An Incomplete Revenge Read Online Free PDF Page B

comments were drawn from an understanding of what it was to be different, treated with suspicion, and regarded with unease, due as much to her work as to her background.
    Priscilla looked at Maisie again. “Actually, while I’m on the boil here, there’s something else I wanted to talk about too—and not to do with the boys. It’s to do with you.”
    “Me? Whatever are you talking about?” Maisie noticed the change in her friend’s demeanor, a squaring of the shoulders, a slight leaning back, as if she was both preparing to break bad news and trying to draw herself apart from the outcome.
    “I made a few telephone calls to various friends before coming down to the bar. One of those friends was Margaret Lynch.”
    Maisie pressed her lips together and found herself mirroring Priscilla’s position. Yes, Priscilla needed to garner strength to broach the subject with me , thought Maisie, as much as I need backbone to hear what she has to say . The Honorable Margaret Lynch was the mother of her beloved Simon, who had been in a special clinic in Richmond since the war, his mind no more than an empty shell following an attack on the casualty clearing station where they had been working together. Maisie was wounded alongside him, though one of her scars was hidden by her hair. The others, no longer aching and livid, remained incarcerated in her soul.
    “Mrs. Lynch?”
    “She wants to see you. You’ve managed to avoid seeing her for years—and she you. It was all too much for you both to bear, wasn’t it? But I think it’s her age now, and . . .”
    “And what?”
    “Simon is failing. God only knows what’s kept him alive since the war. But now the doctors are seeing changes for the first time in eons, and they think it’s only a matter of time.”
    “Oh . . . I . . . Priscilla, I only saw him two weeks ago. Nothing had changed; I looked at him carefully. I was a nurse. . . . I saw nothing to suggest—”
    “That was two weeks ago.” She reached out and took her friend’s hands in her own. “I realize you think me light, Maisie, but hear what I have to say: You can’t hold on forever. Yes, I know you didn’t visit for a long, long time—Margaret understands completely—but you’ve gone to the hospital religiously for two years now, to see a man who neither recognizes you nor withwhom you can have a conversation. A man who is not alive, except to breathe and take food—just.” She rubbed Maisie’s hands as she spoke. “See Margaret soon, Maisie. She doesn’t think ill of you, you know. I concede you are usually the clever one who understands what people are really thinking, but I’m not above the odd bit of empathy myself. She needs to know someone who loves her son as much as she loves him herself. You were the last person to speak to him before he was lost to us all. You are the connection between Simon then and now. Simply being in contact with you will help her—help you both—to weather his passing.”
    “His passing? Priscilla, I—”
    “Maisie. Look at me. He’s dying. There’s no clean or kind way to say it. Simon is dying . His father is dead; his mother is alone. You are the only other person who visits, and you have burned a torch for him since the evening you met, even though you have courted other men. And much as she might have wanted better—” Priscilla closed her eyes for just a second and then began to plead. “I . . . oh, God, I didn’t mean to say that, Maisie. I know how that must have sounded. What I meant was—”
    But Maisie was already on her feet, her stance made more bold by the red dress and her dark eyes as she looked down at Priscilla, who remained seated. “She accepted me into her house because it was wartime. She was kind, courteous, but don’t you think I knew that at any other time my background would have been a point of contention in the family? What would have happened at war’s end, eh, Priscilla? I could never accept Simon’s proposal because I