Sins of Innocence Read online

  Sins of Innocence is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A Loveswept eBook Edition

  Copyright © 1994 by Jean Stone

  Excerpt from Trying to Score by Toni Aleo copyright © 2013 by Toni Aleo.

  Excerpt from Long Simmering Spring by Elisabeth Barrett copyright © 2013 by Elisabeth Barrett.

  Excerpt from Scarlet Lady by Sandra Chastain copyright © 1997 by Sandra Chastain.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Sins of Innocence was originally published in paperback by Bantam Fanfare, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. in 1994.

  Cover Design: Caroline Teagle

  Cover Image: © Lee Avison/Getty Images

  eISBN: 978-0-307-79866-4

  www.ReadLoveSwept.com

  v3.1

  To Cindy, Margaret, Carol, Esther, Kathy, Valerie, and James.

  With special thanks to GARY PROVOST—an extraordinary teacher—and his WRITER’S RETREAT workshop—an extraordinary experience.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part 1 - 1993 Chapter 1 - Wednesday, September 8

  Chapter 2 - Wednesday, September 15

  Chapter 3 - Friday, September 17

  Chapter 4 - Friday, September 17

  Part 2 - 1968 Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part 3 - 1993 Chapter 11 - Saturday, September 18

  Chapter 12 - Saturday, September 18

  Chapter 13 - Sunday, September 19

  Chapter 14 - Monday, September 20

  Part 4 - 1993 Chapter 15 - Friday, September 24

  Chapter 16 - Thursday, October 7

  Chapter 17 - Friday, October 8

  Chapter 18 - Thursday, October 14

  Part 5 - The Reunion Chapter 19 - Saturday, October 16

  Epilogue - 1994 November 28

  About the Author

  Editor’s Corner

  Excerpt from Toni Aleo’s Trying to Score

  Excerpt from Elisabeth Barrett’s Long Simmering Spring

  Excerpt from Sandra Chastain’s Scarlet Lady

  CHAPTER 1

  Wednesday, September 8

  Jess

  Jessica Bates Randall stepped from her dressing room into the bedroom. She adjusted the satin sash of her robe, took a deep breath, and walked toward the bathroom. She knew she had to get this over with, and now seemed as good a time as any.

  “Charles?” she called.

  On the other side of the closed door Jess heard the jets of the Jacuzzi rumble. Her husband didn’t answer.

  She went to her bureau and looked at the collection of framed photographs that covered the top. Jess on her wedding day: peau de soie and pearls, crepe de Chine and calla lilies. The kids’ first-day-of-school pictures: Chuck, Maura, and Travis—tousled hair slicked down, pencil boxes, tentative smiles. The family Christmas photos: Charles in velvet smoking jacket, kids in bright flannel PJs. Then her eyes came to rest on one special picture: Jess holding Chuck—Charles, Jr., their oldest—three days after he was born. She touched the edge of the sterling frame and smiled. The baby’s face was nearly invisible, his body bundled by a new mother’s need to swaddle him in not one but three receiving blankets, edged in spun silk. She hadn’t wanted him to be chilled, never mind that it was July.

  Jess picked up the photo and held it to her breast, remembering how she’d felt when the nurse first brought Chuck to her. She had looked down at the tiny infant with only one thought: I wonder if he looks like her. And though she had known this baby was hers—hers and Charles’s—she was plagued by nightmares until she left the hospital—horrid black dreams in which she asked the nurse over and over to let her see the baby, but the nurse kept laughing and saying “No, Missy, this one goes up for adoption too. All your babies gonna go for adoption.” In her dreams the nurse had looked like Mrs. Hines, the crusty old cook at Larchwood Hall.

  Jess felt tears running down her cheeks now. She set the silver-framed photo back on the bureau and wiped her eyes. Now it was her daughter who was pregnant. Maura. Her sixteen-year-old daughter. And the most important thing to Jess was that no one was going to put Maura through what Jess had gone through, not even Charles. No. No one was going to take Maura’s baby away.

  The jets of the Jacuzzi were silenced. She heard Charles splashing quietly. He was washing his hair now, Jess knew. Twenty years of marriage and no secrets. Well, almost none. Charles had known about her illegitimate child, but he didn’t know everything. Everything that had happened at Larchwood Hall.

  She adjusted the sash of her robe again. Now was the best time to tell him about Maura: He was at his least defensive when he was naked. And in the last few months it seemed the only time she saw him that way was when she walked in on him bathing.

  She crossed toward the split master bath: To the right was her shower, vanity, makeup area, and toilet; his was to the left, complete with steam shower. Connecting the two rooms was the large Jacuzzi room, resplendent with greens and a built-in CD system, lit for relaxation by the recessed lighting that glowed from the raised ceiling. And, like the entire thirty-acre, prime-location, Greenwich, Connecticut, estate—complete with riding trails, stables, swimming pool, guest/bath house, and eight-thousand-plus-square-foot home—the master suite was compliments of her trust fund. Her money had bought all this, Jess reminded herself. Not his. And no matter how hard Charles tried to give the country club illusion that he was a successful investment banker, Jess knew the truth.

  She turned the knob on the door and entered the room. “Charles?”

  He was lying back, stretched to his full six-foot length in the enormous tub, his head resting on a vinyl pillow, his blond hair wet and slippery. He looked about twenty-five, not forty-three.

  He opened his eyes. “This better be important,” he said. “I was meditating.”

  Jess stifled a scream. Sometimes she detested the way he made her feel so trivial. “Yes, Charles,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”

  He groaned and shifted to a sitting position, water spilling out of the tub, onto the black marble deck. “What,” he demanded. Charles never asked. He demanded. Had he always done that? Or was it yet another side effect of two decades of sameness?

  Jess swallowed. Suddenly she heard Maura’s words: Please don’t let Daddy hate me, Mom. Dear God, Jess quickly prayed, let me say this the right way. “It’s about Maura.”

  Charles snorted, picked up the bar of soap, and began lathering his arms. “And I thought you came in here to wash my back. I should have known better.”

  Jess stared at the bubbles as they grew on his arms.

  “So what’s the problem?” he said, snickering. “Her boyfriend meet some other sweet young thing?” He picked up the washcloth and drizzled water over his arms. God, Jess thought, why can’t he just rinse himself like normal people?

  “No,” she answered. “Michael hasn’t met someone else.”

  “I know. Don’t tell me. He has to work at the gas station Saturday night, and she hasn’t got a date for the prom.”

  Jess gritted her teeth. “The prom isn’t until spring, Charles,” she said, then loathed herself for playing his stupid game. She took a deep breath. “Maura has a very serious problem. One that involves all of us.”

 
; Charles squeezed the last drops from the washcloth. “Why do I get the feeling you’re about to tell me something I don’t want to hear?”

  Jess twisted her diamond-and-emerald ring. “She’s pregnant,” she said.

  His face froze for a moment, as though someone had snapped a shutter and another photograph had sealed off time, ready to take its place atop the cherry bureau. Then his eyes darkened to an odd shade of gray. He pitched the washcloth against the mirror and pulled himself up from the tub, splashing water across the deck, the carpeted step, and all over Jess.

  “Just what I fucking need,” he shouted. He bolted from the tub, his body pink from the water, his face flaming with anger. Jess saw his penis shrivel into its skin.

  Charles grabbed a bath sheet from the heated rack and stormed off toward the bedroom. Jess took another towel and wiped the water from herself, then reached over, pulled the plug, and began sopping up the mess. Just what I fucking need. His words stung her mind. What about the rest of us? she wanted to shout. What about Maura? She tossed the towel down and followed him into the bedroom.

  “Charles,” she said. “We need to talk about this.” He had flopped on the bed, a lighted cigarette in hand. He had quit smoking two years ago, when he began his “over-forty” health kick. Obviously he’d kept a pack hidden.

  “What’s to talk about?” he seethed. “She’s sixteen years old. She’ll get an abortion.”

  Jess smoothed the down comforter and sat on the edge of the bed. She really must get the matching draperies finished. There was never enough time to do the things she wanted, the things that she enjoyed. “She won’t have an abortion.”

  Charles coughed and stubbed out his cigarette on the Waterford ring holder. “Says who?” he barked. “Says you?”

  Jess struggled to take a deep breath. “Maura says she won’t have an abortion,” she hissed.

  “She’ll do as I say.”

  Jess twisted her ring again and looked squarely into her husband’s eyes. “No,” she said.

  Charles raised his eyebrows. His eyes grew larger; the black pupils bored into her. “I say she’ll have an abortion.”

  Jess stood up and walked to her bureau. She looked once again at the picture of her with her son. Then she thought about her. Her baby, now a grown woman of nearly twenty-five. She touched the silver frame. “You can’t force her,” she said.

  “I can do whatever I want. I’m her father.”

  Jess scanned the photos. Her family. So together, so happy, so normal-looking. Pictures, she thought, can lie.

  “Speaking of fathers,” Charles said, “I suppose it’s his. That grease monkey’s.”

  “Michael is a nice boy, Charles.”

  Charles spewed forth a disgusted laugh. “Nice? Jesus H. Christ, Jess, he knocked up our daughter! You call that nice?”

  Jess didn’t reply. She knew Charles had never felt Michael was “good enough” for Maura—the same way Father had felt about Richard. Richard, she thought with an ache that had never quite gone away. Her first love.

  “This is your fault, you know.”

  “Because she didn’t use birth control?”

  “No. Because ‘The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.’ ”

  Jess picked up the wedding photo and heaved it at Charles. It missed him and crashed into the brass bedpost. The sound of the glass cracking startled, then satisfied, her.

  “You son of a bitch!” she shouted. “You rotten son of a bitch!”

  “What do you expect me to say?” Charles gloated. “Think about it.”

  She crossed back to the bed, with a kind of courage she didn’t know she had. She pointed a trembling finger close to his face. “I expected you to be upset. And I expect you to support our daughter. I did not tell her to get pregnant, and I am not going to tell her she has to have an abortion. And neither are you.”

  Charles sat up and tightened the damp towel around his middle.

  “So what’s it to be? Do we look up that home for unwed mothers you went to? When was that, anyway—1968?” He rolled onto his side, his back to Jess. Then he laughed. “God knows we won’t need references.”

  She wanted to claw out his eyes. She got up and went around to the other side of the bed, the damp satin robe clinging to her small, quivering body. She stood and looked down at her husband. “Maura will stay here with us.”

  The shock on his face calmed her. Suddenly Jess felt in control. Finally. After twenty years of marriage. “Maura will have her baby. And”—Jess paused to be assured of the greatest impact of her next words. She leaned close to him—“she is going to keep the baby.”

  Charles was perfectly still. For a moment they glared into one another’s eyes. Then he pushed Jess away and got up off the bed.

  “Over my dead body,” he said. He grabbed his robe from the valet stand, threw it on, ripped open the bedroom door, and stormed down the hall in the direction of Maura’s room.

  Jess steadied herself, her heart pounding. Then she raced after him, just in time to see him punch open the door to Maura’s room.

  “You little whore!” His scream split the air. “How dare you!”

  Jess flew toward the room. Charles stood, his hands on his hips, an incongruous masculine intrusion in the cotton-candy colors of Maura’s world. Maura sat in the middle of her bed, cushioned by a fluffy pink comforter, surrounded by her teddy bears.

  “Daddy,” she sobbed. “Daddy. I’m sorry.”

  Jess stepped inside and grabbed Charles by the arm. “Get out of here,” she commanded. “Get out, and leave her alone.”

  He shook off her grasp. “Like hell. This is my house.”

  Jess winced. No, it’s not, she wanted to shout. It’s my house. She put a hand to her chest. Her breath came in short gasps.

  “And this is my daughter,” he went on, pointing to Maura as though she were a statue, a possession. “And she will do as I say.”

  Maura looked to Jess with huge blue eyes, coated with tears. “Mommy?” she whispered.

  “You are having an abortion,” Charles said. “And I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

  Jess brushed past his bulk and sat on the bed. She pulled Maura close to her, stroking her daughter’s fine golden hair.

  “Mommy, he can’t make me. Don’t let him make me,” she whimpered.

  “Think about it!” Charles raved. “If you think for one minute I’ve worked hard all these years to have my daughter held up for ridicule in front of my friends, you’re wrong.”

  Jess felt as though someone had turned up the heat in the room. “Your friends, Charles? Is that what this is all about?”

  “They’re your friends, too.”

  “They’re not my friends. They’re your business acquaintances. I really think we should talk about this privately.”

  “Privately? Why? So your darling daughter doesn’t have to hear what her father thinks about her? How she’s about to destroy his life?”

  “She’s our daughter, Charles.”

  He threw up his hands. “None of this would have happened if you’d let them go to private school. But oh, no. Little Miss Goody Two-shoes Jessica wanted her children to have a ‘normal’ life.”

  Jess swallowed hard.

  “Maybe this is ‘normal’ for you, honey, but it isn’t the way I was brought up!”

  Please, dear God, she prayed. Don’t let him say anything about my baby. Jess had never told the children about her. She had never told them about Larchwood Hall. Charles wouldn’t let her.

  “Charles …” She tried to speak, but the words stuck in her throat, like an aspirin taken without water.

  He balled his hands into fists. The veins at his temples bulged. “I expect you to make the arrangements tomorrow,” he said icily, so much like Jess’s father. The same coldness. Would Father have been so cold if Mother had been alive to protect Jess? Would things have been different? Jess clung to her daughter.

  “I want this taken care of, and I want it
taken care of fast. And I don’t want to hear another word about it until it is over. Is that clear?”

  He turned on his heels and headed for the door.

  “No,” Jess said.

  He spun around.

  Jess kept stroking Maura’s hair, holding on to her daughter for strength.

  “She’s keeping the baby,” she said. “It’s what Maura wants.”

  He stormed out of the room.

  Damn you, Jess wanted to shout. Damn you for doing this to our daughter. Damn you for being like Father. She closed her eyes and slowly rocked her daughter. “It will be okay, honey. You’ll see. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “Oh, Mommy,” she sobbed, “Maybe Daddy’s right. His friends … his business …”

  “Sssh,” Jess whispered. “The last thing we’re going to worry about is what other people think. It’s you who’s important. And your baby.”

  “Mommy, I’m so sorry.”

  Jess took Maura’s shoulders and held her. “Honey, do you really want this baby? Have you thought about it? Really thought about it?”

  “Yes, Mom. I told you. Michael and I want to raise the baby. Together. Then we thought when we’re older, we’ll get married.…”

  Jess pulled her daughter close. It was just as it had been with Richard. She and Richard were to have run away. They were going to be married. They were going to be a family, with their baby.

  But Father had thought differently.

  “It’s not like I expect he’ll give us a real wedding at the club or anything.…” Maura was saying.

  A wedding. Jess remembered the one Father had given her and Charles. The reception hadn’t been at the club; it had been at the Plaza. It was a fairy-tale wedding, and had been given fourteen inches in The New York Times. Well, why not? No one had known about the twenty-year-old bride’s scandalous past. No one except Father, who refused, as always, to acknowledge it. No one except Richard, and his parents, who were gone to God only knows where. No one except Charles, who had acquiesced to marry her anyway, as long as he never had to hear about it again.