But Marcy was insistent.“Mama won’t do nothing different from what the other women do, and they don’t work at the mine.B’sides, she doesn’t mind the factory.She gets paid enough so there’s food on the table, even if there isn’t much left over for anything else.”
She paused then, and Pam was quiet, too.She could see the sadness on Marcy’s face, a face that didn’t usually reveal too much.What it told Pam now made her wonder just what Eugene had meant when he’d said that Marcy had seen the bare side of life.
“Is that what makes things so bad?”she asked cautiously.“Not having money for things?”
Still ironing, Marcy tipped her head to the side.“It’s one of the things.”
“What’s the other?”
“Him.”
“Your father?”
“He’s not my father.My father died in Korea.Mama married Jarvis a couple of years after that.”
“Is he Tommy and Lizzie’s father?”
She nodded.The iron hissed a breath of steam.“Wouldn’t know it.He hits them, too.”
“He spanks them?”Pam had never been spanked in her life.She’d been yelled at, but never spanked.
“Not spanks,” Marcy clarified.“Hits.Sometimes he’s drunk, sometimes he’s not.But when he does it, he does it hard.”She hauled back an arm in demonstration.“Bam!”
Pam flinched.“Did he ever hit you that way?”
“Lots.That’s why your daddy took me to live here soon as I could leave school.”
Pam hadn’t known.She felt awful.“Oh, Marcy.”
“It was worst for Mama.I could run away from him, but Mama, she never did have so much strength after Lizzie was born.She’s all tired after work, and he wants somethin’ to eat.If she doesn’t get it for him fast enough …”
“He hits her?”
Marcy nodded.“And yells.And throws things sometimes clear across the room.”She snapped the shirt from the ironing board, shook it straight, and reached for a wire hanger.“That’s what bad is.”
So now Pam knew, and, as Marcy had intended, it made her feel less sorry for herself.Although there were arguments in her house, there wasn’t any hitting, yelling, or throwing.Patricia wanted dignity and peace nearly as much as prosperity.
Thinking about it that night, curled up in her bed, Pam had a lot to be grateful for.True, she hated John.But sheloved her mother.And she adored Eugene, who was kind and gentle and wasn’t anything like Jarvis Willow.Maybe Marcy was right—maybe her parents weren’t going to get a divorce; maybe they were comfortable just living apart like they did.
None of her friends’ parents lived that way.
But there were some advantages to it.Like the tour-maline crystals Eugene had taught her to love, her life was dichroistic, glowing in one color, then the next as the light turned.When she was in Boston, she was the lady her mother wanted her to be.She went to a private school with her friends, took dancing lessons and piano lessons, went to Saturday morning classes at the museum, which she loved, ate at the best restaurants in town, and went to the ballet and the theater.There were times that she felt she was playing a game, but since she did it well, she didn’t mind—especially since she could then turn around and go to Timiny Cove, take the satin ribbon from her hair, put on jeans and a long shirt, and do all the fun things Patricia might not like.
She couldn’t imagine living in Timiny Cove without returning to Boston.Nor could she imagine it the other way around.Maine was her salvation.It was where Eugene was.It was where everyone knew her and liked her, and she knew and liked everyone.It was small, close, like family.
It was also where Cutter was.
Chapter 6
There had never been a time when Cutter Reid hadn’t known the name St.George.He’d been born and raised in Timiny Cove, and though his father had been kicked off the company payroll soon after Cutter’s birth, St.George Mining was too visible a presence in town to be ignored.That wasn’t to say that Cutter respected it.He didn’t respect much of anything, and, being his father’s son and his own worst enemy, not much of anything respected him.
In 1965 Cutter was sixteen going on twenty-eight, if being street-wise counted for anything.His father had drunk himself to death when Cutter was nine, and his mother had whored her way into an adjacent grave soon after.From the age of thirteen, Cutter had fended for himself.He had worked at odd jobs until he quit or was fired, had gone to school only when the truant officer came looking, and had committed enough petty crimesto firmly establish himself as one tough kid.He’d spent more than his share of nights in the local jail and had managed to avoid a serious conviction only by the skin of his teeth.
That was why, when Eugene St.George tackled him in the trash alley behind Paquette’s Luncheonette, he wasn’t expecting an ounce of mercy.Having helped himself to the contents of the cash drawer at the gas station in the center of town, he suddenly found himself being chased not only by the attendant Judd Stuckey but by Eugene St.George, who had stopped for gas.
Cutter cursed himself for not recognizing the large, dark blue Lincoln, but it was raining so hard that visibility was next to nil, which was one of the reasons he figured he could get away with the heist.Even when Eugene caught sight of him and jumped from the car, he wasn’t concerned.He was younger and lighter than Eugene; he could outrun him.But one block into his escape he knew he was in trouble.March was mud season in Maine, and with the rain pouring down, footholds in the mired earth were precarious at best.Unable to stay on the pavement, which would have led him straight through the center of town and past dozens of pairs of curious eyes, he had to take the back paths.That was how he found himself sprawled face-down in the mud in the trash alley beneath Eugene’s large frame.He barely had time to catch his breath when he was hauled up by the collar.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doin’, boy?”Eugene roared.He was panting from the run, but the exertion hadn’t dulled his indignation.
