The Gift of Christmas Present (17 page)

Finally Christine couldn't take any more silence. “Is
something wrong?” she asked. She sat down on the edge of the bed, directly across from Aunt Hattie, and waited.

“Well, that depends on how you look at it,” she said.

Christine suspected this had to do with Felicity. Perhaps she had asked Aunt Hattie to speak to Christine today. Maybe they were going to ask her to get a blood test. Or demand to know why she was here. Or perhaps they wanted to ask her to leave. Christine simply waited.

“I have something to tell you that I feel you have the right to know.” She sighed. “But this isn't easy for me.”

Christine looked down at her hands folded neatly in her lap, Sunday school hands, her mother used to say, and she continued to wait. Whatever it was, she wished Aunt Hattie would just spit it out. Get it over with.

“As you know, dear, Esther's second husband, James, was my little brother. He was only four years younger than me, but I always babied him as if I were much older. You see, our parents were very busy people. They were quite wealthy, and, as a result, they were always caught up in every social cause and function, and, well, we children were left to our own a lot. I suppose I became something of a mother hen to James. We were very close.”

Christine looked curiously at Aunt Hattie. What did any of this have to do with her? But still she didn't say anything. Just waited for the old woman to continue.

“I'm sure you're wondering where I'm going with my little story.” Aunt Hattie attempted a meek smile. “Well, as you can imagine, Esther, your grandmother, was very upset when Lenore became pregnant. Her plan was to send her to me for a while so that Lenore could have an abortion and then get on with her life.”

Christine nodded. “I saw the brochure on Lenore's dresser.” She swallowed. “It's kind of hard to think about your birth mother wanting to—well, you know—abort you.”

“Oh, no, no, no. Lenore didn't want an abortion at all. That was all Esther's idea. She felt it was a neat way to clean this whole mess up. Personally, I didn't much care for the idea myself, but then I knew enough to keep quiet.”

“
Grandmother
wanted Lenore to have an abortion?”

“That's right. She was worried about James's reputation at the college. He was being considered for presidency at this time. And she didn't want anything to hurt his chances.”

“Oh.” Christine knew this made sense, but it still cut deeply to think that her own grandmother had wanted her life “terminated,” as the brochure put it.

“Anyway, all this became moot when Lenore disappeared.”

Christine nodded.

“But then something happened . . . ,” she continued slowly, as if she wasn't sure how to say whatever it was she wanted to say, “shortly before my brother James died several years ago. Perhaps you've heard by now that he'd been diagnosed with an unusual form of cancer and given less than six months to live . . . Well, it was during that time that he wrote me several letters. At first I thought my little brother was losing his mind due to his terminal illness and the heavy pain medications, because the letters made absolutely no sense whatsoever to me. They were filled with remorse and regret and guilt. And yet, in my opinion, this was a man who had led an exemplary life. It made no sense.”

Christine felt like she was getting an informational, not to mention emotional, overload today, and she just wished Aunt Hattie would get to the point. If there was a point. And right now she wasn't too sure.

Aunt Hattie reached in her pocket to remove a pink linen handkerchief with lace trim. “Then the final letter came . . . and in this particular letter James confessed that he'd been the one responsible for Lenore's pregnancy, which resulted in her subsequent disappearance. And he felt certain that his illness was his punishment for this transgression, and he wanted to tell Esther the truth, but he simply couldn't do it. Oh, believe me, it was a very, very sad letter indeed.”

Christine just stared at her, too stunned to speak or respond. In fact, she felt her lips growing numb and wondered if she might actually be having some sort of stroke or seizure, although she knew that was probably ridiculous and highly unlikely. But how could she possibly have heard what she thought she'd just heard? Or maybe she'd simply misunderstood. “Wh—what?” she managed to stutter.

“I know it's shocking, dear, but I felt you had the right to know.”

“What are you saying?” Christine winced at the words that were about to come from her mouth. “Are you saying that Lenore's stepfather is my birth father?”

Aunt Hattie nodded sadly, then dabbed her moist eyes with the corner of her handkerchief. “I'm sorry, dear, but that's what my brother wrote in his letter.”

Christine's stomach twisted and turned, and she felt as if she was going to be sick. How could this be? It was so wrong. So unfair. Not only had this poor girl been judged
and misunderstood by her own mother, but she'd been sexually abused by her stepfather as well. It was too painful and hideous to even think about. Christine longed to purge this tale from her mind and to run from this horrible house where such dirty little secrets had been hidden for so many years. What was wrong with these people?

“Oh, I know it's disturbing to hear this, dear. But I think it's best to just get these things out in the open and then move on. James fully admitted his guilt in his last letter to me. Yes, he admitted that he had raped his stepdaughter. And, of course, it was wrong. But you must keep this in perspective, dear. He'd been under enormous stress at work, and Esther had taken off to visit her sick mother and had been gone for weeks.”

Christine listened to Aunt Hattie going on and on about how it had been spring break and how “poor James” had been doing some very heavy drinking and missing his wife. As if that excused such inexcusable behavior!

“Apparently the weather had been nice that week,” Aunt Hattie rambled as if she was telling a bedtime story, “and Lenore had been swimming in the pool with her friends, and walking around the house in a very provocative bikini. Oh, I know that's no excuse, dear.” She pressed her lips together, and Christine controlled herself from saying something very regrettable.
Just get this over with
, she was thinking.
Tell your story and be done with it
!

Finally Aunt Hattie continued. “There's really no easy way to understand these things, dear, but James admitted he was so intoxicated that he barely remembered what had happened that day. He wrote that Lenore had confronted him with it later, when she'd discovered she was
pregnant, and that they'd gotten into quite an argument. Naturally, James tried to make himself believe that her accusations weren't true. Maybe he'd even managed to convince himself that it wasn't true over time. But I think that beneath it all, he always knew he'd done it. He knew he'd raped Lenore.”

“That's so disgusting.” Christine grimaced and tightened her fists. “That's like . . . like
incest
.”

Aunt Hattie firmly shook her head. “No, dear, it's not actually incest since they weren't blood relatives.”

“Well, my father isn't a blood relative either,” Christine said hotly. “But if he ever did that to me—” She shuddered at what she knew was an impossibility. “Ugh, that would be just the same as incest to me.”

“I know, I know. It's a horrible thing to hear. And if it makes you feel any better, James was completely heartbroken with regret over it. You can read his letters if you like. He would've done anything to turn back the clock and erase that awful day. And I have a feeling that it really did contribute to his illness and his death in the end.”

“And Lenore's death too.” Christine shook her head. “What a stupid, stupid waste.”

“Not completely,” Aunt Hattie said with a hopeful smile. “At least there's you.”

Christine felt a large lump filling her throat now, making it hard to breathe, let alone respond. It was one thing to be an illegitimate child, an unwanted pregnancy, an embarrassing inconvenience. Although, in fact, she was still grappling with those unkind labels. But it was something entirely different to be the product of a violent crime, the result of rape that was practically incestuous. How would
she ever reconcile herself to something like this? Suddenly she wanted her father more than ever. She wanted to pour out her troubles to him and have him comfort her and then just make everything go away.

“I've got to go.” She quickly stood.

“Oh, I hope I didn't upset you, dear,” Aunt Hattie said. “I only wanted you to know the truth. You seem like such a sensible girl to me. I thought you could handle it. Of course, I plan to tell Esther too, but I wanted to tell you first. I felt you had a right to know. You see, I tried to tell Esther once before and, well, it caused quite a scene.”

“At the funeral?”

“Yes. But I think it's important that she knows and accepts the truth now that you're here. And, actually, once you adjust yourself to everything, well, it's not so bad, really.”

Aunt Hattie stood and held her arms open wide as if she were expecting a big hug. But Christine was still too stunned to respond. She simply backed away.

“I've got—got to go,” she said for the second time as she made her way to the door. “I'm—I'm sorry.”

She dashed down the stairs, carelessly tearing a strip of garland loose on her way. She opened the closet and grabbed her parka, then shot out the front door without even closing it behind her. She could hear Felicity calling after her, probably wanting her to stuff a turkey or bake a pie or hang some mistletoe, but Christine was finished with all that Christmas nonsense now. More than that, she wanted to be finished with this crazy family as well.

Esther sat and stared blankly at the old letters splayed across James's normally orderly desktop. They looked almost as if the wind had blown them in. Or Hurricane Hattie. She should've known better than to let that crazy old woman into her home. Good grief, hadn't Hattie always been the bearer of bad news?

Oh yes, the letters appeared to have been written in James's handwriting, perhaps not as neatly as his usual smooth and controlled hand, but that was most likely due to his illness or the medications, and, of course, there'd been stress. And there was no doubt they'd been written on his own personal stationery embossed with his own initials, JD. And, of course, he wouldn't have used the college letterhead that he normally reserved for official work correspondence. And, most likely, he'd sat right here, right in this big leather chair, when he'd composed them.

But was the content really true? Poor James had endured some heavy pain medications during the last few
months of his life. Perhaps those drugs had affected his mind. Maybe he'd even been hallucinating. These were the excuses she'd given Hattie shortly before she'd closed the door and barricaded herself in James's den with the sternest instructions: “I do not wish to be disturbed.”

Once the door was locked and she was alone, she'd sat there and read and reread each letter until she'd nearly memorized each and every painful word. And now, despite her own earlier misgivings and doubts, she realized that the letters relayed the truth. James had indeed raped her only daughter. Oh, it was difficult to form those words in her mind. It sounded so crude and base and immoral. Not at all like the man she'd been happily married to for fifteen years. Just the same, she knew it was true.

Perhaps she'd always known. At least deep down in some hidden corner of her mother's heart. After all, hadn't Lenore tried to tell her without actually saying the words? But mired in her own foolish pride and stubbornness, Esther had refused to listen to her own daughter.

She leaned back into the chair and closed her eyes. Oh, the stupid and senseless messes people make of their lives. One mess leads smack into another and then another and another. It made her weary just thinking of it. It was like the redundancy of the seaside, one wave tumbling into the next. She had always grown tired of the sound of the ocean after a few days. James had never understood this. Maybe it was just her, since most people seemed to love the sound of the ocean, but the endless pounding of wave after wave after wave had always worn on her nerves. Just the way this whole nasty business with James was wearing on her now. His guilt only added more layers to
her own guilt, making her feel worse than ever. And just when she'd been hoping for some resolution too. Oh, when would the hurting ever cease?

She looked at the photograph of James that she kept on his desk. It was taken shortly after he'd been selected as the university president. Such a proud day that had been. In fact, it would've been perfect except for the fact that Lenore was missing. She studied his smile and wondered how he'd really felt that day. Was he pleased with himself for the way he'd managed to conceal such a hideous offense? Or was he smiling like that simply to hide the shame?