The Temptation of Savannah O'Neill (19 page)

“I
T’S STUNNING
,”
Margot said the next afternoon, her face radiant with a bright smile. Matt felt an insane amount of pride. He was overwhelmed with it, actually. Humbled by it. “It’s so…”

“Totally perfect!” Katie cried, spinning around in a circle, taking in what, Matt had to admit, was a totally perfect courtyard.

The flowers were planted, small hills and valleys of pinks and greens. Roses and hostas. Forget-me-nots, bougainvillaea and birds of paradise. Wisteria, lilac, honeysuckle. It was fragrant to the extreme, and he would never smell another flower without thinking of these women.

The cypress was trimmed and magnificent, the cobblestones replaced by a stunning carpet of green. The wall, barely visible in the back, was strong and would stay that way for a hundred years. The new greenhouse, a kit he’d ordered and modified, gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight.

This was his gift, his offering, his heart, beating and red with blood—for Savannah.

Savannah, who was silent. She stood to the side, her arms across her chest. She looked so thin, so small. Lost in the icy distance between her and everyone else.

How do I get to her,
he wondered, panicked.
How do I reach her?

“What do you think?” he asked Savannah.

“It’s so beautiful, Matt,” Savannah whispered. “It’s…” She smiled slightly and his heart chugged. “I’m speechless.”

“What about the fountain?” Katie asked, pointing to the burlap-covered structure in the seedling maze.

“Let’s check it out,” he said, leading the way, his troop of women fanning out behind him. When they were all standing around the fountain he’d had a friend ship to him—a piece he’d long admired for a long time but had no place for—he untied the twine and pulled off the rough brown cover.

Three delicate copper-and-steel women danced in a circle, long hair streaming, arms raised in jubilation, their mouths open wide as if singing or laughing. Red and pink enamel flowers laced their hair and filled their hands. Blue birds and yellow butterflies darted amongst them.

When he turned on the valve, the fountain spun and the women danced in a light rain.

The girls were silent. Matt could hear them breathing.

“Is that us?” Katie asked.

He nodded. “Those are my wild and unpredictable O’Neill women.” He palmed Katie’s head, giving it a shake.

In the silence the fountain spun and Matt’s heart pounded.

“I remember when you were born, Savannah, honey,” Margot said, her voice choked with tears, her gaze on Savannah like a spotlight. “Carter and Tyler were born up north, but Vanessa came home when she was pregnant with you. She was so big, I thought you were going to weigh ten pounds.” Margot laughed and sniffed, digging in her pocket for a tissue. “There was something going on with her. She said that she and Richard were having a fight, but I knew it was something more. Something bad
she was running from. Carter—” she blew out a big breath “—Carter was like a guard dog over Tyler, it made me so scared something had happened to one of them. With the company Vanessa kept, it only seemed a matter of time before someone got it in their head to hurt one of the little boys.” She shook her head, her lips pressed tight as if keeping the worst of her fears locked inside. “Anyway, Vanessa went into labor in the middle of the night. Real fast. Asleep one minute, screaming her head off the next. We got her into the hospital in the nick of time—I swear I thought you were going to be born into my arms on the front lawn.”

Katie laughed and even Savannah had to smile. Matt’s heart was breaking.

“Vanessa couldn’t breast-feed,” Margot said. “You wouldn’t latch, stubborn little thing. She tried, but you wanted nothing to do with her.”

Savannah’s face crumpled slightly as if bending under the weight she was trying to hold up.

“So I fed you,” Margot said. “So little in my arms—nothing but eyelashes and temper—that was you. I held you in my arms and you blinked open those big blurry eyes and shook your little fists at me. And then you focused. On me. You grabbed my finger. Mine.” Margot’s voice broke and her trembling hands pressed against her chest. “I loved you so much I could barely stand it, and I promised you that first night, walking the hallways of that hospital with you in my arms, I promised I would do what I had to do to keep you safe.”

Matt held his breath, hoping against hope that Savannah could forgive Margot for making the choices she’d made.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the money?” Savannah asked.

“I didn’t know how,” Margot said. “No, that’s not true. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to explain what I knew about your mother. That this was the only way I could think of to keep you all safe.”

“When did you stop?” Savannah asked.

“Stop? I haven’t.”

“What?” Savannah cried. “You’re still paying her?”

Margot’s hand twitched. “Katie.”

“What’s happening?” Katie whispered.

Matt put his hand on the girl’s head. “Give them a second.”

Savannah blew out a heavy breath. “I can’t believe this.”

“I figured someday you’d ask.” Margot’s laugh was coated in tears. “The house is falling apart and I never seem to have any money. I’ve sold the paintings, the china, almost everything of value. I almost wish I had those gems so I could keep the roof from falling down on our heads.”

“I just thought…” Savannah dug her hands into her hair. “I thought you were gambling everything away. I’ve been saving money thinking I would buy the house if it came to that.”

“Oh, honey—”

“I had no idea you were paying my mother to stay away.” Savannah flung out her arms. “God, it sounds so ridiculous.”

“It is. It’s absolutely ridiculous,” Margot said. “But it was the best I could do. You’re a mother, Savannah. You understand.”

Savannah nodded, her smile watery as she stared at the fountain. “I understand. I do. It’s just going to take me a while to get my head around it.”

Margot’s eyes closed in what appeared to be sublime
relief. “Well,” she said, her voice lighter, “don’t take too long. I’m an old woman.”

“Not that old.” Savannah touched Margot’s hand then squeezed it hard.

Finally, Margot turned her attention to Matt—the high beams of her charm and affection nearly blinding him. “As for you,” she said, “you are a miracle. A—” The tears she’d kept controlled until now streamed down her cheeks. “A blessing. I didn’t realize how badly we needed you until you showed up on my door.”

“It’s only a garden,” he whispered, touched by her sentiment.

“No, it is not,” she said, suddenly a dragon. “It is so much more and you are so much more.” Margot wrapped her arms around him, hugged him hard. “Don’t give up on her,” she whispered. “She needs you now more than ever.”

Margot stepped back and took Katie’s hand. “Let’s go make some celebration lemonade,” she said, giving Katie’s arm a shake. “And maybe a sugar pie.”

Katie leaped away, jumping toward the kitchen and the promise of sugar pie.

Now it was only Matt and Savannah standing in the sun-drenched courtyard, the fountain’s whirr and splash joining the mad pounding of his heart.

Matt couldn’t look away from Savannah, couldn’t stop wishing that she would look at him. He was beginning to get angry with himself, acting like a homeless dog searching for scraps.

He used to be better than this, but Savannah had changed the rules. She’d changed the whole game.

“I’ll stay,” he blurted and Savannah’s gaze flew to his, wide and surprised. “I don’t have to go back just yet. I’ll
call.” He dug into his pocket for his phone but Savannah’s cool hand stopped him.

Stopped his heart, to be honest.

“Don’t, Matt. You have to go back, you’ve made promises. And if you broke those now you’d never forgive yourself.”

“A few days, a few—”

“No, Matt.”

“Do you want me to leave?” he asked, shaken to the core.

“No!” she cried. “No, I don’t want you to leave, but I understand that you have to.”

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, relieved. “I’m sorry that I have to leave, that your mother showed up the way that she did, that Margot…” There was so much on her shoulders. So much pain. So much betrayal. “I don’t know how to make this right for you.”

“It’s not up to you to make this right,” she said. “It doesn’t actually have anything to do with you.”

Her words were a wrecking ball and anger slammed through him. “How can you say that?” he asked. “I love you. Everything that hurts you hurts me.”

She stared at him, her eyes wide as though she didn’t get it. Something awful was beginning to build inside of him. Not just doubt or anger, but something dark and big and worse than the building collapse. Like a poison, black and thick, reality crested.

“Do you love me, Savannah?”

She didn’t say anything for a long time then, as though it was a secret or something to be ashamed of, she whispered, “Yes.”

And he didn’t even feel joy over her admission, because he knew, looking at her, that she wished she didn’t love him.

“God, listen to you,” he said, wanting to laugh. Wanting, actually, to scream. “The only person on the planet who thinks love is bad.”

“It’s not bad,” she said. “It hurts. I know you don’t think you’ll hurt me, but you will. It’s what people do. It’s unavoidable.”

“Do you believe me when I say that I’ll be back?”

Savannah licked her lips, her shoulders straight. “I believe that right now you mean it.”

“I don’t know how to convince you,” he said. “What can I do?”

Savannah blinked and blinked again, silent and damning. She would never believe him. She would never be convinced of his love.

Suddenly it dawned on him, what the rest of his life would be like if he returned to her.

“Every day would be a test,” he said. “I could come back, move in. Start my life over with you. But it wouldn’t be enough, because every day you’d be expecting me to walk out. Every day I would have to prove myself to you.”

She looked down at her hands, and a big fat tear splotched across her knuckle. “Please come back,” she said. “Please. I will try, I really will. I will try to trust—”

He was overwhelmed by an anger and a heartache so big he almost collapsed under its weight. “No, Savannah,” he whispered. “I won’t. I can’t.”

Her eyes, blue and wounded, flew to his. “Wh-what?”

“I can’t give you faith,” he said. “I can’t make you have it, or force you to feel it. You’ve got to do that part on your own, Savannah. If you love me, really love me and want to spend your life with me the way I want to spend my life
with you, you have to have faith in me. In you. Us. You have to come to me, otherwise we’re doomed.”

His hands fumbled as he pulled out his wallet, his fingers shook as he dug out a card. He took her hand, memorizing the fine long fingers, the calluses across her palm that she’d gotten working alongside him. He pressed the card into her palm then dropped her hand. Another minute and he wouldn’t go. Another second and he’d do this her way and they’d never have a chance.

“I’ll be waiting, Savannah,” he whispered.

And before he lost the strength to walk away, he left. He left his bag. His clothes. His heart. Everything.

He had his wallet, the keys to his car and the clothes on his back.

I’ll never see her again,
he thought and wanted to die.

I
T WAS THE LAST DAY
of summer school and Savannah watched from her post at the returns desk as Owen’s former girlfriend, The Cheerleader, got cozy under Garrett’s arm.

Garrett had a black eye that was fading to yellow and Owen had made friends with some new hoodlums on the other side of the computer bank. New hoodlums who were eyeing Savannah over their screens.

“I heard he killed a guy,” one of them whispered. “It was an accident, but still.”

“He’s like some hotshot architect or something. He was just pretending to be a gardener.”

“Shut up.” Garrett sneered. “Like Ms. O’Neill’s got a boyfriend. Give me a break.”

Shut up indeed,
she thought, trying hard to block out the whispers as well as any thought of Matt. It was like a small electric shock every time she allowed a memory
of his touch, or his laugh, or the look in those green eyes when he said he wouldn’t be back, to flicker through her head.

She was tired, so tired of resisting the pain.

Particularly when it all hurt anyway.

“Don’t you listen to what they say,” Janice whispered, bringing a pile of books from the oak tables to the desk for reshelving. “They’re a bunch of foul-mouthed jerks.”

“It’s true,” Savannah said in a clear speaking voice that sounded like machine-gun fire in the hushed atmosphere of the library.

Janice dropped the books.

“All of it.” Savannah kept talking, driven by some need to protect Matt from the fate she was drowning in. Her eyes met the astonished eyes of the high school kids. “Every single thing you’ve ever whispered about me, totally true.”

“Savannah.” Janice tugged on her arm. “Maybe lower your voice.”

“No!” Savannah said and the echo was so nice. So loud and hard and cold.

“You’re having some kind of psychotic break,” Janice said and Savannah laughed, the sound rolling and rolling and rolling through the library, filling the corners with its hysteria.

“Probably,” she said. “I
am
an O’Neill, after all. I slept with a married man and my mother is a thief and liar. My brother is a gambler and my grandmother—” she turned to Janice “—what would you call my grandmother?”

“A very nice lady—”

“A whore.” Savannah nodded as if they were all in agreement. “You’d call her a whore. And all of us, every single one of the Notorious O’Neills, is alone. We live alone and we die alone.”

“I’m calling Margot,” Janice said and disappeared.

“But Matt Woods didn’t murder anyone,” Savannah said, advancing on the teenagers who’d been whispering. They backed up, falling out of their chairs, astonished and terrified of Savannah.

Good,
she thought, victorious.
Let them all be terrified.
Because what Savannah was feeling these days, this poisonous mix of grief and longing and anger at herself and her world—it was terrifying.