Read Online Half Past Mourning by Fleeta Cunningham - Free Book Online Page A

The admission cost her, pride and faith crumbling as she remembered Tinker’s guileless disclosure. “I wasn’t the one-and-only for him. Not the way he was for me.”
    Peter put his glass on the table, then drew the larger chair closer to sit beside Nina and put his hand over hers. “All this came from a friend, someone who’s known all along and didn’t tell you? Why tell you now? Why not two years ago?”
    “Tinker’s been away. He didn’t know Danny went through with the wedding.” Nina tucked her feet up under her and spread the skirt of her robe over them. “He was just a kid, a kid with a case of hero worship for Danny, and things were really hard for him.” She found it easy to tell Peter about the kid and his miserable home life, his determination to escape, and his sudden return, at least easier than talking about Danny and his deception. “So when he called tonight, I was excited to see him. Tinker was a great kid, and he did the best he could with a rotten situation. When he said Danny planned to run out, I had to believe him. He came in all innocence to see how I was doing, not realizing that Danny and I really had married.”
    Peter nodded, but a skeptical gleam lingered in his eyes. “And then he told you that Danny had other girls, too?”
    “After I went off to college, Tinker said. Then I came home and started teaching. Sometimes Danny went to car events when I couldn’t go because of school things. Girls hang around the drivers at those places, attracted to the guys and their cars, hoping for a ride. I can see how it would happen. Most of the time it would just be a one-night thing, but sometimes…sometimes not.”
    “And you believe everything this boy, Tinker, said? Take it at face value?” Peter’s silence urged her to answer. Nina shut her eyes, tried not to believe, but the ugly facts wouldn’t go away.
    “I think I have to,” she said at last. “I can’t see any other way. Too much of what Tinker said rings true. Danny did struggle against Marigold. He resented the strings she kept on him, though in fairness I have to say she’d come so close to losing him a couple of times that I couldn’t blame her. He was all she had, her only child, and Danny’s dad died while Danny was just a little boy. Marigold devoted herself to Danny, and keeping him well was the focus of her life. He lived with her restrictions because he had to, but he didn’t like doing so. No one would.”
    Peter got up from his chair and began to pace the small living room. “Nina, I want to go on with the search for Danny Wilson. I think there’s more to this story than you’ve seen and more than one interpretation to Tinker’s hearsay. You said Tinker had a wretched life but Danny was his hero. He’d wanted to take off before, but Danny encouraged him to stick it out till the boy finished school. That’s an act of compassion and understanding. It’s a caring act, helping the boy to make the best of a bad deal. It doesn’t square with somebody who’d use a girl’s love as a distraction for his own vanishing act. Of course Danny would want his freedom, but at your expense?” He leaned over her chair with concern darkening his eyes. “Tinker says Danny had other girls. Did he know Danny had girls, or did he just hear somebody say it? Did stories get started because Danny bought a girl a soda or let her ride in the car? Nina, are you taking gossip for gospel? Did Danny engineer his own disappearance, or was it arranged for him? You still don’t know, sweetheart, and I think you’ll only be able to go on with your life when you’ve exhausted every means of finding answers to those questions.”
    Trying to see things from an objective viewpoint, Nina weighed his words. “No, I think there were girls, Peter. I was away at school for long stretches when I could get home only for holidays, and Marigold was always hinting that Danny could do better than a country schoolteacher’s orphan daughter. She