Grave Deeds Read Online Free PDF

on. One of them still lives up there somewhere, I believe. He’d be an old man by now.”
    Wilson looked at his watch. “What’s this got to do with Mrs.Cairns and the old lady?”
    â€œAh well,” Mr. Ross said. “It all comes down to family in the end, who belongs, who doesn’t. George, her grandfather,” he jabbed his thumb at me, “hated his son’s English wife, specially after she left him. He almost wrote little Rosalie out of his will. But she was family, and, after young George died, she was the last of the Cooks. So he wanted her to have the property in the end.”
    â€œWhen?” I asked. “When did he die?”
    â€œIn 1961.”
    â€œThen why did no one contact me until now?”
    â€œLet me finish,” Mr. Ross commanded. “Your grandfather hated your mother.” He held up his hand to quiet my objections. “Even after she left young George and wouldn’t take any maintenance from him. Old George couldn’t forgive her.”
    â€œFor leaving her husband? But he beat her,” I protested. I squeezed my eyes shut. I would not allow myself to cry in front of these men.
    â€œThat’s what she said, but I never saw any bruises. He said he slapped her once, when she insisted on going out instead of taking care of you. Your grandmother never believed he would hurt any woman, not on purpose, not without being provoked. She said your mother never got over the war, the rationing and misery. That she married your father to get out of England and then wouldn’t settle down to be a proper wife and mother.”
    â€œShe was a wonderful mother,” I protested. “She worked really hard for both of us.”
    â€œThat’s as may be,” Mr. Ross said. “Fact is, she left young George and took you with her, wouldn’t let your grandparents see you. I tried to help. I even got her a job with a friend of mine…”
    â€œMr. McIntosh? You knew Mr. McIntosh?” I broke in. My mother’s employer had been like an elderly uncle to me. On my rare visits to the office, he always spoke to me about school and friends while offering a choice of biscuits from the tin he kept on his desk. And at Christmas there was always a wrapped present under the tree for me from him.
    â€œWhen I saw how determined she was, I figured it was best to leave her where we could keep tabs on her. It was a good job she had there; she worked herself up from receptionist to secretary.She made me promise not to tell the family where you lived. She said that if George ever tried to contact her, she’d take you and disappear. He asked me often enough, but I never told.”
    â€œHe never visited us.” I remembered my old sorrow, my constant questions when I first went to school and discovered that other children lived with two parents. I wanted a Daddy desperately. I remember once running home in tears, asking my mother what was a bastard and why was being one so bad? She told me that I did have a father and that he was dead. After that, I had a certain cachet at school, being an orphan. I told the other kids that my father had been a fighter pilot and killed in the war. The fact that I was born six years after the war ended was never mentioned.
    â€œFor the first two years he kept asking me where you were,” Mr. Ross said. “That man was just eaten with remorse. There was never proof that he ever lifted a hand against your mother. Except that one slap he owned up to. It was her word against his.”
    â€œAnd she was just a war bride, with no family.”
    He bowed his head. “I did what I could.”
    â€œWhat about me?” I asked. “Didn’t my grandparents ever try to see me?”
    â€œOh yes. After young George passed away, they tried to persuade your mother to let them adopt you, send you to a good school, give you your proper place in life. They even suggested you both come to live with