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  He studied me again, then his eyes lit up with recognition. “Of course, how could I forget?” he said, bowing slightly. “Do you still ride around on that magnificent horse?”

  “No, my Sandy took ill and had to be put to death. I haven’t had much interest in replacing him.”

  “Ah, that’s too bad,” he said, then looked at Charles. “So now I find this pretty little dark-haired woman on the arm of my own brother.…” His eyes drifted off.

  “Will you be staying long?” I asked him.

  “No, Charles here can tell you I hate dust storms and dry weather. I soon get a bad case of parched lips,” he ended, looking back at me. I opened my fan in front of my breast and fluttered it slightly.

  “Well, we’d better be going,” said Charles, who appeared to see the evening at an end.

  “Stay around, the party hasn’t even begun,” said Damon as he looped his arms around the waists of the two women nearest him, young sultry types, neither of whom I recognized as residents of Grady.

  “Oh, I’m quite sure of that,” said Charles, “but I have clients to see in the morning, and they wouldn’t be too happy about paying a lawyer’s fee for a fuzzy head. Good night.”

  Oh, how Charles Becker paled beside his brother.

  I couldn’t sleep that night, nor for many nights after, thinking of Damon, and—despite Betsey’s opinion that I was crazed to dangle a man like Charles Becker from a string around the end of my finger, and my mother’s oft-expressed wish that I’d settle down before her death, for she knew she would not get over the disease that confined her to bed—how he excited me in a way Charles never could.

  Though I knew I ought to quit seeing Charles out of fairness to him and because his slight physical resemblance served only to rekindle my imagined place in Damon’s arms, I couldn’t let Charles go because if I did I’d have no way of learning about Damon’s infrequent visits … might never see him again.

  He did come home once more, at a time when my future in Grady loomed hopelessly lonesome, yet I was still unable to bring myself to take the obvious step and marry Charles. It had been about two years since my mother’s death and a little longer since I’d seen Damon for the second time. In truth I was strongly considering going away alone for a while. I had a little money—enough to get me by so I could do some thinking—and maybe I could find another place to live, meet new people who didn’t know my twenty-sixth birthday would soon be coming and wouldn’t care if they did know. Oh, the small-town tongue-trilling of Grady was getting to me as it must have gotten to Damon himself.

  Charles told me two weeks in advance of Damon’s visit.

  “It’ll be nice to see him again,” I said, trying to conceal my elation at the news, which to my confused mind was like a lantern flashing in the night. “And I suppose they’ll be having a soiree in his honor?” I ventured.

  “I suppose,” said Charles, as though the matter bored him.

  “Although his taste in entertainment may differ from yours, it’s well to remember he doesn’t come home often, and after all, he is your brother.”

  Charles smiled. “I guess you’re right, although I have a suspicion it might just be you’ve a mind that favors parties.”

  I merely smiled back in reply.

  I didn’t bother with a new party dress for Damon’s homecoming this time, but instead bought a horse—a brown gelding not nearly so fine as Sandy, though he’d serve my purpose well enough—and took up riding again.

  On the night after Damon’s arrival the inevitable party was held by his friends, and I sat outside Charles’s office awaiting him to finish some business for a client. For an hour and a half I heard the sound of lively music through the open window. The party was going on not far away.

  Once Charles opened his door and looked out. “You don’t have to wait if you’d rather not, Claire. Go on and I’ll join you there,” he said.

  I almost agreed, then thought of the danger of giving my feelings away too soon, and said, “Take your time, Charles. I’ll be fine.”

  When at last we took the short walk to where the big hall stood, its windows lit up, doors opened wide, and its floor dusty from the strut of frolicking people, Charles said, “Slow down, Claire. What’s the hurry?”

  “I’m tired of waiting for you, that’s what,” I told him.

  “Well, forgive me for keeping you. Since you didn’t get fitted out in a new dress, I figured maybe you weren’t any more anxious than I was to go tonight.”

  “There’s no point in going at all if we’re going to miss most of it, is there?” I said tartly. Though I wouldn’t tell Charles, it was not strictly the waiting that had me on edge. I’d been wondering all that day whether Damon Becker could possibly live up to the man I remembered, or if I’d allowed myself to dream him into someone so awesomely desirable that my seeing him again, in the flesh, could only lead to disappointment.…

  It wasn’t to be. He was if anything more magnificent than before, his face roughened by the salty air, his red beard fuller, his eyes stunning and grown more alert by his experiences with the tricky nature of the oceans he sailed.

  “You remember Claire Haines,” said Charles, tapping his big shoulder.

  He turned around to face us, and at once I knew he didn’t remember me at all. “Of course,” he said, his eyes searching. “Charles always has had uncanny good luck in finding the town’s most beautiful women, eh Charles?” He took my fingers in his warm, rough hand and lifted them to his lips. His beard tickled them and and sent a shiver from the base of my spine to my cheeks.

  I knew I must make him remember. “I’ve taken up riding again,” I said, “though my horse is not nearly as fine as the palomino I once owned.”

  Something registered in his eyes.

  “I find the same paths around the thicket as good as ever, but nowadays I’m more wary of dangers that might lie ahead.”

  “Is that so?” he said. “Yes, riding is good sport around Grady, especially on long afternoons.”

  I nodded and looked deep into his eyes. More than words had passed between us.

  The next afternoon I rode the horse I hadn’t bothered to name and wouldn’t keep for long down the paths near the thicket, and soon I spotted Damon across the field. He waved with one black-gloved hand and motioned for me to join him. I went slowly as he had come to me the first time we met. “It’s blasted hot today, for this time of year,” he said as I drew up. “Would you like to rest in the shade?”

  He handed me down from my gelding, the breeze stirring his auburn hair, a mischievous smile across his face. The fleeting thought strayed across my mind that the hands locked around my ribs could just as well crush them with a simple change in mood. He pointed toward a broad-trunked oak and, sitting down beside me, told me he had already had as much as he could countenance of dry land—his ship had pulled in better than a month ago—and would soon be off to sea once again. This confession of his dictated my movements from the moment it rustled the quiet air around us.

  I leaned across him to pick up an autumn leaf, one of thousands fallen from the tree. He sensed my design in doing this and lightly fingered my hair. Now, Damon was not a man inclined to go less than all the way in any pursuit, so he took my face between the black-gloved hands and studied it for a moment, then kissed me, lightly at first as the way he had touched my hair, then harder and harder still, and then his arms went around me and I felt along my back the motion of the black gloves being removed.

  A thrill of fear rose up inside me but I was powerless to stop the hand that now made its way with ease into my blouse and around my breast, and the force of the body that laid me down upon a nest of newly fallen leaves and arched itself above me.…

  When it was over I knew I had been won by Damon Becker, and, knowing too, of his fickle nature, asked quickly, “How soon did you mean to leave?”

  He was not one for commitments of even the shortest span. “I’ll meet you tomorrow again, here,” he said, and mounted th
e horse and rode away. I brushed the autumn leaves from my skirt and buttoned up my blouse. I wanted to shout with joy and cry with relief and cover my face with shame, all at once. But I mounted my horse and rode from the thicket thinking of nothing further away than tomorrow.…

  We had twelve tomorrows, each at the same place, and I had never felt so fulfilled, so happy or blessed, so sure the future would hold nothing but lovely joyful things and beautiful, faraway places and days and nights of bliss; oh yes, I had begun to hope I was in Damon’s eyes different from the other women he’d known.

  But then on the thirteenth day he did not come.

  I waited an hour or two before riding back to town, thinking maybe something kept him from coming, some simple explanation for his leaving me to wait, and all I found, when I returned home, was Charles’s buggy out front and him waiting on my porch to see if I’d like to go on a picnic.

  “I had a special basket packed for us at the hotel cafe,” he said. “Everything’s here we need. All you have to do is board the wagon.”

  “Where is Damon?” I asked dazedly.

  He looked at me in puzzlement. “Why, Damon left town early this morning; you know him, gone off to sea again, I think to Spain, though he promised to write, not that I count on letters from him. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing. Picnic, you said? Sure. Why not?”

  I waited four days, to see if a message would come to me from Damon, and when none did I made up my mind. I called at Charles’s office and right there, amidst the clutter and stuffiness, said, “Let’s not wait any longer to get married. I’m willing to go ahead right away, that is, if you still want me.”

  He came around the desk, his face alive with bewildered happiness, and took me in his arms. “I have to travel for the next couple of weeks on business,” he said. “When I get back, we’ll call the preacher and set the date.”

  And so, within six weeks of my first and last taste of the sweetness of satisfied desire, I watched Charles Becker gently slip a wedding band on my finger and spent the night locked in his arms, pretending. The sensation of pleasure that had been mine when I thought of marriage to Charles as a way to get back at Damon Becker was lost that night, and only a dull sense of hopelessness remained at the pit of my stomach and in all the open chambers of my heart.

  Within another six weeks I found, for certain, I was expecting a child, yet could not be certain whose child it was to be until I went to see a new doctor in town. Charles insisted I see Dr. Hardy, who had treated both of us for almost everything we’d ever had, but I insisted on having my way. When the new doctor confirmed the pregnancy took place during the days I secretly hoped—the days with Damon Becker—I went to see Helga Reinschmidt. She’d been my mother’s housekeeper and companion for the last ten years of her lifetime, and after my mother’s death, had taken a job with another family in Grady. I told her she had to come to work for me and why.

  Helga had loved my mother and she loved me, but was not one to show outward sympathy or affection under any circumstances. She listened to my story with a concentrated frown, then drew up her tall, gaunt figure and said, “So I’ll come. There’s hardly a choice. When the baby arrives we’ll say it’s early, that I know from experience, and in the meantime you should do a lot of walking to keep the baby small, do you hear? I don’t care what anyone says, I know what I’m talking about.

  “You’re a silly girl,” she added without so much as the hint of a smile to soften her hawkish face, “but you probably had the one taste of happiness you’ll ever get and I’d do anything to save a scandal that might reflect back on your dear dead mother. Now get on. I’ll make my settlement with these people and move within the week.”

  Charles was so happy at the prospect of a baby, he would have agreed to anything I asked (although he’d always disliked Helga Reinschmidt’s stony personality), and surely I deserved at least to have my choice of midwives at my side. And when Damon came home, in his time, I thought, I would tell him the whole truth and he would take me away from Grady, from Charles, far away, and it would not matter what anyone thought about it.

  We never had a letter from Damon beyond the first one he sent to Charles, saying he was bound for Spain, and within five months after the marriage between Charles and me we’d received word that Damon’s ship had been caught by a storm and he was no more.

  Now Charles cried and was in need of consoling, but even then I couldn’t reach out to him, not when I hurt so much inside. The only thing that kept me going, got me over the loss of Damon, was the certainty I carried his child. I would, I knew, lavish all the love and affection on that child there was within me to give, and I told myself had Damon known the truth in time, he would have rushed back to me without a moment’s hesitation. I had his child within me, how lucky, how lucky! I was to hold the only part of him left to the world and carry the knowledge to my grave.

  My time came. Helga was there. Charles paced nervously and Betsey ran between the room where I lay and the room where Charles paced nervously, concerned into a frenzy Helga would not do things right, and convinced he should have insisted I stay in the care of the doctor, most preferably, the doctor he wanted me to have.

  “A son,” said Helga finally. And added, when Charles entered the room, “The lad’s a mite early, say a month, month and a half—you can see how small he is. We’ll have to take extra care of him to get him strong.”

  And Charles, teary-eyed, came to my bedside and held my hand and thanked me and thanked God above, and said, “Can we give him my name, Claire?”

  I was a little surprised Charles had not thought of naming the child Damon, in view of his brother’s recent death, yet I had no need to argue, had I? I’d received everything in the world I wanted. A healthy child and part of Damon that couldn’t be taken away no matter how fickle-minded the man I loved might have been. “If that’s what you want,” I said, and kissed his forehead.

  For four months I knew a happiness that encompassed the world and knew no limits beyond it. My son took the milk from my breast like the sweet nectar of the gods, and grew and thrived in the surroundings of so much love, and I gave no thought to the warnings of Betsey I’d soon have him spoiled deplorably, or the glances by Helga that said I’d best pay a little mind to Charles, who seemed delighted by the son he thought his, yet almost awestruck at my possessiveness of him.

  And then one day my baby died in his sleep, his crib not two feet from my side of our bed. There was no help for it. Three doctors said so. Some babies just didn’t make it, no one knew why, and Helga, her face pinched with grief, said, “The lad was early, you know, and probably didn’t get the start he needed. I’ve seen it happen before.”

  I was far too overcome by my own grief to worry about what Charles might be feeling and I remember only one statement he made to me, after the burial was done and we returned from the cemetery. “God help me, I didn’t know life could hold such sadness,” he said, almost in a whisper. “First Damon and now our son.”

  You haven’t lost a son, I thought, then looked at him quickly to be sure I hadn’t said it aloud.

  Chapter 3

  Charles did not know how close he’d come to losing me in those weeks following my son’s death, how many times I’d opened my mouth to say, “Go to Galveston alone, I want no part of it or you,” then shut it just in time, and smiled instead like a pliant woman willing to be led wherever her husband wanted to take her.

  Had he wanted to, he might have seen that nothing tied me to him except a sense of duty; instead he spent our first few weeks in Galveston trying to please me, believing he could help me overcome my grief as he was overcoming his. The house at 707 Avenue L, he thought, would be perfect for improving my state of mind, and he described it one day, drawing a map. “Here’s the island—shaped kind of like a long thumb—the port up on the north side, the beach on the south, and Broadway crossing it from west to east at a slight downward angle. L runs parallel with Broadway, two blocks south. The house is about
six blocks from where the avenue veers off to the beach. The Gulf breeze hits it crosswise—perfect for circulation.

  “It’s a white two-story, with three pointed gables above, french doors in the center and a big, railed verandah. The roof’s deep red and the latticework and shutters and doors are dark green. It’ll be even more beautiful after you’ve planted a garden. Oh yes, and there’s a small barn out back where we could keep a horse and rig.”

  I’d nodded disinterestedly, so he’d continued, “And we have a view of the Gulf of Mexico from the top of the roof—you should see it!” Then he paused and added, “Now, if you’re afraid it isn’t safe, don’t worry. The whole area was developed after the storm of ’75, and the stilts underneath the houses are better than eight feet tall—higher than the water got at any point on the island.”

  I’d said all right and he’d bought it.

  Getting me acquainted with our new neighbors was another of his gestures designed to bring me happiness, so he was anxious that I overlook the queer ways of Janet Garret once her husband explained them, and urged me, the morning after Rubin’s first visit, to call on her.

  “I notice the shutters are open,” he said.

  “All right, I’ll give it a try,” I told him.

  Earlier that morning I’d watched as two men planted six oleander bushes, three on either side of the steps leading up to her porch. The top of each bush brushed the edge of the porch floor. When I went to pay my call about four o’clock, she was out on her front walk, sketching one of the lush pink blossoms that still clung among the leaves.

  “Hello, Mrs. Becker, and how are you today?” she asked, without looking around. Thus was I to learn of her eerie sixth sense. It served her well, most of the time.

  “Fine, thank you. Mind if I sit here on the stairs?”

  “If you like,” she said, her attention still fixed on the canvas before her.

  I cleared my throat and waited as a subject awaits a word from her king.

  Finally she said, “This is my first time to paint an oleander. Do you like flowers?”