Chapter 6

"After the accident," Cassie said matter-of-factly over pancakes, "I couldn't work. I didn't want to go on tour. I couldn't write songs anymore. Nothing anybody said about it made the slightest difference. I didn't have the heart to go on. So I left L.A. in that Toyota Camry that sits out there in the shed. I walked onto a used-car lot and told the salesman to sell me a vehicle that would carry me as far as the Great Smoky Mountains, and I paid cash for it. So here I am."

"Your song—the one about homeless people—was a tremendous hit, but you were nowhere to be found," said John. "Every time I turned on the TV, someone was talking about the mysterious disappearance of Cassandra Dare. You vanished after your accident."

John studied her soberly and with a sense of unreality, still unable to believe the truth that Cassie Muldoon was none other than the multitalented singer, musician and songwriter who over the past decade had captured the public's attention with her whispery soprano voice and her mountain dulcimer. The idea that this quiet, frightened Cassie Muldoon and the poised and confident Cassandra Dare were one and the same was so incredible that John could hardly grasp it.

Cassie shrugged. "'Where the Heart Is' was only a hit because Morgana Friday used it as the theme song in her documentary All the Way Home." She stood abruptly and carried her plate to the sink; John, unwilling to relinquish the subject, followed her.

"I've seen Morgana Friday's film," he said. "It's a striking statement about an important social issue. All the Way Home won major awards and was nominated for several more. That's mostly because of your song, Cassie."

"Morgana's a great filmmaker. I doubt that my song had anything to do with it."

"Don't sell yourself short," John retorted. When he saw the frozen expression on Cassie's face, he was afraid he'd been too abrupt. "All the Way Home is a sensitive film that deals with the issue of homelessness," he continued more gently. "You should see it."

"Maybe someday I will," said Cassie. Morgana had sent her the DVD, but she'd promptly misplaced it. She didn't have anything to play it on anyway.

"I mean what I say about not selling yourself short."

Cassie's only response to his compliment was a quick evasive smile. Sensing that John was becoming too thoughtful, Cassie said on impulse, "Let's leave the dishes and go for a walk in the woods. Just after dawn is the most beautiful time."

So together they crossed the clearing, which was damp and cool in the morning mist, and entered a trail that twisted through the forest. Rough-barked gray-brown tree trunks glistened with moisture. Here and there dead fallen branches blocked their way; John bent and tossed these aside. Green edged upon green, downy moss and lichen contrasted with glossy leaves, and gently uncurling fern feathered against gnarled tree roots. Birdsong sparkled in the thin morning air.

They walked separately until John took her hand. Cassie didn't object. Their entwined fingers seemed natural and right.

"So when are you going back to L.A.?" he asked.

"Never."

He hadn't realized until that moment how much he wanted Cassie to be a continuing part of his life. That would be impossible if she insisted on staying on Flat Top Mountain.

"Why?" he asked very quietly.

Her eyes held a faraway look, as if she were seeing scenes that he couldn't. "Here, I have a life of honesty and simple values. There, the world gets complicated."

"It wouldn't have to be," he said. "You could change it."

"No," she said, and John sensed a vast silence in her. He treasured the stillness of her spirit, and yet, he felt—no, he knew—in his heart that she was capable of retaining that stillness no matter where she lived.

"You're lonely here," he said softly. "You can't deny that."

"There was a time when it didn't bother me," she said, her eyes fixed steadfastly on the trail.

"When was that?"

"Before you came."

"And now?"

"It's different," she admitted.

He curved his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. "It's going to keep on being different," he told her.

"For a while. Until you have to leave."

"No, Cassandra. Longer than that."

She darted a quick disbelieving glance up at him. "You're not thinking of moving here permanently?"

He shook his head. "I can't do that. But you could go with me."

"I don't even know where you live."

"My house is near Los Angeles." There, it was out. Would she make the connection to the man who had bombarded her with letters and emails?

She didn't pick up on it. "I'll never go back to the West Coast. I won't move off this mountain."

Could he change her mind? What would it take? He turned those questions over in his mind.

Their circuitous path had taken them back to the clearing where Cassie's house stood, to the area behind it where her gardens were planted. Here the sun, higher now in the sky, had melted away the dew and the moisture from last night's storm.

Cassie seemed determined to change the subject. "Over there—" she pointed "—that's marjoram, with the little green leaves. And that's the thyme flowering, and on the other side, sage. The sage has already gone to seed."

He loved hearing her talk. He let her ramble on as he considered the situation. This was a woman who had given up a glamorous and exciting life to become a recluse on Flat Top Mountain. If he pushed too hard, she probably wouldn't have any trepidation about giving him up as well. That was the last thing he wanted at the moment.

Today Cassie looked carefree and at ease. Had last night done that for her? He'd thought at the time that his heartfelt lovemaking hadn't done enough. This morning the silken profusion of her hair swirled in the sunshine as she bent this way and that to check on her plants. No wonder he hadn't recognized her sooner—as Cassandra Dare, she'd worn her hair in a chaste knot at the nape of her neck, and her fingers, clasping her goose-quill trademark, had blossomed with rings. This ethereal and yet earthy creature no more resembled the famous singer and songwriter Cassandra Dare than he did.

His feelings for her rose like a lump in his throat; suddenly he wanted to touch her more than anything in the world.

"And this—this is lavender," she was saying from the midst of the lavender bed, its plants low and bearing pale purple flowers. She didn't know he had walked up behind her until she felt his arms around her.

"And this—this is Cassandra," he murmured lazily into her ear, his breath tickling her earlobe.

She laughed lightly. "Thank you for introducing me," she said.

"You have a lot to learn about yourself," he said.

"And you're going to teach me, right?"

"It's a rotten job, but somebody has to do it," he said solemnly, but she could hear the smile behind his words.

She closed her eyes as his hands moved to her breasts, touching lightly. She leaned into him, lifting her weight off the leg that always hurt a bit, and she arched her neck to give his lips access to the long sensitive tendon in her neck. Her eyelids drooped sleepily, heavily, unresisting, and as his hands slid lower, down the warm curve of the abdomen, a new rhythm arose within her, an exquisite pulsing along her veins.

And then, down, down, he was lifting her and turning her so that they glided smoothly into the lavender, and she sank unresisting into the young shoots. Their thighs and shoulders and buttocks crushed the tender leaves beneath them so that the rich aroma perfumed the air. Overhead, the sky shone so piercingly blue that it hurt Cassie's eyes.

His hands went around her face, his wrists meeting under her chin so that his fingers enclosed her face in the shape of a heart. The silence around them was crystalline in its purity. John inhaled the scent of her hair, gently skimmed the tip of tongue across her lips in wonderment, then hungrily closed his mouth over hers. And he was moaning into her mouth, and she was rocking against him, and her dress rode up over her hips, and then her nipples sprouted beneath his fingers.

"Take the dress off," he whispered as he helped her, bunching it into a pillow for her head. He shed his clothes so that it was just the two of them in the lavender, free in the wind-washed mountain air, with the bright blue sky above.

She found his body absolutely beautiful. The variety of his colors in the bright sunlight, the bronze, the pinks, the browns, the mauves. She wanted to explore every part of him, first with her fingers, then with her tongue, to see and touch and taste.

John allowed himself the luxury of time. His fingertips lingered over the mole above her waist on her right side and briefly feathered along the silvery stretch marks on her abdomen. He explored the solid flesh of her thighs and paused at the back of her knees, and he turned her over so he could etch the faint blue tracery of veins there with gentle fingers. When he reached the long scar below her knee, its hard surface white against her tan, he looked at her questioningly, but she only smiled a faint sad smile and in a burst of desire captured his lips fiercely with her own.

Her pleasure in their mating was intense. His body engulfed her, quickened her with feeling, loosed her and warmed her. It did not even matter that he reached his peak and she didn't; her delight in his body was enough.

Afterward, ardor spent, they lay side by side on their backs, inhaling the heady scent of crushed lavender and watching puffs of clouds in the sky. Their skin shimmered in the sunshine, dewy and moist.

John lifted her hand and traced the curving line across the width of her palm as though it were a map of her previous life. "What were you like back then, before the accident?" He glanced up at her.

She smiled, looking back at herself from the perspective of space and years.

"I was fluffy," she said, remembering her round face, devoid of planes, bare of experience.

"What do you mean, 'fluffy'?" He turned his head slowly and looked at her, amused.

"You know. Fluffy. Frothy. Unserious. About as much substance as that cloud up there. For me life was just a bowl of cherries. Until all I had left was the pits." Her eyes hardened momentarily, then became soft again.

More silence while he digested this. "You're not still frightened of me, are you?" he asked, his hand now toying idly with a lock of her hair.

"No," she said, "but I—" Here she stopped.

"You what?" he said, his eyes keen upon her face.

"I'm afraid you're disappointed," she whispered.

He raised himself on one elbow and stared at her.

"No way," he said fiercely. "I want everything to be all right between us because of you, not me. You have to understand that right now, Cassandra."

The fervor in his words not only startled her, it also convinced her. She felt something akin to awe at the intensity of his feelings. "Maybe you're expecting too much, John. I don't think I'm capable of—"

"Cassie, you've had a lot to deal with. Be patient with yourself."

"That's what I'm doing, but when I don't make progress on your timetable, that's my problem, not yours."

"Listen to what you're saying, Cassie!" He had an agenda, but no schedule. He would have been glad to discuss the subject, but not if she was going to go all negative.

His outburst surprised her. "Forget I said anything," she said. Her expression became aloof as she sat upright. She pulled her shift over her head and adjusted the fabric, refusing to meet his gaze.

John kept his voice calm. "You don't think you deserve kindness, or happiness, or pleasure. You're tearing yourself apart with unworthiness, Cassie Muldoon, and for no reason." He began to pull on his jeans.

"What do you know about it?" She stumbled to her feet. Who was he to tell her how she should feel? She'd been imprisoned in places John Howard had never known, dark caverns of the heart and of the mind, places you didn't dance away from but fought your way out of bit by bit, heartache by heartache, until you were bleeding and battered and had no taste for life. John knew nothing of struggle. Oh, she could tell John Howard a thing or two.

"I don't know nearly enough," he said. He took her hand and led her to a sheltering maple. She didn't resist when he pulled her down next to him in the dappled sunlight.

They sat for a time in the quiet, and then her words tumbled out before she could stop them. "I killed them. I killed Kevin and Rory. I didn't hold a gun to their heads or stab them with a knife, but I might as well have. I loved them, and I killed them, my husband and my son, and how does a person live with that?" Tears began to run down her cheeks, and she brushed them away.

John hesitated only a moment before drawing Cassie into his arms. He listened to her heart beating, felt her breath against his throat.

"I remember the stories on the news when it happened," he said against her hair. "The three of you were flying home to your place in the desert, and the plane crashed when you attempted an emergency landing. Your husband and son were killed, and you survived. Cassie, you didn't kill them. The crash did."

She lifted her head, and her face was ashen, her expression lifeless, her lips taut and bloodless. Her eyes were silver mirrors that reflected all the tragedy in the world. "That story is the one that was released, but it wasn't the whole truth. My agent wanted to protect me."

"Do you want to tell me what really happened?" he said gently.

Her voice was barely more than a whisper. "Kevin passed out as we were flying, he fell forward and I couldn't wake him up. Rory started to cry, and I couldn't think what to do. So I turned to the emergency frequency on the radio—Kevin had made sure I knew which frequency it was—and tried to contact a control tower, another plane, anybody...." Her voice trailed off, her eyes glazing in remembrance of the horror of it.

John's arms tightened around her. "Cassie, you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to." His heart ached for her.

She swallowed, drew a deep breath and went on.

"Finally a voice came over the radio, and he said he was a pilot and he'd talk me down out of the sky. I knew a bit about flying from watching Kevin and what he'd taught me, but I'd never taken the pinch-hitter's course. That's a brief course of instruction that helps non-pilots learn to handle a plane if there's an emergency. Kevin always wanted me to take that course, but I never had time. There was always a rehearsal or a concert date or some reason why I couldn't." Her sobs ripped through his heart.

"You never dreamed anything like that would happen to you," he said quietly, kissing away the tears.

Cassie sat up straighter and visibly tried to calm herself. "I guess I didn't. Who does?" With an effort she pulled herself together enough to go on.

"The pilot on the radio was on the ground at a small private airport less than five miles away, and so I followed his instructions until I saw the runway. They'd turned on the lights, making it easy for me to find it. And I did everything he said, everything, and Kevin was still unconscious and Rory was in the back seat holding his breath and I was hanging on for dear life thinking I had it made. About ten feet above the ground, I lost control of the plane. We hit so hard that the plane flipped over and Kevin was thrown out on impact, still buckled into his seat, and Rory was, too, and they died, they died! And it wasn't fair, I should have died, too. But I didn't. I wasn't thrown from the plane and I lived."

"You were hurt seriously, as I recall," said John, shaken by her narrative and the agony with which it was told.

"I had bruises and cuts and a compound fracture of the tibia. I was in the hospital a long time, but not long enough. I was afraid to get out and face things again. Fortunately, I didn't have to at first."

"What did you do?"

"I went to stay with Morgana Friday. It was during the time after the accident, when I stayed with Morgana in her Century City apartment, that I gave her permission to use a song I'd recorded but never released. She was directing All the Way Home, which she described as a really terrific documentary, trying to get me interested in something, anything. That's why my song became so famous. It would never have been a hit without Morgana." She closed her eyes and rested her head against John's broad shoulder, taking comfort from his sympathy.

John had Morgana to thank, too. She was the one who had finally given him Cassie's address. But Morgana had been maddeningly evasive, protecting her friend's privacy at all costs. John hadn't had an inkling that Cassie Muldoon was the lost entertainer Cassandra Dare.

She was tough, Morgana was. It had taken him months to convince her to tell him where he could find Mrs. K. J. Muldoon. He'd never once connected the Muldoons with the disappearance of Cassandra Dare. He'd learned only that the Muldoons had an accident and that Cassie's generosity was his salvation. John became obsessed with finding her and thanking her. He'd been so depressed over losing his sight that his life might as well have been over before the transplant of Kevin's corneas.

Now that he'd found Cassie and knew who she really was, and now that he knew that the saving of his sight was due to the generosity of this woman whose husband was also a pilot, it all seemed to make sense, as though destiny had brought them together.

Cassie was talking, and he forced himself to listen. "Ours was a good marriage, one of the few I know of," Cassie was saying softly. "We met when I'd been in California barely a year, and he understood show business because he'd been around it all his life. He became my manager, and if it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have been a success. After all, who wanted to hire a girl who sang folk songs and played a mountain dulcimer? Kevin knew the people to see and how to gain access. He protected me from the harsher realities of the business. We showed people that I could sing other kinds of songs, too, and, well, you know the rest."

"Only the public part," John said. "Pictures of you in the tabloids, in the newspapers. Public relations articles. You kept a pretty low profile."

"Kevin and I decided early in the game that we didn't want to be part of the glitter and glamour of Hollywood. We did the things we had to do to advance my career, and the rest of the time we spent as a family, hidden away at our place in the desert. We had such a wonderful life. I don't know why it had to end."

John took in her large, mournful eyes, her slightly parted lips, the unusual and beautiful face he loved. The face Kevin had loved, and which he, because Kevin had died, and because his own corneas had been irreparably scarred, saw now quite literally through Kevin's eyes.