Chapter 30

The sun dipped below the tree line, and a decided chill set in just as Perry predicted. The sweater Della now wore was soft and fuzzy and clung to her every curve and he had to admit the sales clerk at Skogmo's had known what she was doing by showing her sweaters in the middle of a heat wave. Because heat waves eventually break and weather returns to normal for the season, just as stressful situations eventually break and life returns to normal.

They were sitting on the bank of a crik, which Perry had always thought was a creek, resplendently full on bread and cheese and a fruity red wine produced by a winery only an hour away. Della learned that Perry hadn't in reality been influenced by a four year-old, but had instead spent an hour at the market buying provisions and scouting a location for their picnic. The blanket from the trunk of the Galaxie had been pressed into service once again to cover the slightly damp grass, but this time there were other picnic-goers close by, so the memories hidden in its fibers would have to suffice.

"Do you want to come back for Carter's wedding?" Perry settled against the weeping willow more comfortably and shifted Della so that her head landed squarely on his chest. The tree was younger and smaller than the one in the back yard, but he knew Della would be pleased that it was a willow, and she had been.

"I wouldn't come back for Carter's wedding. I would come back for Henny's wedding. "

"Do you want to come back for Michael's wedding?"

"I would come back for Michael's wedding. I wouldn't come back for Amy's wedding."

He chuckled. "Maybe we should introduce Michael to Henny and Carter to Amy. That would solve your conundrum."

"It would indeed," she drawled. "Why don't you just come right out and say we shouldn't turn our backs on this place instead of beating around this wedding bush?"

"I'm not beating around any bush. I'm attempting to determine where you stand on these upcoming events."

"I hope to be standing in L.A. during these upcoming events."

Perry yawned. "We'll probably be up to our elbows in a murder trial by the time these events finally roll around," he pointed out.

"Yes, there is that very convenient excuse. I don't think either couple actually believes we'll show up. And I think if anyone wants to see me in the near future they'll have to come out to L.A."

"So it's settled. We will never step foot in this town again."

Della turned onto her side and tucked one hand beneath her cheek. Perry's strong heart beat comfortingly in her ear and she closed her eyes in pure contentment as his arms tightened around her. "Well, maybe once," she capitulated.

Perry grinned into the descending twilight. "Let's hope there are a lot of years between funerals. It will take a long time to recover from this trip."

"He's a sad, beaten man. I almost feel sorry for him because I don't think he's ever truly resolved his feelings for my mother. He and June never had a chance."

"Your father and Eve have been spending a lot of time together, and he has let her stay at the house well beyond the dictates of politeness," Perry mused. "What would you think if she gave her current fiancé the heave-ho and rekindled their romance?"

She levered herself up by digging her elbow into his stomach. He gave a little yelp of protest. "Tell me what you know," she demanded.

"I don't know anything."

"You wouldn't say something like that if you didn't know something, Perry."

"Honestly, I don't know anything. But I think seeing her again has stirred a lot of memories and regrets on his part."

"If I tell you a story about Danny, will you tell me what you know about my father and my mother?"

His eyes looked at her with aching tenderness, debating what of her father's story he could tell her without causing too much pain. "I will tell you one thing I know for certain."

She turned and settled back against his chest. "When I was twelve-and-a-half, shortly after she and Stand got married, June asked Grandmother if I could babysit Danny on Tuesday nights because she was on the library board and Stan worked nights, ironically at the mill. She told Grandmother it only made sense for me to do it, and Grandmother actually agreed with her. The first night I was to babysit, I finished my piano lesson, bolted my dinner, and sat on the bench in the hallway with a new book to read Danny at bedtime, tapping my feet, waiting for Grandmother to put on her coat and drive me to June's house in her Packard."

As this memory poured from her, Perry felt her begin to tremble in his arms. He was ecstatic she was talking about Danny, and hoped she could keep her resolve to not cry about him ever again.

"When I got to June's house, there was a surprise waiting for me: I was not only babysitting Danny, but I was babysitting Tony Domenico as well. I was so excited and felt so grown up I nearly pushed June out the door and slammed it behind her. I shooed the boys into the living room to set out the dominoes and went into the kitchen to make hot cocoa. When I walked into the living room a few minutes later, Tony was standing next to the raised fireplace hearth, laughing like the Devil, and Danny was on his knees, on the hearth, his back to me. He whipped his head around, gave me a big grin, and announced that he had just peed in the fireplace."

Perry's unrestrained laugh boomed out over the serenity of the creekside park, causing other picnickers nearby to stare at him curiously, much like those dining at the country club had earlier in the week.

Della's laughter, free and easy and music to his ears, joined his. "I don't think that fireplace had ever been cleaner by the time those boys got done scrubbing it out. I swore them to secrecy because I was afraid June would never allow me to babysit again and I wanted that time with Danny so much. She's never brought it up, so I can only assume neither of the boys ever let it slip to her."

Perry wiped tears from the corner of one eye, started to say something, but was overcome with laughter again. "My gosh, Della, that's the funniest story I've ever heard."

"He was a good kid, but put him with Tony for any length of time and there was bound to be trouble. They could be so naughty."

"And half the time everyone looked the other way."

Della nodded. "Danny was so engaging, and had such an impish grin…your grin reminds me of his. I think that's why I'm helpless against it."

"That's the best compliment you've ever given me," he said quietly, deeply touched by her admission.

"Being maudlin is not allowed," she told him sternly. "I'm through being foolishly and mawkishly emotional about my life before I escaped this town."

"I wish I had known that before I agreed to tell you what I know about your father and mother. I thought it would make you happy, but now I think it might be foolish and mawkish."

She drew his arms around her more securely, in effect hugging him as he held her. "Let me be the judge of that."

He was silent for a moment before taking a deep breath and launching into what he'd decided to tell her. "Your parents loved each other once...and they loved you."

For the next thirty minutes Della insisted that her quiet weeping was neither foolish nor mawkish.

Della wanted Perry to spend the night in her room, but he insisted that they remain separated, since the house in essence belonged to her father, who had made his attitude about their relationship quite clear. Perry wanted no more confrontations, no more tight-lipped conversations about propriety, no more aggravation for her, no more trips to the 'vangcant' lot. They would be free of her family and the house that all but entombed them in the morning. Surely they could maintain a modicum of restraint until that time, couldn't they? Slightly perturbed, she'd kissed him breathless outside her bedroom as a reminder of what he would be missing, and disappeared quickly behind the door. She tossed and turned for an hour before jumping out of bed and tiptoeing halfway to Perry's room before changing her mind and returning to her room for more tossing and turning.

She rose just after dawn, showered and washed her hair, then dried it with the pink Chic hand-held blow dryer that had fascinated and amazed Henny, applied her make-up one last time at the hundred year-old vanity in her childhood bedroom, and sat back in the slipper chair to regard her reflection in the wavy, pitted mirror.

She looked the same, but she definitely wasn't. Being here this past week had changed her, and only time would tell if the change was good or bad. There was a lot she and Perry needed to talk about – their entire future together irrevocably altered by revealed secrets and shocking truths that no man should be expected to bear in a relationship with a woman no matter how much he claimed to love her.

But Perry did love her. She knew that just as she knew her own name…hell, she could never use that analogy again with any truth. Perry was a man of honor, a man who lived by his word unfailingly. He wouldn't say he loved her if he didn't. And he wouldn't say he would always love her if he didn't truly believe it himself. A practical man, an impatient man, a man who didn't suffer fools lightly, for her he could be impractical, exhibit extreme patience, and generally tolerate occasional lapses in her intelligence. He publically treated her with honorable respect, and privately with nearly reverent respect. He was unafraid to be gentle and tender and to let her see the profound impact his feelings for her had on him. He said he would do anything for her, and she had taken advantage of that vulnerability in him, realizing as she did so that when it came to her he was susceptible to enormous wounding.

Her wounding in regard to him would be every bit as devastating, and she worried about that when she was alone with her thoughts, that his intense commitment to her would ultimately be his undoing, and therefore hers. It was important to both of them that the reason they were together wasn't based solely on Perry's practice, that what they felt for one another had strong legs outside of the office because it was unimaginable to have one without the other. Their personal relationship had already weathered several storms in a relatively short period of time and she feared her constant refusals to marry him tipped the scales in favor of their professional life as they walked a line that became more blurry with every proposal.

It wasn't just her childhood experiences or the newly exposed reality of probable physical limitations that kept her from accepting him as her husband. He was for the most part self-aware of himself, but completely blind to the fact that the attributes that made him such a remarkable man and attorney were the very attributes that would make him a less than remarkable husband. He would continue to love her and be faithful to her, of that she had no fear, but the way he practiced law and made decisions would eventually tear them apart, of that she had no doubt. As long as it was in her power to avoid that inevitability, she would be everything to him she could be…except his wife.

She picked up her brush and unnecessarily pulled it through freshly dried hair. Perry said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. The woman staring back at her in the mirror wouldn't make anyone run screaming, but she wasn't sure 'beautiful' was the best word to describe her. His attractiveness was overpowering at times, a devastating mixture of physical and attitudinal traits he was legitimately unaware of, but of which she was acutely aware as her presence at his side was whispered about and disdained. While she could be and had been faulted for her face and figure, the one thing that couldn't be faulted was her wardrobe. She spent too much of her discretionary income on clothing because what she wore pleased him and his admiring looks more than made up for the scorn of those who thought her inferior to them and unworthy of him.

Della glanced at the clock and with a start realized she had been daydreaming for nearly an hour. Perry wanted to leave by nine o'clock, and it was nearly that now. She pushed back the slipper chair and got to her feet, surprised he hadn't come to collect her by now. She had planned to fix a good breakfast for him after the delightful picnic he had provided for her the night before so they wouldn't have to stop somewhere to eat along the road. She took two steps toward the door when someone knocked. She smiled. Even though she had a nearly non-existent relationship with her father, and despite some bluster to the contrary, Perry remained respectful and polite in this house. His habit of knocking on her door was charming and sexy at the same time now that the light of morning shone on it.

She crossed the room and flung open the door. "You're just in time to help me get dressed…" her words halted abruptly.

Her mother stood on the other side.

Della clutched at her robe, her cheeks tinged with pink at another silly little situation she had opened herself up to the past few days. "M-Mrs. Wyman," she stammered.

"I thought we had decided you would call me Eve," her mother said with a disapproving frown. "Aren't you going to invite me in?"

Della hesitated for several seconds before stepping aside to allow Eve Wyman to enter the bedroom. She left the door open a few inches and turned to face the woman who Perry claimed had once loved her. "What do you want, Mrs. Wyman?"

Eve stood awkwardly in the center of the room, her injured hand cradled against her body, weaving slightly as she held her injured foot off the floor. "You have to win that battle, don't you?"

"I'm more comfortable calling you that," Della admitted. She wouldn't admit that in the presence of others she referred to her as simply 'that woman'.

"Do I make you uncomfortable, Della?"

"You don't make me anything."

Eve Wyman winced. "I suppose I deserve your hostility. And I suppose given everything I've done ten shares of the mill might be more than I deserve." She limped past Della on wobbly legs to one of the slipper chairs and sat down. "I wanted you to know I harbor no resentment toward you for not honoring your grandmother's promise."

"That's big of you. But you're assuming that I care."

"You sound like Perry," Eve said crossly, eyebrows knit together.

Della remained standing in the center of the room, silent, offering her mother no reaction to play off of.

"You're making this harder than it has to be, Della," her mother complained. "I'm not going to apologize for abandoning you or beg you to allow me into your life. To be honest, I have few if any lingering unfulfilled motherly instincts regarding you." She flashed a small grimace. "I'm sure Paul Drake's report mentioned that the emotional capabilities of someone like me are shallow at best. I try to be normal, but there are certain demons that can't be controlled. Unfortunately you and your father bore the brunt of an inevitable breakdown, the first of many."

"You sound different," Della observed cautiously.

Eve flashed another grimace. "It's the pain medication. I've experienced it a couple of times before. Narcotics generally impair one's thinking, but in my case narcotics actually bring clarity to my thoughts. My cognitive abilities…" she broke off with another grimace. "I won't bore you with the psychological analysis of my condition. It's a miracle I'm not a lunatic morphine addict, which I owe to quite a few very good doctors."

"Did those very good doctors tell you it was all right to acknowledge you had no motherly instincts to your daughter's face?"

Eve lifted her chin defiantly at her daughter's unexpectedly bitter words. "As a matter of fact, they did. You may find this hard to believe, but I wanted you. I did my best for as long as I could, but my mind eventually betrayed me and I could barely take care of myself, let alone care for you properly. There really was no choice but for Jameson to put me where I couldn't hurt myself. Or you." She suddenly dropped her head. "It took me a long time to admit that. I blamed him for everything that happened and did everything I could to hurt him as much as he'd hurt me. I humiliated him and myself and sacrificed you to those two witches when the doctors said my mind was as good as it would ever be. I was so young and Jameson…Jameson did things I couldn't understand or accept, and even though he would have forgiven me, I couldn't forgive him. I made the decision not to be his wife or your mother when Katherine offered a lot of money if I left and promised more if I never contacted either of you in her lifetime. I took it and ran away."

"It appears I inherited more than what I look like from you," Della commented dryly. "I tend to run away when emotions overwhelm me."

"But your mind…your mind is strong," Eve insisted, her voice tinged with an almost frantic insistence. She gingerly raised her injured hand. "You would never do this to yourself because voices in your head told you it was the only way to get what those same voices decided you simply had to have."

"Congratulations, Mrs. Wyman. You've just imparted a valuable piece of motherly advice. I promise never to close a hot waffle iron on my hand in an attempt to get what I want."

Eve Wyman rested her bandaged hand in her lap and stared at her daughter with miserable eyes. "The medication is wearing off," she said in an oddly regretful tone.

"How do I know you haven't made up all of this?"

"You know because your boss had me investigated, and he's been talking quite a bit with your father. I'm fairly confident you've been filled in on my appalling history." She smiled sadly at Della's confirming silence and got to her feet slowly. "I thought as much."

There was a tap on the door and it swung open at that moment as Perry stepped into the room. "Shake a leg, darling. The bus leaves in ten minutes…Oh, I beg your pardon, ladies." He tossed a concerned look at Della that visibly got under Eve Wyman's skin.

"Della and I were just clearing the air, Perry," she managed to say breezily. "Would you be a good boy and leave us alone for one more minute?"

Perry advanced further into the room, grabbed Della's suitcase and garment bag from where she had placed them at the foot of the bed and strode back to the open bedroom door. He bowed sardonically. "I wish I could say it was a pleasure, Mrs. Wyman, but I can't."

"He's handsome enough and I was certainly attracted to him at first, but he's the most insufferable man I've ever met," Eve Wyman muttered discontentedly behind Perry's retreating form. "I can't for the life of me imagine what you see in him."

"I can imagine," Della said softly.

Eve spun on her daughter. "Well, you can have him!" she snapped.

Della blinked at the vehemence of her mother's words. If Eve Wyman was truthful in the least it appeared the effects of the pain medication were most definitely waning. "I'll take him!" she snapped back.

Eve Wyman stalked to the door as best she could on her sore foot, pausing as she reached the threshold. "I won't be returning to California, so you don't have to worry about me showing up on your doorstep again," she said in a calmer more lucid tone, her back to Della. "I broke my engagement with Elliott last night and I'm going to live with Bitty in the house where I grew up. My step-brothers are worthless and she needs help maintaining it, and since there is a respectable mental hospital nearby, it makes sense for me to stay. The doctor who treated me twenty-five years ago is chief of staff now. It will be like old times."

"Will you be seeing much of my father?"

Eve shrugged her shoulders, still facing away from her daughter. "That's up to him. I've made him aware that I wouldn't be averse to seeing him on a social basis aside from mill board meetings. He is still quite handsome in case you haven't noticed." She stepped from the room and disappeared down the hallway.

Della stared at her toes, wretchedly aware that nothing in regard to her mother would ever be her father's decision.