Redeeming-Love-By-Francine-Rivers

R E D E E M I N G L O V E
Angel took Lucky’s hand and held onto it. “No.” She didn’t want to be
alone. Not when she had been thinking about the past and couldn’t seem to
push it away. Not when death was all that was on her mind. It was the rain,
the constant, battering rain. She was going mad.
They sat silent for a long while. Lucky poured herself a drink. Tension
rippled through Angel as she remembered Mama’s drinking herself into
oblivion. She remembered Mama’s grief and guilt and the endless weeping.
She remembered Cleo, drunk and bitter, raging against life and telling her
God’s truth about men.
Lucky wasn’t Mama or Cleo. She was funny and uninhibited, and she
liked to talk. The familiar words flowed like balm. If Angel could just listen
to Lucky’s life story, she might be able to forget her own.
“My mother ran off when I was five,” Lucky said. “Have I told you all
this?”
“Tell me again.”
“My aunt took me in. She was a fine lady. Her name was Miss Priscilla
Lantry. She gave up marrying a fine young man because her father was ill
and needed her. She nursed the old miser for fifteen years before he died.
He wasn’t even cold in his grave when my loving mother dumped me on
her doorstep with a note. It said, ‘This is Bonnie.’ And it was signed
‘Sharon.’” She laughed.
“Aunt Priss didn’t much like the idea of having a child to raise, especially
a castoff from her no-good sister. Everyone in the neighborhood thought she
was a saint for taking me in.” She poured another glass of whiskey. “She said
she was going to make sure I grew up proper and not like my mother. If she
didn’t use a switch on me at least twice a day, she didn’t feel she was doing
her duty. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.’”
Lucky plunked the bottle on the side table and pushed her dark hair
back from her flushed face. “She drank. Not like I do. She did everything
proper. She just sipped. Not whiskey, mind you. Madeira, fine Madeira.
She’d start in the morning, a sip here, a sip there. It looked like liquid gold
in her pretty crystal glass. She was so mellow and sweet when neighbors
came to call.” She giggled. “They thought she had such a charming lisp.”
She sighed and swirled the amber fluid in her glass. “Meanest woman I
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