The Blackstone Chronicles

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.