Page 48 of Led Astray (Hellraisers 1)

From the outside, the parsonage looked as it always did. Jenny's car was there, parked next to the one belonging to his parents. There were lights on in the kitchen and living room. Nonetheless, Cage had a gut instinct that something was wrong.

He knocked on the front door and then pushed it open. "Hello," he called out. He went in without invitation and found Bob and Sarah sitting together in the living room.

"Hello, Cage," his father said unenthusiastically. Sarah said nothing. She was twisting a handkerchief round and round her index finger.

"Where's Jenny?"

Bob was apparently finding it difficult to speak because he swallowed several times. When he did manage to make a sound, he spoke economically. "She left."

Anger and fear began to coil inside Cage. "Left? What do you mean she left? Her car's here."

Bob dragged his hand down his face, distorting his features. "She chose to leave without taking anything with her except her clothes."

Cage turned on his heel and bounded up the stairs two at a time, the way he had done in his youth. It had been an in­fringement of house rules, but he had ignored them then and he did now.

"Jenny?" She wasn't in her room. He lunged for the closet and yanked open the door. Except for a few garments, all the hangers were empty. In the drawers he frantically pulled from the bureaus, he found the same mute testament that she was gone.

"Dammit!" he roared like a thwarted lion and went charg­ing down the stairs again. "What happened? What did you do? What did you say to her?" he demanded of his parents. "Did she tell you about the baby?"

"Yes," Bob said. "We were appalled."

"Appalled? Appalled! You found out Jenny is carrying your first grandchild and your only reaction is that you're ap­palled?!"

"She claims it's Hal's baby."

Had it been any man other than his father who maligned Jenny's integrity and virtue that way, Cage would have jerked him up by the shirt collar and beat him until he lived to regret ever having uttered so much as a breath of slander against her.

As it was, Cage only made a low growling sound in his throat and took a threatening step forward. That, in fact, it wasn't Hal's child didn't matter at the moment. Jenny thought it was. She had thought she was telling them the absolute truth.

"You doubt that?"

"Certainly we doubt it," Sarah said, speaking for the first time. "Hal wouldn't have done anything so … so … so sinful. Especially not on the night before he left for Central America as she claims."

"This may come as a surprise to you, Mother, but Hal was a man first and a missionary second."

"Is that supposed to mean—"

"It means that he had the same apparatus as every other man since Adam. The same drives. The same desires. It's only a wonder to me he waited so long to take Jenny to his bed." Hal never had taken Jenny to his bed, but Cage wasn't think­ing very reasonably at the moment.

"Cage, for heaven's sake, shut up," Bob hissed, rising to face his oldest son. "How dare you speak to your mother in such crude terms."

"All right," he said, slicing the air with his hands. "I don't give a damn what you think about me, but how could you have driven Jenny out at a time like this?"

"We didn't drive her out. She made the decision to leave."

"You must have said something to provoke her into taking such a drastic action. What was it?"

"She expected us to believe that Hal had … had done that," Bob said. "Mother and I conceded that he might have. As you pointed out, your brother was a man. But if he did, she must have tempted him to do it beyond his endurance to resist."

Frankly Cage didn't know how Hal had resisted her that night. He never could have. Not in a million years. Not if the jaws of Hell had opened up to welcome him as soon as it was over. "Whatever happened, it was done out of love." That much was the truth.

"I believe that. Even so," Bob said, stubbornly shaking his head, "Hal wouldn't have distracted himself from his mission unless he was sorely tempted. And possibly, just possibly, he was still distracted, or feeling guilty about the sin he had com­mitted, or was otherwise in conflict with himself when he was in Monterico. Maybe that's why he was careless enough to get himself captured and killed."

"My God," Cage breathed, falling back against the wall as though he had just sustained a stunning blow. He stared at his parents, wondering how two such self-righteous, narrow-minded, judgmental people could have spawned him. "You told Jenny that? You blamed her for Hal's death?"

"She is to blame," Sarah said. "Hal's convictions were so steadfast, she must have seduced him. Can you imagine how betrayed we feel? We reared her as our own daughter. For her to turn on us like this … to have an illegitimate child… Oh, Lord, when I think of what this is going to do to Hal's memory. Everyone loved and admired him. This will destroy everything he stood for." Sarah clamped her lips into a thin white line and turned her head away.

Cage was torn by indecision. They were laying the blame for Hal's death on Jenny, thinking she had seduced him. Hal's death couldn't be blamed on anyone but Hal, because he hadn't been distracted or guilty over a night of passion with Jenny. Cage could absolve her now by telling them that she had been with him instead. But if they condemned Jenny for sleeping with Hal, they would stone her in the streets for sleep­ing with him.

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