O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [141]
If, God forbid, you and Zachary decide to go your different ways, you must return to us. We are what we are, family.
Your loving and sorrowing father,
Horace
Raised as a princess, the princess knew how to read between the lines.
It was her father, all right. Once he got a wedge in, he’d get over his newfound humility in short order. The letter was pretty to hear, but inside lurked a thousand greedy, air-sucking tentacles.
Yet.
Amanda could not dismiss it out of hand. There was a desperate chance that it could help her keep Zachary.
“He’s offering you the empire,” she said, not believing the sound of her own words. “He knows how strong we are, together.”
Zach paled.
“Father’s new light-of-day bluff should be called. And you and I together, solidly bound, can change a lot of things at Dutchman’s Hook.”
“And turn Inverness into a house of joy,” Zach said.
“If this is not the end of the line for us, Zach, then we are going to have to fight like hell.”
“Starting life in a conspiracy.”
“Zach, we can do it!”
“And while we’re at it, change the direction of the stars. The only ship I want to build is a flat-bottomed, steel-skirted boat thirty feet long that can land a platoon of Marines with a measure of protection.”
The letter seemed to turn dirty in her hands. Horace Kerr’s words were encrusted in lies. He’d never change, and Zach was shaken and she became shaken.
She put it in the fireplace and let its evil smoke stream up the chimney.
“For God’s sake, man, please just let me be a Marine’s wife!”
“Just as you would hate yourself for taking me to Inverness, I’d hate myself for taking you into the Corps.”
There, it was said, cold, point-blank.
She wanted to argue that she’d make it work, to come with him when she could, to hell with the stings of the navy and Marine wives, and when he was away, start up a small girls’ academy, and bear it when he was gone because it would be pain worth bearing, or, even if he went into combat, I could raise the children, and the more she argued with herself, the blacker the horizon appeared.
What? Bust his career up because he’d spend his married nights longing for her and erode his function as a commander?
And you, Amanda, how long will you live in the shadows of fear and loneliness before you turn old? If I love him as I must love him, I must let the man go or tell the kids, your daddy is gone, he’s a Marine and he loves you very much, but Daddy is very important and we must hold up our end of things.
“The glass slipper doesn’t fit, no matter how I try to squeeze it on my foot,” she said at last.
“I cannot fill your needs, Amanda.”
“You can more than fill my needs, only you are already married, Captain.”
Zach backed down on the hearth and she came within touching distance.
Voices from the Nebo Abyssinian Baptist Church, with Sister Sugar’s riding above them all.
“I’ll not close the book until you tell me why he has come into this place with us.”
“I . . . uh, don’t know what you mean.”
Amanda clenched her fists and shrieked to the rafters. “Paddy O’Hara! I know you’re hiding up there in the rafters! Paddy! Come down! Your son is hurting!”
“Just because I became startled for a moment when I didn’t see you.”
“Paddy! Tell him to stop lying to me!”
Zach came to his feet and raised his hand but did not strike her. He walked away feebly. Amanda went to the four-poster, picked up a blanket and folded it, and went up to the loft.
Zach collapsed into a big chair, motionless and mute, not hearing, not seeing, fearing the waves of fear that engulfed him.
Amanda crawled to a place where she could see down and not be seen and wrapped herself up tightly and stuffed it all down.
Come ye home,
Come ye home,
Come ye home when the cruel