Born in Fire
Page 73

“And she found us.” When Maggie shut her eyes, the scene played back vividly. “She went white, bone white, and screamed and raged, dragged me into the house. I was wicked, she said, and sinful, and because my father wasn’t home to stop her, she whipped me.”
“Whipped you?” Shock had him rising out of his chair. “Are you telling me she hit you because you’d kissed a boy?”
“She beat me,” Maggie said flatly. “It was more than the back of her hand that I’d been used to. She took a belt and laid into me until I thought she’d kill me. While she did she shouted scripture and raged about the branding of sin.”
“She had no right to treat you so.” He knelt in front of her, cupped her face in his hands.
“No, no one has such a right, but it doesn’t stop them. I could see the hate in her then, and the fear, too. The fear, I came to understand, was that I would end up as she had, with a baby in my belly and emptiness in my heart. I’d known always that she didn’t love me as mothers were meant to love their children. I’d known that she was easier, a bit softer on Brie. But until that day, I hadn’t known why.”
She couldn’t sit any longer. Rising, she went to the door that led out to a little stone patio decked with clay pots filled with brilliant geraniums.
“There’s no need for you to talk about this anymore,” Rogan said from behind her.
“I’ll finish.” The sky was studded with stars, the breeze a gentle whisper through the trees. “She told me that I was marked. And she beat me so that the mark would be on the outside as well, so that I would understand what a burden a woman bears because it’s she who carries the child.”
“That’s vile, Maggie.” Unable to clamp down on his own emotions, he whirled her around, his hands hard on her shoulders, his eyes icy blue and furious. “You were just a girl.”
“If I was, I stopped being one that day. Because I understood, Rogan, that she meant exactly what she said.”
“It was a lie, a pitiful one.”
“Not to her. To her it was sterling truth. She told me I was her penance, that God had punished her for her night of sin, with me. She believed that, fully, and every time she looked at me she was reminded of it. That even the pain and misery of birthing me wasn’t enough. Because of me she was trapped in a marriage she despised, bound to a man she couldn’t love and mother to a child she’d never wanted. And, as I’ve found out just recently, the ruin of everything she really wanted. Perhaps the ruin of everything she was.”
“She’s the one who should have been whipped. No one has the right to abuse a child so, and worse to use some warped vision of God as the strap.”
“Funny, my father said nearly the same thing when he came home and saw what she’d done. I thought he would strike her. It’s the only time in my life I’d ever seen him close to violence. They had a horrible fight. It was almost worse than the beating to listen to it. I went up to the bedroom to get away from the worst of it, and Brie came in with salve. She tended to me like a little mother, talking nonsense all the while the shouts and curses boomed up the stairs. Her hands were shaking.”
She didn’t object when Rogan drew her into his arms, but her eyes remained dry, her voice calm. “I thought he would go then. They said such vicious things to each other, I thought no two people could live under the same roof after. I thought if he’d just take us with him, if Brie and I could just go with him, anywhere at all, it would be all right again. Then I heard him say that he was paying, too. That he was paying for ever having believed that he loved and wanted her. That he’d go to his grave paying. Of course, he didn’t go.”
Maggie pulled away again. Stepped back. “He stayed more than ten years longer, and she never touched me again. Not in any way. But neither of us forgot that day—I think neither of us wanted to. He tried to make up for it by giving me more, loving me more. But he couldn’t. If he’d left her, if he taken us and left her, it would have changed things. But that he couldn’t do, so we lived in that house, like sinners in hell. And I knew no matter how he loved me that there were times he must have thought if it hadn’t been—if I hadn’t been, he’d have been free.”
“Do you honestly blame the child, Maggie?”
“The sins of the fathers…” She shook her head. “One of my mother’s favorite expressions that. No, Rogan, I don’t blame the child. But it doesn’t change the results.” She took a deep breath. She was better for having said it all. “I’ll never risk locking myself in that prison.”
“You’re too smart a woman to believe what happened to your parents happens to everyone.”
“Not to everyone, no. One day, now that she’s not hobbled by my mother’s demands, Brie will marry. She’s a woman who wants family.”
“And you don’t.”
“I don’t,” she said, but the words sounded hollow. “I’ve my work, and a need to be alone.”
He caught her chin in his hand. “You’re afraid.”
“If I am, I’ve a right to be.” She shook free of him. “What kind of wife or mother would I make with what I’ve come from?”
“Yet you’ve just said your sister will be both.”
“It affected her differently than it did me. She has as much need for people and for a home as I have to do without them. You were right enough when you said I was stubborn and rude and self-absorbed. I am.”
“Maybe you’ve had to be. But that’s not all you are, Maggie. You’re compassionate and loyal and loving. It’s not just part of you I fell in love with, but the whole. I want to spend my life with you.”
Something trembled inside her, fragile as crystal struck by a careless hand. “Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said?”
“Every word. Now I know that you don’t just love me. You need me.”
She dragged both hands through her hair, fingers digging in and pulling in frustration. “I don’t need anyone.”
“Of course you do. You’re afraid to admit it, but that’s understandable.” He was sorry, bitterly, for the child she’d been. But he couldn’t allow that to change his plans for the woman. “You’ve locked yourself in a prison, Maggie. Once you admit those needs, the door will open.”