A Promise to Believe In

by Tracie Peterson

  With Lacy and Beth hard at work and the men on their way to other projects, Gwen thought it the perfect time to see to the outhouse papering.

  “I’m going out back to see to the men’s outhouse,” she told her sisters. Gwen took the glue bottle down from the cupboard and headed out the back door. She picked up a stack of newspapers on the way and glanced to the north to see that Hank and Mr. Sherman were still hard at work staking out the dimensions of the store. Major followed Hank from one end of the property to the other. He certainly had taken to Hank.

  “Well, it’s only fitting, since I have, too,” Gwen said with a laugh.

  It would definitely be nice to have a mercantile next door. How handy to be able to just go a few feet, instead of having to drive all the way into Bozeman. She supposed that once she and Hank married, they would continue to live at Gallatin House, but she couldn’t be sure. After all, they hadn’t ever discussed their living arrangements.

  Gwen propped the outhouse door open with a rock to allow fresh air and sunshine into the stall. She quickly noted the large spot where the paper had been ripped away. She put the stack of newspapers down and opened the bottle of glue. It would be a quick and simple job, and then she could put that poor Mr. Barnaby’s mind at ease.

  Lifting the brush to apply the glue, Gwen stopped short. Beneath the torn edges of the newsprint was something white. Although dusty and not clearly visible, it looked to be paper of some sort. She put the brush back into the bottle and reached up to pull back more of the newsprint.

  “What in the world is this?”

  Part of the newspaper peeled away, while other parts stuck to the paper where it had been glued. Gwen carefully pulled at the edges of the white paper and found that only the corners had been glued to the wall of the outhouse. Her heartbeat quickened as she eased the paper loose and turned it over.

  It was a stock certificate bearing the name of Martin Bishop.

  She reached up and pulled away more of the newspaper and could clearly see that there were a number of the white pages beneath.

  “Oh, Harvey,” she whispered.

  It was clear to see that Harvey had hidden the certificates away from her, but for the life of her, Gwen couldn’t figure out why. Why all the deception? Why had he not felt he could trust her?

  Tears trickled down her face. It had all been a lie. The life he’d said he’d lived—the childhood dreams and friends—the parents he’d lost.

  “And probably our love,” Gwen said, shaking her head. “All lies.”

  She turned from the wall, stock certificate in hand. There was no sense in trying to repair the mess. No sense in trying to repair anything. She choked back a sob and raised her apron to her face. She couldn’t let anyone else see her crying. They wouldn’t understand. Her sisters would tell her to rejoice—the lost was found. Hank would be beside himself with joy, because now his mother would have the future she so desired.

  But seeing the stocks so carefully hidden away on the outhouse wall destroyed a part of Gwen’s heart. She couldn’t pretend that the stocks had merely been mislaid and forgotten. Harvey had intentionally kept them from her. He’d gone out of his way to lie to her.

  “And why should Hank be any different?” she muttered and sniffed back tears.

  Bitterness edged her emotions. All men were liars. Pa had lied about what a great future they were going to have. Harvey had lied. Hank was probably lying, as well. She couldn’t trust anyone.

  “I’m cursed, and this just proves it. Well, so be it,” she said angrily.

  Her anger stifled her tears and gave her a false sense of strength to face Hank. At least a false sense was better than nothing. She marched across the yard to the north, tightly gripping the stock with one hand and wiping away the last evidence of tears with the other.

  Hank was standing there talking to Mr. Sherman when she approached. He had rid himself of his coat, vest, and tie and had even rolled up his sleeves.

  “Come to inspect our work?”

  “Not exactly.” She held out the paper. “You need to see this. I think you’ll find it’s what you’ve been looking for.”

  Hank took the piece and inspected it. His eyes widened, and he looked up at her with such an expression of joy that Gwen nearly burst into tears anew.

  “Where did you find this?” He grabbed her and whirled her in a circle. “This is so wonderful. Truly answered prayer!” He put her down. “Show me where you found it.”

  “Apparently Harvey hid them in the outhouse.”

  Mr. Sherman looked at her oddly, as did Hank. Hank glanced at the stock once more, then shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Come with me, and I’ll show you.”

  She led the way, not even waiting for Hank to acknowledge her. I have to stay strong, she told herself over and over. I have to be brave. Opening the door to the outhouse, Gwen pointed and looked back at Hank and Mr. Sherman.

  “He papered the walls with them and then covered them over with newsprint.” She gritted her teeth. It shouldn’t matter that this is one more thing he omitted to tell me about.

  Hank entered the outhouse and studied the situation. He pulled at the strips of newspaper to reveal even more of the stocks than Gwen had exposed.

  “Well, I’ll be.” He turned to Gwen. “This is amazing. It’s the last place any of us would have thought to look.”

  It’s also the last straw. The last hope I had—that maybe, just maybe, Harvey had somehow forgotten who he was and who his family was.

  “I guess I have my work cut out for me. Leave it to Harvey to do something like this.”

  Yes, leave it to Harvey to betray us all.

  Hank pulled another certificate from the wall and marveled at the thing as if it were a treasure map. “This is so wonderful. Everything will be better now.”

  Everything but my life.

  Gwen’s anger continued to mount. She held her tongue and stared on with clenched fists as Hank worked loose one certificate after another. If she remained here much longer, she would surely explode.

  “I’m leaving now.” She turned to go, but Hank reached out to stop her.

  “Wait, is it just in here or does the ladies’ outhouse have the same thing?”

  Gwen shrugged. “I have no idea. I didn’t get any further than this. I came to repair the paper and saw that there was another layer of something underneath. I knew we hadn’t planned it that way, but Harvey was the one who built and papered the outhouses.” She looked past him as her eyes began to fill with tears. “It would seem his ability for hiding the truth knew no end.”

  She pushed back Mr. Sherman and stomped off toward the house. The last thing she wanted to do was get into a discussion about Harvey and his deception. Gwen stumbled up the back porch steps and made her way blindly into the kitchen.

  “Watch out!” Lacy said as Gwen flew through the back door. “I nearly got this bacon grease all over you.”

  “Sorry,” Gwen muttered, but she didn’t stop.

  “What’s wrong?” Beth asked. She stepped in front of Gwen to block her passage. “Something’s happened.”

  Gwen looked up at her sister. “Yes. I found the certificates.”

  “You did? But that’s wonderful.” Beth looked at Gwen for a moment as Lacy came up to join them. “It is wonderful, isn’t it?”

  Gwen began to cry in earnest. She had honestly thought she was all cried out years ago, but now the flow didn’t seem to want to stop. “I’m glad . . . we found them,” she said. “For Hank’s sake, and his mother’s.”

  “Then why are you crying?” Lacy asked. She seemed completely shocked to see Gwen fall apart, but Gwen couldn’t do anything about it. Let them be shocked, she thought. Let them see that I’m only human.

  “Because it only serves to prove Harvey’s deception. He intentionally kept their existence from me. All the time he was making up stories about his life—all the things he said to me—it was a wall between us. I loved him so much, bu
t everything he told me was a lie. It’s all been nothing more than lies.”

  She pushed past Beth and raced through the dining room and up the stairs.

  Beth thought to go after her sister, but when she looked up and saw Hank standing in the back doorway, she decided against it. She wasn’t sure how much he’d overheard, but apparently he’d been there for at least the last of it.

  “I should go talk to her,” he said, coming forward.

  Lacy and Beth turned to face him. Beth put out her hand. “No. Let her have some time alone. She’s really hurt over this.”

  “But she knew the past wasn’t what Harvey had told her,” Hank said, shaking his head. “I was proof of that.”

  “Maybe so, but the certificates left no doubt. Gwen could have pretended that Harvey spent the certificates before we met him or lost them on his journeys, but the fact that he purposefully hid the certificates . . . well, that pretty much says it was all intentional.”

  “It’s hard for her to face that someone she loved could lie to her so completely,” Lacy added.

  Hank drew a deep breath and nodded slowly. “I suppose I can understand that.”

  “Which brings us around to you,” Beth said, crossing her arms against her chest. “Exactly what are your intentions, now that you’ve found the stocks?”

  He looked at her oddly for a moment. “The same as they’ve always been. I’ll recover the stocks and take them back to my mother. I had planned to go at the end of the week, due to helping Bruce set the design of the store, but now I think I must go as soon as possible.”

  “And what of our sister?” Lacy questioned. “What are your intentions where she’s concerned?”

  Hank raised a brow and smiled. “They’re the same as they’ve been now for some time.”

  “Which are what?” Beth asked.

  He chuckled. “Well, to marry her. I’ve talked it over with Major Worthington and Calvin J. Whiskers, and I’ve even asked your sister for her hand.”

  Lacy looked very doubtful. “And she said yes?”

  Hank looked from Lacy to Beth and nodded. “She did.”

  Beth narrowed her eyes and squared her shoulders. She hoped she might look intimidating but doubted her ability to do so. “And does finding the stocks change things?”

  “Of course not,” Hank replied. “It makes things much better for me, in many ways. I can leave my mother to her adventures with a clear conscience and the knowledge that she has more than enough money to care for her needs. It also frees me, once I deliver the stocks to her, to return sooner. I was going to have to stick around Boston and see to the sale of my various businesses, but now that won’t be necessary. I can have my accountant handle it all for me.”

  Beth considered his comment for a moment, then asked, “Does Gwen know this?”

  “I didn’t tell her that in so many words,” Hank said. “I didn’t get much of a chance to say anything. She commented about Harvey being good at hiding the truth, then stormed off. I followed after her and heard what she said to you and Lacy. That’s why I want to talk to her.”

  Beth could see the sincerity in his eyes and hear the concern in his voice. She’d always found Hank Bishop a bit of a mystery, but one thing she could clearly recognize and understand was that this man loved her sister.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Gwen, we need to talk.” Hank stood facing the closed door and continued to call out. “Open the door, please.”

  “Go away, Hank. I’ve nothing to say.”

  “Well, I do. Now open the door.”

  “Just go.”

  “If you don’t open the door and let me in, I’ll kick it down,” Hank warned. He waited a moment, then heard her footsteps on the floor.

  Gwen opened the door only enough to reveal her tear-streaked face. “You can’t be here, it isn’t appropriate.”

  Hank pushed back the door as gently as he could without allowing her to oppose him. “There are a lot of inappropriate things in the world, but this isn’t one of them. I know you’re hurt by what Harvey did, but keeping me away isn’t going to help the matter at all.”

  Gwen shook her head and moved across the room to her rocking chair. She took a seat and pulled her shawl close. “I don’t want to hear any more lies.”

  Hank stood watching her for a moment. She looked as if she were trying to protect herself from the world—from whatever blow that might come. She looked helpless and terrified, and he hated that he had any part in the matter.

  “I’ve never lied to you, Gwen. That was Harvey.”

  “You’re brothers.”

  “Yes, and two entirely different men. How do you get off thinking it’s fair to blame me for the actions of someone else?”

  She barely raised her face. “I don’t want to talk about it. Say what you feel you must and then go.”

  Hank shook his head. How could he get through to her? What should he say to make her understand? “Look, I can’t say that I fully understand what you’re going through, because I don’t. The truth of the matter is, Harvey lied to me, too. He also betrayed me and our family by denying our existence. It hurts—no doubt about it. Still, I thought you’d accepted that Harvey lied and that, for whatever his reason, he thought it was the best thing to do. Maybe he thought he was protecting you.”

  “Ha! He was protecting himself, most likely. He didn’t care about me, or he never would have lied in the first place.”

  “I agree that he shouldn’t have lied, but I can’t imagine that he didn’t really care about you. He’d been through a lot and probably wasn’t thinking clearly.” Hank gritted his teeth. Making excuses for Harvey wasn’t the reason he’d come here. “No matter what he thought or felt, that’s no reason for you to go on so.”

  He bit his tongue on that one. He hadn’t meant to make it seem like it was her fault. Hank paced for a moment. “That didn’t come out right. I just meant to say that Harvey’s lies had nothing to do with you—with us.”

  “They have everything to do with us. You wouldn’t even be here if not for Harvey and his lies. You came here to find the hussy who’d married and killed your brother. Well, here I am. You came here to find the stock certificates that my esteemed husband stole. You’ve found them. Your mission is complete, so now you can go back to Boston and the life you knew there. Just don’t lie to me and tell me Harvey’s lies had nothing to do with you or us.”

  Her voice was raw with emotion, and Hank knew that while his first thought was to counter with denial, Gwen would never receive it. He stopped and stared at her until Gwen lifted her gaze once again.

  “All right. I won’t tell you that Harvey’s lies had nothing to do with us. Harvey obviously put them between you and him, and you’re putting them between you and me.”

  “That’s not true. I’m not responsible for what happened. I knew nothing about his past. I’m just as surprised as you to find my outhouse papered in hundreds of dollars of stock certificates.”

  “But don’t you see?” he said, coming closer. “We have both been duped by Harvey. We’ve both been hurt by the decisions and choices he made. Let us use it to unite our cause rather than destroy us.”

  “There is no us,” she countered. “Everything has been built on falsehoods. I can’t trust that this is the end of it just because the stocks were found. For all I know, Harvey may have married someone else and have a family elsewhere. He might have been running from them, as well.”

  “But that has nothing to do with you and me. I love you, Gwen.”

  She raised her head fully. “Don’t. I want to set you free from our engagement.” She sighed, and it was as if some of the life left her with that single breath. “I can’t explain why this hurts me so much. I know it seems silly to you, but I can’t help it. I have to sort through all of this and figure out what I need to do next. All I know for certain is that you shouldn’t feel obligated to me.”

  “I don’t feel obligated. I love you. I don’t want to be released from o
ur engagement.”

  “But you need to go to Boston. Once you’re there, you will probably find that your old lifestyle is more appealing than the idea of living in Montana.”

  “If you really think that of me, then you don’t know me at all.” He was getting frustrated. How dare she suggest he could so easily cast aside their love for the comfort of the familiar?

  “That’s my point. I don’t really know you. You don’t know me. If you did, you would know that I only cause pain and suffering to those I love. You would know that I’m destined to be alone.”

  “This is about that curse again, isn’t it?” He looked at her, and though she didn’t answer, he could see the affirmation in her eyes.

  “The real curse is that you’re blind to the truth,” he said, heading for the door. He knew if he didn’t leave he would say something in anger that he might regret. “You’d do well to read that Bible of yours—if you want to know what the answer is.”

  Gwen heard the survey team return for the evening and realized she’d wasted the entire day in her room. Beth had tried to talk to her about eating lunch, but Gwen had begged her to just go away for a few hours. She knew she’d hurt Beth’s feelings, but she couldn’t even begin to talk to her or anyone else.

  Now, given the shadows in her room, Gwen knew that it must be quite late. The summer sun in Montana was up sometimes until nine-thirty or ten. Seeing the fading light made her realize she’d lost all track of time, doing nothing but rocking and contemplating her life.

  Why did it have to be like this? Why was she so naïve about people and the things they said and promised?

  I am a poor judge of people, she told herself. I believe most anything, only to be disappointed when reality hits.

  Still, the things Hank had said made sense, she reasoned. But so had the things Harvey told her.

  She knew she had lost the ability to trust. There was no way she would set herself up for that kind of hurt again. Trusting in men had proven her downfall. Didn’t it make sense to protect herself from the possibility of it happening again?