The Cinderella Hour (10 page)

“I hurt you.”

“No, you didn’t! Not really. It will be better next time.
Easier.”

“There’s not going to be a next time.”

“I was that awful?”

“No, Snow. You weren’t awful at all. But we can’t do this
again.”

“You’re angry with me.”

“I’m angry with myself.”

“For betraying Vivian.”

“Will you forget about Vivian? I betrayed
you
, Snow.
Your innocence.”

“I
wanted
you to.”

“I shouldn’t have believed you.” His voice seemed to silence
the birds and make the breeze hold its breath.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I shouldn’t have let this happen.
It can’t happen again. It won’t.”

“But . . .”

“What?”

“Can we be friends?”

They had been blood friends, and now they were blood lovers.
He had hurt her. Made her bleed. She didn’t care about sex. Why would she?
There couldn’t have been any pleasure for her. But she cared about
him
—still—and
wanted to be his friend.

Or believed she did.

It was time to set her straight. “I need to tell you about that
night.”

Snow didn’t blink. “Okay.”

“What if I told you Noah was wrong? That I killed my father
and made it look like he tried to kill me? What would you say to that?”

“Your father was mean to you. Cruel. He starved you. And . .
. he hurt you, didn’t he? Hit you.”

“Sometimes.” If he was lucky, that was all Jared did.

“That’s why there were days when you couldn’t come to school.
Isn’t that right? Because he hurt you,
injured
you.”

“Yes. But there are plenty of mean fathers in the world. They
don’t all end up dead. Their sons don’t all end up killing them.”

“Just like you didn’t kill yours. Even though . . .”

“He deserved it? You can’t say it, can you?”

“No. I guess I can’t—any more than you could
do
it.”

“I planned to kill him that night, Snow. I was thinking about
how to kill him when he poured the gasoline under the door.”

“You wouldn’t have followed through.”

“No?”

“No. You don’t hurt things, remember?”

Not things, Luke thought
. Just you
. But she looked
whole, not injured. Radiant, not hurt. And believing in him
still.
“How
do you know I didn’t kill him?”

“Beyond the simple fact that you never would?”

So simple, to her
. “Yes. Beyond that.”

“You would have killed yourself if you had. No matter what he’d
done to you, you couldn’t have lived with yourself if you’d taken his life.”

Was that true? Luke wondered. Perhaps. The memories of
contemplating Jared’s death had been torment enough.

There had been another torment, too—the worry that, without
Jared’s murderous plans, he would have acted on his own.

Maybe grace would have intervened if evil hadn’t.

Grace.

Snow.

His love, his friend.

They
were
friends, for all the
world to see. The watching world viewed the friendship as strange indeed.
Vivian’s gorgeous spurned lover and the overweight brainchild with the sexy
voice.

The relationship couldn’t be physical. It had to be a weird
brother-sister thing. True, Luke hadn’t dated anyone since Vivian dumped him
for swim team captain Harrison Wright. And he had resisted the most blatant
overtures from other girls.

Luke’s focus was elsewhere. Grades, split times, Snow.

The senior hunk and the sophomore chunk weren’t outcasts.
Winning was paramount to their classmates at Larken High. As long as Snow
argued the debate team to victory, and Luke swam faster than any other high-school
boy in the state, Snow and Luke could have whatever odd relationship they
pleased.

Snow planned to lose the rest of her excess weight. It would
be easy. The pounds that melted away following Vivian’s inspirational pep talk
at orientation were nothing compared to the weight that started to vanish from
the sheer joy of being with Luke—and the queasiness she began to experience
during the third week of school.

Once the cause of the queasiness was confirmed by a home
pregnancy test, Snow forced herself to eat. The weight was necessary to conceal
the secret she alone knew, and alone
would
know, until the time was
right to tell Luke.

It wasn’t right yet. Luke had too much on his mind. Noah, who
had proclaimed Luke’s innocence when no one wanted to hear it, had experienced
an episode of slurred speech and right-handed numbness.

Upon being rushed to the emergency room by Luke, Noah was
diagnosed with having had a transient ischemic attack. A TIA was a warning, the
neurologist explained, of the potential for a future stroke.

Noah’s symptoms cleared, and he was taking aspirin as
prescribed, and he had returned to the vibrancy he had felt ever since his
lonely existence had been invaded by “the youngster.”

Noah wasn’t dependent on Luke. He had reinvigorated lapsed
friendships and made new ones. But Luke worried about him nonetheless.

Luke also had a decision to make and people pressuring him to
make it. An athletic scholarship was his at whatever college he chose. The
coach was pushing for Stanford, the principal for Yale, and his teammates,
hoping for a tandem pick, urged him to select UCLA, Notre Dame, or Purdue.

Luke’s decision would take him away from Quail Ridge . . .
and from her. Sometimes it seemed that he was already gone. But other times,
wondrous times, he would look at her as if she was the only place he wanted to
be.

Snow made a decision of her own. She would tell Luke about
the baby only after he had made plans for the future he wanted.

“Who are you taking to the Glass Slipper Ball?” Luke asked
her one day.

It was early January. Hype for the upcoming prom was
everywhere. Banners in the hallways. Articles in the paper. Tickets on sale
during lunch. And, in the display case near the Girls’ Club lounge, a
collection of charms, on loan from alumnae, spanning fifty-five years.

This year’s model was also on display. Snow’s classmates had
opted for a traditional high heel, in gold, with sapphire rhinestones.

“I’m not going.”

“Yes, you are, Snow. With me. But you have to ask me.”

Luke had been remote since the Christmas holidays. She had
feared he would never come back. But now he was focused only and intently on
her.

“You’ll say yes if I do?”

“I will.”

“Okay. Would you like to go to the Glass Slipper Ball
with—you can’t. You and Noah will be at the swim meet at UCLA.”

“We’ll fly to Los Angeles early Sunday morning and arrive in
time for my first event. I’ve already checked with the coach. It’s all right
with him. I didn’t ask about my midnight curfew, but I will. I’m sure Noah will
be fine with it, but the coach also has to agree.”

Snow didn’t care about dancing until one. The dream was going
to the ball with Luke. She wouldn’t be fleeing from her prince as midnight
neared. She and Luke would leave together, in time to get her home, and then
him home, before the clock struck twelve.

And they would walk—not run—away.

“You don’t need to ask him, Luke. Leaving before midnight is
fine.”

Hilltop
Country Club

Glass
Slipper Ball

Saturday,
January
14

Sixteen
years ago

“Snow! You look beautiful!” Fairy
Godmother Vivian exclaimed. “That pink is fabulous on you.”

“Thank you, Vivian.”

“And Luke . . . so
dashing
in a tux.”

“Hey, Vivian.”

With a flourish, Vivian produced the evening’s pearl-white
dance program with its golden tassel, to which was tied Snow’s very own charm.

“Consider yourself slippered.”

“Thank you,” Snow said again, overwhelmed by Vivian’s
attentiveness.

But that was Vivian. She made everyone feel special.

Snow had been feeling special, and overwhelmed, since opening
her front door to Luke. She felt more of each as the evening progressed, a
dizzying crescendo because of him.

They danced only slow dances, watching others gyrate whenever
the band picked up the pace. With each dance, they swayed a little closer, until,
when Luke’s arms were about to encircle her waist, and her arms were lifting to
loop behind his neck, he led her off the floor.

“Luke?”

He squeezed her hand but didn’t speak as they passed through
curtained French doors to the terrace overlooking the golf course where Jared
had played—and won—so many rounds.

The air was cool but not cold, and the starry sky made the
predictions of a major snowstorm, due to hit Chicago the following night, seem
farfetched.

“What is it, Luke? What’s wrong?”

“There’s something I need to tell you. I wasn’t planning to do
it tonight. I didn’t want to ruin the evening. But I’ve decided this is the
right time. You can hear what I have to say and think about it while I’m in California. You do need to think about it, Snow. Read about it. Once you have, I want you
to promise you’ll be honest about what you’ve learned and how it makes you feel
about me.”

I
love
you, she thought.
Nothing
could change
that. “I promise. But tell me quickly, Luke. You’re scaring me.”

“Okay. Remember telling me about the reading you did on
runaway teenage girls?”

“Yes. I was thinking there might have been abuse in my mother’s
past that made her become—why are you asking me this?”

“Because after you told me, I did some reading, too. A lot of
reading. I had the Quail Ridge library order books and articles from other
libraries. They didn’t add much. Just more of the same. Everything you need to
know can be found in the library here.”

“I know. That’s what I discovered, too. I don’t understand.
Did you find something in your reading that I missed? And how could it make me
feel . . . differently about you? My mother wasn’t sexually abused.”

“No. She wasn’t.”

“Then what is it?”

“Your mother wasn’t sexually abused, Snow. But I was.”

“What? Oh, Luke.
Luke
. Your father?”

“My father.”

“I hate him.”

“Me, too.” Luke’s laugh was bitter, and he didn’t smile. “I
had decided that what he’d done to me died the night he did. I suppose I always
knew it wasn’t true. What I’ve read confirmed it. It’s not surprising. The
threat of what he did to me, the fear of it, was part of my life from the time
I was three.”

“Three?”

“It may have started before then, but that’s my first memory.
We were at Disneyland. A family trip to celebrate my third birthday.”

“I don’t know what to say. Except that I’m glad he’s dead.”

“Don’t say anything. Not even that. Just listen and think
about it . . . about me.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with you!”

“But it does. It’s who I am, Snow. Who I might become. The
books are pretty clear about the kind of men sexually abused boys can grow up
to be.”

Violent men, he had learned, who inflicted the same kind of
pain they had endured, as innocents, on others as innocent as they once had been.

Luke couldn’t imagine hurting anyone the way he had been
hurt—intentionally hurting anyone, ever. He had felt violence within him as a
boy, anger at what Jared was doing and frustration at his powerlessness to stop
it. When the fury needed release, he threw snowballs, did chin-ups. The anger
hadn’t died with Jared. It swam with Luke, day after day, lap after lap, and it
brought him back to Snow . . . who needed to read about boys like him and
decide on her own what kind of man Luke would be.

Because of her, the boy who had never been a boy dared to
dream. He had dreams, for her and for him, if she believed in him after learning
what she must.

“It’s the reason my mother abandoned me. She walked into my
bedroom, saw what he was doing, what
we
were doing, and that was that.”

“She left when you were five. She can’t have thought you
wanted him to molest you. She can’t have
blamed
you.”

“I don’t know what she thought. All I know is she left me
with him, knowing what he was doing to me. Maybe she realized it was her only
way to be free of him. I’m sure she’d wanted out for a while. She knew he was
seeing other women. He laughed at her when she demanded that he stop. If she’d
taken me with her, he might have come after us. But if she left me—”

“
Sacrificed
you, you mean.”

“It felt like that sometimes.” Luke drew a breath of cool
night air. “The thing is, something about me
was
to blame.”

“No.”

“Hear me out, Snow. Please. He had never desired children
before me. Or after. There weren’t any other victims. Except for me, he was
interested in adult women.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me. Repeatedly. His desire for me enraged him. He
hated it, hated me, and most of all he hated that he couldn’t stop.”

“That’s why he wanted to kill you.”

“Maybe. Or maybe it was because I was growing up. His
violence toward me didn’t diminish as I grew. But he came after me less often
for . . . sex. The boy he had desired was disappearing. I became expendable, I
think. And potentially dangerous. The night he died I threatened to report him
to the police. He laughed. The entire town knew I was a liar. He’d made sure of
it. Still, he decided to get rid of the sole witness to a perversion he
detested but had indulged in for many years.”

“I’m glad he’s dead. And as for the way it makes me feel
about you—”

“Think about it, Snow. Read about it. Learn what it can mean.”

“I don’t have to!”

“You need to. I’m missing pieces. Important ones. I can feel
where they’re supposed to be, the empty places I’ve filled with anger. I don’t
know what the pieces are, or how to find them, or if they even exist.”

“Do you think you should talk to someone?”

I am talking to someone, Snow. I’m talking to you
. “I think I have a pretty good
grasp of the issues.”

“I know. But—oh!” She touched her lower abdomen. “Oh.”

“What is it?”

“Luke,” she whispered. “Feel here.”

He did, and felt nothing, and then everything, the fullness
beneath his hands and a filling, an overflowing, of the empty places within
him.

The places had been filling even before her
oh
. He had
been afraid to confess his abuse, afraid she would see him not as the Luke she
knew but as the boy he had been forced to be with Jared. Once those grotesque
images entered her mind, could she ever see him the same way again?

Yes
,
she had been telling him, even as he confessed.

His fear had come from a missing piece that now was found.
Trust.

She trusted him, and he trusted her. With everything.
Including . . . “You’re pregnant?”

“Yes. I’ve wanted to tell you. It’s just . . . you’ve had so
much on your mind.”

So much, Luke thought. His life.
Her
. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I have a feeling she wanted me to wait to tell
you until tonight. That’s why, a few seconds ago, she moved for the very first
time. It felt like she was swimming, Luke, doing a flutter kick just like you
do. Oh, she did it again. Did you feel it?”

“No.”
I can’t feel her. I want to feel her
. “Is she
still kicking?”

“No. She’s stopped. Treading water, I suppose.”

“She?”

“I don’t know. But I think she is,
feel
she is. I
think, I feel, she’s Wendy.”

“Wendy,” Luke whispered.
Our Wendy.

Another voice drifted onto the terrace, a startling intrusion,
but not an invasion of their privacy. The voice was disembodied and amplified,
the band leader announcing a final song before their eleven o’clock break.

“We have to leave.”

“Soon,” Luke replied. “Will you marry me, Snow?”

“Marry you?” Her eyes shimmered yes. But . . . “You don’t
have to do this, Luke. I can take care of her.”

“She’s my baby, too. My Wendy. I want to take care of her,
and you.”

It was his dream, the one he had hoped to pursue if she
believed in him after learning the truth about Jared. If she did, and wanted
the dream, too, he would go to one of the many colleges nearby. He had already
applied, unbeknownst to anyone at Larken High, for academic scholarships, not
athletic ones. He would swim for the remainder of this school year. He would
have to, as a condition of his parole. And, for the coach and his teammates, he
would post the best times he could.

Then he would never swim again, and he and Snow would date
while she finished her studies at Larken High, and he would follow her to
whatever top-ranked college she wanted to attend. And, one day, he would marry
her.

Now the dream was here.

Snow wasn’t worried about the kind of man he would become.
But she
was
worried, Luke realized. For him. For his future—a future, he
knew, that was even better than he had dared to hope. They would marry now. He
and Noah would care for Wendy while Snow was at school. And he would get a job.
Several jobs. He would support his family, his
family,
earning enough for
college, for every dream, for his brilliant wife and their baby girl.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said. “We’ll figure everything out
together. The three of us, Snow. You, me, Wendy.”

“Oh, Luke.”

She moved closer, as he moved away.

Then he was on bended knee, reaching for her hand.

“Snow Ashley Gable, will you marry me?”

“Yes, Lucas Kilcannon, I will. I
will.
”

“On Valentine’s Day?”

“Yes, Luke. Oh, yes.”

She tugged at his hand. But Luke Kilcannon, bridegroom-to-be,
didn’t stand.

Luke Kilcannon, father, had something to do.

With gentleness, with love, he kissed Snow’s lower abdomen
where his Wendy slept.

Snow awakened with a sense of
dread on what should have been the happiest morning of her life. Luke wanted to
marry her. His baby swam inside her.

It was
7
:
00
a.m., eight hours since she had felt
the first flutters . . . and when, moments later, the fluttering had stopped.

Wendy was still sleeping, she told herself. Dreaming. Or, if
awake, her kicks created such delicate ripples they couldn’t be felt.

Everything was fine.

There was nothing to dread, and every joy to embrace.

No reason whatsoever to feel loss.

But Snow couldn’t shake her fear. She even considered waking
Leigh. I need to talk to you. For once in my life—and your life—I need you to
be my mother.

Mother wasn’t a role Leigh could don as easily as she slipped
into a designer dress. Besides, she had been out at eleven-thirty, when Luke
dropped Snow off in time to make his midnight curfew, and she was still out at
two, when Snow finally floated to bed.

Floated. Just hours ago.

Now there was dread.

When her phone rang at ten, Snow raced to it with a silent
prayer.

Luke is fine.
Please
. He and Noah won’t have been in a
car accident en route to O’Hare, and their plane will have landed safely in Los Angeles. Luke will be calling from there, sensing I need him, even though, to save
money for our life together, we agreed he wouldn’t call until Tuesday night.

“Hello?”

“Snow? It’s Vivian.”

“Vivian.”

“Are you coming to the Fairy Godmother Brunch?”

Snow had forgotten all about the morning-after celebration of
the Glass Slipper Ball, the first time the newly slippered Cinderellas could
wear their charms.

Where
was
her charm? The thought came with a jolt of worry,
and then a breath of relief. She had given the tasseled dance program to Luke
for safekeeping in an inside pocket of his rented tux. Bert knew Larken High’s
champion swimmer was leaving at dawn for California. Luke could keep the tux,
Bert had said, at no extra charge until his return.