What a Woman Must Do by Faith Sullivan

Author:Faith Sullivan [Sullivan, Faith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82270-3
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

KATE

Archer stood, as he often did, at the foot of Kate’s bed, a darker stain within the darkness of the room. She left off talking with him when she heard a car stopping at the corner and then the screen door twanging downstairs.

Bess was home, although later than usual. The Big Ben alarm said two-fifteen.

Up the stairs the child came, quietly, stepping (Kate knew) to the side of the tread, close to the wall, to keep the stairs from creaking. She didn’t stop in the bathroom to wash her face, but went straight along to her room and closed the door.

Archer waited.

How would Bess get into that bed with all the clothes and books piled on it? Kate massaged the swollen knuckles of her right hand. After a minute of listening to soft to-ing and fro-ing in the next room, she heard Bess’s bedsprings gave a metallic wheeze and the house was still.

Kate sighed. In the account book of her mind, she ticked off another night, only a handful remaining until Bess would be away. Elizabeth Canby escaped without injury.

Her eyes again sought the dark figure at the foot of her bed.

“If I’d had it out with you, Archer, the night that Celia came running here with Bess …

“I know you hit her because there were marks on her cheek, but there was more to it, something awful, because she stayed with me a week.” Fretful, Kate scraped her fingers back and forth across her brow.

“I guess I still had a speck of pity for you,” she went on. “The war was off and running, and everybody was going except the older men and 4-F’s. You wanted to play soldier and you got half crazy with loathing that useless arm.

“You’d’ve got killed doing some dramatic thing, I don’t doubt. You yearned for a reckless end, like the end of a gangster movie.

“You were so miserable, they had to let you go at the lumberyard. They couldn’t have someone dealing with the public who snarled like a cur. I think they were about to give you the boot at the creamery, too. But you showed them. You showed us all.”

A little mewl of frustration hummed in her throat.

“If I’d gone to you the night that Celia came running here … But Martin was only dead eight months, and I kept thinking that having it out with you was something a man should do.”

Disgust at her long-ago failure hardened her voice. “But a woman must do things.” Like Demeter braving Hades to bring back Persephone.

Impatiently she dismissed Archer and turned her gaze once more to the white-on-white pattern of the ceiling. In the intricate web of silvery leaves lay intimations of things that a woman must do.

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