Page 102

"I have a very important meeting with the directors of an equity group tomorrow morning. I won't be there."

"You've got to be there." I said sharply.

"What? I've got to be at the funeral of my mother's chauffeur instead of attending an important business meeting?" She laughed. "Hardly." she said. She started to turn away.

I couldn't stand the thought of her belittling Jake. I wouldn't permit it.

"He's not just your mother's chauffeur, Wait!" I shouted with insistence.

"What is it?" she said impatiently. "I have important calls to make and I've wasted enough of this day already."

"Jake wasn't just your mother's chauffeur. Jake was your father," I said.

For a moment she didn't speak. Then she took a few steps back toward me and laughed.

"Are you mad? Is that a consequence of your being crippled, these distorted, ridiculous thoughts? My father-- Jake the family chauffeur?"

"He told me so himself. He and Grandmother Hudson were lovers and she got pregnant with you. That's why the man you thought was your father, treated Megan differently than he treated you. He knew,"

Her cold smile was replaced with the hardest look of anger and hate I had yet seen on the screen of her face. This venomous expression rose from some well of enmity that surely went as deep back in time as Cain. A veil of darkness fell across her as she stepped closer. She seemed to grow taller, her shoulders rising until she loomed above me like the angel of death about to pounce.

"How dare you distort things I've told you in confidence? How dare you create some disgusting, ridiculous tale of sin? Is it to cover your own guilt? Is that it? Do you hope that by doing this, the fingers of blame will no longer point at you?"

"No, of course not. I'm telling you what Jake told me and what you should have been told years and years ago. He was proud of you. Aunt Victoria, He often spoke of your strengths and accomplishments and--''

"Stop it!" she screamed. Her eyes shot daggers down at me as she slapped her palms over her ears so hard it had to have stung. "I won't listen to another syllable! If you should as much as dare to even suggest such a thing to anyone. I'll... I'll make you think that being in this chair was wonderful compared to what will follow."

"I don't care if you believe it," I said quietly. "But you should attend the funeral."

She just fumed for a moment. Then she lowered her hands from her ears and nodded.

"All this rebellion, this nonsense, it's his doing, the fortune hunter's." she said. "I'll see about that." She turned and started toward the front door.

"Austin has nothing to do with any of this," I shouted. 'Don't you even think of doing anything that would harm him. I'm warning you."

She didn't hesitate.

"Aunt Victoria. I'm warning you! Aunt Victoria!" I cried.

With firmness in her steps, she pounded down the hallway and out of the hou

se, slamming the front door behind her and leaving me shaking in my chair.

There weren't many people at Jake's funeral. Aside from the friends he had at the local tavern and a few old friends who knew him before he had left and enlisted in the navy, there was just Austin and myself and Mick Nelsen, the horse trainer who had helped me with Rain. At the cemetery Mick told me how much Jake had talked about me and how much he had loved and had admired me.

"I used to kid him and say you sure she ain't your daughter. Jake? He said no, but you were the closest he'd ever have to a daughter. He just loved the way you rode that horse and the way the horse took to you."

I asked him exactly where Rain was and he told me and assured me the horse was in good hands. I mused aloud that I might take a ride to see her someday and Mick promised he would call ahead for me and make the arrangements whenever I wanted, He stood beside us as we listened to the minister and then watched Jake's coffin being lowered, Afterward. Austin took me over to Grandmother Hudson's grave where I sat for quite a while. Austin waited at the van so I could have my private time. He hurried back when he saw my shoulders quaking from my heavy sobs.

"It's time to go, Rain," he said handing me his handkerchief.

I wiped my eyes, nodded and lay back, letting him do all the work wheeling me through the cemetery and into the van. Shortly afterward, he was wheeling me up the ramp and into the house. With Mrs. Bogart gone and no replacement hired yet, the long corridor and large rooms seemed even more empty and dark. Austin suggested we go out to dinner.

"That's something we haven't done vet,' he said. "Why don't you get dressed up and I'll put on a jacket and tie and we'll go to a really nice place I know. It's got a patio overlooking water. How's that sound?"

"Nice," I said smiling.

"Need any help getting ready?"