The Legacy of Eden. Nelle Davy

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СКАЧАТЬ the potential to realize those dreams into a reality? Is that what you would call love?

      Why, you may wonder, do I not ask the same thing of my grandfather?

      Because there is a much simpler way of clearing that up.

      Two weeks passed and in that time this was what Anne-Marie learned.

      She learned that Leo had not been back to the farm since the day of the funeral.

      She learned that Cal had not refused his share and that he had continued to stay in the main house with his sister and daughter. When the suppliers had rung up, it had been he who fielded their calls, and when the farmhands came down in the evenings, they said it was he who gave them their instructions during the day. Leo stayed in a hotel on the outskirts of town and Cal began to farm Aurelia.

      Piper tried to see Leo. She was admitted into his room at the hotel. She started to tell him Cal’s side of the story. She pleaded with him to see sense and come home. They could still farm the place together, each taking a share, she insisted. It would be a family business just like their father had wanted.

      But when she next tried to call on him a week later, the man at the front desk told her he would not receive her and when she telephoned, she was told that Leo had asked not to be disturbed. She resorted to writing a letter, which she took to the post office and gave to Florence Baxter, who noted the name and address with an uncomfortable grimace. No one saw Cal outside of the farm.

      And then one evening Anne-Marie and her husband sat down to dinner. The meat was overcooked and the vegetables wilted on their forks but they ate it nonetheless. When the doorbell rang, Lou pushed his plate forward and wiped his mouth on the napkin before going to see who it was.

      She heard him before she saw him.

      When he came into the room she saw immediately that he was different. Instead of the cheap salesman suits he usually wore, he was in slacks and a blue plaid shirt. His hair was lightened by the sun and she could see the faint discoloring line on his forearms that spending time out working in the fields had given him.

      “So what can we do for you, Cal, that’s so urgent I can’t finish my supper?” asked Lou as he sat back down at the table to do precisely that.

      Cal didn’t look at Anne-Marie as he spoke.

      “I’ve come to talk to you, sir, about a matter that has been plaguing my conscience for some time now.”

      “Why would you come to me about it? I’m a doctor, not a priest,” Lou joked.

      Anne-Marie saw the ignorance of her husband draw a blank across his features as he stirred his food with his fork and she allowed herself a brief moment of irritation.

      “There’s no real easy way of saying this so I guess I should just say it,” said Cal. Lou did not look up from his plate.

      “I believe I’m in love with your wife, sir,” Cal finished.

      Anne-Marie watched as her husband’s fork paused underneath a heap of sweet corn. His jaw worked slowly as his mouth caught up with his ears.

      “Did you hear me, sir?”

      “Yes, I heard you.” Lou put down his fork and, composing his hands in his lap, stared at Cal.

      “What do you expect me to do about it?”

      Cal flicked a gaze at Anne-Marie but she gave away nothing. This had to be his fight, she decided, though she would never forgive him if he lost.

      “I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

      “Well, Cal, you come into my house, interrupt my dinner and tell me that you’re in love with my wife. I assume you’ve done all this for a reason.”

      “Yes, sir. I have. I’ve come to take her home with me, if you’ve no objection.”

      Lou stared at him, incredulous. Suddenly he laughed.

      “Cal, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t hit you. The way you talk I don’t think I could live with myself as a doctor if I hit a simpleton.”

      “I’ve been sleeping with her,” said Cal, “in the full sense of the word. It’s been going on for some time now. I have known her and been with her knowing that she was your wife. But that’s only in name, and now it’s time for her to come home with me, sir. Seeing as how she hasn’t been yours for a long time now, I cannot see how you can object to her returning to her rightful place.”

      For the first and last time in her life Anne-Marie would see a raft of emotions find life in the eyes of Lou Parks. The man who had been little more than a ghost since she’d come to live with him as his wife remembered his blood and let it course in shades of puce and purple throughout his skin. He was so still she wondered if when he finally broke his pause it would be to fly at Cal and try to kill him. She could see Cal bracing himself as he contemplated the same thing and all the while she kept herself still, wringing her napkin between her fingers under the table.

      Finally Lou turned to his wife and asked, “Is this true?”

      Anne-Marie nodded.

      “And do you want to go with him?”

      Anne-Marie paused and then nodded again.

      “Well …” said Lou and he stood up from the table, went into the living room and shut the door.

      Cal stared at where he had gone and then said quickly, “Get your things.”

      She was finished in twenty minutes. She had made a mental inventory weeks ago and made sure everything that was needed would be ready. She came down the stairs carrying her overcoat and a single suitcase.

      “Do you want to speak to him?” asked Cal.

      Anne-Marie gave him her suitcase. “I’ll see you in the car,” she said firmly.

      Cal hesitated, but she had already opened the door to the living room.

      In the car he waited for ten minutes drumming his fingers against the wheel. Eventually the front door of the house opened and in a moment she climbed in beside him.

      Without saying a word they drove home and that was when my grandmother finally stopped being Anne-Marie Parks, the local doctor’s wife, and came to be known as Lavinia Hathaway: adulterer, whore, monster … victor.

      That is where my grandfather used to finish this story. That was where everyone finished the story, but that was not the end.

      As they stopped at some traffic lights, my grandmother said very quietly but clearly, “If you ever hit me again, I’ll stab you while you sleep.”

      My grandfather nodded in answer and when the lights went green, drove on.

      5

      TODAY I PULLED OUT THE SUITCASE FROM THE top of my wardrobe and lay it open on the bed. Then I made myself a drink.

      I packed some clothes, my diary and a list of phone numbers, and went about the business of trying to organize my life for the next few weeks. I made a checklist СКАЧАТЬ