Sins of Innocence by Jean Stone

Author:Jean Stone [Stone, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-79866-4
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-08-24T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Jess

It was the morning before Thanksgiving. Jess sat in her room, staring at her calendar. Seventeen days until December 14. Seventeen days until her baby would be born. She turned back the calender pages, eyeing the thick black X’s through each day, looking back to the weeks, the months, when she thought of this baby as belonging to her and Richard. She felt the ache again, numbed as it was by the knowledge that although she had been angry at Father for paying off Richard’s family, she now knew he had been right: What Richard had really wanted all along was her money.

She scooped up the pages and shoved them back into the drawer of the nightstand. In a few weeks it would all be over. She would be home for Christmas—the first without Mother—then, most likely, back to London, or to some other faraway boarding school Father had selected for her. The baby moved inside her.

“Someday,” Jess whispered, “I will make this up to you. I promise.”

Breakfast was somber, as gray-clouded as every day had been since Susan had heard of David, since P.J.’s father had died. The tall radiators in the dining room hissed at the chill of winter coming on; their sounds mingled morosely with only the occasional sluggish scrape of a fork against a plate. Jess looked around the table at the bulky figures and thought of the few mornings they had left to be together.

“I’ve got an idea,” she spoke up, her words scratching the silence. The others looked at her, but no one spoke.

“Tomorrow is Thanksgiving,” Jess said. “Before you know it, we’ll all be gone.”

“Here, here,” Ginny said.

“Mrs. Hines is going to make a turkey.” She shrugged. “I thought it might be good for all of us if we decorated the house.”

“Decorated?” Ginny asked.

“Sure. For Christmas. We could get some pine boughs.…”

“Well,” Susan spoke up, “I’ve got lots of experience at this. Shall we use one menorah or two?”

Jess tried to twist her ring. It was too tight, but she never wanted to take it off again.

“I’m not much in the mood for the holidays this year,” P.J. said.

“P.J., I know how you feel about not having your father. But this is the first Christmas without my mother too. Maybe it would be easier if we made the best of it—together.”

“Hey, what the hell,” Ginny added, “it would help to kill some time.”

* * *

After breakfast they put on heavy jackets. Miss Taylor loaded them up with shopping bags, as they headed into the brisk wind toward the woods.

“I’ll get Mrs. Hines to make hot chocolate when you get back!” the housemother yelled from the back door.

They trudged through the ground cover of brown leaves and dried pine needles crunching under their feet.

“I know the perfect spot,” Ginny said.

“For pine boughs?” Jess asked.

“Yeah. It’s a place I found right after we first came here. A hundred years ago.”

By the end of the morning their hands were sticky with sap and their backs ached from bending over their stomachs, but their cheeks were rosy and their spirits higher.

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