Legacy Of Terror

spends his monthly check from his mother's estate as if the entire concept of money had been scheduled for the ash can the following day. He enjoys escorting pretty girls here and there-and pretty girls also require money. He drives too fast and drinks a bit too much. But, in the end, what is there to say against any of that?”
    “He is still young,” she said. “But when he's forty or fifty and still hasn't accomplished anything, what will he think of himself.”
    “Perhaps you judge him too harshly. But that is good. Be wary of him, for half his blood is Honneker blood. As is half of Gordon's.”
    “I like him.”
    “Gordon is anything but frivolous,” Jacob noted. “He'll run the family investments and eventually the restaurants. Sometimes, I wish he would gad about a bit more than he does.”
    She slid forward in her chair, “I'm confused, Mr. Matherly.”
    “About what?”
    “Why it matters that half their blood is Honneker- or that all of Paul's blood is.”
    “Amelia and Paul's parents were first cousins. As a nurse, you must know that such a close marriage between relatives can often result in the transference of undesireable genes to future generations.”
    “Hemophilia for one.”
    “Worse things,” Jacob said darkly.
    He was trying to frighten her, as he had frightened her before, but he was not going to succeed. Fear of an unknown quantity was senseless. One could only fear something concrete, something tangible whose threat was plain to see. Thus far, whatever Jacob feared seemed to be an unknown.
    “Such as?”
    “You haven't yet learned about Christmas Eve?”
    “Just that, whatever happened, it was done with fifteen years ago.” She smiled and leaned towards him. “You shouldn't be worried, still, about something so long forgotten, Mr. Matherly.”
    “You don't know. You weren't here.”
    “Tell me.”
    “It was the worst thing in my life,” he said. “It was the worst thing I had ever seen. And I had been to war, you know. I'd seen so much, but all of it was pale next to what happened that night.”
    He was speaking very rapidly, breathlessly now.
    “Don't excite yourself,” she said, suddenly concerned with his welfare, afraid that she might have generated some of his hypertension.
    His hand strayed to his chest. He was slightly bent, as if he were trying to encircle the pain with his body and smother it. His face, the half of it which was not perpetually grimaced, was twisted in agony.
    She rose quickly and went to the medicine cabinet where she found the glycerine pills. She took two of these back to the old man and fed him one with a sip of water from the glass on his food tray.
    He remained in an agonized hunch for another few minutes.
    When she gave him the second pill, he soon leaned back and breathed more easily. The tiny, whimpering sounds that had been caught in his throat were now gone.
    “Angina,” he wheezed. The word caused as much pain as the symptoms it described. He disliked the idea of being ill, dependent. “It's much better now.”
    “You'd better get into bed,” she said.
    “Perhaps I had.”
    “And to sleep.”
    “It's so early yet!” he protested, like a child.
    “Nevertheless, I think you ought to take a sedative and try to sleep.”
    He did as she asked. In twenty minutes, he was soundly asleep. She tucked the covers around him, turned out the light, turned on the tiny night light, and left his room, closing the door quietly behind her.
    It was too bad that the attack had come when it had, for she had been on the verge of learning what it was that Jacob Matherly feared in the Honneker blood -and what had happened on that mysterious Christmas Eve more than fifteen years ago.
    In her own room, once she had dressed for bed, she chose a book from the half dozen paperbacks she had brought with her and settled down under the canopy of the large bed. When she had finished only a chapter, her eyes were heavy. She marked her place and turned out the light. She had not intended to fall asleep so early, but she was exhausted from packing and driving and unpacking and meeting so many new people. It seemed impossible that this could be her first day in the Matherly house. Certainly, she had been here for years. At least months. At the very least, weeks. Sleep came instantly.
    In her dream, a rare dream, it was the night before Christmas, and she was opening her gifts early. She no longer believed in Santa Claus, so what was the use in waiting for the sunrise? One of the presents was a large, red and green