Another Homecoming Read online

  There were a number of very nice things about that reluctant spring, and Kyle clung to them. Focusing on them helped to ease her through the worst moments of loss and reestablish some feeling of balance. She would be graduating from St. Albans and had been accepted to Georgetown University. To her surprise, her mother seemed almost relieved at the news. Abigail’s concern was apparently not whether Kyle would go to college, but whether she would continue to live at home. Kyle desperately wanted to study at the university. She was willing to continue living at home if that was all it took to avoid a confrontation with her mother.

  Another good thing about that winter and spring was that Kyle saw Randolf Crawley almost not at all. For some reason, his visits were now limited to occasional swift meetings with her mother. Whenever Kyle greeted him in his comings and goings, he would glance furtively toward wherever her mother had last been seen.

  Emily Crawley had apparently been bitten by the same bug, for she seemed to avoid contact. Yet whenever Kyle saw her at school, Emily cut off conversation and watched her pass, her gaze thoughtful. Could it even be envious? That surprised Kyle as much as anything, for Emily Crawley had never been envious of anyone else in her entire life.

  That March, the weather seemed to match Abigail’s gale-force moods. Occasionally days would warm up, as though spring was struggling to break free, only to be beaten back by fierce winds and freezing temperatures. The first day of April was marked by a freak snowstorm that brought Chevy Chase and Washington to a shuddering halt. Kyle spent the day building a snow family with Bertrand and Maggie’s four grandchildren, whose weekend visit had been extended by impassable roads. They rolled up a portly daddy snowman and a smiling snowmom, then made eleven snowkids, from a nine-foot basketball player down to a snowbaby only six inches tall.

  Kyle was grateful for the company and the reason to stay outdoors, because Abigail paced the front hall and railed against the weather with anger that frightened her. Kyle could not understand what the commotion was about. She knew Abigail was supposed to have gone to court that day. Kyle wondered if all the meetings and arguments of that winter were coming together, focusing down upon this time in court. The delay caused by the snowfall left Abigail almost speechless with rage.

  Two days later the snow admitted defeat. But as the days and weeks flowed on toward May and Kyle’s graduation, the stormy cold continued to do battle with spring. Mornings remained frosty, the days overcast. Jim joined her for early walks, muttering about how his entire garden was a month and more late. Even the tulips seemed afraid to rise above the earth and face the unseasonably chilly weather.

  April began to approach May, and still spring was held at bay. The weather began to make the news, with announcers vying with one another to describe the freakish weather. Kyle continued the ritual begun by her father, joining her mother for the evening news. Secretly she glanced over from time to time and noted that often Abigail seemed not even to be watching. Her mother remained strangely silent. Even at dinner Abigail did not take up her normal criticisms of how Kyle sat or ate or talked. She said almost nothing at all.

  Finally, the first week of May, the bitter weather faded so swiftly it was as if it had never existed. Warmth blasted in, and overnight everything blossomed. Kyle’s morning walks became explorations of wonder, for the entire garden bloomed at once. Colors were so brilliant that she felt ready to cry aloud with joy.

  By this time, the birds knew her so well they awaited her arrival just outside the kitchen door, chirping irritably if she was a few minutes late. Even the shy sparrows would flit in and land on her fingers, accepting bread from her hands. The household staff took to gathering at the kitchen window, sipping their morning coffee and watching as Kyle coaxed everything from cardinals to tiny finches onto her outstretched arms.

  On Tuesday afternoon, Kyle had returned from St. Albans and was upstairs changing when she heard Maggie exclaim, “Mrs. Rothmore, are you all right?”

  “Where’s Kyle?” came her mother’s flat reply.

  “Upstairs, madam. Should I—”

  “No, never mind. Has Randolf arrived?”

  “Mr. Crawley? No, madam, there’s nobody here except Kyle and the staff.”

  Something in her mother’s voice drew Kyle out of her room and down the stair’s sweeping curve. She held back, able to observe while remaining unseen. Her mother had a wild-eyed look about her. “He should be here,” her mother said. Abigail’s voice sounded rough, hoarse, as though filed with a rasp. “Why hasn’t he come?”

  “Madam, I don’t know. Should I call someone?”

  Kyle could scarcely believe her eyes. Her mother, whose whole life seemed built around looking impeccably polished and perfect, was in total disarray. Her eyes scattered glances every direction. Her hair was coming down in sparse strands. Her clothes looked haphazard. “He’ll be here. He said he had to stop by the office. But he’ll come. He has to. We must plan. This can’t be final. It can’t be.”

  “No, madam,” Maggie said doubtfully. “Should I call the doctor?”

  The question seemed to help Abigail focus. “Don’t be silly. I’m perfectly all right. When Randolf arrives, show him out to the back veranda.”

  Friday Kyle came out of St. Alban’s to find the family Rolls parked directly in front of the school’s main doors. Bertrand stood beside the open door, his face blank and stony as Kyle hurried over. “I thought you promised—”

  “Your mother’s express orders, Miss Kyle.” Bertrand ignored her unease and the whispered comments of other students who gathered and watched. He walked around, slid behind the wheel, and continued, “She wants you to join her down at the office.”

  “But it’s Friday,” she protested, knowing it was a feeble objection but not able to come up with anything else.

  Bertrand shared a somber look with her before repeating, “Your mother insisted.”

  “Well, at least take the long way,” Kyle begged.

  Bertrand hesitated, then swung the big car around and headed toward the city’s center, not the Rothmore building. Kyle settled down with a sigh. “Thank you, Bertie.”

  They cruised in front of the White House before heading down Constitution Avenue. The Jefferson Memorial and The Mall were surrounded by hundreds of cherry trees, which the Japanese had sent over to symbolize the end of the war. The trees had grown over the ensuing years until many of the branches met overhead. Bertrand slowed so he could turn and look with Kyle, for in the sudden explosion of a delayed spring, all the trees had bloomed together. The walkways were thick with people, all captured by the glory of the moment. The sun was bright and hot overhead, the trees so ephemeral their blossoms belonged more to the clouds than to the earth.

  When they finally turned toward the Rothmore building, Kyle became increasingly uncertain and agitated. As Bertrand pulled up in front, he turned to her and said, “It’s all going to be fine, Miss Kyle.”

  “Is it?” She searched the familiar face, saw the genuine concern. But it only seemed to make it worse. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I know you,” he replied. “And I know you will do the right thing.”

  “I’m so scared, Bertie.”

  He hesitated a moment, then said, “I find Maggie’s wisdom fits such times very well. Perhaps you should try to find comfort in a time of prayer.”

  Kyle glanced up and through the front windshield. She could feel her mother’s presence and all the unanswered questions there waiting for her. “Prayer doesn’t belong in this place,” she murmured.

  “That is not true,” he protested. “The Lord saw Daniel out of the lion’s den. He could be with you here, if you let Him.”

  The words tugged at her heart, but the dark shadows reached out from the high unseen floors and grasped at her. “I have to go,” she said through wooden lips.

  Before Bertrand could come around, Kyle slid from the car. She did not want to wait, to hesitate even a moment. There was too much risk that her nerve would fa
il and she would not be able to enter at all.

  But once inside, the reactions that greeted her were so unexpected she found herself pushed beyond her fears. A pair of secretaries coming out of the ground floor soda fountain stopped to smile and wish her a good morning. She could only vaguely remember having ever seen their faces before. Then the elevator operator tipped his hat to her and kept up a cheerful chatter about the weather. The elevator clanked up the floors, and as others came and went, all of them seemed to have some kind word for her. Kyle had never known such a greeting before. For her father, certainly, all the employees knew him and seemed to have genuinely liked him. But this was directed at her.

  When she reached the top floor, a passing secretary greeted her with yet another smile and said that she had just seen her mother down in Randolf Crawley’s office. Kyle thanked her but found her footsteps turning toward the far end of the corridor.

  She did not hesitate, not even when she pushed through the tall outer door and Mrs. Parker, her father’s secretary, greeted her by bounding to her feet and giving her the most brilliant smile Kyle had seen that day. Instead, she went into the inner sanctum and closed the door behind her.

  She stood still, her hands on the knob behind her, and leaned against the door. This, she knew, she had to do alone.

  She turned slowly to look at the long-familiar broad chamber. The office was so much like her father, she could feel his presence surround her again. At each step, her heart collided with her chest. She traced one finger along the edge of his desk. She looked at his high-back leather chair and mentally heard the heavy tread as he walked into the room behind her.

  She closed her eyes so as to hear more clearly his booming voice, smell the English Leather cologne that he always used, feel the weighty pressure of his hand on her shoulder. But when Kyle reached up, she felt only emptiness as her hand touched nothing but the fabric of her jacket.

  Carefully Kyle checked her compact to obliterate any trace of tears before opening the outer door. Mrs. Parker was still standing by her desk, as though she had not moved. “Your mother came by, Miss Kyle. I . . . well, I told her . . .” she hesitated, “I said I’d send you down . . . as soon as you appeared.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured, avoiding the woman’s gaze. This visit to her father’s office had shattered her more than she had expected. “Where is she now?”

  “Down with Mr. Crawley, I’d imagine. Shall I ring and find out?”

  “No, that’s all right, Mrs. Parker, I’ll go down.”

  “Miss Kyle,” the woman started, then stopped. Mrs. Parker was a professional woman who had been with her father for as long as Kyle could remember. But now the astringent features suddenly softened in genuine concern. “I just wanted to tell you, madam, that all of us here are rooting for you.”

  “Thank you,” Kyle said, but she didn’t know what the woman meant. She entered the hallway, returned the greetings of several people she did not recognize, and started toward Randolf’s office. But her legs did not want to carry her. Her limbs felt leadened, as though all her strength and focus had been drained away. She felt utterly alone.

  Kyle faltered and reached out a hand for the side wall. But instead she touched a door, which pushed inward as she leaned.

  “Why, Kyle, hello, how are you?”

  She recognized the voice before she remembered the name. Kyle watched her father’s former assistant rising from his desk. “Hello, Kenneth.”

  He walked over, searched her face, and in that moment his own smile slipped away, swallowed by a mirror of what she felt in his own heart. “It’s so hard,” he said quietly. “I still can’t get over the fact that I’ll never hear his voice booming out for me again.”

  The hollowness in her chest was filled with a soft fire. Her tears began again, leaving warm trails across her cheeks. “I miss him so much,” she whispered.

  “I know you must. He loved you so.” He took her arm, guided her inside, and shut the door behind her. “I never heard such happiness in his voice as when he was talking about you.”

  Each word seemed to unravel another thread of her control. Her shoulders shook with the sorrow that seemed to always hover nearby. She put her hands over her face, trying to push it all back inside, feeling as though her whole body was crumbling.

  Kenneth’s arms seemed to just appear, wrapping her up in strength and comfort she had not known since her father’s passage. She heard the voice murmur in her ear. She felt a hand stroke the hair out of her face, felt the muscles of his arms cradle her with gentle strength.

  Gradually she recovered her composure, until she was able to free herself and wipe her eyes with the handkerchief he offered. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize. I think I know how you feel.”

  She glanced at him, just a quick look. There was too much sincerity in his gaze to hold it for long. But his words seemed to speak directly to her heart. “You miss him too.”

  “So much. He was a friend as well as my employer. You don’t know, you can’t know, how rare that is.” He guided her over to a chair, seated himself beside her. “He was a genuine man, right down to the core. Every word he spoke, he meant.”

  She nodded. That was indeed her father. Still she could not look at Kenneth. It was too hard. Those strong features held an immense capacity for compassion. They pulled at her heart, inviting things from her that she tried to keep hidden.

  Kyle avoided returning his gaze by looking around his office. She had seen it several times in the past, usually when her father pushed open the door and proudly pointed to his protégé as though he himself had invented the young man. Yet this was the first time she had ever been inside. Then she noticed the plaque set above the door, and it drew her upright.

  He noticed the change. “What is it?”

  She pointed at the plaque. “Up there.”

  “The needlepoint? It’s very old. My mother’s grandmother did it.”

  The design was intricate and beautiful, a garden trellis supporting wisteria in full bloom. Above shone a four-pointed sun, shaped like a golden cross. And framed by the trellis and the flowers and the streaming light were the words, “My son, give me thine heart.”

  “That’s from the Bible, isn’t it?”

  “The quote? Yes, from Proverbs.”

  She turned to him, recalling the conversation they’d had at the dinner table, the only other time she had really talked with him. It seemed like memories from another lifetime. “You’re a . . . a Christian?”

  The surprise in her voice caused him to smile. “I try to be. No—that’s not correct,” he quickly went on. “One does not become a Christian by trying to be one. But I do try to live up to the standards that Christ set.”

  Kyle could not bring herself to respond. At a moment when she felt her world so shaken, she was confronted not with mere words but with a fact. Here was a man who cared deeply for her father. He showed her the caring concern that her own heart yearned for. He was successful in business; she knew that by the way her father had often spoken of him.

  And he was a Christian. Here. In the heart of the place where she thought faith did not belong. Especially now.

  Kenneth’s eyes turned back to the plaque. “Your father used to come in here sometimes after hours. We’d talk about everything under the sun. Including faith. Toward the end, we began to study the Bible together.”

  She could not keep the shock from her voice. “Daddy?”

  But he was not seeing her. His eyes and his mind seemed fastened upon something very far away, maybe very dear. “He was one of the most open men I’ve ever met. Most people who find success are imprisoned by it. They refuse to consider anything that might challenge their hold on the good life.”

  Kyle found herself nodding at the words. This sort of person she knew all too well.

  “Lawrence was totally different. He was interested in everything. He had no time for fools, and could be quite short with somebody he thought was wasting hi
s time. But he’d sit there and listen with an openness I found amazing. He told me once . . .”

  Kenneth stopped. Kyle found her eyes drawn to the young man. His silhouette was a strange mixture of sharp-angled strength and the softening of deep sorrow. He took a long breath, held it, let it out slowly.

  “It was toward the end, one of the last times we talked together here in private,” he said quietly. “I’ve found myself wondering if maybe he knew what was coming. Lawrence told me he’d never met anybody who talked about faith like I did. He said the words seemed to spring naturally from whatever it was I had inside—that was the way he put it. I told him nobody had ever paid me a nicer compliment. That night we prayed together. He received God’s gift of salvation. And there was such a wonderful feeling here.”

  Kenneth turned to her then, the move unexpected, and seemed to catch them both with aching transparency. Kyle stared into his eyes and felt as though heart was speaking directly to heart. Finally he said, “I miss him.”

  “So do I,” she whispered. “So much.” After a pause she said, “Thank you for telling me about this.”

  A sense of need finally stirred within Kyle. As though a thought had been planted inside her mind, Kyle sensed that here was someone she could ask. Someone she could trust.

  She sat straighter and asked, “Please tell me. What is going on around here?”

  She would think back over that moment many times in the days and weeks to come. For Kenneth did not disengage and withdraw behind an official barrier. Instead, he stayed right there with her, comfortable with the closeness, willing to go wherever she wanted. “What do you mean?”

  “Everybody is so nice to me. They’ve always been kind, but not like this. It’s different.”

  He nodded slowly. “You haven’t been back here for some time, have you?”