With nowhere to turn, there was nothing to do but to swallow what little pride she had left and go home to Blackstone to try to start her life all over again.
First she would find a job—any job.
Then she would go back to school—and this time not quit until she’d finished.
And the next man she got involved with was going to have to be a lot more honest than Gary Fletcher had been.
Not rich.
Not even handsome.
Just honest, and decent, and willing to be a father to their kids. With these, the first hopeful thoughts she’d had in weeks, lightening her despair, Andrea had pulled her battered Toyota into the familiar driveway on Harvard Street, and breathed a sigh of relief when she realized that no one was home. She would not have to face her mother—yet.
The old key she had never quite had the courage to toss out still fit the lock. Inside, it was oppressive and dark—even darker and more oppressive than she remembered it. Now, wandering through the downstairs rooms, noting their unchanged appearance, she clung to her newly found resolve: Somehow, she would make it work out.
Retrieving one of the three worn suitcases that contained everything she owned, Andrea carried it upstairs, and discovered that one thing had changed. Her room—the room that had been her only retreat after her father left and her mother sank deeper and deeper into her own strange version of religion; the room that she simply assumed would be waiting for her, welcoming her even if her mother did not—was no longer hers. Her cousin Rebecca was living in it—Rebecca’s clothes in the closet; Rebecca’s slippers by the side of the bed; her raggedy teddy bear perched on the pillow. The knowledge stung her sharply. Her mother had cut her out of the house as thoroughly as she’d cut her father out twenty-five years before. The wound was almost as painful as Gary’s betrayal had been, and for a moment a blinding jealousy seized her. Then reason returned. None of her problems, after all, were Rebecca’s fault. She certainly couldn’t ask Rebecca to disrupt her life just because she had messed up her own.
With renewed determination, Andrea went back downstairs and into the room next to the dining room. Small, little more than an alcove, really, it could be closed off with a pair of pocket doors, and still contained the daybed Andrea remembered her mother had always used for naps whenever she felt too tired to climb the stairs to her own room. At least she wouldn’t be in anyone’s way, she thought, and she didn’t need much room anyway. Opening one of her suitcases, Andrea began hanging her clothes in the room’s single, tiny closet.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Her mother’s voice, even harsher than she remembered it, cut through her reverie. Andrea froze, the blouse she’d been about to hang up clutched to her chest.
She wanted to say, Aren’t you glad to see me? Don’t you want to know why I’ve come home? Don’t you want to give me a hug and ask me why I look so sad? But all she could manage was, “I—I was just putting my clothes away, Mother.”
“Down here?” Martha asked, her face hardening and her lips compressing into a tight line of disapproval.
Andrea glanced nervously around the room as if the walls might offer some clue to the reason for her mother’s objection.
“If you think I’m going to allow you to live down here where you can come and go at any hour of the day or night with anyone you choose, you are very wrong. Do you think I’m going to tolerate your sins right here in my house?”
“Mother, I’m not going to—”
“You will sleep in your old room, next to mine,” Martha decreed. She glanced around the little room. “There’s no reason why Rebecca can’t use this one.”
“But Mother, that’s not fair! Rebecca’s been using my old room for years. She shouldn’t have to move now!”
Martha glared at her daughter. “Keep a respectful tongue in your head, child. ‘Honor thy mother,’ ” she quoted. “I know the Commandments mean nothing to you, but as long as you are under my roof, you will live by them. Do you understand?”
Andrea hesitated, then nodded. But as she began removing clothing from the closet, she wondered how she was going to tell her mother about her pregnancy. Well, there wasn’t really any reason to tell her right now. After all, it wasn’t as if she was showing yet. Maybe she’d just wait and—
No!
That was how she’d lived her life for way too many years already, letting herself drift along, thinking that everything would work itself out. But that was over. From now on she was going to face things squarely, and deal with them. Otherwise, she’d never have a life at all.
“There’s something I have to tell you, Mother,” she said. Martha’s eyes narrowed to suspicious slits, and though Andrea wanted to run from the accusing glare, she made herself keep her gaze firmly on her mother’s face. “Gary … the man I’ve been living with, the one I thought would marry me … He left me. And—he fired me from my job.” She hesitated, willing herself not to burst into tears. Taking a deep breath and deciding that if her mother was going to throw her out, she might as well get it over with now, she said in a rush, “I’m pregnant too.”
For what seemed an eternity, Martha Ward said nothing. As the seconds ticked interminably by, Andrea wondered if her mother was, indeed, going to banish her from the house.
Finally, Martha spoke. “You will pray for forgiveness. When the child is born, we’ll find a family that will take care of it. Then I shall decide what you will do next.”
Andrea took another deep breath. “I already told you what I’m going to do next, Mother. I’m going to get a job, and I’m going to go back to school.”
“While you’re pregnant?” Martha demanded. “I don’t see how—”
Andrea decided to finish what she’d begun before she lost her nerve. “I’m not sure if I’m going to stay pregnant, Mother,” she said. “But whatever I decide, it’s going to be my decision, not yours.”
Martha Ward could barely contain her fury. How dare Andrea speak to her this way? How dare she live in sin with a man who was married to another woman, then bring the fruits of her transgressions into Martha’s own home?
Martha knew what she should do: she should cast Andrea out now, cast her out of her home lest her own immortal soul be put at risk.
But then she hesitated, remembering something she’d read recently.
It was the sin she was commanded to hate, not the sinner.
In a flash of insight, she understood.
She was being tested!
Andrea had been sent back to her as a test of her faith.
Her cross to bear.
She must not cast Andrea out. Instead, no matter how deeply her wayward child offended her, she must turn the other cheek and lead her prodigal daughter back onto the path of righteousness.
Reading her mother’s silence as assent for her to stay in the house, Andrea Ward picked up her suitcases and started up the stairs to the room in which she’d grown up.
Martha Ward entered her chapel and fell to her knees. Her lips moving silently, she prayed for guidance on how best to cleanse her daughter’s soul.
Chapter 3
A cold drizzle was falling by the time Oliver and Rebecca got back to the Chronicle office. Oliver insisted on driving Rebecca home.
“You don’t have to do that,” she protested. “It’s way out of your way. I can walk.”
“Of course you can” Oliver told her. “But you won’t. And it won’t take more than a couple of minutes anyway.” He fixed her with a mock glare. “Don’t argue with me.”
“I’m sorry,” Rebecca said so quickly that Oliver immediately knew she hadn’t realized he was joking. “I didn’t mean—”
“No, I’m sorry,” Oliver immediately cut in, opening the door to the Volvo for her. “You can argue with me all you want, Rebecca. About anything. But I’m still going to drive you home.” This time he made certain his words were accompanied by a smile, and found himself inordinately pleased when Rebecca smiled back at him.
>
“I don’t always get the joke, do I?” she asked as he slid behind the wheel.
“Maybe I don’t make it clear enough when I’m kidding,” he replied.
Rebecca shook her head. “No, it’s me. I know everyone in town thinks I’m strange, but ever since the accident, I just don’t seem to get things right away the way other people do.”
“I don’t think you’re strange at all, Rebecca,” Oliver told her. Then he grinned. “But what do I know? Everybody thinks things about me too.”
“No they don’t.”
“Sure they do. They just don’t say anything to my face, that’s all.” Oliver pulled the Volvo up behind an old Toyota that was parked in the driveway of Martha Ward’s house. “Looks like Andrea must have arrived. Do you think I should come in and say hello?”
Rebecca glanced worriedly toward the house. “Aunt Martha wouldn’t like that. She—” Feeling suddenly flustered, Rebecca left the sentence uncompleted, but Oliver finished it for her.
“Is it just me she disapproves of, or is it any man at all?”
Flushing scarlet, Rebecca stared at her hands, which were kneading the brown paper bag in which Janice Anderson had put the cigarette lighter. “It’s anyone,” she said. “Aunt Martha doesn’t trust men.”
Oliver reached out and gently turned Rebecca’s head so she couldn’t help but look at him. “Don’t believe everything Aunt Martha says,” he told her. “I won’t hurt you, Rebecca. I couldn’t.”
For a moment he thought Rebecca was going to say something, or maybe even burst into tears, but then she quickly got out of the car and hurried up the walk to the porch. At the door, she turned, hesitated, then waved to him. As he drove away, Oliver felt an overwhelming sense of relief that she hadn’t gone into the house without looking back at all.
And that, he realized, told him something.
It told him that, despite his better judgment, despite telling himself that his affection for her was nothing more than friendly concern, he was falling in love with Rebecca Morrison.
How, he wondered, was he going to deal with that?
More important, how was she?
* * *
Rebecca closed the front door behind her, trading the gloom of the late afternoon for the gloom inside the house. She was about to call out to her cousin, but before Andrea’s name could even form on her lips, she heard the insistent tones of the Gregorian chants that invariably accompanied her aunt’s prayer sessions in the chapel. Moving quietly enough not to be heard over the music, Rebecca searched the lower floor of the house, but found no sign of Andrea. Then she realized where her cousin must be: in the chapel, praying with her mother.
But a minute later, as she was about to open the door to her room on the second floor, Rebecca stopped. She could hear something—a muffled sound like someone crying—and it was coming from inside her room. She hesitated, wondering what she should do.
It had to be Andrea, of course. But what was Andrea doing in her room? And then she remembered. The room used to be her cousin’s, and Andrea had certainly expected to find it waiting for her.
Gently, Rebecca tapped at the door, but heard no response. She tapped again, a little louder this time. “Andrea? Can I come in?”
Now there was a distant sniffle, then Andrea’s voice. “It’s okay, Rebecca. It’s not locked.”
Turning the knob, Rebecca pushed the door open. Andrea was sitting on the bed, three suitcases spilling their contents on the floor around her feet. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, and she clutched a crumpled tissue in her hand.
Andrea looked thinner than Rebecca remembered her being, and tired. “Andrea?” she whispered. “You look—”
Terrible. She’d been about to say “You look terrible.” But for once, instead of blurting out whatever came into her mind, Rebecca caught herself. But it was as if Andrea had read her mind.
“I look awful, don’t I, Rebecca?”
Rebecca nodded automatically, and the tiniest trace of a smile played around Andrea’s lips.
“I figured,” her cousin said. “Apparently, I look too awful for Mom even to give me a hug. Or maybe she’s just not very glad to see me.”
“Oh, no!” Rebecca exclaimed. She hurried to the bed, dropped her purse and the paper bag onto it, and wrapped her arms around her cousin, then stood back and said, “You look fine! Aunt Martha doesn’t hug anyone. And I’m sure she’s glad to see you. She’s just—”
Miraculously, Rebecca once again managed to censor herself, but once again Andrea had no trouble finishing the thought for her.
“Still crazy, right?” Her smile faded and she seemed to deflate. “I shouldn’t have come back here, should I? Now it’s not only going to be my life I mess up, but yours too.”
Rebecca slipped her arm around her cousin in a quick hug. “You’re not messing up my life. Why would you say that? I’m glad you came home.”
“Then you haven’t talked to my mother yet. She says if I stay here, I have to be in this room. She says you have to move into the room behind the dining room. Look, I feel really terrible about it. If you want me to, I’ll go find somewhere else—”
“No!” Rebecca interrupted, holding a finger to Andrea’s lips to silence her. “This is your home, and this was your room, and you should have it. And I really am glad you’re here.” She picked up the brown bag, now crumpled and sodden from the rain, and thrust it into Andrea’s hands. “Look—I even bought you a present.”
Andrea hesitated, and Rebecca had the strangest feeling that for some reason her cousin didn’t feel she deserved whatever gift might be inside the bag.
“Please take it,” Rebecca said softly. “It isn’t much, but I thought you might like it. And if you don’t, you don’t have to keep it.”
Now Andrea’s eyes were shining with tears. “It isn’t that at all, Rebecca. It’s just—” She struggled for a moment, but couldn’t hold the tears back. “Nobody’s given me a present for so long that I forgot what it feels like. And I don’t have anything for you. I—”
“Just open it,” Rebecca begged. “Please?”
Blowing her nose into the crumpled Kleenex once more, Andrea finally opened the bag and took out the tissue-wrapped object inside. Stripping the paper away, she gazed uncomprehendingly at the gilded dragon. “I—I don’t understand,” she stammered. “What is it?”
Instead of telling her, Rebecca took the dragon from her cousin’s hands and squeezed its neck. Click! And a tongue of fire shot from its mouth. Andrea laughed.
“I love it!” she said, taking the lighter back from Rebecca and trying it herself. “Where did you ever find it? It’s wonderful!” Rummaging in her purse, she found a package of cigarettes at the bottom, pulled one out, and lit it from the dragon’s mouth. “Now if anyone says I have dragon breath, at least they’ll be right!”
“You mean you really like it?” Rebecca asked. “It’s all right?”
“It’s perfect,” Andrea assured her. Then she glanced around. “Now I feel even worse about taking your room.”
“It’s not my room,” Rebecca reminded her. “It’s yours. And the one downstairs is fine for me. I don’t need much. I’ll bet I don’t have nearly as many clothes as you, and I won’t have to listen to Aunt Martha snore anymore.” She instantly clapped her hands over her mouth as she realized she’d once more spoken without thinking, but Andrea only laughed again.
“Is it really bad?”
Rebecca nodded. “Sometimes I have to wear earplugs in order to sleep.”
“Oh, Lord,” Andrea moaned, flopping back onto the bed. “Maybe I’m actually doing you a favor after all.” She sat up again, then held the pack of cigarettes out to Rebecca. “Want one?”
Rebecca shook her head. “Smoking’s not good for you.”
Andrea laughed, but this time the sound was bitter. “Life hasn’t been very good for me. No job, no husband, no place to live, and pregnant. So where’s the good part?”
“You’re having a
baby?” Rebecca asked. “But that’s wonderful, Andrea. Babies are always good, aren’t they?” Then her eyes fell on the cigarette from which Andrea was inhaling deeply. “But now you really shouldn’t smoke,” she went on. “It’s really bad for the baby.”
The last faint feeling of optimism that the gift had brought to Andrea dropped away. “What the hell would you know about it?” she asked. Then, unwilling to witness the pain her words inflicted on Rebecca, she stood up and went to the window, gazing out at the dark, rainy afternoon.
Rebecca, stinging from Andrea’s rebuff, went to the door. Hand on the knob, she turned back, hopefully, but when Andrea made no move even to look at her, she shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just—well, I just say things, that’s all. I’m really sorry.”
“Just leave me alone, Rebecca. Okay?”
A moment later Andrea heard the door open and close, and knew that she was once again alone in the room. She went back to the bed, dropped down onto it once more, and picked up the lighter.
Clicking it on and off, she watched the dragon’s flaming tongue flick in and out of its gilded mouth. As the flame flared then died away, flared and died once more, she thought about the baby growing in her womb.
Then, with a sharp click that made the dragon spit its flame again, she made up her mind what she was going to do.
Chapter 4
Martha Ward left her house at dawn the next morning. She hadn’t slept well, which she always took as a sign that her soul was troubled. This morning, her private prayer session in her own chapel wouldn’t be enough. Dressed in the dark blue suit she invariably wore to church, and with her hat and veil pinned carefully in place, she used her key to bolt the front door. Both Rebecca and Andrea were asleep inside the house, and though she was well aware that both of them were already steeped in sin, she was always mindful that there were men in Blackstone—just as there were men everywhere—whose hearts were filled with lust.
Satisfied that the door was firmly locked, she left the porch, buttoned her coat to her chin as the sharp wind cut into her, then made her way down Harvard Street. Her feet, misshapen from the arthritis that had been one of her crosses for the last twenty years, were hurting badly by the time she’d gone a block, but she ignored the pain, silently repeating her rosary. This morning she was saying St. Benedict’s—one of her favorite rosaries—and the rhythms of the Latin words eased her pain slightly. If her Savior had been able to bear His cross through the streets of Jerusalem with graceful dignity, surely she could carry the pain of her arthritis with dignified grace. When Charles VanDeventer stopped to offer her a ride, she barely acknowledged him before turning her head firmly away from temptation.