Abide with Me by Delia Parr

Author:Delia Parr
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Steeple Hill
Published: 2006-02-24T23:00:00+00:00

Madge raced up the staircase, following the trail Russell had left on the cream carpet. She found him in the guest room across the hall from the master bedroom. He was tucking his little girl into the antique iron bed that had once belonged to Madge’s Grandmother Poore.

Standing in the doorway, her heart trembled with anguish as she watched Russell tucking his child into bed. His daughter. Sarah was his daughter. She was another woman’s child, and she was here, in Madge’s home.

Madge did not want to look at this child any more than she wanted the girl to exist. But Sarah did exist. She was still fast asleep as Russell knelt by the side of the bed and struggled to untangle the blankets wrapped around her.

Madge’s eyes misted with tears. Sarah was just a wisp of a thing. Blond ringlets, damp from the rain or from sleeping within a cocoon of covers, framed her heart-shaped face. She stirred and whimpered a bit when Russell settled her head on the pillow, but her lips never lost their grip on her thumb. As soon as he pulled the quilt up to her chin, Sarah curled onto her side, facing Madge, and started sucking on her thumb.

Such an innocent lamb.

Madge’s heart ached when Russell pressed a kiss to his daughter’s forehead, and she couldn’t control her curiosity. Had Sarah been conceived in one rare moment when Russell had been too weak to resist the temptation of sin? Or had this child been born to Russell and another woman he had been seeing for…how long? Several years, at least, if Sarah was three years old.

Who was the woman who had been Sarah’s mother?

Who was this man, the man who had been Madge’s husband for all these years?

Reeling from questions that had no answers, she watched him as he pressed his forehead to the pillow next to his daughter. When his shoulders trembled and she heard him choke back his sobs, she sagged against the frame of the door.

He loved this little girl.

Madge had thought he had loved her, too, and his betrayal and the vision of the evidence of his betrayal sliced through her, opening a wound in her heart that she knew would never heal, not in this lifetime.

In that moment, watching her husband kneeling next to his love child, the world she had known crashed and shattered into pieces: The marriage she had treasured for twenty-six years? Gone. The vows they had taken, pledging devotion and forsaking all others? Broken. The husband she had loved? A traitor. The life they had shared together? An illusion.

When images of their sons flashed in her mind, Madge clenched her jaw to silence a moan. How could she tell Drew and Brett their father had been unfaithful? Or that he had brought his love child home?

Tears welled and streamed down her cheeks. Her heart hurt. How could Russell have done this to her and to their sons?

Another image flashed through her mind, a premonition of days to come.

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