John Saul: Hellfire

There must have been a time, though, when they had loved each other. Maybe the first couple of years of their marriage, before Carolyn’s ambitions for him had taken over their lives. Alan had been a carpenter and a good one, who took pride in practicing his craft, but that had not been enough. Carolyn had decided he should become a contractor, a businessman. He’d always refused, telling her he just didn’t want the responsibility.

The arguments grew more bitter and, finally, had broken up the marriage.

The irony was that two years after the divorce, he’d wound up getting his contractor’s license anyway. It had finally become an economic necessity. If he was going to support himself, along with Carolyn and Beth, he simply had to have more money coming in. And so he’d done what Carolyn had always wanted him to do in the first place.

And what had happened?

She’d upped and married Phillip Sturgess, and he was off the hook for everything except child support. For that matter, he didn’t suppose it would matter a whit to Carolyn anymore whether he sent the monthly support check or not. Phillip, he knew, would make up the balance, and do it cheerfully.

But it was a matter of principle. Beth was his daughter, and he wanted to support her, whether she needed his support or not.

The money, he suspected, was probably going into a trust fund for her. That would be very much like Phillip — children should have trust funds from their fathers, and he would see to it that Beth had one, whether Alan knew anything about it or not.

Grinning to himself, he wondered if Carolyn knew how well he and Phillip really got along together. In fact, if Carolyn hadn’t married Phillip, they would probably have become good friends, despite the difference in their backgrounds.

For Phillip, alone among the Sturgesses, had somehow managed to overcome the sense of superiority that had been bred into him from the day he was born.

He’d gone to the right schools, played with the right children, met the right women — even married one of them, the first time around — but no matter how hard his parents had tried, Phillip had never been able to put on the aristocratic airs the Sturgesses were renowned for. Now that Phillip had married Carolyn, the two men should have kept a wary distance, but, in fact, Alan could not help liking Phillip Sturgess. Now that Carolyn had what she wanted — position, money, all the comforts of life he had not been able to provide — he hoped the marriage would thrive. For one thing was certain, Phillip loved her — as much as Alan himself once had.

He wanted his ex-wife to be happy, if only for his daughter’s sake, knowing that if Phillip and Carolyn found it rough going, somehow Beth would get caught in the middle.

Whatever happened, Alan would never allow his daughter to be caught in it. It wasn’t Beth’s fault that things hadn’t worked out for him and Carolyn. In fact, if he really thought about it, it was probably the Sturgesses’ own fault.

For as long as he’d known Carolyn — and they’d grown up together — she had been fascinated by the Sturgess family.

Fascinated by them, and repulsed by them.

And yet she’d married Phillip.

So maybe the revulsion of them that she’d always professed had not been quite what she’d said.

Maybe it had been envy, and a wish that she’d been born one of them.

At any rate, when Phillip Sturgess had suddenly reappeared in Westover a year ago after living abroad for nearly a decade, Carolyn had wasted no time in snaring him. Which, Alan realized, wasn’t really a fair thing to say. The two of them had met and fallen in love, and Carolyn had resigned her job in the local law office when she’d married Phillip, claiming that continuing as assistant to an attorney when she was marrying his major client involved a conflict of interest.

Perhaps it did; perhaps it didn’t. None of it mattered, not anymore. The fact was that Carolyn had married Phillip, and Alan hoped she would be happy. When Abigail followed Conrad to the grave, he thought, maybe she would have a chance at that. Until then, Alan was certain his former wife had an uphill battle ahead of her.

The door opened, and his secretary walked in. She dropped a stack of mail on his desk, then surveyed him critically. “Thoughtful,” she said. “Always a bad sign.”

“Just thinking about the Sturgesses, and hoping they didn’t all drown in Conrad’s grave.”

Judy Parkins snickered. “That would be something, wouldn’t it? And after Carolyn worked so hard to get Phillip, too.”

The smile faded from Alan’s face, and Judy immediately wished she hadn’t spoken. “I’m sorry. I didn’t really mean that.”

Alan shrugged wryly. “Well, let’s just hope they’re happy, and wish them well, all right?”

Judy regarded her employer with a raised brow. “How come you always manage to be so damned good? And if you are, how come Carolyn wanted to trade you in for Phillip Sturgess in the first place?”

“First, I’m not so damned good, and second, she didn’t trade me in. She chucked me. And it’s over and done with. All right?”

“Check.” Judy turned, but as she was about to leave the office, Beth burst in, her face blotched and streaked with tears. She threw herself into her father’s arms, sobbing. Judy Parkins, after offering Alan a sympathetic look, slipped out of the office, quietly closing the door behind her.

“Honey,” Alan crooned as he tried to calm his daughter. “What is it? What happened?”

“Th-they hate me,” Beth wailed. “I don’t belong there, and they all hate me!”

Alan hugged the unhappy child closer. “Oh, darling, that isn’t true. Your mother loves you very much, and so does Uncle Phillip—”

“He’s not my uncle,” Beth protested. “He’s Tracy’s father, and he hates me.”

“Now who told you that?”

“T-Tracy,” Beth stammered. She stared up into her father’s face, her eyes beseeching him. “She … she said her father hates me, and that by the end of the summer, I’ll have to go live somewhere else. Sh-she said he’s going to make me!”

“I see,” Alan replied. It was exactly the sort of thing that had happened in the spring, when Tracy had last been home from school. “And when did she tell you this?”

“A little while ago. Everyone was in … in the library, and I was by myself in the living room, and she came in, and she told me. She said that now that her grandfather’s dead, her father owns the house, and … and he’s going to make me go away!”

“And was anybody else there?”

Beth hesitated, then shook her head. “N-no …”

“Well, I’ll bet if Uncle Phillip had heard Tracy say that, he’d have turned her over his knee and given her a spanking. Maybe I’d better just give him a call, and tell him.”

Beth drew back, horrified. “No! If you call him, then Tracy will know I told, and it’ll just be worse than it already is!”

Alan nodded solemnly. “Then what do you think we ought to do?”

“Can’t I come and live with you, Daddy? Please?”

Alan sighed silently. This, too, was something they’d been through before, and he’d tried to explain over and over why it was best for Beth to live with her mother. But no matter how often he explained it to her, her reply never changed.

“But I don’t belong there,” she always said. “They’re different from me, and I just don’t belong. If you make me stay there, I’m going to die.”

And sometimes, when he looked into her huge brown eyes, and smoothed back her soft dark hair — the hair she’d inherited from Carolyn — he almost believed she was right.

He stood up, and took his daughter by the hand. “Come on, honey,” he said. “I’ll drive you home, and well talk about it on the way.”