Eden Burning by Belva Plain

Author:Belva Plain [Plain, Belva]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-57457-2
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-07-21T04:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

One day Teresa Luther went back to St. Felice. Tee Francis resisted still, but Teresa Luther gave in at last.

“How can you refuse?” Richard urged. “He’s asked us so many times, and now, with our first grandchild coming—”

“I have responsibilities,” she began.

“Nonsense! You have grown daughters who’ll look after Margaret. They’ll all get along without you very well for a few weeks,” he said gently.

Adversity had softened and weakened him. Oddly enough, she often thought, it had given him a greater dignity, as well.

“Look,” he said. “I got out this old album. Here you are.”

There she was, serious and pale under the dark fall of her hair. Here they all were, Père with his gold-knobbed cane on the lawn at Eleuthera and Julia, in flounces, standing with Tee in front of the twin staircase at Drummond Hall.

“That must have been taken not more than a year or so before we were married,” Richard observed.

“It must have been.”

He said unselfishly, “Francis would be so glad! I can see his face when you walk in.”

“And when you walk in.”

The album rested on the windowsill. A flurry of dead leaves, driven in gray, chilled air, blew past.

“It’s too bad we had to be so gray and gloomy on your first day in Paris,” Anatole Da Cunha had said on just such a day.

“You’re a strong girl, stronger than you know.” That was Marcelle, who had taught her to survive.

Strange, I haven’t thought of her in years. Not strange, I have made every effort not to.

“You can do whatever you have to do,” Marcelle had said.

That was true. A marriage without love, a secret like a box of dynamite in the closet—one could manage anything if one had to. Now, finally, I am called upon to go back. There can be no excuse this time, I have run out of them.

“Then you’ll go?” asked Richard. “I can make arrangements?”

“Yes, I’ll go,” Teresa Luther said.

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