Regan's Pride

“You’re coming back to the house with us, aren’t you?” Sandy asked after a minute. “They’re reading the will after lunch.”

“In a hurry, is she?” he asked icily.

“It was Barry’s mother’s idea, not hers,” Sandy shot back angrily.

“No surprises there,” he remarked, his blue eyes searching for Barry’s small, elegant mother in her black designer suit. “Tina probably would enjoy dumping Coreen on the front lawn in her underwear.”

“She does seem a little hostile.”

Ted ground out the cigarette under the heel of his highly polished dress boot. “Is that a surprise?” he asked frankly. “Coreen killed her son.”

“Ted!”

His blue eyes looked hard enough to cut diamond. “She never loved him,” he told her. “She married him because her father had died and she had nothing, not even a house to live in. And then she spent two years teasing and taunting him and making him unhappy. He used to cry on my shoulder….”

“How? You never went near their house, except once, to visit for a few hours,” she recalled. “You even refused to be best man at his wedding.”

He averted his eyes. “He came to Victoria pretty often to see me,” he said. “And he wasn’t a stranger to a telephone. We had business dealings together. I heard all about Coreen from him,” he added darkly. “She drove him to drink.”

“Coreen is my friend,” she responded. “Even if I believed that about her, it wouldn’t matter. Friends accept the bad with the good.”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t have friends.”

How well Sandy knew it, too. Ted didn’t trust anyone that close, man or woman.

“You could make the gesture of giving her your condolences,” she said finally.

He lifted an eyebrow. “Why should I give her sympathy when she doesn’t care that her husband is dead? Besides, I don’t do a damned thing for the sake of appearances.”

She made a sound in her throat and went back to Coreen.

The ride back to the redbrick mansion was short. Coreen was quiet. They were almost to the front door before she looked at Sandy and spoke.

“Ted was saying something about me, wasn’t he?” she asked, her voice strained. Her face was very pale in its frame of short, straight black hair and her deep blue eyes were tragic.

Sandy grimaced. “Yes.”

“You don’t have to soft-pedal Ted’s attitude to me,” came the wistful reply. “I’ve known Ted ever since you and I became friends in college, remember?”

“Yes, I remember,” Sandy agreed.

“Ted never liked me, even before I married his cousin.” She didn’t mention how she knew it, or that Ted had been the catalyst who caused her to rush headlong into a marriage that she hadn’t even wanted.

“Ted doesn’t want commitment. He plays the field,” Sandy said evasively.

“His mother really affected him, didn’t she?” Coreen knew about their childhood, because Sandy had told her.

“Yes, she did. He’s been a rounder most of his life because of it,” she added on a sigh. “I used to think he had a case on you, before you married,” she added with a swift glance. “He was violent about you. He still is. Odd, wouldn’t you say?”

Coreen didn’t betray her thoughts by a single expression. She’d learned to hide her feelings very well. Barry had homed in on any sign of weakness or vulnerability. She’d made the mistake once, only once, of talking about Ted, during the first weeks of her marriage to Barry. She hadn’t realized until later that she’d given away her feelings for him. Barry had gotten drunk that night and hurt her badly. It had taught her to keep her deepest feelings carefully concealed.

“It will all be over soon,” Sandy remarked.

“Will it?” Coreen asked quietly. Her long, elegant fingers were contracting on her black clutch bag.

“Why did Tina want the will read so quickly?” Sandy asked suddenly.

“Because she’s sure that Barry left everything to her, including the house,” she said quietly. “You know how opposed she was to our marriage. She’ll have me out the front door by nightfall if the will did make her sole beneficiary. And I’ll bet it did. It would be like Barry. Even when we were married, I had to live on a household allowance of a hundred dollars a week, and bills and groceries had to come out of that.”

Her best friend stared at her. It had suddenly dawned on her that the dress Coreen was wearing wasn’t a new one. In fact, it was several years out of style.

“I only have the clothes I bought before I married,” Coreen said with ragged pride, avoiding her friend’s eyes. “I’ve made do. It didn’t matter.”

All Sandy could think about was that Tina was wearing a new designer dress and driving a new Lincoln. “But, why? Why did he treat you that way?”

Coreen smiled sadly. “He had his reasons,” she said evasively. “I don’t care about the money,” she added quietly. “I can type and I have the equivalent of an associate degree in sociology. I’ll find a way to make a living.”

“But Barry would have left you something, surely!”

She shook her head at Sandy’s expression. “He hated me, didn’t you know? He was used to women fawning all over him. He couldn’t stand being anyone’s second choice,” she said enigmatically. “At least there won’t be any more fear,” she added with nightmarish memories in her eyes. “I’m so ashamed.”

“Of what?”

“The relief I feel,” she whispered, as if the car had ears. “It’s over! It’s finally over! I don’t even care if people think I killed him.” She shivered.

Sandy was curious, but she didn’t pry. Coreen would tell her one day. Barry had done everything in his power to keep her from seeing Coreen. He didn’t like anyone near his wife, not even another woman. At first, Sandy had thought it was obsessive love for Coreen that caused him to behave that way. But slowly it dawned on her that it was something much darker. Whatever it was, Coreen had kept to herself, despite Sandy’s careful probing.

“It will be nice not to have to sneak around to have lunch with you once in a while,” Sandy said.

Worried blue eyes met hers through the delicate lace veil. “You didn’t tell Ted that we had to meet like that?”

“No. I haven’t told Ted,” was the reply. Sandy hesitated. “If you must know, Ted wouldn’t let me talk about you at all.”

The thin shoulders moved restlessly and the blue eyes went back to the window. “I see.”

“I don’t,” Sandy muttered. “I don’t understand him at all. And today I’m actually ashamed of the way he’s acting.”

“He loved Barry.”

“Maybe he did, in his way, but he never tried to see your side of it. Barry wasn’t the same with another man as he was with you. Barry bullied you, but most people don’t try to bully Ted, if they’ve got any sense at all.”

“Yes, I know.”

The limousine stopped and the driver got out to open the door for them.

“Thanks, Henry,” Coreen said gratefully.

Henry was in his fifties, an ex-military man with close-cropped gray hair and muscle. He’d been her salvation since he came to work for Barry six months ago. There had been gossip about that, and some people thought that Coreen was cuckolding her husband. Actually Henry had served a purpose that she couldn’t tell anyone about.