It wasn’t the sex that alarmed her. It wasn’t the blood or the sickness or even the way she’d surrendered herself so completely, so quickly, so knowingly.
It was the distance he’d put between them in that ill-made bed, the back he’d turned to her, the realization that he had never once called her by name.
Chapter 5
On his first morning home from Yale, Kit Barrows woke early, showered, shaved, dressed carefully, and crept past his father’s bedroom door, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. While he waited at the table, the cook made him a pan of bacon, a stack of toast, and a pot of black coffee. She knew what he wanted without asking, and she knew him well enough to keep quiet. There were mornings when he was friendly and talkative, but this was not one of them.
When he had finished eating, he picked up the phone, dialed the carriage house, and asked Holly to join him in the garden as soon as she could. He did not apologize for waking her. Nor did he ask her if she was alone. The thought of her asleep in her bed did not even enter his mind.
There was an old gazebo in the garden where Kay Barrows and her children had feasted on strawberries and read stories through the hottest part of many summer days. As Kit sat there, waiting for his sister, he passed the time by thinking about business school, Wall Street, and wealth. Such daydreams never failed to fill him with anticipation. They did not fail him now. When he saw Holly making her way slowly through the tulips, he stood up reluctantly and put his hands into his pockets.
“Hello, Holly.”
“Hello yourself,” she said. When they sat down, they kept a yard of bench between them. “What’s so important that it can’t wait past the crack of dawn?” But as she looked up from her tennis shoes, she forgave him with a modest smile. It made him uncomfortable to see the way her face worked. The way her skin stretched taut over her bones. He did not see how it could be anything but painful.
“I’m worried about Dad. I wanted to talk to you before I saw him again.”
“He’s not up yet?” Their father had always been an early riser, as if to sleep in daylight was to miss an opportunity.
“No. He was … he had too much to drink last night.” To which Holly showed no surprise at all. “I found him outside when I got home. In the magnolias. He must have been drinking for some time by then. He was sick.” Kit worried a loose button on his shirt. “It was awful. I don’t understand what he was doing out there, acting like that.”
He looked at Holly, hoping she’d be the one to say, Maybe it had something to do with the man I was with last night. But she didn’t. She simply blinked slowly, sleepily, and looked out at the tulips in their beds. She seemed to have lost interest in what he was saying. “You don’t seem too concerned,” he said.
“I’m not,” she said to the tulips. “Why should I be?”
Despite the way Holly had distanced herself from their father, Kit had expected more than this. “Because it’s so unlike him,” he said. “I would have been less surprised to find him playing bingo.”
Which got him another ghost of a smile.
“How do you know what’s like or unlike him?” she said, the smile receding.
“How do I know? No one knows him better than I do.”
Holly looked at him for a long moment. “Of the two of us,” she finally said, “I know him better.”
Although Kit suspected that Holly’s tryst on the carriage-house roof was linked to his father’s strange behavior, and although he was often easily annoyed by things she said and did, Kit had not called her out here for a scolding. Now, however, in the face of this claim, he felt himself become angry.
“That’s ridiculous, Holly. You’ve done everything possible to avoid Dad for as long as I can remember. What makes you think you know him better than I do?”
Holly had become accustomed, over the years, to being reprimanded by her brother and her father. She had learned to expect little from either of them. Certainly not much in the way of affection or respect. But she had also grown tired of holding her tongue, keeping her own counsel, and on this invigorating spring morning she was for once unwilling to hold herself in check.
“What do you want from me?” she asked him. “You call me out here, tell me a sad story about Dad drinking, remind me that the two of you are great pals. What for?”
She was right. It didn’t make a lot of sense. But none of what he’d seen since coming home made much sense to Kit. “I guess I was curious to see if you knew what was bothering him. If it had anything to do with your visitor last night.”
“My visitor.” Holly looked out at the tulips again. They were dependable flowers. Tough. Lovely, even in their last days. “Yes, it had everything to do with my visitor.” She pushed her hair back away from her face with both hands. “But I don’t really think that’s any of your business, Kit. And since you know Dad so goddamned well, figure him out for yourself.” She pushed herself up off the bench and straightened her clothes, slipped her hands into her pockets, and took a step away from him. “I’m sorry you had such a lousy homecoming,” she said. “But I’m sure things will be much better
