The Invitation

by Jude Deveraux

  There was instant silence in the room. Only William seemed to be at ease as he took Arnold’s hand and shook it. “I am hoping to persuade Jackie to marry me,” he said smoothly, seemingly unperturbed by what had just been said.

  As for Jackie, she wished the floor would open so she could sink down inside the earth and never be seen again. Turning on her heel, she walked out of the room, ignoring Arnold’s apologies ringing out behind her and the group’s pleas for her to return.

  When she got outside, she wasn’t surprised to feel William’s hand on her arm. He was trying to make her stop walking, but she meant to get into a plane, as that was the only place where she felt really safe.

  “Jackie,” William was saying, “the man is half drunk, and even sober I doubt if he can see past the end of his nose.”

  “He could see what everyone else can see.”

  William grabbed her shoulders. “Jackie, I’ve had about all of this I can take. I love you. I love you. I don’t care how old you are, what race you are, whether you’re fat or skinny. I love what’s inside you.” When she didn’t respond, he dropped his hands from her shoulders. “But it’s your decision,” he said, and his voice was cold. “You have to decide.”

  She moved away from him and kept walking toward the plane, and within minutes she was airborne.

  If William thought she had flown recklessly the day she took him out, he would have been horrified to see her now. She buzzed trees, flying so low that the top branches scraped the plane. She flew straight toward a mountain, not knowing until the moment she pulled up whether she was going to miss it or not. When the plane, its engine straining, almost didn’t make it, part of her didn’t care.

  She flew for hours, right side up, upside down, sideways, every which way the plane would turn.

  When she ran out of gas she was at ten thousand feet and hovering over a mountaintop. Below her was a flat, treeless meadow, and she dropped the plane onto it, neither knowing nor caring whether she would overshoot it and plunge over the side of the mountain into oblivion.

  She made the landing, the nose hanging over the mountain, the wheels at the very edge of the precipice.

  For a moment after the engine sputtered to death, she sat where she was, leaning her head back, her eyes closed beneath her goggles. She was on top of a mountain with an empty fuel tank, and the only way out was to walk down and climb back up with a can of gas.

  She got out of the plane, but she didn’t start down the mountain. Instead, she sat down on the edge of the cliff, looking out over the long, magnificent view and waited for some wisdom to come to her.

  No wisdom struck her, but hail did. In the late afternoon the skies opened up and hailstones came down on her head. Jackie moved under the wing of the plane.

  When night fell, she curled up in a ball, pulled about her the leather clothes she’d quickly donned before going up and dozed some. She still couldn’t think. In fact, she hoped she’d never think again. She wished she could go back to the time when life was easy, when she was younger and knew all the answers.

  Early the next morning she wasn’t surprised to hear a plane approaching. Of course William would look for her. Didn’t he always rescue her? He was always there to save her, whether she needed money or stitches or help in dealing with intrusive people. When the plane was directly overhead, she stepped out from under her own aircraft and waved to the pilot, letting him know that she was unharmed. In reply, he waggled his wings, so she knew she’d been seen. From this distance the pilot looked to be one of Charley’s friends. Feeling guilty for having caused so much trouble, she realized that William would have put all of them to work in the search for her.

  She was hungry and tired and knew she was being a great bother to a lot of people who were worried about her, but she still didn’t start down the mountain. And she hoped that no one would come after her. Especially not William. Right now she needed to think.

  Only she couldn’t seem to think. There were too many voices inside her head. There was William’s voice, urgent and imploring. There was Charley’s voice saying, “What will it matter a hundred years from now?” There was Arnold’s voice and Terri’s voice. How Terri’s voice echoed in her head!

  But most of all there was Jackie’s own voice. He will want a younger woman. He deserves better. He deserves a woman who can give him a houseful of children.

  “Stop it!” she said, putting her hands to her ears. Why couldn’t she hear what she’d told Terri? How wise she had been then, so very wise. She’d said all the right things. So why didn’t she believe them?

  It was late afternoon, and she was light-headed with hunger. She knew she should head down the mountain, but still she didn’t go. Still she hadn’t made a decision.

  When she heard the unmistakable sound of someone coming up an old elk trail to the top of the mountain, she knew without a doubt it was William. With her jaw set, her arms folded across her chest, she braced herself to wait for him. What was she going to say to him?

  To her utter disbelief, she saw, not William, but his soft, plump mother, Nellie, struggling up the mountain, a huge, heavy picnic basket under her arm.

  It took Jackie a few moments to recover herself, and for a moment she thought she was having hallucinations.

  But Nellie’s words made her react. “I do believe I’m having a heart attack,” she said, a smile on her lips. Then she slowly sank to the ground.

  Chapter Twelve

  Nellie was not having a heart attack. She was just not used to climbing, and the exertion combined with the altitude was making her feel that she was dying. For several busy moments Jackie’s attention was off herself and on Nellie, but within minutes they were sitting in the shade of the wing of the plane and eating from the prodigious amount of food Nellie had hauled up the mountain.

  Patiently, Jackie waited for the lecture to begin. But Nellie said nothing about William or about the two of them together. She commented on the weather and the fact that Jackie’s plane was nearly over the edge of the mountain, but didn’t mention anything important.

  Finally, Jackie could no longer wait for the lecture to begin. “You think I’m stupid, don’t you?”

  Nellie didn’t seem fazed by Jackie’s abruptness. “No, dear, I think you are one of the finest young women I have ever met.”

  Jackie snorted in reply.

  Nellie didn’t seem to notice her sarcasm. Instead, she changed the subject. “Why won’t you enter the Taggie?”

  Jackie smiled. She could refuse to tell William, but not his mother. “I don’t like being a celebrity, and I hate instrument flying, which is what flying has become today. You don’t need talent, you need a degree in mathematics. In a few more years people like William are going to be better fliers than I am.”

  Nellie smiled at the innocent conceit in Jackie’s words.

  “Why don’t you want to marry my son?”

  So, Jackie thought, here it was. “A lot of reasons. For one thing, he deserves better. And then there’s my vanity. I don’t like all the gossip and the talk.”

  Nellie laughed. “You have indeed stirred up a lot of talk. My poor husband can’t walk down the street without someone telling him the latest bit of gossip about two unmarried people being in bed together. You have scandalized all of Chandler. I’m sure you must be the first couple in this town to jump the gun.”

  Jackie turned red with embarrassment and looked down at the ground.

  “You know what they’re saying now? That maybe something was going on between the two of you when you were children.”

  Jackie blinked a couple of times at that. “What?”

  “Yes. Mrs. Beasley says that the bond between you and my son all those years ago was not natural.”

  Jackie opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it. Then she began to laugh. “But William was a child! And a pest. An absolute pest. I did everything to get rid of him. If that isn’t natural, I don’t know what is.”

  “Did you try to get a
way from him? I seem to remember the two of you being inseparable. I remember that you always told William to leave you alone, but when he did stay home you always came to get him.”

  “I did no such thing,” Jackie said indignantly.

  “What about the time he had the flu? You stopped by every day.”

  “I was worried about your whole family.”

  “William was the only one who was ill.”

  Jackie picked up a stick and started to draw circles in the dirt. “He was just a kid. Still is. Always has been.”

  “You never thought so. You used to ask his advice about any number of things. You always loved adventure, but before you did anything, you asked William if he thought it would be all right.”

  “I didn’t,” Jackie said, sounding like a schoolgirl.

  Nellie didn’t answer for a moment. “Did you know that William didn’t speak for a whole month after you left Chandler? He wouldn’t talk, would hardly eat. The only way he would go to sleep at night was if I’d hold him and rock him. I was afraid he might lose the will to live.”

  “And I never thought of him.” Jackie ran her hand over her eyes. “And now he’s all I do think of. I don’t know what to do. William wants to marry me. But there are…differences between us. People—”

  “Damn people!” Nellie said.

  Jackie had never been more startled by any statement she’d ever heard. Nellie Montgomery was the calmest, gentlest, most easygoing person in the world. Nothing ever made her lose her temper, not twelve children climbing all over her, not even three of them dripping blood at the same time. Nellie was the person you wanted to be near during a calamity; she’d have remained calm in the face of a barrage of bullets.

  But now she was cursing.

  When Jackie looked at her, Nellie’s face was not the soft, sweet one she’d always seen. This was the face of anger.

  “Jackie, grow up!”

  That made Jackie sit up straight, her eyes widening.

  “Do you think other people have easy lives and you’re the only one with problems? You’ve been lucky so far.”

  “Lucky?” Jackie whispered. How had her life of poverty and struggle been lucky?

  “Oh, I know what you’re thinking, that I’m one of the Montgomerys and therefore I know nothing but luxury and ease. But you’re wrong. All your life you’ve been able to do what you wanted, when you wanted to do it. And you’ve had people who loved you along the way. Now that you have one little obstacle, you turn tail and run. Why don’t you stop being so selfish and think of someone besides yourself?”

  Jackie, still in awed silence at this woman’s unusual outburst, was shocked further when Nellie began to clean up the picnic food in preparation to leave.

  Jackie wanted to defend herself. “I don’t understand. I’m not being selfish; I’m thinking of William. This is as much for him as it is for me.”

  “No, it’s not!” Nellie said fiercely. Then suddenly she put her hands over her face and began to cry.

  Jackie did the only thing she knew to do: she put her arms around Nellie and pulled her to her.

  “I’m sorry,” Nellie said, sniffing and moving away. “It’s just that I can see things more clearly than you can because I’ve lived through the same problems. Years ago I was in the same situation with my husband.”

  “I don’t understand. Your husband isn’t younger than you are.”

  At that Nellie laughed. “No, dear, Jace isn’t younger than I am. But age, in my case and in yours, means nothing, absolutely nothing. You see, you’re afraid of what other people will think. I’ve learned in life that if you give people power over you, they will misuse it.”

  She put her hand on Jackie’s. “A true friend is one who wants what is best for you, not for him or for her.”

  Nellie took both of Jackie’s hands in her own. “Years ago Jace wanted to marry me, but I said I couldn’t because other people—people I thought loved me—said I shouldn’t marry him. They said their only concern was for me. It took me a long time—almost too long—to realize that they were thinking only of themselves and not of Jace or me. People can be very selfish creatures.”

  “I…I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “No, you’ve thought only of doing what everyone else does. Most women marry a man about five years older than they are, then live their lives exactly as they’ve been told to. Tell me one thing, Jackie. Do you love William?”

  “Yes.” Her heart could be heard in that one word.

  “Then what else is there?”

  Jackie just looked at her, not having an answer.

  “My dear, you don’t seem to realize that all there is in life is love. That’s all there is. Money doesn’t matter, what you own doesn’t matter, how old you are, who your friends are, what you accomplish in life, means nothing. The only thing worth anything is love. Love is what makes our time on earth worth something. And you know something else? Love, true love, is rare. It doesn’t happen very often. Most people spend their lives searching for it and never find it.”

  She paused, but her eyes were intense. “Tell me, Jackie, if you looked at the ground here and saw a big diamond sticking out, what would you do?”

  “I would pick it up,” Jackie said softly.

  “What if the diamond were perfect except that it had a tiny flaw, a crack say, along one edge, would you throw the whole diamond away because of this one flaw?”

  There were tears coming to Jackie’s eyes. “No, I’d keep it, flaws and all.”

  “My son is perfect, but to your eyes he has a flaw: I gave birth to him ten years after your mother gave birth to you. Are you going to throw away my son because of my error?”

  Jackie was crying harder now. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I don’t know what to do.”

  After a moment, Nellie stood up and started to walk away, meaning to leave Jackie with her head on her upraised knees, but Nellie turned back. “Are you coming down with me?”

  Jackie gave Nellie a crooked smile. “How many of the people of Chandler are down there waiting for me?”

  “A few,” Nellie said, smiling.

  Which, of course, meant half of Chandler. “Is William there?”

  Nellie’s face was serious. “No, he’s not. He said you’d know where he was.”

  That statement made Jackie’s heart sink. No doubt William was waiting for her in some place she was supposed to remember. She hadn’t seen it in twenty years, but she was supposed to remember it. “I’ll be down in a moment,” she said. “I want to do something with my face.” And give myself more time to think, she thought.

  “Ten minutes,” Nellie said. “But no more. People are worried about you.”

  “Yes, of course,” Jackie answered, both of them knowing that she still hadn’t made a decision.

  The moment Nellie was out of sight, Jackie went to the plane, climbed onto the wing and looked inside the cockpit for the little metal box she carried inside. She almost always had cosmetics with her in case she unexpectedly flew into the press. And now, if she was going to have to face the citizenry of Chandler, it would be better if her face wasn’t marked with tears.

  She found the box and as she was rummaging inside looking for a lipstick buried under three maps and a compass, she saw a large white envelope on the bottom. For a moment her hands as well as her heart seemed to stop beating, for she knew very well what she was seeing.

  Slowly she pulled the envelope out and opened it. Inside was the invitation to participate in the Taggie. She had received it the day of Charley’s funeral, and it had changed her life. Three days before, she had awakened not to Charley’s horrendous snores but to an unnatural silence. Charley was not asleep beside her; he was dead. He had died of a massive heart attack quietly and peacefully in his sleep, with what looked to be a half smile on his lips.

  For days after his death Jackie hadn’t been able to think, but as people Charley had known, people who had loved him, gathered to say good-bye, everyone
seemed to assume Jackie would continue doing what she had always done. They assumed she’d keep flying higher and longer and faster.

  It wasn’t until the day of the funeral that she had absently opened the mail and seen the invitation to the Taggie in her hometown, and with it was a letter from Jace Montgomery. It was at that moment that she realized she was sick of it all. She was sick of constantly moving, of having no roots. She was sick of seeing her name in the newspaper, of having people take photos of her, of being asked the same stupid questions over and over. She wanted a home. She wanted what other people had.

  Without another thought, she wrote Mr. Montgomery that she would accept his offer to return to Chandler and start a freight business, but she would not enter the race. She didn’t tell him or anyone else that she was afraid not of losing the race but of winning it.

  Now, holding the torn and dirty invitation, she walked to the edge of the cliff and stood there looking out over the deep ravine. Wasn’t all of life invitations, she thought. Didn’t every person in the world constantly receive invitations? Some were golden, some made of lead; some were big and some little. Some were blatant and some subtle. But what made life interesting was which invitations a person chose to accept. Most people accepted only the safe invitations, ignoring the unusual or the ones that involved risk.

  But Jackie had never been afraid of risk. Jackie had, as William had said, always done exactly what she wanted to do. She had accepted the invitation her mother had offered that said she could be different from the other children, that she could stay away from the other children who seemed to be stamped out of the same mold. She had accepted Charley’s invitation to live a life of adventure and excitement. And along the way she had accepted and refused invitations however she wanted to. All of it done without hesitancy, just doing what she instinctively knew was right for her and no one else.

  But now William was offering her another invitation, probably the greatest invitation of her life, yet she was hesitating. Why was she hesitating? Because William was younger than she was? Or was there another reason?