Kerry Read online

  © 2013 by Grace Livingston Hill

  Print ISBN 978-1-62029-394-2

  eBook Editions:

  Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-62416-505-4

  Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-62416-504-7

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.

  All scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design: Faceout Studio, www.faceoutstudio.com

  Published by Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683, www.barbourbooks.com

  Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Early 1920s

  Kerry Kavanaugh thought when her beloved father died that the worst that could had come upon her. The day her mother told her, six months after her father’s funeral, that she was going to marry again, and that she was going to marry Sam Morgan, the multimillionaire, Kerry knew that there were worse things than death.

  Sam Morgan had been a youthful acquaintance of Mrs. Kavanaugh’s—a sort of skeleton in the closet ever since Kerry could remember.

  “If I had married Sam Morgan,” Mrs. Kavanaugh would say plaintively as she shivered in a cold room, “we wouldn’t have had to stay at such cheap hotels.”

  And Kerry’s father would say in a tone as nearly acid as his gentle voice ever took, “Please leave me out of that, Isobel. If you had married Sam Morgan, remember, I would not have been staying at the same hotel.”

  Then Kerry’s mother’s blue eyes would fill with tears, and her delicate lips would quiver, and she would say, “Now, Shannon! How cruel of you to take that simple remark in that way! You are always ready to take offense. I meant, of course, that if I—that if we— That I wish we had more money! But of course, Shannon, when you have finished your wonderful book we shall have all we need. In fact, by the time you have written a second book I believe we shall have more than Sam Morgan has.”

  Then Kerry’s father would look at her mother with something steely in his blue eyes, his thin, sensitive lips pressed firmly together, and would seem about to say something strong and decided, something in the nature of an ultimatum. But after a moment of looking with that piercing glance which made his wife shrink and shiver, a softer look would melt into his eyes, and a stony sadness settle around his lips. He would get up, draw his shabby robe around him, and go out into the draughty hotel hall where he would walk up and down for a while, with his hands clasped behind his back, and his gaze bent unseeing on the old ingrain carpet that stretched away in dim hotel vistas.

  On one such occasion when Kerry was about ten, she had left her weeping mother huddled in a blanket in a big chair, magnifying her chilliness and her misery, and had crept out to the hall and slipped her cold, unhappy little hand into her father’s; and so for a full length and back they had paced the hall. Then Father had noticed that Kerry was shivering in her thin little dress that was too short for her and too narrow for her, and he opened wide his shabby robe and gathered her in close to him where it was warm and so walked her briskly back another length of the hall.

  “Mother was crying,” explained Kerry. “I couldn’t listen to her any longer.”

  Then a stricken look came into Father’s eyes, and he looked down at Kerry solicitously.

  “Poor little mother!” he said. “She doesn’t always understand. You little mother is all right, Kerry, only she sometimes errs in judgment.”

  Kerry said yes in a meek little voice and waited, and after they had taken another length of the hall, her father explained again. “She is such a beautiful little mother, you know, Kerry.”

  “Oh yes!” assented Kerry eagerly, for she could see that a happier light was coming into her father’s eyes, and she really admired her frail little mother’s looks very much indeed.

  “She’s always the most beautiful mother in the world, you know, Kerry.”

  “Oh yes!” said Kerry again quite eagerly.

  “You see,” said Father slowly, after another pause, “you ought to understand, little daughter, I took her from a beautiful home where she had every luxury, and it’s hard on her, very hard. She has to go without a great many things that she has been used to having. You see, I loved her, little Kerry!”

  “Yes?” said Kerry with a question in her voice.

  “And she loved me. She wanted to come!” It was as if he were arguing over and over with himself a long-debated question.

  “But Father, of course,” bristled Kerry, “why wouldn’t she want to come with you? You’re the bestest father in the whole wide—”

  Then Kerry’s father stopped her words with a kiss, and suddenly hastened his steps.

  “She might have had the best in the land. She might have had riches and honor!”

  “You mean that ugly, fat Sam Morgan, Father?” Kerry had asked innocently with a frown.

  “Oh, not that man!” said her father sharply. “He is a—a—louse!” Kerry remembered how her father had spoken the word, and then seemed to try to wipe it out with his voice.

  “I mean, Kerry, that he was not worthy of your mother, your beautiful mother. But there were others she might have had who could have given her everything. It is true I thought I would be able to do so, too, someday, but my plans haven’t worked out, not yet—But Kerry, little Kerry, beautiful Mother gave up all her chances in life for me. We must remember that. We must not mind when she feels the lack of things. She ought to have them. She was made for them. She is your beautiful little mother, Kerry, you will always remember that?”

  “Oh yes,” caroled Kerry for she could feel that a different tone was coming into her father’s voice, the tone he wore when he went out and bought Mother a rose, and made jokes and laughed and cheered Mother so that she smiled. Kerry was glad the cloud was passing, so she promised. But she always remembered that promise. And she never forgot the tone her father used, nor the look of his face, when he called Sam Morgan a louse! That was a word nice people didn’t say. It was a word that she had been taught not to use, except when it applied to rose insects. It showed that Father felt very deeply about it that he would use the word, and she could sense that there had been apology to her in his eyes when he used it. She would never forget the thought of that great big, thick-lipped Sam Morgan as a louse crawling around. Even as a rose louse he acquired the sense of destructiveness. Rose lice spoiled roses, and her beautiful little mother was like a rose.

  After that Kerry’s father worked harder than ever on his book. He used Kerry’s little bedroom for a study, and his papers would be littered over her bed and small bureau, and Kerry never went in there except when she had to, to get something, while Father was working; and then she went on tiptoe. He was always deep in
to one of the big, musty books he brought from the library, and he must not be disturbed. He told her one day that he was going to make Mother rich when his book was done, but there was still much work to be done on it, much, much work, for it was to be the very greatest book of its kind that had ever been written, and it would not do to hurry, because there must be no mistakes in the book.

  Kerry’s mother read a great many story books, and ate a great deal of chocolate candy. Sometimes she gave some to Kerry, but most of the time she said it wasn’t good for little girls.

  Kerry went to school whenever they stayed long enough in a place to make it worth while, for Father had to go to a great many different places to be near some of the big libraries so that he might finish his book sooner. And when they would think he was almost done with the book, he would find out there was some other book or books he must consult before he would be sure that his own was complete, and so they would journey on again to other cheap hotels.

  In this way they spent some years in Europe and Kerry had wide opportunities of seeing foreign lands, of visiting big art galleries, and wonderful cathedrals, and studying history right in the historic places. For often Kerry’s father would stop his work in the middle of a morning, or an afternoon, and take her out for a walk, and then he would tell her about the different places they were passing, and give her books out of the library to read about them. He taught her Latin also, and to speak French and German and Italian. As she grew older, she would go by herself to visit the galleries and buildings, and would study them and delight in them, and read about the pictures, and so she grew in her own soul. Sometimes, on rare occasions, her beautiful mother would go with her to a gallery, dressed in a new coat, or a pretty hat that her father had bought for her, and people would always turn to look at the beautiful mother. Once Mother told her that she had been called the most beautiful girl in her hometown when she married Father.

  And once, when Mother and she had gone to the Louvre together, Sam Morgan had suddenly turned up.

  Kerry had not seen him for several years, and he had grown puffier and redder than before. There were bags under his eyes, and he wore loud, sporty clothes. Kerry’s mother was rapturously glad to see him, but Kerry hated his being there. He tried to kiss her, though she was now sixteen, just back from school in Germany. Kerry shied away, but he did kiss her full on her shrinking mouth with his big, wet lips, and she hated it. She looked at him and remembered that her father had called him a louse. She took her handkerchief out and opening it wiped her lips, hard, and then she walked away and studied the pictures until her mother called her and said they must go home. Even then Sam Morgan had walked with her mother down the street until they reached their own hotel, but Kerry had walked far behind!

  Kerry had never mentioned this to her father, but somehow he always seemed to know when Sam Morgan had been around and Mother had seen him.

  For two long years Kerry had been put in a school in Germany, while her father and mother went to Russia and China and some other strange countries because it had been found necessary for the sake of the book. They had been long years to Kerry, and she had worked hard to make the time pass. Her only joy during those two years was her father’s letters. Her mother seldom wrote anything except a little chippering postscript or a picture postcard. Kerry sensed that her father had prompted even those. Yet Kerry loved her mother. She was so very beautiful. Sometimes Kerry took delight in just thinking how beautiful and fragile her mother was. It seemed somehow to make up for all the things she lacked, like not being well enough to keep house and make a home for them, and not being able to eat anything but the dainties, never any crusts. Kerry had been brought up to really like crusts.

  The money to pay for Kerry’s tuition ran out before the two years were over, but Kerry won a scholarship, which carried her through to the finish of her coursework; and she stuck to her study in spite of her loneliness and longing to be with her father and her beautiful mother.

  When she joined them again it was in London, and she was startled to find that her father had been growing old. There were silver edges to his hair, and lines in his face that had been there only occasionally before she went away. Now they were graven deep.

  The book, he told her, was almost done. It needed only copying. He must look up a typist. But first he must try to write something for the papers that would bring in a little extra money to pay the typist. They really had spent a great deal that season because the mother had not been feeling well, and had to have a better hotel, and luxuries now and then.

  Then Kerry surprised her father by telling him that she had learned typing at the school so that she might help him, and they only needed to find a cheap second-hand machine to rent and she would begin the work at once.

  It was a great joy, those days she spent working with her father. Neatly the pages mounted up, page after page, with all the little notes put in so carefully, just where her father had marked them on his diagram. She even managed to sketch a couple of diagrams for him, and her cheeks glowed at his praise.

  All the little scraps of paper on which he had written his notes, all the bits of yellow paper, white paper, blue paper, backs of business letters, even brown wrapping paper that had been scrupulously saved and used in the precious manuscript were marshaled, number by number, scrap by scrap, until they were all there in orderly array, the fruit of his labor and scholarship. Her father! How proud she was of him.

  She was almost seventeen when she began to help her father in the final stage of his book. It was about that time that Sam Morgan had appeared on the scene.

  But nothing could take away her joy in the life she was living with her father. Not even a louse! She brushed him off from her thoughts as she might have whisked away an insect.

  Her mind was opening up now. She saw, as she copied day after day her father’s great thoughts, how really wonderful he was. She began to comprehend what a stupendous work he had undertaken. She began to take a deep personal interest in it, and its success. She even ventured a suggestion one day about the arrangement of certain chapters, and her father gave her a quick proud look of admiration. Kerry had a mind. Kerry had judgment. He drew a sigh of quivering delight over the discovery.

  “Kerry,” he said to her one day, “if anything should ever happen to me, you would be able to finish my book!”

  “Oh, Father!” Kerry’s eyes filled with tears of terror at the thought.

  “No, but dear child, of course I hope nothing will happen. I expect fully to finish it myself. But in case the unlikely should happen, you could finish it. You have the mind. You have the judgment. You understand my plan, you can read my notes. You could even talk with the publishers, and if there were any changes to be made, you could make them. In a technical book like this there might be changes that would have to be made under certain circumstances, and it would be disastrous to the work if the writer were gone, if there were no one else by who could understandingly complete what had to be done. Listen, Kerry. There are some things I must yet tell you, and then I can go on with my work less burdened, knowing that if anything happened to me, you and little Mother would have plenty to keep you in comfort. Because, Kerry, I have assurance from other men in my line that such a book as this is going to make its mark, and to be profitable.”

  Then Kerry, with aching heart, listened to his careful directions, even took down notes and copied them for future reference, “If anything happened.”

  One day Kerry’s father looking up casually between dictation, said, “Kerry, I’m leaving the book to you. Understand? If anything happens to me, Mother will have our income of course. That is understood. But the book will be yours. I’ve filed a will with my lawyer to that effect. I think Mother will not feel hurt at that. She rather regards the book as a rival anyway, and she will understand my leaving you something on which you have worked. You see, Kerry, Mother would not understand what to do with the book. Her judgment is not—just—well—she is all right of course. Only I wo
uld prefer your judgment to be used in the matter of the book. And you will understand that whatever comes from the book in the way of remuneration is to be all in your hands. You are not to hand it over to Mother to handle. She is a beautiful little mother, and we love her, but she would not have the judgment to arrange about the book, nor handle any money.”

  Then Kerry put down her work and came over to her father’s side.

  “Father, are you feeling worse than you did last summer?” she said anxiously. “Did you go to the doctor the other day when you went out to walk alone? Tell me the truth please.”

  “Yes, I went to the doctor, Kerry, but only to ask him to give a thorough examination. I always feel that is a good thing once in a while. I wouldn’t like to get—high blood pressure or anything—at my age, you know.”

  “And did you have it?” Kerry asked anxiously. “Tell me what the doctor said. Father, please! I’ve got to know.”

  “Why, he assures me that I am doing very well,” evaded the father glibly. “Says I’m ninety percent better off physically than most men who come to him.”

  She was only half reassured, and went back to her work with a cloud of anxiety in her heart.

  Six months later her father lay dead after a sharp, brief heart attack, and the world went black around her.

  The world went black for Kerry’s mother, too, in a material sense. She insisted on swathing herself in it in spite of Kerry’s strongest protests.

  “Father didn’t like people to dress in mourning, Mother!” pleaded Kerry. “He said it was heathenish!”

  “Oh, but your father didn’t realize what it would be to us, Kerry, to be left alone in a world that was going cheerfully on, and not show by some outward sign how bereaved we were! Kerry, how can you begrudge me the proper clothes in which to mourn your father. That was one thing about him, he never begrudged me anything he had. He always spent his last cent on me! You must own that!” And the widow sobbed into a wide, black-bordered handkerchief for which she had that morning paid two dollars in an expensive mourning shop in London, while Kerry sat in the dreary hotel room mending her old glove to save a dollar.