CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Amelia fought her way to the baggage area in the airport
terminal. She'd never seen such crowds before. She engaged a redcap, who got her a taxi. Amelia tipped him, gave the driver the address of the Hilton Hotel, and leaned back. God, she was exhausted.
Forty minutes later she checked into the Hilton and accepted a copy of the
Crystal City Times
. All she wanted was a long, hot bath and some sleep. It would be bliss to hear or see Cary, but not now. One thing at a time.
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The following day, as Amelia dried her hair in front of the hotel mirror, she wondered if she was doing the right thing by not going to Sunbridge. She planned to go to her house first and follow through with her renovations, actually sleep there until the project was completed. It was time to see something through to the end. Then, and only then, would she call Cary.
It was noon when Amelia checked out of the Hilton Hotel. A uniformed doorman tipped his hat to her, smiled, and crooked his finger at a bellboy, who was standing at attention. “Put the lady's bag in the cab.” He smiled again at Amelia, approvingly, and tipped his hat a second time. Amelia smiled in return. Usually, she didn't notice hotel personnel. She'd been too busy comparing herself to the other guests. And another thing: She usually hired a limousine. Now she felt she didn't have to impress anyone but herself. Anything with wheels would get her to where she wanted to go.
As the taxi driver pulled into the driveway, Amelia noticed it had been paved in her absence. The wide, circular front porch was finished, gleaming in the noon sunshine. The inside must be done, too, for she heard no hammering.
A little thrill coursed through her when she slipped the key into the new oiled lock and the solid oak door swished open. Slowly she walked from room to room. All the carpentry work was finished. The bathroom was remodeled, the carpeting laid. All she had to do was clean everything up, arrange the various
objets d'art
, and outfit the bedrooms. The furniture she'd ordered months ago was being held, as were the drapes. She'd made calls this morning to arrange delivery for tomorrow and the following day.
Amelia climbed the stairs a second time to change into her coveralls. Then she set to work with a vengeance, scrubbing and polishing till late in the evening.
A long, soothing bath made her feel drowsy. She spread her sable coat on the clean floor and slept like a newborn infant, her hand tucked under her cheek. When she woke in the morning, she couldn't remember if she'd dreamed or not.
At nine o'clock the rental car she'd ordered arrived, and Amelia immediately drove to a deli in Crystal City. Hot coffee in three containers and a bacon-and-egg sandwich to go would hold her till later. She also picked up a copy of the morning issue of the
Crystal City Times
. Back at the house, she ate breakfast and read her paper from cover to cover, rereading the local business page. There was a brief mention of Cary and his associates and the remarkable progress they'd made. But there were no pictures. Amelia looked longingly at the yellow wall phone. Not yet. Not till she was finished.
By three-thirty every window in the house was draped. By six o'clock all the downstairs furniture was in place. She had only to dust, arrange her art objects, hang the pictures that were in the hall closet, vacuum. At eight o'clock everything was done. Amelia called the deli and had them deliver a pastrami on rye and two cups of coffee.
She bathed early, ate dinner, and slept, wrapped in her sable coat in the middle of the furnished living room.
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Every night before he returned to his empty apartment, Cary drove through the silent streets trying to relax. And somehowâlike tonightâhe always found himself driving to Amelia's house. Why? he wondered. Why did he keep punishing himself? What was it he expected to find?
As usual, he slowed his car once he rounded the curve of the road. There it was, all by itself on thirty acres of ground. He pulled up to the curb and cut the engine. The house was dark and silent, as always. He sat for over twenty minutes staring at it. For some strange reason, he felt closer to Amelia than ever before. If only . . . if only . . .
He didn't notice the car in the driveway when he slipped the car into gear and drove away.
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It rained the next day, great buckets that slapped at the newly draped windows. Amelia turned on the heat to chase away the chilly dampness. The upstairs furniture arrived at eleven-thirty. At twelve-thirty she backed the Mustang out of the driveway and headed for Crystal City's poshest department store. She bought bedding, towels, soap dishes, mattress covers, sheets, blankets, spreads. The last things she purchased were bathroom mats and drinking glasses for the four bathrooms. The trunk and backseat of the car were so full, she had to use her sideview mirror to drive. She stopped at the deli for more sandwiches, then continued on to the house.
She spent the next three hours dressing the beds and manicuring the bathrooms. She vacuumed a second time for lint, then replaced the sweeper in the upstairs closet.
It was done. All of it. She felt absolutely giddy with relief. She'd started from scratch and seen the whole thing through to the end.
Amelia ate a corned beef sandwich and munched on the deli pickle as if she were eating pheasant under glass. The coffee tasted good, so she opened the second Styrofoam cup and drank that, too. Then she wadded up her trash and carried it to a container in the garage.
Everything smelled so new. All the place needed was someone to move in. Amelia smiled when she sat back down at the kitchen table with her work papers in front of her. She used a purse minicalculator and worked for close to an hour. She'd spent a quarter of a million dollars renovating this house that had been her mother's. Added to that was the original cost of the house and land: 1.6 million dollars. Before leaving England, she'd instructed her bank to pay off the mortgage company in Austin. So she was now full owner of a house worth roughly 1.85 million dollars. She'd done the work, paid for it with her own money. It was all hers.
An hour later Amelia walked out onto the back porch. It was still raining, and she shivered inside her fuzzy robe. She secured the dead bolt on the door, then turned off the lights as she made her way to the living room, where she would again sleep wrapped in the sable coat. No way was she going to disturb the newly made beds upstairs. She was sound asleep when Cary drove past the house at eleven-fifteen.
Amelia stayed in the house for four more days, waiting for what she called perfect weather. She was getting sick of deli sandwiches and pickles, but she had no other choice. When she woke on the fifth day, she could feel that it was right. She checked outside: it was airless; not a leaf in the garden moved. All she had to do now was wait. She sat on the back porch eating her sandwiches, drinking her coffee, and reading snatches from a lusty romance novel that set her teeth on edge.
At twenty minutes before noon Amelia walked into the Liberman Insurance Agency and presented her homeowner's policy. “Cancel it and issue me a credit. I'll wait.” The scurrying around amused her. When a Coleman canceled a policy of any kind, the whole town would know. That was all right; she didn't care. When she left the office with the huge red
CANCELED
stamped across the face of the policy, she felt pleased. As of 12:01 she was uninsured.
She laughed as she got into her car. God, she felt good! To celebrate, she stopped at a steak house on the highway and ordered a T-bone, rare, a large country salad, a baked potato with butter and sour cream. Then she finished off her meal with blueberry cheesecake and coffee, left a generous tip, and returned to the house that was now hersâand uninsured.
Amelia sat on the back porch with coffee she'd heated in the microwave. It tasted awful, but she sipped at it complacently as she leafed through the romantic novel.
At seven o'clock, just as dusk was settling in, she took the gardening shears and walked across her perfect lawn to her perfect flower beds and neatly clipped exquisite perfect flowers, which she arranged in a perfectly cut crystal vase. She set them in the foyer on a cherrywood table that was a genuine, perfect antique. She returned the shears to the potting shed in the yard and resumed her seat on the back porch. The evening hadn't gotten cooler; it was still hot and airless. Deathly still.
It was ten-thirty when Amelia left her chair on the back porch. She entered the house, closed and locked the back door. She walked through the rooms, admiring her handiwork. Her mother would have been pleased. She walked upstairs, going from room to room. Everything was perfect. She parted the draperies in the master bedroom and looked outside. She pulled the drapes in the bedroom, then did the same in the rest of the bedrooms. She didn't turn her head for a second look. On the landing of the stairway she turned off the night-light. She walked through the downstairs, turning on the magnificent chandelier for a better look. She loved it.
She picked up her sable coat, then debated a second. People would think she was crazy, carrying around a sable coat in this weather. She folded it neatly and laid it on the back of a beautiful morris chair she'd had custom-made. The chandelier twinkled and glistened before she turned it off. The only remaining light was in the foyer.
Amelia left the front door slightly ajar when she went out to the rental car. She threw her purse into the backseat and backed the car down the driveway with only the parking lights on. She opened the trunk and removed a filled kerosene can, stuffing the car keys into the pocket of her slacks so she could use both hands to carry the can. Inside the beautiful house, she hurried up the stairs, sprinkling the kerosene as she went. Then she turned and did the same thing downstairs until the can was empty. She placed it outside the front door and went back upstairs, digging in her pockets for matches. She lit little fires that blazed into big fires. The steps were burning behind her as she rushed down to light still more fires.
The house was blazing when she closed the door for the last time. With the kerosene can in one hand, four unused matches in the other, she walked down the drive. It would be a while before anyone noticed. The fire department would come . . . maybe. She'd stand right where she was in case they did come. She'd tell them to let it burn ... to the ground.
It was almost midnight. She was free. The past was gone. Tomorrow would be a new day. Only the future remained. What she did with it would be up to her.
Amelia stood in the darkness and watched her house burn. She was officially broke now, by Coleman standards a pauper. She laughed, enjoying the feeling.
Damn, a car was coming down the road. Well, when the driver slowed and finally got out, she'd tell him the same thing. Let it burn to the ground.
Cary slowed his car and stared. Amelia's house was lit up like a Christmas tree. When he slammed the car into park, he realized the whole damn thing was blazing, a bright red-and-yellow conflagration against the dark Texas sky. “Holy Jesus!” he groaned, about to get back into the car to go for help.
A figure emerged from the shadows. “Let it burn.”
“Amelia! Amelia, is that you?”
“Cary? Cary darling, what are you doing here?”
“I can't believe it's you.” The house, the fire, everything was forgotten in that one instant as Cary reached out. Amelia. How good she felt. “My God, how I missed you. I thought you were never coming back. I prayed. Amelia, I prayed.”
“Shhh. So did I. I'm free now. Look at me, Cary.”
“You're the most beautiful creature on earth,” he said as he gazed into her loving eyes. “Look at me! I've lost sixteen pounds and I look like hell. Life was hell, without you.”
Amelia laughed, a young, girlish sound. “I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
“In this beholder's eyes, anyway.” Cary squeezed her tightly. He was never going to let her out of his sight again. Never. “Amelia, your house. What happened?”
“I finished it. I came back from England and finished it. I've never really finished anything I've started until tonight.” Tears glazed her eyes, but they were not tears of regret. “I was using that house just like my mother did. As an escape, a place to hide. I made myself so busy trying to regain the past that I couldn't look ahead to the future, and I cheated myself and everyone else of the happiness of the present. I burned it down, Cary. It's an effigy to the ghosts of the past, and I don't need it anymore.”
“We don't need anything, Amelia, only each other.”
Someone had alerted the Crystal City Fire Department; Amelia heard the distant whine of sirens. Quickly, she explained about the insurance and paying off the house. “Don't let them fight it, Cary. I don't want anyone hurt, and there's nothing in there worth saving. Let it burn.”
Dawn broke when the last engine pulled away from the ashes of what had once been Amelia's house. The firemen hadn't fought the fire but had stood in readiness to keep it from spreading.
“Let's go home,” Cary said, nuzzling Amelia's hair. “Hey, you did something different to yourself,” he said in surprise. “I don't know what it is, exactly, but you look great. Fatten me up, okay? My clothes don't fit anymore.”
Amelia laughed, a joyous sound that rivaled the music of the early-morning birds.
She was finally free. Free of the past, of the ghosts that had haunted her, of fear of the future. She was Amelia Assante now. She'd be Amelia Assante until the day she died.
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When the intercom in the nursery buzzed, Susan leaned over and listened. “Miss Susan, Mr. de Moray is here. Will you see him?”