One Summer (20 page)

By the time Rachel reached the gates of Walnut Grove and started up the long driveway, her heart had almost resumed its normal rhythm. That is, until she saw that the house was ablaze with light. Nearly every window in the downstairs, and most of those abovestairs, was lit up. Only the front bedroom where her father customarily slept was dark.

Something had happened. The knowledge filled Rachel with a jittery panic.

She stopped the car with a squeal of brakes, jumped out, and hurried toward the front door. It opened to meet her just as she would have put her hand on the knob.

“Where in the name of heaven have you been?” her mother whispered fiercely, her eyes moving over Rachel and widening at what they saw.

“What’s happened? Is it Daddy?” Rachel brushed by Elisabeth, her face white, her heart filled with dread as she came face to face with the unthinkable.

“Your daddy’s fine.” Elisabeth sounded grim as her eyes went over Rachel again. Aided by the chandelier in the front hall, she missed no detail of her daughter’s appearance, from the badly wrinkled green skirt, to the mussed hair, to the slightly swollen lower lip. “It’s Becky. She got home an hour ago with the girls. She’s been crying to beat the band, and I can’t get a lick of sense out of her to even begin to guess what’s the matter. Maybe you can.”

“Becky,” Rachel echoed with a sense of profound relief. Whatever ailed Becky, at least no one was dead. Her blood had frozen at the possibilities. Despite the fact that she knew perfectly well that her father would never recover,
would continue to decline mentally and physically until death was a merciful release, she could still shudder with dread at the thought that he had actually passed from this life.

“Where is she?” Rachel asked, shaking off the melancholy reflection.

“In the library. I started a fire and made her hot chocolate. But she won’t talk to me. All she does is cry.”

“I’ll go to her.”

“Just a minute,” Elisabeth said, catching Rachel’s arm. “Before you do, I want to know where you’ve been. It’s past midnight. There’s nowhere in town that’s open so late, and don’t tell me that you’ve been with Rob because he called wanting you to go to the Labor Day picnic with him.”

Her eyes moved over Rachel again in a comprehensive, assessing way that stiffened Rachel’s spine even as it brought hot color flooding up her neck.

“I’m a grown woman, Mother. If I want to stay out past midnight, it’s strictly my own concern.”

Elisabeth’s face went taut, revealing the lovely bone structure and at the same time making her look far closer to her true age. “I don’t understand you anymore, Rachel,” she said. “You’ve always been so sensible, so reliable, so smart about everything. But lately, I feel I just don’t know you. It’s that Harris boy—since he’s been back in town, you’ve changed. You’ve been with him tonight. Haven’t you?”

Elisabeth looked into her daughter’s eyes as if she could read the secrets hidden there.

“What if I have, Mother?” Rachel answered quietly. “Would that be so very terrible?”

Without waiting for a reply, she removed her arm from her mother’s grip and went to her sister in the library.

19

E
lisabeth had not exaggerated, Rachel saw as she paused for the briefest moment in the library doorway. Becky was huddled in a corner of the bright yellow couch, her slender legs drawn up beneath her, her curly black hair resting on the furniture’s plump upholstered arm, her face turned into a small, square pillow as she sobbed. Flickering light from the fire and a soft glow from the blue-figured china lamp atop their father’s massive rolltop desk provided the only illumination. The Delft blue walls and white plantation shutters that closed over the floor-to-ceiling windows gave the room a certain coziness that offset the daunting effect of the enormous crystal chandelier hanging overhead from the ten-foot ceiling. The furniture in this room that had been their father’s domain was oversize, well stuffed, and designed for a big man’s comfort. Against such a backdrop, thirty-one-year-old Becky, who was as petite as her mother and sister, looked tiny and almost childlike.

Watching the small body in the exotically printed silk camp shirt and walking shorts, Rachel felt a spurt of concern. Becky had always been prone to dramatize even the most mundane situation. Still, for her sister to cry so, something must be seriously amiss.

“What’s the matter, Beck?” she asked as she went to place a soothing hand on her sister’s heaving back.

“R-Rachel.” Becky glanced up, eyes swollen and brimming with tears. To her credit, she sat up and tried for a smile. Her wavering effort had a much different effect from what she obviously intended. Alarmed by what she saw in her sister’s face, Rachel sank down on the couch at Becky’s side. Their mother stood in the doorway regarding the pair of them with anxious eyes.

“Is it one of the girls?” Perhaps one of them had been diagnosed with a serious illness. But speculation was as useless as it was ridiculous. The possibilities were endless.

Becky’s lovely face, so like a younger Elisabeth’s that the resemblance was almost startling, crumpled anew as she shook her head.

“No.” Tears poured down her cheeks. Her mouth worked.

“Michael?”

“Oh, Rachel!” Covering her face with her hands, Becky began to sob in great, tearing gulps. Appalled, Rachel put her arms around her sister and hugged her close. As aggravating as Becky could sometimes be, at times like this all Rachel could see was the curly-haired baby sister who had toddled after her from the time she could walk.

“Becky, what is it? Please tell me.” Rachel rocked her sister back and forth while Becky cried on her shoulder.

“Michael—Michael wants a divorce.” It was a shuddering whisper, muttered into her shoulder, so low that at first Rachel wasn’t certain she had heard correctly.

“A divorce?” she repeated, stunned.

“A divorce?” From the doorway, Elisabeth pressed her hand to her throat as she echoed Rachel’s words.

“He told me today. Over the phone. He’s in Dayton on business, and he called me at home and said he wanted a divorce. Just like that. Can you believe it?” Becky lifted her head to glance first at her mother and then at her sister.

“But why?” Elisabeth asked faintly.

“I think he has a—a girlfriend. I guess he wants to—to marry her.”

“Oh, Becky!” Becky looked so woebegone that Rachel ached for her. Becky’s gaze focused on her.

“I’m just—sick. I haven’t told the girls, but they know something’s wrong. Oh, what am I going to do?” It was a wail, and Becky buried her face in Rachel’s shoulder as she uttered it. Rachel, feeling helpless, patted her sister’s back.

“You’re going to stay right here with us and let us take care of you,” Rachel said, while her mother, who had sunk bonelessly into Stan’s wooden desk chair near the door, nodded agreement.

“Oh, Rachel, I’ve missed you and Mama and Daddy so much. It’s been hard being away from home, trying to bring up the girls by myself. Michael’s been gone so much, and I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. And then today—” Becky burst into fresh sobs. Rachel held her tighter.

“Sweetheart, why didn’t you tell us?” Elisabeth sounded stricken.

“I didn’t want to worry you. And—and I know how you feel about divorce.”

Elisabeth’s views on divorce—she disapproved strongly of the modern tendency to uncouple at the drop of a hat—were indeed vehement. But the vigorous shaking of her head revealed that they didn’t necessarily apply to her beloved younger daughter.

“Nonsense,” she said firmly, renouncing the tenets of a lifetime in the face of her child’s distress. “You know that Daddy and Rachel and I will stand behind you whatever you decide to do. We only want what’s best for you. And the girls.”

Becky’s body shook. “They adore their Daddy. I hate to tell them.”

“You don’t have to tell them yet,” Rachel said. “Not
until you and Michael have had a chance to talk some more. Maybe he didn’t mean it. Maybe he was just upset about something.”

“I think he meant it.” There was a pathetic quiver to Becky’s voice that caught at Rachel’s heart. Becky took a deep, shaken breath and sat up out of her sister’s arms. “Oh, Rachel, I wish he’d married you instead.”

This heartfelt sigh brought a wry smile to Rachel’s mouth. “Well, thanks a lot.”

Becky gave a watery chuckle and mopped at her eyes with both hands. “That sounded awful, didn’t it? But you know what I mean. You—you’re so strong. You would have been able to handle this better than I am. I feel like such a fool. The last few years he’s been traveling so much. I thought he was seeing somebody, but he kept telling me I was crazy. I—I almost believed him—that I was crazy, I mean. But I’m not. I was right all the time. He’s been screwing around on me for years, and I just took it and took it and pretended I didn’t know and stopped making a fuss. And now he wants a divorce, and I ruined my life over him, and he wasn’t worth it, not one bit.”

Tears welled again. Rachel said firmly, “Your life is not ruined. Whatever happens, you’ll be just fine. You’ll be happy again and find another man again—a better one this time. And you’ll have lots of wonderful times. We just have to get you over this hump. And we will.”

Becky smiled at Rachel. The effort was shaky but filled with affection. “Aren’t you glad you escaped?”

“Yes,” Rachel said, meaning it. “Yes, I am.”

Without volition she thought of Johnny and the deep, dark passion he roused in her and realized with a sense almost of shock that Michael had never even touched that part of her. For the first time since Michael Hennessey had chosen Becky over her, Rachel was able to see her love for him for what it had been: a young girl’s infatuation, now long in the past. She had grown up since then.

In the kitchen the schoolhouse clock that perched over the pantry struck the hour.

“My goodness, it’s two in the morning. We need to go to bed!” Elisabeth exclaimed.

“Yes, we do,” Rachel agreed, getting to her feet and tugging her sister up with her.

“Katie will be awake at the crack of dawn,” Becky predicted gloomily, referring to her youngest daughter. “And Loren and Lisa won’t be far behind.”

“Tilda and Rachel and I can look after them. You need to sleep in,” Elisabeth said as Rachel and Becky joined her at the door.

“I’m so glad to be home.” Becky hugged her mother, then stretched out an arm to pull Rachel into her embrace. For a moment, the three women stood, united in this time of crisis, foreheads touching, arms around each other. “I love you guys.”

Then, pulling away, Rachel said briskly, “Enough of this. In another minute, we’ll all be crying. Mother, you and Becky go on up. I’ll lock the doors and turn off the lights.”

20

T
he watcher was only occasionally present as the body in which he dwelled drove through the darkness, hands tight around the steering wheel, eyes unseeing as they stared out at the all-enveloping night. Memories that bore no connection to the watcher’s present-day life flickered in and out of focus.

They brought with them pain and a growing rage, but no real understanding of what was occurring. Kaleidoscopic pictures of a time at least a hundred years in the past seemed suddenly more real than the tall oaks that guarded the winding road. The First Baptist Church appeared on the left, and the watcher’s gaze was drawn irresistibly to it. Then the car swerved around the bend, and the church was out of sight. But the building triggered a burst of brain activity, and the watcher was suddenly fully present.

The watcher witnessed the unfolding of long-ago events as immediately as if they were taking place at that very moment. What he saw made him tremble with pain and rage. It was happening again—but not a hundred years in the past. He knew that. The events of the past were being repeated in the here and now.

Through the night, swiftly, silently, unseen and unknown, the watcher sped, to exact not vengeance but a
terrible kind of justice. But the dwelling that was his destination was dark, deserted. No one was home.

Blood would not be spilled this night. There would be another frustration added to the watcher’s rage.