The Last Princess (25 page)

L
ILY WAS SNUG IN
the cozy living room of the Sutton Place apartment, bent over her needlepoint—a Metropolitan reproduction. A smile came to her lips as she reminisced about their happy Christmas vacation. She resolved that her children would have to come home for the summer vacation as well. And she had a feeling, given the Yuletide success, that no one—not Drew, not Randy, not Melissa, and certainly not Harry—would balk at the thought.

Just then the phone rang. Lily set aside her needlepoint and picked up the receiver. A voice greeted her before she had a chance to say hello.

“Mrs. Kohle? This is Dean Whittaker.”

“Dean Whittaker! Why, hello.” With a thrill, she thought, Could Jeremy have made the Dean’s list? How proud Harry would be!

“Mrs. Kohle,” said Dean Whittaker, “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

“Bad news?” she repeated inquiringly. She couldn’t imagine any trouble Jeremy could be in.

“Mrs. Kohle, I’m afraid we’ve—lost Jeremy.”

“Lost him? Why, what do you mean?”

“I’m so sorry…. There’s no other way to tell you this. Jeremy committed suicide this morning.”

Lily dropped the phone and sat for a moment in stunned silence. Then she let out an anguished, horrified shriek. The door of Harry’s study flung open and he came racing out with Valerie Kirk on his heels.

“Lily! Lily, what is it?” he cried, seizing her by the shoulders. But Lily was sobbing too hysterically to speak. When she finally recovered enough for words, all she could utter was, “No, no, no!”

“Lily, please,” Harry begged her. “Please, tell me what it is.”

“Jeremy,” she gasped at long last. “Our Jeremy is—dead!”

“Lily, what are you saying?”

“He—he’s taken his life.” She sobbed again at hearing the awful truth coming from her own lips.

“Oh my God.”

“Oh, Harry. I want to see my baby.”

It was Valerie who finally noticed the dangling phone and replaced the receiver. Later it was she who made all the necessary calls and drove Harry and Lily up to New Hampshire to bring back the body. The parents remained in shock. Neither was eating. They barely slept; they didn’t talk.

As the car rolled along the scenic highway, Lily pondered again the unanswerable question that had plagued her every waking moment ever since the dean’s fateful call: Why? What had driven her firstborn to such a point of despair? Somehow, she could not turn to Harry for comfort. He was totally wrapped up in his own grief. If she had, she might not have counted on him for much solace.

Laird Phillips was the one to shed light on the events that led up to and surrounded Jeremy’s death.

“He was just terrified of failing, Mr. Kohle. You’ve never seen anyone study the way he did. He cracked the books constantly—had no social life at all. I tried to tell him to relax a little, but he’d never listen. He felt such tremendous pressure from you.”

Harry couldn’t let him go on. “At Christmas I told him that I would be proud of him, no matter what.”

“Well, that’s not the sense he came back with after the break. He was frantic, wanted to make you proud of him. He said it was what you expected, but he also knew he just wasn’t up to it; he felt defeated from the start. Jeremy was a good student, but he had a terrible time reading. I know. I saw him go at it. He said the words got confused for him; I can’t explain it better than that. Neither could he. But he said that he would just die if he failed to live up to your expectations.” Laird broke off. He could see the Kohles were grief-stricken. Perhaps he was telling them too much.

Lily could hardly take in what this boy was saying. Why, if what he said was true, then Harry was to blame. She should never have trusted him alone with her Jeremy. After all these years, how could she expect him to change? Harry had remained as demanding of Jeremy as he’d always been. She was a fool for ever having thought otherwise.

Unable to bear the thought of it anymore, Lily burst into tears. Her sobs ended the conversation with young Phillips.

Randolph couldn’t have been more stunned by the news of Jeremy’s death. Right away his thoughts went to Lily. She had already endured so much. Knowing that neither she nor Harry was in any shape to make funeral arrangements, he took over the grim task. He also took it upon himself to notify relatives. Benjamin Kohle was the first person Randolph contacted, going in person to the Kohle town house.

They were not complete strangers, since they had met at the children’s naming ceremonies. Now Randolph’s heart went out to him as the old man sat staring blindly out the window.

Gently, he said, “Mr. Kohle, I haven’t talked to Lily and Harry yet about where Jeremy should be buried, but I know that, as a Catholic, he cannot be buried in consecrated ground because of the way he died. Do you have any wishes?”

There was an uncomfortable pause. Finally, Benjamin said huskily, “I would like Jeremy to be put to rest in the Kohle family mausoleum if Lily and Harry agree.”

“I’m sure they will,” Randolph said gently.

After Randolph had taken his leave, Benjamin once again turned his eyes bleakly to the window, but he saw nothing, his mind crowded with wrenchingly painful thoughts.

Why, oh why had he let all those years go by without seeing Harry’s children? Why had he wasted the opportunity to know them? Stubbornness and arrogance were surely a disease of the heart.

He had had twelve grandchildren, but strangely only in Jeremy had he experienced that mysterious feeling of lineage. Harry’s child—Harry was the only one of his sons made in his image—and he had thought that Jeremy, too, seemed made in his image.

He had hoped that the circle of the family, broken by Harry’s defection, would be magically repaired. So why had God dealt him this great blow?

Tears rose in the faded blue eyes. No man should live beyond his time. No man should ever have to live to bury his son, or his son’s son. It was contrary to the natural order of things … and it was almost more than he could bear.

Sitting alone in the high-ceilinged study, he wept unabashedly.

It had been impossible to keep the manner of Jeremy’s death from the press. The news reports represented sensationalism at its worst, and while none of the accounts openly speculated as to the reason for the Kohle child’s suicide, they proffered a range of possible if not probable motives for it.

Ellis had been the first to catch wind of these reports. He contacted Harry in hopes of keeping the papers—and reporters—away from Lily. Harry was enraged at the thought of such muckraking. He did his best to shelter Lily, but come the day of the funeral there was little he could do to keep her from the prying eyes of the media.

But Lily hardly noticed them, so deep was her grief. What did she know about Jeremy? She was his mother! She was the one who had brought him into the world almost seventeen years before on a wild, wet, stormy day inside a little farmhouse.

That precious baby, that sweet little boy, who had knelt with her, planting seeds in the moist black earth.

“Spit those out, Jeremy.”

“I made a picture for you, Mommy—you, me, and Daddy.”

“Don’t you want to put in your brothers and Melissa?”

“No, Mommy—just you, me, and Daddy, okay, and Drew.”

And again, she cried out in her inner soul, Where did I fail you, Jeremy? What were your last thoughts? Were you in so much pain? Why wasn’t I there to reassure you?

Only Randolph’s arm saved Lily from collapsing as the huge bronze doors of the mausoleum swung open to receive her child’s body. While she presented a stony face to the proceedings, she felt as if her heart had broken. When at last it came time to entomb her darling, when the heavy bronze doors were swung shut with an ominous clang, Lily’s knees buckled.

She had no recollection of the following hour, but somehow she found herself back at The Meadows, with crowds of mourners beginning to arrive. As a steady stream of cars rolled up to the doors, she stood in her place in the foyer, her natural breeding giving her the appearance of iron composure.

But after the guests had all moved on into the living room, she stood in the foyer for a long moment grieving.

Fragments of conversation drifted in from the other room, and there was the clink of ice in glasses as highballs were passed. She caught sight of a sumptuous buffet—arranged for, no doubt, by the efficient Valerie. Suddenly the numb feeling was replaced by a surge of bitterness. Lily turned away and mounted the stairs. She hated them for their conversation, for the occasional bursts of subdued laughter, even for their appetites for food and drink. How could they act so normal when her son was lying in a cold mausoleum, shut away from life and love and laughter forever?

She walked slowly down the hall to Jeremy’s room, entered, and shut the door behind her. Suddenly she remembered another moment, many, many years before, when she had stood in another child’s bedroom—that of her brother, Charles. She had thought merciful time had erased the agony of that memory, but now the veil had lifted and revealed it as vividly and terribly as ever.

After a long time she finally went to her own bedroom and lay down. It was Melissa who first came to check on her after the last of the mourners had driven away.

“Are you all right, Mommy?” At her age, she was little able to understand the meaning of her brother’s death.

“I’m all right,” Lily told her. She began to realize she would have to be strong for the other children’s sake. She forced herself to get up and let her daughter help her downstairs. They were at the landing when they heard raised voices. Lily ran down to the living room in time to hear Drew shout angrily, “I hate you, you son of a bitch. You drove Jeremy to this! It’s your fault. All these years, you pushed him and prodded him. And for what? Harvard, Harvard, Harvard! The place even you—brilliant, big-shot writer you—didn’t get in.”

If Lily could scarcely believe what she was hearing, Harry was stunned. Such damning words—and from his own son. At first Harry said nothing, he was so shocked by Drew’s cruel speech. Then, abruptly, anger wiped out grief. He wasn’t going to take this from anyone, let alone his own son!

“How dare you, you miserable little bastard! Who the hell do you think you are?”

Drew was angry enough to stand his ground. “What’s the matter, Father? Does the truth hurt? You killed Jeremy as surely as if you’d tied the noose around his neck and kicked the chair away.”

Harry began a harsh retort but it was Lily who ended the confrontation. She took five brisk steps toward Drew, raised her hand, and slapped him across the face as hard as she could. With tears welling in her eyes, she said, “I will not stand for that kind of talk in this house. You are never to speak to your father that way.” The tears streamed down her cheeks as she said the words. “Do you understand me?”

Not once in his life had Drew known his mother to raise a hand against one of her children. That fact made a stronger impact on him than the slap itself.

“Now I want you to apologize to your father—this instant!”

Drew knew in his heart he would never forgive his father for driving Jeremy to his death. But at the same time, he could not bear to cause his mother any more grief than she’d already suffered.

Without looking at his father, Drew muttered, “Sorry.”

Later, when the children were about to leave to return to their boarding schools, Drew took his mother aside. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “But not for what I said. I’m only sorry to have hurt you.”

Lily nodded sadly. “I know, dear. And I know how much you loved Jeremy. But you must know that your father loved him, too. He only wanted the best for your brother.” Drew said nothing, and even as she said the words, Lily couldn’t help but feel that they sounded hollow and, worse still, untrue.

For days after the children had gone, Lily nursed her grief like a strong drink. Drew’s accusations washed over her like a curse. For as much as she tried to deny it, she couldn’t shake the ever-growing conviction that Drew was right: Harry was responsible for Jeremy’s death as surely as if he’d hung him. Lily couldn’t shake the thought. After a week of living in gloomy silence with Harry, she could bear it no more. She resolved to spare him another scene like the one with Drew, but she also resolved that they should part for a while.

One evening the following week, Lily determined to broach the subject over drinks. Before she could speak, Harry said, “Lily, why don’t you talk to me? Why are you shutting me out?”

Fighting to maintain her resolve, Lily clenched her fists by her sides.

“God, Lily. Do you think I didn’t love that boy with all my heart? I would have done anything to keep him alive! Everything I ever did or said to him was for his own good!”

He bent over and pulled her to her feet. “Lily, say that you believe me!”

In a voice devoid of all emotion, she finally answered, “Harry, the only thing I know is that our son is dead. He committed suicide because he didn’t feel he could live up to what was expected of him.”

“And you blame me.” Harry let go of her, picked up his glass, and downed the rest of his Scotch.

Then, turning back to her, he asked abruptly, “When do you want to start back to the city?”

It was as though someone else had taken over and was speaking for her. “I’m not going back to the city at all, Harry.”

“What do you mean? Do you intend to stay here?”

“Harry,” she said with slow deliberation, “I’m moving back to the farm.”

Harry was dumbfounded. “The farm?” he echoed. Then, his eyes narrowing, he said, “With or without me?”

“I’m sorry, Harry.” She could hardly believe it had come to this.

Harry was quick to pick up the silent accusation in this parting. “You’re just like Drew,” he said quietly. “You think I’m responsible.”

Lily could not deny it. “I just think we need some time apart for a while. We certainly don’t seem to be doing each other any good.”

A part of Lily knew how much her decision was hurting him, but she was even more certain that if she went back to the city with him, sooner or later she would voice the terrible accusation burning within her—and that would mean the end for them. Their only hope was that a few weeks apart would soften the pain.