Titans (8 page)

“I suppose it will all depend on the price the place is going for and if the owner is not opposed to the family farm being converted to a ranch-to-market road,” she said. “I wouldn't want Las Tres Lomas changed in character.”

Silbia, the Mexican housekeeper who saw after the domestic management of the main house, came in to announce that
la cena
—dinner—was on the table. She prepared breakfast and supper for
el patrón
and his
hija
—daughter—but the noon meal was carted to the main house from Grizzly's kitchen unless her boss and his daughter ate with the ranch hands.

“Ah, Grizzly's fried steak,” Neal said, rising. “I hope he sent over plenty of gravy.”

A look at her father betrayed no sign of illness, just bright anticipation of enjoying a good meal, but as Samantha rose, she glanced toward the fireplace, and her heart caught. Fallen from the softly glowing embers into the grate was the burned corner of a cream-colored letter.

F
ive days after his twentieth birthday, on the tail end of a bright, crisp Wednesday, Nathan rang the doorbell of his father's town house, which was situated in an elite enclave of other distinctive homes nestled on a tributary of the Trinity River in Dallas, Texas. The cabbie who had picked him up at the train station immediately recognized the address Trevor had written on the back of the business card that Nathan showed him. “Oh, yes, that's in Turtle Creek,” he said, giving Nathan's barn jacket and faded jeans a skeptical look. “You goin' to do some work on the place?”

“My father lives there,” Nathan said.

A black maid wearing a frilly white cap and lace-fringed apron over a dark dress opened the door. It was made of ebony, lacquered to a glossy finish, and bore a shiny brass knocker. “Deliveries go to the rear door,” she said, frowning down at Nathan's knapsack at his feet.

Nathan removed his cloth cap. “I'm not a delivery boy. My name is Nathan Holloway, and I'm Mr. Waverling's son. He asked me to call on him.”

The maid's mouth opened like a gawping fish. Nathan heard the toot of several horns from the street before she spoke. “Well, I never in all my life expected to hear such a thing. Get out of here before I call the police.”

“You do that, and you'll hear from Mr. Waverling. I'll wait here until you telephone him at his office to inform him I've accepted his invitation. I imagine an establishment like this has one of those inventions.”

The maid backed away, eyes bulging, and closed the door. Nathan could hear the hard click of the lock. He put his cap back on and sat down on the front step of the round brick stoop to await the result of the maid's threat or the call to Trevor Waverling's office. Leon had advised that he write to his father to warn him of the date and time and place of his appearance.

Show up at his office, not at his home address
, Leon had said.
I didn't hear that option extended, and when you introduce yourself, say simply that you're Nathan Holloway from Gainesville, Texas, and you have an appointment with Mr. Waverling. Don't mention anything about bein' his son. That way things'll get off on the right foot with no embarrassment for anybody, 'specially for you if there should be… well, some awkwardness
. He also advised Nathan to dress in his best and only suit.
Shows respect
, he'd said.

Nathan had listened and disregarded. He was Trevor Waverling's son. If the man was ashamed of that fact or preferred to ignore it, Nathan figured that by declaring who he was up front to any who asked, he would know soon enough if Trevor Waverling was sincere in his wish to claim his son. Back entrances were not for Nathan. If his father thought him good enough to visit him at his office, he was good enough to meet him at his home before his front door dressed as he was every day with the exception of his cap.

Nathan pulled a copy of Jack London's
Son of the Wolf
out of his jacket pocket. Though rare, his idle moments were spent reading, and his spare money went for books he bought in a general store in Gainesville. He couldn't abide sitting doing nothing, like Lily could. He didn't have enough to think or dream about to fill his mind as his sister did, so he let in worlds and people and events through used copies of the classics and dime novels of detective stories and frontier tales and medieval romances he could think about during his long, solitary chores.

“Hello.”

Nathan turned his head toward the sound of the childish voice. He'd been so engrossed in the tales of the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness and the Klondike gold rush that he had not heard the approach of footsteps. At first he thought his mind was playing eerie tricks on him. A little girl's head had bloomed among the masses of blue hydrangeas in one of a pair of hedges that flanked the flight of steps, her hair ribbon the same color as the tightly compacted florets. She blinked at him, her long lashes like crescents of feathers above shy, deep brown eyes.

Nathan laid down his book, spread open to the pages he was reading. “Hello,” he said, his greeting softened with a smile. “Who are you?”

“I'm nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there's a pair of us—don't tell! They'd banish us, you know.”

Nathan slowly rose from the step. Her singsong words sounded familiar. He was sure he'd heard them before, and then he remembered. They were a verse from one of his sister's poetry books she'd read aloud to the family one evening. “I suppose you'd call me a nobody,” he said, addressing her across the hedge.

“How dreary to be somebody!” she quoted. “How public, like a frog, to tell your name the livelong day to an admiring bog!”

She was not quite right in the head, Nathan perceived immediately. Leon had mentioned that Trevor Waverling had a retarded daughter. There was something otherworldly about her gaze. She was staring straight at him but without really seeing him, and her lip twitched involuntarily as if pulled by an invisible puppet's string. He had come expecting to meet her and his grandmother, too.

“What is your name?” he asked.

The question puzzled her. “Rebecca!” she sang after a moment's struggle to remember.

He thrust his hand across the hedge. “I'm Nathan.”

Slowly, she reached across the blue haze and shook it. “Nathan… Are you nobody, too?”

“I reckon I am to those folks who think they matter,” he said.

Nathan heard an approaching
tat-tat-tat
that sounded like the strike of steel against the flagstone path that ran alongside the house, and within a few seconds out from the trellised entrance stepped an elderly woman wielding a cane. The expensive scent of a floral fragrance reached him before she spoke.

“Well, for heaven's sakes,” she said. “You did come.”

Nathan yanked off his cap. “Ma'am?”

“I'm your grandmother, Mavis Waverling,” the woman said. “There's no denying it. You've got my eyes.” She peered at him as she drew closer. “Your father's, too, of course, but there's something in yours missing in his. I see you've met Rebecca.” She placed her arm around her granddaughter's shoulders. “Rebecca, dearest, this is your… brother.” She glanced at Nathan. “Do you mind if we dispense with the half part of it?”

“Not at all,” Nathan said.

Rebecca's eyes grew round. “My… brother?”

“Yes,” Nathan said. “You're my sister.”

Rebecca turned to her grandmother. “He's nobody, too,” she said proudly. “There's a pair of us—don't tell!”

“I won't,” Mavis Waverling whispered conspiratorially into her ear.

Nathan was afraid he gawked. So this was his grandmother. She looked wafted from a flower box, perhaps one stored away in an attic yellowing and growing brittle with age but exquisite just the same. Nathan thought she must have been extremely pretty at one time. He had wondered about her, what she would look and be like, if they possessed anything in common. She was the main reason he had come. Indeed, they must be related, for they shared the same color and shape of eyes, the flesh around hers finely webbed. Beyond those features he could claim no identity to her fine bone structure and head of diaphanous white hair and a stature hardly as tall as the border of hydrangeas she stood behind. An odd sensation filled him as he realized he carried her blood. “You're… my grandmother?” he said.

“I am. We have a lot of time to make up for, don't we? Let's go inside. Your father's on the way, but we'll have a little time to get acquainted before he butts in. Come, Rebecca, darling.”

They came from around the hedge, the girl so spindly and the woman so fragile a puff of his breath could have blown them away. Yet the little girl skipped with the bounce of youth and her grandmother stepped with a will of such strength that Nathan thought he might cause offense if he offered his arm. “Is that your only luggage?” Mavis asked, poking Nathan's knapsack with her cane.

“Yes, ma'am,” he said.

“There doesn't look enough in it for a change of clothes.”

“I don't plan to stay long.”

“Really? Well, we'll see about that. You'll lodge with us, of course.”

“Oh, no, I couldn't do that, ma'am. I saw a boardinghouse on my way here.”

“Nonsense. I'll have a guest room made up for you. No grandson of mine is staying in a bedbug-infested boardinghouse. Rebecca, why don't you run and tell Lenora to report to me in the parlor and to bring us tea with plenty of sandwiches. Your brother looks hungry. Don't forget your book, Nathan.”

Deeming it pointless to argue, Nathan picked up the book and his knapsack and followed the two slight figures in their pretty pastel dresses into the house. They had made his acquaintance outside in case he proved to be too unsuitable to be invited in, he realized. He must have passed muster, but closing the ebony door behind him, he wondered what he was entering into and if it was a place from which he could easily make his escape.

I
t was the grandest house Nathan had ever seen or hoped to see, not counting the fancy residence Lily hoped to inhabit someday as the wife of a rich man. “Sit over here next to me so you'll be close to the tea trolley, Nathan, and don't be afraid to sit on the damask. Your pants are clean enough,” Mavis said, taking what appeared to be her usual spot before a softly glowing fire. “Besides, it's nice to have another male Waverling in my parlor in clothes that look to have done a day's work. Your uncle, my other son, was just such a fellow. I wish you could have known him, too. That's his picture there.” She gestured toward the mantel where a portrait of a man who looked nothing like his urbane brother was positioned facing his mother's chair. There was a handsomely framed photograph of Trevor on the other end of its marble length as well, but the one of his brother reigned over the room.

“He's… deceased?” Nathan wondered if there was a picture of her husband anywhere around—his grandfather.

“Three years ago,” Mavis said. “Mystery surrounds his death to this very day, but that's a story for another private moment.” A large tabby jumped down from an embroidered seat on another chair and went immediately to hop onto Nathan's lap. “Well, well,” Mavis said. “First Rebecca, now Scat seems to have taken to you, and they're not bad judges of character, either. Get down, Scat, before I take my cane to you.”

The cat looked at her, yawned, and curled up in the nest of Nathan's cap before he could put it in his pocket. Nathan chuckled. “I don't mind. He's nice and warm. I'm sorry about your son. Were he and… my father your only ones?”

“My only ones. No daughters. Believe me, I am sorry my boy's gone, too. Jordan, his name was. Rebecca worshipped him. Jordan introduced her to poetry. It was a great love of his, and the reason Rebecca parrots it so. He read to her every night from his books of poems. Ah, here's Lenora with the tea tray. Lenora, this is my grandson, Nathan. He'll be staying with us awhile. Will you make up the blue room for him, please?”

“How'd do,” Lenora said, her little curtsy accompanied by a sharp look of doubt that Nathan was who he claimed to be and a warning that he better watch himself. He acknowledged her meaning with a nod and small lift of his shoulders to convey that the invitation was not his idea.

“I'll try to be no trouble,” he said.

“Be all the trouble you like,” Mavis said. “You can tell a lot about a person by the trouble he causes. Lenora, take Scat to the kitchen so the boy can eat his sandwiches in peace, and keep Rebecca with you for a while so Nathan and I can talk. Nathan, heap your plate. I'll pour the tea. How do you like it?”

“Just plain will do, thank you,” Nathan said, for politeness' sake, taking only two of the miniature-sized sandwiches. He was wolfishly hungry. His last meal had been supper yesterday. He'd not taken time for breakfast after he milked Daisy in order to catch the 7:30 train to Dallas. Leon had seen him off at the station and slipped him a dollar.

For breakfast
, he'd said.
Get yourself some eggs and bacon at a stop along the way. It'll be a long, hungry ride to Dallas.
But, not knowing what he'd run into in the city, Nathan had saved the money to add to his meager store of cash, safely tucked into the tops of his socks.

Mavis handed Nathan his tea while adding more sandwiches to his plate. He sensed she could read and understand boys. He figured she was a good mother to her sons, though she didn't seem to like her surviving one very much.

“Let me tell you a little something about Rebecca,” Mavis said. “Did Trevor mention his daughter to you?”

“Briefly to my stepfather,” Nathan said.

“That figures. She's his daughter by his first wife. Because of Rebecca, the second one was afraid to bear him any more children. I took my granddaughter into my home to raise after Trevor's first divorce. Trevor lives here, too, but it's my house, like everything else, but I sidetrack.” Mavis flicked away the digression with her pale, thin fingers. “The child is keenly intelligent, but her mind is manacled by some kind of nerve disorder. Doctors tell us her mental development will probably never mature beyond the age of eight or nine and she'll always be a little girl. As you noticed, her verbal skills are severely limited, but she can parrot anything she hears or reads back to you, and she can comprehend and write reasonably well for someone of her arrested mental growth.”

“I would think it would take a good mind to fit the lines of a poem to a situation,” Nathan said.

“One would think.”

There was the sound of the front door opening and closing quickly, strong, rapid footsteps in the foyer, and the bustle of Lenora hurrying to intercept the caller. “Oh, Mr. Waverling, I was expecting Benjy to bring you to the back!” the maid cried, her frantic greeting pierced by a squeal of “
Daddeee!
” and the rush of small feet down the hall.

“Not now, Rebecca!” came the sharp rebuke. “Take her back to where she was, Lenora. I'll speak to her later.”

“Yes, Mr. Waverling.”

“Behold the arrival of my second son and father emeritus,” Mavis said, her voice dry as a dead twig.

The double doors to the parlor flew open. “Nathan! What a surprise!” Trevor Waverling cried, striding forth to offer his hand. Nathan rose to take it, perceiving in his father's hale and hearty manner a clear attempt to hide his irritation at finding his son in his parlor. Where was the paternal enthusiasm he'd displayed at the farm? “I thought you understood you were to come to my office if you decided to accept my invitation.”

“I decided to come here,” Nathan said.

“And thank his good sense that he did,” Mavis said. “We've been getting acquainted, a pleasure I may have been denied if he'd gone to your office, Trevor.”

“Oh, well, I… yes… I see you've met your grandmother and… Rebecca?”

“He's met your daughter, Trevor,” Mavis said.

“Then you see that we have an… interesting household. Where are you staying?”

“Here,” said Mavis emphatically. “Your son is staying here in the blue room, until Nathan decides he can't abide us.”

Trevor looked at his mother blankly. “Here?”

Nathan put up his hands. “Look,” he said, embarrassed. He could feel his face turning red. “I came only for the day, actually, with no intention of staying. I planned to take the train back tonight after I visited your place of business and met my… grandmother and sister, so please don't go to the bother of putting me up.”

“To look us over, in other words,” Mavis said. “Very smart, but you can't do all that in one day, Nathan, and it's no bother to put you up.”

“I agree to both,” Trevor said, his composure restored. “Tomorrow morning is early enough for you to leave us if you feel you must get back. I've come to take you to the plant, and we'll lunch downtown, so don't expect us, Mother,” he said, his tone rejecting any notion Mavis might have to the contrary.

“But I will expect you for supper, Trevor,” Mavis said, her look forbidding any idea he might have otherwise.

“Come, Nathan,” Trevor said. “Let your father show you the family business with the hope you'll see you didn't make the trip for nothing.”

Nathan turned to his grandmother to thank her for her hospitality, his eye falling uncertainly upon his knapsack. “Leave it, Nathan,” Mavis said. “It will be in your room waiting for you when you return.”

Nathan drew on his cap. “Until then,” he said, giving her a smile. “I really enjoyed the tea. The sandwiches hit the spot.”

“If nothing else, the food is good here,” Mavis said.

“Oh, Mother…” Trevor sighed resignedly. “Come on, Nathan.”

Nathan followed the broad-shouldered figure of his father in his perfectly fitting suit out of the room. Glancing back at Mavis, he saw a look of yearning upon her porcelain fine face, but for who—for what? A pang of sympathy for her made him reluctant to leave. There was deep animosity in this house, he thought, but love, too—like two tigers circling in a cage. Which one would eat the other? Which one would win out? And why did he suddenly care?