Good Intentions Read Online Free PDF

rhymes with beanie—
not
Renée, rhymes with day.”)
    “You were driving very fast, very recklessly …” Debbie continued, unaware of Renee’s inner dialogue. “Actually,” she continued, “you weren’t the one driving. It was Renée.”
    “Figures,” Renee said, almost unheard.
    “There were signs all over the road, warnings about dangerous curves,” Debbie went on.
    “I always ignore signs about dangerous curves,” Renee said. “Something about that squiggly design I never liked.”
    Debbie brought her lips together so that they all but disappeared. “I’m glad that you think this is so amusing,” she said stoically, her back stiffening. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you, Renée. I’ll go back to my room.”
    “Nonsense,” Philip said immediately, his arm reaching out again and securing his daughter to him, his eyes fixing Renee with their most withering stare. Even in the darkness, its power was dazzling. “You could never be disturbing us. This is your home.”
    And this is my nightmare, thought Renee, listening as her husband persuaded his daughter to continue with her description.
    “Well,” the young girl said, allowing herself to be cajoled, “I saw the danger you were in. I knew that if she didn’t slow down”—“she” now, Renee thought, the woman with no name— “she’d drive you both off a cliff and into the ocean …”
    “And did she?” Renee asked.
    “Renee,” her husband cautioned.
    “I tried to warn you. I called out, ‘Renée, Renée’ …”
    “I probably thought you were talking to someone else.”
    “I guess you couldn’t hear me,” the child continued, as if Renee hadn’t spoken. “The car kept going faster. Finally, it went off the cliff. I watched helplessly as it crashed against the rocks. I screamed.”
    “My poor baby,” her father soothed.
    “I got there as fast as I could and pulled you to safety.” Renee marveled that there were actually tears in Debbie’s eyes. “Renée died,” Debbie added, almost as an afterthought.
    “Well then, it wasn’t such a nightmare, after all,” Renee told her cheerfully.
    “Really, Renée, I don’t know why you’re so hostile.”
    “I’m always hostile after I plunge from a cliff to my death.”
    “It was just a dream,” the girl told her.
    “Yes,” Renee responded, seeing the young girl as clearly as if she’d just turned on all the lights. “I’m afraid that’s all it was.”
    “Feel better now?” her father asked.
    Debbie shrugged and buried her face against her father’s hairy chest. “I was so scared for you. There was nothing I could do. I felt so helpless. I tried to warn you. She wouldn’t listen.” The child was actually crying now.
    “Why don’t I make us some hot chocolate?” Philip asked energetically, as if it were the middle of the day, and Debbie brightened immediately, lifting her head and smiling just past her father’s shoulder to where herwicked stepmother sat motionless and openmouthed. “Remember how when you were a little girl and you’d have a bad dream, we’d go into the kitchen and make some hot chocolate …”
    “And you’d sit with me while I drank it, till I finished every drop. I remember. I didn’t think you did.”
    “Hey, I remember everything about your childhood. Every bad dream, every sneeze. You’ll be all right after you’ve had a cup of Daddy’s special hot chocolate. Now, who’s the doctor here? Renee, will you get my robe?”
    Renee said nothing, recognizing a no-win situation when she saw one, and moved swiftly to the closet to retrieve her husband’s navy-blue silk dressing gown.
    “You don’t want any hot chocolate, do you?” Debbie asked Renee after Philip had departed for the kitchen, and the two women—one, thirty-four, who knew better than to get involved in this type of power struggle, and the other, sixteen, who knew it all—were left to confront each other. “I mean, you’re on a diet, aren’t you?”
    “Not at the