Phantom of Riverside Park Read Online Free PDF Page A

who was responsible for her condition.
    “I thought we might talk...about the
baby.”
    “I told you, I’m not going to marry you. I
thought you understood that.”
    “I did. Of course, I did, Taylor, it’s just
that I thought about your parents. They’ll want to know about their
grandchild.”
    “Lizzie, if you tell my parents my goose is
cooked.”
    “Why? You’re all they’ve got. They dote on
you. They’re bound to want this baby.”
    Taylor had to know that was true. His
parents’ reputation was legend: they never let go of anything that
belonged to them.
    Red-faced and stiff-backed, Taylor stalked
off fumbling with a pack of cigarettes. They shot out of the
cellophane and spewed around his alligator skin boots. He ground
them into the mud then suddenly his shoulders slumped. When he
turned back to Elizabeth he was a little boy, winning smile,
irresistible charm and all.
    “You’re not going to tell them, are you,
Lizzie?”
    She could never resist Taylor when he looked
at her that way. That’s what had gotten her into this mess in the
first place.
    “No, I won’t tell, Taylor.”
    “Good. I knew I could count on you, Lizzie. I
don’t want them to know. Not ever.”
    A sharp tug on her hand brought Elizabeth
back to the present.
    “Mommy!”
    “What? What is it, Nicky?”
    “I ast you free times already. When we get
home can I play on my swing?”
    “Yes, you can.”
    What if Taylor’s parents had somehow found
out about Nicky? They’d want him. She’d always believed that. It
was Elizabeth they wouldn’t want, the unsuitable girl from the
wrong side of the tracks. They would find some way of trying to
take Nicky away from her.
    And perhaps they had. Perhaps the check was
Belliveau bait, and if she cashed it she would set off a
cataclysmic chain of events that would destroy her, that would
destroy them all.
    Elizabeth hastened her step, hurrying toward
the only haven she knew, the ugly house that looked like an old
Dominicker hen with its feathers pecked all to pieces.
    She shut her eyes to the exterior, which she
couldn’t do a thing about, and hurried inside. She’d done
everything she could to make it a home, and she’d succeeded in
that, at least, for every evening on the long walk from the park,
Papa and Nicky acted as if they were headed to the Belliveau
mansion.
    She pushed open the door and walked inside
and just stood there telling herself to breathe. Forget the check
and breathe.
    The soft diffused light of evening lent a
grace to the house that belied the cracked linoleum, the peeling
paint, the scarred furniture. A complete stranger would mistake
what he saw for poverty, but when Elizabeth walked through the
front door she saw a rakish charm. The huge bouquet of black-eyed
Susans and Queen Anne’s lace, wildflowers that grow along every
roadside in the Deep South, disguised the watermarks on the table,
and her grandmother’s crazy quilt covered the faded sofa. Made
mostly of calico, every scrap told a story. Elizabeth’s favorite
was the one her grandmother told about the blue velvet and ivory
lace that adorned the center of the quilt.
    All the while she was washing Nicky’s hands
and pouring his glass of milk, Elizabeth felt her grandmother
watching over her shoulder and one of the stories Mae Mae used to
tell popped into her mind. Mae Mae’s stories were always short and
to the point, and always ended with a bit of sage advice.
    “When I married Thomas I was poor as a church
mouse,” she used to say. “So was he, but that didn’t stop him from
getting me a fine wedding dress. I had bleached some flour sacks
and was busy sewing up a plain white gown, when Thomas rode up to
my house as big as you please with an armful of blue velvet. ‘Wear
this,’ he said. ‘It matches your eyes.’ Then he rode off without
another word. It was curtains he’d brought me, blue velvet
curtains. I didn’t tell him it was July and a hundred degrees in
the shade. I went down to