Emilie Richards – Fox River (страница 21)

I was to fade carefully into the background, making certain that my husband shone brightest in every setting. I was, in short, to become a more accomplished version of my mother.

I am certain I loved Mama. As colorless, as remote as she seemed, sometimes I glimpsed the woman beneath. I remember a cool hand on my feverish forehead, secret cups of hot chocolate when I’d undergone a disappointment, the flash of pride in her smile when I bested my brothers at some childish endeavor.

I am certain I loved her, but at that moment I couldn’t remember why. I was stunned she understood so little about me.

Annabelle Jones, a distant cousin on Mama’s side, was from a family several generations more advanced in society than our own. Her paternal grandfather, a Union officer from a New York family, had survived the War Between the States at a desk in New Orleans, where he busied himself performing clandestine favors for local businessmen. With an eye for the main chance, Colonel Jones had endeavored to make the wartime lives of those prominent New Orleanians as comfortable as possible. The fact that this sometimes involved smuggling and outright theft hadn’t troubled him.

After Appomattox the colonel had gone on to use his connections to establish himself as a cotton exporter and, later, as an officer of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Now, despite their Yankee origins, the greater Jones family moved among the cream of Louisiana society, as well as that of other Southern cities. Josiah Jones, the Colonel’s youngest son and Annie’s father, had settled in Virginia to indulge his love of country life and horses.

Annie was a grave disappointment to her family. Vivacious and intelligent, she was also, sadly, not a pretty woman. She was as tall as a man, with broad shoulders and hands, and a lack of physical grace that arose from trying to fit herself into a world made for smaller women. Annie’s face was long, and her lovely brown eyes were shaded by unfeminine black eyebrows. I’d seen first-hand the effect she had on eligible men. Each suitor carefully weighed the humiliation of being married to a homely woman against the enticement of her name and influence. As of yet, no one had found the latter to be enticing enough.

Annie was my closest friend. Never, and I can say this without reservation, did I love her because of the benefits our friendship might hold. Certainly I was young and self-centered, but never calculating. I loved Annie for her wit, her insights, her deeply rooted loyalty. I sensed, even as a child, that Annie would never hurt me.

On the morning that Annie and her parents ended their visit to New York and came to take me and my considerable wardrobe to the train station, I said goodbye to the stuffy, cheerless home of my childhood. My mother remained in the doorway as we pulled away from the curb in an autotaxi. She didn’t wave, but she held a handkerchief to her lips, as if to block some latent protest. My last memory was of her tiny, dark-clad figure leaning against a pillar, the heavily draped windows of our house like eyelids squeezed tightly shut.

“You won’t be sorry you came,” Annie promised, taking my gloved hand in her own, as if she was afraid I already might be homesick. “We’ll have such fun, Weezy. I promise we will.”

“You’ll have to stop calling me Weezy,” I told her. “Or I won’t have any fun at all.”

Annie had a wonderful, unfettered laugh, a laugh that frightened men as much as her extraordinary height and masculine shoulders. I smiled at the sound of it and clasped her hand harder. I was absolutely certain that the best part of my life was about to unfold.

I remember, oh, I remember so very well, that ecstatic conviction that everything I’d ever dreamed of was finally within my reach.

9

An unfamiliar guard came for Christian just after breakfast. He had already eaten the requisite ounces of scrambled eggs and grits and a biscuit that was harder than Milk Bones. His second cup of coffee had been stronger than dishwater, and for once, more palatable. He hoped this was an omen for the day ahead.

“Carver…” The guard, a thin, furtive-looking man, jerked his head toward the door. “Warden wants to see you.”

Since Peter and Mel’s visit yesterday, Christian had thought of little besides the possibility of acquittal. Now, to his chagrin, his heart jumped in his chest, and not because the coffee had more than a wisp of caffeine in it.

He buttoned his work shirt as he walked half a step in front of the guard through the maze of corridors and checkpoints, making sure not to crowd the man or make him nervous. Prison life was a compromise between pride and common sense. A man gave up the parts of himself that didn’t really matter and held on to everything else he could. Long ago Christian had given up trying to prove his manhood with the guards.

Last night he’d dreamed he was mounted on a massive white stallion that lifted him over the prison walls like Pegasus floating on air currents.

The warden’s office was large and comfortable, a vivid contrast to the rest of the prison. One wall was lined with diplomas and books on psychology, law and enlightened penal systems. Christian and the guard waited in the doorway to be recognized.

At last the warden, an overweight man in his fifties, nodded to the guard. “You go on. I’ll call somebody to take him back once we’re finished here. Mr. Carver, come have a seat.”

Christian was neither fooled nor encouraged by the warden’s pleasant tone. His dealings with Warden Phil Sampsen had been mercifully brief and for the most part cordial. As long as the Pets and Prisoners program garnered positive publicity for Ludwell, Christian had little to fear. But the warden was a capricious as well as political man, filled with petty dislikes and an overblown sense of his own importance. He believed himself to be particularly insightful about the motivations of the men at Ludwell. He relished playing God with their lives and did so with alarming frequency.

“You had time for breakfast?” The warden was paging through a document on his desk and didn’t look up as Christian took a seat.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Good.” The warden flipped another page.

Christian knew better than to ask why he’d been summoned. He would find out when it suited the warden.

The warden scanned and flipped in silence. Christian was careful not to fidget. Finally the warden looked up, removing wire-rimmed reading glasses and setting them beside the pile of papers. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, which, like everything about him, was a little too large, a little too prominent.

“I know what’s going on with your case, Carver. I was just looking over your file.”

Christian assumed Sampsen was talking about Karl Zandoff’s confession. He wondered if the jewelry had been found. He tried not to show his impatience. “Yes, sir.”

“Looks to me like you’ve enjoyed the full benefits of the law, young man. Would you say so?”

Christian would not say so. Had he enjoyed the full benefits of the law, he wouldn’t have been brought to trial. By now he would be married to Julia Ashbourne, perhaps even be a father. Together he and Julia would be breeding and raising the best damned hunters in America.

The warden filled the silence. “Maybe you don’t think so.”

“I’ve had a good attorney. I’ve had help on the outside.”

“That would be Peter Claymore, of Claymore Park?”

Christian nodded.

“And Karl Zandoff? Have you had help from him?”

For a moment Christian didn’t know what to say. The warden’s question seemed to have come entirely out of left field. “I don’t know Zandoff, sir. I don’t know anything more about him than what I’ve read in the newspapers.”

“Well, he claims he worked in Virginia about the time Miss Sutherland was murdered. Claims he worked right down the road from her house. As I recall, you worked down the road, too, didn’t you?”

Christian phrased his answer carefully. “I grew up at Claymore Park. We get a lot of drifters in the horse business. Most jobs don’t pay that well. Men leave after a few months and move on.”

“He claims he was working construction. You had construction going on at Claymore Park about then?”

“Peter Claymore’s stables are the finest in Virginia. He’s always improving on perfection.”

“Then maybe Zandoff was one of the men working for Claymore.”

“Men come and go in construction, too. If he was there, I don’t remember him.”

“Now, I’m just wondering, son, if that’s really true.” The warden made a tent with stubby, nicotine-stained fingers. “I’m wondering if there’s something you’ve been wanting to get off your chest all these years.”

Christian didn’t think the warden was fishing for a critique of prison policy. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”

“Your family life wasn’t exactly the best, was it now?”

Christian wondered about the file on the desk in front of the warden. He kept to the basics. “My mother died when I was six. My father died when I was twelve. Peter Claymore took me in after that.”

“He’s been like a father to you? Would you say?”

“He’s been kinder than he needed to be.”