The Unloved Read Online Free PDF Page B

she commanded, her voice rising shrilly. “Now, damn you!”
    As she began applying her makeup, Ruby went to the closet and searched for the dress.
    Fifteen minutes later Helena examined herself in the mirror. “Nothing’s really changed, has it?” she asked, her voice so soft that Ruby wasn’t certain she meant to speak aloud at all. “I haven’t changed, and the house hasn’t changed. It will be almost as if he never left. We’ll all go on again, just as if he’d never been gone!”
    “But he’s only here for a visit,” the old servant replied. “He ain’t going to stay.”
    Helena’s eyes flickered in the mirror, then fixed on the servant. “Yes, he will,” she whispered darkly. “He’s a Devereaux, and no Devereaux has ever left Sea Oaks.”
    “Mr. Kevin did,” Ruby reminded her. “And you can believe he’ll leave again.”
    “He won’t,” Helena insisted. “I want him to stay here, and I’ll see to it he stays.” She turned and struggled to her feet. “How do I look?”
    Ruby stared at her mistress, wondering what to say. Helena’s hair—once luxurious, but now thin and limp—hung down around her shoulders, framing a face that had been turned into a garish parody of the beauty she had once been. The skin that years ago had glowed with a deep clarity was now covered with a mask of white powder. Thick blotches of rouge were dabbed on each cheek and a bright red slash of lipstick was smeared across the thin line of her mouth. Whatever remnants of dignified beauty might have remained to herhad been completely lost in her vain attempt to turn back the ravages of time.
    “Fine,” Ruby breathed at last, knowing that what Helena saw in the mirror bore no resemblance to reality. “You look just fine.”
    Helena smiled at her. “Then I’m ready to go downstairs, aren’t I?”
    Once again Ruby’s mouth opened in surprise. “Downstairs?” she repeated. “But Miss Helena—”
    “Don’t argue with me,” Helena commanded. “If I wish to greet my son downstairs, I shall. Now give me your arm.”
    Almost against her own will, Ruby allowed the old woman to grasp her arm, then walked her slowly out of the bedroom and down the hall to the main stairs. Supporting Helena as best she could, she helped her into the seat of the ancient chair lift that had been installed in the house years earlier. She fastened the safety strap around the old woman’s waist and waited as Helena arranged the flowing skirt of the old black silk dress. Finally, when Helena nodded her readiness, Ruby pushed the brass button at the top of the stairs.
    Instantly the machinery rattled to life and the chair began its slow descent, carrying the frail body of Helena Devereaux down from the second floor of her house for the first time in nearly a decade.
    At the bottom of the stairs Kevin and Anne Devereaux and their two children watched the slow approach of the strange apparition.
    We should never have come here
.
    The thought flashed unbidden through Anne’s mind, and she took an involuntary step backward before she caught herself. She forced a smile onto her face, feeling its falseness even as she made herself step forward once more to greet the mother-in-law she’d never met. At her side she felt Jeff’s hand tighten in her own, and then, a second later, Julie took her other hand. Though neither of the children spoke a word,Anne knew that both of them were feeling exactly the same thing she was.
    Fear.
    And yet despite this sense of fear Helena immediately induced in Anne, the old woman was tiny. She seemed almost to disappear within the folds of the rusty black dress she wore, and her face, all but obscured by the layers and layers of makeup, was strangely expressionless. But her eyes—two brightly glowing embers—seemed to reach out to Anne, grasping her in their grip, drawing her forward. She reached the bottom of the stairs just as the chair lift clanged to a stop, but said nothing. Whatever was to be said, she