Jessica stirred the remains of her twenty-ounce Slurpee with the straw, sipped, and gazed out into the pasture. Her eyes lost focus and her mind drifted to the farm and to today’s visitor.
“Jessica, did you hear what I said?’
Jessica jumped. “What? Oh, you’re ready to go.” She swung her legs over the split-rail fence and slid to the ground. Balancing her cup against a fence-post, she dusted off the seat of her sundress and watched Alison do the same to her jeans. With a farewell glance at the big, chestnut quarter-horse, the paint, and the black mare who had been their mid-morning companions, she turned and followed Alison through the un-mowed grass that bordered the two-lane highway, kicking her way slowly towards the turn-off a hundred yards ahead.
“That’s a pretty dress,” Alison said without looking over her shoulder.
Jessica smiled. Her summer treat was cotton print, ornamented with yellow and peach lilies and lime foliage. “Thanks. I like your shirt, too. It’s cute.”
“Did you wear it just to get a MoonPie?”
Jessica glanced sharply at her friend’s back, said, “It’s just such a lovely day,” and looked back down, brow furrowed.
“Are you meeting a boy?”
Jessica blushed, hoped her friend wouldn’t notice.
“You are meeting someone! Who is it?” Alison had stopped and turned to stare.
But Jessica lowered her shoulders and shoved past.
Alison was her best friend and knew Jessica was the only girl in their grade who never dated, but she also knew better than anyone that, although Jessica accepted and shared her parents’ moral and religious beliefs, she had fifteen-year-old-girl hormones. Although Jessica told Alison everything, she kept her feelings for Colby Kidd private. Colby was not only two years older than them and to Jessica a man, but he was also the preacher’s son. And he was coming to the farm today to help her father. Jessica planned to bump into him.
“Go on, tell me. Who are you seeing?”
“No one. Besides, who would I want to see?”
“I don’t know. Jeff Parker?”
“Alison!”
Alison laughed. “Yeah, I guess that was months ago.” She lapsed into silence, though Jessica knew her mind was spinning for an answer.
The girls had both gone to the Church of the Epistles their whole lives and while Jessica followed the strict moral rules enforced by her parents, Alison, like most of the teenage congregants, played loose with them and dated frequently and widely. Alison not only knew all about Jessica’s crush on Jeff, but had tried to goad her into acting on it. But then Alison also knew that nothing had happened and that Jessica had moved on.
“I wonder… ”
Alison had always been Jessica’s best friend, had always shared her homeroom at school, but Jessica sometimes wondered what the popular girl still saw in her. Perhaps she gave Alison a place away from teen-age cliques, somewhere safe to talk about tampons and periods, crushes and dates, and Alison’s increasingly intimate sexual experiences. It didn’t matter, though: Jessica was grateful for a friendship without which the classroom would be a lonely place and the long summer boring.
Alison’s eyes lit up, she put her hands on her hips, and with a tone of confident discovery she announced, “You’re seeing Colby Kidd.”
Jessica scowled and said, “Of course I’m not.” She pressed her head lower and accelerated towards the unmarked road on which Alison would turn off and head to her house on the main street through the small, mountain town of Wilkeston.
“You are, too. I’ve seen the way you look at him. Where are you meeting?”
Jessica reached the corner. Sullen, though not sure why, she turned and faced Alison. “We’re not. He’s just coming over to help out on the farm.”
“Wow.” Alison paused and Jessica felt herself being studied. “You know he hangs out with Robbie and them? He’s… Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“I’m not doing anything, all right?”
Alison’s eyes were sympathetic but Jessica didn’t want to talk about it. She had an insane crush on a stud two years older than her who she barely even knew and she didn’t want Alison making her feel stupid. So she glared back defiantly.
Alison eventually shrugged. “Just be careful, okay? And call me if you want to talk.” With a toss of her head, her long curls bouncing, she swung her hips, turned and walked up the hill towards home. Jessica watched her best friend drift up the middle of the road, a run-down trailer park fronted by beaten-up pickups on her left, a furniture outlet on her right. Perhaps she should have talked to Alison. Alison would know how to handle Colby. Maybe she would call her later.
When her friend passed into the shadow of a large oak tree, Jessica sighed and turned to cross the highway. She glanced both ways and saw nothing but a scooter fading into the distance. It was probably Danny Collins making a run to the state line. Danny had lost his license years ago for drinking and driving, but tooled around town on his 50cc bike and made routine trips for a case of beer and a stack of lottery tickets.
She crossed the road and meandered towards the farm, dreaming of Colby’s green eyes. She had been watching him for over six months now. He was at church every Sunday, always on the front pew. Jessica usually managed to get her parents to arrive early, steered them towards the front on the other side of the aisle, and spent the service admiring Colby’s strong jaw and broad shoulders in profile. She caught glimpses of him at school, too, though they were generally fleeting. Usually he was with his friends and she was with Alison, so the best she could do was steal sly peeks. Occasionally she got closer, leaned casually on a locker and manufactured a hallway encounter, exchanged quick humor in the lunch line. But he probably had no idea that she liked him. How could he? She was younger, a prude, and he could have any girl he wanted.
Jessica’s home was a small farm less than half a mile from the pasture. The house, barn and surrounding trees and shrubs obscured the farmyard from the road, so she couldn’t tell whether Colby’s car was there. But she craned her neck as she walked up the long driveway, her heart beating faster and finally leaping when she saw a big, blue Buick, Pastor Kidd’s car. Could Colby have borrowed it for the day, planning to take Jessica for a drive? She knew this was neither likely nor permitted, but still a thrill tingled in her belly. She swallowed and resolved that today would be the day. She would talk to Colby, even if she had to wander out into the fields to find him. But first she had to feed the kittens.
Four weeks ago Maisie, one of last year’s litter of barn cats, had birthed six kittens. She had been way too young and the birth was premature: one kitten was stillborn and a second had died soon thereafter. Now Maisie was not feeding well, so taking advantage of the summer vacation, Jessica took a bottle of warm milk to the barn twice a day to feed the survivors. They were making good progress, though Spike was still weak.
Jessica turned to the left, past her dream of being taken for a ride, and entered the old, stone house to fetch the milk. The kitchen’s austerity, stark cleanness, and lack of ornamentation spoke of Ma and were enough for reality to shatter Jessica’s dreams. A relationship with Colby could never happen. Ma expected Jessica to live the same life of sacrifice—especially sacrifice of pleasure—that she had made her own, a life of servitude, eventually in bondage to a man to whom she would offer unquestioning obedience. While Jessica did not know when she would be granted permission to find that man, she knew it was not yet.
Jessica turned on the faucet, picked up a bottle and fumed. She wanted to rebel and have a boyfriend, but she was scared. Ma and Dad had never talked to her of the birds and bees. They never even held hands. When it came down to it, Jessica was too embarrassed to bring even the topic of boys into the house. Succumbing to earthy desires would bitterly disappoint parents from whose example she had learned that pleasures of the flesh were for lesser people.
A bottle of warm milk in hand, Jessica stepped into the yard and looked around hopefully, but there was no sign of Colby. Her chin fell, and she crossed to the old barn, a faded wood construction with missing panels and a gaping hole in one side from a runaway tractor accident. Jessica had not been allowed near the machine since. But the barn was structurally sound and the tin roof was only ten years old, so the hayloft where the kittens lived was warm and dry. Jessica entered the barn and climbed the ladder. Her head poked above the line of the hayloft and her heart stopped. Maisie was licking Spike, who lay motionless beside her.
No!
She scrambled up the last steps and hastened to the kitten. Maisie didn’t object to her offspring being picked up, but Spike didn’t move. Jessica wept. She laid the corpse aside and picked up the mother to console her, but Maisie was uninterested. Her eyes were dull, like the lifeless buttons on the face of a stuffed toy. Jessica put her down, and the cat returned to her offspring, licked her all over, and then wandered drearily into the back of the barn.
They were only barn cats to the rest of the Jacksons, but to Jessica they were more, more even than pets. They were her friends, and the hayloft, with its familiar smells of oil, animals, and hay, was a sanctuary she shared with them, a place she came to rest and to dream. Dad had made her a cedar chest when she was a toddler, and she used to hide in it and giggle when he found her among the clothes. Now it resided in the hayloft and held her treasures: a ticket stub from the first time Dad had taken her to the movies; Cassandra, her childhood princess doll; magazine photos of Leonardo DiCaprio, Justin Timberlake, and other MTV and Hollywood stars she wasn’t allowed to watch. The chest was also where she stored her diary and the hayloft where she came to write. Spike’s death was a desecration of her sacred space.
Quiet conversation approached the barn and Jessica straightened. That would be Dad. He would make the pain go away, just like he always did. It was Dad who hugged her when her emotions spun out of control, Dad who offered her words of wisdom when things went wrong. She knew that she was the jewel of his life. He had told her a hundred times how, for the first twenty years of his marriage with Ma, he had desperately wanted children and had felt as blessed as Abraham when at thirty-six Ma had, like Sarah, borne him the child that he no longer thought possible. Jessica felt blessed too, for she loved her father more than anyone or anything in the world. His happiness was the most important thing in her life.
But he must be busy on farm business right now. She cocked her head to listen.
“Okay, Colby.” Her father’s voice became clearer as it approached. “You fetch the pick and axe from the barn and get started. I’ve got to go down to Cook Hardware for some odds and ends. Then I need to spend half an hour in my shop fixing the chain. I’ll meet you at the stumps with the tractor in an hour or so.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jessica flushed. When Spike had brought heartbreak to the hayloft, she had forgotten about Colby. She brushed the straw and cat hair off her lap, shook out her long, black hair and pulled it back over her shoulders, and grabbed one of Maisie’s gamboling kittens and a bottle of milk. Tiger gripped the nipple greedily while Jessica tickled his neck and shifted slightly so she could see down into the barn.
She had watched Colby from afar for long enough that she saw his rocking gait in her dreams. He always rolled the sleeves of his shirts halfway up his forearms and favored jeans and cowboy boots. Standing in the barn doorway, his arms hung loose at his side and his shoulders swung with his head as he peered around the tractor and agricultural equipment, looking for tools. She gazed at him from the hayloft, her chest thumping, her breath arrhythmic. She was nervous. No, it was more than nerves: something very uncomfortable was happening. She was drawn to Colby, wanted to be with him, yet she was too embarrassed to do anything. What if he didn’t like her? She thought he was interested, but what if she was wrong? What if she made a fool of herself? And what would Ma and Dad think?
Colby’s eyes latched onto something in the corner and he started to move. If Jessica didn’t act now it would be too late.
“Hi Colby,” she called.
What had she done? Guilt accompanied embarrassment and she waited.
Colby’s head moved quickly from side to side, confused and searching for the voice.
He’s so cute!
He saw her. “Hi Jessica,” he said.
“I’m feeding the kittens.”
You idiot! What a stupid thing to say.
“I’m helping your father dig up a couple of tree stumps. I have to get some tools to loosen up the roots first.”
“I could use a hand. The kittens are hungry and Maisie’s not feeding. And Spike’s dead.”
“Spike?”
Jessica nodded. “She’s one of the kittens.”
A pause, then Colby shrugged his shoulders. “I guess there’s no rush. Is Spike up there?”
“Yeah, she’s right here.”
Boys!
She had a litter of kittens to feed, tiny little balls of fluff, and all Colby cared about was the one that had died. But he was strolling across strips of sunlight to the short ladder. Maybe he did like her. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach and she dusted the wooden floor beside her with the palm of her hand.
Panic hit.
Colby would want to explore, look in her cedar chest. He would see Cassandra, read her diaries. She would look so immature, sitting in her secret place and feeding the kittens. What was she thinking? And what could she possibly talk about to a boy two years older than her?
Colby scrambled up and looked around. “Where’s Spike?”
Jessica nodded to the side. “I put her over there.”
Colby took a few steps and crouched down. Jessica tried to swallow the guilt she felt looking at the strong shoulders and back that pressed against his shirt.
“Cool.” He stood up and turned. With a smile he crossed the hayloft and lowered his back against the bales of hay beside Jessica, stretched his legs out straight, almost touching her. Tiger released the bottle and wobbled back to the hay.
Colby was so close that Jessica could hear his breath. Her mind swirled and she felt giddy. She wanted him to smile at her, to say sweet things. She wanted him to look at her, to touch her. But mostly there was just wild confusion. She scooped her hand under a kitten that rubbed against her leg and lifted him to her lap. The kitten kneaded her waist and rubbed his head against her belly. He was hungry.
“This one’s Bubbles.”
“Bubbles?”
“Yeah.” Jessica smiled. “He’s kind of round and he bounces a lot.” She lifted the small gray and white bundle and held him out. “Why don’t you feed him?”
Colby held out his open hands, a confused expression on his face.
“Let me show you,” she said and slid across the inches that separated them. Her bare shoulder pressed against the muscles under Colby’s shirt. Surely he could feel her heart pounding, the heat radiating from a face fit to burst with excitement? Their legs touched and Jessica thought she would explode.
Jeff Parker, her freshman-year-crush, was in her grade, so he had been easier to talk to, easier to touch. One time last year she had leaned on him, pressed herself to his back as she reached around for a book on the desk in front of him. And she felt embarrassed whenever she remembered letting him hug her from behind for a reason she could no longer recall, let his hand rest on her butt for a few seconds. It had been thrilling, but in the classroom and safe.
She had never touched anyone like this, though. It was an invitation, that much she knew. But an invitation to do what, of that she wasn’t sure. With her heart in her throat, she put her hand around Bubbles.
“You do it like this,” she said. Surely Colby could hear her voice quaking?
She laid Bubbles on his back on Colby’s hand and held out the bottle. The kitten grabbed the nipple and sucked.
“Here, you take it,” she said, and with her chest pounding, guided the older boy’s hand to the bottle.
Jessica remembered a fantasy that she had never told her father and which even Alison would have forgotten. It was a fantasy she had outgrown, but which in some strange way still hung on in the corners of her imagination, surviving the havoc puberty had wreaked with her emotions. She had dreamed of a prince riding up to the farm on a white stallion and sweeping her off her feet. Pastor Kidd, leader of the Church of the Epistles in Wilkeston, was king of her community. Could his son be her prince?
She slid her hand down the bottle to rest on Colby’s hand, didn’t resist as his leg pressed back against hers. She studied his face. Its flatness offered simplicity and its breadth spoke of openness and honesty. The red hair and freckles gave an air of novelty and perhaps a touch of humor. But above all the face was just Colby and when he was around she tingled all over and fumbled and dropped things. Her crush on him was six months old and she still didn’t really know why she liked him. Now that she thought about it there were plenty of muscle-bound boys: the school fielded a whole football team of them, and many were taller. If it was ‘cute’ or ‘handsome’ she was after, then she should be drawn to Philip Darcy or Josh Delegance. And yet no one made her feel the way Colby did. Was this what being in love felt like?
“How old is he?”
“Four weeks.”
Colby watched the kitten suck for some time then looked up at Jessica and said, “He’s cute. How many have you got?”
“Three.” Jessica gazed helplessly at Colby, paralyzed by fear and wonder. Even her monosyllabic answers made her voice shake. She tried to summon up the courage to speak a full sentence, tried to compose one, but Colby spoke first.
“You’ve been crying.”
His hand moved towards Jessica’s cheek, and she flinched. She wanted him to touch her and yet was unbearably nervous. She forced herself to sit still in the thrill of anticipation. Tender and light, the back of a finger wiped away a tear. It stroked her cheek again, although no tear remained.
“I’m sorry. I’ve probably been really insensitive about Spike, haven’t I?”
Swallowing hard, Jessica fought to keep her voice steady.
“No, you haven’t.”
“Are you sure? ’Cause if I have been, you know… ”
Jessica didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. “No, you’re fine. I’m just glad you’re here.”
Jessica knew she was out of control and speaking gibberish, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from Colby’s. No one had ever looked at her like this before. If they had, even if it had happened behind her back, or across a thousand miles, she would know. It was a look of want, of need.
“You know, you’ve got a real pretty nose. I don’t know where you get it from. Your Mom has that long ridge.” They both laughed. “But yours is real cute.”
He put the bottle aside and Bubbles scurried away. Colby’s touch on Jessica’s nose was tender, not at all what she had expected, and the little things he said were funny. He moved his finger up to her forehead and ran it back down her small, upturned nose. Jessica was suddenly conscious that her hand still rested on Colby’s. It felt fat and heavy, her leg against his awkward.
Colby raised his finger and tapped the tip of her nose, ever-so-gently, and then tapped again. They both smiled and their eyes met again.
“I could gaze into your eyes all day long.”
“Dad has hazel eyes, too.” Jessica felt herself floating, the barn and her body strangely unreal. She was in the presence of her prince, and they were as one. Her hand was no longer numb, her leg no longer inadequate. They were, rather, irrelevant. The whole universe was reduced to Colby’s gaze.
His finger slipped from Jessica’s nose down to her lip. She laid her head back on the hay.
“You have beautiful hair too.” He ran his fingers through the dark mane that was Jessica’s pride and joy, pulling it forward so it cascaded over her shoulders. As it fell, a breeze blew onto her ears. With a familiar smooth slipping sensation, her hair slid back off her cheeks and shoulders. She smiled.
Colby turned his shoulders and tilted his head, eased it towards Jessica’s. Sitting on the loose hay, the sultry humidity of late summer clinging to her clothes, the smell of the farm filling her nostrils, Jessica’s moment of magic had arrived. He tipped her head back and she closed her eyes. Their lips met and Jessica melted, opened her mouth to a blissful blackness. She had not known such beauty or pleasure was possible and wanted it to last forever. The world disappeared, she disappeared, into the unknowing cloud of the kiss. Her fairytale ending had arrived, her prince had come.
The hand on her knee slipped up her thigh and slid under the hem of her skirt.
This was not the way it was supposed to happen. The mystery of the kiss shriveled and Jessica dropped her hand firmly onto Colby’s fingers, pulled back from his mouth. Colby lifted himself from her and raised his head. Jessica expected to see the softness of his last gaze, but it was gone, replaced by an intensity that scared her. She started to sit up, but Colby placed his hand gently on her shoulder, arresting her movement without pressing. The softness returned to his eyes.
“It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you.” He removed his hand. “I just want to make you happy.” He brushed her hair from her face, stroked it. He touched her cheek. He ran the backs of his fingers up her arms, then straightened out the hem of her skirt, and with just the tips of his fingers touched her thighs.
It was wrong and yet she tingled.
“Colby,” she looked down at her crumpled dress, “I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“It’s okay to be nervous, I am too. I really like you Jessica. You’re cute and pretty and funny.”
Jessica just sat, let Colby stroke her arm. On the rare occasions her father had spoken of boys he had warned her of their ways, told her that they only wanted one thing. But was this so wrong? After all, Colby had backed off when she asked, and Alison had gone much further than this anyway. And the kiss had been so wonderful. Jessica relaxed and laid back against the hay, allowed her head to fall back, her arms to fall to the ground.
“I’d like to kiss you again, Jessica; can I do that?”
She gazed up at Colby and nodded. That is exactly what she wanted. He rolled forward and she closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around his shoulders and let her mouth melt into his. Her arms tightened and held him close, ran up and down his back. She let him slide her down to lie on the floor of the hayloft and her right leg entwined with his left, then wrapped around him. And she felt against her belly something new. She could not give this warmth and pressure a name, did not try, but she found her hips rocking against it, matching Colby’s motion. Her legs and arms slipped and slid. She had not realized it was possible to join with another human being in such an intimate way. The kiss was now a memory: this immersion was complete.
Colby’s hands explored, wandered to places that had never been touched before, but when they returned to her hemline she resisted, pulled herself back from paradise and pressed on his chest.
Colby knelt and Jessica opened her eyes. He reached down and undid his belt and zipper.
Jessica’s hands rose to her mouth and she gasped, paralyzed. When she was able to move again, she averted her gaze: she had never seen a man naked, not even in the movies her mother disapproved of her watching. Her legs and arms curled up protectively. She could not look at Colby with his pants down.
“Colby, what are you doing? Stop it.” She dropped her hands to the ground and started to push herself away, to sit up. But Colby put his index finger on her lips.
“Shhhh.”
His whisper was just enough to make Jessica think twice. She glanced at his freckled face before closing her eyes tight and tucking her head once more into her curled-up arms. The Colby of her dreams who had promised a home far away where kittens did not die, where princes and princesses lived happily ever after, was fading.
“It’s okay, Jessica.”
She had only wanted to let him kiss her and yet they had lain together on the ground. She had held him close, rubbed against him with that strange, rocking motion. It had been wonderful, but she did not understand what was happening. Even Alison’s intimate accounts of what boys did when she let them take off her bra and her most recent disclosure of Jake putting his hand down her panties had not prepared Jessica for this. She was terrified and wanted to stop.
But she had led Colby this far. The prudishness of her upbringing conflicted in terrible ambivalence with the need to sacrifice herself. It was because of her that they were lying on the floor, because of her that Colby wanted to continue.
“It’ll be all right, Jessica.”
Jessica was afraid. She neither moved nor spoke.
“Let’s just take it one step at a time and you tell me when to stop, okay?”
The tips of Colby’s fingers stroked her raised calves. She shivered and lowered her feet to the floor beside him, knees raised. His fingers ran past her knee and stroked her thighs, up to, but not crossing, the hemline. She laid her head back on the ground, tried to relax, though her arms were still curled up tight.
Hands rested on Jessica’s hips, circled her belly. Thumbs caressed.
“I’m going to lie down with you, okay?”
She sensed Colby’s weight shift and felt him sit down beside her. A hand touched her cheek. “You’re so beautiful.” The hand stroked her hair. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
Jessica shuddered. Dad had been there for every difficult moment in her life, but he couldn’t help now, and she had spurned Alison’s advice. What was she supposed to do?
“You’re crying again.” A hand brushed her cheek and she let her arms fall away, though her fists stayed clenched. Her eyes remained closed as Colby lowered his body to the ground beside her, laid a leg across hers. He stroked her cheek again, ran his fingers through her hair.
Jessica was terrified, yet unable to move. Colby kissed the tears that trickled out of the corners of her eyes…
“Colby, don’t.”
… and then her cheeks.
“Colby, please.”
“It’s okay, baby, just one step at a time.”
When lips touched hers, Jessica started to mumble in protest, but he pressed and she relented. How could she not? She let his lips open hers. She even put her arms around his shoulders. She was losing the will over her body. Colby rotated his body in increments until he was lying on her once more.
Jessica couldn’t go any further. She released her arms, relaxed her lips and waited for him to stop.
But he didn’t.
Colby’s head slid beside hers, his hot breath now on her shoulder. He pressed his thighs hard against the inside of her legs and Jessica started to struggle, slid her hands between their bodies and pushed up on his shoulders. But Colby used his weight and balance to hold her to the ground. With one hand he reached down and lifted her skirt. She felt his hand on her belly, his warmth beneath that, and she squirmed and tried to roll him off. He was too strong, though. His hand slid around the base of her belly and onto her hips.
He ripped off her underpants.
Eyes wide in terror, Jessica fought. She tossed her hips furiously, beat at him with her hands. Her feet flailed and kicked.
But Colby was too strong. His weight and hands held her hips to the ground, her legs apart. She wanted to scream, but what did she have to scream about? Had she not brought this on herself? And if her parents found her like this they would be horrified. Besides, Dad would still be at the hardware store.
But her instincts took over, and she filled her lungs.
Colby placed a hand over her mouth and smothered her cry. She tossed her head and tried to bite his hand, tried to pull it away from her face with her own hand. But suddenly it was too late to scream. The sharp, unfamiliar, and almost unbearable pain seemed to last an eternity, though she knew it took but a few moments.
Colby’s weight lifted. Jessica slid out from under him, shuffled the short distance to the corner and yanked her dress down so violently that she felt the seams give. She tucked her knees tight against her chest and curled up to die, her lips quivering, loose hay clinging to her clothes, her tousled hair, her skin. She glanced up. Colby was fumbling with his trousers, but he looked at her. His eyes were wide and his face white. When he caught her eyes, he staggered backwards as if she had hit him. Staring at her with round eyes, his mouth hanging open and his arms limp, Colby backed slowly away, then turned and lunged for the stepladder. There was thump as he slid down the last few steps and fell to the floor, than a clatter and a muttered curse, presumably the implements he sought being dropped. A crash and another outcry sounded like him stumbling into the tractor, and then with fast footsteps, he was gone.
What did Jessica’s prince think of her now? She had fought him at the last, but not until it was too late. She had allowed—invited—him to violate her and yet still rejected him. And Colby’s hasty departure told her that this prince would not be carrying her off into the sunset.
Jessica no longer wanted him to do so anyway. She had flaunted herself and tempted the pastor’s son to lie with her. She was guilty, like Eve, of original sin, and like Eve, she would have to face the consequences of her disobedience.
Tiger, Bubbles and Blizzard nuzzled up to Jessica. Were they still hungry or did they sense that something was wrong? They mewed and rubbed their noses on her legs, but rather than offering consolation, their presence reminded her of the emptiness of their mother.