My Sweet Audrina (Audrina 1)

It hurt to see Arden so grateful when he should have known better. Perhaps all men were more or less alike and understood each other very well. I raged inside that Papa was still controlling my life, even though I was married.

Cozily established in what had been my aunt’s rooms, made grand in a useless effort to please her, was Billie, dressed like a stage star in a fancy lace dress that should have been seen only at a garden party.

Her bright eyes glowing, she gushed, “He stormed over to my place about an hour after you drove away and raged at me for encouraging the two of you to elope. I didn’t say a word until he calmed down. Then I think he really looked at me for the first time. He told me I was beautiful. I was wearing my shorts, too, with those damned stumps sticking out, and he didn’t seem to care. Darlin’, you just don’t know what that did for my ego.”

Papa was clever, so clever. I should have expected he’d find a way to defeat me. Now he had my mother-in-law on his side.

“Then he said we should make the best of a situation that couldn’t be changed, and that wonderful man invited me to come and live here, and share your lives and his. Wasn’t that gracious of him?”

Of course it was. I glanced around at the room I thought should be a shrine to my aunt’s memory and ached inside … and yet, what good were shrines when Billie was so grateful? And Aunt Ellsbeth had never appreciated anything done to make her rooms pretty. Certainly if anyone deserved rooms like these, it was Billie.

“Audrina, you never told me your father is so kind, understanding and charming. Somehow you always made him seem insensitive, conniving and abusive.”

How could I tell her Papa’s good looks and contrived charms were his stocks-in-trade? He use

d them all on women, young, middle-aged and old. Ninety percent of his clients were wealthy older women who totally depended on his advice, and the other ten percent were wealthy men too old to have good judgment of their own.

“Audrina, darlin’,” Billie went on, holding me against her full, firm breasts, “your father is such a dear. So sweet and concerned about everyone’s welfare. A man like Damian Adare could never be cruel. I’m sure you misunderstood if you think he mistreated you.”

Papa had followed us upstairs, and until she said this, I hadn’t seen him leaning gracefully against the door frame, taking all of this in. He spoke to Arden in the sudden silence. “My daughter has been raving about you since she was seven years old. God knows I never thought puppy love would last. Why, I loved a dozen girls or more by the time I was ten, and two hundred before I married Audrina’s mother.”

Arden smiled, appearing embarrassed, and soon he was thanking Papa for offering him a job when no one else had—and a decent salary for someone with absolutely no training as a broker.

And so again Papa had won. Aunt Ellsbeth was dead. She had not saved me any more than she’d saved herself. Only Papa was free to time and time again hurt those he claimed to love most.

Soon Papa was talking seriously to me and Arden about giving him a grandson. “I’ve always wanted a son,” he said while looking directly into my eyes. It hurt, really hurt to hear him say that, when he’d always claimed I was enough to please him. He must have seen my pain, for he smiled, as if I’d been tested and he found me still faithful. “Second to a daughter, I wanted a son, that is. A grandson will do just fine, since I already have two daughters.”

I didn’t want a baby yet, not when just being Arden’s wife was traumatic enough. Bit by painful bit I was learning how to cope with those nightly acts of love that seemed atrocious to me and wonderful to him. I even learned to fake pleasure so he stopped looking so anxious and allowed himself to believe that I was now enjoying sex just as much as he did.

Even before Arden and I returned from our seashore honeymoon, Billie had taken over in the kitchen Aunt Ellsbeth had so recently abandoned. Billie had her high stool there, carried over with most of her other belongings by my own father, who detested doing physical labor. I watched him as he watched her with admiration, adroitly putting meals together without one grumble, and not much fuss, either. She smiled, laughed in response to his many jokes. She cared expertly for his clothes and ran the huge house with so little effort that Papa couldn’t stop admiring her remarkable efficiency.

“How do you do it, Billie? Why do you even want to? Why don’t you tell me to hire servants to wait on you?”

“Oh, no, Damian. It’s the least I can do to repay you for all that you’re doing for us.” Her voice was soft and her eyes warm as she looked at him. “I’m so grateful that you wanted me and have welcomed my son as your own that I can never do enough. Anyway, having servants in the house steals your privacy.”

I stared at Billie, wondering how a woman with her experience could be so easily fooled. Papa used people. Didn’t she realize that she was saving him tons of money by being his housekeeper and cook?—and that generous offer to hire servants was all fraud, calculated to make her feel she wasn’t being used.

“Audrina,” said Billie one day when I’d been married about two months and Arden was still studying for his broker’s exam, “I’ve been watching Sylvia. For some reason she dislikes me and would like to see me gone. I’m trying to think as she might think. It could be she’s jealous because she sees you love me, too, and she’s never had to share your love with others. When I was in the cottage it was different, but now I’m in her home and stealing your attention and your time from her. Arden is her competition, too, but for some reason, maybe because he leaves her alone, she isn’t jealous of him. It’s me she’s jealous of. What’s more, I don’t believe she’s nearly as retarded as you think. She mimics you, Audrina. Whenever you turn your back, she follows you. And she can walk just as normally as you do—when she knows you can’t see her.”

Whipping around, I caught Sylvia just behind me. She appeared startled and quickly her closed lips parted, and her focused eyes went vacant, blind looking. “Billie, you shouldn’t say things like that. She can hear. And if what you say is true—although I don’t believe it is—she might understand and be hurt.”

“Of course she understands,” said Billie. “She isn’t brilliant, but she’s not beyond the pale.”

“I don’t understand why she’d pretend …”

“Who told you she’s hopelessly retarded?” Sylvia had drifted out into the hall tugging Billie’s little red cart along with her. As I watched, she sat upon it and began to shove herself along in Billie’s fashion.

“Papa didn’t bring her home until she was more than two and a half years old. He told me what her doctors had told him.”

“I admire Damian a great deal, although I don’t admire the way he’s burdened your life with the care of your younger sister, especially when he could afford to pay for a nurse to care for her, or, better, a therapist to train her. Do what you can to teach her skills, and continue with your speech training. Don’t give up on Sylvia. Even if those doctors gave what they thought was an honest evaluation, mistakes are often made. There is always hope and a chance for improvement.”

In the months that followed, Billie convinced me that perhaps I had misjudged my father after all. She obviously adored him, even worshipped him. He ignored her legless condition and treated her with such gallantry he surprised me and pleased Arden. Papa even had a special wheelchair custom-made for Billie. He hated her little red cart with a passion, though the fancy “our kind” of chair with concealed wheels didn’t speed around fast enough for her. She never used that chair unless Papa was around.

Arden worked like an Egyptian slave in the day, then studied half the night, trying to remember all he needed to know for his broker exams. It was what he said he wanted, but I knew his heart wasn’t in it.

“Arden, if you don’t want to be a broker, give it up and do something else.”

“I do want it—go on, teach.”