anything, she almost ran to get it.
“See?” Barry had laughed. “Isn’t she the perfect little homemaker? That’s my girl.”
Ted hadn’t laughed. He’d noticed the harried, hunted expression on Coreen’s face and the pitiful thinness of her body. He’d also noticed the full liquor cabinet and remarked on it, because everyone knew that it was Tina’s house that Barry and Coreen were staying in, and that Tina detested liquor.
“Oh, a swallow of alcohol doesn’t hurt, and Coreen likes her gin, don’t you, honey?” he teased.
Coreen kept her eyes hidden. “Of course,” she lied. He’d already warned her about what would happen if she didn’t go along with anything he said. He’d been even more explicit about the consequences if she so much as looked longingly at Ted. He’d invited his cousin to torment Coreen, and it was working. He was in a better humor than he’d enjoyed in months.
“Get us a drink. What will you have, Ted?”
The older man declined and he didn’t stay long. Ted had never come back to visit after that. Barry met his cousin occasionally and he enjoyed telling Coreen how sorry Ted felt for him. She knew that Barry was telling him lies about her, but she was too afraid to ask what they were.
Her life had become almost meaningless. It didn’t help that her earlier clumsiness had been magnified tenfold. She was forever falling into flowerpots or tripping over throw rugs. Barry made it worse by constantly calling attention to it, chiding her and calling her names. Eventually she didn’t react anymore. Her self-esteem was so low that it no longer seemed important to defend herself. She tried to run away. But he always found her…
He mentioned once how his mother, Tina, had controlled him all his life. Perhaps his weakness stemmed from her dominance and the lack of a father. His drinking grew worse. There were other women, scores of them, and in between he was cruel to Coreen, in bed and out of it. He was no longer discreet with his affairs. But he was less interested in tormenting Coreen as well. Until that card came from Sandy on Coreen’s birthday, the day before the tragic accident that had killed Barry. It had Ted’s signature on it, too, a shocking addition, and Barry had gone crazy at the sight of it. He’d gotten drunk and that night he’d held Coreen down on the sofa with a knife at her throat and threatened to cut her up….
A sudden buzz of conversation brought Coreen back to the present. Shivering from the memory, she focused her eyes on the big oak desk where the lawyer was sitting and realized that he was almost through reading the will.
“That does it, I’m afraid,” he concluded, peering over his small glasses at them. “Everything goes to his mother. The one exception is the stallion he willed to his cousin, Ted Regan. And a legacy of one hundred thousand dollars is to be left to Mrs. Barry Tarleton, under the administration of Ted Regan, to be held in trust for her until she reaches the age of twenty-five. Are there any questions?”
Ted was scowling as he looked at Coreen, but there was no shock or surprise on her face. There was only stiff resignation and a frightening calmness.
Tina got to her feet. She glanced at Coreen coldly. “I’ll give you a little while to get out of the house. Just to stem any further gossip, you understand, not out of any regard. I blame you for what happened to my son. I always will.” She turned and left the room, her expression foreboding.
Coreen didn’t reply. She stared at her hands in her lap. She couldn’t look at Ted. She was homeless, and Ted controlled the only money she had. She could imagine that she’d have to go on her knees to him to get a new pair of stockings. She was going to have to get a job, quick.
“She could have waited until tomorrow,” Sandy muttered to Ted when they were back outside, watching Tina climb into the Lincoln.
“Why did he do that?” Ted asked with open puzzlement. “For God’s sake, he was worth millions! He’s involved me in it, and she’ll have literally nothing for another year, until she turns twenty-five! She’ll even have to ask me for gas money!”
Sandy glanced at him with faint surprise at the concern he’d betrayed for Coreen. “She’ll cope. She knew Barry wasn’t leaving her much. She’s prepared. She said it didn’t matter.”
“Hell, of course it matters! Someone needs to talk some sense into her! She could sue for a widow’s allowance.”
“I doubt that she will. Money was never one of her priorities, or didn’t you know?”
He didn’t reply. His eyes were narrow and introspective.
“She looks odd, did you notice?” Sandy asked worriedly. “Really odd. I hope she isn’t going to do anything foolish.”
“Let’s go,” Ted said as he got in behind the steering wheel, and he sounded bitter. “I want to talk to that lawyer before we go home.”
Sandy frowned as she looked at him. She was worried, but it wasn’t about Coreen’s money problems, or the will. Coreen was hopelessly clumsy since she’d married Barry. She said that she liked to skydive and go up in sailplanes, especially when she was upset, because she said it relaxed her. But she’d related tales of some of the craziest accidents Sandy had ever heard of. Sometimes she thought that Barry had programmed Coreen to be accident-prone. The few times early in their marriage that she’d seen her friend, before Barry had cut her out of Coreen’s life, he’d enjoyed embarrassing Coreen about her clumsiness.
Ted didn’t know about the accidents. Until the funeral, he’d walked away every time Sandy even mentioned Coreen, almost as if it hurt him to talk about her. He had the strangest attitude about her friend. He didn’t care much for women, she knew, but the way he treated Coreen was intriguing. And the most curious thing had been the way he’d looked, holding Coreen in the living room earlier. The expression on his face had been one of torment, not hatred.
She was never going to understand her brother, she thought. The violence of his reaction to Coreen was completely at odds with the tenderness he’d shown her. Perhaps he did care, in some way, and simply didn’t realize it.
Sandy insisted on staying with Coreen overnight, and she offered her best friend the sanctuary of the ranch until she found a place to live. Coreen refused bluntly, put off by even the thought of having to look at Ted over coffee every morning.
Coreen got her friend away the next morning, after a long and sleepless night blaming herself and remembering Ted’s accusation of the day before.
“We’re just getting moved in. Remember, Ted leased the place, along with the cattle farm, and we moved to Victoria about the time you married Barry. Ted’s away a lot now, over at our cattle farm on the outskirts of Jacobsville, that Emmett Deverell and his family operate for him. We’re going to have thoroughbred horses at our place and some nice saddle mounts. We can go riding like we used to. Won’t you come with me? I’ll work it out with Ted,” Sandy pleaded.
“And let Ted drive me into a nervous breakdown?” came the brittle laugh. “No, thanks. He hates me. I didn’t realize how much until yesterday. He would rather it had been me than Barry, didn’t you see? He thinks I’m a murderess…!”
Sandy hugged her shaken friend close. “My brother is an idiot!” she said angrily. “Listen, he’s not as brutal as he seems when you get to know him, really he isn’t.”
“He’s never been anything except cruel to me,” Coreen replied, subdued. She pulled away. “Tell
