8

Sunny waited in tense silence in the chair, holding herself together by sheer force of will.

Page stood motionless in the middle of the room with his back to her, his head in his hands. “Page?” she whispered, afraid her voice might unhinge him. “Who are you, darling? Did your father tell you?”

He turned and walked into the bedroom. She followed to find him pulling open his dresser drawers and throwing clothes on the bed. Sunny took his arms and made him look at her. Her face made him cry again, briefly and harshly: her beautiful, sensitive face. Suddenly he caught her to him, holding her in arms made powerful with misery.

“Page, you must tell me. You always wanted to know who you are. Was it so awful?” She spoke to him soothingly as his mother might have.

Instead of explaining he picked her up and put her one last time on the bed, meaning to leave her. But he gazed down at her and found he couldn’t move. He had been so warm and ready for love, so enchanted with her before the call came and blasted his life. It was beyond his courage to tell her and then walk out and leave her forever.

Instead he sat down and tried to open his mouth and declare that he was her brother. Roger Rotheli. That the father-in-law he loved and admired was his own father. His tongue refused to move.

He sat there beside his wife and felt the utmost love he had ever felt for her, and the deepest despair. He leaned down and kissed her brow, afraid of her sweet mouth. And abruptly, to his helpless dismay, was consumed with a raging desire for her.

Just once, before she learns the truth, he told himself in anguish. And without a word he took her. For Sunny, his sudden furious love-making was a nightmare. His hands that had been so gentle were hard, his lips bruised her, his tears terrified her.

Weeping and tremulous, she gave herself and prayed that her tenderness, her fright, her very flesh, would calm him, bring him back to sanity. But when it was over he simply lay across her, a dead weight, and said nothing.

Sunny held him tightly and murmured, “Page, my darling, whatever it is, we have to face it together.” He turned his face away so she couldn’t see it. “My darling, my love, nothing in this world can whip us as long as we have each other,” she told him.

“One thing,” he said.

“Was your father a ... an evil man, Page? A criminal? Or sick?” She spoke as she might have to an ailing child.

Page rose suddenly and began pulling his clothes together. “No,” he said. He zipped up his pants and put his jacket on and started out of the room, not daring to take time to collect his clothes. He felt he had to leave at once or he would want her again. It was a nightmare.

“Page!” Sunny cried, running after him into the living room. “For the sweet love of God, tell me!” When he opened the front door and turned to face her like a man taking permanent leave of his woman, she gave a little scream. “Tell me,” she demanded.

“Sunny, I—I—”

“You what? Page, are you trying to destroy me? You what?”

She stood with fists clenched, eyes wild in a flushed face, only half dressed.

“I’m your brother,” he said in a weird, strained voice.

Again a fateful silence struck the room. Page hesitated, waiting for her to faint. He would catch her, put her on the sofa, and sneak out before she regained her senses. It would be cowardly but easier. He dared not stay under the same roof with her.

But she didn’t faint. She only stood gazing at him while her face, that had been in the ruins of despair, slowly took shape again. A great wave of trembling went through her and subsided. Like Page, she lost her voice entirely for a minute ... an inherited trait they shared in emotional moments. When it came back she said, “You are Roger? My brother, Roger, who died?”

He nodded, ready to bolt. For a second they stared incredulously at each other, as fascinated as they were appalled. Sunny absorbed it bravely, better than he had.

“Page, shut the door and come here,” she said. Her voice was still quavery but she showed no signs of fainting. The blood had left her face and her eyes grew wide like green flowers above her white cheeks. But he wouldn’t come near her.

“I can’t stay, Sunny,” he said.

“You can’t stay?” It didn’t make sense at first.

“I commit the foulest kind of sin every time I look at you,” he said. “Now that we can’t ... I mean ... I want you terribly.”

“Page, are you absolutely certain? There’s no mistake?”

“Doc Blue told Mother when he learned your name. The records verify it. Good old Doc Blue ... my evil spirit,” he said acidly.

Sunny sat down on the arm of the sofa and Page moved to leave again, but she stopped him. “You can’t go!” she cried.

“I can’t stay, that’s for sure,” he said grimly.

“But where will you go?”

“The Manns’, I guess.”

“What will you tell them?”

“My God, that’s right.” He slapped his face with one hand. “I can’t tell any of our friends.” The enormity of it hit him brutally and he drew the hand over his grimacing face. “I guess I’ll have to get a hotel room somewhere.”

“Page, darling,” Sunny said, in better control of herself now, “did it ever occur to you that it’s too late for that? There’s no point in leaving me now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m pregnant with your child. You can’t do any more harm. It’s all been done. Does it matter then if we still make love?”

He was so shocked that he took a few steps toward her, his face screwed up with the effort to understand her. “Are you trying to tell me we should go on living together, as if this hadn’t happened?” he said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

Sunny was taken aback by his disgust. She looked down, unprepared for this turn. “Darling, that baby was conceived in love and innocence,” she said.

“We aren’t innocent any more, Sunny. Neither is our love.”

“I love you so much,” she said miserably.

“You’re in love with your brother,” he said, still stunned by it. “It’s evil now.”

“Evil!” The word made her reel; she was frightened by his revulsion for the situation. “I can’t be ashamed of my love for you, no matter what you call it!” she flashed. “I won’t apologize for falling in love with you!”

“We don’t have to apologize for it, we have to do something about it,” he cried.

“What? Stop loving each other?”

“Separate,” he said miserably. “God, Sunny, I’ll never stop loving you.”

“Then stay with me.”

He threw out his hands at her. “You’re my sister, can’t you understand that? I’ve found my name at last. I’m your brother, I’m a Rotheli.” Just the thought of it shut him up for a second. “And you’re sitting there suggesting that we go on as if we were normal, ordinary, wholesome lovers! It’s unbelievable!”

All his ideals: normality, wholesomeness. How could he face the world without them?

“Page, you talk about us as if we were diseased!” she shot back at him. “Were we degenerates when we married, when we made love to each other? Does just knowing it debauch us somehow?”

“Only if we stay together,” he said, “and keep on committing an act we know now is criminal.”

“No!” she said with the ardor of a woman fighting for her love. “I’ll never accept that, Page. I can’t believe a love like ours is anything but good.”

“Well, now you have to believe it,” he said. “It’s dirty and it’s wrong, Sunny. The sooner you face it, the less grief this will bring us both.” He seemed to be struggling to convince himself as much as her.

“The sooner I face what? The baby in my arms—your baby? How do I explain him away? What shall I tell this ‘most wanted baby in the world’? Daddy doesn’t exist, dear? Mother just stirred you up in a test tube?”

“Would you rather tell him his father is also his uncle?” Page shouted.

“Does he have to be told? Does anyone?”

“Things like this don’t stay secret forever, no matter how you try. Suppose he’s born a monster. How will you explain that?”

Sunny put a frightened hand over her stomach. Like most people she had only hazy ideas of what happened to children born of incestuous unions, and all the ideas were gruesome.

“It will be beautiful,” she said, shaken but still brave. “It has to be, to prove our love is right.”

“It will only prove we found out about ourselves too late,” he said sorrowfully.

“It’ll be healthy and normal,” she said. “A sign—”

“Stop it, Sunny! There are no signs from heaven any more. All the miracles happened long ago. There aren’t any left for us. Darling, there’s only one way out.”

“What?” She was crying now, unable to control her face.

He tried to say it kindly, but the word itself was cruel. “An abortion.” It was her turn to register shock and disbelief. “Dad said Doc Blue might do it,” he added rigidly.

“Your father said that?”

“In this case, he happens to be right.”

Sunny shook with resentment. “How can you think such a thing? This innocent baby, this part of yourself you were so almighty proud of, and you want to murder—”

“And you want to go on living with me. Me, your brother!” he shouted. “And give birth to an imbecile—”

“Page, don’t!” she cried with all her strength. “Get out! Get out! Get out!” She collapsed into the sofa, whimpering.

He stood in the door for a moment, watching her until she looked up to see if he had gone. They gazed at each other, speechless with the size of their despair and the size of their love.

“Don’t tell anyone. Anyone,” she pleaded.

He nodded and pulled the door shut behind him.

“And let me know where you are,” she called after him. “Page? Page!” But the door was closed; he had left her and nothing indicated he had heard; or, having heard, that he would keep in touch.