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“Oh, boy, Aunt Abby. Kittens!” Lucinda exclaimed, and her whole little face lit up.
Across the room, Cody saw that delight on the child’s face and felt a weight on his shoulders like a concrete slab. He’d wanted children so badly. But Deborah had said they had years to think about kids. She didn’t really like them. Cody did. But he loved Deborah enough to sacrifice his own hungers. Now, looking at Lucinda’s joy, bright and shining, he felt the hunger again, deeper and stronger.
“You look well,” Bart told Abby, smiling as he hugged her gently. “How do you like Denver?”
She made a face. “I hate it. Lucinda’s in a school she doesn’t like, and we live in a poky little apartment on the top floor with a drunk next door and a drummer on the next floor.” She leaned toward him. “He likes to practice at two in the morning!” She laughed.
Cody saw that laughter in her face and felt as if he was smothering to death in a misery of his own making. He turned and went out the door. It hurt, to see the woman and child so happy, when they looked at him as if he’d committed all seven deadly sins and was bent on retribution.
Abby watched him go and she relaxed. “Why was he here?” she asked bluntly.
“He and Charlie were friends as well as third cousins,” Bart told her. “They played chess together. Cody got tired of town living, so he bought Dan Harlow’s place, the ranch that adjoins Charlie’s property.”
She looked hunted all over again.
“Don’t,” Bart said gently. “He’s sorry for what he said to you and Lucy,” he added. “He said he’d give anything to take it back.”
She averted her eyes. She didn’t have to tell Bart about her past, he knew. Everybody in Catelow knew everybody’s business. It was a big, sprawling family, and there were no secrets in it. Abby’s father had been a hopeless drunk. He’d gambled away everything her mother had, and there had been a good deal of money when they’d married. He’d turned to strong drink when his luck at the gaming tables turned, and he’d been brutal. Abby and her mother wore concealing garments so that the bruises wouldn’t show. It was almost a relief when the old man died, but he took Abby’s mother with him. Her older brother, Lawrence, had come to get her and take her to live with him and Mary. They both loved her dearly, and she’d been grateful for a home, even if it was in Denver.
Abby got a job with Lawrence’s firm as an administrative assistant just out of high school and immediately enrolled in night classes to get her paralegal training. Abby hated having Lawrence responsible for that training. As intelligent as Abby was, she couldn’t qualify for any scholarships that would have paid her way. Private schools were expensive. She hadn’t even had her parents’ home after their deaths. It was mortgaged to the hilt. Lawrence, her brother, had sold it when he took Abby to live with him and his wife Mary.
She loved her brother and Mary, but she felt she was a burden on them, with Mary pregnant and a bedroom needed to convert to a nursery. They protested; they loved her and she was welcome, they emphasized. But she was determined to go, to make room for the baby they’d anticipated for so long. So, she moved into a small apartment. Lucinda was born soon afterward. Abby had loved her from the start, finding excuses to visit, so that she could hold the little girl. She was as fascinated with her as her doting parents.
Then had come the car crash and the agony of the funeral. Deborah had come to pay her respects to her first cousin, Mary, and contracted the fatal virus from one of the attendants, who also died of it. Deborah had been admitted to the hospital with a high fever and Abby had gone from the funeral home where Lawrence and Mary were together in a viewing room to the hospital to see about Deborah.
Cody had come across them in the parking lot, after being told by an aide that Deborah had gone to the funeral home and caught the virus from somebody there. He’d assumed it was the little girl, because she was feverish and sick. Abby had stopped by the emergency room to let a resident look at Lucy and give her something for the complications that had presented themselves. She’d given up the idea of visiting Deborah, with Lucy so sick, and had actually been on her way to the car to take Lucy to Lawrence’s apartment where a friend would take care of the little girl while Abby came back to see Deborah.
That was when Cody had encountered them in the parking lot and raged at them out of his grief.
Abby shivered, just at the memory of his unbridled rage. She was afraid of men anyway. That experience had put a nail in the coffin of her desire to ever get married. First her father, then Cody. Men frightened her in a rage, and she’d rarely seen her father any other way. She’d stay single and raise Lucy and never get involved with a man, she decided.
“Hey, it’s okay, he’s gone outside,” Bart said softly, noting Abby’s expression.
She swallowed. “You think you can get over things. But sometimes, you just can’t.”
“Are you okay, Aunt Abby?” Lucy asked softly, catching one of her aunt’s hands in her own. She had Lawrence’s eyes, pale blue and piercing, and full of compassion.
Abby smiled in spite of herself. “I’m okay, honey,” she replied. “Really.”
Lucy sighed. “I’m hungry.”
Abby realized then that they hadn’t even had breakfast. There was still the funeral service and the graveside ceremony to get through. “It will be just a little while, okay?” she asked.
Lucy smiled up at her. “Okay,” she said.
She was an easy child, eager to please, loving, industrious and gentle. The school she went to in Denver was a hotbed of violence, usually contained, often not. The principal had become used to seeing Abby in her office about various problems Lucy encountered in the course of a week. The classrooms were dangerous. Abby said so. The principal just sighed. She had political considerations to weigh her down and there was very little she could do. She apologized, and sympathized, but Abby saw that nothing would ever change. Lucy was growing more frightened by the day. It was a bad neighborhood. It was also all Abby could afford. Lawrence and Mary’s apartment had been leased soon after Lawrence died, and the landlord immediately filled the space with a new family, giving Abby only a few days to clean everything out, save the most valuable mementos, and find a new place to live. On her salary, she did the best she could. It wasn’t enough.
She wrapped her arms around herself. “I’d love to come back here and live. Except he’s here,” she added bitterly.
“Abby, you won’t have to see him unless you want to,” he said, aware of Lucinda’s rapt attention. “He knows how badly he frightened you. He won’t come near you. Case in point,” he added, nodding toward the door where Cody had left.
She drew in a long breath. Her pale eyes were old with sorrow. “I hate my job. I hate where we live. I hate having to practically live at the school, complaining in the principal’s office about harassment, just to keep Lucy safe,” she added bitterly. “The school has two separate gangs who hate each other, and violence breaks out almost every week.”
“Then come home,” Bart said simply. He smiled. “I’ll do anything I can for both of you,” he added. “It will be an absolute joy to have relatives around. Besides Cody, I mean,” he added with a grimace. “And I never see him except at business meetings or when somebody dies.”
She smiled at him. “You’re a nice cousin, even if you’re only a relative by marriage,” she said.
Lucy laid her head on his shoulder with a sigh. “You’re nice, Cousin Bart,” she murmured.
