The Arrangement 1

Chapter 9

April spent the night watching the girls sleep. They had their own rooms of course but they’d wanted to spend their first night in the new house together so they were both in Lucy’s bed.

Lucy was the older of the two, named for April’s mother.

April thought of her mother and what she would have done in a situation like this. She often found that she thought of her mother when her back was against a wall. If nothing else, at least her mother had been a survivor. And despite all the hardship they’d gone through she’d always managed to pull her family through it together.

There were periods when April and her sister had been taken into public care but their mother fought tooth and nail and always, always found a way to get them back to her. April didn’t know if she had the same strength of purpose. Walter was signing her babies up for boarding school and she was just letting it happen. She knew her mother wouldn’t have stood for it. She took out her mother’s earrings and looked at them. They made her feel closer to her mother. She wished she could call her up on the phone and talk to her. She wished she had any family, somewhere in the world, that she could call up but there was none. Her sister, Kathy, she didn’t even know where she was. After their mother died they’d each gone their separate ways and had never managed to get back in touch. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. There’d been a few quiet phone calls, usually from police stations or motels, but they’d frittered out since April’s marriage. Kathy had picked up on the fact that Walter didn’t like her calling and had fallen out of touch with her sister. April wished now that she’d maintained the connection.

She looked at Lucy sleeping so peacefully, and at little Mary next to her, and she prayed for them. She prayed for their future, and that they wouldn’t end up as alone and helpless as she was.

Then she started to let them go. It wasn’t like she would never see them again, she could see them every weekend if she wanted, but she already knew that things would never be the same for any of them again. The school would be their home from now on. That’s how it was with those schools. They were cold and harsh but ultimately they gave children what they needed to succeed in the world and become strong, determined people. And maybe that was more important to her girls that what she could give them. 

She knew though that she would never really be able to forgive herself for the decision she was making that night. There was no point arguing with Walter, he’d do whatever the firm told him to, but she still had choices. She could take the children from their bed right now and make a run for it, take them to a place where she’d always be with them and be able to care for them, but was there really a place like that? And would they even thank her for doing it. She’d be taking them away from everything money could buy, all the comfort and security in the world, just so that they could drift from motel to boarding house to motel for the rest of their childhoods. She’d take them away from all of this just so that they’d have the childhood she’d had. 

No. She knew she wouldn’t do it. She wasn’t even certain she could do it, not with the security at the gate and her without a car now. And then there was the firm. Walter had all sorts of connections. She didn’t stand a chance going up against people like that. Walter would take her to court and win custody and then she’d never see them at all.

Even if she could, she knew in heart that she didn’t have the strength to go up against Walter. She’d have to do what he wanted and that was the end of the matter.

She told herself it was for the best, and that she had no right to take this opportunity away from them. And it would be a while still before they had to start school. And there’d be weekends and holidays and she’d make it up to them during those times. She’d make sure they knew she loved them and that she would always be there for them. And then she cried till the sky reddened with the first blush of dawn. 

In the morning her eyes were swollen and red but she did her best to clean herself up and look her best for the new day. She had a job to do, and that was to be the wife and mother that Walter expected her to be, and she was going to do it.