Read Quiet Dell: A Novel for Free Online

pushed her sleeves up and held her wrists under water that dropped in galloping clumps into the deep double sink.
    “Anna, sit down.” He helped her into a kitchen chair and knelt beside her. “You aren’t making sense.”
    “You are so good, Charles, so good to me, and I thank God for my good fortune, that I am not required to accept your sacrifice, but I ask you to wait—” She pushed him a little away, bracing her arms against him. “Trust me, for I will explain in time, and you will be my good friend, just as you are now—”
    “Of course I’m your friend. And you must listen to me. Heinrichdied in an accident. Whatever was between you had nothing to do with it. Do you hear me?”
    “Yes.” Her eyes were wet and dark.
    “You are confusing regret with responsibility. It was reasonless. That is the meaning of ‘accident.’ ” He paused. “Anna, why have you never told me of these feelings? Why did you never speak of this?”
    She looked past him, into the room. “So much is becoming clear to me. A great change must happen. Is about to happen.”
    “Anna, the change should be that I am here with you, and we are married. Promise me that you will not dismiss me. Think on what I’ve said, when you are calmer. And you must not make any decisions that we don’t discuss. Look at me, Anna.”
    She took the wet, squeezed towel with which he’d bathed her forehead, and held it to her face. She would not tell him, and she would not take advantage of him. His offer had moved her, blinding her with remembrance. “Yes, all right. I’m all right, Charles. I don’t know what came over me.”
    “It’s very hard to be alone,” he said.
    “Yes, it’s hard.” She smiled at him tenderly, knowing she was not alone. The letters in her room were a presence, constant and deep.
    “I’ll stay a few days. We’ll think it through,” Charles said. “Do you mind?”
    “Of course not; you’re welcome to stay.” She drew him to her and kissed his forehead. How would he, how could he ever, find the heart’s companion she had found? The world would not allow him.
    He stood and lifted her to her feet. “Are you recovered?” He sighed as she nodded affirmation. “Anna, I feel as though we have traveled a great distance. I’ve surprised you, I know, but I’ve told you of my deepest hope. Anna, depend on me.”
    “Charles.” She realized he must have carried her into the kitchen like one of Annabel’s pageant heroes, and touched her palm to his face. “We love you very much. It would never be Christmas here without you.”
    A crash resounded from the living room. They heard Hart’s cries of “Duty! Duty! Give it up!”
    “I’ll go,” Charles said. “We’d best have the pageant soon.”
    •   •   •
    Annabel has taken off her shoes in order to stand on the camelback sofa and attempt to hang the theater curtain for her pageant play. Grandmother had made the curtain long ago, for what Annabel can’t remember; it is red velvet in two floor-to-ceiling panels. Grandmother kept it rolled like a rug around a cardboard tube between shows, to prevent it wrinkling, and now Annabel is in charge of it. Last night Charles fetched a length of rope from his trunk in the garage and helped her thread it through the sewn panel at the top. Rope will hang it so much better than cord, and reach from one wall sconce to the other, across the living room. If only she had a piece of white organdy, big as a bedspread, gauzy and see-through, to hang as a backdrop with the Christmas tree’s lit candles shining through: heaven behind the players in the glade. It is the sort of idea Grandmother would have liked, and Annabel imagines Lavinia, just for a moment, standing as she did on Christmas mornings, in her vanilla wool robe with the silk cuffs. Her pink leather slippers were patterned after ballet shoes and fit so nicely, with one silk strap across. They are palest rose, and French. Annabel has them still, under her bed