Chapter Nine
Lacette searched her closets and drawers, going from one to the other and back again. “I’m like an excited puppy chasing his tail,” she said aloud, scolding herself. “Girl, there is absolutely no point in this. He’s just a man, and he saw you and what you had on every day for six weeks.” Nevertheless, she tried on several pairs of pants, a sweater that had shrunk when she washed it and was then too tight. “Heck, I’m going to be comfortable.” She settled for a green suede riding skirt, beige shirt and brown boots. She tied and draped a beige, green, and brown paisley scarf in the neckline of her open-neck shirt, put on a tan tweed jacket and considered herself ready for her Sunday morning date with Douglas.
“Not too much and not too little,” she said to herself as she looked in a mirror. When he knocked, she took her time opening the door, although she stood less than four feet from it.
“Hi,” he said, and she reflected that she’d been silly about what to wear, for the warmth of his greeting, the delight that shone in his eyes and the sweetness of his smile told her that he would like her no matter what she wore.
“Hi. Where’re we going?” she asked him.
“Do you mind the company of a nine-year-old for a couple of hours?”
Her blood began to race. He didn’t know her well enough to take her to meet his son. Or did he? “Won’t you give him the wrong impression? Meeting all of your girlfriends may have a negative influence on him. Perhaps it would be best if you . . .” she nearly choked on the words . . . “if you . . . if he just met the one who’s real special to you.”
He took her key, locked the door and started toward the van holding her hand as they walked. “I have never introduced my son to a woman other than his teachers.”
She missed a step. “Oh.”
She had learned that Douglas joked a lot and teased, but she also knew when he was serious, and when he stopped walking, looked at her and said, “Well?” she didn’t hesitate. “I’d love to meet him.”
He squeezed her hand, opened the passenger’s door of the van and helped her in. “When I get a sedan, you won’t have to worry about wearing wide skirts,” he said, surprising her, for she hadn’t considered the height of the seat when she chose the A-line skirt.
She straightened out her skirt and fastened her seat belt. “When will that be?”
“When I start my own business. I need the van to transport plants, tools and other things. Maybe another four months, and I’ll be straight.”
And he would, too, she thought, and said as much. “I’m rooting for you, Douglas. I know how proud it makes me to be sitting in my office rather than someone else’s, and I don’t wish any less for you.”
“Thanks.” He pulled away from the curb and headed into the heart of Historic Frederick on his way to Route 70 and Hagerstown, a city of about 38,000 sleeping between Antietam Creek and the Shenandoah River in Northwest Maryland. “I like to drive this way on a sunny Sunday morning when there’s very little traffic and I can see the beauty of this region.” He passed an elegant old house on Benz Street. “I always slow down, when I pass here,” he said of the Roger Brooke Taney House. “I always give it the finger, and I want to be sure it goes to that house and not to the Francis Scott Key Museum next door. I suppose you know Taney was the supreme court justice who wrote the Dred Scott Decision.
“Sure, I know it, which is the reason I always spit in the direction of that house.”
His laughter, warm and robust, comforted her. “I have the opposite feeling about this place,” he told her about twenty minutes later when they passed the Seton Shrine.
“Ever been inside?” he asked her.
“You mean the Stone House? It’s very stark. Imagine the courage of that woman. She established a religious community right there in 1809.”
“Yeah. They had no heat or running water, but Elizabeth Ann Seton had guts.” He said. “I’ve always admired strong and purposeful women. Wait’ll you meet my mother.”
“You mean I’m going to meet—Douglas, I would have put on something else.”
“What for? I love my mother, and I respect her opinion, but she’ll never choose a woman for me. I say you look great.”
Maybe, but she knew to take that with a bit of doubt. A nice word from Mom never hurt. At least I haven’t got so much invested here that I’m going to sweat over it. Heck, I might not like her. When he drove up to 1104 Harper Street about a mile from the creek and cut the motor, she opened her eyes with a start.
“We’re here already?”
“It wasn’t such a quick trip; you slept.” He went around to help her out, locked the van and started up the walk toward the redbrick, two-story row house.
“Do your parents and your son know I’ll be with you?”
“You bet. My mother hates surprises when they’re people. Presents? Now, they’re always welcome.”
She understood that his words were intended to put her at ease, but they only made her nervous. Oh well, she thought, if I fell out of a boat and swam my way to safety, though I had no idea how to swim, I can doggie paddle my way through this, too.
He didn’t use his door key, but rang the bell. His mother opened the door, hugged Douglas and looked over his shoulder at her. Then she smiled, stepped away from Douglas and wrapped Lacette in a big motherly embrace.
“Mom, this is Lacette Graham. Lacette, my mother, Edwina Rawlins.”
“Welcome, Lacette.”
Lacette returned the greeting, but her mind had focused on the son who wasn’t there to greet his father. As they walked into the comfortable but modest home, she glanced around at the evidence of family unity, the photographs of three people when Douglas was growing up, then of five after he married, of six people after his son’s birth, and then . . . she stopped short.
“When was that picture taken?” She pointed to a photograph of Douglas and his son, a boy of about six, astonished at the pain mirrored in both their faces, wondering how a child so young could be so sad.
“We were leaving my wife’s burial. I didn’t know anyone took pictures that day until I received that in the mail about a year ago. The photographer was best man at my wedding.”
“Where’s your son right now?”
Edwina spoke with a slight lisp. “He said that if we’re having company, we need ice cream for the pie, and he and my husband went to buy ice cream.”
Her relief was so great that her entire body seemed lighter. “Lunch will be ready as soon as they get back,” Edwina said, walking ahead of them. “You two make yourselves comfortable.”
This is one woman who does not hang onto her son. What a relief!
“What can I do to help?” Douglas asked her.
“Just keep Lacette company. If I need a jar opened, I’ll call you.” She winked at Lacette. “You will learn that a man’s main roles in your life are: one, to give advice; and two, to open bottles and jars. They’re expert at both.”
Douglas stretched out his long legs and crossed his ankles. “I forgot to warn you; she’s a comedienne when it suits her.”
Edwina’s smile enveloped her whole face. “Lacette, you can ring Douglas’s bell anytime you feel like it. His father and I do it regularly. Of course, he’s pretty good at it, too. Oh, there they are,” she said in response to the noise and chatter in the foyer. “Nick never does anything quietly.”
She didn’t know why she did it, but Lacette stood when Douglas’s father and son walked into the living room. “Dad! Gee, this I great. Till you called, I thought you were coming next Sunday.” She remained standing while father and son greeted each other, stunned by the emotion that showed on Douglas’s face.
“You’ve grown a lot in a week,” he said.
“I’m eating everything Nana stuffs into me.” He stopped talking and looked at Lacette. “Hi.”
She walked over to him and extended her hand for a handshake. “Hi. I’m Lacette.”
Douglas completed the introductions. “His name is Oscar Edwin, but we call him Nick.” Suddenly the boy appeared to be embarrassed and pressed his hands to his sides. “Gee, Dad, I should’ve gotten dressed. I’m sorry.”
“You look fine. You’re clean and reasonably neat. That’s what matters.”
“But look at her. She’s all sharp.” He turned to Lacette. “In a couple of years, I’ll be as tall as my dad. All Rawlins men are tall. That’s what Nana says.” She could feel Douglas’s gaze on her, scrutinizing her behavior, judging her reaction to his son. Unfairly, she thought, because her experience with young children was limited to her Sunday school class years earlier. And their behavior had been all but exemplary, thanks to her fathers’ constantly badgering them with reminders of God’s wrathful treatment of sinners.
Douglas’s voice brought her mind back to the present. “I do not want you to play tricks on Lacette. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.” His eyes—large and rounded like those of his father—widened, and she recognized in them a mischievous glint with which she was already familiar.
“Can you play basketball? We have a hoop out back.”
She assured him that, although she’d been a point guard in college, she had forgotten how to shoot a basket. “I’ll teach you,” he said, and as he inquired as to her athletic abilities, Douglas’s father walked into the living room.
“Hello, Lacette. I’m Oscar Rawlins. You’re welcome here. Is Nick giving you his litmus test?”
Glad for the interruption, she quickly extended her hand and liked Oscar Rawlins’s handshake. Strong, as if he meant it. “Thank you, sir. Nick’s just being a boy, I guess.”
A tall man with broad shoulders and a muscular body, Oscar Rawlins’s presence generated warmth and security, much as her own father’s had as she moved through her childhood and into womanhood.
“Having Nick here with us is like raising Douglas all over again,” Oscar said. “I’ve never seen two people more alike. Edwina wants you all to come and eat.” He patted Douglas on the shoulder. “She’s been cooking ever since you called.”
They sat down to a meal of stewed chicken and dumplings, string beans, fried peppers and rice, with apple pie à la mode for dessert. “Douglas and Nick love chicken and dumplings,” Oscar explained after he said the grace.
The ease with which she interacted with Douglas’s family impressed Lacette. She wanted to ask Douglas whether they ever had the kind of tension and drama that had marked her family in recent months. She marveled at the warmth, love, and camaraderie that seemed to bounce off each of them, and at the family togetherness that she had once enjoyed with her parents and Kellie. No, she thought, trying to see the comparison more clearly. The tension between us was always there for as long as I can remember; I bought the peace and warmth with my catering to Kellie and at the expense of my own self-worth. As the afternoon wore on, she failed to see hostility or resentment in any of them.
She might have left with an impression of Nick as a model child had he not maneuvered to get her alone with him and try to test her mettle. He began with a smile—proving that he knew he had charisma—and followed that with the question: “Do you have any children?” Innocuous enough she thought, told him she didn’t have, took another deep breath and waited.
“Nana is always after my dad to get married so I’ll have a mother, but Nana is my mother. Are you going to marry my dad?”
Taken aback by his declaration that he didn’t need her as well as by his male toughness, she could do little more than stare at him.
But he didn’t wither beneath the fire of her gaze. “Well?” he asked, reminding her that, in that same attitude, Douglas posed that word to her as they left her house a few hours earlier.
She snapped out of her mental lethargy. “Nick, your father and I have not discussed marriage, and if he mentioned it, I’m not sure what I’d say. Another thing. Nana is your father’s mother, not yours.”
He stared at her. “What’s wrong with my dad that you don’t want to marry him?”
“I didn’t say that. He’s a wonderful man, but we haven’t gotten that far.”
His stance changed from that of challenger to conciliator. “Can you play darts?”
She recognized the question as an effort to make peace in case he’d upset her. “No, but you may teach me.”
He grabbed her hand and led her to the basement and what was obviously a game room where she saw, strewn around, a guitar, darts, a pool table, and an easel. “Who paints?” she asked him.
“Granddaddy. I’ll stand behind you and show you how to hold the dart and throw it.”
Douglas found them that way nearly an hour later. “Lacette, I think we ought to head back to Frederick.”
Nick’s eyes beseeched his father. “Can she come back?”
“I’ll ask her.”
At the door, Edwina Rawlins hugged Lacette. You’re welcome any time. We loved having you.”
Oscar shook her hand. “Yes, indeed. We’re looking forward to seeing you again.”
Douglas embraced Nick and his parents, draped an arm around Lacette’s waist and walked with her out of his parental home. He’s made a statement, she thought, unsure as to her readiness for it, but closed her eyes and leaned back as he started the car for the drive back to Frederick.
“Is this your first visit to Hagerstown?” he asked her, letting her know that he did not intend to ask how she liked his family.
“Yes. I’d been told that it’s a beautiful town and, of course, I’d seen pictures of it, but I’ve always been put off by its glorification of its Civil War relics.”
“I don’t think the town glorifies the achievements of either side. The city calls itself the Crossroads of the Civil War. Maryland was not in the pockets of the Confederates. Don’t forget that Hagerstown celebrates the Battle of Antietam where Lee suffered one of his worst defeats and which led to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.”
She opened her eyes and sat up straight. “Somewhere in the archives of my mind, I think I knew that.”
“I had that drummed into my head from the time I was in the first grade. This town is proud of its history.”
As he drove, they talked about history, world peace, the beauty of nature, but not of themselves. When he reached her house, he parked, got out and walked around to the passenger’s door to help her out of the van. She opened her front door, flicked on the foyer light, looked up at him and waited for his move. Unhurried and with seeming calm, he gazed down at her, his face the picture of solemnity.
“Are we going anywhere from here?”
He could have knocked the wind out of her with a less abrupt demand, but having to deal with the appeal of his masculinity along with his brashness set her back for a minute. But only for a minute.
“Where do you want us to go?”
He half lifted, half pulled her into his arms and let his action speak for him with the probe of his tongue at the seam of her lips. His scent, the taste of him and the strength with which he held her—that something about him that said I’m man and you’re woman and we were made for this—impelled her surrender. She opened to him and betrayed to him the tenderness and caring that she felt for him.
He stepped back and stared at her. “Where do I want us to go? I want you for myself, for when I need someone to laugh with, cry with, reason with, have fun with and make love with. And I don’t want any other man to have that right. I want you for the woman who shares my secrets, my ups and downs. When you opened up to me a minute ago, you answered my question. Have I answered yours?”
She was learning to accept and expect his forthrightness. She hadn’t analyzed it, but she supposed that it accounted at least in part for her readiness to trust him. “In a way, you have. I imagine you’ll get around to telling me why you want that from me.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Because I care for you, and because the feeling deepens each time we’re together or when we speak by phone. Thanks for an enjoyable day.”
“Thank you, and thank you for introducing me to your family. I got a warm feeling being with them. All of them.” She reached up and kissed his cheek and, as if in shock from it, his eyes widened and he scratched the back of his head. Then a grin possessed his face and he leaned down, kissed her cheek and left.
“Did I do something wrong?” she asked herself and she watched him amble down the walkway. “No, I didn’t,” she decided. “Surprise is good for him.”
At about that time, Marshall Graham was also thinking of a surprise, one that he hoped to spring on Melvin Moody. As a man of the cloth, he knew he was commanded to forgive his transgressor, and he preached that to his parishioners. However, Melvin Moody had been his closest friend and confidant, a man with whom he prayed regularly, and Melvin Moody had abused his friendship and his trust. Introducing his fourteen-year-old daughter to sex and, in effect, showing her how to control men with her body, was not something that he was prepared to forgive without recompense. He had no doubt that Kellie’s promiscuous behavior began under Moody’s tutelage, and he meant to call him on it.
He returned to his small, but comfortable, motel room after an unsatisfactory meal at a steak house and phoned a man who had attended the church he once pastored in Baltimore. “Charles, this is Marshall Graham. I hope you and your folks are well,” he said, and assured that they were, proceeded to the purpose of his call. “I’m trying to reach Melvin Moody, and I remember that the two of you were close friends. Where does he live and what’s his phone number?”
“You sound just like your old self, Reverend. No small talk. But I guess it’s that and gossip that gets us into trouble. Wait a minute. It’s Lizzie who keeps up with our social life.” He could hear them in the background, and his heart skipped a beat when he thought she said she didn’t have it, for his task would then be much more difficult than anything as simple as making one phone call.
“Here it is,” Charles said. “We don’t hear from them except at Christmas, but that’s about the way it is with most folks we keep up with. Let’s see. Lizzie’s pretty sure he’s in Baltimore at 2904 Brockton Street. You can call him at 410-777 . . .” Charles gave him the number, “but he’s never home.”
Marshall thanked the man, wished him well, hung up and dialed the number. “Moody residence, how may I help you?”
“Sorry,” he said, not wanting to hang up without saying anything or to lie and say he had the wrong number. He checked his calendar and decided that Monday afternoon would be the perfect time to confront Melvin Moody. He reread portions of John Kennedy’s Profiles In Courage and went to bed. He missed his family more than he would admit to any of them, and most of all, he missed the camaraderie he once enjoyed with his wife, but there was no turning back. What was done was done, and he knew his attitude toward that awful afternoon would never change.
“I’m happier here by myself where I can control both my behavior and my tongue.”
Monday afternoon, the next day, Marshall knocked on the door of 2904 Brockton in Baltimore. “Marshall! This is really a surprise,” Moody’s wife exclaimed. “Come on in. I’ll get Melvin. He’s down in the basement checking on the seedlings. We have a nice garden out back, and I grow a few vegetables back there and some flowers.”
He had no reason to treat her coolly, and he tried not to, but he was more vexed than he’d been in years. He never had been much good at pretense, and small talk was nothing more than pretense.
“Have a seat,” she said. “He’ll be right in, and I’ll get some coffee. I know how you love your coffee.”
He had to restrain himself when Moody walked into the living room with his arms widespread for their old greeting and his face wreathed in smiles. Marshall stepped back, hands up and palms out, halting Moody’s steps and dashing the grin from his face.
“What is it?” Moody asked him, his face etched in concern. “Have a seat.”
He ignored the invitation, walked over to the wall-to-wall picture window that bespoke the elegance of the house and leaned against it, relaxed and comfortable with himself and what he was about to say.
“How did you get the gall to violate my fourteen-year-old daughter?”
Melvin Moody’s feet popped up from the floor, his face appeared to ashen, and his bottom lip sagged. “Man, there must be some mistake. You know I wouldn’t—”
Marshall held up his right hand. “There’s no point in lying about it; Kellie told me. And what’s more, she did so in a terrible fit of anger, intent on proving how inept I’d been as a father, how little attention I paid to what was going on in my face and under my nose. Oh, you’re guilty, all right. I trusted you as I would have trusted a brother, and that’s the way you treated my trust. I’ve a good mind to let you feel the brunt of my fist on the side of your face.”
“Marshall, I . . . it must have been—”
“It was you. I know my daughter. She was too furious to lie. If I didn’t have to deal with God, I’d wish you to rot in hell. If I ever see you again, you’ll wish you were already there.” He passed Moody’s wife when he walked out of the room, and as he closed the front door, he heard her say, “You’re going to tell me what that was about. Every bit of it.”
He started back to Frederick, driving more carefully than usual, for he was aware that anger distorted a person’s thinking. At Lisbon, about halfway between Baltimore and Frederick, his conscience began to flail him, and he drove off the highway and parked at a gas station. What had he been thinking? Didn’t he preach forgiveness, and that if you had a grievance against someone, you went to that person and talked with him about it? He wanted to cry, as if somehow that would heal the hurt, wash away his disappointment in a friend he had loved, and cleanse him of his own guilt in not paying more attention to Kellie, as if crying could banish his self-disgust about the way he approached Moody.
He started the engine, turned around and headed back to Baltimore. He didn’t expect a warm welcome from Moody or his wife, and he didn’t get one. “What do you want this time?” she asked when she opened the door.
He didn’t pretend warmth or pleasantness, but merely fixed an unwavering gaze on her. “I was angry, and I didn’t behave as I should have. I want to speak with Melvin.”
She regarded him carefully, not attempting to hide her resentment. “Just a minute.”
She left him standing there, and after a few minutes Moody appeared, obviously upset and embarrassed. “Come on in and sit down.” He didn’t give Marshall the option of opening the conversation, but plunged ahead, purging his soul, as it were.
“I know it sounds terrible, but when you left here, I felt as if a full ton weight had been lifted off me. I carried this shame and guilt all these years, and not many days passed when it didn’t worry me. I don’t have an excuse, Marshall. I was older, and I knew better. Once I started it, I became like a crazed man. I wanted to stop it, but I—well, at least I never went all the way, though I’m not sure I can take all the credit for that.
“You were mad this morning, and you should have been, but I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”
“I’m going to try, and I’ll have to pray over it. I came back here because I didn’t practice what I preach, and because the Bible teaches that we should forgive if we would be forgiven. Did Annie hear any of what I said this morning?”
“No, but your demeanor and your attitude spoke volumes to her. I told her the whole thing. I was just tired of keeping it to myself. She’s hot as a steamed lobster right this minute, but we’ll work through it.”
Marshall rose and extended his hand to Moody. “I hope you and I can do the same. Would you ask Annie to step in here for a minute?” Moody left the room and returned a few minutes later with his wife, who tilted her nose upward and stood at the door with her arms folded and her stance wide.
Holding the hand of each, Marshall prayed, “Lord, help us to forgive and to forget and to love one another. Amen.” He squeezed their fingers in a gesture of warmth. “Be seeing you. God bless.”
He walked down the street for about seven blocks, went into a fast food café and bought a lunch that consisted of a hamburger and a bag of chips. When he left the café, drops of rain fell around him but, with no pity for himself, he took his time walking to his car. A clap of thunder and then a flash of lightning were sufficient to make him run. He opened the door of the car just as a bolt of lightning flashed around him and the sky seemed to open up. Thoroughly damp, he slid behind the wheel of his Cadillac and headed for Frederick. His anger had not completely abated, and he knew it wouldn’t for some time, but he’d made a start. He owed it to Kellie to tell her what he thought of her behavior, for at age fourteen, she had been taught that involvement in any kind of intimacy with a married man was a sin as well as a dangerous thing for a girl to do. And if she was fooling around with Hal Fayson, which was nearly as bad, she didn’t think highly of herself. It might be too late to turn her around, but he owed it to her and to himself to try.
After arriving in Frederick, he drove directly to the parsonage, having decided to speak with Kellie that night, but as he turned the corner into the street on which the church was situated, he nearly wrecked his car, for Kellie jumped from Fayson’s pickup truck and raced around the corner toward the parsonage. His immediate reaction was to block the pickup truck, but he remembered his two earlier encounters with Melvin Moody, passed the truck and parked in front of the parsonage at about the same time that Kellie reached it.
He got out of the Cadillac and slammed the door loudly enough for the sound to get her attention, so that she slowed her steps and looked over her shoulder, allowing him to catch up with her.
“Daddy!” She covered her mouth with her right hand, but he immediately put her at ease; fear and anger always made Kellie doubly unreasonable and obdurate, and he wanted to reason with her.
“I thought I’d drop by to see you. We don’t get together as much as we should. Oh, I admit to my part in that, but I intend for us to spend more time together.”
As she unlocked the door, it became clear to him that fear had colored her initial reaction to seeing him, fear that she’d been caught with Fayson. “I . . . uh . . . Does that mean you and Mama will be getting back together?”
He knew it wasn’t a serious question, but was Kellie’s effort to keep the conversation away from her. “No. I’ve told you and Lacette that a reconciliation with Cynthia is out of the question.”
“Have a seat somewhere,” she said, as they entered the house. “I’ll make you a decent cup of coffee.”
“Thanks. I can use one.” While he waited for her to come to the living room with the coffee, he couldn’t help gazing around at the place he’d once called home, and wondering why it held no lure for him, why it no longer represented warmth, love, and comfort. The furnishings remained the same as when he lived there, but they seemed different, less inviting. Even the odors were new and, to him, less appealing.
“Here you are, Daddy. I heated some scones, in case you’re hungry.”
This was the charming Kellie, the sweet and loving one who he’d always found so hard to deal with. But deal with her he must, and he would.
“I’m just getting back from Baltimore.” He held up his hand when she attempted to speak, and she rested her cup in its saucer and waited, as if she knew his words would hit her like a lightning strike. “My purpose in going there was to confront Melvin Moody and to upbraid him for what he did with you. I did that, and I probably caused a rift between him and his wife, though I expect that will heal.
“I didn’t tell him that what he did set you on a calamitous course that is destroying your life. I didn’t tell him that he taught you to use your body to control men, to barter with them for something that you want. And I didn’t tell him that using that knowledge has led to your entrapment in an abysmal, ruinous relationship.” She slumped in her chair, but he knew it would only be a moment before she gathered steam and came out slugging. He headed her off.
“I do not hold him entirely responsible, because you knew that what you did was wrong. All that is in the past.” He leaned toward her, trying to reach her emotionally as well as intellectually. “Kellie, I don’t want to see you swallowed up and dragged down to a life of misery; consorting with Hal Fayson is like stepping into hot quicksand.”
She sat up. “I’m not—”
He interrupted. “You just got out of his truck. I saw you. If having Lacette’s brooch is so important to you, I’ll buy you a diamond brooch.” When she didn’t react, he said, “But that wouldn’t satisfy you, would it?”
Her chin jutted out, and the fire of rage blazed in her eyes. “Gramma knew how I loved that brooch.”
“And you want it badly enough to sell yourself for it? Where’s your mother?” he asked, realizing that they were alone in the house and signaling that, for the present, he would speak no more of her transgressions.
“I don’t know where she is, and I’m not overly concerned.”
“What do you mean by saying you don’t care where your mother is? What is happening to you?”
“She’s doing her thing, I’m doing mine, and the pot can’t call the kettle black. Period. If she can get that into her head, we’ll get along better.”
He couldn’t argue with that, but nevertheless, he didn’t plan to see his daughter slip through the cracks. “Meet me for supper tomorrow.” He couldn’t get used to calling the evening meal dinner and had stopped trying. “I’ll pick you up here at six-thirty.”
He noticed that she squirmed, and he figured she had a date with Fayson, but he gave no quarter and repeated, “I’ll be here for you at six-thirty sharp. No reason why we both should eat alone.”
He left with the feeling that he hadn’t accomplished much. If he could only get her away from Frederick . . . But he knew that sex could be like a drug, binding the most unlikely individuals. Well, he’d give it his best shot. He couldn’t do more.
Kellie grilled a cheese sandwich and put it on a salad plate along with a handful of baby carrots, got another cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table to eat her supper. More often than not she was alone in that big, cavernous house at night, and she hated the loneliness with an increasing vehemence that made her want to strike out at something or someone. She rinsed her dishes, put them in the dishwasher and climbed the stairs. She had lived in that house for nine years, but never before had she heard the stair steps creak. When a windowsill rattled, she whirled around, saw that the window was open and breathed again.
“It’s time I left this place,” she said aloud. But where would she go? She sat on the side of her bed feeling trapped. She had beautiful, expensive sweaters, suits, and dresses, high-priced leather boots and a mink-lined coat, but no money. On Lawrence Bradley’s advice, she put her inheritance into a certificate of deposit and couldn’t touch it for two years. She spent what she made and lived from one payday to the next. If she moved out, her 38,000 dollars a year would do little more than pay for rent, food, and transportation unless she lowered her living standard. She’d have to give up her weekly visits to the hairdresser, manicurist, and masseur. A frown spread over her face. She would miss the feel of the masseur’s hands all over her naked body. He wouldn’t let her turn over and face him, but one day she intended to surprise him, and he’d never forget it . . . that is, if he wasn’t gay.
The thought raised her spirits, and she picked up the phone and called him. “Gee, I’m glad you’re still in the gym, Max. I’ve got this kink in my shoulders and I can hardly turn from one side to another. Can I run down there and see if you can get rid of it?”
“Now? Kellie, it’s almost nine-thirty.”
“Max, please. I’m miserable.”
“All right. Hop a cab, and get over here. I’m tired, hungry, and ready to go home.”
She showered, dressed and called a taxi. She had the taxi stop long enough for her to get two orders of jerked chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy and string beans, and went on to the gym.
“You said you were hungry, so I brought you something to eat,” she said breezily, as if he hadn’t waited forty-five minutes for her.
“Thanks. You had better done something to redeem yourself.”
She sat on a high stool, crossed her legs and let her open jacket expose her tight sweater. “Don’t be such a poop.” She ate a few pieces of chicken and licked her lips at the sight of his treasure bulging in front of him. “I’d better get undressed. Let me get a towel.”
“I’ll get it,” he said, “if you’ll let me finish eating. This really hits the spot. Woman, I was starved.”
“I’m always nice to people who’re nice to me,” she said, and when he raised an eyebrow, she laughed inwardly and shivered with anticipation.
He followed her into the massage room and pointed to the screen. “Okay. I don’t want to be here all night.”
She winked at him and started pulling her sweater over her head. “It shouldn’t take that long.”
“You’re supposed to undress behind the screen.”
“Oh, pooh. You’re a grown man, and you’ve already seen everything I’ve got. Well . . . not quite everything.” She stepped out of her skirt and faced him wearing her bikini panties and a demi bra.
He stepped toward her, his Adam’s apple bobbing furiously and his color high from the neckline of his crew-neck T-shirt to the edge of his wavy blond hair. “Did you come here for a massage or a good screwing?”
She tossed off her bra. “Let’s start with the massage.”
“No. We’re starting with this. It’s what you came for, what you’ve been asking for for months.” He picked her up, sucked the nipple of her left breast into his mouth and put her on the table. “If you’re planning to back out, do it now.”
For an answer, she lifted her hips and began to pull down her panties. He finished the job for her, pulled her further up on the table and mounted her. Two hours later, he looked down at her and said, “I hope you’re on the pill, because I didn’t use anything.”
“Let’s hope the pill does its job. After what you put me through, I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t.”
“What do you mean by that?”
She couldn’t help laughing. “I was lying before, but now I really do need a massage.”
“Let’s get dressed and get out of here. When you coming back?”
All of a sudden, she remembered Hal. “I don’t know.”
“Is everything okay? I mean, did you get straightened out?”
“Quite a few times,” she told him, and she was glad that she could say that truthfully. If nothing else, Hal had taught her how to achieve a climax. “Do I need to call a cab, or will you drop me home?”
“I’ll take you home.”
As they approached the house in his Jaguar, she saw Hal’s truck parked across the street from the parsonage. “Oh, my God. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
He circled the block and stopped in front of the church. “I take it you saw your man waiting for you. From now on, babe, it’s massages only. Sex is plentiful, but I’ve only got one head.”
She slipped out of the car and headed home, walking at her normal gait. When she reached the parsonage, she didn’t look toward the truck that was parked across the street, but turned into the walkway that led to the house. Then she saw him leaning against the door.
“Where the hell you been, babe, and make it good. I called you almost three hours ago.”
She staged an act of effrontery. “What do you mean by checking on me? I had dinner with my father.”
“Yeah? Well what happened to his big Cadillac that he couldn’t drive you home?”
“Listen, Hal, I just had a row with my dad, and I walked out and left him in the place. I am not up to dealing with a lot of attitude.”
He lolled against the door as if he owned it. “What was the row about?”
She looked straight at him. “You. It was about you. Are you satisfied?”
He straightened up. “All right. Don’t let me catch you with some dude, cause if I do, I’ll break both of you in two.”
The strength of his fingers beneath her chin frightened her, but she knocked his hand away. “Don’t overplay your hand, Hal,” she said, shaken though she was by his behavior and his attitude.
He gripped her arm. “Let’s get this straight right here and right now. You go when I say go, and you come when I say come. You’re my woman, and I call all the shots. If you forget that, it will be the biggest mistake of your life. See you tomorrow at the usual time and place.”
“I c-c-can’t, Hal. My father is picking me up here at six-thirty. I told him I had an appointment, but he wouldn’t hear of it. I have to meet him.”
“Don’t let me find out that you went with somebody other than your father. If I do, you’ll regret it.”
“I’d better go inside. If Mama sees you here, she’ll report that to my father. I’m getting tired of all this harassment. See you.”
He pulled her to him and forced his tongue into her mouth. She hated his openmouthed kisses, and he knew it. He had no appreciation for oral sanitation.
“What’s wrong with me, you don’t like to kiss me? All you want from me is a working tool.”
She caressed his chest in an effort to soften him. “If you’d go to the dentist, get your teeth cleaned and fixed up and stop eating raw onions, maybe I’d be kissing you all the time.”
He stared at her. “Yeah? All right. I’ll call you.” He ran down the steps and across the street to his truck.
She went inside, trudged up the stairs and flopped down on her bed. Nobody had to tell her that she’d bit off more than she could chew, that Hal Fayson would enslave her and that she would let him, not because she loved him; she didn’t, but because of the way he made her feel in bed. She’d stay away from him for a couple of days, and then she would need him as she needed food and water.
Most of the time I don’t even like him, and I hate his slovenliness and his uncouth behavior, but I don’t know how to get him out of my system.
She kicked off her shoes and fell across the bed. If Hal knew she’d been with Max, he’d probably kill her. But if she hadn’t done it that night, she would have done it later, because the man excited her. He’d said that would be their only time, but she’d see about that. She rolled over and stared at the ceiling.
“I wonder if being a tramp is something a person can inherit. I’m thirty-three years old, and I’ve had at least a dozen men. Am I different, or are other women like this? I’d give anything to know.”
The front door opened, and she heard her mother’s high heels on the stairs. Quickly, she doused the light on the night table beside her bed. But Cynthia wasn’t misled. She opened Kellie’s bedroom door and peeped into the room. “Hal Fayson’s truck was parked across the street for over two hours tonight, and he didn’t leave till you came home. Nan and I saw him when he drove up, let the motor idle for about fifteen minutes, turned it off, got out and came to the door here. You better watch that fellow. A man who will do that will get violent. Good night.”
So Cynthia had been across the street at Nan’s house watching her with Hal. She hadn’t even remembered her aunt Nan, and she’d have sworn that her mother was out on the town chasing her youth. She made up her mind to break off relations with Hal as soon as he kept his promise to let her into her father’s house so she could search the dining room and den for the brooch.
“It’s there,” she said to herself, “and I intend to find it.”
However, Kellie didn’t reckon on her father’s resolve or with her sister’s special gifts. After leaving her that night, Marshall set for himself two tasks: have Lawrence Bradley mount a real search for that brooch, and move into the house within the next two weeks. Once there, he would make a thorough search himself, provided that the brooch hadn’t already been located. He hoped Douglas Rawlins could finish the landscaping before that, but he’d move in no matter what the place looked like.
He phoned Kellie the next morning. “I have a group of teenagers in the church, and I want you to come and talk to them as part of their lecture series.”
He imagined her in a state of shock, for her sputters were clearly audible. “Me? Daddy, you’re joking. This is Kellie. Did you think you dialed Lacette’s number?”
“I know which number I dialed, and I know which one of my daughters I’m speaking with. I can find a lot of people who’ll tell these kids what to do and how to live, but I don’t know any young people who can tell them what happens when you don’t do what’s right.”
“Are you asking me to blab out some true confessions to a bunch of teenagers?”
“No, indeed. I want you to convince them of the importance of obeying their parents and trying to keep the commandments and of what happens when they stray from that.”
“I’m not sure I want to do it. I’d be a hypocrite.”
“Not if you tell them the truth. Make some notes, decide when you want to do it and let me know. They’ll be excited when I tell them you’re going to talk with them.”
“I don’t know, Daddy. I’ll see.”
He hung up. Maybe she’d do it, and maybe she wouldn’t, but he’d given her reason for serious thought about her past, her present behavior and what she could expect in the years to come. He only wanted to enable her to think about her life.
On a Monday morning in late March, Lacette awakened with a start and sat up in bed. The bank. That old woman had said something about the bank. What bank? The woman had also advised her to pay careful attention to her relationship with Douglas, and she had focused on that. But what bank was she talking about, and why had she mentioned it? She struggled out of the tangled covers, a testament to her sleepless night, and padded to the bathroom. Her first working day in her new office, and she had barely enough energy to put one foot in front of the other one. Bank. What on earth did that mean? Save money? Be careful of investments? Spend carefully?
“I’ll know sooner or later,” she said as she got into her car and headed to her office to begin her first day as owner and manager of L. Graham Marketing Consultants, Inc.
“What does the word ‘bank’ connote to you?” she asked Lourdes, her receptionist and secretary.
“Money, and a lot of it.”
Somehow, Lacette didn’t think the old woman was telling her that banks held a lot of money. She forced herself to put the issue aside and concentrate on drawing in some business. But it wouldn’t leave her mind and, at every lull in the day, she searched for what relevance the remark could have for her.
“I’ll get it. It’s important, and I’ll figure it out,” she told herself and settled into her work.