A Quiet Strength Read Online Free PDF Page A

seemed to end up in some kind of confrontation.
    “I’m glad you came, Jenny. Please just … just come any time. You’re always welcome.”
    Jenny nodded silently, the only indication that she had any feelings whatsoever for her old friend.
    The train was chugging its way up beside the platform where they were standing, puffing steam and billowing smoke. Virginia saw small Mindy shut her eyes tightly against the noise and confusion, sucking her thumb more vigorously. She’s as attached to that thumb as her mother is to her cigarette , Virginia thought ruefully, turning to Jenny. She carried no luggage, another indication that her flight had been hurried and not pre-planned. She wished to give Jenny a warm hug but wasn’t sure how it would be received. She had no idea what to say. How to say it. She felt a wall had been solidly erected between them. “Take care,” she managed. It sounded so cold, distant.
    Jenny tossed down her latest cigarette and squashed it into the wooden platform with her smart leather boot. She nodded. “You, too. And if you decide to marry that guy—Jonathan—let me know. Okay?”
    “I don’t have your address.”
    Jenny shrugged. “Well, we might be moving before long, so I guess there isn’t much use giving it to you now.”
    She began to move toward the waiting train, and the silent little Mindy fell into step just at her heels.
    Virginia moved along with her. “Keep in touch,” she called above the noise of the train.
    She wasn’t sure if Jenny nodded in assent or not. Perhaps she was just shaking her once-auburn head of hair. A conductor reached down and swung little Mindy up the train steps, and Jenny followed behind. She did not even turn around for one last wave.

CHAPTER  3
    I t seems so strange that she would just drop in like that and leave again so quickly.” At the supper table, Belinda was still puzzling over Jenny’s surprise appearance and then disappearance. “I thought she would be staying with us for a few days.”
    “She had no luggage,” observed Virginia.
    “Nothing?” put in her father.
    “Nothing.”
    “You mean she took the train all the way from … wherever she is … and came up here for a day? No luggage? Not even for her little girl?” asked Francine, sounding as mystified by it all as the rest of the family.
    “Nothing,” said Virginia again.
    “Doesn’t sound like she planned very well,” Francine noted with youthful wisdom.
    “I don’t think the trip was planned at all,” Virginia responded, concern edging her voice.
    “You mean she just up and took the train?”
    “Didn’t she tell you anything , Virginia? I had promised Clara to help her with some sewing. But I certainly could have changed those plans if I’d known Jenny would not be with us for at least a few days.”
    “I don’t think it would have made much difference. She didn’t feel like talking.”
    “Well, that’s a switch,” remarked Drew with a fatherly smile. They all remembered the old Jenny and her nonstop chatter around the family table.
    “She didn’t say anything?” Belinda probed.
    “Well …” began Virginia reluctantly, “she did say that she and her husband—Hayden, she called him—had a tiff. A ‘tiff,’ she called it. But I …” Virginia paused, wondering how much she should say. “I noticed that she had a … a bruise on her cheek. She had tried to hide it with makeup, but it still showed.”
    All eyes were fully on Virginia’s face. “Oh my!” said Belinda, hand to her mouth. “The poor girl.”
    “May be only jumping to conclusions,” hastily put in Virginia. “She could have bumped a door. Anything. But she did seem a bit self-conscious about it.”
    “Oh my,” said Belinda again. “Poor Jenny. I should have—”
    “Mama, there was nothing you could have done. Nothing any of us can do unless she lets us. We’ll have to keep praying for her—and for us, that we’ll know what …” She drifted to a stop.
    “Our Jenny