The Heroines by Eileen Favorite Read Free Book Online Page A

forehead. Everything about me looked wild: my eyes, my panting mouth, my sweaty, freckled forehead. The grandfather clock chimed the quarter hour. It was after midnight.
    “I’ve been worried sick!” Mother said. “Where have you been?”
    My mother’s interrogation seemed like a parody of an exchange any mother and daughter would have over a broken curfew. I almost laughed.
    “You were in the woods, weren’t you? How many times have I told you to stay out of the woods after dark?”
    “I’m not seven years old!” I snapped. “I go to the woods all the time.”
    “You what?”
    My big mouth had done me in again. Admitting that I wandered the woods was not a smart tactic. Even if minutes before I had vowed never to return to the woods, I couldn’t let pass any opportunity to challenge Mother’s authority. My fragile young ego didn’t want to admit that she’d been right about it. To save further browbeating, I started to cry. “It’s not my fault! This man—”
    “What man? Your face is all scratched, and oh, my God!” She pointed at my legs.
    I looked down. Two purple bruises had blossomed on my inner thighs from squeezing the flanks of the horse. They looked like perfectly oval plums.
    “What did this man do to you?”
    “He pulled me on his horse—”
    “Sweet Lord.” Suddenly her anger evaporated, replaced by horror. “Oh, my darling. Lie down on the couch. You need to rest, to stop thinking—the police are on the way.”
    “You called the cops?”
    “Come lie down.” She held my hand and led me to the living room couch. I walked with my eyes half closed, pressing my hand to my chest, hoping that would help my heartbeat to slow. The sound was turned down on the television, but a picture of G. Gordon Liddy with his fat black mustache dominated the screen. Mother had told me he was the mastermind of the Watergate break-in. I lifted my hand to point at him, but Mother stopped me, put a pillow under my head, and peeled the flip-flops off my feet, the plastic sticking between my raw toes. I wanted to explain everything, but I was suddenly so tired, and I enjoyed her touch so much I didn’t want to ruin it with words that might be misconstrued. She stretched out my legs and laid an afghan across my chest, which moved up and down more and more slowly. Mother’s touch was utterly soothing. I hadn’t let her come this close to me since Madame Bovary had left. The velvety cushions felt wonderful, and fatigue fell on me; my legs felt heavy and leaden. I closed my eyes and a little while later felt a warm cloth on my forehead. Mother gently washed my face.
    “That feels good,” I said.
    “Shh. Rest now.”
    Her voice lulled me to sleep, the warm soothing tone she used when I was a child. I hadn’t known how much I missed it.

    I woke to the sound of a hissing walkie-talkie and gruff voices in the hallway. The back of my neck was killing me. I blinked, wondering why I wasn’t in my bed. Then everything came back to me. My head thrown back as he’d pulled my hair. The flash of fire in his torch. The thrum of the horse beneath us. My high-speed escape through the prairie. I pushed the afghan off and propped myself on my elbows to listen.
    “My men are combing the woods, but we need to ask her a few questions.”
    Combing the woods? I sat up and plunked my feet on the floor. Could the cops possibly apprehend Conor? Would they even see him? We kept the Heroines a secret from all outsiders. Hell, in Mother’s mind, I was an outsider. But if the cops brought him in, what would happen to Conor? And what damage might he do to them with that hundred-pound sword of his? Did Conor even exist? I touched my legs; the bruises were real, the scratches too, and the memory of his holding me on the horse sent streams of warm feelings through my legs. For an instant I hoped they’d bring him in. But that was crazy, and I felt ashamed and confused. I wasn’t supposed to have liked a brutal man like that, was I? I