Down from the Mountain. Barbara Gale

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СКАЧАТЬ it, more than one, but he refused—the only thing he ever refused me. I even tried to call you myself, one morning, but he walked in while I was dialing and became absolutely livid. He insisted I hang up, and swore me to secrecy right then and there. He certainly knew how to tie up loose ends, though, and I guess I was one of them. I just wish he’d asked me what I wanted. He could be a little autocratic at times.”

      “A little?” David snorted as he rose to his feet. “Now there’s an understatement!”

      Ellen took a deep breath, courage fighting with her instinct to run. Courage won out, but the cost was high. John Hartwell’s high-handedness, coupled with David’s resentment, was upsetting. The way Harry Gold had kept apologizing to David had really begun to grate! Hey, what about her? she’d wanted to shout. Didn’t she rate the same consideration? What on earth was so special about David Hartwell, that everyone should feel sorry for him? After all, she was the one who was going to undergo surgery! If anyone should complain…

      She stopped short, shocked by her display of self-pity. If she didn’t watch out, she was going to begin to sound like an off-key singer in a honky-tonk bar. Still, David Hartwell was so bitter, Ellen had to wonder, and not for the first time, exactly what had happened to him. It was awful, that much she knew, but only because of certain allusions John Hartwell had made about David, not because of anything specific John had told her. When pressed, John had always blown her off, and now, here David was, raising the same red flag to any and all trespassers who dared to cross the same line his own father had so carefully drawn. It was enormously irritating.

      “You know, John hasn’t asked you to do all that much, just help me out for a couple of months. Does my blindness make you uncomfortable? People sometimes do have that reaction. Being handicapped is not a popular venue.”

      David’s silence was awful.

      “Yes, well, perhaps we need a break,” she decided, fiddling nervously with her cane. “I know we have an important decision to make, but this whole thing has been a big surprise to both of us. I know I certainly need time to sort things out. John was very good to me, but this… I need to try and figure out what he meant.”

      “The answer may be in this envelope,” David said, forcing himself to speak as Ellen rose to her feet.

      “I’m sure it is,” she agreed with a tight smile, “but you must read it first, alone. It’s what John wanted, or it would have had both our names on the envelope.”

      A curious brooding filled David’s heart as he watched her escape to the safety of her rooms. How much had she known? How hard had Harry Gold really fought this will? How much had John laughed? He hardly knew what he was doing as he opened his father’s letter.

      Greetings, my son, from your dying father,

      Now, I ask you, how’s that for an opening? I trust it got your attention, something I wasn’t very good at doing in real life. My truest regret is that we won’t have time to make our peace—we would have, you know. I believe that with all my heart—because if you’re reading this, then the worst has happened—but you’ve come home.

      The car accident you suffered as a boy left a void you never allowed me to fill. Well, I am going to fill it now. However you have rewritten history is the quarrel of a young child, but suffice it to say—to the wounded man that poor, scarred boy has become—I leave my most valued possession. You’re the only one to whom I can entrust the well-being of Ellen Candler. She needs you, although she would never admit to it and I know you will protect her with your life. In return, she will give you back yours. I only wish I could be there to enjoy the fireworks.

      Your loving father,

       John

      David stared down at the letter crumpled in his fist. Got me! Just as he knew he would. He closed his eyes and massaged his brow, fighting the onslaught of a headache. This was no time for a headache, not when he needed his wits about him—for Ellen’s sake, if nothing else. Even if it was she who had unwittingly opened the old wounds of that poor, scarred schoolboy! Wounded man! Let’s not forget that part! But hey, he could be forgiven a lot of sins for what happened one night, twenty long years ago! And the personal cost to him—well, hell, only his damned face—and all semblance of normal life! And if anybody doubted that, they just had to watch people gawk when he walked down the street, or went to a museum, or entered a restaurant, or…or looked in a goddamned mirror and saw what he saw every goddamned day of his tormented life!

      Two million dollars and a blind girl!

      Fireworks? David shook his head sadly. More like murder in the first degree—and who’d be holding the smoking gun was anybody’s guess.

      Ellen kept to her room that afternoon, perhaps unable to summon the energy to go another round with him. Relieved by her disappearance, David decided to hike the three miles to the summit of the mountain. If he stayed in that mausoleum one minute longer, he thought he would go crazy. It made his skin crawl. Too many memories haunted the place. Every turn he made, he expected to see his father and every room he entered, he looked for his mother, his beautiful mother, always ready to laugh, always ready to stop what she was doing and gather him up in her soft, perfumed arms. Almost as if she had known their time together would be short. Sometimes he thought that when she’d died, she’d taken his laughter with her. His father’s, too. Laughter, perfume, hugs and kisses—all the soft, sweet things in life that her two grieving menfolk never managed to make up for.

      It was dark, nine-thirty, when he finally returned to the house. The housekeeper met him at the door.

      “Miss Ellen asked me to tell you that she had a headache and would see you in the morning. She took a dinner tray in her room. I thought you would like the same.”

      David’s windblown hair almost hid his scars, but they couldn’t disguise the tired lines that pulled his mouth taut. Still, he managed a faint smile. “Dinner and a headache? Sounds fine to me.”

      Hurrying upstairs, he paused by Ellen’s door and almost knocked, but a glance down at his stained jeans and muddy work boots changed his mind. When he finished showering, his dinner tray was waiting in his room, the aroma of beef stew and freshly baked rolls reminding him how hungry he was. He was so famished, he ate in his bath towel, downed the entire jug of iced tea and practically licked the dessert plate clean. Feeling more human, he threw on a pair of cutoffs and made his way down the hall to Ellen’s bedroom. He knocked lightly, but when there was no answer, he turned the knob.

      The room was dark but a sliver of moonlight let him see exactly where everything was, including Ellen. Huddled beneath a silvery sheet, she was sound asleep. Her red hair curling around her delicate face, a hand tucked beneath her cheek, she was a vision he thought existed only in fairy tales. Annoyed with himself for being so fanciful, he nudged her awake more roughly than he meant. And when she woke with a start, he cursed himself for a fool, for not realizing how sensitive she must be to touch.

      “Whoa, Nellie! It’s only me, David.” He caught her just before she toppled off the bed in panic.

      Ellen relaxed as David’s voice began to register in her clouded mind. Rubbing sleep from her eyes, she remembered she wasn’t dressed and covered herself, but not before David got an eyeful. One beautiful lady, he thought, and sighed wearily as he released her.

      Scurrying back against the headboard, Ellen pulled the bedding around her. No one invaded her privacy, it was a cardinal rule. If she didn’t answer a knock at her door, it was understood by the household that she didn’t wish to be disturbed. David’s invasion—although she dimly understood he was unaware of his trespass—made СКАЧАТЬ