Regan's Pride

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Coreen shivered. “Not really,” she said. “Not anymore. Anyway, the people I skydive with watch out for me. I’ll get better. I’m not suicidal, you know,” she chided gently, and watched her friend blush. “I wouldn’t kill myself over Ted’s bad opinion of me. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.”

“Ted wouldn’t want to see you hurt,” Sandy said gently.

“Of course not,” she said placatingly. “Now, go home. You’ve got a life of your own, although I really appreciate having you here. I needed you.”

“Ted came voluntarily,” she said pointedly. “I didn’t ask him to.”

Coreen’s blue eyes darkened with pain. “He came to make me pay for hurting Barry,” she said. “He’s always found ways to make me pay, even for trying to care about him.”

“You know why Ted won’t let anyone close,” Sandy said quietly. “Our mother was much younger than Dad. She ran away with another man when I was just a kid. Dad took it real hard. He gave Ted a vicious distrust of women, and I was the scapegoat until he died. Ted’s kind to me, and he likes pretty women, but he wants no part of marriage.”

“I noticed.”

Sandy watched her closely. “He changed when you married. For the past two years, he’s been a stranger. After he came back from that visit with you and Barry, he took off for Canada and stayed up there for a month and then he moved us to Victoria. He couldn’t bear to talk about you.”

“God knows why, I never did anything to him,” Coreen said. “He knew Barry wanted to marry me and he thought I was after Barry’s money, but he never tried to stop us.”

Sandy let it drop, but not willingly. “Send me a postcard from wherever you move. I’ll phone you then,” she suggested. “We could meet somewhere for lunch.”

Coreen’s eyes were distracted. “Of course.” She glanced at Sandy. “The birthday card…”

“Surprised, were you?” Sandy asked. “So was I. Ted had just talked to Barry. A day or two later, he saw a photograph of you and Barry in the Jacobsville paper he got in Victoria. He became very quiet when he saw it. You weren’t smiling and you looked…fragile.”

Coreen remembered the photograph. She and Barry had been at a charity banquet and he’d been drinking heavily—much more so than usual. She’d been at the end of her rope when the photographer caught them.

“Then Ted remembered that your birthday was upcoming,” Sandy continued, “and he picked out a card to send you. For a man who hates you, he’s amazingly contradictory, isn’t he?”