Always, My Love by Dorothy Fletcher

Author:Dorothy Fletcher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

Two

If Virginia Easton had ever envied her sister Louisa her good luck in snagging a husband who had made an early fortune in plastics, it had been only in periods of stress in her own household. There had been such periods, and at times she had despaired of providing the kind of college education she considered Iris’s due. Tears had been shed and hands had been wrung, but things had “come out all right,” and although Virginia had a host of friends and acquaintances, the person who meant the most to her (aside from her husband and daughter) was her sister Louisa.

What had prevented her from ever taking a penny from Louisa, or even borrowing, was the fact that the balance, she felt, must be kept even. Louisa had the money — and a great deal of it — while she, Virginia, had the child, the daughter fate had denied her sister. Louisa, after a second miscarriage, was unable to have children and it had been a great sorrow to her. One reason, perhaps, why she had so cherished and loved what she did have … her husband, who was twenty years older than herself.

And now, with Henry dead, the balance was uneven. In spite of her wealth, Louisa had, substantially, nothing while Virginia had everything … husband, daughter and for the first time in her life, some financial comfort. Virginia’s own world seemed suddenly blighted. With Louisa’s life shattered, her own was in chaos as well.

So when Iris came home that Saturday afternoon to announce that Aunt Louisa was immeasurably improved, and “picking up the pieces,” it was like a kind of rebirth. Suddenly the sun had its full strength again, the faces of her loved ones, husband George and daughter Iris, swam into her consciousness to dazzle and enchant her, and the new living room sofa that had seemed much too costly when it had been bought filled her with a joy and pleasure that set her to straightening its cushions about a dozen times.

“Beautiful thing,” she murmured to it. “You are worth every penny and I love you dearly.”

“And we’re to leave in September,” Iris told her.

“Isn’t that wonderful!”

Dad said, as they were having their supper, “I’m not disapproving, Iris. You’re in a way, like a child of her own. Perfectly proper for her to underwrite your vacation … at this particular sad time, anyway.”

“Iris wouldn’t do anything you’d disapprove of, George, so no need to take that ensouffrance tone.”

“Am I being taken down a peg or two?” he asked mildly.

His wife beamed at him. “Say anything you have a mind to. I feel very happy tonight.”

“I’m enormously fond of Louisa Collinge myself, and if I hadn’t been guarded carefully from a glimpse of her while we were courting, I might very well have married her myself.”

“She wouldn’t have had you.”

“Why?” he asked reasonably.

“Because it would have been over my dead body, and then you’d have gone to prison.”

“I was that fascinating?”

“Very likely just to me, and I would have slain to keep you.

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