The Sins of the Fathers

Chapter Twenty-Four

April 2064

Boston

Massachusetts

"Madness, isn't it?" Grace Palmer-Stoddart whispered as she caught up with Mena on the route march towards the arrival's hall. Mena did not agree. She found the sight of every single woman arriving in Boston wearing at least half-decent gowns, bonnets and gloves strangely comforting. She did admit that the plane was a bit of a squeeze, even in her narrow-skirted travelling gown, but everything looked more like home. "Conspicuous piety in the land of the free...grown women choosing to subjugate themselves...I will never ever really understand it, you know...even though I have to do it, just to fit in?"

"Do you really think that believing in God is any type of madness, Grace?" Mena grinned as she took her young friend's arm, feeling almost light-headed. The public announcement of her release from the Order and deportation was still on the front page of every newspaper in the world, but no one was ever going to recognise her in Boston. Not when she could hide behind a mantle in public, and beneath her new blonde wig in private, without arousing any suspicion. She was also travelling under an assumed name, with official documentation kindly provided by the Rosen Foundation telling the world that she was Olivia Stoddart, a cousin of her host in Boston, the Secretary of State himself. She felt free. "This is like old Meadvale was...before...a Christian city...where people choose to follow the doctrine?"

"Did you believe in God, before?" Grace asked as they stepped onto a travellator, and she stared at a woman who looked about her age, walking with an older keeper from the look of her grey uniform, on a leash. She had heard that some people in Boston had employed real keepers. Not necessarily British ones, although there were rumours that some were. Boston was a banking city, and it was not unusual for the upwardly mobile executives to spend a few years living and working in London, if their bank had a branch there. It was quite fashionable to bring a British keeper back when you returned home, according to Brett Stoddart, and that sort of commitment was often rewarded with rapid promotions and larger salaries. Grace had to ask herself if the poor women looked after by those imports were choosing to follow the doctrine. It did not seem likely to her. And the leash was just madness. It was apparently very fashionable in Britain, but not compulsory. She could not understand why any American would ever think that was a fashion they wanted to copy.

"I attended a Catholic boarding school from the age of eight, Grace? I swore I wanted to be a nun when I was twelve...which is rather ironic, I know...I wasn't so into it when Papa took me back to London...but yes...I believed?" Mena explained, although the switch from Catholicism to Christian Reformism was not exactly her choice. "And you believe too, don't you?"

"Not in this...and I am not sure how I feel about God, in general...my father is an atheist and Mom is...well, her weird relationship with whatever she believes is...unhealthy?" Grace sighed as she started looking for their driver. Her dear mother-in-law would not hear of them taking a taxi, and she had not been happy about them flying without an escort, either. Grace was quite sure that Mary Stoddart would employ a keeper given half a chance, but thankfully her father-in-law only indulged her preferences so far. Stuart employed maids and an ordinary housekeeper and told his beloved wife that she could obey them if she liked. "But I go along with it here to keep the peace...Brett works with these people and Stuart is working hard to stop any of the extremist nonsense getting a foothold in this country. He needs to have a foot in both camps...and now, so do I?"

"You do it because you love your husband...you are a good wife, Grace?" Mena insisted as she squeezed her arm, and Grace smiled and nodded, just as she spotted the driver. Grace did love Brett Stoddart, and Mena was right, she did want to be a good wife. She had known Brett her whole life, because Stuart Stoddart was a family friend and whenever she was in Washington, they all got together. Brett was five years older, but she had a gigantic crush on him from around the age of twelve, which she never got over. And when she graduated from Princeton, she spent a year in Washington, interning for her brother and living in the White House with her uncle. They started dating and the rest was history. But she did not like the Boston part of their lives. She understood it, and had agreed to suffer it, because Brett was working for a Boston firm and they expected him to have a wife who could fit in wherever she was, quite apart from all the pressure Mary Stoddart dumped on her at every available opportunity. But she did not like it.