The Whole Bargain
Chapter 3
"Whispers of the Past"
It was the day. Mary had could have bitten her tongue, just to relieve her nerves. He was coming. He was coming to stay. She didn't even know why she said she would take him in, but there was the need for money, and he did need to be in fresh air, and he was Caroline's cousin, and Caroline didn't have enough room while there was this family reunion…
She wondered why money was her first reason for everything nowadays. Why couldn't she feel that she was letting him stay just to help Caroline out with her family reunion? Was there something ungenerous about her nature?
Mary would have been sized up by any great psychologist as not un-generous, but as desperately proud. Those years of poverty and scandal had done something to her. She had been warped from a nice, kind, friendly girl, into a haughty and jaded woman.
And Richard had done it all.
*~*~*~*~*~*
It had been a Friday night. Sitting there in the twilight by her lake, Mary bitterly remembered that night in her first year in college. She had been going to ICC (the local community college) and there had been a party. There were always parties. Mary had gone to a few in High School, but had gotten a general dislike of them.
She had only gone to this one because she thought there would be no drinking. Richard Moore had told her so, and, since she had had no reason to distrust him, had gone.
At first it had been fun. She hadn't seen any drinking, hadn't really thought about seeing any drinking, and had been talking to some people that she knew from class. Much more fun than her usual Friday night movie and pizza.
And then they brought out the drinks. Mary, now thinking of it, shuddered. She had never had a glass of alcohol in her life. Her mother had seen many bottles of beers around the room where her father had killed himself, and so had gotten rid of all the alcohol in the house. There had never been any more since.
Mary in her inexperience did not know anything about the effects of alcohol. She hadn't known that when Richard told her he loved her forever, and wanted to show her, it was just the one too many glasses of vodka he'd had speaking.
And she had been left to rot here, sitting on the cold rock by the freezing lake, because of it.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Four hours. That was how long it had lived. It had been premature, and it had been tiny and weak. But it had been hers. All hers. She had sung to it, and cuddled it, and watched it disappear behind a glass and never come back.
Life just wasn't fair.
*~*~*~*~*~*
At dusk he came. And it felt that so did her heart, right along with him.
He was dark haired and well built, but it was his eyes. They were dark and alluring in moonlight, and looked like she had known him eons ago, under some dancing star that she had been cheated out of in this life.
He was dear, and witty, and everything she could have ever asked of a man.
But she became frozen, almost instantly. She wouldn't, couldn't….
"Oh…" She sobbed into her pillow, demanding of the fates, "Why couldn't I have met him first?"
"Why?"
*~*~*~*~*~*
A/N Yep. I actually wrote a third chapter. I am actually getting somewhere with this fic. Aren't you all impressed?
Ruby: Thanks for reviewing! I'm glad you think it's interesting!