Beauty From Ashes Read Online Free PDF Page A

way.”
    Anne reached for the slender young woman, now at least two inches taller than her mother. “Pete, Pete, no! Don’t ever say a thing like that. Your father gave me enough joy and beauty and happiness to last me for the remainder of my days!”
    Without looking at her, Pete asked almost gently, “Then, why don’t you act like it? Oh, Mama, forgive me! Would you—would you mind if I put my arms around you?”
    “Have I ever minded that? Hold me, Pete. Please hold your complaining mother. I know she needs to be spanked, but hold her instead, will you?”
    With Pete’s strong arms around her, Anne wept again, but not for long this time. Another load had seemed to lift. In a way only Pete could have managed, her red-haired, tomboy daughter had brought Anne to her senses. Had forced her to face the bitterness to which she still clung. John and Annie and Belle and Mama were all dead.
    Paul Demere, with or without a valid 35 excuse, was married to another woman. He was now the father of this other woman’s child, as well as of little John Fraser Demere. There wasn’t one single thing Anne could do about any of it, so what choice did she have but to let go of her bitterness if she was not to go on scarring the valuable young lives of her own children. And Papa! No wonder she’d made the boat trip only once to Hopeton on the mainland, where her heartbroken father now lived with James’s family to comfort him. She had gone just once since her mother’s funeral back in April because she knew perfectly well that instead of comforting Papa the one time they’d been alone, she had demanded comfort of him.
    Was she truly beginning to shed the ugly skin of her self-pity as she’d thought? Or was that another selfish figment of her imagination?
    “Mama?”
    “Yes, dear.”
    “Wouldn’t you like to read the end of Mrs. Butler’s letter? You said you hadn’t finished it.”
    “That’s right, I haven’t. Your precious brother brought letters from Aunt Frances in Savannah and from Cousin Willy Maxwell
    too.” A weary smile played at the corners of her mouth as she looked down at the letters she still held. “I never knew myself to forget to read letters. Not ever before in my long life!” She handed them to Pete. “You read the end of Mrs. Butler’s and then Frances Anne’s, please.”
    Hesitating a little, Pete took the letters. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be alone to read them for yourself?”
    “I’m sure.”
    “All right, if you say so. Where did you stop reading Mrs. Butler’s letter?”
    “I’d only begun what’s on the back. Begin at the top. I know she’s allowed to live under the same roof with her husband and two little girls but is permitted only one hour a day with the children.”
    Pete snorted. “That’s one lady who should never have married!”
    “Just read, Pete. Don’t comment.”
    “All right.”
    “With all my heart, I hope to make my time with my girls one of laughter and beauty, but most days I fail. Oh, Anne, dear friend Anne,
    no matter how tragic your life, keep 37 your children uppermost in your mind and your heart. I cannot for the life of me, I cannot for the love of God in my heart, imagine that I could have done other than write of their plight and try to ease the pain and hardship of the dusky folk Pierce owns, but had there been another way to avoid quarreling with him, for the sake of my beloved girls, I would have tried. Do your best to live in the sheltering fold of that `amazing grace` we share in our mutual worship of the God who is love. By that grace, He will help you find a way to smile again—for John’s sake, for your own sake, and for the sake of your four remaining offspring. Don’t scar their minds as I fear I have caused the minds of my girls to be scarred. I will try to write more cheerfully when again I reach for your understanding heart.
    Your still devoted friend,
    Fanny Kemble Butler”
    After a long silence during which a cardinal