“Good point, Harry. I say the child was born before he was killed.” Susan held them spellbound. “The child was born and it looked like him.”
“Good God, Susan, I hope you’re wrong.” Lucinda blinked. “How could a man kill his own child to—to savehis face?”
“People do terrible things,” Port flatly stated, for she didn’t understand it either, but then, she didn’t refute it.
“Well, he paid for his intentions, if that’s what they were.” Ellie Wood felt rough justice had been done. “If that’s true, he paid for it, and done is done.”
“‘Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand and their doom comes swiftly.’ Deuteronomy 32:35,” Miranda intoned.
But done was not done. The past was coming undone, and the day of calamity was at hand.
24
“I thought it would take some of the burden off you. You don’t need people at you right now.” Ansley Randolph leaned on the white fence and watched the horses breeze through their morning workout around the track—the Fibar and sand mix kept the footing good year-round. “Not that anything will make you feel better, for a time.”
Pain creased the lines around Warren’s eyes. “Honey, I’ve no doubt that you thought you were doing the right thing, but number one, I am tired of being whipped into shape by Mim Sanburne. Number two, my family’s diaries, maps, and genealogies stay right here at Eagle’s Rest. Some are so old I keep them in the safe. Number three, I don’t think anything of mine will interest Kimball Haynes, and number four, I’m exhausted. I don’t want to argue with anyone. I don’t even want to explain myself to anyone. No is no, and you’ll have to tell Mim.”
Ansley, while not in love with Warren, liked him sometimes. This was one of those times.“You’re right. I should have kept my mouth shut. I suppose I wanted to curry favor with Mim. She gives you business.”
Warren clasped his hands over the top rail of the fence.“Mim keeps a small army of lawyers busy. If I lose her business, I don’t think it will hurt either one of us, and it won’t hurt you socially either. All you have to do is tell Mim that I’m down and I can’t have anything on my mind right now. I need to rest and repair—that’s no lie.”
“Warren, don’t take this the wrong way, but I never knew you loved your father this much.”
He sighed.“I didn’t either.” He studied his boot tips for a second. “It’s not just Poppa. Now I’m the oldest living male of the line, a line that extends back to 1632. Until our sons are out of prep school and college, the burden of that falls entirely on me. Now I must manage the portfolio—”
“You have good help.”
“Yes, but Poppa always checked over the results of our investments. Truth be told, darling, my law degree benefitted Poppa, not me. I read over those transactions that needed a legal check, but I never really paid attention to the investments and the land holdings in an aggressive sense. Poppa liked to keep his cards close to his chest. Well, I’d better learn fast. We’ve been losing money on the market.”
“Who hasn’t? Warren, don’t worry so much.”
“Well, I might have to delay running for the state Senate.”
“Why?” Ansley wanted Warren in Richmond as much as possible. She intended to work nonstop for his election.
“Might look bad.”
“No, it won’t. You tell the voters you’re dedicating this campaign to your father, a man who believed in self-determination.”
Admiring her shrewdness, he said,“Poppa would have liked that. You know, it’s occurred to me these last few days that I’m raising my sons the way Poppa raised me. I was packed off to St. Clement’s, worked here for the summers, and then it was off to Vanderbilt. Maybe the boys should be different—maybe something wild for them like”—he thought—“Berkeley. Now that I’m the head of this family, I want to give my sons more freedom.”
“If they want to attend another college, fine, but let’s not push them into it. Vanderbilt has served this family well for a long time.” Ansley loved her sons although she despised the music they blasted throughout the house. No amount of yelling convinced them they’d go deaf. She was sure she was half deaf already.
“Did you really like my father?”
“Why do you ask me that now, after eighteen years of marriage?” She was genuinely surprised.
“Because I don’t know you. Not really.” He gazed at the horses on the far side of the track, for he couldn’t look at her.
“I thought that’s the way your people did things. I didn’t think you wanted to be close.”
“Maybe I don’t know how.”
Too late now, she thought to herself.“Well, Warren, one step at a time. I got along with Wesley, but it was his way or no way.”
“Yep.”
“I did like what he printed on his checks.” She recited verbatim: “These funds were generated under the free enterprise system despite government’s flagrant abuse of the income tax, bureaucratic hostilities, and irresponsible controls.”
Warren’s eyes misted. “He was tough duty, but he was clear about what he thought.”
“We’ll know even more about that at the reading of the will.”
25
The reading of the will hit Warren like a two-by-four. Wesley had prepared his will through the old prestigious firm of Maki, Kleiser, and Maki. Not that Warren minded. It would be indelicate to have your son prepare your will. Still, he wasn’t prepared for this.
A clause in his father’s will read that no money could ever be inherited by any Randolph of any succeeding generation who married a person who was even one-twentieth African.
Ansley laughed. How absurd. Her sons weren’t going to marry women from Uganda. Her sons weren’t even going to marry African Americans, quadroons, octoroons, no way. Those boys weren’t sent to St. Clements to be liberals and certainly not to mix with the races—the calendar be damned.
Warren, ashen when he heard the clause, sputtered,“That’s illegal. Under today’s laws that’s illegal.”
Old George Kleiser neatly stacked his papers.“Maybe. Maybe not. This will could be contested, but who would do that? Let it stand. Those were your father’s express wishes.” Apparently George thought the proviso prudent, or perhaps he subscribed to the let-sleeping-dogs-lie theory.
“Warren, you aren’t going to do anything about this? I mean, why would you?”
As if in a trance, Warren shook his head.“No—but, Ansley, if this gets out, there go my chances for the state Senate.”
George’s stentorian voice filled the room. “Word of this, uh, consideration will never leave this room.”
“What about the person who physically prepared the will?” Warren put his foot in it.
George, irritated, glided over that remark as he made allowances for Warren’s recent loss. He’d known Warren since infancy, so he knew the middle-aged man in front of him was unprepared to take the helm of the family’s great, though dwindling, fortune. “Our staff is accustomed to sensitive issues, Warren. Issues of life and death.”
“Of course, of course, George—I’m just flabbergasted. Poppa never once spoke of anything like this to me.”
“He was a genteel racist instead of an overt one.” Ansley wanted to put the subject out of her mind and couldn’t see why Warren was so upset.
“And aren’t you?” Warren fired back.
“Not as long as we don’t intermarry. I don’t believe in mixing the races. Other than that, people are people.” Ansley shook off Warren’s barb.
“Ansley, you must promise me never, never, no matter how angry you may become with me or the boys—after all, people do rub one another’s nerves—but you must never repeat what you’ve heard in this room today. I don’t want to lose my chance because Poppa had this thing about racial purity.”