“Maybe you ought to stay in and rest. I'm great at giving TLC.”
As upset as she was at having missed a morning at work, she laughed at his humor. “Thanks, but I have three important afternoon appointments. I'll accept a nice lunch, though.”
“Consider it done.”
Her inability to rush troubled her, and she didn't like the way in which she plodded along. “I'll be okay as soon as I get some breakfast,” she said to herself. “I just need some food.”
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As she dealt with a difficult and unexpected problem in her relationship with Douglas, Lacette couldn't know the chasm over which her sister was about to cross or the deepening of the hole that Kellie was digging for herself.
Kellie hated that she had to ask Mabel for a couple of hours off. A month earlier Mabel sat at a typist's desk across the aisle from her, and now she was Miss Big Shot Supervisor. She reined in her pride, walked down the hall to Mabel's office and knocked.
“Come in.”
She stepped inside and closed the door. “I'm moving this evening, Mabel. Could I have a couple of hours off, please? I haven't taken any leave this year.”
Mabel pushed her chewing gum between her gum and her jaw and looked hard at Kellie. “Lord, I sure hope you don't plan to move in with Hal Fayson.” Kellie's jaw dropped, and she fumbled for a chair and sat down. “That's right,” Mabel said. “You know there aren't any secrets in this town. Better watch what you're doing, 'cause that brother ain't worth shit, and I know four women, including my first cousin, who are living witnesses to that fact. Love 'em and leave 'em. That's Hal. Girl, the way women act over him, he must have one fantastic bag of tricks. I hope you're not pregnant.”
“No,” she said in a barely audible voice, stunned that after the care she'd taken to keep her relationship with Hal a secret, even Mabel knew about it.
“Don't be so surprised that I know. I hear he was in Joe's boasting that he had one of the town's âtop chicks,' I believe is the way he put it, and when Chad York challenged him, he told him right in front of everybody how he met you. Yeah, you can have the afternoon off.” She shook her head. “I tell you, I never would have believed you'd do a thing like this. Your folks must be upset.”
What could she say? “Thanks a lot, Mabel. I'll be in tomorrow morning on time.”
She managed to get out of the office without breaking down. She had known for some time that Hal held the trump card, but it shocked her that he played it so deftly and so ruthlessly. Moving in with him wasn't her idea, but he'd sworn that he wouldn't see her again unless she did, and she knew she'd prowl like a cat in heat if three days passed and she couldn't be with him.
She had wanted the afternoon off so that she could pack and move before her mother came home from school, for she didn't plan to announce that she was leaving home until it was a fait accompli. However, she had packed less than half of her things, when she heard the front door open and felt as if her belly had plunged to the floor. A sickening feeling pervaded her as her mother's footsteps came closer and closer. She didn't have time to close her bedroom door.
“What in the Lord's name . . . Kellie, for God's sake where have you been? I've been out of my mind. Did you stay with that man last night?” She walked into the room and stuck her knuckles to her narrow hips. “Did you?”
Kellie could feel her jaw twitching and her nostrils flaring, letting off steam as a steer does just before it charges. “Mama, I'll be thirty-four years old in three months. I don't ask where you've been when you come in at midnight.”
“But I come home,” she said. “I don't cause my children to worry that someone may have killed me.”
“Excuse me, Mama. I'm busy, and I'm sorry, but I don't feel up to this drama.” She folded several sweaters and some pants and put them into a suitcase.
“You're packing. You're going off somewhere with him.” Her voice rose with each word she spoke. Her hand gripped Kellie's arm. “Don't act like I'm not talking to you.”
“Please, Mama. You'll be moving into your apartment next week. I'm . . .” Suddenly she stopped folding clothes, straightened up and looked at her mother. She didn't need to apologize, and she wasn't going to. “I'm moving in with Hal, and he'll be here soon to get my things.”
“
You what?
Are you crazy? That foul-mouthed man doesn't even have a job, and my daughter . . . Oh, Lord. This is too much.” She slumped onto the bed beside the suitcase, and tears trickled down her cheeks.
“Mama, please don't start with the histrionics. It's too late now to raise me. You should have done that when I was a child. I want him, and I'm going to live with him. And he has a job.”
Cynthia jumped up from the bed. “This is scandalous. You ought to have more self-pride.”
“Really? You have to admit that nobody has found me twisting and turning in the backseat of a car, making out in a garage. And since I'm
not
married, whose business is it but mine and his? Mama, let's . . . let's not say these things. I mean . . . I'm leaving. Don't make things so that we won't be speaking to each other.”
“You want me to just stand here and watch you ruin your life?” Her feistiness gone, she spoke in subdued tones, the fight gone out of her.
“Think back, Mama, to where this started and why. I have to hurry, because Hal is always impatient about everything.”
“I hope you can get him to change his style,” Cynthia said, “though nothing's going to alter the picture that the people of Frederick have of him. Of all the no-good men in this town, you have to choose one who's also a woman chaser and a professional infidel.”
“Mama, please let me get on with this. I'm going with him, and nobody's going to stop me.”
Cynthia walked to the door, stopped and looked toward the ceiling as if searching for an angle, one thing that would change her daughter's mind.
“Try to profit from my mistake, Kellie. I thought I would have climbed Mt. Everest to be with that man, but as I look back, the few hours I had with him are not worth a minute of the hell I've been going through ever since.”
She didn't want to hear any more. “I'm sorry, Mama. I'll . . . uh . . . say good-bye before I leave.”
She finished packing, put the remainder of her belongings in one closet, struggled down the stairs with her suitcases and put them in the foyer. She sat on one of them, chewing her nails until the doorbell rang.
“You ready?” Hal asked.
“In a minute. I have to go back upstairs and tell Mama good-bye. I'll be right back.”
“Tell her good-bye? Why, for heaven's sake? She'll just give you a hard time. Come on.”
She knew that it was useless to try explaining that, in spite of all the awful things she'd done, she couldn't treat her mother in that way.
When Cynthia didn't respond to her knock, she opened the door, walked into the room and looked at her mother, a forlorn figure staring out the window. She placed a hand on Cynthia's shoulder. “Uh . . . good-bye, Mama. I'll call you.” She didn't expect a reply and didn't get one.
When she got to the van, he had the motor running, and she had barely closed the door when he released the brake and accelerated so sharply that the van jumped from the curb. “Let this be the last time you disobey me,” he growled and sped down the street at such a speed that she prayed silently beside him. He was mad, but at least he took it out on the car instead of her. She remained quiet, and tried to stay calm so as not to incite his ire.
He stopped at a delicatessen on the corner of Ice Street and Gerard Lane. “Get us a six-pack of Budweiser beer.” She turned to him for the money, but he shrugged. “You got money. I just started working today.”
She went into the store, bought the six-pack of beer and a package of Chiclets. “What else did you buy?” She told him. “You could at least have bought me some chips to snack on with the beer. Jeez. Don't you even think?”
She squashed her temper and said nothing. He needed time to get used to them as a couple, but she hoped it wouldn't take him too long.
You don't believe that,
her common sense said, but she pushed that aside, too. “It'll work out,” she told herself.
It has to; I've burned my bridges, and I can't go back.
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While Kellie was rationalizing Hal's behavior and trying not to see it as a harbinger of things to come, Marshall was on his way to the parsonage hoping to learn something of Kellie's whereabouts. He hadn't called her at her job that day, because he didn't want to raise suspicions about her. Cynthia answered the doorbell after it rang nearly a dozen times.
“Who is it?”
“Marshall.” She opened the door. “If you've got company, we can talk right here. I still haven't heard anything from Kellie. Have you?”
“I'm alone. Come on in. I just called you. Kellie was here when I got home from school. She packed most of her things, and about half an hour or so ago, Hal came and got her. She's moving in with that awful man.”
He slumped against the wall. “Oh, my Lord. How could she do a thing like that? He doesn't even have a job, and when he's tired of her, she'll be like the other women he's used and left.”
“I tried to reason with her, but she said nobody was going to stop her. Marshall, I told her that what I did wasn't worth a minute of the hell I've lived in ever since.”
He raised an eyebrow. He didn't doubt that she was sorry, but he couldn't absolve her, because he wasn't a liar. She had hurt him so deeply that he still had nightmares about it. Catching her . . . He shook his body as a bird does after a bath, trying to remove the thought of it from his memory.
“That's past, Cynthia. It's also written in stone. If Kellie gives you her address or phone number, please call me. Meanwhile, I'll ask Hal's father if he knows where they're staying. Good night.”
When he got back to his car, he phoned Lacette and told her what he'd just learned and added, “I'm devastated.”
“Come on over here, Daddy, and I'll fix you some supper, provided you don't mind ground steak.”
“Don't mind? I'm on my way.”
He parked in front of Lacette's house and cut the motor, but couldn't muster the will to get out of the car. For the last thirty-five years, in crisis after crisisâand he'd known plenty of themâCynthia's understanding and encouragement, her faith in him and in his ability had sustained him. She had never buckled under adversity, and had given strength and courage to him and their children. For the first time since he left her, he missed her spirit, her fortitude, but now, she could neither influence her husband nor guide her children. Sadness engulfed him as he got out of the car and walked with a heavy heart to Lacette's front door.
“Oh, Daddy,” Lacette said, when she opened the door. Her arms opened to him, and he thanked God for her. “Come on in. I decided to cook beef stew instead, but it won't take long in the pressure cooker.”
“I'll eat whatever you cook, but you know I love beef stew.” He didn't care what he ate, and he didn't want to make talk. “Lacette,” he said, “I'm just about done in. How did Kellie lapse into this kind of behavior? She has gone against everything that I stand for, everything that her mother and I taught her. Lacette, she's amoral. She'll do whatever it takes to get what she wants, and she doesn't care who she hurts.”
“I guess I've always known her better than you and Mama know her, so although I'm astonished and sorry for what she's done this time, I'm mainly surprised at the man's identity.”
He walked to the window and looked out at the clear sky and young moon. “Funny. That's the only part I understand; she used him and got the surprise of her life. She thought she'd exploit him and discard him, but instead, she got hooked. That's what happens to people who are unprincipled. It catches up with 'em.”
“Come on in the kitchen,” Lacette said. “I have to cook the rice. The spinach won't take but a few minutes.” They sat at the little table facing each other. “I hope he doesn't mistreat her.”
Marshall ran his fingers through his graying, but still thick, hair. “Of course he'll mistreat her. His father told me he's a cruel man.”
“He must not have mistreated her so far.”
He slapped his right fist into the palm of his left hand and stopped himself just before his fist pounded the table. “I want you to listen to me. Don't tie yourself to a man because of sex, because you'll have no power over him. You'll be so besotted that he'll hold all the cards. You should meet as equals, and for goodness sake, don't be a cringing schoolgirl who's too prudish to be a wife.”