Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [86]
Annie listened, thinking of her own life, devoted to caring for her selfish father. He had never given her anything of himself, no word or gesture of affection had ever passed between them. She understood what Lai Tsin meant and knew he was right.
Francie nodded, her heart too full to speak. In his wisdom Lai Tsin had showed her the path out of her despair. She would no longer think only of herself, she would have her child to love and protect. And she would be eternally grateful to him, for she knew what it had cost him to speak of his past. But she also knew he still had not told her everything, and that the rest of his tragic story was still locked away inside him.
CHAPTER 20
Annie’s heart sank as the hired gig jolted around the final bend in the long, rutted road and the de Soto Ranch came into view. It was even worse than she had expected. But Francie’s face had lit up when she told her about it. She said it was a special place, that her only good memories were the times spent there with her mother. “Mama left it to me” she said stubbornly, “I read it in the newspapers when they published my father’s will. I never went to the lawyers to claim it because I was afraid Harry would find out. But he never goes there, no one does! It’s beautiful and it’s mine and it’s where I want to have my baby.” And just two days later here they were. They hadn’t passed another house in miles and the place looked as though it were about to fall down.
“Oh, Annie,” Francie said with a contented sigh, “isn’t it just the most beautiful house you’ve ever seen?”
Annie stared gloomily at the weatherbeaten gray clapboard house with its broken windows and sagging wooden porch. “I suppose we can fix it up all right,” she said grudgingly.
Francie climbed from the gig and ran up the steps. She turned to look at the long valley view, at the green paddocks and low sun-dried hills. In the distance she could hear the cackle of geese and the whinny of a horse and she felt the soft breeze on her skin.
“It’s just the same,” she said happily. “I’ve always felt free here. And it’s the only place that ever felt like a real home to me, all those long summer days spent with my mother and the cold winter evenings together by the fire.”
The door was unlocked and she stepped inside, wandering slowly through the dust-covered rooms, smiling as it came back to life in her memory. She saw the parlor in the warm glow of the old pot-bellied stove and her mother lying in the chaise longue and herself sitting at her feet while Princess snoozed on the braided hearthrug. In her memory, the big kitchen with its long scrubbed pine table and its old cast iron pots and pans was full of the delicious aromas of baking bread and roasting chicken, of rosy, fresh-picked apples and green walnuts and black wine grapes.
There was no lingering sadness about her mother’s room: the warm afternoon sunshine filtered through the broken windowpanes and she could see her now, rosy-cheeked and sparkling-eyed, lying on her embroidered white pillows in the carved wooden bed, bringing her the gift of love and happiness.
“It’s just the same.” She sighed, content. “It’s just as perfect as it always was.”
Annie raised a skeptical eyebrow. All she could see was a broken-down old house whose roof probably leaked. It was hard to tell what it might look like after twelve years of dust and grime had been removed. But at least now Francie was happy. “We’ll have it fixed up again in no time,” she said cheerily enough, but her heart sank as she wondered where to start. She glanced up, startled