Read Online Widow's Tears by Susan Wittig Albert - Free Book Online Page B

word of advice for those in the low areas: get to higher ground.
    A Weekend in September

John Edward Weems
    As far as the Blackwood children were concerned, it was the most wonderful of mornings. After breakfast, the three boys and even Ida, who was usually a perfect little lady, had begged to put on their oldest clothes and go out and play in the warm rain. They were so excited that their mother felt she had to let them go, even though she was increasingly uneasy about the threatening weather.
    Rachel had lived in Galveston only since her marriage to Mr. Blackwood some nine years before. She had little experience of tropical storms. But her cook-housekeeper, Mrs. Colleen O’Reilly, was one of the survivors of the hurricane of 1886, which had roared ashore a hundred miles to the south, turning the thriving port of Indianola—a rival of Galveston—into a ghost town. This morning, she was visibly apprehensive, which gave Rachel another reason for concern. Mrs. O’Reilly, who was not yet thirty,red-haired and with a generous sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks, had a touch of the second sight.
    Rachel might not have believed this if she hadn’t witnessed it for herself. One bright summer afternoon, the two of them had been in the drawing room, laying out tea for the Ladies’ Guild. Mrs. O’Reilly had glanced out the drawing room window and seen Mrs. Neville, the Blackwoods’ next-door neighbor, crossing Q Avenue in front of the house. And then Mrs. Neville suddenly vanished from view—simply vanished, as if she had never been.
    Mrs. O’Reilly had burst into tears and turned to tell this to Rachel, crying out in her rich Irish brogue that she feared for Mrs. Neville’s life. Scoffing to herself (she wasn’t in the least superstitious), Rachel had soothed her and sent her back to the kitchen. But two days later, Mrs. Neville was struck down in the street by a runaway horse. She died on the very spot where Mrs. O’Reilly had seen her vanish.
    When Rachel told Augustus what had happened, he had shrugged, then smiled indulgently. “Another reason to canonize our Colleen,” he’d replied mildly. Like Rachel, he had a special fondness for Mrs. O’Reilly, who had become a mainstay in their home. Not only was she an extraordinarily competent cook-housekeeper who could (as Augustus said) work miracles with the loaves and fishes, but she loved the children in the same warmly protective way that she loved her own young daughter, Annie, whom she often brought to play with the Blackwood children.
    This morning, visibly anxious, Mrs. O’Reilly had hurried through the preparations for the noon meal: meatloaf and mashed potatoes with green beans and cabbage and carrot slaw. That done, she hurriedly frosted Matthew’s birthday cake, added ten candles, and made sandwiches for the afternoon birthday party.
    Then—even though it was not yet eleven, with the rest of the day’swork yet to be done—she took off her apron and announced that she was going home.
    â€œSure ’n this storm is goin’ to be a bad ’un,” she said. “I will be takin’ me mother an’ Annie to the Ursulines.” The convent was a strong building just a few blocks from the small frame house where Mrs. O’Reilly lived with her mother and three-year-old daughter. She tilted her head with an oddly intent and listening look. After a moment, she added urgently, “Ye must come, too, an’ the children, Mrs. Blackwood. We’ll be safe with the sisters.” She paused, fixed her gray-green eyes on Rachel’s face, and repeated: “Truly, ye
must.
I know it.”
    A little frightened by the young woman’s intensity, Rachel hesitated. But the rain had stopped, and the wind—that peculiar keening wind that whistled so eerily in the eaves—had abated somewhat. She summoned her courage and smiled. “Thank you for your concern, Mrs.