Her mother sighed her relief. “I’m really not so prudish as all that, really. It’s just… You are my little girl, you know, and always will be, no matter how old you get. Or how experienced. Now tell me, what is it you think I can help you with?”
Sarah took a moment to gather her thoughts and re-phrase them in a way that would least offend her mother. “I’m sure you know women who, after they reach a certain age, no longer fulfill their marital obligations to their husbands.”
Her mother nodded, determined not to take offense. “Many women find those duties… unpleasant,” she decided after some thought. “Or even uncomfortable. And others simply decide they don’t want any more children, and abstaining from… from intimacy is the only sure way to avoid having them.”
“Mrs. VanDamm said she hadn’t had relations with her husband since Mina was born,” Sarah reminded her. “If that’s true, where did Alicia come from?”
“Perhaps she was confused,” her mother suggested. “She would have been in her early thirties when Alicia was born. She married very young, if I recall. Conceiving Alicia so long after Mina would have been embarrassing. Indeed, I remember how surprised we all were at the time…”
“What is it?” Sarah asked when her mother’s voice trailed off. “What are you thinking?”
Her mother was staring at something across the room but not really seeing it, because her thoughts were far away. “I was just remembering what people were saying then. We all thought… I mean, when there were no other children after Mina and from what Francisca said… I believe we thought that what she told you was the truth, that she had stopped…” She gave Sarah a beseeching glance.
“Sharing her husband’s bed?” Sarah offered.
“Yes,” her mother agreed gratefully. “And she seemed so smug when she told us she was expecting another child, as if she were…” She shrugged helplessly, once again at a loss for words.
“As if she were what?” Sarah prodded. “Guilty, perhaps? Do you think she’d taken a lover, and that’s how-?”
“Heavens, no!” her mother scoffed. “Francisca was much too dull to even think of something like that. No, it was more as if she were sharing a delicious secret with us. She was delighted with herself and with us for being surprised. She thoroughly enjoyed all the attention she received from it, which is why I was surprised when she withdrew to the country shortly afterward. We didn’t see her again until after Alicia was born.”
“I remember that,” Sarah said. “Mina went with her. They took her out of school so she could be company for her mother during her confinement. Mina was terribly angry about it at the time. I thought she was just embarrassed about her mother having a baby, and that perhaps she was a little jealous, too. She always resented Alicia, and I guess that’s why.”
“How odd,” her mother said, considering.
“Do you think so? I’d expect her to be resentful of the new baby who got all the attention, especially since she was just approaching womanhood herself. And for her parents to have produced offspring at that stage in their lives must have been mortifying to a girl her age.”
“No, I mean how odd they took Mina out of school and sent her to the country with Francisca. You said Mina resented the new baby, and in any case, I’d think they’d want to shield a girl of that age from the… the realities of her mother’s condition.”
It took Sarah a moment to understand what her mother meant, and when she did, she had to agree. In a society where pregnancy was barely acknowledged, it seemed unlikely a family would force their adolescent daughter to confront the reality of it at close quarters when she could have been left at school and remained ignorant.
“What could they have been thinking?” she asked aloud. “Could they have been trying to protect Mina from teasing or from being asked embarrassing questions?”
Her mother looked away, as if unwilling to meet Sarah’s gaze.
“You know something, don’t you?” Sarah asked.
Her mother bit her lip and sighed. “Not really, but I can think of one possible explanation, although it does no one credit, not even me.”
“Mother, what are you talking about?”
Mrs. Decker sighed again. “I feel like the lowest gossip to even think such a thing, but it wouldn’t be the first time it happened.” Her mother turned back to her, her eyes bleak with despair and remembered loss. “We sent Maggie to France when it happened to us, or at least we tried to.”
As Sarah met her mother’s tortured gaze, all the awful memories came flooding back. Maggie angry and defiant, refusing to bend to her father’s will, refusing to be hidden away until her baby was born. Maggie, pale and dying, making Sarah promise to take care of the child who was already dead. The pain of her loss was still raw, and she saw her mother felt it, too. Her eyes had filled with tears, and she held herself stiffly, as if the slightest movement might shatter her.
That was when the question formed in Sarah’s mind, the one she’d never allowed herself to consider, the one she would never have dared to ask all those years ago. “What would you have done with Maggie’s child if she’d gone to France the way you’d planned?”
Even though Mrs. Decker resolutely refused to blink, still one tear escaped and cascaded down her pale cheek. “I wish I had thought…” she whispered, her voice ragged with the agony of her losses.
“You wish you had thought what?” Sarah demanded, clutching tight to her fury because she knew she’d never be able to endure the pain if she allowed herself to feel it.
“I wish I had thought to pretend I was with child myself. I could have gone with her. We could have brought the baby back and…”
“And pretended it was our baby sister,” Sarah said, finishing the thought her mother couldn’t.
Her mother covered her mouth to hold back the cry of anguish propriety forbade her to utter.
Sarah felt as if someone had clawed her heart out. Maggie, Maggie, Maggie. Was that what had driven her to flee? The thought of having her child torn from her, taken away, never to be seen again? No wonder she had been so desperate. Sarah had blamed it on passion, but she hadn’t understood that Maggie had made the only choice she could if she wanted to keep her child.
Mrs. Decker drew a ragged breath and turned back to Sarah. “I would have done it. I would have done anything to save her. You must believe that, Sarah.”
Anything except let her marry the man she loved, Sarah thought, but she didn’t say it. Recriminations wouldn’t bring Maggie back, and in all fairness, her mother hadn’t been the one who decided what would become of Maggie and her child. Someday she would have to face the person who had, but not today. Today, she had to comfort her mother and herself.
“I believe you, Mother. Any woman would, to protect her child.”
Even a woman as shallow and self-centered as Francisca VanDamm, she realized as she watched her mother’s lovely face crumble beneath the weight of her grief.
FRANK DOVE FOR the body, grabbing the dangling legs and lifting, relieving the pressure of the rope around the neck, but even as he did so, he knew he was too late. The body was already stiffening, and he could feel the chill of death even through the man’s clothes. After a moment, he let go and stepped back in defeat, looking up into the face of death.
Harvey had not gone peacefully. Frank could see the scratch marks on his throat where he had clawed at it while it choked the life out of him. The reaction was instinctive, no matter how much someone might want to die. No matter that he had been despondent enough to make a noose and tie it securely and mount the stool and slip the rope around his neck. Still, when the stool tipped over and the rope cut into the living flesh, the will to live overtook the will to die for at least a few seconds, no matter how futile the effort.