Husband Material
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Emma Goldrick
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17,4K
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CHAPTER ONE
ROSE MARY CHASE was a small baby. When her uncle John carried her to the baptismal font in the Episcopal church in Padanaram, he could hold her in one hand. “Rose,” he told the Bishop. “Rose Mary. A holy terror, but she’ll grow.” She had, of course, but not very much. And when Rose was twenty-seven she gave up her crusading ways and settled down. Uncle John and all her other relatives were dead by that time, including her husband, Frank Hamilton, and she had only Millie O’Doul to look after her.
Padanaram was an unusual village. Over the course of a century or more inhabitants had gone down to the sea in ships, and had been fruitfully rewarded. As the elders died off their fortunes passed down, usually to widows or single daughters. So eventually Padanaram contained a large cluster of widows or daughters who believed in the old adage never to spend your principle; to live off your interest and live frugally.
Rose Chase was one of these. Not the oldest, nor the richest, but still one of the “old money” inheritors. A widow, too. Her young husband, a Hamilton, had been killed in a hit-and-run auto accident almost a year past. Rose had set her red-headed mind to survival, and life went on.
On August fourteenth, at two in the afternoon, Rose was standing in her front yard, leaning on her swinging gate, daydreaming.
“Is this 16 Middle Street?” A deep voice. Bass, she told herself as she peeped out from under her straw bonnet. Deep bass.
A man; husky but not big, to be truthful, dressed in blue suit and tie, carrying a wicker basket over one massive arm, its contents covered with a light dishcloth. Rose, usually quick of tongue, gasped at him. She had met many men, but none so magnificent as this one. He took her breath away.
“16 Middle Street?” he asked. “Little girl?”
“Little girl”? One thing Rose hated was condescension. “Little girl” indeed! She glared up at him and took a deep breath. She was wearing an old summer dress; it could barely contain her. “I am not,” she said coldly, “a little girl.”
He chuckled. Massively. Deeply. “Yes, I can see that,” he answered solemnly. “Is your mother home?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Perhaps your father? Your aunt?”
“For whom are you looking?” Rose crossed her fingers. She was a few years out of the University of Massachusetts, and had only a flighty memory of pronouns and verbs, possessive, recessive, or whatever. She ducked her head behind her bonnet; he didn’t seem to mind.
“I’m looking for Mrs. Chase,” he said. “One of my neighbors at the other end of the block recommended that I contact Mrs. Chase with my problem.” He lifted his basket and rested it on top of the stone wall.
“Oh, you’re selling something? We’ve already bought at the office.”
“No, I’m not selling anything.” She could feel the impatience in his voice. His size caused her to back off a step or two. “And who is this Mrs. Chase?”
Rose took a deep breath. “Me,” she said. “I.”
“You have to be kidding! You’re a—”
“I am Mrs. Chase,” she said firmly. “The only one in town. And just who might you be?” It was impossible to hold her breath any longer. She exhaled gustily and her bodice seemed to shrink an inch or two. Then she squared her shoulders.
He studied her warily, his bronze face turning just the slightest bit darker. “Horton,” he said. “Sam Horton.” She waited for something more, some definition, some listed occupation. But Sam remembered his instructions, up in the office of the attorney general in Boston. “We’ve had all kinds of investigators poke around down there, Horton, and he evaded them all. You’ve got to keep undercover. Say that you’re a—oh, I don’t know—a book salesman. You could open a bookstore and—”
But opening a bookstore in a village as tiny as Padanaram was no easy thing. “Bookstore, hell,” he had muttered on his way out to his car. “I’ll make believe I’m a lawyer, which I am.”
Who would believe that? Not even the parking-meter lady.
“Even was you the governor’s brother,” she had said as she’d written the ticket.
“That wasn’t too smart.” His twelve-year-old daughter had been curled up in the back seat of the car, watching as he tore the ticket up. He’d growled at her; he hated young female critics, even his own.
So here in Padanaram he clamped his mouth shut in front of this lovely girl and shoved his basket over in front of her as a ploy. “I’m opening a law office,” he said. “Well, in fact I’m scouting around town for a suitable location.”
Rose shook her head. A law office in one of the smallest villages in Massachusetts? The man had rocks in his head! But then she wasn’t here to censor, and the cover on the basket wiggled interestingly.
“I know just the man for you to see,” she said warily. “Chad Westbrook, my broker. Out of an old Yankee family.” Which, as any resident of Padanaram would know, guaranteed his quality. But this beautiful Mr. Horton didn’t seem to recognize the code.
He gave her a curious look, acting as if he was waiting for her to say something else. Instead the light cloth cover quivered—wiggled, actually—and pulled free at one corner. And a gunmetal-gray kitten pushed her nose out into the sunshine and mewed. A tiny thing with the tiniest stub of a tail; hardly no tail at all.
“A kitten!” Rose exclaimed. “You’re selling kittens!” The joy faded. “But we don’t need a kitten—I don’t think. How much are you charging?”
Trapped, Sam Horton thought quickly. “Not selling,” he commented. “Giving. You like kittens?”
“Love them.”
The kitten was nursing on Rosie’s little finger. And then, as she watched, entranced, the cover wiggled again.
“Twice as much love, then,” he said. “Two for the price of one. No charge. And the basket thrown in for a quick bargain.”
The other little feline managed to get his head out. “Twins?” Rose reflected, enchanted.
“Twins,” he affirmed. “Weaned and inoculated.”
The first kitten was still gnawing on Rosie’s finger. The second moved over to join in the nourishment. Little kittens had sharp fangs. She moved her finger gingerly out of the way.
“Let me show you,” he said as he pulled the second little animal out and held it in one hand. The little stub of its tail wiggled enthusiastically. The hot summer sun broke through its clouds and the little cat’s gray fur sparkled.
“Lovely,” Rose murmured, all her innate love of the young rushing out through her eyes. “But—come in the house. Millie has to see.” She tugged at his massive arm. “I have to ask her. We share the house, you know.”
“Ask me what?” Millie asked from the front door.
“Ask you if you could resist such adorable kittens,” the man said.
“Before we take anything,” Millie said, “we like to know who is giving it away. And why.”
“Oh,” he said as he ran his hand through his short hair. “I’m Sam Horton. My daughter and I just moved here from Boston and her cat, Beatrice, just had these two kittens. I’m a—er—looking to open a law office here in the village.”
“A lawyer?” Millie sounded as if the fish she had bought for supper had just gone bad. “I don’t think there’ll be much business for you here in Padanaram.”
“Don’t make the man stand out here in the sun,” Rosie interjected. “Come on in, Sam, and bring the kittens.” As she opened the front door she turned and asked again, “You say they’ve been weaned?”
Following Millie into the house, he said, “Yes, ma’am. They’re four months old today. They’ve both been weaned.”
“How does your daughter feel about giving away her kittens?” Rosie asked from the back of the line.
“My daughter is resigned,” Sam said as they entered the kitchen. He crossed his fingers behind his back. “I’m allergic to cats. The only reason my daughter gets to keep Beatrice is that she’s had the cat for nearly all her life.”
“Come sit down,” Millie invited him. “Have a cold drink.”
“No, thanks,” he demurred; “I’ve got to get back. Penelope gets upset if I’m away too long.”
“How old is she?” Millie asked.
“Penny is twelve, going on thirteen,” he said. “Do we have a deal? Will you take one of the kittens?”
Millie picked one of the animals up and after looking said, “What happened to their tails? These kittens don’t have tails.”
“Sorry,” Sam drawled, “I only give them away; I don’t explain genetic shortfalls.”
“Well, thank you, Mr Horton,” Rosie said quickly before Millie could uncover his life history. “Yes, we’ll take them both. Let me show you out.”
Millie looked affronted, but Sam stood up, and seemed to fill the small kitchen. “I’m sure you’ll get a barrel of enjoyment from the kittens. What do you suppose you’ll name them?” He knew where the power of the household lay. He spoke to Millie, who was now holding both of the squirming little felines.
“Too Soon,” Millie said, taking precautionary measures to keep her tongue from wagging out of synch. “And the other one probably Too Late. The Too twins.”
He masked a grin and shook his head at her. “Too much,” he said softly, and made for the door, following Rosie’s trim figure.
Going from the bright kitchen where Rosie had installed extra windows, they plunged into the semi-darkness of the front room. Sam was blinded for the moment it took his eyes to adjust. He didn’t see that Rosie had stopped. He ran into her and, having her in his arms, he decided to do what he’d wanted to do since he’d first seen her. He bent down and kissed her. She was so taken aback that she let it happen. It felt so nice that she contributed to the whole experiment. Just for a second, of course. And then she broke away.
“Well, really! Aren’t you a married man?”
“I was but she divorced me a few years ago,” he said. “You know, I’m going to like living here in Padanaram.” He moved to the door and opened it. “Surely you’re not married?”
“Widow,” Rose said through clenched teeth. “My husband was murdered some years ago.”
Oh, boy, he told himself. Widow? Murdered? Luckily for him, he went out the door and walked down the path to the sidewalk before Rose could gather her senses.
“A lot of man,” Millie said after a moment from her place at the kitchen door. “Good-looking.”
“Oh? I thought he was—homely. Big, though. Big and homely?”
“You’re seeing with your druthers,” Millie said. “You’d druther he wasn’t too good-looking, because then your radio station would have to be nice to him.”
“Me? Be nice to a—lawyer? And didn’t he sound so tentative about that? I’ll wager a nickel to a doughnut he hasn’t won a single case so far this year. Lawyer? Hah!”
Rose turned her back on her housekeeper and delved into the kitten basket. The pair of them came to her hand and twined themselves around her wrist.
“The kittens are handsome,” she commented. “And the basket is out of this world! What a nice addition to the neighborhood.”
“Him?”
“No. Them.” She plunged her hand back into the kitten basket.
Radio Station WXBN blared in her ear. Rock and roll for a Sunday afternoon. “Turn that darned radio down. Who ever convinced me that we needed hard rock on a Sunday afternoon?”
“It’s your station and your music,” Millie said. “If you don’t like it you can cancel. And fire the program director. Besides, I like it!”
“And if I canceled,” Rose said glumly, “we’d lose all of our Sunday afternoon kiddie audience.”
“And it’s the kids who spend the money,” Millie commented.
“I like it,” Millie repeated. “Take a note, kid. He’s good-looking, employed and single.”
“What are you trying to do to me?” Rose complained wearily. “Every time there’s a new man in the neighborhood you keep pushing me at him. Most of them don’t become interested until they hear about my money. I’m a career woman, not a prospective housewife. I operate a two-hundred-and-fifty-watt commercial radio station.”
“I’ve got light bulbs that big in my closet,” Millie snapped. “You’re not married. That’s the important thing in a girl’s life. Seems a shame.”
“I’m single by choice. I’ve been married. It’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. And besides, he’s encumbered.”
“He’s what?”
“Encumbered. With a daughter. You heard him. Why would any sensible woman rush to become the wicked stepmother?” There was only one way to win an argument with Millie. Rose took it. The screen door slammed behind her before her housekeeper could muster an answer, but even as far as the fence Rose could hear her muttering.
The sun was really hot. Sam Horton stopped at the corner of Franklin Street and fished out a handkerchief. Crazy, he told himself. I know housing’s in short supply, but I never expected to wind up in a neighborhood like this. Mrs. Moltry is a society maven and expects me to join her set. The lady next to her reads palms and does astrology charts. The next house is empty. And then we have Mrs. Chase and company. Lord knows what her specific problem is; witchcraft, maybe? She lives in a madhouse.
But she’s cute, his conscience demanded. He shrugged. The attorney general back in Boston had assured him this was only a temporary assignment. And it’s true, he thought. She is cute!
His house was not as large as Rose Chase’s, which had two floors and at least twelve rooms and a swimming pool out back. But his had plenty of land around it, now set in tired sawgrass and weeds. A little imagination could make a garden, or even a swimming pool for Penelope. He looked around for his daughter. She loved to be out in the sun.
Penny was at the side of the house, sitting stiffly upright in her wheelchair, her nurse hovering at attention nearby. There hadn’t been much sunlight at their Boston apartment. The child looked like a pale ghost. Long blond hair, hanging straight as a die down her back; pale cheeks, except for the red splotch—red splotch?—just beside her mouth. Gray-green eyes. Massive eyes for a girl just turning thirteen. A dress hid the upper steel structure of the braces that provided support which her muscles could not furnish. A red splotch adorned her left cheek…
Red splotch? As if someone—“Mrs. Harrold?”
“Good morning, Mr. Horton.”
“Good morning, Mrs. Harrold. How has Penelope been so far today?”
The woman was built like a block of granite, with a face that hadn’t smiled since Caesar crossed the Rubicon. “Naughty,” she grumbled. “All day long. Whining and complaining about everything. And she wouldn’t eat her breakfast. I was forced to punish her.”
He looked down at his daughter. Her chin was stuck out as if she was determined to outface the world. Lord, what am I into? he asked himself. I haven’t the slightest idea how to raise a girl-child!
The girl rolled one of the wheels of her chair to turn her more toward him. As she did so the bright sun outlined her figure in what was an extremely thin dress. The words he had planned to speak stuck in his craw. I can’t manage her in her childhood, he snarled at himself, and while I’m trying to learn how, she’s growing older by the minute! Why me, God?
He leaned over and took one of her thin, almost wasted hands in his own and squeezed gently. Four years since his divorce, two years since he had taken over the care and direction of this child of his. Holding the gentle hand, he looked over at Mrs. Harrold.
“You mean you hit her?”
“That’s what you have to do with children who don’t behave,” the nurse reported grimly. “Take the strap to her. That’s what the Bible says.”
“Does it really?” he commented in a voice as mild as Ivory soap. He reached into his pants pocket.
“Yes. Raise them in the Fear of the Lord,” the nurse continued in a very self-satisfied tone.
“I don’t exactly think that’s what the Bible meant,” Sam Horton said. “Especially in regard to a girl who’s been confined to a wheelchair for most of her natural life.”
“God’s punishment,” Mrs. Harrold commented. “Brought it on herself, I expect.”
Sam gritted his teeth. “It’s hard to be a father,” he returned. “It takes a great deal of patience.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket and counted a couple of bills off a money-roll big enough to choke a horse. He pushed them into the nurse’s hands and folded her fingers over them.
“I don’t think you and I are ever going to get along. I would appreciate it if you would move out of here today. This noontime, to be exact.”
“Well, I never!”
“Certainly never again,” he said. “Do yourself a favor, Mrs. Harrold. Don’t ever appear in my house again for any purpose. I don’t think I could be as full of the milk of human kindness as I ought!”
The nurse tilted her head high in the air, sniffed at the pair of them, and made for the gate at high speed. Father and daughter watched as the woman climbed into her car parked at the curb and zoomed off.
Sam Horton bent over and scooped his daughter out of the wheelchair. “So there,” he chuckled.
“But you shouldn’t have,” the girl said solemnly. “We’ve been in town here for four days and you’ve already fired two nurses. It didn’t hurt.”
“The firing didn’t hurt?”
“No, silly. The hitting. She’s not very strong. I enjoyed the firing.”
He cuddled her close to his massive chest. “There’ll be no hitting in my family,” he said. “None!”
“But Mama hit me all the time.”
“And that’s why we were divorced, love.”
“If I was a cute little tyke she wouldn’t have, Daddy.”
“You are a cute little tyke,” he exhorted. “Cute as a button.”
“That’s all right for you and me to say, but how come there’s no other woman in the world who agrees with you?”
“There’s bound to be somebody else,” he insisted as he swung her up in his arms and started for the door. “Somewhere in this wide, wide world there’s a nice woman who thinks just the way I do—about you, that is.” He held his daughter at the door, and waited for the child to turn the doorknob. Somewhere there has to be, he told himself grimly. And I’ve got to find her. I don’t care how many rotten traits she has, just so long as she loves Penelope Horton!
“I tried, Pa. I tried to be nice to both of them, but I was scared. I didn’t—”
“I don’t blame you, love. They were both too old. Are you hungry?”
“Mmm.”
“Come on, there’s still some of that crunchy peanut butter left.”
“Another peanut butter sandwich? One of us has got to learn how to cook before we both starve to death.”
“I agree, baby. You?”
“Not me. I’m too young.”
“And I’m too old.”
“I know a heck of a good way to get some nice woman to take care of us,” Penelope Horton said. “Why don’t you get married again?”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know, love. I tried that once. It didn’t work.”
“That’s because you didn’t do it right. My mother couldn’t boil water without burning it. Now, if we really put our minds to it we could look around and find someone who can cook and bake and sew, and like that, and-”
“We could?”
“We could. This is too important to be left just to some dumb man! I know just what we want.”
“And of course I don’t?”
“You surely don’t,” the child said. “We might even find one that’s sort of—well—sexy. You’d like that.”
Sam Horton looked down at his daughter. She looked up at him. Twelve years old was too early by far for all this. Carefully he lowered her into her indoor chair, moved her gently over to the window, and raised the shade to let the light in. She was wearing a shoestring sundress. It might have been green at one time; now it was nondescript. It was too tight at the top and too short at the bottom, and even a blind man could have seen that his little girl was well over the threshold of puberty.
Oh, my lord, he muttered to himself. I haven’t even learned how to handle her in her formative years. Why is it all happening to me—and all at once?
His daughter, who had outstanding hearing for a girl of her age, also had the brain to dissemble. “It’s that red wallpaper on the walls.” she said. “It makes everything appear dull. We hafta get things straight around this crazy place.”
At the other end of the row of houses Rose Chase, still mooning in her front yard, heard the crash of thunder and looked up. A massively black cloud came racing in from the southwest, spurred on by a breeze that strengthened by the moment. It was threat enough.
She looked around her tiny front yard, where the grass was brown and sere instead of waving green. August was always this way. Short on green and water, long on sun and beaches and swimming. New England had four full seasons, and one had better develop a love for them all, or move.
But she had delayed too long. A very large raindrop splatted across her nose, as if the Wampanoag Rain God was laughing at her. She plucked up her skirts and ran for the house.
Millie was waiting there, holding the screen door open. “Left it a little late, didn’t we?”
The words were unnecessary. In just those eight or nine running steps it took for her to reach the tiny porch the clouds had opened on her, and she was so soaked that her dress clung.
“You look like a drowned mouse,” her housekeeper told her. “Another five minutes and I would’ve called the rescue squad. Here. Take this.” Millie had come prepared, with a massive bath towel in her hand. She threw it in Rose’s direction. With the background of much practice Rose caught the towel and dropped it over her head.
“Rub it in,” Millie commanded, and then immediately moved to do the rubbing for herself. Rose chuckled. It always came to this. Millie would never admit that her little Rose had grown up, that she could think and move and do for herself.
“Don’t know enough to come in out of the rain,” the old lady muttered through gritted teeth as she rubbed to the best of her strength. “I don’t know how you keep that radio station afloat.” Which was a line she always used, a line Rose had learned to put up with without a sarcastic come-back.
“Now hop upstairs and change into something dry. Lord, what’s the world coming to these days?”
“Armageddon?” Rose offered as she dashed for the stairs. She almost stumbled over the railed transport chair they had needed to help Frank up the stairs.
“And don’t be smart,” Millie called after her. “You’re still not too old to get a good paddling!”
Rose knew better. Her last paddling had come about when she was two years old, when she had, with malice aforethought, bitten her father’s hand. And learned the axiom about the hand that fed you.
Thereafter she had quickly discovered that honey turned more blows than vinegar. She stripped as she went, dropping her dress here, her bra there, her shoes wherever. “And dry yourself off before you put on something different,” Millie yelled from downstairs. With a smile on her little round face Rose complied, and found herself confronting the massive mirror hanging on the wall of the bathroom, nude.
It was the one attitude that always surprised her. Normally she paid little or no attention to her appearance. She brushed her curly red hair regularly—one hundred strokes daily—covered herself daily with some dress of some color, and let it go at that. Usually it was a dress that Millie had bought for her because her “baby” just didn’t have the time or skill for shopping. Her baby, twenty-seven years old. From time to time Rose rebelled, but mostly she enjoyed the pampering, and only occasionally found herself confronting herself. As now.
There was no doubt about it. Her breasts were too big. Without more care they would begin to sag. Not yet, but some day soon. She cupped them with both hands. They were still firm, thank the Lord. Nothing she hated worse than the thought of sagging. She turned to one side in front of the mirror. There was a comfortable little balloon around her hips as well. That needed to come off PDQ—Pretty Darn Quick.
And her hair…Lord, what a mess. A russet forest of curls, her mother used to say. But with a jaundiced eye it was a rage of red. She leaned over to pick up her hairbrush. Nothing sagged. That was a relief. She attacked the jungle on top of her head.
Millie came upstairs just as she finished dressing. “Ham for supper? Canned. Potatoes? What else?”
“Spinach?” Rose was busy trying to braid her short hair into two plaits, with little success.
“I don’t know why you do that,” Millie said, staying the brush momentarily. “It only stays in place for—”
“For an hour,” Rose interjected. “Maybe even more on a rainy day. But at least for an hour I can look neat.”
“You planning to go out on a date tonight?”
Rose turned away from the mirror, surprised. “Now where in the world would I go on a Sunday night, and with whom?”
Millie gestured at Rose’s bedroom. “You ask me? Who in the world would live in a pure white bedroom at your age? Virginal Manor? You’ve been a widow for—”
“Twelve months,” Rose supplied.
“Twelve months. And you’re still living in the room that you’ve used since you were five years old. Why aren’t you up and around? Why don’t you redecorate the master bedroom and move back there again? Why are you home with not a date in sight on a Sunday night?”
“Oh, come on, Millie. You know all the answers. You tell me.”
“I don’t know this answer. Don’t tell me that you’re still wearing the willow for your husband?”
“And why not?”
“You know why not. You were darn near to divorcing him before that—that man ran him down.”
Rose whirled around to face her housekeeper. Her face turned pale. She almost looked a perfect match for her white-painted walls. “Don’t you say that, Millie,” she said fiercely. “Don’t you ever say that again!”
“Why not? It’s true.”
“It may be true, but—he was a hard man to live with, what with all his medical problems. And when he was killed I felt so—guilt-ridden, Millie!” Her normal contralto rose to a panicky pitch. “It doesn’t matter—all those little arguments between Frank and me. So he wasn’t a perfect husband, but he was a volunteer hero for the United Nations in Somalia, and he came home and died a hero!”
Rose was still pale as a sheet, not red-faced. She steadied herself, forced her feelings back down her throat, and stabbed at her left eye with her knuckle. It was the eye that always had the tendency to leak.
She needed something to take her mind off the subject. She picked up the brush and started on her hair again.
Millie shrugged and, forced by long habit, went back out into the hall, to the trail of clothing that Rose had left while undressing, and began to pick up the discarded material. Rose let one plait escape her before she sealed it with an elastic. It fell down and immediately returned to its curly nature. She shrugged into her robe and sat down on the edge of her bed and started again.
What if…? Her mind buzzed. What if I had a date with Sam Horton? Lawyer Sam?
Both her mother and father would have been proud of her, walking out with a lawyer. A businessman above the usual trade, entitled to call himself “Esquire”. Although somehow or another he didn’t seem to quite fill the bill. And besides, both her parents were gone.
And what if she and the lawyer made a thing out of it? Certainly he would have a great deal of influence in the village—after a time, that was. Yankee villages tended to move very slowly. Maybe even enough influence to force the district attorney into discovering and bringing her husband’s murderer to trial on some charge. Murder? How could it have happened? Struck down in the middle of Middle Street. Run down by a hit-and-run driver, in the darkness of a rainy night and not a single witness to be found.
What if…? What if Sam Horton turned out to be a secret FBI agent, with a lot of power?
What if he kissed me again? she wondered. Oh, wow! There was nothing small-time about his kissing. Nothing bad at all. Just imagine we were married and had three children of our own and lived in a big house across the bay, up on the hill near Colonel Green’s former estate, and every single night we—!
And down at the other end of the block Sam Horton stood with spatula in hand over the gas stove, trying to construct a couple of hamburgers. But his mind wasn’t really on his work. He could see Rose Chase standing in his kitchen, dressed in practically nothing. No, that wouldn’t do. His kitchen walls were a dingy depository for more frying grease than his skillet could hold. The kitchen would have to be redone before he could get Rose into it. But how about upstairs?
In the master bedroom. That had been redecorated just before he’d bought the house. And the bed was massive. Rose Chase, delightfully dressed in moonbeams. He would lead her to the bed and she would fall back down on the mattress and smile at him, and they would—if only Penelope didn’t interrupt!
But then Penny, with her wheelchair, lived on the ground floor, while the other bedrooms were upstairs!
“What in the world are you doing, Dad?” Penelope. Astonished, he was back in the kitchen staring at the spiral of smoke rising from the blackened hamburgers. Was it a bad thing to swear at your daughter? he asked himself. Probably. Even if you didn’t say it aloud?
Shaking his head in disgust, Sam Horton set the spatula down on the top of the stove and turned off the gas before he moved to hug his daughter. Hugging was not a thing he had done much of in past years. Too busy? His conscience had begun to bother him some time during the last four weeks. “I’ve not been much of a father, have I?” he asked. Penelope did a double-take but did not respond. Maybe she was thinking the same thing?
“What do you say, Penny, if we go down to McDonald’s for our supper?”
“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
Your daughter is still mad at the world and all its people, he told himself. So we’ll go anyway. Maybe we could stop by the Chase house and see if Rose would go with us? He shrugged. He knew it wouldn’t work. Too completely different women, both angry with him at the same time. What a dinner party that would make! But—
But I’m not ready yet, he told himself. How about that? An outstanding record in law school. Editor of the Harvard Law Review. And on my first case I prosecute a man who commits murder and he walks away! And that’s the end of my job with the district attorney. So the next thing I do when I move to a new town is to meet a woman whose husband has been murdered, and his murderer, she tells me, walks away too! Well, I’ll do better. Damned if I don’t!
