Barbara Gale - Down from the Mountain

Greetings, my son, from your dying father,

Now, I ask you, how’s that for an opening? I trust it got your attention, something I wasn’t very good at doing in real life. My truest regret is that we won’t have time to make our peace—we would have, you know. I believe that with all my heart—because if you’re reading this, then the worst has happened—but you’ve come home.

The car accident you suffered as a boy left a void you never allowed me to fill. Well, I am going to fill it now. However you have rewritten history is the quarrel of a young child, but suffice it to say—to the wounded man that poor, scarred boy has become—I leave my most valued possession. You’re the only one to whom I can entrust the well-being of Ellen Candler. She needs you, although she would never admit to it and I know you will protect her with your life. In return, she will give you back yours. I only wish I could be there to enjoy the fireworks.

Your loving father,

John

David stared down at the letter crumpled in his fist. Got me! Just as he knew he would. He closed his eyes and massaged his brow, fighting the onslaught of a headache. This was no time for a headache, not when he needed his wits about him—for Ellen’s sake, if nothing else. Even if it was she who had unwittingly opened the old wounds of that poor, scarred schoolboy! Wounded man! Let’s not forget that part! But hey, he could be forgiven a lot of sins for what happened one night, twenty long years ago! And the personal cost to him—well, hell, only his damned face—and all semblance of normal life! And if anybody doubted that, they just had to watch people gawk when he walked down the street, or went to a museum, or entered a restaurant, or…or looked in a goddamned mirror and saw what he saw every goddamned day of his tormented life!

Two million dollars and a blind girl!

Fireworks? David shook his head sadly. More like murder in the first degree—and who’d be holding the smoking gun was anybody’s guess.

Ellen kept to her room that afternoon, perhaps unable to summon the energy to go another round with him. Relieved by her disappearance, David decided to hike the three miles to the summit of the mountain. If he stayed in that mausoleum one minute longer, he thought he would go crazy. It made his skin crawl. Too many memories haunted the place. Every turn he made, he expected to see his father and every room he entered, he looked for his mother, his beautiful mother, always ready to laugh, always ready to stop what she was doing and gather him up in her soft, perfumed arms. Almost as if she had known their time together would be short. Sometimes he thought that when she’d died, she’d taken his laughter with her. His father’s, too. Laughter, perfume, hugs and kisses—all the soft, sweet things in life that her two grieving menfolk never managed to make up for.

It was dark, nine-thirty, when he finally returned to the house. The housekeeper met him at the door.

“Miss Ellen asked me to tell you that she had a headache and would see you in the morning. She took a dinner tray in her room. I thought you would like the same.”

David’s windblown hair almost hid his scars, but they couldn’t disguise the tired lines that pulled his mouth taut. Still, he managed a faint smile. “Dinner and a headache? Sounds fine to me.”

Hurrying upstairs, he paused by Ellen’s door and almost knocked, but a glance down at his stained jeans and muddy work boots changed his mind. When he finished showering, his dinner tray was waiting in his room, the aroma of beef stew and freshly baked rolls reminding him how hungry he was. He was so famished, he ate in his bath towel, downed the entire jug of iced tea and practically licked the dessert plate clean. Feeling more human, he threw on a pair of cutoffs and made his way down the hall to Ellen’s bedroom. He knocked lightly, but when there was no answer, he turned the knob.

The room was dark but a sliver of moonlight let him see exactly where everything was, including Ellen. Huddled beneath a silvery sheet, she was sound asleep. Her red hair curling around her delicate face, a hand tucked beneath her cheek, she was a vision he thought existed only in fairy tales. Annoyed with himself for being so fanciful, he nudged her awake more roughly than he meant. And when she woke with a start, he cursed himself for a fool, for not realizing how sensitive she must be to touch.

“Whoa, Nellie! It’s only me, David.” He caught her just before she toppled off the bed in panic.

Ellen relaxed as David’s voice began to register in her clouded mind. Rubbing sleep from her eyes, she remembered she wasn’t dressed and covered herself, but not before David got an eyeful. One beautiful lady, he thought, and sighed wearily as he released her.

Scurrying back against the headboard, Ellen pulled the bedding around her. No one invaded her privacy, it was a cardinal rule. If she didn’t answer a knock at her door, it was understood by the household that she didn’t wish to be disturbed. David’s invasion—although she dimly understood he was unaware of his trespass—made her want to rage and cry at the same time. It reminded her of her vulnerability on about a thousand different levels. Still, she didn’t want to start an argument with him in the middle of the night, and her in a flimsy nightgown, to boot. Maybe he’d seen hundreds of half-naked women and would find her modesty laughable, but it wasn’t anything she was used to. So she struggled to remain calm, trying to find him with her sightless eyes.

David understood immediately. “I’m here, to your right. We have to talk.”

“Now? In the middle of the night?”

“Sorry, but I wasn’t watching the clock. Unfortunately, Harry Gold is. And I wanted to know why you disappeared today.”

“Why I disappeared? What about you? You made yourself pretty scarce, too!” Ellen sniffed.

“True.” He couldn’t help the faint smile that tugged at his mouth. Her indignation was charming, but in giving him the cold shoulder, Ellen had unintentionally given him another wonderful eyeful. Scanning the smooth sweep of her elegant shoulder, the delicate curve of her spine, the satin sheen of her skin in the moonlight, he thought it was ironic that he’d been asked to protect the one woman in the world who might need protecting from him. Having not seriously looked at a woman in years, he was susceptible to a pretty face. A few years back, when he’d still harbored hopes of a normal life, he’d fallen hard for a little blonde from Lake George. It had been a complete disaster. Although the girl had been willing to see him, her parents had come down on him as if he were a freak. It was his last attempt at a normal relationship. The enchantment of romance would never be his. If it happened sometimes that the grief that lingered challenged the thin veneer of his pride, like now… Well, he thanked God that Ellen couldn’t see his fists clenched at his side, see how dry his lips had become, see how hard he strove to speak.

“Look, lady,” he finally rasped, trying to sound as normal as possible, “let’s not equivocate. Harry needs our decision by noon. What’s it going to be?”

“That’s up to you, isn’t it?” Ellen reminded him, impatience coloring her voice.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That I’m at your mercy, for goodness’ sake! Either you agree to help me, or you don’t, but I certainly can’t win an argument over this. I can’t force you, can I?” she exclaimed.

In the face of such odds, David admired her spunk. “True enough. Okay, then. This operation of yours. What’s it all about?”

Ellen didn’t know how to answer. How did she explain the chance of a lifetime—or at least, the hope of one? How could she describe what successful surgery would mean to her? How could she describe its failure? It served no purpose. Since David had no idea what it meant to be handicapped, she wasn’t sure she could find the right words to explain it. In the end, she decided not to try, to just stick to the facts. He wasn’t stupid, just ornery. He’d figure the rest out for himself.