Read From Here to There for Free Online Page B

should have agreed to marry him, and I understand how much pain I’ve caused you all, but I can't undo that."
     "A divorce and now an annulment. This is too much for one day," her mother cried, dabbing at her eyes with a linen handkerchief. "I don't understand what's happening to us all. Phillip is a perfectly marvelous man. I can't believe you would jilt him."
     "I think the word is passé, Mother. The modern thing it to say we simply don't suit."
     "That might have been true a month ago or yesterday," her father snapped, rubbing his neck distractedly, "but today I think you'll have to settle for jilted." He looked up abruptly. "Are you sure he didn’t hit you? If he did, I'll go over there and--"
     "He did not hit me. I can't explain any of this to you. It's just a bad combination. We don't suit. It's that simple. I'm unsure of who I am. How can I be married?"
    “Helene, that sounded absolutely mad,” her mother said with a grimace as she poured herself a glass of wine.
     Helene wished she had the words to explain all she was thinking, words that would help her parents understand how deep this problem went in her life. She found herself questioning her strength of character, her willingness to be led into a marriage she had known inherently was wrong. To bring all that up would be to make it sound as though she was criticizing them for the pressure they'd brought onto her and even their own example of having chosen and stayed in a marriage of convenience rather than seeking help to remake their relationship into something more solid or even getting a divorce years earlier.
     "You did marry him," her father reminded her as if the point wasn't obvious.
    “You can’t be pregnant, can you?” her mother asked taking a big gulp of the wine.
    “Hardly. There couldn’t be an annulment if I was pregnant, could there?” Helene took a deep breath to steady her nerves.
     "Oh dear Lord," her mother said, dabbing at her eyes again and blowing her nose daintily.
     "He's gay, isn't he?" her father retorted. "That's it, and the bloody bounder didn't have the guts to tell you beforehand."
     "Of course not!" Helene was beginning to feel exasperated with the lot of them. "There is nothing wrong with Phillip. He's perfect. Except--" Angry now, she snapped, "He can't chop wood, fix a tractor, birth a calf, or ride a range. He hasn't got calluses on his hands, and his muscles come from a gymnasium, not real work." As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. Both parents were looking at her as though if they had wondered before, now they were absolutely sure. She'd lost her mind.
     Her mother scrunched up her face. "I didn't hear her say that. Tell me I didn't hear that!"
     Her father began a string of obscenities that ended with something only mildly profane but had worked its way through several Helene had only recently heard from Phillip's lips. Obviously she was doing nothing for the self-control of the men around her.
     When her father had spewed out his anger at her, he turned on Uncle Amos. "This is your fault. You think I don't know where she got those romantic ideas!"
     “Romantic ideas?” Amos laughed with amazement. "My fault? How do you figure that?"
     "She goes to your ranch. Gets her head filled with a lot of Old West malarkey, then can't come back here and deal with the real world."
     "So, Massachusetts is the real world," Amos said shaking his head and laughing, "and the ranch ain't!"
     Ignoring Amos, Helene's father continued in his tirade, stalking around the dining room. "First you dragged my sister out there. Now you want my daughter. Well, you can't have her."
     "I don't remember trying to steal her." Amos raised his hands in mock defense. "But if she wants to come out to me, that's for her to decide. This whole thing is getting out of hand. You and Flo have been squabbling. Your daughter is so tired she can't see straight. Let her go to bed. This'll make better sense to all of