“Yes, ma’am.” Annie’s chest deflated. She bent to retrieve the cards and gave her sister a sad smile. “How ’bout we play Hearts instead?” She nodded at the table. “Over there.”
Glory trudged to her feet as if she were rotund instead of a bitty little thing. Her tiny brows bunched in a thunderous scowl while the Queen of Sheba dangled from her fist in a most unregal manner. “I’d rather play Old Maid than Hearts,” she muttered under her breath, sliding Aunt Eleanor a scowl while she sulked to the table. “The ‘old maid’ should play—she could use one.”
Broiling her sister with another look, Annie took the chair facing the hearth so her aunt wouldn’t see Glory’s nasty look.
“Lemonade, per your request, Miss Eleanor.” Frailey entered the parlor with a tray in hand, head high and body stiff, his stride almost a glide except for the faint indication of a limp.
Eleanor looked up, face in a frown. “Goodness, Frailey, it’s almost June, and your arthritis is still acting up?”
“No, miss, not too badly.”
The glasses came off. “Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes, Mr. Frailey, you’re limping more today than I’ve seen in a while.” Her daunting tone couldn’t mask the concern in her eyes. “Are you trying the cider vinegar and honey concoction I told you about?”
Frailey offered her a lemonade, bending slightly at the waist. “No, miss.”
“Well, I suggest you do so right now, is that clear?”
“Yes, miss.”
Before he could turn away, she reached to brush his hand, almost a caress to gnarled fingers as they held the tray. Her voice was low, as if she didn’t want anyone to hear except Frailey, and so fraught with pain that Annie paused. “You mean the world to me, Arthur, you know that. Please—for me—take care of yourself. When you’re in pain, I’m in pain.”
“Annie, it’s your turn,” Glory said, shaking Annie’s arm.
She startled and returned her attention to the game, stunned at her aunt’s depth of concern for her elderly butler. Never once had she known Aunt Eleanor to express emotion of any kind, even when her only sister had passed away. Mama told her once that she and her little sister “Ellie” had been close growing up—Eleanor a vivacious and bright-eyed little girl and Mama the older sister she idolized. But everything changed when Mama quit Radcliffe to elope with Daddy, not only alienating her parents by marrying outside the church and moving to Chicago, but estranging ten-year-old Ellie as well. But for all her anger and bitterness over her older sister leaving the Church to marry a minister and her disdain for the offspring of that union, Eleanor Martin had reached out. First to Maggie in providing a top-notch education at Radcliffe, and now to Annie and Glory.
“Thank you, Frailey,” Annie said, reaching for the lemonade he offered.
“My pleasure, miss.”
She took a sip, peeking at Aunt Eleanor through lowered lids, noting she had returned to her stitching with a porcelain expression that meant all emotion was safely tucked away. Unbidden, Annie’s throat tightened at the sadness that engulfed her aunt, as potent as the tart lemonade that now wrinkled her nose. And then, in the rise and fall of her breath, Annie saw beyond clipped responses and cool gazes into the eyes of a woman who desperately needed love in her life. And a touch from God to heal her soul, just like he’d done for Annie. Oh, Lord, help me to connect with this woman whose blood I share.
“Thanks, Frailey.” Glory took a gulp of her lemonade, face puckered like a prune. “Mmm . . . nice and sour.” Her rosebud lips went flat, voice sinking to a mutter. “Just like Aunt Eleanor.”
Annie nudged her with her foot under the table, suddenly comprehending for the first time just why Aunt Eleanor was so bitter. Mama had told her that Ellie’s fiancé had broken her heart when he cheated on her days before the wedding, so she’d called it off. And then Mama’s parents had perished in a rail accident on their way to New York four years later, leaving Aunt Eleanor broken and alone as the sole heir of a lucrative estate. Aunt Eleanor became a shell of a woman at twenty-six: beautiful, educated, wealthy . . . and so very alone. And as lifeless as the artificial flowers she placed on her parents’ graves.
“Ouch!” Glory rubbed her shin, her narrow gaze fusing with Annie’s. “Why did you kick me?”
“I did not kick you, young lady,” Annie whispered with a stern look, “I just don’t think we should be talking about Aunt Eleanor that way.”
“Anything else, miss?” Frailey asked with a stiff bow to Aunt Eleanor.
“No, thank you, Frailey—just tend to that leg, all right?”
“Yes, miss.”
Annie watched the kindly butler leave, his regal bearing more in keeping with royalty than servitude, and all at once she wondered about this man who had devoted his life to the Martins. Mama said he had come from Manchester, England, and swore that Arthur Frailey had blue blood in his veins. But if he had an aristocratic heritage in Britain, Mr. Frailey never let on. “A love affair gone awry,” Mama suspected, never understanding why her beloved butler, with whom she corresponded until her death, never opted to marry.
“Aaaaan-nie,” Glory moaned, “you have to start, remember?”
“Oops, sorry.” Annie snapped from her reverie to select three cards from her hand and push them forward. “I wonder why Frailey never married,” she mused out loud.
“Think about it,” Glory whispered in her typical sage-in-a-five-year-old-body mode. “If you worked for Aunt Eleanor, would you want to marry a woman?”
“I think she’s just really sad,” Annie said softly. “Which is why we both need to try harder to be nice to her and do what she says without complaining.” Annie leveled a pointed look. “She’s Mama’s sister, after all, and she’s been good to us.”
A surprisingly low grunt erupted from Glory’s lips. “If you call jail good.” She slapped three cards on the table while moisture glistened in her eyes. “I miss Daddy.”
Annie squeezed her little hand. “I know you do, baby. I do too . . .”
“Excuse me, Miss Eleanor, but you have a visitor. Mr. Callahan is at the door.”
Aunt Eleanor looked up at Frailey, her skin suddenly as white as the milk-glass tulip lamp that highlighted the gold in her hair. Nervous eyes darted to a gilded bronze clock on her Tudor oak writing desk. “At this hour?” Her voice rose to a crack. “What does he want?”
Frailey’s eyes softened. “I believe he has papers for you to sign, miss.”
She rose with a disgruntled sigh, the set of her shoulders a clear indication the visit would be short. “Well, show him to the library, Frailey, and for pity’s sake, don’t take his coat.”
“Very good, miss.” With a stiff bow, Frailey hurried from the room.
Placing her needlepoint aside, she removed her glasses and glanced in the mirror, hands shaky as she smoothed ash-blonde curls. Her flustered gaze collided with Annie’s in the glass, and she whirled around, back straight and head high. “Susannah, it’s late, and you girls should be asleep. Since Mrs. Pierce left early, I’d appreciate it if you put Glory to bed tonight, please.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Annie bit back a sigh. She gathered the cards, countering Glory’s jutting lip with a sympathetic smile. “We’ll play tomorrow night, okay?” she whispered, squeezing her hand.
“No we won’t,” Glory muttered, golden curls as limp as her mood. “She’ll still be here.”
“I heard that, Gloria,” Aunt Eleanor said as she strode by, a storm raging in her eyes. “And, yes, I’ll be here, young lady, rest assured, but you may not be if an orphanage is more to your liking.”
Glory shrank back, tears pooling. She clung to Annie. “I want my mama,” she whispered.
Eleanor spun around at the door, her eyes glinting with both tears and torment. “Stop it!” she rasped, hysteria rising along with her chin. “She’s gone, do you hear? She left you just like she left me, like she left Mama and Papa—with a broken heart and a life full of pain. Why should you be any different???
? she screamed, fists clenched white.
Air seized in Annie’s throat while her body chilled to stone. She clutched a sobbing Glory to her side, both of them shivering from the shock of their aunt’s hateful words. “Shhh, baby, let’s go upstairs,” she whispered, “and we’ll snuggle for a while, okay?” She ushered her out, inching past their aunt, who stood at the door, head in her hands.
Annie flinched when Aunt Eleanor halted them with a quivering arm, face averted to the wall and voice hoarse with repentance. “Forgive me, I . . . I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t mean it . . .” Her voice broke on a shuddered sob. “I suppose . . . I miss your mother too . . .”
Throat swelling with sympathy, Annie laid a tentative hand on her aunt’s shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. “It’s okay, Aunt Eleanor,” she whispered. “We understand.”
At least I do, Annie thought with a heavy sigh as she mounted the stairs with her sister weeping in her arms. Glory was young enough to forget most of the pain of losing Mama and even Daddy, but Annie certainly wasn’t, something she obviously shared in common with Aunt Eleanor. Determined to forge more commonalities with the woman who now shared their lives, Annie purposed to reach out to her aunt.
“But I need the Queen of Sheba,” Glory insisted after Annie tucked her in and said prayers. “She’s on the floor in the parlor, and I can’t sleep without her.”
“Okay, I’ll get her, sweetie. Close your eyes, and I’ll be right back.” Planting a kiss to her sister’s cheek, Annie hurried downstairs to rescue the Queen of Sheba. Bobbling the rag doll in her hands, she turned to head back upstairs when a shout halted her at the parlor door.
“Never!” her aunt shrieked. “I could never trust you again—ever! Please leave—now.”
Annie stared, her back pressed hard against the green silk wallpaper of the foyer wall, gaze frantic as it darted to the half-open library door. She was paralyzed, desperate to flee, but a thunderous slap rooted her to the floor as surely as the palms that were rooted in brass containers at the foot of the stairs. Her aunt’s hysterical shouts to “get out” sent Annie flying to the library door where she skidded to a stop, the next words leeching the blood from her face.
“I’ve never stopped loving you, Ellie, and I never will. I was a stupid fool, too young and weak and full of myself to see the hurt I would cause. Please . . . you have to forgive me.”
Mr. Callahan loved her aunt? Annie’s body fused to the wall behind a potted palm, her aunt’s wrenching sobs keeping her from flying back up the steps. Hoarse, muffled words told her Mr. Callahan was attempting to comfort her, but it seemed to no avail as her weeping continued . . . until a telling silence. Too scared to move or even make a sound, Annie stood fixed, eyes sealed as if that would alleviate guilt over invasion of her aunt’s privacy.
“Marry me, Ellie,” he said, his voice urgent and low. “Let me make it up to you so we can have the marriage we were meant to have.”
Annie stifled a gasp, unable to escape for the shock grafting her shoulder blades to the wall. Mr. Callahan was the fiancé who’d broken her aunt’s heart? The next thing Annie knew, Mr. Callahan stormed out of the library without so much as a glance back, the slam of the front door jarring both the beveled glass panes and Annie’s nerves. Heart banging against her rib cage, she tiptoed to the stairs and stopped, the sound of weeping drawing her back. Slowly moving to the library door, she peeked in, and tears pricked at the sight of her stern and stoic aunt slumped over the love seat, body heaving with every painful sob. Without a second thought, Annie hurried to her side, hesitating only a moment before dropping Glory’s doll to embrace her aunt in her arms.
Eleanor startled, head lunging up to reveal a face swollen with tears. She pushed a damp strand of hair from her eyes, voice hoarse. “What are you doing?” she whispered, her glazed look only adding to the tragedy of her manner.
Kneeling before her, Annie tenderly took her aunt’s hand, giving her a faltering smile as moisture welled in her own eyes. “Sharing your grief, Aunt Eleanor,” she whispered. “That’s what families do, you know.”
Mouth parted in shock, Aunt Eleanor stared like sodden stone, seconds passing before her lips began to quiver. With a fresh swell of tears, she collapsed into Annie’s arms, clutching tight while Annie stroked her hair with the same tenderness she reserved for Glory. Head bent against her aunt’s, she silently prayed for God to heal her hurt, and in one frail shiver of her aunt’s body, a rare peace began to settle. “I’m not sure what Mr. Callahan said or did to hurt you like this, Aunt Eleanor, but once when my best friend moved away, I remember Mama comforting me, holding me just like I’m holding you. She said something I didn’t really understand at the time, but I remember that it gave me a lot of peace when she said it.”
Aunt Eleanor sniffed and pulled away, swiping a limp handkerchief to her eyes. “What was it?” she asked, her words waterlogged and nasal.
Annie ducked to smile into her aunt’s eyes like her mother had done so many times for her. “She said, ‘Susannah, I know it hurts like the dickens now, but God promises that “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”’ ” Annie swallowed hard, the memory of her mother’s comfort pricking her eyes. “So we prayed, and you know what?”
“What?” Aunt Eleanor whispered, eyes rimmed raw and looking a lot like Glory.
Annie caressed her aunt’s arm, a rush of love filling her heart. “Within one month, the best friend I ever had moved in next door.”
Aunt Eleanor caught her breath, fingers pressed to her mouth. Rare wrinkles bunched beneath squinted eyes that appeared on another onslaught of tears. Blinking hard, she attempted to smile, clutching Annie’s hand in a quivering grip. “She was lucky, your friend,” she said with a heave, blinking hard as if to dispel more water from streaking her face.
“Oh no, Aunt Eleanor, I was the lucky one,” Annie said. She leaned to press a light kiss to her cheek. “Just like now.”
“Susannah . . .” Aunt Eleanor’s throat shifted before she swallowed Annie in a ferocious hug, her whisper trembling with emotion. “Thank you so much.”
A grin tipped Annie’s lips over her aunt’s shoulder. “You’re more than welcome, Aunt Eleanor.” She closed her eyes, wishing this moment could last forever. “Can I . . . I mean would you . . . allow me to pray with you? It’s what Mama would do if she were here, you know.”
The breath in Annie’s lungs stilled as she waited, Aunt Eleanor silent in her arms. Finally she felt her aunt nod, and her breath slowly seeped from her lips. Tears stinging, she prayed just like Mama and Daddy would pray—calling upon the God whose mercies were new every morning, along with his joys. She asked God to give her aunt peace in the midst of this storm, to heal her soul and bring her joy. When she was finished, she pulled away, giving her aunt’s hand a final squeeze before reaching for Glory’s doll. Rising to her feet, she smiled, her face as blotchy as her aunt’s, no doubt. “Well, I better take this to Glory before there are tears on the second floor as well as the first.” She bent to kiss her aunt’s cheek. “Good night, Aunt Eleanor. I love you.”
“Good night, Susann—” Aunt Eleanor stood, her demeanor calm once again. She tugged on her dress, gaze low as she attempted to straighten it while muscles jerked in her throat. “I mean . . . Annie. Thank you.” Pink tinted her cheeks. “And I love you too, dear.”
Annie smiled and turned to leave, joy leaping in her chest.
“I . . . I’d like you to go with your friends.”
Annie stopped, easing around with a kink in her brow. “Pardon me?”
With a firm lift of her chin, Eleanor finally met her gaze. “Out to dinner for your birthday, dear, and I’ll give you funds to pick up the bill.”
Annie couldn’t help it—her jaw dropped. “Thank you, Aunt Eleanor, but that’s not necessary to buy dinner for my friends, truly. I’m not sure if they’ll pick someplace a little more expensive or not, but even so, there will be four of them in addition to me, s
o that’s too much.”
“No it isn’t, Annie,” she whispered, moving forward to extinguish the light. “Nothing’s too much to repay your kindness.” Cupping a tentative arm to Annie’s waist, her aunt gave her one of the first genuine smiles she’d ever seen on her face. “And to be honest, my dear,” she said, a tremor in her tone, “dinner for a thousand wouldn’t be enough.”
Flinging the door wide, Luke McGee stormed into his four-story brownstone on Commonwealth Avenue, the subsequent slam of the front door a perfect match for his mood. Usually the seven-block walk from the Boston Children’s Aid Society was a pleasure this time of year, when May was just burgeoning into June. There was nothing Luke loved more about summer than shooting a hoop or two with dirty-faced urchins who clamored for his attention, while mothers strolled with toddlers and neighbors jabbered from yard to yard. But tonight, the chatter of tree frogs and scent of honeysuckle were the farthest things from his mind. No, tonight his thoughts were first and foremost on his wife. Katie Rose, the sass and love of his life . . . and the woman with a penchant for secrets when they suited her cause.
With two abrupt jerks, he loosened his tie and bolted up the worn oak steps to his second-story flat like he hadn’t just worked a thirteen-hour day. Adrenaline pumped through his veins along with more than a little anger. Even at the late hour of ten o’clock, the smell of fried chicken from somebody’s supper still lingered in the hall along with the scent of his neighbor’s pipe, a docile man whose wife refused to allow him to smoke in their flat. Luke’s lips leveled in a tight line. Why would Mr. Tuttle allow his wife to wear the pants in the family, for pity’s sake? Didn’t he know women needed—no, wanted—a strong man they couldn’t ride roughshod over? That if given the chance, some women had no problem batting their baby blues while taking an inch and pushing a mile? Free as a bird to flit wherever they wanted?