Read Online Cascade by Maryanne O'Hara - Free Book Online Page B

people like Zeke and Dr. Proulx had urged him not to stir up trouble.People in general were having a hard enough time as it was, they said. The threat would blow over; it had before.
    “You can’t blame yourself. We all hoped this was going to just go away.”
    “Well,” he said, “we stopped them in ’29, we’ll just have to stop them again.”
    “But—” Or maybe he didn’t know. “You do know the real story of why they pulled out of Cascade last time?”
    He looked up, suspicion in his eyes—he had heard the rumors, had suspected there was a real story, known only by certain people. “Tell me,” he said.
    “Well, you remember Richard Harcourt.” In the early twenties, Richard Harcourt, a vice president of the New York Stock Exchange, built one of the Greek Revivals on River Road. His wife and children used to spend their summers in Cascade; Harcourt would train up from Manhattan on weekends. He was one of the Cascade Playhouse’s biggest patrons, good for large donations and dozens of tickets. Now he was in prison.
    “Harcourt put in a quiet word to the governor back when the water commission was doing that second round of surveys and recommendations,” she said. “He got the state to back off Cascade. He didn’t want his summer place destroyed.”
    Asa raised his eyebrows with amusement, with relief. “Oh, come on. I heard those rumors, but one person’s word wouldn’t have been enough to squelch a major plan like that.”
    “It’s true.” Her father had been privy to all of it. “Governor Fuller was an arts patron. He came to a performance here more than once. He cared about that sort of thing. I happen to know he owns a Renoir and a Boccaccino. And of course at the time no one thought it made a lot of sense to build so far from Boston.”
    “It still doesn’t.”
    “No.” But it was kind of like death after a long illness. This uncertainty that had been hanging over their heads like an ax; well, it would be arelief, in a way, to finally
know
, one way or the other. If the state did choose Cascade, the fight could start in earnest. Either that, or—or what? They could accept the inevitable? No.
    “They’ll take Whistling Falls, Asa. It simply makes more sense.”
    “Our elevations are lower,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Our water levels higher. Most of Cascade borders the river. Our valley is a more natural bowl shape. Except for that chunk on the east, and I bet they’d take just a bit of Whistling Falls to fill it all out. I bet they would. The site work’s done, too. All those surveys they did in the twenties. Once they make their decision it won’t take long for them to get down to work.”
    He was too agitated to sit with the coffee he normally enjoyed after dinner. He lifted his coat, still slick and wet, off the coat rack and opened the back door. The rain had stopped and the night air was fresh with the smell of earth and river water. He stepped out onto the porch and raised his arms, an appeal to the heavens. “It’s impossible. They simply can’t do this!”
    The yard was cluttered with dead branches. Among the debris was a Baltimore oriole’s socklike nest at the bottom of the steps. Asa crouched down to pick it up and set it on the porch railing.
    “That same family of orioles has come back to that nest year after year,” he said grimly.
    “I hope it’s not a sign—”
    “Oh, hush!” He said it so harshly she felt slapped. He’d never spoken to her like that. But he didn’t apologize, just started across the lawn, then turned to shoot her a savage look. “What’s the attraction to people like that Abby person, anyway? Why don’t you socialize with the women in town?”
    “Well, I—”
    “What’s wrong with Lil Montgomery?”
    “Well, she—” Asa knew she had gone to boarding schools, for goodness sake, that the local girls were nice enough, but they had grown up with Dez Hart out of sight, out of mind. And now they were all busy with