Cutler 03 - Twilight's Child

 
    1

THE BATTLE FOR CHRISTIE
     
    THE VIRGINIA COUNTRYSIDE FLEW BY AS JIMMY AND I DROVE toward Saddle Creek, a suburb of Richmond. My heart was pounding in anticipation because the road signs announced that we were drawing closer and closer to our destination. Soon I would be holding my baby in my arms. I had barely had a chance to look at Christie when I gave birth to her at The Meadows, for soon after she was born she was taken away from me. It was the last in a series of horrible things Grandmother Cutler had done to me before she had died, bitter and broken, hating me right up until the end for reasons I didn't come to understand until the reading of the wills.
    "It won't be much longer now," Jimmy said, smiling at me. He was almost as excited about my retrieving Christie as I was. I was so happy that Jimmy was willing to consider Christie his own.
    While Jimmy had been in the army and away in Europe I had fallen in love with Michael Sutton, my vocal teacher at the Sarah Bernhardt School of Performing Arts, But rather than being disappointed in me for not waiting for his return, Jimmy had told me he understood how I had fallen under Michael's spell. As soon as he had learned that I had become pregnant and that Michael had deserted me, Jimmy came searching for me and rescued me from the clutches of horrid Emily Booth, Grandmother Cutler's older sister. He was truly my hero, whisking me out of that strange plantation house where I had been sent to have my baby in secret. Jimmy arrived shortly after Christie had been born. And when we found out what Grandmother Cutler had arranged—the immediate giving away of my child—we both vowed that we wouldn't rest until I had her back in my arms again.
    But joyful anticipation wasn't the only thing that made my heart pitter-patter so fast it made me dizzy. I couldn't help but be overwhelmed by the quick sequence of events that had literally changed my life and determined my future. Two wills had been read after Grandmother Cutler's death: hers and a secret letter and will left by the man I had once thought to be my grandfather and now knew had been my father. To repent for what he had considered the sin of my birth, he left me a majority interest in the family hotel. For all practical purposes, I was suddenly the true owner of Cutler's Cove.
    But did I want to be, and perhaps even more importantly, could I be? I could still hear my half-sister Clara Sue screaming at me just before we set out to retrieve Christie. Her shock and envy had been fueled by the jealousy she had always held against me.
    "You couldn't fill Grandmother's shoes!" she cried, twisting her mouth, her hands on her hips. "You'll be the laughingstock of the Virginia shore. If Grandmother was alive, she would die laughing."
    Clara Sue's words taunted me. It was almost as if the stern, vicious old woman were speaking through Clara Sue and smirking skeptically. I felt the challenge, but I also feared what inheriting the hotel and all the responsibility would do to my dreams of becoming a singer. Then again, I thought, perhaps all those dreams had died the day Michael deserted me. Maybe I wasn't meant to dwell in the show business world after all. Maybe everything that had happened had happened for the best.
    Jimmy seemed to think so. All during our trip today he had been making plans and promises.
    "As soon as I'm discharged from the army, we'll get married," he pledged.
    "And live at the hotel with my crazy family?" I asked.
    "They don't bother me. Besides, you're the real boss now, Dawn. I'll become the maintenance manager. I've learned a lot about motors and electricity and engines. . . ."
    "I don't know if I can do it, Jimmy. It frightens me thinking about it," I confessed.
    "Nonsense. Mr. Updike, the family attorney, said he would help you, and Mr. Dorfman, the hotel's comptroller, promised to do everything he could, too. No one expects you to bear all that responsibility immediately. Cutler's Cove will become your new school," he said, laughing. "And as soon as I'm discharged be there at your side, always," he promised, and he squeezed my hand.
    I believed him. He was at my side now, when I needed him the most, wasn't he? And I was tired of the lies and the deceit and the pain. I wanted my life with Jimmy and Christie to begin on a happy note, and the prospect of holding Christie in my arms promised to bring just that: music of joy, blissful, sweet, hopeful.
    But promises, like rainbows, usually come