She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [40]
Planning quickly gave way to construction. After the groundbreaking, Steve, with Meagan at his side, became a constant presence, sitting in a lawn chair under an umbrella with a cooler of water, watching as the house grew out of the lot. He was there the day the masons laid out the stone. When it came to the fireplace mantel, Gus had the stone beaten with chains and coated with buttermilk to age it. Once installed, the mantel was held up by carved lions, a symbol from the Beard family crest.
His soon-to-be next door neighbors, Bob and Bess Dennison, a retired orthopedic surgeon and his wife, in the throes of building their own home, stopped over often to see Steve. It was obvious that he was immensely proud of the house. On more than one occasion Steve told Bob it would have the perfect living room: one with a big screen television and a wet bar. “Steve wasn’t overly impressed with his money. He had fun with it,” says Dennison, who quickly decided he liked his new neighbor.
When it came to Celeste, Dr. Dennison wasn’t as sure. Steve bragged about her, telling Dennison she had a degree from Pepperdine. “She’s beautiful,” Steve said, “and smart as a whip.” The Dennisons weren’t impressed. Around them, Celeste barely spoke. It was as if their money and genteel manners intimidated her.
That year, Steve brought Celeste and Kristina to Virginia to meet his youngest son, Paul, and his wife, Kim. A hospital corpsman, at the time of the wedding Paul had been aboard ship, unable to attend. When Paul entered the bar at the Williamsburg Country Club, it stung to see Celeste wearing his mother’s gold watch. Still, dinner went well. Celeste was affectionate toward Steve, bragging about him to his son and daughter-in-law. When Paul and Kim left to smoke cigarettes, Celeste joined them, but not before she bent over and kissed Steve on the cheek. “She seemed all right,” says Paul. “I thought maybe things would be okay. Maybe she loved him and he’d be happy.”
Yet his misgivings quickly returned. From that point on, whenever he attempted to visit his father, Celeste rebuffed them. “She’d say it was never the right time. They were always going somewhere, something was happening,” he says. “She kept all of us kids away from our dad. There was always a reason we weren’t welcome.”
“Mom didn’t want the older Beard kids around,” says Kristina. “She didn’t want them poking their noses into her business.”
If Paul had been at the lake house that summer, he would have seen much to disturb him. Kristina did. She’d grown to care about Steve. In her young life, with the exception of her father, he was the first man who’d stayed long enough to become a presence. Yet, she loved her mother and felt responsible for her. She said nothing when she saw Celeste combing grocery store shelves for dented and bulging cans, then bringing them home and feeding the contents to Steve. She never connected it with a memory out of her own childhood. Years earlier, Kristina and Jen had faint recollections of being rushed to a hospital, where doctors pumped their stomachs. Steve never did get sick, convincing Kristina that Celeste wasn’t really hurting him.
That year as the house construction continued and summer beckoned, Kristina’s school counselor asked her what she’d like to be when she grew up. She answered, “A vet, because I like animals.” She listed her hobbies as volleyball, basketball, and watching television, and her teacher commented that she was conscientious. Yet the counselor’s note reflected something else, something about how Kristina had closed off her emotions in order to live with her mother: “Kristina’s affect is flat. She seems distant from her feelings. She was unable to generate three wishes when asked.” Her teacher added, “Kristina is friendly, easygoing, likable, responsible, and willing to work.” But she displayed “a significant amount of emotional distress as related to family issues.”
In July 1996, Kristina left to see Jennifer at their paternal grandfather