The Blackstone Chronicles (25 page)

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.

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.”