Read Online Home of the Brave by Jeffry Hepple - Free Book Online Page B

do now for a
First Lady?” Nannette wondered aloud.
    “Oh, Nan,” Tom
complained.
    “What?” she asked. “It’s a
perfectly logical question.”
    “Rachel hadn’t planned to be
First Lady,” Marina said. “She had already asked her niece, Emily
Donelson, to do that.”
    “Now that’s odd,” Nannette
pronounced.
    “The Anti-Jackson Democrats
attacked Rachel cruelly throughout the campaign.” Marina shook her
head.
    “Not cruelly enough,” Anna
announced from the parlor door, “or President Adams would have been
re-elected and we wouldn’t have to endure that murdering jackass
for four years.”
    “Eggnog?” Nannette
asked.
    “Nothing that was said
during the campaign was untrue,” Anna continued, undaunted by
Nannette’s attempt to derail her. “The woman was a convicted
bigamist and adulteress; little better than a harlot.”
    “That’s a lie,” Marina
replied angrily.
    “Rachel Jackson was a
decent, Christian woman,” Yank added as vehemently as Marina but
less passionately.
    “Listen to your mother and
father, Anna,” Tom advised. “They knew her very well.”
    “Why should I care about the
opinions of a whore and an adulterer,” Anna said loudly.
    Yank went pale and looked at
Marina, anticipating an eruption of rage.
    “Get out of my sight before
I do something I’ll regret, Anna,” Marina said in a strangled
voice.
    “I’ll not only get out of
your sight, I’ll get out of this creaky old house too. And I’m
never coming back.” Anna started for the stairs.
    “Good riddance,” Marina
screamed at her.
    Anna stopped. “Does it
strike you as odd, mother, that you have five children and I am the
only one who came home for Christmas? Everyone has abandoned you,
even your husband.” She ran up the stairs and a few seconds later a
door slammed.
    “I’ll go talk to her,”
Nannette said, starting for the stairs.
    Marina was seething. “Go
ahead if you want to, but I’ve had enough of her and would be very
glad to see her go.”
    Nannette stopped and
waited.
    “This is your home, Nan,”
Marina continued, in an almost normal tone, “and if you want Anna
to stay that’s your business. But if she stays, I’m
leaving.”
    “This is the Van Buskirk
home, Marina,” Tom replied quickly. “It’s as much yours as ours.”
He looked at Yank for help but getting none, he turned to face
Marina again. “You know that I try not to interfere but if you let
Anna go now you’ll live to regret it.”
    Marina pointed up the
stairs. “Do you know why she called John an adulterer? She saw him
in Washington with Annabelle Priest and assumed the
worst.”
    Nannette shook her head.
“Annabelle Priest?”
    “The sister of the doctor
that took care of Yank after Detroit,” Tom grumbled. “Jesus. I
don’t know how such a smart woman can be so easily confused by
names.”
    “It takes me a minute to
connect,” Nannette groused. “And I’ve never met Rachel Jackson or
Annabelle Priest. They’re just names with no faces.”
    “Well,” Tom replied. “Anna’s
heard the woman’s name enough to realize what close friends she and
Yank have been over all these years.”
    Anna was coming down the
stairs with a small suitcase in her hand and her coat across her
arm. “None of you have seen them together,” she said. “I have. They
looked like a couple.” She glared at Marina. “More than you and
Father ever did.”
    “I’ll get my coat and
arrange for your transportation, Anna,” Yank said.
    “I don’t need your
help.”
    “I’ll go,” Tom
said.
    “Nor yours,” Anna fired
back.
    “Let her go,” Marina
insisted. “Otherwise I’m going to snatch her hair out.”
    Anna stormed out the door
and slammed it so hard that a picture fell off the wall.
    “Damn,” Yank
muttered.
    “We need to sell that
place,” Marina said. “Or at the very least you and Annabelle have
to stop staying there together before you start a real
scandal.”
    “Sell it,” Yank said with an
annoyed wave