The Thawing of Mara (2 page)

"I'm attempting to understand you," her father replied wearily. "Why am I here? After my accident you went to the doctors and told them that you were bringing me here and you would take care of me. At the time I thought you'd finally forgiven me. But you haven't. So why am I here?"

"Unlike you, I felt a sense of family obligation." Mara returned the pot holder to its drawer. "Regardless of how I feel about you, you are my father. It's my duty to take care of you."

"And that's why I'm here. Because you consider it's your duty." He studied her, brown eyes measuring brown eyes. "Are you sure I'm not a convenient excuse to shut yourself off from the rest of the world?"

A smile twisted her mouth. "It's my responsibility to take care of you. But I'm sure you don't understand that since you don't know the meaning of the word."
 

"You're so righteous, Mara, that I sometimes expect to see a halo circling your head," Adam Prentiss commented dryly. "Yet you have few friends. Whenever people invite you somewhere, you always turn them down because you have to stay here to take care of me. Hardly anyone calls anymore."

"It doesn't bother me." Mara lifted her shoulders in an uncaring shrug.

"You rarely went out when your mother was alive, either, did you? You spent most of your time with her." There was a shrewd gleam in his look.

"Mother was very lonely after you deserted her." The flatness of her statement was calculated to lash at him. "She needed me."

"You used her as an excuse the same way that you're using me," her father accused in a low, quiet voice. "You like to look down on the rest of us from your lofty position of piety. What are you afraid of, Mara? Are you afraid that if you step down from your pedestal, you'll discover you're as imperfect as the rest of us?"

"Believe whatever you wish, Adam. I couldn't care less what you think." With a mildly arrogant smile, she turned from him and walked to the coat rack. Taking her wool plaid jacket from an iron hook, she put it on. "I'll go and see if the mailman left anything in our box."

"Go ahead and run from the conversation, Mara," he interposed. "It's as ineffective as shutting yourself away."
 

At first she made no response as she paused at the back door. When she turned, her gaze sought the man in the wheelchair.

"You're only trying to rationalize your own feelings of guilt, Adam," she said. "You know you need someone to take care of you, but you prefer to pretend that I'm doing it for some other reason because it makes you feel better."

"Oh, Mara!" He shook his head sadly.

Her gaze strayed from him to wander over the old, cozy kitchen. The oak cupboards and cabinets had been installed over a century ago, but time hadn't dulled the rich luster of the wood. The walls were papered in a cheerful yellow and white check design to match the tieback curtains at the windows.

An aging oak table and spindle-backed chairs stood in the middle of the room. The tabletop was covered with a bright yellow cloth, a small wicker basket of red apples and oranges at its center. The floor was covered with a continuous length of white linoleum, speckled with red, yellow and green.

"I know it bothers you that this is my home," Mara said. "You're only here at my sufferance. Knowing how you abandoned us, it probably irritates you to be so dependent upon me. But you're really very lucky, Adam. Here you have a comfortable place to live and you can continue your work. Plus, you not only have me as nurse and housekeeper, but also as a typist and researcher. Why don't you think about that instead of seeking an ulterior motive for something that I'm only doing out of a sense of family duty?"

When she was answered with silence, Mara turned and opened the back door. "Don't let the wind blow your halo off," came her father's biting words of caution.

Her lips thinned as she pushed open the second door, its screen replaced with storm-glass panes. She closed the inner door while stepping outside. The second door swung shut on its own when she released it.

A brick path circled the house to the front entrance then continued out to the gravel road. There was an autumn chill in the air, September's breath. A few leaves were scattered around on the green lawn even though there hadn't been a killing frost yet. The trees were still full and green, but soon they would be painted with autumn colors. Then the Pennsylvania countryside around Gettysburg would be arrayed in hues of gold and scarlet and rust.

With her hands in her pockets, Mara held her jacket front together and followed the brick walk out to the road. The carriage of her head was naturally high, but after her father's biting rejoinder she held her head even higher. She despised him. The force of the emotion clenched her hands into fists in the pockets of her jacket.

How typical of him to try to make someone else feel guilty! Mara remembered how her mother had anguished over what she had done wrong when he'd run off with that other woman. Mara had insisted it wasn't her fault. The only blame she placed on her mother was for being such a fool over him.

A squirrel scurried around, busily stashing his winter supply of food. Overhead there was a flash of scarlet as a cardinal flitted among the tree branches. But the wildlife didn't draw even a passing interest from Mara.

At the mailbox, she pulled down the door and removed the letters inside. Pausing, she glanced through them. Most were addressed to her father, although there were a couple of bills for her, typically she received no personal correspondence.

It was true that she had few friends, but she had never felt any great sense of loss at her lack of companionship. In fact, Mara often felt sorry for those who had to constantly be with others. She was content to be alone, not depending on someone else to entertain her. She viewed it as a trait of strength.

Mara's independence was something that had developed over her twenty-two years. Part of it came from her environment, being raised in the country with none of the close neighbors having children her age, and with no brothers or sisters. Part came from the circumstances of her life. Her schoolmates had sympathized with her at her father's sudden departure, but they hadn't understood the sense of betrayal Mara felt.

His desertion of her and her mother for another, younger woman wasn't something that could be kept quiet. Adam Prentiss was a noted Civil War historian, an authority on the Battle of Gettysburg. Everyone in the area knew what had happened and why.

Mara had been in her first month of college when her mother took sick. She had left college and cared for her mother until she died six weeks later. Then there had been the arrangements for the funeral and all the legal business of settling the estate. Finally there had been her father's accident two years ago. All of it had contributed to Mara's unconscious decision to rely on no one but herself.

She closed the mailbox and turned to retrace her steps to the two-story red brick farmhouse with its white windows and door. A car came down the country road. It slowed as it approached and honked its horn. She recognized Harve Bennett, the dark-haired driver.

"I have some good news for you!" he shouted out of the opened car window, and turned into the driveway that ran parallel with the brick walk.

Mara lifted an eyebrow in fleeting curiosity before she started toward the house. His message obviously had something to do with the cottage on the far corner of the property. Harve Bennett was a young real estate man with whom Mara had become acquainted while ironing out some title questions during the settling of her mother's property and estate.

The cottage had once provided rental income. After her father had left, it had become neglected and too run-down to be rented. A few months ago, Harve had finally succeeded in persuading Mara to make the necessary repairs and fix it up. Mara had agreed, partly because her father had advised against it, insisting that she wouldn't be able to recoup the cost through the nominal rent she could charge for the small one-bedroom cottage.

All the major work had been completed a week ago, and Mara had leisurely begun to furnish the cottage while Harve started advertising for tenants. She had not felt the need to rush to finish her task. Judging by the wide smile on Harve's face as he waited for her at the front door, she thought she might have been wrong.

"Hello, Harve." Her mouth curved in a polite reciprocation of his smile. "You said you had some good news. Is it about the cottage?"

She walked past him and opened the front door. Entering the house, she took it for granted that Harve would follow her—which he did.

"It's about the cottage," he answered. "I had a phone call from a man today who's interested in it."

The wide entry hall split the house in two. At the end, an L-shaped staircase that had once been enclosed led to the second floor. The sliding oak doors to the study, formerly the parlor, were open, hardwood floors glistening from beneath an area rug.

From inside that room on the left, Adam Prentiss called, "Was there any mail for me, Mara?"

"Yes." She paused and separated the envelopes addressed to her father from the others she had in her hand. "I'll only be a moment," she said to Harve and walked into the study. "Here you are." She placed the mail on the desk behind which her father's wheelchair was positioned.

He glanced beyond her to the man standing in the hallway. "Hello, Harve," he greeted him affably. "How's business?"

"We're selling a few houses," was the falsely modest response. "How are you, Mr. Prentiss?"

"Fine, fine," was Adam's dismissing reply, and he began looking through his mail.

As Mara turned to rejoin Harve, she let her gaze inspect his features. Cynically she thought that fresh-scrubbed, faintly freckled face had probably been responsible for selling quite a few houses. Although in his early thirties, Harve Bennett still possessed the wholesome innocence of a boy—a trick of nature, Mara was sure.

"Shall we go into the kitchen?" she suggested smoothly. Whatever Harve had come to discuss, it was no business of her father's. And she didn't want him listening in on their conversation.

"Sounds great. I could use a cup of coffee if you have any made," he said unabashedly.

"I think there's some left from lunch," she admitted, amused rather than irritated by his naturally pushy behavior.

Pushing open the swinging door to the kitchen, she walked to the coat rack. Harve was there to help her out of the wool jacket. She coolly smiled a thank-you before hanging the jacket on its hook.

"You said you had a phone call from someone interested in the cottage." She reminded him of the reason for his visit as she walked to the counter where the electric coffeepot was plugged in. "Someone local?"

"No, from Baltimore." Harve pulled one of the chairs away from the table and sat down, rocking it back on two legs and clasping his hands behind his head.

"From Baltimore? Why? Is this person moving here?" Mara filled two coffee mugs and carried them to the table. "Cream or sugar?"

"Haven't you remembered by now that I take it straight?" he chided her, and let all four legs of the chair come down on the floor with a resounding thud. "It seems your prospective tenant is looking for a weekend retreat so he can get away from the hassle of the city and the pressure of work."

"I suppose he wants to see it," she concluded logically. Sitting in one of the other chairs, she mentally began to calculate how long it might take her to complete furnishing the cottage if she devoted all of her spare time to it, "I have the bedroom furniture and the kitchen appliances there, as well as a sofa, but—"

"He doesn't want to see it," Harve interrupted.

"You don't mean he's going to rent it sight unseen?" Mara looked at him in frowning surprise.

"I didn't mean exactly that he isn't going to see it," Harve qualified his previous statement. "He can't get away right now and I, er—" he grinned "—gave him the impression that you already had several inquiries about the cottage and wouldn't be inclined to let it sit vacant until he was free to come here to look at it."

"So how is he going to see it?" she persisted.

"When I told him it was out in the country, secluded and quiet, he said it sounded like just what he was looking for. I almost got a commitment from him over the phone," said Harve, the pride in his selling ability surfacing with the claim. "To make sure he wasn't renting a log cabin instead of a cottage, and to speed things up, he wants me to send him some Polaroid pictures of it. I promised I'd send them to him in tomorrow's mail."

"Tomorrow? That's worse than I thought," she muttered. "Why did you do that, Harve? You know it isn't completely furnished yet."

"I told him that. He said he was only interested in the bare necessities." Harve sipped at his coffee, cradling the mug in both his hands.

It was all beginning to sound too good to be true. Mara felt a surge of skepticism that all wasn't as wonderful as Harve seemed to think.

"Who is this man? What do you know about him?" she demanded. "Is he young or old? After all the money I've spent fixing the cottage up, I'm not going to rent it to some wild young kids so they can wreck it partying all weekend."

"It's difficult to judge people over the telephone." he defended himself. "His name is Sinclair Buchanan. He sounded mature and well educated. I bumped the monthly rental a hundred dollars higher and he didn't even hesitate when I told him the price."