Read Online More in Anger by J. Jill Robinson - Free Book Online

like that. Opal felt he had betrayed their hospitality, and their trust. She took him aside politely to suggest that it was not appropriate, that he was taking advantage of a young girl’s naïveté. But nothing Opal said dissuaded him. In fact, her objections seemed to make him more, not less, resolved, and May, completely lacking experience when it came to matters of the heart, was easy prey. She was moonstruck. And giddy. And silly as Opal had never before seen her. She was more like Lillie than like herself. Never mind that she was almost thirty; she was completely innocent and susceptible to his machinations.
    The situation only got worse when it was revealed that Fred was in fact a married man! He already had a wife! How dare he set his sights on May?! Opal was faint with outrage. Fred would not be invited to their home again, but she had felt only temporary victory because now the whole wretched affair was continuing in secret. Whenever May left the house, Opal suspected she was going to meet him, but what could she say? And she couldn’t forbid May from singing in the church choir. The whole business was deeply humiliating for Opal, and she could not hold her head up. She almost stopped going to church.
    The day came that Fred hand-delivered a note in which he insisted upon seeing them the following day, either in their home or at a restaurant. She was not about to discuss anything with that man in a public place, so what could she do? She told Macshe doubted she could stay in the same room with him, but Mac said they had better get it over with and hear the man out. All right, said Opal. But she would not offer him tea.
    Fred said right out that his intention was to marry May. He said that he had asked her and that she had accepted.
    â€œWell, this is the first we’ve heard of it,” snapped Opal.
    Fred said nothing.
    â€œAnd what does your wife have to say about it?” asked Opal.
    â€œAgnes is my wife in name only,” said Fred.
    â€œBut a wife nonetheless.” Well, what had happened to his marriage? Opal wanted to know. And where exactly was his current wife?
    He had parted ways with Agnes York years before, he said, well before he had come to Canada, because Agnes had told him flat out that she had—and he quoted—“no inclination whatsoever towards the pioneering life,” and wanted to stay where she was, in Dundee. (Pioneering life indeed, thought Opal. You would think they were a bunch of savages.) She was terrified, Fred said, with an attempt at levity, of the Indians. So he had set sail alone. He said that he and she were too young when he married. They did not know their own minds. Which was no longer the case with him. He knew exactly what he wanted, and when, and whom, and that whom was their daughter May.
    He might as well tell them now, he added, that he had been offered and had accepted a teaching job at a college near Seattle, a tenured position, and that he and May would be moving there in September, soon after they were married. They would marry this coming summer.
    Now Opal had heard enough, more than enough to confirm her worst suspicions. She stood purposefully, expecting Mac to usher Fred to the front door. She had her parting words prepared: he was never to darken their doorstep again. He was never to telephone this house again. Never mind what May wanted. But Mac let Opal down. “Come upstairs,” he motioned to Fred. And the two of them went up to Mac’s study, where, she was sure, Mac got out the bottle of Scotch he had hidden there and thought she knew nothing about. Ha. Dollars to doughnuts she would be able to smell the liquor on them when they came back. Before long she heard them up there, sharing a laugh like brothers while she, down here, and alone, was on her third hanky. May was nowhere in sight. When Opal heard the men descending the stairs, she fled to the summer house. There, she wept some more.
    This marriage