allowing the wind- driven rain to wet his pajamas and
glue them to his skin.
He saw me just about the time I saw him, and
he stepped into my room without saying a word. We
clung together, me crying and him trying hard not to. I
wanted him to go, even as I held hard to him and cried
on his shoulder. "Why, Cathy, why all the tears?" he
asked as I sobbed on and on.
"Chris," I asked when I could, "you don't still
love her, do you?"
He hesitated before he answered. That made
anger simmer my blood into a rolling boil. "You do!" I
cried. "How can you after what she did to Cory and to
Carrie? Chris, what's wrong with you that you can go
on loving when you should hate as I do?"
Still he didn't say anything. And his very silence
gave me the answer. He went on loving her because he
had to if he were to go on loving me. Every time he
looked in my face he saw her and what she'd been like
in her early youth. Chris was just like Daddy, who had
been just as vulnerable to the kind of beauty I had. But
it was only a surface resemblance. I wasn't weak! I
wasn't without abilities! I could have thought of one
thousand ways to earn a living, rather than lock my
four children in a miserable room and leave them in
care of an evil old woman who wanted to see them
suffer for sins that weren't even theirs!
While I thought my vengeful thoughts and made
my plans to ruin her life when I could, Chris was
tenderly kissing me. I hadn't even noticed. "Stop!" I