Embrace the Night

Page 10



be reformed by half a woman?

Tears stung her eyes and she dashed them away with the back of her hand. Lately, all she wanted to do was cry, to wallow in self-pity. She was tired of it, ashamed of it, but she couldn't seem to stop. She was almost seventeen years old. She wanted to run through a sunlit meadow, walk along tree-lined paths, swim in the pretty blue lake behind the orphanage. And more than anything, she wanted to dance.

She glanced at the beautiful little ballerina music box beside her bed. Her one dream, ever since she'd been a little girl, had been to be a dancer. It was a hope she had held close to her heart through all the years of her childhood, a hope that had grown fainter each time the doctor had changed the braces on her legs, until, in the end, they had removed the braces altogether. Any hope she had ever had for a normal future had died that day, killed by the cold, implacable realization that she would never walk. She would never be a ballerina. She would spend her whole life in a wheelchair.

She wouldn't cry! She wouldn't!

Sara choked back a sob as the door swung open and Sister Mary Josepha came in to see to her nighttime needs before tucking her into bed.

"Sleep well, child," Sister Mary Josepha said.

After making sure the bell pull was in place in case Sara Jayne needed something during the night, the nun left the room.

Sara lay in her bed, wide awake, as silence fell over the household. She was drawing the covers up to her chin when she saw a shadow move across the gauzy curtains that covered the veranda doors.

"Gabriel?" She peered into the darkness. "Gabriel?" She called his name again, the cry echoing in the lonely corridors of her heart. "If you're there, please come in."

She held her breath, waiting, hoping, and then the doors swung open, revealing a dark figure silhouetted by the moonlight.

"Gabriel."

"Sara." He inclined his head in her direction as he stepped into the room and closed the doors behind him. "You're up late."

"I'm not tired."

"You've been crying," he remarked, his voice tinged with accusation and regret.
She shook her head. "No, I haven't."

She pulled herself into a sitting position, then lit the lamp beside the bed. "Have you been watching me again?"

Gabriel nodded. He had stood in the shadows, watching her read, watching the play of emotions on her face. It had been so easy to divine her thoughts as the story unfolded, to know that she had imagined herself as the heroine, that she yearned for the perfect fairy-tale kind of love and fulfillment that existed only in books.