Sarah was up from the sofa like a shot. She marched straight to a marble-topped credenza and poured out claret into two glasses. Bringing them back to the sofa, she gave one to Lauretta. “This will quiet our nerves,” she said, and drank, and sat again, holding glass in one hand, caressing her sister with the other. That is how Leon and the others found them a quarter of an hour later when Lovey preceded them into the room with a tray of glasses filled with iced tea.

12

Everyone was kind, but summer is an uncomfortable time in which to be pregnant, and Lauretta was not of the best disposition as she waited for motherhood. Everything at Beulah Land reminded her of Sarah’s importance and of her dependence on her sister. Before coming, she had thought herself the central figure in the drama. She had anticipated Leon’s initial astonishment, followed by concern for her well-being. He was hardly more than civil, treating her not at all as one for whom he felt a special tenderness and responsibility, but rather as an embarrassing, unwelcome, and even boring reminder of past indiscretion.

He sought no moment to speak to her privately, although she dropped sufficient hints at the dining table of her intention of walking in the orchard or along the drive or in the woods, at such and such an early or late hour in the day, when it was not too hot for her to enjoy gentle exercise. Not once did he apprehend her under an arbor or as she rounded a bend; and pretty soon she left off taking walks altogether.

Edna and Trudy Davis made the time to come over and pay their respects, but after courtesies, they addressed their attention entirely to Sarah, making it clear that they considered Lauretta of no particular interest, except as the older sister of their friend. They did not behave at all as if she were a figure of mystery and importance, and when she declared to them how fortunate she felt herself to be to have a sister as good as Sarah who was eager to look after her at such a time, they merely nodded their heads as if what she said was only the simple truth and had nothing in it of special grace or modesty.

Everyone, in fact, was forever consulting Sarah, waiting for Sarah to express an opinion or preference, deferring to Sarah. It rubbed Lauretta’s fur the wrong way. The household women were obliging, but not in any personal sense. Lovey saw to it that she had every comfort the plantation could provide, but she never spoke to or looked at her as if she mattered of herself at all.