“But that’s wonderful. Just what you’ve needed.” Adam glanced at her face expectantly and was taken aback by the conflict in her eyes. More softly, he said, “Surely you aren’t going to pretend that you love him any less because of what your mother has told you?”
“How can it ever be the same again?” Her voice broke. “He isn’t the person I looked up to since birth. Everyone else in the world has let me down, but never Papa.”
“Cathy, just because he’s human—” He broke off when he saw that she was near tears. “Just open the package. Give the poor fellow a chance.”
She shot him a pained glance. Could he be so obtuse, not to realize that she might as well be talking about her husband as well as her father? But then Alice sat down and rested her head against Cathy’s knee, and she began to tear away the brown paper. In the shadowed dining room, not far away, Auggie pretended to read a book.
She gasped when she saw the golden box. “Oh, look— isn’t it lovely?” Her fingers worked at the lid, and then she found a creamy envelope on top of a dense nest of wood shavings. Part of her didn’t want to open it, sensing that its contents would make her hurt more than ever, but the urge to have communication from her father was too strong. She slipped her thumb under the seal and took out the folded paper. It was covered with Jules’s neat handwriting:
Dearest Catherine,
I am missing you terribly this Christmas, our first apart. Are you missing me? I will always love you with my whole heart, you know. However, now you are married and far away and my life would have been emptier than ever if I’d kept on as before. You know your mother. Can you find it in your kind heart to forgive me for wanting a bit of love for myself?
Merry Christmas, angel.
Your Papa
Slowly, the hot tears began to spill at last from her eyes and run down her cheeks. She covered her face with her hands. Sitting down beside her on the settee, Adam put his arm around her and gave her his handkerchief.
“It’s all right to love him, you know. No one’s perfect.”
When at last Cathy had calmed herself, he watched as she put her hands into the nest of wood shavings. Her guileless face was pale except for a smudge of color on each cheek. After a moment, she made a discovery and withdrew a small, blown-glass Christmas ornament. It was slightly garish: a little dancing bear, painted orange-gold, with a green ruff, a silver face, and a red nose. Cathy’s tears began again.
“For God’s sake, what is it?” Adam asked, looking askance at the rather ugly decoration.
“Papa gave me this for the first Christmas tree I can remember,” she managed at last. “I was four, I think. We were at our little townhouse, downtown in New York City, before we had much money.” Reaching into the box, she took out another object. This one seemed to be a slightly worn, homemade Santa Claus ornament, with an angel hair beard glued onto the globe and a face and hat painted above it. “Oh— it’s Stephen’s ornament! He made it for me that same year in New York, and I was forever picking at the angel hair. The Christmas before he died, he glued on a new beard, but this one hasn’t fared much better. Isn’t it sweet?”
His eyes stung as he nodded. “Yes, it is sweet.”
One by one, Cathy found all the ornaments that had marked the early years of her childhood and the memories of her dearest Christmases past. “I’ll put them on the little orange tree,” she decided.
“A splendid plan,” Adam agreed.
Now that she had opened the door of her heart to her father, it was easier to let down her guard with Adam a bit, too. After all, it was Christmas Eve. Couldn’t they have peace and harmony for the holidays? She turned a little on the settee and smiled at him. “Would you like to help me?”
“Why don’t we do it a bit later, after supper? I’ll open a bottle of our best wine—”
“And we’ll light candles all around the sitting room!” Just then, Cathy saw her mother entering the room. Jumping up, she went to her, arms outstretched. One of the gilded bird ornaments hung from a hook on her fingertip. “Mother, you’re looking well today. Merry Christmas!”
Hermione stopped and stared in surprise. “What’s that dreadful object?”
“Oh.” Flushing, she looked back at Adam, then at the package. “Well, it just arrived by post.” She swallowed. “Papa sent my ornaments.”
“How dare he?” Grabbing the little bird, she smashed it on the new floor. “Get rid of the rest. I won’t have anything around you that reminds me of that philandering jackass.”
“Mother!” Cathy felt the blood rushing to her face, but in spite of her anger, she couldn’t bring herself to respond in kind. After all, her mother had been betrayed and had no idea how to properly express her pain.
Adam stood up, longing to protect Cathy from Hermione, to tell the woman exactly what he thought of her. However, when he looked at his wife, he realized that it wasn’t his place to get involved. This was her battle to fight.
“Please, try to understand,” Cathy was saying. “Those ornaments are all I have here in Barbados of my childhood—”
“Then it’s time you grow up like the rest of us.” Halfway to the dining room table, she paused, watching Simon as he hurried in with a brush and dust pan to clean up the shattered glass. “Furthermore, we had much better decorations than those. Why, you were only six when we moved up Fifth Avenue to the mansion. And, as I recall, that’s when I wanted to pitch those old things away.” She paused to sharpen her point: “Those gaudy ornaments look like ones that Mae Larkspur would choose!”
Adam watched Cathy gasp softly, then turn pinker. With an effort, he turned away, calling to Auggie, “Come outside with me, old fellow, and I’ll show you the iguana that’s been prowling around. We haven’t many left on Barbados.”
Looking dubious, the younger man followed him. Adam was just opening the verandah doors when Liza appeared with a tray.
“Here’s your coffee, Mrs. Parrish,” she said. “I tried to get Josephine to make it the way you say.”
“It can’t be any worse than that mud you usually serve,” Hermione grumbled.
Adam paused in the doorway. “Liza, I am missing a small, folded note that was here on my desk yesterday. Did you happen to see it when you were dusting? On the floor, perhaps?”
She blinked, backing out of the room. “No, sir.”
“How curious.” He paused at Cathy’s side and touched her warm cheek. “I’ll leave you now.”
Hermione sipped the fresh coffee and her face puckered. “Honestly. Are they slow-witted in that kitchen? This coffee tastes as if it’s two days old.”
“Mother, kindly remember that you are in my home.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. This isn’t your home, you’re just passing through until you come to your senses.”
“You are wrong.” With a supreme effort, Cathy managed to keep her tone even.
“Do not speak to your mother that way.”
“What about the way you speak to me? Shouldn’t mothers treat daughters with respect as well?”
“You are being nonsensical.”
“It’s not just the coffee, Mother. I understand that you have been hurt badly by Papa, and I want very much to be close to you now that I am a married woman, but you seem to be determined to tear down my new life rather than building it up.”
Hermione nervously fingered the pearl choker at her throat. “I have only spoken the truth for your own good. Who will do it if not your own mother?”
“No, that’s not the way it is,” Cathy said firmly. Leaning forward, she held the older woman’s eyes. “When you denigrate Adam and our home, you denigrate my choices. When you mock my childhood ornaments, you are also belittling the sweetest emotions of my heart.”
“Catherine, if you allow yourself to get caught up in that sort of sticky sentiment, you will only be hurt more in the end. A healthy dose of harshness will keep you safer.” It was Hermione’s turn to lean forward. “As your mother, I would be failing you if I encouraged you to love your husband. You’d be far better off learning to love material goods.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say!”
“Is it?” She paused, sipped more coffee, and grimaced. “Your possessions won’t betray you the way a man always does. And believe me, if your father could be unfaithful, the devilish Lord Raveneau is capable of much, much worse...”
Chapter 24
Hermione’s ominous words left a dark spot on Cathy’s fragile heart, but she tried to erase it. A long bath helped, and June washed her hair, then rinsed by pouring buckets of fresh water from the standpipe over her head. By the time Cathy had dressed in an elegant gown of cream lace over palest mint-green silk, it was time to go down and oversee dinner preparations.
Retta’s withered face lit up at the sight of her mistress. “Pretty, pretty lady tonight,” she exclaimed, reaching out from her rocking chair to touch the ribbons that wound through Cathy’s upswept curls.
She beamed back at Retta. It was a relief to see that no one was fighting. The jug-jug was finished, along with turtle soup. The ham Theo had brought was now baked and maple-glazed, and there were dishes of cornmeal cou cou, string beans, boiled cristophenes, and sweet potatoes. For dessert, there were thin slices of great cake, tamarind balls, and sautéed plantains. June was at the table, pouring ruby-red sorrel into the etched crystal goblets.