Chapter 1
Nancy Greenwell trudged wearily from the front offices of Nor'star Milling & Grain Co. and turned down River Street to begin the block-long hike to her car. St. Paul screamed around her in the throes of its rush-hour convulsions, spewing out people and cars and noise in frenzied, hysterical haste. The sky was low with ominous-looking snow clouds, even though three inches of the messy stuff still covered the ground from last Thursday's blow. It was cold, noisy, and cramped ... and lonely.
"Hey, lady, get the hell out of the way!"
Nancy jerked her head up, and stepped quickly back up onto the curb. The irate cab driver squealed around her, blasting his horn at the same time, and staring at her as though she had just set his front lawn on fire. Nancy glared back at him, angered by his anger, feeling the tension of the day suddenly wash over her. Then, she was pushed off the curb by the mass of humanity pressed up behind her, as the traffic light turned green and the mindless herd began to swarm across the intersection. Nancy was forty-one-years-old, and had lived in St. Paul nearly all her life, but she could never adjust herself to the capitol city's rush, the tension, the nerve-wracked tempo that others seemed to take for granted. She was a beautiful woman, with mink-brown hair that lay in soft curls on her shoulders, and an innocent face betrayed only by a pair of intense, smoldering eyes. She affected a somewhat cool, aloof manner, but this was only a defense, a rein that held her frustrations in check. Only in her soft grey eyes could one perceive the fire that burned inside her, concealed behind that cool exterior. It was this combination that served to make her irresistibly magnetic to men, who flocked to her like bees to honey ... that and a still-firm forty-two inch bustline.
Nancy's five-year-old Plymouth Duster finally came sputtering out of the parking lot, adding more than its share to the poison in the air around her. She quickly paid the attendant, and slid her girlish voluptuous body behind the wheel. She eased out of the parking lot and began to make her slow, agonizing way out of the city. This was the part of the day she hated the most. Even the morning rush hour was not this bad, because then she was fresh, still untouched by the day's trials and tribulations.
She honked at a bread-truck trying to force its way into her line of traffic. She eased the accelerator toward the floor, cutting him off and forcing him to brake with a jerk. He glared at her, she glared at him, and the traffic slowed around them like a river flowing around some unseen obstruction. Then, she shot ahead of him, a minor victory in this latest battle to escape the city.
Nancy lived in a tiny two-bedroom apartment in suburban Pine Hills, which had no advantages except that it was relatively inexpensive. But that was enough. Her job as bookkeeper for Nor'star certainly didn't pay very well, and to think of moving into something that was closer to her work and therefore more expensive was simply out of the question. She tolerated her work, but didn't enjoy it. Still, it was something, and the best she could find with her work record. She had moved from job to job in the past two years since her husband had died and her only son married and moved to California, seldom staying at one place more than two or three months, sometimes less.
She hadn't always been so nonchalant about her life; in high school Nancy had been quite active in her school's social scene. She had been cheerleader, class vice-president, homecoming queen all of the things that typify a young girl's high school success story. Boys had swarmed around her, inviting her out, walking her to classes, begging for some of the attention she gave to those she liked. But that had all changed, abruptly, her senior year ... had changed with a finality that still drove her from place to place in an unending attempt to escape its irrevocable consequences.
Nancy tried to force her mind onto some other subject, but it returned every time to the pain of that last year in school. She hadn't even known Bill that well. She had only accepted his offer of a date in order to attend a last minute party with some friends, and had not even found him that attractive. Bill Greenwell had been very attentive, and Nancy had had much too much wine to drink, and before she knew it she was wrestling with him, separated from the others, at first resisting and then, aroused beyond endurance by his sexual foreplay, finally accepting his body with an abandon that took Bill completely by surprise.
Nancy passed a trembling hand over her soft grey eyes, and tried to focus on the traffic ahead, but the cars ahead had slowed until they came to a complete stop, and while she waited for the line of traffic to start moving again, she tried to remember what it had been like that first time.
She remembered a great deal of pain, her shame once it was all over, and her agonized waiting until her period came, but little more. And when her period hadn't come, she'd waited longer, praying that it was just delayed, her fears of pregnancy immobilizing her completely, until finally she was simply spending the entire day in bed at home. Finally, her mother had forced her to see a doctor, thinking she might be seriously ill, but having no idea of the nature of her illness. The doctor easily drew the truth from her, and when his tests were completed, her terrible fears were proven true.
Nancy felt a shiver run through her curvaceous body, still able to feel the effect that awful news had had upon her so many years ago. The doctor had told her mother immediately, and her mother, despite Nancy's heartfelt protestations, had insisted that the boy marry her. She hadn't wanted that, simply because she hadn't known Bill Greenwell very well, and there followed a traumatic four months while Bill and his family were convinced, arrangements were made, and Nancy herself grew steadily larger with the life inside her.
Still, despite their crude beginnings, they had, for the first two or three years, been happy. And, little Bobby had turned out to be a beautiful baby. But then, eventually, perhaps because they had married too young, Bill began to wander to play around with other women and the more adventuresome he became, the more time and attention the heartsick little wife began to spend with her bright and growing son until little Bobby became the center of her life.
But while Bobby had been able to salve those wounds with the simple fact of his presence, he hadn't been able to heal the scars they left on Nancy's personality, and on her sexual being in particular. Anything that even remotely reminded the young mother of the traumatic experience she was going through with her immature husband was avoided, shoved into the far recesses of her mind to lie hidden behind an almost neurotic wall of repression. She had been hurt irreparably, and she had subconsciously placed the blame for all her troubles on the sexual side of her nature.
She feared any kind of intimate involvement even yet, and had summarily rejected coolly all the inevitable advances made by the scores of men drawn irresistibly to her in the months since Bill's untimely death from a coronary. And so, she moved from job to job thinking she was avoiding entanglements that could only lead to further heartache, but in reality simply trying to escape the undeniable pressures exerted on her by her own seething sensuality. Nancy left the expressway and began to make her way up the small streets to her apartment. The rows of dingy apartments passed by her with a hypnotic sameness as she turned into her ice-encrusted parking slot, cut the motor and wearily eased her voluptuous body from behind the steering wheel. Nancy didn't bother to lock the car, but made her way toward the common entrance she shared with the dozen identical apartments in her building.
She stopped by her mailbox hopefully, but it offered her nothing more than an advertising circular marked Occupant. She sighed, then turned to the stairs leading to her apartment. "Well, Mrs. Greenwell, no word from the kids again?"
Nancy stopped, but she didn't turn around. The last person in the world she wanted to talk to was her bitchy, nosy old landlady, Mrs. Carmichael. "No, Mrs. Carmichael," she answered curtly, "nothing again today."
"Well, ain't that a cryin' shame," the old "witch" cackled behind her as she mounted the stairs. "These kids today just don't seem to have any consideration for their betters. Why, when I was young, I used to write my family-"
"Mrs. Carmichael," Nancy snapped harshly, turning to face her. "I'm sure you were a darling little person, but I don't want to talk about it now!" She turned on her heels and strode quickly up the stairs, leaving the landlady open-mouthed in the hallway below.
She unlocked the door to her apartment and went inside, closing it behind her. Gossipy old bitch, she thought to herself as she moved to the fridge to pour herself a glass of sherry. She took a long swallow, letting the amber-tinted wine wash the tension out of her, then turned to go to the bedroom to change. Damn, but she hated coming home to an empty house!
As she changed quickly into her dressing gown, the young mother issued a small sigh. It had been two weeks since she'd heard from Bob and Judy, two long weeks without so much as a line. Damn, but she unshed her new daughter-in-law was a little more thoughtful with her correspondence! And then, idly at first, but with growing curiosity, she wondered just what the kids would think if she were to pop in on them unexpectedly one of these days.
She thought Bob would be happy to see her, but she didn't know for sure about Judy. Indeed, she hardly knew her daughter-in-law at all, except through photographs and the infrequent letter. But then, she thought, why not? ... Really! ... What better excuse as if she needed an excuse than to get to know her daughter-in-law better ... to help her through her pregnancy? Quickly, Nancy flew to the little Princess phone on the night table and began to tap out the required long distance code with the tip of one long-nailed finger. Bob wouldn't be home from work yet, what with the time difference, but she just couldn't wait to tell some body ... even Judy!