The Reunion (18 page)

“You.”

“Me? What about me?”

“I feel sorry for you.”

Cassandra seemed mildly intrigued. “You feel sorry for me? Now, why would you feel sorry for me?”

“Because you’re obsessed with this world. You drive a fast car, mask yourself under jewels and fine clothes, and class people in terms of wealth and power. But what good are all those things? If you die tomorrow, all your possessions and success would be meaningless. Those things eventually become so much dust, an empire of dirt. All of them combined aren’t worth one moment of human intimacy and love.”

Cassandra gazed at Ebony with renewed interest. “What else do you notice about me?”

“Your beauty.”

“What about it?”

“I think you’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen,” Ebony responded, “but there’s something missing.”

“What’s missing?”

“Your beauty is sterile, flat. There’s no life force glowing from within you. Take away your possessions, and there’s nothing left.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing but chaos.”

“You’re wrong about that, my friend, because even if you take away everything I own, I still have my fiancé.”

“He’s my fiancé, too,” Ebony unexpectedly said, jealousy in her voice. “I was engaged to him long before you two ever met. And even if I wasn’t, I still couldn’t let you take him. You would destroy him. He needs peace, not the hell on Earth you’re offering.”

“What if I promise to torture you and never give you a moment of peace until you step aside?”

“Go to hell!”

“I will have him,” Cassandra snapped, leveling a malevolent glare.

“Leave!” Ebony insisted, her patience at the breaking point.

“Excuse me,” Cassandra said, pretending to take offense. “I was just trying to be friendly.” “Get out!” Ebony hollered. “Get the hell out of my house or so help me God I’m going to throw you out!”

Cassandra was about to say something else, but being thoroughly pleased with herself, she turned to leave with a self-satisfied smirk. Suddenly she stopped cold and stepped back with a look of shock and apprehension.

“Ethan!” Cassandra exclaimed with a nervous edge in her voice. “I was just talking about you, darling.”

Ebony immediately jerked up her head and looked at Ethan with mixed feelings of intense anger and incredible relief. Ethan glared at Cassandra, brushed past her, and knelt in front of Ebony.

“What do you want?” Ebony snapped at Ethan, glancing at him as if it were painful to look upon his face.

He reached out to stroke her hair.

Ebony pushed away his hand. “Leave me alone. Go back to your fiancée.”

“Fiancée?” Ethan mumbled in obvious confusion. He quickly turned to Cassandra, his eyes burning. “What did you tell her?”

Cassandra’s body stiffened. She tried to smile, but she soon took a deep breath and stood with a blank face. “I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

Ebony looked up at her in shock.

“What did you tell her?” Ethan demanded so authoritatively that it shook Cassandra.

She shuffled to the couch with the air of a reprimanded child and reluctantly admitted, “Ethan is not my fiancé.”

Ebony snapped to attention, and her expression changed dramatically. Until that point, it had not once crossed her mind that Cassandra had been lying. At first she wondered how she could have been so trusting of the madwoman, but by degrees she soon realized that trust was not the issue. She had not trusted Cassandra at all. The real problem was that she had
mistrusted
Ethan. It wasn’t about Cassandra, and it wasn’t even about Ethan, it was all about her.

“We aren’t engaged,” Cassandra repeated as she turned to Ethan, “not yet anyway.”

“Not ever!” he shot back. Ethan glared at her, then turned to Ebony. “I don’t know what she told you, but don’t believe anything she says. I’m certainly not her fiancé, never have been, never will be.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” Cassandra objected, pouting like a spoiled child who has been denied a toy. “No one knows what will happen in the future.”

“Cassandra,” Ethan articulated slowly and irritably, “go home, and leave us alone. I’ve got nothing to offer you, and you’ve got nothing to offer me. You live your life, and I’ll live mine. Go home.”

“Come back with me, Ethan. Imagine it, the two of us running Daddy’s firm. You would be making important decisions. You would have the power and position without going through the drudgery of having to acquire it yourself. You want to be a somebody, don’t you? You want to leave your mark on the world. Come back with me. Marry me.”

Ethan lightly touched Ebony’s quivering hand.

“Oh, such a noble sentiment,” Cassandra quipped. “The proud and ambitious Ethan Harrington forgoes his own needs to come to the rescue of a poor little lamb. Are you happy with yourself, Ethan? Yes, I can see you are. But for how long? A day, a week, a year? Sooner or later, darling, you will drown in the tedium of this life. The unremarkable people, the lack of challenge, the nun you’ve returned to out of guilt. Soon enough they will all start closing in on you. You’ll feel like you’re being buried alive. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Come with me, and let me save you from all this.”

“Who would rescue him from you?” Ebony said, shaking her head.

“Ethan, please.”

“Go home, Cassandra.”

“All this time,” she stammered, smiling unnaturally, “I thought you would be mine. I cherished that dream. It’s all that kept me going. But now”—she touched her temples—“I feel faint.”

Her eyelids drooped, and she collapsed. Ethan instinctively jumped up and caught her, then lifted her curvaceous body in his powerful arms. He carried her toward the couch, and Ebony moved out of the way when, suddenly and without warning, Cassandra sprang awake and pressed her lips to Ethan’s mouth. He instantly dropped her, but like a cat, she landed on her feet without removing her lips from his. Ethan had to use a good deal of force to free himself from her grip.

“How was that?” she asked, panting wildly and staring at him with inflamed eyes. “Did you feel the fire and the passion? I ignited your blood, didn’t I? Admit it, Ethan.”

“Stop it!” he commanded, angrily wiping his lips.

“Don’t let this country bumpkin extinguish the flame within you, the flame between us.”

“Cassandra, you want only what you can’t have. And unless you change, you’ll always want me because you’ll never have me. I love only one woman. I’ve never loved any other. I can’t change that, and even if I could, I wouldn’t.”

Cassandra stared defiantly at him for several seconds. Her chest heaved, and her eyes smoldered. It seemed that rather than being perturbed by Ethan’s stern rejection, she was challenged by it. The look of determination in her eyes was unmistakable.

“Please show me to the door,” she said to Ebony, her nose thrust into the air.

“With pleasure,” Ebony returned.

At the door, out of Ethan’s view, Cassandra turned on Ebony with gritted teeth. “You little bitch,” she said with a snarl.

“Good night,” Ebony said, holding the door and gesturing for her to leave. “Don’t you ever dare set foot on my property again.”

Cassandra scowled. “I leave tomorrow,” she whispered in a harsh tone, “and Ethan will be with me.”

Ebony firmly shut the door behind her unwelcome visitor. When she returned to Ethan, she hugged him. Though Ebony felt as happy as a child, Ethan was staring into space, frowning.

“She has upset you as much as me,” Ebony said. “Where did you meet that woman?”

“In Italy. She’s the only child of my mentor, Anthony Vaccaro.”

“What is your connection to her?”

“When I met Anthony, you possessed my mind and spirit, but I was wandering aimlessly. Nothing interested me. Especially not other women. But Cassandra refused to accept that. She was accustomed to getting everything she wanted. With me it was different. I ignored her. The more I ignored her, the more exasperated she became. For her, controlling me became a mission, an obsession. She’s done everything in her power to own me.”

“What happened when you left?”

“I had to come home to you, come what may. When I left, Anthony’s health was failing, and he was angry I was going. He told me not to call him or ever speak to him again.”

“Could you live the rest of your life in Shad Bay with me? Or is she right? Would you be bored?”

“Living here with you is exactly what I want.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s after midnight. I have to go.”

“Stay,” Ebony pleaded. “You can sleep on the couch.”

He turned away from her.

“What’s wrong?”

“I love you so much,” he said strangely.

“There’s something else,” Ebony persisted, a frantic note in her voice. “You’re thinking about her offer, aren’t you? Admit it. I can see it in your eyes.”

He walked toward the door.

“You always wanted to win at everything and be successful,” Ebony taunted, grabbing him by the arm. “You haven’t changed. When you could have had me five years ago, you no longer wanted me, and you left. Then you wanted me again. Now that you’ve accomplished your goal, you’re tired of me. That’s it, isn’t it, Ethan? You only like the challenge. Once you reach the goal, you’re bored and you feel the need to try something else. Now you want to go back to Europe to regain the position you lost. It’s your character. Admit it.”

Ebony shook and trembled with indignation. Her lack of faith in Ethan had begun as an unformed thought, but the more she criticized him, the more convinced she became that he no longer wanted her. Though she was deeply hurt by this realization, she took pleasure in venting her anger. The more she raved against him, in fact, the less concerned she became with truth and reason. She merely wanted to inflict pain on the man whom she felt was deserting her for a second time.

“Get out of here!” she screamed, now beside herself with rage. “How dare you come back into my life? You weren’t happy with breaking my heart the first time, oh no. You had to come back and finish the job. Well, Ethan, it is finished. We’re finished. Forever.”

Tears formed in his eyes. “I thought things had changed between us.”

“Changed?” she said with a cynical laugh. “How have things changed? You deserted me five years ago, and now you’re doing it again. How have things changed? Tell me that.”

He stared at her as if at once feeling compassion, disappointment, and resentment.

“Say it!” Ebony yelled hysterically. “Except this time don’t leave a stupid note. Say it to my face. Say it, Ethan! Or haven’t you got the courage? Hmm? Well, I’ll say it for you. You’re betraying me again. Deny it. I dare you to deny it.”

“I really don’t know what to say. It seemed things had changed, but they haven’t. They probably never will.”

“Get out of my house!”

“I came back earlier tonight,” he said in a cracking voice, a tear rolling down his cheek, “because I wanted to ask you something. But you were gone.”

“What did you want to ask me?” she scoffed, suddenly grabbing the phone book and thrusting it at him. “You wanted to use my phone, right? To call the airport, right? Book a flight? Huh?”

“I wanted to ask you to marry me.”

The anger and resentment instantly disappeared from Ebony. She stared blankly at him.

“How could you have believed I was engaged to another woman?”

“I don’t know,” Ebony said weakly, falling back on a chair and rubbing her face with her hands. “I guess I just foolishly trusted her.”

“You didn’t trust her,” Ethan corrected. “You distrusted me. If you had the slightest faith in me, the slightest trust, you would never have believed her.”

She knew he was right, and she knew that there was a war raging within her soul, a war between love and trust. He was the only man she had ever loved, but her life had begun and had been defined by abandonment. Fear of abandonment was her Achilles heel, a weakness she might never overcome. It was truly a war, and she could not conquer it no matter how hard she tried.

“If we did get married, would I constantly be afraid of arousing your suspicions and condemnation? If I was late because of an appointment, or forgot to call, would you think the worst? If someone told a lie about me, would you believe her or your own husband? I honestly don’t know, Ebony.”

Ebony, tired and drained and weak, walked to the couch, lay down on it, and pressed her face to the pillow.

“But it all comes back to me,” Ethan said, opening the door with a distracted look. “I’m the only one to blame here. You have every right to think poorly of me. It’s all my fault.”

“Don’t leave,” she pleaded.

“I have to think. Give me time to sort this out.”

Ebony watched helplessly as Ethan closed the door behind him. Surrounded by a numbing silence, she wept. Then she locked the door, picked up the stained glass picture with a guilty expression, and laid it beside the silver chest on her kitchen counter. Ebony staggered to her room and fell onto the bed. She shivered from a chill she caught at the races, and the anxiety Cassandra caused seemed to make her condition worse. For hours she tossed and turned. Sleep came only in brief stretches, and during it she was haunted by dreams of Cassandra throwing her bouquet or Ethan shutting the door behind him.

When she awoke in the morning, she kept thinking about the importance of trust. Without it, she and Ethan had nothing. But she wanted him so badly. Ebony vowed to trust him with all her heart and soul. But was it too late? And could she truly trust him? Yes. To prove it, she phoned Jenny at eight and even though she felt awful, she suggested a picnic. The preceding night Cassandra said she was leaving the next day and taking Ethan with her. If she distrusted Ethan, she would stay home and watch his every movement. If she truly trusted him, however, she would leave for the day, assured that when she returned, Ethan would still be in Shad Bay. Jenny, surprised by the invitation, agreed to pick her up in an hour. Immediately after hanging up, the phone rang.

“Hello,” she said, trying not to betray her heightened emotional state.

“Hello, Ebony,” replied Father Thomas. “I heard Ethan did very well at the dory races.”

“Yes. Very well.”