Cinderfella by Linda Winstead Jones

Author:Linda Winstead Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Romance
Published: 1997-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Once the telegrams had been sent, Charmaine made her way to the house to see her mother. If her father was there she’d have a civil greeting for him, and nothing more. How could she ever forgive him for doing this to her? It was embarrassing, degrading . . . and everyone who smiled and waved as she passed knew exactly what had happened.

To her surprise, a smiling Ruth answered the door. To her even greater surprise, Ruth rushed off to the kitchen after admitting Charmaine. Apparently, she was entertaining Elmo there.

Her mother was sitting in the parlor and absently stitching on a sampler that had been in progress for a number of months. She’d brought it to Boston on the last visit, and had given it as much attention then as she did now. Very little. She seemed relieved to have an excuse to set it aside.

“Charmaine, is everything all right?”

It occurred to Charmaine to tell her mother all her troubles, to rail against her and take out all the anger and confusion that was bottled up inside. To search for answers to the puzzling questions and contradictions in her heart. But the normally robust Maureen Haley was pale, and her eyes were not as bright as usual. In fact, she looked a bit dazed.

“I just dropped by to say hello and visit for a while,” Charmaine said as she took a seat near her mother. “Everything’s . . . fine.”

Fine. What an audacious lie.

But the warm smile she received at that answer made the lie worthwhile.

Ruth very quickly served tea and cookies, and then bustled from the room to return to Elmo and the kitchen.

The initial conversation that followed Ruth’s exit was stilted and formal. They talked about the weather, and Charmaine only shivered once, when her mother mentioned that heavy rainstorm they’d had this week. She couldn’t help but notice that often her mother seemed to be elsewhere — thinking of something entirely different from their harmless conversation.

“Are you all right?” Charmaine leaned forward, a half-empty teacup in her hands.

She expected a fine as false as her own, but her mother turned teary eyes her way. “I’m being so silly,” she whispered. “It happens to every woman of an age, and I knew it would happen to me, but I guess I wasn’t really prepared.”

“Prepared for what?” Charmaine placed her teacup on the table and moved to sit beside her mother on the sofa. She placed her arm around a stiff shoulder, feeling very odd to be comforting her mother the way her mother had always comforted her.

“The change.” It was a low whisper. “The change of life that comes to every woman when she gets. . . . ” she sobbed. “Old.”

“You’re not old,” Charmaine said staunchly as she held her mother close. “You’re . . . mature.”

It was, evidently, the wrong thing to say. Charmaine watched in horror as her staid, calm, sensible mother burst into tears.

“There now,” she said with a few soft pats to her mother’s shaking back.

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