Darkwater Read Free

it was that she felt. She looked around the room. It was cozy, snuggled under the eaves, with a dormer window and an inviting window seat. It was neither opulent nor plain, but a comfortable little room in which it was easy to feel at home.
    That was it, she thought suddenly—the feeling of being at home. As if she belonged here, in this house, in this room.
    â€œI think I do,” she said softly, a smile brightening her face. “I think I belong here.”
    For some time now she had felt detached from everything. Since her mother’s death—no, before that, since the war.
    At one time she had felt very much a part of the world, very much alive as only a young woman, healthy, happy, in love, can feel alive. Then had come the War Between the States, and her father had gone to serve. Her fiancé had gone, too.
    Neither of the men had come back, ever, and she’d had to face the war alone, alone with her invalid mother after the servants had gone.
    At first her mother had been able to get around and it had not been so difficult. But then had come the news that her father was dead in battle, and it was as if a mortal blow had been struck her mother too. True, she lived on, through the war and for years afterward until just a few months ago, but she had never recovered from that blow. It was Jennifer who had to carry the ever increasing burden.
    The war. Soldiers. Pillage and looting, and worse. Homes destroyed, and those that were not destroyed, confiscated after the war. The Hales had been reduced from relative prosperity to penury, and in the end, they lost everything.
    By then it had not mattered much to Mrs. Hale, who was hardly aware that she lived now in a cheap rented room instead of in her once lovely home. Jennifer had gone to work as a teacher.
    At last, perhaps too much later, her mother had died and Jennifer had been left with nothing but a few dollars that she was able to get for their few remaining treasures—and the bills far outweighed those.
    Which was how she had come to gamble on this job in a distant location, and why she felt so strongly the need to secure the job and remain here. It was not only that feeling of belonging here, of being at home.
    She had nowhere else to go.
    She sighed. Then, pulling her shoulders back rigidly, she began to remove her muddy dress. She found herself picturing Walter Dere. What an attractive man he was. For some reason, thinking of him brought back memories of her dear Johnny. She had thought those memories long banished from her mind, and was surprised, not only to discover them still there, but by their intensity.
    She shoved those memories determinedly aside. The dead were gone, all of the past vanished. Those memories must be gone too. She could not afford that sort of romantic dream.
    Her dreams now were of nothing more thrilling than survival. And for that, she would need all of her wits about her. She couldn’t waste her time or her energy on ghosts from the past.
    * * * * * * *
    Helen Dere had been oddly impressed with their visitor. It was not only that the young woman was very pretty—you were taken at once with that, of course—or that she was obviously well bred despite the shabbiness of her clothes. Since the war, one had gotten used to seeing people dressed in shabby finery, even here in remote Durieville.
    What Jennifer Hale had was a look of strength—soft and subtle, but enduring strength.
    Of course she would never do. Alicia would never permit it.
    Alicia. That woman! How she had disrupted the peace of an otherwise happy house, with her sickness. We would be better off if she died , Helen thought, and was at once shocked at herself.
    She hurried back down to the first floor and along that hall, to the rear of the house. A young girl of about fourteen slipped from the door of the room at the end of the hall. The slim figure stood poised for a moment, as if for flight. Then she looked down the hall and saw Helen