Chapter Thirty
“Eroica, hello,” Sister Wallace smiled as she opened the door. “Mark said that you were taking a job at a music school in Germany. I thought he said that you were leaving this morning. I must have misunderstood. Please come in. Mark ought to be home soon, and I know that he will want to say goodbye to you.”
“Mom, Daphne got a whole bunch of egg shells in the cookie dough, and we can’t get them all out.”
“Excuse me, Eroica. The girls are making chocolate chip cookies, and it isn’t going very well. Have a seat. I’ll be right back.”
Sister Wallace had scrapbooks and photograph albums all over the table and couches. It looked as if she were trying to get ten years worth of memorabilia into everyone’s books. Eroica pushed a stack of pictures aside and sat down. She tried to formulate in her mind what she would say to Mark. She was so excited to see him, and yet so nervous.
“I’m sorry about all the clutter,” Sister Wallace said, coming back from the kitchen. “I try to get caught up on scrapbooks every year before school starts. And it’s not easy. Daphne and Blythe are really good about putting their books together. But I have always struggled with the boys. They just aren’t interested.”
“Do you mind if I look through some of these?”
“Oh, goodness no. Here is one of Mark’s photograph albums. I think it has his high school pictures in it.”
Eroica eagerly took it.
“Mom, Blythe just put in a whole cup of salt instead of just a teaspoon.”
“Ugh. I think we had better dump it out and start over. Mark should be home soon, Eroica, if you have time to wait,” she repeated.
Eroica opened Mark’s scrapbook to the first page. She stared unbelievingly at it. Here was a young man with wavy brown hair and thoughtful brown eyes. She turned several more pages, and the same person stared back at her. It was Mark in each picture. It was also the cellist that she had been looking for all these years.
Eroica’s mind piled thoughts one on top of another. Why hadn’t she recognized him? His hair was thinner now, and he wore glasses. But he didn’t look so very different. She was so certain that she would have recognized him when she saw him, but she hadn’t.
All of a sudden Eroica realized that Mark knew she had been looking for him. She had told him about her cellist. Plus, she had told him her name at the music camp. Eroica’s feelings turned from disbelief to dismay, and from dismay to sheer anger. He was going to let her go off to Germany, and he wasn’t going to tell her that he was who she had been looking for.
Eroica slammed the book shut and stood up. She had to get out of this house before Mark came back. She never wanted to see him again. She would go to Germany and stay there until this whole ugly nightmare of a dream was over. Eroica hurriedly threw the front door open and knocked right into Mark. He had to grab her by the shoulders to keep her from falling over.
“Eroica, you didn’t go?”
“No,” she glared at him, “But I’m going now.”
Mark could see the hurt and anger in her eyes. The photograph albums and scrapbooks all over the room quickly explained to him what had happened.
“Eroica, wait. Please. You have to let me explain.”
“You have nothing to say that I want to hear. You have known who I was since that first day of school, and you never said anything. You knew that you were the one I was looking for, and you never said anything. I was leaving the country, and still you didn’t say anything. Were you ever going to tell me? Ever?”
“I don’t know.”
Eroica was furious with this answer. She tried to get past him, but he wouldn’t let her.
“Eroica, I can’t let you go until you have heard what I have to say. Believe me, I have so wanted to tell you. I almost did the night of David and Allisun’s wedding. But I knew the time wasn’t right.”
“The time will never be right. We were supposed to be best friends. We were supposed to tell each other everything. I don’t know why you did this, but I don’t care anymore. All I want is to get on a plane and get as far away from you as I can.”
Mark took a deep breath, “I won’t stop you from doing that. Just hear me out and then you can go to Germany, and I’ll never bother you again.”
Eroica reluctantly let Mark take her into the shade of the backyard. She sat down while he paced back and forth.
“I guess in order for this to make sense, I need to go clear back to music camp. I didn’t know that anything was going to come from our meeting. I was going on a mission and was focusing on that. Not marriage. So when I went through the temple shortly before I went into the missionary training center, I was not prepared for what happened. Right there in the temple, I knew that I was supposed to marry you. There was no denying this feeling. And I knew that you were not a member of the Church, and there was nothing I could do about that for the next two years.
“So I left the whole situation in the Lord’s hands and spent two years teaching the gospel in the Andes Mountains. I was one of the few nonnative missionaries that could handle the high altitude, so I spent my whole mission above ten thousand feet. I knew that I wouldn’t be bumping into you there.
“When I came home, knowing that you were from Boston, I applied to the Boston Music College and was accepted. I looked for you everywhere. I went to recitals, I checked at other schools, I talked to countless piano majors. Unknown to me then, you weren’t even on the east coast. You were here at the Deseret College of Music.
“Still hopeful that I would find you, I went to the New York Conservatory of Music for my master’s degree. That was when you went to Germany. Now we weren’t even on the same continent. Not finding you, I decided to come back to Utah and get my doctorate here. I was hired to teach a few classes, and it felt like the right thing to do. I though that God wanted me to go on with my life and to stop looking for you.
“So, on that first day of school when you showed up in my theory class, with your flowing brown hair and your passionate eyes, I was more than surprised. I just stood there at the front of the class staring at you and repeating your name. I knew who you were, and I also knew that you didn’t remember me. Not at all. In fact, you thought I was making fun of your name.
“I was prepared to find you, teach you the gospel, baptize you, wait a year, and marry you in the temple. I thought that was why Heavenly Father let me know that I would marry you, so I would be ready to do all of that. But there you were, in a Mormon school, and already a member of the Church. And not only did you not recognize me, but I had offended you, and you didn’t even like me.
“I didn’t know what to do. I had been counting on the Holy Ghost converting you to our religion. It was going to be so easy. But now I had to get you to like me. I’d never had a problem with this before. People generally liked me. Until you.
“You didn’t know it, but you tortured me through the whole school year. I watched you date other people, knowing that I was your teacher and that the administration would come down on me if I asked you out. I knew that you were looking for someone, but you didn’t see him, even though he was there every day of your life. And I was so in love with you. I have been every since I met you when I was just eighteen years old.
“I wanted to tell you who I was, but what would that have done to our relationship? Would you marry me out of a sense of duty, of obligation to God? You probably would have, you are so good. But I wanted you to be in love with me. I wanted you to want to marry me.
“So I didn’t tell you. I prayed every day that we would become friends and that you would eventually fall in love with me. And the deeper our friendship grew, the more I felt that I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know if I ever would have told you. You didn’t love me enough to stay, so it didn’t seem necessary. And maybe you would have met someone that fit your remembrance, and you would have thought that he was the one for you, and you would
have lived a happy life with him. I didn’t want to ruin your dream.
“I don’t know why things became so complex. I wish that we could have just met, fallen in love, and married. Like everyone else does. I guess it wasn’t meant to be. There was one good thing that did come from all of this, though. You did join the Church. And regardless of what happened between us, Eroica, the Church is still true. Don’t ever forget that.”
Mark had said his peace so he quit pacing back and forth and sat down across from her.
“You were there for me all along,” Eroica said, more to herself than to Mark, “But I failed you. I talked about recognizing each other’s spirits, but all I did was destroy our friendship. I’m sorry.”
“No, Eroica,” he said kindly, “No more regrets. Remember?”
The two of them sat in the backyard, neither one sure what to do next.
“Eroica,” Mark finally broke the silence, “Why did you come back?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“It does to me.”
“I don’t know how to tell you anymore. Everything is so different now. How can I expect you to believe me after what you have said, and after what I have done to you?”
“Everything that you did just made me love you more. That was all that I meant.” He paused before asking again, “Why did you come back?”
“I will tell you, but then I must go. For your sake, Mark. I won’t stay here and continue to mess up your life. I found that I couldn’t get on the plane. I told God that I wanted to marry you and no one else, and all of a sudden I knew I could make the commitment that you wanted. And I knew that this was what God wanted for me all along, and no one else mattered. So I couldn’t get on the plane and leave you. I loved you enough to stay.”
Before Eroica could protest, Mark was next to her and his lips were on hers.
“I won’t let you go, Eroica. Not now. Not ever.”
“But Mark, we both know that we need to go on with our lives. And I don’t know that you can ever believe in me again.”
Mark looked seriously at her. “Nonsense, Eroica. Stop being so hard on yourself. You are who I’ve been hoping and praying for. And now that I know that you love me, I am not going to let you leave me. Do you still have the ring that I gave you?”
Eroica took it out of her skirt pocket, where she had slipped it just before entering Mark’s house, and gave it to him.
“Eroica Hamilton, will you marry me?”
“Yes.”
“Then let this ring be a symbol of our love and commitment.” He slipped the ring onto her finger. “And let’s have no more talk about misunderstandings and mistakes.”
Eroica had never felt so at peace before. She knew that this was right. She leaned against Mark’s shoulder and envisioned a future together with him.
“Eroica,” Mark asked as he stroked her hair, “Do you remember that wedding dress that you were wearing last fall when I stopped by with the Heinrich Schelling recording? The one that Tilly was pinning?”
“Yes, I remember it.”
“Do you think that Tilly could make a dress like that one for you? Every time I picture us getting married, I see you in that dress.”
Eroica smiled up at him. Her search was over. She had finally found who she had been looking for. And God had granted that it was the one man she knew she could love forever.
“I think that can be arranged. But,” she laughed, “I may have to marry you in my bare feet.”
The End
Heartstrings Page 30