In Search of a Memory (Truly Yours Digital Editions) (2 page)

Angel felt as if she’d been sucked into a void; she could scarcely think. Could barely believe what Rosemary said was true. Faye’s uncharacteristic behavior seemed to make it all the more horribly real and not some hurtful prank for which Rosemary was known.

“Come upstairs,” Rosemary invited with another hateful smirk. “The albums don’t lie.”

Dread made Angel hold back.

“What?” Rosemary taunted. “Afraid to see the truth with your own eyes? You can spout it about everyone else, but when it’s turned around on you, you run away like a coward!”

Angel clamped her lips and straightened her spine, refusing to sink to the stairs in tearful self-pity, as Rosemary no doubt wished. It had been years since she’d shed a tear. She had learned at a young age that crying never helped and often made things worse.

“Very well,” she agreed. “Lead the way, Cousin.”

Faye eyed Angel with unease while Rosemary regarded her in triumph.

Determined not to bolt, Angel directed her attention to the stairs, trying to ignore her cousins, who might not be cousins at all; they certainly had never treated her as family, though Faye at least seemed to have a conscience. Angel felt surprised her legs could move—they’d begun to tremble so—but she led the sisters to their mother’s bedroom. Momentary unease made her hang back on the threshold while they brushed past.

As a child, she’d been forbidden to enter her aunt’s personal domain, and not since Rosemary’s malicious trick in childhood to lure Angel there and lock her inside to get her in trouble had she ever attempted it. But the sight of the worn leather album her cousin pulled from beneath the bed captured her curiosity… and released a wave of foreboding.

Against her better judgment, she moved closer.

Rosemary opened the album’s wide pages. A letter fell to the floor. Angel caught the town’s name—Coventry—before Faye snatched it up and held it to her breast, as if the envelope contained secret government documents. In the album, newspaper clippings had been pasted on the heavy black pages, along with old photographs.

Rosemary thrust the book under Angel’s nose, her index finger pointing to a photograph. “There she is—your mother, Lila! Look and see if you don’t believe me. And the brat Uncle Bruce is holding must be you.”

With her heart pounding madly, Angel eyed the images, worn and faded from the years. The candid shot showed a group of carnival performers clustered near an erected tent; few acknowledged the camera. The little girl in the bald, heavyset strongman’s arms was one of three people posing. Her eyes and smile sparkled as she tilted her head and modeled for whoever held the camera. Surely that couldn’t be her! The dark-haired child with the long, tight ringlets seemed much too lighthearted and happy to be Angel.

Stunned, she tore her gaze from the ebullient child and stared at the solemn, dark-haired woman standing at the man’s elbow. Young and slender, she wore a veil, Arabian style, hooked across her nose and extending over the lower part of her face. Huge dark eyes, shaped like Angel’s, were the only feature clearly seen.

“What is the meaning of this?”

At their mother’s forbidding words, Faye scrambled off the bed. Rosemary dropped the book. Numb from so many revelations in so short a time, Angel didn’t jump in guilty shock like the others, didn’t do anything but blink and stare.

A scowl darkened Aunt Genevieve’s features. Her gaze dropped to the open album on the floor. Immediately her snapping dark eyes lifted and ensnared Angel’s.

“M–mother,” Rosemary gasped, “we didn’t expect you back so soon.”

“The meeting ended early.” Her eyes glittered. “Girls, go to your room. I’ll deal with you later.”

Angel snapped out of her trance and moved after them, also hoping for escape.

“Angelica, you will remain. I must speak with you.”

With a heart that furiously pounded and sank deeper each moment that passed, Angel stood, rooted, and awaited her fate.

Five long hours later, when all was dark and the occupants of the house lay sleeping, Angel tiptoed downstairs, clutching a train case and one bigger satchel—all she could carry with all she owned in the world. In the larger case rested her uncle’s album, which her aunt practically shoved at her when Angel quietly asked if she might look at it. She felt no remorse in taking the album, one of three, since it contained only clippings of her mother and husband and their life at the carnival. As much as she hated Angel’s mother, Aunt Genevieve would have no wish to keep the memento and likely had forgotten she owned it.

All that Rosemary said was true; Aunt Genevieve verified it in cutting, concise words. Equally distressing, her aunt informed Angel that she owed it to her to marry the man of her choosing, and her aunt’s choice made Angel shiver with revulsion: Benjamin Crane, one of the meanest, oldest, and richest misers in all of Lanville, who’d often leered at Angel. According to her aunt, Angel, being nameless, would never make a better match or find another man who’d want her, and Angel should consider it an honor to be presented with such an “auspicious opportunity.” Auspicious for her aunt, maybe, but not for Angel. Her aunt went on to say that the Depression had hit all of them hard, but she’d provided for Angel, who should consider herself fortunate not to have been kicked out on the street to fend for herself.

Except for her companionship with the friendly cook, Nettie, Angel almost wished her aunt had kicked her out. She certainly wouldn’t marry Mr. Crane, old enough to be her grandfather, and felt a bit like Cinderella escaping her evil stepmother and wicked stepsisters. But no glass slippers existed for her, no magical ball to attend, and certainly no prince. Only the distant memory of a forgotten mother urged her down the silent road, along with the faintest recollection of her sweet scent and the gentle wisps of a song, perhaps an old lullaby, crooned in a voice that soothed Angel. The fleeting memory visited her both awake and asleep, and Angel reasoned any woman with such a voice couldn’t be the vindictive monster her aunt described.

She wasn’t sure how she felt to have a mother people thought of as a traveling carnival oddity, but above all else, she wished to find her. Even the ambiguity of her quest was preferable to the certainty of her future if she stayed in Lanville. Perhaps she might learn what it felt like to be happy like the little girl in the picture.

Her emotions dictated every action; reason had long fled. She refused to think beyond the flicker of hope that her mother might want to know her, that somehow her absence had all been a dreadful mistake.

The streets remained eerily quiet; not even a dog barked. Angel kept close to the elm trees, should the need to duck behind one for cover present itself. The neighbors thought highly of her aunt, who involved herself in charitable endeavors, and would no doubt report Angel’s whereabouts should they peek through their curtains and see her skulking in the night with her luggage.

The windows of the houses remained dark, quiet. Yet her heart raced with each sudden snap and creak, sure she would soon be caught.

How much time elapsed before she reached the train depot, Angel didn’t know. Her feet in her pumps hurt dreadfully, her legs, almost-numb, throbbed, and her stockings did little to keep out the chill night air. A late March wind blew sharp and cold beneath her calf-length skirt, and she pulled her coat closer beneath her chin as she approached the ticket window and took a place in line.

“A one-way ticket to Coventry, Connecticut, please,” she informed the bespectacled man when her turn came, mentioning the town she’d seen on the envelope before Faye grabbed it.

“Certainly, miss. That’ll be three dollars.”

“So much?” she asked, her hopes plummeting. “I’m only going one way.”

“That’ll still be three dollars.”

“Thank you, but… I—I’ve changed my mind.”

Crestfallen, she moved away. The next gentleman in line quickly stepped up and took her place at the window before the idea surfaced to ask the stationmaster where two dollars and twenty-five cents would take her. Eyeing the line that had grown by half, Angel decided to continue down the platform. She should have taken a bus. She’d had no idea traveling by train would cost more than she possessed, the last of her earnings from working at the soda fountain before Mr. Hanson needed to dismiss her, unable to continue paying her wages. To her knowledge, which tonight had proven sadly deficient, she’d never taken a train; according to the picture in the album, she had. The photograph showed she had actually lived on one.

Too weary to walk even half a block more, she mulled over what to do. She couldn’t return to her aunt’s home and be forced to marry Benjamin Crane. Angel’s life would then be over….

The shrill call of a train whistle captured her absorbed attention. Without really giving the linked cars conscious thought, she stared at the long line of them on the nearest track.

“Mommy,” she heard a little boy ask the woman holding his hand. “Is Coventry very far? How long till we get there? Will we be there soon?”

“Yes, Coventry is very far, Timmy, and we will get there when we get there. Hush now.”

Angel watched mother and son move up the metal stairs of the car nearest her. A porter took their bulky case, helping the heavyset woman into the confined area. He looked toward Angel for a fearful heartbeat, and she wondered if he could read her mind. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. Her face went warm.

Quickly she averted her gaze down the length of the platform, pretending to look for someone. After a moment she allowed her attention to return and noted with relief the trio had disappeared inside the train. Through a line of filthy windows, Angel watched their progress down the aisle.

The train began to move. Each entrance glided past. Her heart began to race.

Did she dare?

An image of Nettie’s disapproving features filled Angel’s mind, but she was desperate. And besides, she didn’t have that far to go.

Before the train trundled past, Angel threw her largest case up into one of the last entrances—grateful fate was at least kind enough that the case didn’t rebound and spill onto the platform. Running to catch up, she barely jumped aboard herself, using one hand to grab the rail.

She made it!

She took a deep, shaky breath. Once she regained her equilibrium and her satchel, she approached the railcar on her right, wishing to get as far as possible from the shrewd porter and find somewhere to hide.

The door flew inward beneath her grip.

She inhaled a startled gasp as both the experience and the abrupt motion of the train’s increasing speed made her stumble forward. A man’s strong hand grabbed her arm to steady her, and for the second time that day, she dazedly blinked up into the enigmatic eyes of the tall, dark stranger who’d visited her aunt’s home.

Roland stared into a pair of bewitching eyes, as dark a blue gray as the Atlantic at dusk. It took him a moment to realize where he’d seen such eyes, and the jolt made him go stock-still.

“You,” he said at the same moment her lips silently formed the word.

A brown hat was smashed down over thick, shoulder-length hair the color of sable, curly wisps blew into her face, and the ruffled edge of a scarf wrapped around her neck covered much of her jawline. But he couldn’t mistake those rich, deep eyes.

“Did you follow me?” he asked in puzzled amusement. He assumed she hoped for either the opportunity of a handout or the prospect of a good time.

“F–follow you?” she spluttered. “Of course not! I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing.”

“No need to go berserk. It was only a question.”

The dame’s icy courtesy and frosty smiles from that afternoon should have been enough to give him an account of her feelings for his company. She frowned, clearly unhappy to see him again. The cold air from the train in motion whipped through the opening between railcars. With his hand still closed around her arm, he pulled her inside and slammed the door shut behind them.

His intention of securing a newspaper no longer important, Roland turned to his unexpected guest. With a quick appraisal, he noted her tousled, windblown appearance and breathless manner, as if she’d run a long distance to make it to the train on time. Two spots of red colored high cheekbones belonging to a flawless face—what he could see of it—and she gripped the luggage handles in tight, gloved fists. A real doll, chinalike in appearance. But a hint of panic made her wide eyes even bigger, her full lips drawn and tense, and he wondered if she might lash out at him with her bags if he were to take a step closer.