to let Tracy see her anger. “I thought she was coming into the library with the rest of us.”
“Well, if she’s not there, then obviously she didn’t, did she?” Tracy countered.
“Have you seen her?”
“No.”
“Well, if you do see her, will you tell her I’m looking for her?”
Tracy’s eyes narrowed, and her lips curled in what should have been a smile, but wasn’t. “Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t,” she said. Then she started up the stairs, disappearing from Carolyn’s sight.
Ignore it, Carolyn told herself. She’s not used to you yet, and she’s not used to Beth, and you have to give her time. Then, guiltily, she found herself wishing that it were not June, and that Tracy were not home for the summer. It had been bad enough at Christmas, when she and Phillip had gotten married, and Tracy had refused to speak to her at all, and worse during the spring break, when Tracy had furiously demanded that she and Beth leave, telling them they had no place in this house. Tracy had been careful to deliver her ultimatum when her father wasn’t around, and Carolyn had finally decided not to tell Phillip about the incident at all. But now the girl was home for the summer, and though there had been no major scenes yet, Carolyn could feel one building. The only question, she was sure, was when Tracy’s anger at her father’s second marriage would boil over once more. She hoped that when it did, she would bear the brunt of it, not Beth. Beth, she knew, was having a hard enough time of it already. Sighing, she started up the stairs. Perhaps, as she often did, Beth had retreated to her room.
As she reached the second floor, the imperious voice of her mother-in-law stopped her.
“Carolyn? Where are you going?”
Carolyn turned, and fleetingly wondered how Abigail Sturgess had managed to materialize so suddenly. But there she stood, her ebony cane gripped firmly in her right hand, her head tipped back as she surveyed Carolyn with her blue eyes—the same eyes she had passed on to her son and her granddaughter.
Except that Phillip’s eyes were as warm as a tropical sea.
Abigail’s and Tracy’s were chipped from ice.
And now, as they were so often, those eyes were fixed disapprovingly on Carolyn.
“I was just looking for Beth, Abigail,” Carolyn replied.
Abigail offered her a wintry smile. “I’m sure Beth is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. And a good hostess doesn’t leave her guests by themselves, does she? Come. There are some people with whom I wish you to speak.”
Carolyn hesitated, then, with a quick glance up the stairs, followed Abigail back to the library.
No one but Abigail seemed to have noticed that she had left.
No one but Phillip, who, spotting her from his position next to the fireplace, offered her a smile.
Suddenly she felt better, felt that perhaps, after all, she did belong here. At least Phillip seemed to think she did.
Alan Rogers leaned back in his desk chair and unconsciously ran his hand through the unruly mop of black hair that never, no matter how hard he tried, seemed to stay under control. He glanced out the window; the rain seemed finally to have stopped, at least for a while. He couldn’t help smiling to himself as he pictured the scene that must have been going on up at the Sturgesses’ an hour ago.
All of them dressed in black, standing in the rain, but regally ignoring it while they finally put the old bastard to rest.
If Conrad Sturgess would ever rest in peace. Alan Rogers sincerely hoped he wouldn’t.
Perhaps, he thought, he should have gone to the burial. No one, after all, would have told him to leave. That wasn’t their way. They would simply have looked down their patrician noses at him, and done their best to let him know, subtly, of course, that he wasn’t wanted there.
And if it hadn’t been for Beth, he might have done just that, and the hell with Carolyn.
She would have been furious with him, naturally, but that wouldn’t really have bothered him at all. After all these years, he was used to Carolyn’s fury. Indeed, sometimes he wasn’t sure he could remember a time when she had not been furious with him.
There must have been a time, though, when they had loved each other. Maybe the first couple of years of their marriage, before Carolyn’s ambitions for him had taken over their lives. Alan had been a carpenter and