The Telegraph Proposal

by Becca Whitham

  What a lie.

  He was filled with it, judging himself a better person than those who failed to live up to his standards. In his fierce need for loyalty, he had cut off anyone whose betrayal ran too deep. His father for having feet of clay, his mother for putting her needs ahead of his, his uncle for falling into the trap of pursuing power, and Mac for bringing Eli Alderson along for the arrest.

  Mac stood on the opposite side of the desk, waiting.

  Yancey once said that speaking the truth was a sign of friendship. She was right. So was Mac.

  Hale looked across his desk at his friend. “How did you do it? Reconcile with your mother?”

  Mac sat and dropped his hat into his lap. “We’re still working through that.”

  “How did you start?” Because Hale had no idea how to even begin. He’d not spoken with his mother in seven years.

  “I had to accept her for who she is rather than who I wanted her to be.” Mac rubbed the side of his neck. “Looking at it from her perspective, it makes sense. Who wants to be loved only if they live up to someone else’s standards?”

  “But shouldn’t we want to be our best selves out of love?”

  Mac chewed his bottom lip and stared absently out of the window for a long moment. “I think the difference”—he transferred his gaze to Hale—“is between wanting to be our best selves and being required to be. My mother wanted to be loved by a son. The way she’s taken to Nico proves it. That boy waltzed into her life thinking she was the finest example of motherhood he’d ever seen.”

  It was probably true for him.

  “Whereas I waltzed into her life intent on turning her into my ideal mother.” Mac shook his head. “My standard was impossible, so she scorned it. Same thing happened with you and Yancey.”

  Hale sucked in a breath, preparing his heart to hear her name again. “What about us?”

  “When Yancey first fell in love with you, it was the knight in shining armor you knew you weren’t, so you pushed her away.”

  True.

  Hale stared at his desk, the memory of Yancey’s face reflecting in the polished mahogany. Since issuing her condition that he learn to forgive, she’d not brought it up again. She wasn’t requiring him to change to earn her love—she’d proved that by staying behind to clean the bloodstain because she knew how hard it would be for him. By remaining faithful to her word to help with the campaign. By being his friend over the past two months, when he withdrew into himself to manage his hurt apart from her. But she wasn’t giving him her heart until he fulfilled one of the requirements listed on her application to the Archer Matrimonial Company.

  A Christian man.

  She didn’t want a knight in shining armor, she wanted a man who lived what he claimed to believe. Christ demanded forgiveness. Yancey was asking for no more—and no less.

  Hale looked across the desk at Mac. “How do I get her back?”

  “Yancey or your mother?”

  “Both.” And his father, too.

  Mac picked up his hat and stood. “You already know the answer to that. Now you just need to put it into practice.”

  After Mac left, Hale took several blank pieces of paper from his top drawer and laid them on his desk. He dragged the mug of sharpened pencils closer because—for this—he was going to need all of them.

  Eight pages later, he recopied his messy draft letter in ink onto six pages, sealed them in an envelope, and addressed it to his mother. He then withdrew several more sheets and started a second letter to his father. The final version was shorter—only two pages—and didn’t include any information about Portia York or Yancey Palmer.

  By the time he’d spilled his heart on the pages, he was exhausted and more lighthearted than he’d felt in years, just as his Aunt Lily had told him he would be ten years ago when he’d first met her.

  Oh, how it hurt to remember her as she was while the picture of her death was still fresh. Would he ever be able to rid it from his mind or recall her wisdom without feeling its loss in the future?

  We must take the good with the bad.

  Yancey had said that, a repetition of wisdom from Carline’s Uncle Eugene about the loss of her parents, but it applied to every situation.

  With people.

  With past, present, and future.

  With himself, for how could a man work for the good of his family or community unless he first recognized his capacity for evil?

  People were not perfect. They would make mistakes. They would make terrible choices, often knowing full well that their choices were wrong. Sometimes people would pay for their sins. Sometimes others would—as Aunt Lily had. God hadn’t created the world to work this way. He’d created it perfect. Sinless. And beautiful.

  But when Adam and Eve decided they could determine what was good vs. evil apart from God’s standard, it broke that perfection. Ever since then, mankind had been making their own standards, doing what was right in their own eyes, and the pattern would repeat until God put an end to it.

  Hale had grown up hearing the story of Creation, but until now, he’d never understood what was so wrong about humankind knowing the difference between good and evil. It wasn’t the knowing, it was making the determination of which was which apart from God.

  Including determining which people deserved forgiveness and which didn’t.

  What kind of husband and father would he truly be if either his wife or children could commit unpardonable sins, if he cut them out of his life because their betrayal ran too deep?

  A miserable one, and one Yancey Palmer didn’t deserve. Now he just needed to figure out how to convince her he’d changed, so he could start spending the rest of his life creating the happy home he’d always wanted. Not ideal. A happy one.

  With her.

  His first stop was to the post office, where he mailed his letters. He greeted people along the way, accepting their condolences on losing his aunt and their veiled questions to determine if he’d been aware of his uncle’s illegal activities, as Harold Kendrick was suggesting to anyone who would listen—including a reporter who was more interested in headlines than truth. Hale forced himself to express gratitude for the condolences and repeated his innocence, including that he had helped gather evidence against his own uncle.

  But as much as his blood pounded at their accusations, his next stop made sweat pool under his hat brim. He stepped into the downtown telegraph office. It was empty save for Yancey’s father and brother. “Mr. Palmer. Might I have a word with you?”

  Four weeks later

  Had every soul in town decided they needed telegraph messages sent from the train depot at this exact moment? The line was out the door and the next train wasn’t due for another half hour.

  Yancey took a message and money from a stranger, and after she tapped out a notice of departure from Helena and imminent arrival in Billings to his business associate in Missoula, she delayed waiting on the next customer until she sent a request for help to the downtown office.

  Less than a minute later, she was stunned when her father showed up. “How did you get here so quickly?”

  Papa cut through the line in order to get behind the counter. “Did you send a request for help? Sure looks like half the town is here.” There was a distinct twinkle in his eye. “Let me take over the machine while you wait on people.”

  Sure she was missing something but too busy to ask what, Yancey turned her attention to the next customer. “Mrs. Abbott, how can I help you today?”

  Rather than handing over a message, the older woman looked around the room as though searching for someone.

  “Mrs. Abbott?” When repeating her name didn’t have any effect, Yancey stood on her tiptoes to lean over the counter and touch the woman’s arm. “Mrs. Abbott? Did you have a message?”

  A commotion at the doors leading to the train depot drew Yancey’s attention. She could just see the top of a black hat—either Hale’s or one just like it—as it bobbed and weaved through the crowd parting
ahead of it, then reforming behind it. Yancey picked out specific people: Carline and Windsor, Isaak and Zoe, Mac and Emilia, Mrs. Hollenbeck, and strangely, Yancey’s mother and brother.

  What were they all doing here?

  Hale cleared the bulk of the crowd. He carried a large bouquet of red roses. Mrs. Abbott stepped away from the counter to give him her place. All conversations ceased, as though an invisible conductor cut them off with the wave of his baton.

  Yancey’s heart pounded, the beats filling her ears and rattling her vision. “What . . . what’s going on?” She twisted around to look at her father. “What’s happening?”

  Papa just smiled. Four weeks ago, he’d announced that Hale had asked for permission to show he was learning how to forgive. Since then, he’d made dozens of small steps toward that goal, including meeting with Eli Alderson and encouraging him to rejoin the county sheriff’s office.

  But nothing had proved it more dramatically than when he’d arranged for his uncle to live under house arrest. Jail was a death sentence, and an asylum for the criminally insane was an even worse fate. Between paid nurses, a bevy of volunteers, and a telephone installed inside the house allowing instant connection to the sheriff’s office if needed, the former judge would live out his days trapped between waiting for his beloved wife to come home from the market and the searing guilt of causing her death. Kendrick seized on Hale’s decision to work for a more lenient sentence as proof he’d been complicit in the judge’s crimes. Knowing it would cost him the election—which it had, as of a few nights ago—Hale stuck to the harder path.

  “I don’t care what anyone else thinks,” he’d told Yancey, “as long as you believe me.”

  The temptation to pull him into her arms and kiss him would have proved overpowering were they not standing at the front of a huge crowd gathered outside City Hall as the election results were read.

  Hale had also told her of the letters he’d mailed to both his parents in an effort to reconcile with them. There’d been no answer from his father, and it was too soon to expect one from his mother.

  And with each evidence of change, Yancey fell more in love with Hale Adams in all his wonderful, flawed, glorious Hale-ness.

  “Yancey Marilyn Palmer?” His voice sounded as wobbly as her legs felt.

  She swallowed hard and turned to face him. “Y-yes.”

  “Would you come around to this side of the counter, please?” He inhaled and exhaled in shaky spurts. “I have something I need to ask you.”

  Had the roses not announced his intention, the dramatic sighs and fluttering hankies of the women, along with the wide grins of the men, would have.

  Hale was going to propose.

  She looked to her father again.

  You have my blessing, he mouthed.

  She gripped the edge of the counter, the gate, and the counter again as she worked her way closer to Hale. Should she clear the room, ask for the privacy she knew he’d prefer, or let him declare himself in front of so many people? She was still figuring out the answer when he knelt in front of her. “Oh, Hale. You don’t need to do this.”

  His face fell.

  “No. I mean, do this”—she waved her hands around, trying to encompass his posture and what it meant—“but not like this.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Yancey sighed. Here she was, getting the proposal of her dreams, and she couldn’t enjoy it because she knew how much it was costing Hale. He hated crowds. Or at least he once had.

  From the opposite side of the counter, she heard her father whisper, “This was his idea, child. Let him carry it out.”

  This was Hale’s idea? To propose in front of a hundred people? Which it wasn’t, because only fifteen or twenty could cram into the space, but it sure felt like that many. Tears of gratitude, joy, unworthiness, and a whole host of other emotions Yancey couldn’t identify at present stung her eyes. “I’m sorry, Hale. You were saying ... ?”

  He licked his lips and tried to open a folded piece of paper with only his left hand. He lifted the flowers. “Could you take these?” he whispered, a blush creeping into his cheeks.

  The dear man. He’d planned out his speech but forgot to take into account his props.

  Yancey took the flowers, raising them to her nose to inhale the sweet fragrance. While Hale fiddled with opening his speech, Yancey glanced over her shoulder at Carline, who nodded her understanding. A few months ago, the two of them had crushed the dry, brittle petals of the bouquet Yancey had saved because Hale had brought it as a hostess gift for her mother. This bouquet would be saved for as long as Yancey lived. She smiled at her friend, then returned her attention to the man kneeling before her.

  He pushed his glasses into place with a finger. “Ten years ago, you knew we belonged together. I’m sorry it took so long for me to catch up. I’m also sorry for how I’ve ignored you and worse in the intervening years. I set myself up as judge and jury, interpreting your actions in light of how they affected me. I was wrong.”

  The tears spilled onto her cheeks. Yancey let them fall, afraid any movement on her part would wake her from what was beginning to feel like a dream.

  “As my dismissal of you played out in front of the town, I thought it only right that I beg your forgiveness and ask you to allow me to make it up to you for the rest of our lives in front of them, too.”

  A sob broke from Yancey’s throat. Was she supposed to say yes now? Or was there more?

  When he reached into his pocket and withdrew a glittering ring, she sucked in a breath and held it. Hale stared up at her with humility and adoration pouring from his brown eyes. “Yancey Marilyn Palmer, would you do me the very great honor of consenting to be my wife?”

  Epilogue

  Four months later

  Yancey smoothed the white satin skirt of her dress. Designed by Charles Frederick Worth, it featured a deep ruffle along the hem, a modest bustle trailing into a three-foot train, and a fitted bodice decorated with seed pearls, lace, and fabric roses in pinks, reds, and purples with green leaves. When they were younger, Yancey and Carline had sat on the floor, magazines laid on the floor between them, and dog-eared the pages of elegant dresses never once thinking they would actually get to wear one of them.

  Mama had conspired with Hale’s mother—a bona fide countess from England—to surprise Yancey with the custom-made dress two weeks ago when the Countess of Devon, her husband, and their six-year-old son arrived in Montana for the wedding. Mama had sent the countess lace taken from the dress she’d worn when she married Papa to be worked into the design.

  Something old and something new.

  Mama lifted the veil trimmed with seed pearls—the same one her sister, Luanne, had worn—from the trunk. “Are you ready, my dear?”

  Yancey smiled. “I’ve been ready for years.”

  As her mother pinned the veil over her hair, Luanne and Carline reentered the bridal room—a converted Sunday school room in the basement of the church. Wearing a dark pink dress and a smile that hadn’t left her face since Windsor had declared his love for her, Carline pressed both hands against her cheeks. “Oh, Yancey. You look like a fairy princess.”

  “I feel a bit like one, if you want to know the truth. I’ve pinched my wrist so many times today, I think I’m going to have a permanent bruise.”

  Luanne, wearing a deep purple dress, came close and touched the veil, a nostalgic smile on her face. The veil was the same one she’d worn when she wed Roy.

  Something borrowed.

  Luanne sighed. “Pastor Neven has given the signal to begin.”

  Mama stepped aside. “Turn around now, dear, and take a look at yourself.”

  Yancey obeyed, inhaling sharply when she caught her reflection in the full-length mirror her brother had hauled down the stairs with much grumbling. “I doubt Hale will recognize me.”

  Mama appeared in the background. “He will think you’re beautiful.”

  Luanne appeared on the other side. “Even if you were wea
ring a burlap bag.”

  Carline poked her head in the space between Luanne and Yancey’s shoulders. “But he won’t be happy if you’re late.”

  Yancey laughed, the nervous fluttering in her stomach easing. She turned around, careful of the dress’s ruffled train. “Thank you—all of you—for everything you’ve done to prepare me for this day.”

  Mama shook a finger under Yancey’s nose. “Don’t you dare make me weep. I’m holding on by a thread as it is.”

  “Weep all you want.” Yancey pulled her mother into a light hug.

  Knock, knock, knock. “You about ready in there?” Papa’s voice came from the hallway outside the room.

  Luanne and Carline headed for the door. Luanne reached it first, opening it to allow Papa entrance.

  Mama took a step back. She tugged the veil back in place. “There. You look perfect.” It was time for her to join the processional party, but she remained.

  “Was there something else?” Yancey prompted.

  Mama took Yancey’s hands. “We know Hale as well as any parent could hope upon the marriage of their daughter, but I’m going to ask once more on principle. Are you sure you want to marry him?”

  The first time the question was asked, Yancey had answered flippantly. This time she answered from the deepest place of her heart. “I have never been surer of any decision I’ve ever made.”

  Papa stepped beside Mama and put his hand around her waist. “There, my dear. Are you satisfied?”

  “I am.” Mama turned and patted her husband’s cheek. “I felt the same way when I married you.”

  Yancey blinked to keep the tears at bay.

  Carline pushed between them. “You will not make the bride cry.”

  Mama waved her hands at her face like she was trying to dry her cheeks. “I’m going.” She hurried out of the room, leaving the door ajar.

  Papa turned so he stood at Yancey’s side and pushed out his elbow. “Shall we?”