The Heart Remembers Read Online Free

business houses; the frame houses were tucked between and farther along. There were pigs rooting in the soft, sandy road; giant water-oaks bordered the road on each side, and long festoons of Spanish moss stirred ever so faintly in the wind. Here and there a cow moved languidly aside to let the station wagon pass. Beside the road, just barely off it, a half grown Negro boy lay soundasleep, his hands folded peacefully, a mongrel dog idly kicking at fleas between naps at his feet.
    When they had left the small village behind, Jim said dryly, “And that, Fair Lady, constitutes the town of Harbour Pines. Still think it could support a newspaper?”
    â€œI’m going to give it a chance to try,” said Shelley stubbornly.
    His jaw hardened a little and a moment later he turned the nose of the station wagon from the rambling sandy road down a narrow twisting lane between live-oaks and lower growing underbrush and came out at last in front of a beautiful old house with gracious, mellow lines which spoke of an almost regal stateliness before the evil shadow of decay and neglect had fallen upon it.
    It was a big house, square, solid-looking, with four tall white columns guarding the wide front gallery and steps. A lovely fan-light filled in the space above the arched front door. Windows were full-length to the porch, with green shutters. Paint was flaking from the white house and from the green shutters.
    The lawn and the garden were infested with weeds, so that they were little more than a ghost of what must have been a former glory.
    But it was obvious that to Jim the house required no explanations or apology. It was home and he probably saw it with the eyes of affection that refused to accept its signs of decay. Eyes that had watched a disintegration so gradual that he was hardly aware of it.
    He slid out of the car, swung the door open for her and said politely, “Welcome to Oaklawn, the home of the Durands and Hargroves, Miss Kimbrough. Will you come in?”
    The big front door was open, and he led the way into a square, old-fashioned reception hall, from the back of which curving stairs led upward. He putdown her suitcases, and glanced through an open door on the left that was obviously, judging by its decoration, a woman’s sitting-room.
    â€œI’ll have to find Aunt Selena,” he said carelessly. “Make yourself at home. I won’t be long.”
    He did not see the tightening of her body at the mention of his aunt, and she was deeply grateful that he turned and went out without hearing her small, caught breath.
    She stood very still, hearing his footsteps go away down the hall. In a handful of moments now she was going to be face to face with Selena Durand, a name that had held a very special place in her thoughts for fifteen years. A name that she had heard, and that she had come to hate with all the resentment inspired by the burning injustice done her mother and her own childish, bewildered pain. The woman had played an ugly, if unseen part in the tragedy of Shelley’s childhood, a tragedy that had blighted three lives.
    She was so shaken that she was not aware of the passing of time. She could not be sure whether it was five minutes or many times that long that Jim had been gone, when at last she heard him returning. She braced herself, her hands clenching tightly as she heard the sound of other, lighter footsteps accompanying his.
    Shelley had moved instinctively so that her back was to the window, so that her expression would be somewhat hidden, when she looked on the woman beside Jim.
    She was, like the house, a ghost of what must once have been a great beauty. Tall, too thin, her graying head held high, her gaunt face composed, her dark eyes cold, she stood beside Jim in her neat flowered cotton dress, faded from too many washings, as Jim said quietly:
    â€œAunt Selena, this is Shelley Kimbrough. I’ve toldher we would put her up for a few days until she can get her own