Music in the Night (Logan 4)

"She asked me to bring you up to the house right after school."

I looked at Cary, whose gaze dropped to his feet. "I'll see about May," he said and started off. "Something wrong?" Robert asked me.

"I don't know. I'll call you tonight," I promised and got into the luxurious automobile. I hadn't ridden in it all that much and never before alone. I felt selfconscious about driving off in a chauffeured Rolls with other students looking after me.

When we arrived, I went right inside and found Grandma Olivia alone in the living room, seated in her favorite chair, her thin-framed glasses on her pearl chain resting against her bosom. She had been reading the society pages in the Boston newspaper and set it aside.

"Hello, Grandma. You wanted to see me?"

"You can sit over there, Laura," she said, nodding at the sofa across from her. I sat and waited as she pulled her shoulders up.

"Is this about my visiting Aunt Belinda?" I asked quickly.

"No, not directly," she said, pursing her lips for a long moment. "You and I, you'll recall, had what I thought was a very important conversation. I was hoping you had listened to what I said and would behave accordingly. That you would be a source of family pride and accomplishment and continue to be a good daughter, a good granddaughter. But you have chosen, it seems, to fly in the face of all my words of wisdom and be defiant."

"It's about Robert," I said, nodding. "I told you, Grandma, that he is a very nice young man and I--"

"Nice young men don't invite impressionable young women to their homes when their parents are away and seduce them," she spat.

For a moment I could swear my heart actually stopped. I know I felt faint.

"What?"

"Don't deny it. I can see it's true in your face and denying it only makes it worse."

"Who--I don't understand." Did she have spies everywhere? Was every living soul in this town on her payroll?

"There's nothing to understand. What you've done and what you seem bent on continuing to do is disgraceful. I want it put to an end tonight. I will not say a word of this to your father and your mother if you obey, but if you don't--"

I shook my head and stood.

"Sit down, I'm not finished with this

conversation, Laura."

"I won't listen. I don't want to hear another word, Grandma. You don't understand and you have no right to run my life like this."

"Of course I do," she replied, as if I had spoken the silliest words. "I'm responsible for the health and welfare of this family."

"Why?"

"Why?" She laughed. "Why? I'll tell you why," she said, fixing her eyes on me and narrowing them into slits, "because the men in it are not capable of it. They've never been capable of it, and the other women haven't the stamina or the backbone.

"Now, back to what I was saying. You are apparently seeing so much of this boy and being so openly intimate with him, you have people talking. Some of my closest friends have come to me and--"

"You have people spying on me, Grandma? Am I being followed?"

"Of course not, but they have eyes. They have ears and they know how important the family reputation is to me," she said.

"They're just gossips who have nothing else to do with their lives," I cried. "I'm no princess, Grandma, and you're not a queen. We're not royalty because we can trace our family lineage back to the first settlers here. We're just like everyone else. We put our shoes on one at a time," I said, the tears streaming so freely down my cheeks, they dripped off my chin.

"Have you no self-respect?" she hissed. "Don't you care at all about what you do to my family name?"

"Your family name?"

"Our family name. I explained how important that is, how reputation--"

I straightened my shoulders to match hers.