America's First Daughter: A Novel(102)
Chapter Twenty-two
THE MAGNITUDE OF THE DISASTER—both emotional and financial—was too much to take in. “That can’t be true,” I said, my head spinning as I grappled with all this would mean for us.
“It is true,” Tom said, too weary to stand. Sinking down onto the schoolmaster’s desk, he said, “My father rewrote his will in his last hours. He chose to spite me with his very last breaths.”
Suddenly, Gabriella’s strange remarks at breakfast took on a new light. No doubt Colonel Randolph’s young widow and her father hovered like buzzards over the mean old bastard to the last. They’d stolen Tom’s patrimony, but I’d have to put a more charitable spin on it, because Tom looked on the verge of shattering to pieces.
Regardless of the inheritance, my husband would be guardian over the children and steward of the estate. Much as my grandfather had been when he built this schoolhouse. That was the custom, and Tom could find some solace in that. “Tom, I’m sure your father was only worried the child would have nothing. That boy isn’t even two years old and will need us to look after him and his mother. It’ll be nearly twenty years before he comes into his inheritance, and with your stewardship at Tuckahoe—”
“You don’t understand,” Tom said, sharply. “I won’t have a stewardship at Tuckahoe. I meant what I said. I’ve lost my ancestral home. Not just the profits and enjoyment of it. But everything. John Harvie was named guardian over the younger children.”
I gasped in outrage and insult, my arms hugging my stomach against the sudden burning ache that settled there. Never mind the money; how could Colonel Randolph have entrusted his children into the care of the Harvies? And I was suddenly struck with fear that little Jenny, who had been living with us for years now, might be ripped away. “That cannot be true.”
Tom gripped the edge of the table so hard the wood creaked. “You think I’d make it up? Until the boy comes of age, Harvie will be master of Tuckahoe, not me. My mother’s children have no place here any longer.” My husband laughed bitterly. “But my brother and I do have the singular honor of executing my father’s estate.”
Which meant that Colonel Randolph had left my husband to settle his debts.
My throat tightened and my heart raced, sending my head into a spin. I pressed a hand to my forehead. That malevolent old rotter said my Jefferson blood ran cold. But nothing could have been colder than this. Colonel Randolph hadn’t simply impoverished us, but aimed to rip Tom’s sisters away from us and saddle us with costs and expenses besides.
He was as petty a tyrant as any king who’d ever lived, and the most un-Christian feelings welled up inside me such that I wanted to make the trip to the cemetery just to spit on Colonel Randolph’s freshly dug grave.
But my fears, disappointment, and anger were nothing in the face of Tom’s loss. “I—I tried to obey him,” Tom murmured through bloodless lips. “Tried to please him when I could. You saw that. I tried to make of myself something he might be proud of, but I didn’t always obey and I never could find a way to please him no matter how hard I tried. Even so, I never thought he could hate me. What did I do to make him hate me so?”
Reaching for my husband’s face—which was somehow even more beautiful in its anguish—I cradled his cheeks in my hands. “Your father didn’t hate you.” It was a lie, but I’d told others and for lesser cause. To protect my husband from this pain, I’d tell this lie and a hundred others. “No father could ever hate his son, and especially not you. Not a learned, hardworking, loving, and lovable son like you.”
“I’m not lovable, Patsy.” Tom clutched at my arms. “Never have been.”
“You are.” I brought my lips to his brow, like I was soothing a babe.
But he drew back with a shudder. “You know better than anyone that I’m not worthy of love. You’ve always held yourself back because you see what’s in me—this darkness. This melancholy and temper that slips its reins. I think my father must’ve seen it, too. Must’ve known that something was broken in me, like dogs know there’s something wrong with a pup.”
At the sight of tears in his reddened, swollen eyes, I brought my forehead to touch his, whispering, nose to nose. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Tom Randolph.”
A sob escaped him. “Then why would my father do such a thing to me?”
For spite, I thought. But it wouldn’t help Tom to know his father was a spiteful worm, lower than dirt. When a man knows that he’s come from nothing he may never aspire to better. So I said, “Your father was very ill. To do such a thing, in the end, he must’ve been quite out of his senses.”
A spark of hope lit in Tom’s eyes. “Do you think so?”
I nodded, firmly. Convincing myself as much as him. “I do. Why, any right-minded person might suspect your father’s widow stood over the bed and held the pen in the dying man’s hand.”
I was sowing discord amongst the living when it was the dead who was to blame, yet, in my estimation, the Harvies had stolen my children’s birthright, and I wasn’t apt to be charitable.
Meanwhile, Tom choked back another sob. “I should’ve been here. I should’ve been here sooner.”
I was to blame for that. I was the one who hated Varina. I’d hounded him to move to my father’s mountain, thinking it was the best place for my children. Was I wrong to have done it? “You went to him the moment you heard,” I reminded him, stroking his hair, still marveling at the thickness of it between my fingers.