Read Online After Dark by Beverly Barton - Free Book Online Page B

friend for the past fifteen years. “Did you send that note to Johnny Mack?”
    Standing at attention, like a proud soldier, Lillie Mae said, “Yes, I sent the note. Even if he doesn’t realize it right now, Will needs his father—his real father. And whether you’ll admit it or not, you need Johnny Mack, too. You need a strong man at your side if you’re going to fight and win this battle. And it’s way past time for Johnny Mack to pay the piper.”
    Â 
    Edith Ware opened the door to Mary Martha’s room. Jackie Cummings jumped up out of the chair in front of the television in the sitting area and smiled a warm greeting to her employer.
    â€œCome on in, Miss Edith.”
    Jackie all but bowed to her. Edith liked subservience in her employees. Actually, she appreciated subservience in all her relationships, even in her marriage. There had been only two people she had never been able to bend to her will. Her first husband, John Graham. And his bastard son, Johnny Mack Cahill.
    Edith motioned for Buddy Lawler to follow her as she entered her daughter’s sanctuary, a room that had changed little since Mary Martha was twelve. Pastels and lace and girlish frills. French Provincial furniture and a wall curio filled with dolls.
    â€œHow is Miss Mary Martha doing tonight?” Edith asked.
    â€œShe ate a few bites of supper,” Jackie reported. “She’s been sitting peacefully over there in her rocker for the past hour.”
    Edith turned her attention to her child. Her thirty-three-year-old child. Her only child, now that Kent was dead. Mary Martha possessed an innocent beauty that was deceptive. Flawless pale skin. Waist-length strawberry blond hair. And pale brown eyes that seemed incapable of seeing into the real world.
    â€œWhat’s that she’s holding?” Edith took a step closer and barely stifled the gasp that came immediately to her lips.
    â€œIt’s just a baby doll,” Jackie said. “She’s been toting it around all day. And tonight she’s been rocking it and singing to it. I hope that’s all right. I didn’t see any harm in her playing with her doll.”
    â€œNo, of course not.” Edith bit down on her bottom lip. No harm at all for her mentally unstable daughter of thirty-three to play with a doll as if she were a six-year-old. Without glancing back at the hired nurse, Edith said, “Why don’t you take a break, Ms. Cummings. Buddy and I will sit with Mary Martha awhile.”
    â€œYes, ma’am. Thank you. I wouldn’t mind a smoke.”
    â€œRemember to go outside for that,” Edith said. “No one has smoked in this house since Mr. Graham died. The day he died, I burned every damn box of cigars he had.”
    â€œI’ll go on the back porch.” Jackie nodded hello to the police chief as she excused herself.
    Edith moved slowly toward her daughter, halting as she came up behind the rocking chair. “She’s been like this since the afternoon after Kent’s funeral. I thought surely by now she would have improved.”
    Mary Martha rocked back and forth in the white wooden rocker. Holding the life-size baby doll in her arms, she crooned to it as a mother would to a child.
    Edith caressed the top of Mary Martha’s head. “I’m afraid to let a psychiatrist examine her. There’s no telling what she might say.”
    â€œThen, we’ll make sure she’s taken care of until she’s ready to come back to us on her own terms.” Buddy Lawler knelt in front of Mary Martha and spoke to her in a soft, caring voice. “How are you tonight, sweetheart? I hear you ate a little bit of supper. That’s good. You gotta eat more. Gotta keep up your strength. As soon as you get well, I’m going to take you down to the Gulf, and we’ll gather sea-shells on the beach the way we did the last time we were there.”
    Ignoring him, Mary Martha