Читать книгу The Girl Who Came Back - Barbara McMahon - Страница 8

ELIZA SHAW SWORE AGAIN as she shifted to balance her dripping, overstuffed handbag, stack of damp mail, twisted skeleton of an umbrella and soggy bag of food, all the while trying to unlock her apartment door.

“Dammit!” she muttered through clenched teeth. The perfect ending to the day from hell. She hated days like this. She was wet from head to toe and had a raging headache to boot. Sometimes it didn’t pay to get out of bed.

“If anything else goes wrong, I’m wiping the date off the calendar for years to come,” she muttered, finally succeeding in opening the door. She burst into her apartment, dropping the handbag and remnant of her umbrella onto the hardwood floor.

She kicked off her sopping shoes and tossed the mail on the counter separating the kitchen from the living room. She was freezing. The month of April was supposed to be the beginning of spring, not the tail end of winter. The forecast had been for a little rain—ha! If the storm that now raged over Boston had arrived after midnight as predicted, instead of twelve hours earlier, she wouldn’t have been caught in it at all. She glanced at her watch. It was not quite eleven-thirty. Too bad the storm hadn’t listened to the weatherman.

Every cab in the city had been elsewhere, leaving her to trudge the twenty blocks between work and home in the pouring rain. The wind had laughed at her paltry umbrella, twisting it inside out within seconds of leaving the safety of the restaurant.

“If I ever win the lottery, I will hire my own chauffeur,” she vowed as she traipsed into the kitchen. She turned the faucet on high, blasting water into the teakettle, which she quickly set on the gas range. Hot chocolate or tea would help to warm her up along with a hot shower.

Impatiently waiting for the water to boil, Eliza went to the flashing answering machine and pushed the button. She needed to get out of her wet clothes. The rain had soaked through her jacket and even her sweater was damp.

“Hello, Eliza,” a familiar voice said. “I know you’re still at work, but call me when you get home no matter how late.”

Eliza frowned, checking her watch. It was late, but she’d still call. Stephen would wait up until she did. He didn’t like the fact she worked until after eleven most nights, and after midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. But as a sought-after chef in one of the hottest restaurants in Boston, Eliza was used to the long hours. Stephen knew working late came with her job. There was no need to have her check in every night.

Guilt tugged at Eliza. She was tired and cranky. She should appreciate that Stephen cared enough for her to want to know she was safe. It was nice to feel cherished. She shouldn’t take out her bad mood on him.

She picked up the phone as the teakettle screamed. Carrying the portable receiver with her into the kitchen, Eliza quickly made a cup of tea, then punched the speed dial for Stephen’s number.

“What are you doing still up?” she said when he answered.

“Waiting to hear from you. You’re later than I expected.” He sounded worried. “Are you all right?”

“Sopping wet. There were no cabs so I had to walk.”

“In this downpour at this time of night? You should have called me.”

She smiled, feeling warmed with his concern. “I’m fine,” she assured him. “I wouldn’t have asked my worst enemy to come out on a night like tonight.”

“I wish you’d quit that job,” he said. “Find something that has daylight hours. Or open a business of your own. You know I’d back you in a New York minute.”

He’d suggested it before. Maybe it was time she gave the idea some serious thought. “After this walk home, I’m closer to starting that catering business we’ve talked about,” she murmured, taking a sip of the warm tea. More days like this and she’d take the plunge. She’d never thought of herself as an entrepreneur, but she had menu ideas for special events bubbling around in her mind.

“You’d still be working evenings, but with a better clientele,” Stephen said. “ And you could take off when you wanted. Let’s get married right away, sweetheart.”

He’d been patiently waiting for her to pick the right time to get married. She loved Stephen, but was not quite ready to make that final commitment. What was wrong with her? Or was she still adjusting to the fact they were engaged? It had only been a few weeks. She needed to get used to the idea.

“Maybe I could work from home and we could spend all our time together,” he said facetiously.

Eliza laughed. “Sweetie, I can’t see your clients coming to our flat. Besides, we’d be tempted to do a lot more fun things besides work.”

His chuckle warmed her even more. She did love him. She wished she had called him for a ride, just so she could have seen him this evening. Why was she dragging her feet about setting a wedding date?

“Okay, so open a bakery. At least you’d keep more normal hours.”

“Something to think about, but bakers have to start work about four in the morning. I’m not sure that’s for me.” Baking was fine, but she loved the challenge and range that creating main courses offered.

“You could do charity work,” he suggested. “You know Mother would love to have you on some of her committees.”

Eliza wrinkled her nose, not that he could see. “I don’t think that’s my thing.” They’d had this discussion once before. She thought she’d made her position clear. Sometimes Stephen heard what he wanted to hear, not what she said.

As for Stephen’s mother… Eliza adored Adele Cabot. She was all Eliza wished her own mother had been—loving, elegant, devoted to her only child. And she was more than welcoming to Eliza. At one point Eliza had wondered if her feelings for Stephen had grown out of her liking for Adele and her hopes to have her for a mother-in-law.

“It beats working nights and never having time for a normal social life,” he said easily. “Speaking of which, Mother is having some friends down at the Cape this weekend. I told her we’d join her.”

This wasn’t the first time he’d made plans for them without consulting her. She wasn’t up to dealing with it tonight.

“Stephen, you need to check with me before accepting invitations.”

“This is just a weekend at home. No big deal.”

“I’m working Friday and Saturday nights, but I could make it there Sunday in time for brunch,” Eliza said. She loved spending time at the old Cabot family home on Cape Cod. It was totally different from what Eliza was used to. She’d been a foster child in a small Mississippi town—no family, no background, no money. But her lack of background hadn’t stopped Stephen from proposing, or Adele from accepting her into the family with welcoming arms. Eliza’s childhood seemed distant—as if it had happened to someone else. Boston had been her home for the last ten years.

“Switch with someone like you did two weeks ago,” Stephen suggested.

“I can’t do that very often. That was for that special opening at the museum you wanted us to attend. I traded with Paul, but I can’t keep asking him. He has his schedule and I have mine. Once in a while maybe.” Didn’t Stephen realize that many people came to the restaurant solely because of her cooking?

“It would give us time together,” he said in that sexy Bostonian accent that still sounded exotic to her ear.

“I’ll see about switching Saturday night. Then I could get there Saturday morning, but I can’t switch two nights.” Eliza was firm.

“Deal. I’ll take what I can get. We’re leaving Friday afternoon and will return Monday morning. Shall I drive back and pick you up?”

“No, I’ll get there on my own.”

“I’ll drive Mother’s car and leave you mine. That way you and I can come back together.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“And maybe while we’re there, we can discuss setting a date for the wedding,” Stephen suggested.

“We’ll see.” Eliza hated to feel pressured, but she was too tired to argue tonight. “I’ve got to get out of my wet clothes. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Her bare feet felt like blocks of ice. She had plonked the bag of food on the counter beside the mail. Thankfully the soggy paper sack had held up. She didn’t know what she would have done if she’d dropped her dinner in some puddle blocks from home. She popped the meal into the oven, set on a low heat, and headed for the bedroom and some warm clothes.

A quick hot shower and sweats, that’s what she wanted. That, plus peace and quiet for at least twelve hours!

Ten minutes later she was toasty warm in fleece sweats and thick socks. Her hair was slightly damp, but she hadn’t wanted to spend a lot of time drying it. She was starved!

Passing through the living room, she picked up the ruined umbrella and stuffed it in the trash. She ran a practiced eye around the room. It was tidy. Immaculate, actually. Just the way she liked it.

She returned to the kitchen to eat a late dinner. People sometimes teased her about being a neatnik, a control freak. But she liked order. She felt able to cope with anything as long as there was a certain amount of harmony in her life. In Eliza’s mind, order equaled harmony.

Sitting at the breakfast bar, she riffled through the mail as she ate the warmed roasted squab. She could almost feel the storm inside the eighth-floor apartment. Rain sheeted down her windows, the wind howled. She pitied anyone still out in the tempest.

Once she’d finished eating, she took her hot tea and the newspaper that had come in the mail and went to sit in her cozy chair in the living area. The Maraville Bugle arrived weekly—a hometown paper for a woman who hadn’t been to Mississippi in ten years.

Boston had been her home since her second set of foster parents had moved to the city a couple of years after she’d graduated from high school. While Eliza was not technically a part of their family, they’d invited her along and she’d gone. After high school she’d tried a semester of college, but it wasn’t what she’d wanted. She had felt restless and had had no direction, so had been happy to move east. She’d lived with the Johnsons until they’d been transferred to California six years ago. Eliza still missed Dottie and Al and kept in touch.

A couple of years ago, before she’d met Stephen, Eliza had given in to a bout of nostalgia and had begun a subscription to the weekly paper from her hometown in a vain hope of feeling connected to her past.

At first, it had been strange reading about places and people she remembered but hadn’t seen in so many years. But as the months went by, she began to feel a tenuous connection. She had even taken a chance and contacted her former foster mother, Maddie Oglethorpe. Maddie’s house in Maraville was the closest thing to a real home Eliza had ever had.

She thought about the old Victorian house on Poppin Hill, in her mind envisioning a weathered clapboard building standing in lonely splendor atop a small knoll on the outskirts of the sleepy southern town.

For a moment a kaleidoscope of images flooded her mind. The shock of losing her mother when she’d been only four. The uncertainty and fear when she’d suddenly been thrust into the foster home on Poppin Hill to live with strangers. People often said young children didn’t remember much, but she recalled every day at Maddie’s with her foster sisters.

April, Jo and Eliza. Wild girls with no place else to go, they’d carried chips on their shoulders the size of elm trees as they’d grown into rebellious teenagers. But they had ended up closer than sisters. There had been laughter and shared confidences, plans and dreams.

Jo had dealt with her anger at the world by challenging authority every chance she got. April had seemed vain and conceited to those around her, but underneath was a girl desperate to know her family. Eliza’s own insecurity had been covered by a brash bravado and clinging dependence. A jumble of images from those days—poignant, funny, bleak—flashed through Eliza’s mind now.

Their lives together had ended abruptly when Eliza was sixteen. In the space of two days, the world as she’d known it had changed. Nothing had ever been the same.

She shook off her somber mood and scanned the front page. Opening up the paper, she stopped in surprise. There in a sidebar column on page two was a report of Maddie Oglethorpe’s stroke and hospitalization.

For a moment, emotions swelled in Eliza. She felt like the uncertain sixteen-year-old she had been all those years ago—alone, adrift, afraid—after being forced from Maddie’s home. The last twelve years might never have been. She was transported back in time to the last day she’d seen her foster mother.

The older woman had seemed indomitable. She had been the strength of that household, caring for the girls, making ends meet on a limited income and the small stipend from Social Services.

Eliza had written to her frequently since that initial contact two years ago, sending her cards at Christmas, even calling her a couple of times to chat on the phone. They’d made tentative plans more than once about getting together, but Eliza hadn’t gone back to Mississippi and Maddie hadn’t come to Boston.

The news of her stroke shocked Eliza. She couldn’t imagine Maddie sick at all, much less gravely ill.

Checking the date, she saw the paper was only three days old.

She picked up the phone and dialed Information to find the number for the Maraville hospital. It was now after midnight, but a hospital was staffed twenty-four hours. There would be someone on duty who could give her an update on Maddie’s condition.

Several frustrating moments later she hung up. No one would give her any information. She was not a relative. Maddie didn’t have any relatives after her father had died. That had been one reason she’d opened her home to foster children in need of family.

There had to be someone in town who could find out how Maddie was and let Eliza know.

The first name that came to mind was Cade Bennett’s. The old hurt resurfaced. Eliza knew he wouldn’t give her the time of day. Not after those hateful words he’d said to her that last day in Maraville.

If April or Jo were still in town, she could have called one of them. The only person she could come up with was Edith Harper, Maddie’s best friend. But when she called Information, there was no number listed for her. Was her phone unlisted? Surely Maddie would have written if anything had happened to Edith.

Dammit, who could she call?

Not for the first time, Eliza felt the aching loss of her best friends. Sisters united, they’d called themselves. She rubbed the small scar on the tip of her index finger. She remembered the day the three girls had pledged undying friendship and sisterhood. Blood sisters.

It had been Jo’s idea. They had been thirteen at the time. Three girls with no family to call their own banding together. Eliza’s parents were dead. Jo’s mother was too caught up in drugs and abusive men to care about her only child. April’s parents were unknown.

To solidify their bond, they had each cut a fingertip and mingled their blood. What a mess they’d made, cutting deeper than necessary. Blood had spattered their clothes and the bedspread. Maddie had been upset with the mess they’d made, but the bond had never wavered until the day they were sent to different foster homes throughout the state of Mississippi.

It was all because of the accusations Jo had made. Angry at Maddie for reasons Eliza never knew, Jo had accused their foster mother of beating her, and she’d had the injuries to prove it. Social Services had stepped in immediately after the sheriff had interviewed Eliza and April the next morning, swiftly taking each of the girls from Maddie’s home and placing them elsewhere.

By the time her junior class in Maraville had held its prom that spring, Eliza had been living in Biloxi with the Johnson family. She never knew where April and Jo had been sent. In the twelve years that had followed, she had not heard from either of them. Nor, as far as she knew, had Maddie. She’d asked in earlier letters, but Maddie had said neither had ever contacted her.

Losing touch with Jo and April had been devastating. Eliza had tried to find them but ran into brick walls at every turn. She’d kept to herself at her new school and was grateful her second set of foster parents had invited her to remain with them when she’d turned eighteen. They had helped her far more than she’d deserved.

It wasn’t until she’d left Maraville that Eliza realized how much living with the other girls meant to her. Maddie, too, though at the time Eliza had often thought her rules excessive. As time passed, however, she recalled happy memories. Laughter as well as tears.

The three girls had made plans to go to college together, to get a large apartment in New Orleans. They’d been united in their desire to leave Maraville and take their chances in the world.

Homesickness grabbed hold of Eliza, surprising her. She suddenly yearned to see April and Jo with a fierceness that startled her. How could they have let the years go by without finding each other? Had April or Jo learned of Maddie’s stroke? Would either of them consider returning to Maraville?

Eliza sat on the sofa for long moments, lost in memories and indecision. But the idea forming in her mind grew stronger the more she thought about it. She had not left town under the best of circumstances. But time healed old wounds. And she owed Maddie.

She could make a quick visit. See Maddie. Reassure herself her former foster mother was going to recover.

Eliza rose and went to the window. The rain continued its assault. The Charles River glittered in the distance, light reflecting from the choppy surface. The asphalt below gleamed beneath the streetlights. The few cars on the road splashed through the puddles, coating the sidewalks with their spray.

She leaned her forehead against the cold pane. She wanted to go back. She wished she could see the other girls, discover what they’d done with their lives. Maybe she could recapture that ephemeral feeling of family she’d had so long ago.

Her fear for Maddie grew. What if she didn’t recover? What if the stroke put an end to the Maddie she knew? Eliza was filled with a sense of impending doom. She had to get to Mississippi. She’d let things go far too long without making a real attempt to reconnect with Maddie and revisit her childhood home. It was too bad it had taken a tragedy to prompt the thought.

Eliza had spent so many years alone. It was one thing to vow to remain aloof, to protect her heart from further bruising, but the reality had led to a solitary existence. She had made a mistake as a teenager and it had left her wary of getting close to anyone—afraid of hurting and of being hurt herself.

Maddie had done her best for her girls. Eliza appreciated her even more now that she was on her own. She couldn’t imagine taking in three young girls and raising them alone as Maddie had done.

Was this the end? Was Maddie alone in the hospital, living her last few days with no one to visit, to talk to her, to love her?

Eliza couldn’t allow that. It was said that you could never go home again. But for her entire childhood, Maddie had given Eliza her best. She was the only mother Eliza remembered. And now she needed Eliza.

What was she waiting for?

She flipped through the city directory and lifted up the phone and punched in the number of an airline.