Twice Dead - Catherine Coulter [181]
Tennyson was nearly over the edge now. “No, no, listen to me. I suppose I saw the paintings as your grandmother’s, nothing more than that. Valuable things that needed some oversight, particularly after you became so ill. All right, I was willing to do that work. Please, Lily, believe me. When you told me that she was your grandmother, I was very surprised and pleased for you. Then I dismissed it. Lily, I didn’t marry you for your grandmother’s paintings. I swear to you I didn’t. I married you because I love you, I loved Beth. That’s it. My father—no, I don’t believe there could possibly be anything there. You’ve got to believe me.”
“Tennyson,” Lily said, her voice low, soothing, “do you know I’ve never been depressed in my life until I married you?”
“Before Beth’s death, you had no reason to be depressed.”
“Well, maybe I did. Didn’t I tell you a bit about my first husband?”
“Yes, he was horrible, but you survived him. Lily, it was completely different when your daughter was killed by a hit-and-run driver. It’s only natural that you’d be overcome with grief, that you would experience profound depression.”
“Even after seven months?”
“The mind is a strange instrument, unpredictable. It doesn’t always behave the way we would like it to. I’ve prayed and prayed for your full recovery. I agree it’s been taking you a long time to recover but, Lily, you’ll get well now, I know it.”
“Yes,” she said very slowly and pushed back her chair. “Yes, I know I’ll get well now.” She felt her stitches pull, a tug that made her want to bend over, but she didn’t. “Yes, Tennyson,” she said, “I fully intend to get well now. Completely well.”
She pressed her palms flat on the table. “I will also love Beth for the rest of my life, and I will know sadness at her loss and grief until I die, but I will come to grips with it. I will bear it. I will pray that it will slowly ease into the past, that I won’t fall into that black depression again. I will face life now and I will gain my bearings. Yes, Tennyson, I will get well now because, you see, I’m leaving you. Tonight.”
He rose so quickly his chair slammed down to the floor. “No, you can’t leave me ... Lily, no! It’s your brother. I wish my father hadn’t called him; I wish Savich hadn’t come here to ruin everything. He’s filled your mind with lies. He’s made you turn on me. There’s no proof of anything at all. No, none of it’s true. Please, Lily, don’t leave me.”
“Tennyson,” Lily said very quietly now, looking directly at him, “what sort of pills have you been feeding me these last seven months?”
He howled, literally howled, a desperate, frightened sound of rage and hopelessness. He was panting hard when he said, “I tried to make you well. I tried, and now you’ve decided to believe this jerk of a brother and his wife and you’re leaving me. I’ve been giving you Elavil!”
Lily nodded. “Actually, there doesn’t seem to be any solid proof to haul you to the sheriff. The sheriff is something of a joke anyway, isn’t he? When I remember how he tried so hard to apprehend Beth’s killer.”
“I know he did the best he could. If you’d been with Beth, maybe you would have made a better witness, but you—”
She ignored his words and said, “If we find proof, then even Sheriff Bozo will have to lock you away, Tennyson—no matter what you or Daddy say, no matter how much money you’ve put in his pocket, no matter how many votes you got for him—until we manage to get some competent law enforcement in Hemlock Bay. The truth of the matter is, I would leave you even if you didn’t kill your first wife, if you hadn’t, in truth, tried to kill me, because, Tennyson, you’ve lied to me; from the very beginning you lied to me. You used Beth’s death to make me feel the most profound guilt. You milked it, manipulated me—you’re still doing it—and you very likely drugged me to make me depressed, to make me feel even more at fault. I wasn’t at fault, Tennyson.