“Patrice, do you know Ty Winthrop?”
“I don’t believe I do,” she said. The nervousness shook her voice. She forced herself to go and shake hands with him. She kept her eyes carefully away from the table. It wasn’t easy.
“Ty is Father’s lawyer,” Mother Hazzard said.
Bill had risen and drawn up a chair beside the table for her. “Sit down, Patrice, and join the party,” he invited.
“Yes, we want you to hear this, Patrice,” Father Hazzard urged as she hesitated. “It concerns you.”
Her hand tried to stray betrayingly toward her throat. She kept it down by sheer will-power.
The lawyer cleared his throat. “Well, I think that about takes care of it, Donald. The rest of it remains as it was before, from there on.”
Father Hazzard hitched his chair nearer. “All right. Ready for me to sign now?”
Mother Hazzard bit off a thread with her teeth, having come to the end of her darning. She began to put things away in her basket. “You’d better tell Patrice what it is first, dear. Don’t you want her to know?”
“I’ll tell her for you,” Winthrop offered. “I can put it in fewer words perhaps.” He turned toward Patrice and gazed over the tops of his reading glasses, “Donald’s changing the provisions of his will, by adding a codicil. You see, in the original, after Julia here was provided for, there was an equal division of the residue made between Bill and Hugh. Now we’re altering that to make it one-quarter of the residue to Bill and the remainder to you.”
She could feel her face beginning to flame, as though a burning crimson light were focused on it. She felt agonizing sensations of wanting to push away from the table and make her escape.
She tried to speak quietly, “I don’t want you to do that. I don’t want to be included.”
“Don’t look that way about it,” Bill laughed. “You’re not doing anybody out of anything. I have Dad’s business—”
“It was Bill’s own suggestion,” Mother Hazzard let her know.
“As you know, I gave both the boys a cash sum to start them off, the day they each reached their twenty-first—”
Patrice was on her feet now, facing them, almost panic-stricken. “No, please! Don’t put my name down at all! I don’t want my name to go in the will!”
“It’s on account of Hugh, dear,” Mother Hazzard said in a tactful aside to her husband. “Can’t you understand?”
“Well, I know; we all mourn for Hugh. But she has to go on living Just the same. She has a child to think of. And these things shouldn’t be postponed on account of sentiment.”
She turned and fled from the room. They made no attempt to follow her.
She closed the door of her room after her. She stormed back and forth berating herself with bitter words. “Swindler!” She burst out. “Thief! It’s just like someone climbing in through a window and—”
A low knock came at the door about half an hour later. She went over and opened it, and Bill was standing there.
“Hello,” he said diffidently.
It was as though they hadn’t seen one another for two or three days past, instead of just half an hour before.
“He signed the will,” he said, “After you went up, Winthrop took it back with him, Witnessed and all. It’s done now, whether you wanted it or not.”
She didn’t answer. The battle had been lost in the room downstairs. This was no more than a final communique.
He was looking at her in a way she couldn’t identify. It seemed to have equal parts of shrewd appraisal and blank incomprehension in it, with just a dash of admiration added.
“You know,” he said, “I don’t know why you acted like that about it. And I don’t agree with you. I think you were wrong.” He lowered his voice a little in confidence. “But somehow or other I’m glad you did. I like you better for acting like that about it.” He shoved his hand out to her suddenly. “Want to shake good night?”
Chapter Five
In the light of the full moon the flower-garden at the back of the house was as bright as noon. The sanded paths gleamed like snow, and her shadow glided along them azure against their whiteness.
Eleven struck melodiously from the Reformed Church over on Beechwood Drive. The echo lingered in the still air, filling her with a sense of peace and well-being.
Bill’s quiet voice, seeming to come from just over her shoulder, said: “Hello. I thought that was you down there, Patrice.”
She turned, startled, and could not locate him for a minute. Then she saw him perched on the sill of the open window of his room.
“Mind if I come down and join you?”
“I’m going in now,” she said hastily, but he’d already disappeared.
He stepped down from the back porch and the moonlight silted over his head and shoulders like talcum as he came toward her. She turned In company with him, and they walked slowly on together side by side.
Bill didn’t say anything. Just walked beside her with one hand slung in his pocket. He kept looking down, as though the sight of the path fascinated him. He stopped once briefly to light a cigarette.
“I hate to tear myself away, it’s so lovely down here,” she said at last.
“I don’t give a hang about gardens,” he answered almost gruffly. “Nor walking in them. Nor the flowers in them. You know why I came down here. Do I have to tell you?”
He flung his cigarette down violently, backhand, with the same gesture he’d use if something angered him.
Suddenly she was acutely frightened. She’d stopped short.
“No, wait, Bill. Bill, wait— Don’t.”
“Don’t what? I haven’t said anything yet. But you know already, don’t you? I’m sorry, Patrice. I have to tell you. You have to listen.”
She was holding out her hand protestingly toward him, as if trying to ward off something. She took a backward step away, broke their proximity.
“I don’t like it,” he said rebelliously. “I was never bothered by girls before. I never even had the childish crushes all boys do. I guess that was just my way to be. But this is it, Patrice. This is it now, all right.”
“No, wait— Not now. Not yet. This isn’t the time—”
“This is the time, and this is the night, and this is the place. There’ll never be another night like this, not if we both live to be a hundred. Patrice, I love you, and I want you to marry me.”
“Bill!” she pleaded, terrified.
“Patrice,” he asked forlornly, “what’s so terrible about my loving you? I’m no lover. I can’t say it right, but—”
“Bill, please.”
“Patrice, I see you every day and—” He flung his arms apart helplessly. “I didn’t ask to fall in love. But I think it’s something good. I think it’s something that should be.”
She bowed her head for a moment as if in distress. “Why did you have to tell me? Why couldn’t you have given me more time? Please, give me more time. Just a few months—”
“I can’t take back what I’ve already said, Patrice,” he answered ruefully. “How can I now? How could I, even if I hadn’t spoken? Is it Hugh, is it still Hugh?”
“I’ve never been in love bef—” she started to say, penitently.
He looked at her strangely.
I’ve said too much, flashed through her mind. Too much, or not enough.
“I’m going in now.” The shadow of the porch dropped between them like an indigo curtain.
He didn’t try to follow. He stood there where she’d left him.
“You’re afraid I’ll kiss you.”
“No, I’m afraid I’ll want you to.”
In the mornings the world was sweet just to look at from her window. To wake up in her own room, to find her little son awake before her, and giving her that special smile of delight. To carry him over to the window and hold the curtain back, and look out at the world. Show him the world she’d found for him.