackson to see my grandfather.”

“Start packing, then,” he responded crisply, “and I’ll take care of the reservations.” He turned and disappeared through the kitchen door, his lunch forgotten.

Miserably, Maggie stared down at her own lunch. Her burst of anger at her father spent, she now regretted the sudden tension between them. He became grumpy only when he didn’t feel good, and she knew he was suffering now with his sinuses. Perhaps he was so insistent that she stay home simply because he didn’t feel good.

But, no,
she thought.
He never speaks that way to me, even when he doesn’t feel good. There's something he doesn’t want to tell me. What could it be?

Stirring from uncomfortable thoughts—not wanting to probe further at the time, and her appetite gone—Maggie wrapped the sandwiches in plastic and stuck them in the refrigerator, along with the potato salad. She slowly walked back upstairs to her room to pack.

Before she retrieved a suitcase from the closet and faced the difficult decision of what to pack to meet her family for the first time, Maggie went to her bookshelves and pulled out an old photo album. She sat on the bed and leafed through its pages. The earliest pictures in the album were of her maternal grandparents, who had died when she was too young to remember them. Her fingers traced lightly the contours of their faces, seeing in them little of her own facial features. She examined a portrait of her mother, again seeing little of herself there, except perhaps the determined set of her chin.

Maggie closed the album with a familiar sense of frustration. So much of her personal history was missing. Now, at last, she had a chance to fill in some of the gaps, but the circumstances were far from ideal. With a shrug, she put the album back in its place on the shelf, then went to her closet.

While she looked through her wardrobe for her best clothes, she pondered Helena’s letter. Though she hadn’t read it, she thought there was something peculiar about that letter.

Why had Helena written to inform them of her grandfather's condition? Surely, if he was so near death, Helena should have called.

But more puzzling than that, Maggie decided, was her father’s reaction. Why didn’t he want her to go to Jackson? At this point in time, there should be no reason for her not to meet the rest of her family. Unless, she considered uneasily, there was something—or someone—in Jackson her father feared for her to know.

Chapter Two

Seated next to her father on the plane the next morning, Maggie waited with mounting impatience for takeoff. This was the only portion of the flight she detested, other than having to wait to board. Sitting there was uncomfortable, especially when it was so humid outside. They hadn’t yet turned the air-conditioning on, and those little air vents really didn’t do much good, she reflected. So she sweated in silence, using the airline’s magazine as a fan to offset some of the stuffiness.

Gerard sat beside her, withdrawn into his own thoughts, as he had been all the previous evening and thus far this morning.

Maggie felt like she was almost dealing with a complete stranger. She and her father had always been close, and his shutting her out now disturbed her. She knew he was under considerable stress, and several times she was on the point of asking him to confide in her. But the cold, distant look on his face frightened her. She simply didn’t know what to say to him. If only he would open up to her a little, she thought. But whatever was bothering him, he refused to confide anything in her. She’d have to be patient until he was ready to talk. She had many questions about his family, since Helena was the only one she had met, but her father was obviously in no mood to talk. She’d have to take everything as it came.

The aircraft jerked into motion, and Maggie came out of her reverie. She had ignored the repeated warnings of the flight attendants to buckle her seat belt, and now she hastily did so.

Once they had changed planes in Dallas and were again in the air, she decided to venture a question, which she thought might be a neutral topic. “Who's going to meet us there?”

For a moment Maggie thought her father hadn’t heard her, so intently was his gaze focused out the window. Then he turned toward her, a slight frown on his face. “I don’t know. Helena’s a little too scatty to be a good driver, but my father probably has someone who drives for him. He’s always hated doing it for himself.” He turned back to the window.

Maggie shrugged—another attempt at communication turned aside. Muttering under her breath, she reached for her book bag and pulled out one of the books she had to read for her exams.

About an hour later, she wrenched herself back into the present when the irrepressibly perky flight attendant reminded her to put her bag of books underneath the seat once more. They were approaching Jackson, and as she put her books away, Maggie could feel her heart begin to beat faster.

Making sure that her seat belt was secure, she then thrust her head next to her father’s as she strained to look out the window and get her first glimpse of his birthplace. The skyline didn’t quite compare with Houston, Maggie saw, but she was pleased to view an abundance of trees amidst all the buildings. Jackson might be the biggest city in the state of Mississippi, but it didn’t seem like it was too far from the country, no matter which way you looked.

Jackson’s airport was tiny, compared to the sprawling expanse of the terminals at Houston’s Intercontinental. Is that the only terminal? Maggie wondered.

The flight from Dallas to Jackson had been considerably less crowded than the flight from Houston to Dallas, so the McLendons had little trouble making their way out of the plane. Once they had gained the relative quiet of the waiting area, both Maggie and Gerard looked around for anyone remotely resembling a welcoming committee. There seemed to be no one waiting for anyone from their flight except a tall, blond man, dressed casually in khakis, polo shirt, and sneakers.

As Maggie looked curiously at the man, she noticed that he gave a start upon looking directly at her, then moved quickly toward them.

Surely I don’t look that bad,
she told herself.
Now I’m scaring total strangers in airports.
She looked down surreptitiously at her dress, a dark green cotton sheath she had always thought flattered her figure and her complexion. Reassured that she still looked presentable, Maggie stared back at the man.
This stranger is not anything to scare little old ladies,
she thought.
In fact, he probably charms them right out of their rockers and savings accounts.

He had to be one of the best-looking men she had seen in the flesh. His blond hair was thick and curly. His eyes, as she noticed when he stopped his progress diffidently in front of Gerard, were a dark green. His shirt, a shade reminiscent of his probing eyes, clung snugly in all the right places to a physically fit body.

“You must be Gerard McLendon,” the stranger said, proffering a hand. His voice was low and musical, not gruff and unmannered, as she had perhaps subconsciously expected. “I’m Adrian Worthington. Miss Helena McLendon sent me to bring you and Miss McLendon back to the house.”

As she heard herself called Miss McLendon in that cultured and velvety-smooth Southern voice, Maggie began to blush. She wasn’t quite sure why, but it might have had something to do with the look of cool appraisal that Adrian Worthington had given her.

As she felt the blush receding, she tried—just as coolly, she hoped—to return the man’s glance. She couldn’t help liking what she saw, because physically he had most of the characteristics she found attractive in a man. Rugged good looks, a body that obviously benefitted from regular exercise, and—most important of all—he was at least three inches taller than her own often-troublesome six feet.

“How do you do?” she said, almost blushing again when she heard how stiff and unfriendly her voice sounded.

One of Adrian’s eyebrows arched slightly. “Welcome to Jackson, Miss McLendon.” His voice chilled her.

Now,
Maggie chastised herself,
he probably thinks I’m a snob.
But there seemed little else she could do at the moment.

“If you’ll follow me,” Adrian said, as he abruptly turned on his heel, “we’ll collect your baggage and be on our way.”

Father and daughter followed, Gerard somewhat huffily, Maggie easily matching her strides to those of the two men.

They waited in silence several minutes for the baggage to be unloaded. Adrian made no attempts at conversation. Maggie stood quietly between the two men. Gerard’s mood was even more tense than before, and his edginess seemed to have increased tenfold once they were on the ground in Jackson.

“There they are,” she said suddenly, pointing to the two large suitcases belonging to her and her father. She reached out for them, but Adrian was there before her, swinging the luggage off the belt as if the suitcases were empty.

“Shall we go?” he inquired politely—and rhetorically, since he was already heading toward the exit when he asked.

The car toward which Adrian headed, once they had reached the parking lot, was—surely Maggie was mistaken— a Rolls Royce!

After taking care of the two large suitcases and the three smaller bags which Maggie and Gerard had carried on the plane, Adrian opened the door to the backseat and courteously ushered them inside. Maggie’s eyes were wide as she looked at her father in mute inquiry. As her gaze traveled around the interior of the car, she noticed the glass partition which separated her and her father from Adrian.

“I have a feeling there’s something you haven’t been telling me,” Maggie commented wryly once her perusal of the car’s interior was finished.

“What do you mean?” Gerard’s brows were knitted together in concentration. He had not been paying any attention to their mode of transport.

“This!” she replied, motioning vaguely around with her right hand. "It’s a vintage Rolls Royce, in case you hadn’t noticed!”

“Oh,” he muttered blankly. “I thought it looked familiar.”

Her nerves tightened a little further. Noticing the expression on his daughter’s face, Gerard hastily continued. “I never told you, because I didn’t see any point in it, but my father is a wealthy man."

Maggie leaned weakly back against the seat and contemplated her father in silence.
I can't wait to find out what else you haven’t told me!
she thought. But there was no point in a confrontation right then. She concentrated instead on seeing what she could of Jackson out of the frosted windows of the Rolls.

Presently they left the busy thoroughfare for a quiet and noticeably prosperous residential area. She noted with interest that the farther they went in this particular area, the more opulent—and widely spaced—the houses were. Eventually they came to a block which seemed to be nothing but trees, but then she spotted a driveway, into which the Rolls sedately turned.

As Maggie looked through the glass which separated her and her father from Adrian Worthington, she could see through the windshield ahead very large and sturdy iron gates barring their progress. But as she watched, the gates slowly began to part, and the Rolls entered the grounds of a large estate.

The driveway wound through the trees ahead of them, but once they had rounded a small curve, she could see quite clearly the large house which lay before them. There was a niggling air of familiarity about the mansion, although Maggie couldn’t recall ever having been in Jackson before.

Suddenly she began to laugh as she realized how she knew the house! Any moment now, Scarlett O’Hara could waltz out the front door, crinolines billowing, because it looked like an overgrown replica of Tara from the movie version of
Gone with the Wind.

Maggie chuckled as she climbed out of the car. She tried to nod her thanks gracefully as Adrian opened the door of the Rolls, but he remained impassive as he stood aside for her to climb out. Then she couldn’t stop the laughter from bubbling up. She didn’t know whether she was to be awed or amused by the sight before her.

The resemblance of her grandfather’s mansion to Tara was more than casual, but this building looked much larger than the cinematic one. For once Maggie felt dwarfed as she gazed up the broad front steps and on up to the roof far above. The wings of the mansion stretched many yards on either side of her. The gleaming white of the walls was brilliant in the morning sunshine. A broad veranda ran the length of the front of the house, and soaring columns emphasized the massiveness of the whole structure. The solidity of it intimidated her, because she had never imagined her roots traceable to such a setting.