Whitefern Read Online Free Page A

raucous. More people had arrived. Arden had arranged for a bartender and two maids to serve hors d’oeuvres. I was determined to be polite, not festive. Many of the men greeted me with quick condolences but, thinking they had to, movedinstantly to assure me that my husband was capable of carrying on.
    â€œAfter all, he was trained by an expert,” Rolf Nestor, one of Papa’s high-net-worth clients, told me. “You can be very proud of him.”
    Others said similar things to me, and when Arden, standing off to the side, overheard them, I could see his pleased, arrogant glare. Eventually, too physically and emotionally drained to remain, I excused myself.
    â€œOf course, darling Audrina,” Arden said, loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear. “You’ve done more than enough for any father to be proud of you. He died knowing you would be well cared for, and you will be,” he vowed.
    I saw the way the women were looking at him admiringly, and the men were nodding. It was not too different from the way they would look at Papa when he was younger and more energetic. Ironically, Arden was becoming more like Papa, the man he supposedly despised now.
    I said nothing. My heart was heavy. When I went upstairs, I checked on Sylvia first. She was dead asleep. Out of habit, and maybe because I wanted to convince myself that this was not all a terrible nightmare, I opened the door to my father’s bedroom and stood there full of wishful thinking. I imagined him propped up with two of his oversize pillows, his glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose, reading some economic charts or some company’s profit-and-loss statement. In his final years, although he was working less, he’d kept up the research and preparation tomake sure that Arden made no significant blunders in his absence, the way he had in the beginning. In fact, now that I thought about it more, I could understand why he had wanted to keep Arden from galloping off with the company and thought that perhaps having the majority of the company’s shares in my favor would make Arden more cautious. Papa always chose to be more conservative with other people’s money. He hated to be blamed for losses.
    Of course, the room was dark, the bed was empty, and the cold reality rushed back at me. I did all I could to keep from fainting and made my way quickly to our bedroom, changed into my nightgown, and slipped under the covers. Despite my fatigue, I thought I was going to lie there for hours and hours sobbing and staring into the darkness.
    Memories flowed freely around me. I could hear my mother playing the piano. I could see Papa’s look of admiration and love and also jealousy at the way other men looked at her, even when she was pregnant with Sylvia. I saw him reach for me so I would rush to him and sit on his lap when I was very little. We would both listen to Momma play. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Aunt Ellsbeth standing in the doorway, holding Vera’s hand. Both looked envious but for different reasons. Vera was always jealous of the love Papa showered on me, and Ellsbeth was simply jealous of her beautiful sister, who seemed to possess everything any woman would dream of having. She was always angry that Whitefern had been left mainly to my mother and not to her.
    They tried not to say unpleasant things directly to each other. I recalled how they pretended to be Aunt Mercy Marie and used their imitations of her at their special Tuesday “teatimes” to let loose all the venom toward each other that they usually held back. Aunt Mercy Marie’s picture was on the piano. She looked like a queen, wealthy, with diamonds hanging from her ears. Aunt Ellsbeth would hold the picture up in front of her and change her voice to say nasty things, and Momma would do the same. I was still unsure about what had eventually happened to my great-aunt after she had gone to Africa. The family thought it was possible