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"A business manager?" He shook his head.
"But first things first. We need that mortgage," I said.
"I don't know. Mortgaging the hotel to expand it . . . I don't know."
"Look at these letters from former guests and prospective new guests, all asking for reservations," I said, lifting a dozen or so of my desk. "We can't accommodate half of them. Don't you see how much business we're turning away now?" I asked. He widened his eyes and looked through some of the letters.
"Hmm," he said. "I don't know."
"I thought you prided yourself on being a good gambler. This isn't so risky a gamble, is it?"
He laughed.
"You amaze me, Lillian. I brought a little girl here, or at least someone I thought was a little girl, but you very quickly took hold. I know the staff already respects you more than they do me," he complained.
"It's your own fault. You're not here when they need you. I am," I said sharply.
He nodded. He didn't have as much interest in the hotel as I had developed, but he knew enough not to pass up a potentially good opportunity.
"Okay. Set up a meeting with the bankers and let's see what this is all about," he concluded. "I swear," he said, standing up and gazing down at me behind my desk. "I don't know whether to be proud of you these days or afraid of you. Some of my friends are teasing me already and telling me you're the one who wears the pants in our family. I'm not sure I like it," he added, perturbed.
"You know you wear the pants, Bill," I said a little coquettishly. He smiled. I had learned quickly how easy it was to flatter him and get my way.
"Yeah, just as long as you know it, too," he said.
I looked sufficiently submissive for him to feel less threatened and he left. As soon as he did, I contacted a young lawyer named Updike who had been recommended to me by one of the businessmen in Cutler's Cove. I was very impressed with him and I hired him to represent us in all our business dealings. He helped get us our mortgage quickly and we began an expansion that would continue on and off for the next ten years.
My work and responsibilities at the hotel made it hard for me to travel back to The Meadows more than twice a year. Bill accompanied me only on the first visit. Each time I arrived, I found the old plantation sinking deeper and deeper into disuse and neglect.
Charles had long since given up on most of it and simply tried to keep enough going to provide the basic necessities. Papa complained about his taxes and his overhead, just as always, but Vera told me he was leaving the plantation less and less and hardly gambling anymore.
"Probably because he has little left to lose," I said, and Vera agreed.
Most of the time, Papa hardly paid any attention to me nor I to him. I knew that he was curious about my new life and impressed with my clothing and my new car. On more than one occasion, I even thought he might ask me for money. But his Southern pride and arrogance prevented him from making such a request—not that I would have given him any. It would have only gone into other hands over a card table or been spent on bourbon. But I always tried to bring nice things for Luther and Charlotte.
With every passing year, Charlotte began to take on more and more of Papa's physical characteristics. She grew tall and wide and had long fingers and large hands for a girl. My long periods of separation from her had taken their toll over the years. By the time she was five, she seemed only to vaguely remember me each time I reappeared. When I spoke with her and played with her, I noticed that she took longer to understand things than she should and had a short attention span. She could become fascinated with something shiny or something simple and spend hours turning it over and over in her hands, but she had no patience when it came to reciting her numbers and learning her letters. As soon as
Charlotte was old enough, Luther took her to school with him as often as he could, but she quickly fell years behind where she should be.
"You should see how Luther looks after her," Vera told me during one of my infrequent trips back. "He won't let her go out without a wrap on if it's too cold and he chases her right back into the house as soon as the first raindrop falls."
"He's a very serious and mature little boy for his age," I said. He was. I had never seen a young boy focus so intently on things and smile or laugh so infrequently. He carried himself like a little gentleman and according to Charles, he was already a significant helper on the plantation.
“I swear that boy knows almost as much as I do about engines and things already," Charles told me.
Whenever I visited the plantation, I spent time at the family graveyard. Just like everything else on the old farm, it needed some tender loving care. I weeded and planted flowers and cleaned it up the best I could, but nature seemed to want to overtake The Meadows and swallow it up with overgrowth and new saplings. Sometimes when I left I'd look back and wish that the house itself would crumble and the wind scatter the pieces far and wide. Better it should disappear, I thought, than linger like Bill's mother had lingered, a neglected, decrepit shell of itself.
As far as Emily was concerned, none of this made much difference. She had never taken much joy and pleasure in the plantation when it was bright and beautiful. There could be flowers and trimmed hedges, bright magnolias and fresh wisteria or there could not be. It was all the same to her, for she looked out at the world through those gray eyes and saw no color anyway. She lived in a black and white universe in which her religion provided the only light and the devil continually tried to impose the dark.
If anything, Emily grew taller and thinner, yet never looked stronger and harder to me. And she held on firmly to all her childhood beliefs and fears. Once, after one of my visits, she followed me to the car, that old Bible still clutched in her clawlike fingers.
"All of our prayers and good work have been rewarded," she told me when I turned to say goodbye. "The devil no longer dwells here."
"It's probably too cold and dark for him," I quipped. She pulled herself up tight and stretched her lips into that disapproving expression.
"When the devil sees he has no chance of victory, he moves on quickly to riper pastures. Beware that he doesn't follow you to Cutler's Cove and take up residence in your godforsaken den of debauchery and pleasure. You should institute regular prayer services, build a chapel, put Bibles in every room."
"Emily," I said, "if I ever need to exorcise evil from my life, I'll call on you."
