Chapter 3

Ramona Franklin’s emotions were almost at as high a peak as her childrens’ had been as she drove home from the bank. She’d known this day might come. She’d dreamed that this day might come. But another part of her had dreaded this day coming. It was all tied up with her past, a past she’d tried to leave behind her like a bad dream. She’d gone to college, looking for and hoping to find a man to share her life with so that her life could be normal. Up to that point in time her life had been anything but normal.

Ramona had found a man, whom she had fallen in love with, and who had presented her with two beautiful, normal, happy children. That he had been someone she knew long before she ever stepped upon a college campus was as much a surprise to her as it was to him. They had gone to High School together, but had traveled in different social circles. She tried to fade into the background and he was involved in every extra curricular activity he could fit into his schedule. She had gone home to study each day, doing extra work on the weekends, while he dated all the popular girls.

When they bumped into each other at a Freshman mixer at Welsley College, she was amazed to see him. It was an exclusive school, so small that most people didn’t even know it existed. He had been from a blue collar family, with limited means. And he had smiled at her.

“Hey, is it a small world or what?” he said, walking up to her.

She hadn’t thought he’d recognize her. “I didn’t think you’d even know who I am,” she replied.

“Are you kidding? It’s great to see a familiar face. I thought I was going to be all alone here,” he said.

Their chat had turned into a pledge to study together. He had obtained an academic scholarship and needed to keep high marks to maintain it. He was also the first person in his family to go to college, so a lot of hopes were riding on him. His manner was so easygoing that Ramona had pushed away her fear of letting someone close to her.

By the time they had finished the first semester they were not only study mates, but they were lovers. He never questioned why she had no virginity to make their first time uncomfortable, or that she seemed to know what to do, perhaps even more than he did. She never talked about her past, and he never questioned her about it, seeming to know that she didn’t want to that subject broached.

They married while they were seniors, when it became apparent she was going to have his baby despite the precautions they had taken. Both welcomed the marriage and the baby. That was what young people were supposed to do. His family welcomed her into their lives. She had no family to ask questions, and her guardian was happy to see her married so that he could begin to finalize certain arrangements and his task would be complete.

When Richard had taken her back to Nettleton, to show her their new house, a time she should have been overjoyed, she was almost crushed. She couldn’t believe it was right next to the house that inhabited her bad dreams, the house in which her parents had been slain, the house that she never wanted to see again in her life. Right next door to the Nettleton mansion.

Her husband didn’t know, of course, because she hadn’t told him. All he knew was that her parents were dead in a tragic incident. He didn’t know she was Elizabeth Nettleton, or that, upon marriage, she would receive her portion of a trust fund that would make them wealthy beyond almost anyone’s wildest dreams. He didn’t know because Ramona didn’t want the money. She wanted a normal life, free from her past. The irony of having to live next to the one place on earth she never wanted to see again was almost palpable, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t want him to know. And when she was summoned one last time to her guradian, who handed her the legal letter informing her that an account had been established in her maiden name, which she was now free to draw upon at her will, she burned the letter, and the account number with it.

Her mind drifted, against her will, to the history she wanted to forget.

When Ramona and her brother had first been carried out of the crime scene, there had been chaos for a while. They had been separated at first, having been placed in an orphanage where boys and girls were not allowed to mix, whether they were related or not. Most four-year-olds don’t remember much about what happened to them at that age, but the changes in Ramona’s life were so tumultuous that they were imprinted in her mind forever.

It had taken six months for her father’s will to be found and executed. That will had very specific provisions in it about who would take care of the children, and provided funds from the estate to do so. Ramona’s reunion with her brother was joyous, but relatively short-lived. The woman her father had specified as guardian only had charge of them for a year before her tuberculosis wasted her away. The court then gave over their care to another family, a family that the judge classified as “temperate and stable” and which made their living by fostering children such as the two.

Ramona’s life had been good with the woman, and her relationship with her brother had been close. Their new guardian sent them to boarding school, paid for by trust funds established in their father’s will but they saw each other rarely, in arranged formal “sitting room” meetings, where they were expected to drink tea and have light conversation.

The house and grounds in which they had lived was also put into trust, to be turned over to Robert upon reaching his majority. Money was set aside to ensure that the property was maintained. Other funds were put into trust for the children, but conditions were attached. For Ramona, she would receive access to her trust when she married, or finished college, whichever came first. For Robert, his trust could not be touched until he graduated from a university.

Roger Nettleton had planned well, and his will had been very detailed and specific. But, without an advocate keeping a close eye on things and, people being what they are, things didn’t always go as he had planned. The money was guarded by banks and the law, and though people tried to get at it, they failed, for the most part. Their new guardian didn’t care about the house. He signed off on authorizations for its upkeep, but didn’t actually check to see what was happening. Those funds were skimmed and pocketed most of the time.

The boarding school presented inflated bills and expenses associated with the Nettleton children, and the finite amount of money legally set aside for that purpose, which should have taken care of their education through High School, was depleted by the time they were in the eighth grade.

When their guardian couldn’t find a way to extract more money from the estate, he was forced to take them into his own home, where they were, for the most part, unwelcome mouths to feed. The other fosterlings in the house had an established hierarchy of “rank”. Ramona and Robert were at the lower end of the scale, getting only hand-me-downs and the last helpings of food.

Their new guardian had had some success in the past at getting money by having the children take his name. It wasn’t adoption - that would have ended outside financial compensation - but sometimes a child’s trust fund could be penetrated in the legal twists and turns of such a procedure. Ramona, in a vain effort to exorcise the horrors of her past, accepted that suggestion, adopting her middle name and the last name of her guardian.

Robert did not.

While the man’s dream of getting access to Ramona’s trust failed, she was glad for her name change when they entered the public school system. As they went through school, teachers always perked up when the Nettleton name was called in class. No one paid any attention to Ramona Shanks, though, and she preferred it that way. People knew she lived in the same house, and that there was “another Nettleton child”, but never put the two together.

Robert, knowing the travails of bearing the Nettleton name, did not publicly acknowledge that Ramona was his sister. He protected her as best he could at “home”, where they shared a room that was big enough for one child. They both tried to keep a low profile, both at home and at school and, for the most part, succeeded.

There was a price to pay, however, and that price was that the only people in the world who loved the Nettleton children were ... each other. Their forced proximity at home, sleeping in the same bed well into puberty, and their reliance on each other for all of their emotional needs, led to a closeness between the siblings that polite society would have been horrified at.

Their guardian, a man with zealous religious convictions, was not aware of their relationship and the effect that entering puberty had had on that relationship. He worked ceaselessly to convince Robert that service to mankind as a missionary was the only way to extinguish the evil that had hounded the Nettleton family in the past. He tried to convince Ramona of that as well, encouraging her to become a nun. There was, in the back of the man’s mind, the thought that if she never married, and Robert never went to college, all that money would remain in the bank, and he might find some way to get it.

Ramona had resisted the man’s brainwashing.

Robert had not.

He was tortured, not only by their family history, but by the fact that the only real joy he experienced was when he was in his sister’s welcoming embrace, as they writhed naked in the dark of night, performing their sinful dance of lust together. The thought of receiving forgiveness for what he couldn’t control drove him to follow their guardian’s plan. After High School he joined a group of missionaries, turning his back on wealth.

He hadn’t told Ramona of his decision until the night before he was due to leave. She didn’t know this was the last time she’d feel his weight pinning her to the lumpy mattress as he probed her depths with his manhood and she felt the warm rush of his love spewing into her womb.

He gave her that one last moment of bliss before he turned her world on its ear once again.

Then, he disappeared overseas somewhere, being chased by his own demons.

She cried bitterly for weeks after he left. Her loss was assuaged to some degree by the letters he sent, addressed to her through their guardian.

And she responded to those letters. The letters were forwarded to him by the people who administrated whatever mission he was assigned to at the time. When she went to college he was able to send his letters directly to her, but she still had to respond by routing her letters through the mission center, because many times he could collect his mail only every six months or so. She told him, over the years of her new life, college, Richard and her children. She informed him her desire to keep her past secret from her new husband. She knew he was in Africa somewhere, after having been stationed in several other exotic locations.

His letters grew fewer and fewer, and hers to him as she found love and emotional support from Richard replacing that of her distant brother. When she and Richard had moved into their new home, and she no longer had a private mail box in which to receive letters from a man her husband knew nothing about, she made the gut-wrenching decision to stop writing. She had cried about that for weeks too.

They had not communicated for the past five years.

She had tried to ignore the unhappy place next door to her new home, and concentrated instead on loving her husband and raising her twins. She hoped that Robert could find some happiness too.

Then, as if the dark miasma of her former home had sniffed around and found her, seeping through the iron fence to continue its assault on normalcy, her husband was killed. A truckload of paper products was too heavy, and the brakes of the truck failed as it came down the mountain side. Richard had seen what was happening and drove for the shoulder. The truck driver, thinking to avoid hitting any cars, also headed for the woods at the side of the road. Neither could adjust and Richard was killed instantly.

Had her twins not been there ... not needed her ... she would have taken her own life. But she had to go on. There was only one other person she could turn to ... her brother Robert, but the one human in the world who might be able to fully understand how she felt was beyond her reach. She didn’t even know where he was any more. The thought of what it would take to write a letter, which might not even be read by him for months, caused her to leave pen and paper lying unused.

She got a job at the bank, ironically the same bank that still guarded a fortune that was hers, but which she still thought of as blood money. She was aware that, while he was involved in his missionary work, Robert had somehow obtained a college degree. Access to personal accounts gave her the information that he drew from his own fortune from time to time, but not in large amounts. He used less than the annual interest his account earned. She took comfort in seeing those small transactions, though, because that told her he was still alive.

Life had eventually settled back down for Ramona. Her twins and her job filled her days for her, as well as her love of reading and quilting. She made a half dozen intricate, huge quilts that adorned the beds in the house and filled several storage containers.

In honor of her brother’s life work, she made a large number of plainer ones that she donated to Robert’s missionary headquarters to be sent wherever they were needed. She also gave them to the Salvation Army, dropping them off as simple donations packed in paper sacks recycled from grocery shopping. A woman who worked at the Salvation Army center had wanted to know her name, but she demurred, simply saying “These are for whoever needs them.”

Toiling over the quilts gave her satisfaction that she was doing something worthwhile with the time she had wanted to throw away when Richard was killed.

And she was proud of her children. They were smart, and strong and happy, untouched by the ugliness of their heritage and unearned wealth that might have corrupted them. She knew she’d have to dip into her unwanted trust fund to send them to college, but that was for a good cause too, and she didn’t want them to have to scrimp and work, like she had breren forced to do, herself in school. True, her tuition had been taken care of by the trust fund, but her living expenses she earned herself, never responding to letters asking how much she needed for such things.

She had been tempted, when, after Richard died, her guardian contacted her and suggested he knew worthy charities that could benefit from the money she wasn’t spending, but she ignored him. He was a cold and loveless man, who dominated his wife mercilessly, as if she were chattel. His attitude toward the children under his care was also cold and distant. She had suspicions about where the money would have gone. Even though he had been handsomely paid for his duties under the court appointment that gave him dominion over the Nettleton children, he had made it quite clear that he deserved more, and they deserved nothing.

That she didn’t want her children to ever face such a life was a lesson she learned the hard way. Her will was up-to-date and even more specific than her father’s will had been when he was murdered in his bed.

All had been mostly serene. She found happiness in her children, and the things she used her time for. There was an emptiness in her heart since Richard had been taken, but that pain was less severe than others she could recall.

There had been overtures from men from time to time. She didn’t consider herself to be beautiful, though many of those men would have disagreed. Their attention had appealed to the little vanity she had left in her ... had made her feel warm and good. But the idea of laboring toward a relationship that was more than just dinner now and then, or that included passion, was something she avoided. There had been too much loss in her life to risk more. Nothing gained meant nothing could be lost, as far as she was concerned. That passion still lurked in her, she knew. She tried to keep a lid on that, succumbing to her infrequent sexual yearning only in-so-far as using her fingers to bring release now and again.

She convinced herself it was enough.

Yes, life wasn’t so complicated that she couldn’t enjoy it, all things considered.

Until she received a registered letter, in her married name, addressed to her at the bank.

It was from her brother.

She had no idea how he had tracked her down, but he had. She had read it so often that its contents were committed to memory now:

“Dearest Rami,

I have done what I could to comfort the bereft wherever I found them. I have missed you more than I would have thought possible. Living among the needy has illuminated my own emptiness.

I have decided to return to our house ... to restore it to its former grandeur, and try to make of it a place of happiness and light. I know you want nothing to do with that sad place, but this is something that is driving me. I know not what I’ll do with it once its darkness is expelled. I know I may not even be able to do that. Perhaps I’ll donate it to the county as a museum. But I know this is something I must do.

I want to see you again too, dearest sister. I know you are happy with your husband and family, and I will not intrude upon that happiness. Please find it in your heart to let me see you again when I return, if only briefly and in secret, and then I shall retreat again, leaving you to your well-deserved wonderful life.

The image of your face in my mind has lifted me from despair on more occasions than I could count. I know I was never a good brother to you, but I have learned much about the world and myself in my years abroad. I’m not the man you knew so long ago.

I don’t know exactly when I’ll be done with this commitment. I’ll contact you when I return.

All my love”

His signature was simple script, spelling “Bobby”

That had been a rough day for Ramona. Memories and fears had come rushing back, affecting her so much that another employee had become alarmed, asking if she were okay and offering to call for help. She had folded up the letter and gotten control of herself, stammering that everything was fine ... that it was just a bit of unsettling news. She had thrown herself back into her work, concentrating on each of her customers as if they were the only people alive at the time.

Later she had re-read the letter, and many times since then. Her emotions had undergone a roller coaster-like journey within her mind. She was filled with questions. How could Robert want to have anything to do with the mansion? True, he owned it, according to the provisions of their father’s will, but how could he want to restore it? Could it even be restored? What did that mean for her and her children, living in the shadow of the place? How would she feel when she saw him? What would she say? How would all this change her life?

And then, there was their former relationship to think about. As children they had clung to each other, orphaned by cruel circumstance, living in a cold and loveless place with foster parents who cared but little for them. They had naturally bonded much more closely than most siblings ever did. That bonding, over the years, had led to things their guardian would have raged at ... would have called an abomination. He had never known what they did together. Those times were the few memories Ramona had that were joyous and happy. She loved her brother and he loved her, and nothing could take that love away. There was bitterness there too, though, for the fact that their love could not be consummated publicly. Society forbade that. Never mind thousands of years of historical precedence. Never mind that their love was true and pure. Never mind that they could be happy together. That was not to be ... not if the powers of “propriety” had anything to say about it.

And, knowing that, Robert had foresworn their love and separated from her, tearing her heart from her chest. Once again, the only love they had known was ripped from them by events beyond their control, leaving wounded, bleeding survivors to make their way in that hostile world as best they could.

And now ... that wound would be reopened. Robert made it clear that he didn’t intend to interrupt her life, but he didn’t know of the changes that had taken place since her last letter to him. He made it clear that their former relationship was a thing of the past, and that he didn’t intend to resume it. But Ramona’s feelings on that point weren’t so clear.

All in all, Ramona was as upset about the “stranger” who had opened the gates of the Nettleton Mansion after all these years as her children were. Ironically, their fears were remarkably similar. Their lives had been turned topsy-turvy, and the result was an emotional storm of doubt, fear, and anguish over forbidden love.

She pulled into her driveway, stopped the car, and laid her head gently against the steering wheel as she wept quietly.

Ten minutes later, providence preventing her children from realizing she was home already, the woman who entered the Franklin household was a completely different woman.

“I’m home,” she sang, expecting and getting an excited welcome from her children.

“Thank goodness you’re home!” Debbie said excitedly, skipping into the living room, where her mother was dropping her purse and keys on the sideboard where she kept them.

Ramona held up her hands. “Be patient a little longer. We’re having a visitor for dinner tonight. All will be explained.”

“But Mahhhhhm” came the drawn out protest. “You have to tell us what’s going on!”