Heaven Sent

HEAVEN SENT

Alice Duncan

Heaven Sent

Copyright
©
2001 by Alice
Duncan

All rights reserved.

Published 2001 by Berkley
Publishing Corp.

A Jove book

Digital edition published July 24,
2012

No part of this publication may be
reproduced in any form whatsoever without written permission from
the author. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Any
similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not
intended by the author.

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www.aliceduncan.net

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Prologue

Santa Angelica,
California, August 1897

Miss Callida Prophet finished her
simple supper, washed her dishes, and sat in her late father’s
comfortably padded rocking chair. Monster, her aptly named black
cat, jumped onto her lap as soon as he figured she was set for the
evening and commenced purring.

With no more thought than she might
have given to watering a flower, Callie opened the letter little
Becky Lockhart had addressed to her mother in heaven. Tampering
with the U.S. Mail was a felony but Callie, rural postal carrier
for Santa Angelica, California„ wasn’t worried. All Callie cared
about was that, by reading and answering Becky’s letters to her
dead mama, she might be helping the poor girl cope with her
terrible loss.

Anyhow, Mr. Wilson, the Santa Angelica
postmaster, had sanctioned Callie’s intention to respond to Becky’s
letters. The entire town of Santa Angelica knew how huge a blow the
loss of Anne Lockhart had been to Anne’s daughter.

Dear
Mama
, had been written in Becky’s firm,
though somewhat lopsided printing.

I miss you lots. Papa dint
come down to brekfist today. He dint eat his dinner yesterday. I
miss you. I miss Papa. He says he will hire a nany for me. Is a
nany like a mama? I want a kitty or a puppy.

Love, Becky

The word “nany” gave Callie pause
until she realized Becky had been trying to write
“nanny.”

“
So. He’s hiring a nanny for
his child, is he?”

Callie didn’t know what to think about
that. Becky’s letters told her what she’d already guessed: Becky
missed her mother terribly. Worse, she missed her father, though he
still resided in the house in which Becky lived. But Becky’s
father, the rich Mr. Aubrey Lockhart, seemed to have become mired
in grief somewhere along the road leading from his wife’s illness
and death to the present. He was wallowing in the slough of
despondency to this day, a year later. He’d clearly withdrawn from
his daughter, who needed him now more than ever.

Often when she read Becky’s letters to
her mother in heaven, Callie wished she could shake Mr. Aubrey
Lockhart until his teeth rattled and his brain started functioning
again.

Callie knew exactly what Becky was
going through because she’d lost her own mother when she was six
years old, the same age as Becky. But Callie, unlike Becky, had had
two wonderful sisters, a compassionate older brother, and a loving
father to comfort her.

Poor Becky sometimes wrote about how
nice the Lockhart housekeeper, Mrs. Granger, was, but the only
messages her letters ever contained about her father were that he
was hiding out somewhere in his own personal hell and ignoring
Becky. She didn’t use those words, of course, but Callie could read
between the lopsided lines.

And that, in a nutshell, was
the reason Callie had started answering Becky’s letters to heaven
with letters of her own and signing them “
Mama
.”
Somebody
had to pay attention to a
little girl’s loneliness and distress.
Somebody
needed to reassure her that
her mother had loved her beyond anything.
Somebody
had to persuade the child
that life could be good, even when one did lose the person one
loved hest in the world. And, since Becky’s father didn’t seem
inclined to interrupt his own selfish suffering to offer assistance
to his daughter, Callie tried her best to do the job for
him.

“
Stupid man,” Callie
grumbled. It shouldn’t take a genius to understand that he and
Becky could be of enormous help to each other in coming to terms
with Mrs. Lockhart’s death.

Anne Lockhart, the mama Becky missed
so much, had been sick for a long time, suffering from some sort of
wasting illness that had eaten her up inside and sapped her
strength until she’d at last been confined to her bed. She’d been
the talk of the small village of Santa Angelica for almost two
years before her ultimate demise. She was still talked about, with
sad shakes of heads and dolorous sighs.

The whole town had mourned her death.
Most Santa Angelicans had attended her funeral, Callie among them.
Anne Lockhart had, by all reports, been a truly good
person.

Everything Callie had ever heard about
Anne bespoke a generous, gentle, good-natured, loving woman who had
adored her husband and daughter. Surely she wouldn’t want them to
suffer like this from her death. She would especially hate it that
Mr. Lockhart had forsaken his daughter just when she needed him
most.

Callie sat in the chair, stroking
Monster, and wondering if there wasn’t something she could do for
Becky. Something more than answering her letters to heaven. Becky’s
father was beyond Callie’s reach, so she’d never be able to tell
him to his face that she thought he was an idiot to retreat from
his own daughter. Still, there might be something . . .

Her gasp of insight startled Monster
into lifting his head and scowling at her. A stunning—no, a
brilliant—idea had occurred to her. She wasn’t sure she dare try
it.

“
But why shouldn’t I,
Monster? After all, I’m perfectly qualified for the position.
Besides, what do I have to lose?”

Monster evidently didn’t know because
he didn’t answer. He did resume purring after a few seconds,
though, so Callie guessed he approved. She lifted Monster gently
off her lap and set him on the rocking chair as she went to the
desk to pen a response to Becky’s letter.

My darling Becky, I hope
you get your kitty or your puppy. A little girl needs a pet to play
with. And then, when all the grown-up people around you are busy,
you could talk to your pet. Pets are good for that. I hope your
papa hires a nice nanny to take care of you, dear. He loves you
very much. And so do I.

Love, Mama

It irked Callie to tell Becky that her
father loved her, but she knew Becky needed to read it. And the man
probably did love his daughter. That he was unable to tear himself
away from his own unhappiness and demonstrate his affection was not
to his credit, but it didn’t mean he didn’t love his
child.

As she folded the letter and sealed
it, Callie turned and murmured to the sleeping cat, “Well, Monster,
it looks like I’m going into another line of work.”

Monster only purred more
loudly.

Chapter One

Aubrey Lockhart sat with his head in
his hands, staring at his desk blotter, wishing he were dead. It
wasn’t an uncommon pose for Aubrey, and it certainly wasn’t an
uncommon wish. He’d got into the habit of doing both somewhere
between the onset of Anne’s illness and her death. He was only
adhering to tradition.

He sighed heavily. Why had this
happened to him? Why? Had he irked the gods so much that they’d
decided to punish him? Why couldn’t they have taken him instead of
Anne? Aubrey didn’t think he’d mind dying. Hell, he’d greet death
with open arms, if that was the only way to see Anne again. But
that would be even more unfair to-Becky than he was already
being.

He felt very guilty about Becky. He
knew he ought to be holding her, talking to her, reading to her,
going for walks with her, as he used to do. Before Anne left
them.

But now, every time he saw Becky, he
saw Anne. Becky had Anne’s bright blue eyes and peaches-and-cream
coloring. Becky’s hair was lighter than Anne’s had been, but that
was only because she was so young. When she grew up, she’d be the
very image of her mother.

No. Aubrey couldn’t bear being around
Becky. For one thing, she brought Anne’s loss into sharp focus,
which was excruciating. Worse, he couldn’t quell a new fear that if
he loved Becky too much the gods would take her, too.

“
Ass.” Aubrey had also
become accustomed to calling himself names, much as he’d become
accustomed to basking in his unhappiness. Both behaviors were habit
with him now, not unlike his habit of breathing. Or his habit of
avoiding his daughter, who didn’t deserve it.

He shoved his chair away from his
desk, let his head loll back, and stared at the ceiling.

“
Why can’t I just get over
it?” he asked himself, not for the first, or even the hundredth,
time. Anne had been dead a year last week. He shouldn’t still have
this terrible ache in his chest. He shouldn’t still feel this awful
emptiness, this deep hole in his life. He shouldn’t—

A sharp knock at the library door
jerked him upright in his chair. “Yes?”

The door opened without a creak. Mrs.
Granger, his housekeeper, wouldn’t allow hinges to creak in her
house, God bless her.

Figgins, Aubrey’s butler, entered the
room slowly and said, “Mr. Lockhart, there’s an applicant in the
drawing room.”

“
An applicant?” Aubrey’s
mind, a cumbersome organ determined to be of as little use as
possible to him lately, finally paid attention. “Oh. An applicant.
For the position advertised in the
Santa
Angelica Post
, I presume?”

“
Yes, sir.” Figgins, who
Aubrey sometimes thought looked as though he’d been stuffed by an
exceptionally talented taxidermist, came forward. He looked much
more regal than any of the Lockharts ever had, and he bore a silver
tray in his white-gloved hand. A small card rested on
it.

With a sigh, Aubrey picked up the
card. “Miss Callida Prophet.”

“
Yes, sir. I had her remain
in the drawing room.”

“
Right.” Aubrey shoved his
chair back farther, rose, plucked his coat from where he’d flung it
over the sofa, and accompanied Figgins out of the library,
shrugging into the coat as he went.

He was glad he’d thought of hiring a
nanny. Since he was of no earthly good to Becky, he ought at least
to hire someone who would be. Guilt gnawed at his insides, nibbling
at the edges of the blotch of grief residing there. But, hell’s
bells, he couldn’t take care of a child. He was a man. Becky needed
a woman to care for her. Some gray-haired granny perhaps. Maybe an
old maiden aunt who missed taking care of her now grown-up nieces
and nephews.

Aubrey could picture the two of them
in his mind’s eye: Becky, smiling happily as she walked
hand-in-hand with a small, graying, elderly woman wearing a silly
flowered hat and, perhaps, spectacles. They’d both be smiling.
Maybe talking to each other in low voices, exchanging the innocent
secrets of the very old and the very young. The nanny would
probably walk with a cane. Or carry one of those frilly
old-fashioned parasols. She would be like a grandmother to
Becky.

Yes, indeed. Once he found the right
nanny for her, Becky would finally get the love and care he knew
she needed. Aubrey had begun to smile slightly by the time he
reached the drawing room.