told him I’d go out with him next week,” she said. “And look! He gave me a present!”
Germaine took the handkerchief from Rebecca. She could see at a glance that although it was spotless and carefully pressed, it was very old. As she examined both the lace and the embroidery, she realized something else: not only was the work flawless, but it had all been done by hand. “It’s beautiful,” she pronounced, bringing a happy smile to Rebecca’s face. Then she smiled herself. “Mother will love it.”
Rebecca’s pleasure at Germaine’s compliment for the handkerchief instantly collapsed. “Your mother? But Oliver gave it to me.”
Germaine clucked her tongue as if chiding a child who was being deliberately dense. “But what would you do with it? You’d only lose it, or ruin it. A work of fine craftsmanship like this should be enjoyed by someone who can truly appreciate it. And I can’t think of anyone better than Mother.” She paused a moment, then: “Can you?”
Rebecca hesitated; she reminded herself of how kind Germaine and Clara Wagner had been to her. “No,” she said at last. “I’m sure she’ll love it as much as I did.”
As Germaine started up the stairs to present the beautiful handkerchief to her mother, Rebecca returned to the back of the house. First she would bring in the firewood, then she’d fix tea for Miss Clara.
And she would console herself with the memory of the look on Oliver’s face when he gave her the present she didn’t get to keep.
Germaine paused outside the door to her mother’s room, girding herself to face the woman whose only goal in life appeared to be to make her daughter’s life as miserable as her own. How long had it been since her mother had announced one morning that she could no longer walk? Fifteen years? Closer to twenty, Germaine suspected, though she’d long ago given up keeping track. After all, what was the point? Nothing was ever going to change until her mother had passed to her heavenly reward, and Clara Wagner was showing no signs of joining her Maker anytime in the near future.
Germaine had always suspected that nothing was wrong with her mother when Clara suddenly announced her status as an invalid; indeed, none of the many specialists Germaine had taken her mother to had been able to find any physiological cause for the woman’s paralysis. But Clara had insisted she could no longer move her legs, and by now it was undoubtedly true. Certainly her mother had grown smaller over the years, her whole skeleton seeming to shrink as her body adapted to the cramped contours of the wheelchair. Her muscles had quickly atrophied from lack of exercise, her legs turning into useless sticks. The pounds had dropped from her once stocky frame, and Germaine was sure she no longer weighed even a hundred pounds. Her eyes had sunk deep into their sockets, and her skin hung in wrinkled folds from her cheeks and arms. But the strength of Clara’s voice had never failed her over the years, nor had her will to dominate everything—and everyone—around her.
Most of all, Germaine.
The years had ground slowly by as Germaine waited on her invalid mother. She prepared her meals and kept her bathed. At first, when she’d still believed that Clara would either recover or quickly die, she tried to keep her entertained as well. She’d gotten her to movies and concerts, even taken her on trips. But it had never been good enough. There was something wrong with everything they did and every place they went. After a while, when it became clear that Clara was neither on the verge of recovery nor hovering on the doorstep of death, Germaine had given up. It was no longer worth the effort to try to cajole and plead and lift and push her mother into activities that Clara showed no sign of appreciating. Her father had left just enough money to keep up the house, and Germaine’s paycheck, while not generous, yielded just enough for her to hire a part-time cleaning girl, giving her at least a partial respite from her mother’s complaints each day.
But every day when Germaine came home from the library, Clara demanded to know what she had brought her, like a spoiled child asking for candy.
Well, today she had something to offer, even if it was only the little gift that Oliver Metcalf had given to Rebecca.
She would have to do something about that situation. When the