by Grace Walton
The older woman laughed at the girl’s obvious rueful joke. “Yeah, that surrendering thing. It never seems to stop, huh?” she agreed.
“No, and I guess, this side of Heaven, it never will, at least not for me. Every single day, sometimes several times, I need to surrender my will again and again.”
“Me too, Mags, me too.” Carrie’s lips turned up in the sweet smile that had earned her millions, once upon a time.
“I just want, no I need, a new start, Carrie. I need to be somewhere I can be anonymous. I want to be just a girl who doesn’t have a family fortune or a dreadful past.”
“I get that, I do. When I was in Witness Protection there was a kind of freedom to being no one in particular.”
“And look how well that ended for you,” Maggie teased. “You ended up married to the love of your life.”
“Yeah, I did.” Carrie grinned. “Even if getting there almost killed both me and Gage. Maybe you’ll find someone special in England. Maybe you’ll get your happily ever after too.”
Maggie’s hands stilled. It took all her strength of will not to crush the garment in her fingers.
“I don’t think so,” she said after a few awkward fraught seconds. “I’m not looking for love in London. I just want to find myself, if you want to know the truth. I want to find out who I am when I’m not classified as Gage’s tagalong little sister, or Cerise’s obedient daughter, or that fiendish Ferguson girl who messed up Chase Brown’s life. I want to start over.”
Carrie frowned. It hurt her heart to think of this kind and loving young woman alone her whole life. Magnolia Ferguson was made for marriage and motherhood. She loved children. And she loved one man with her whole heart. Too bad he was the wrong man for her.
“So you’re going to London to work in the church’s slums mission?” she said by way of changing the subject and easing the strain between them.
“I am.” Maggie’s face brightened. “I’m the new supervisor of the mission’s daycare and after school program.”
“Do you have a place to live?”
“Yes, Pastor Gentry arranged for me to rent a small flat near the Mission Center. I’ll be able to walk to work each morning and make my way home each evening.”
Carrie frowned again. She knew that part of London. It was not a particularly safe place for single young women. There were rampant street gangs and even some budding terrorist factions working there amongst the poor and illiterate immigrants flooding into Europe. It was a breeding ground for violence and bloodshed.
She knew, without hesitation, her husband would do anything within his power to stop his young sister from entering into that kind of world, if he knew of her plans. Carrie wondered if Pastor Gentry had spoken to Gage. She quickly dismissed that idea. She was sure her husband knew nothing of Maggie’s hair-brained scheme.
Pastor Gentry should have known to speak to Gage about anything concerning the Ferguson family. But the young man was straight out of seminary. Theirs was his first church. He’d shown neither wisdom nor restraint during his short tenure. Carrie hadn’t been impressed with him, thus far.
“Mags, maybe you should run all this by Gage. He could make sure your London apartment is safe.”
“I’ve seen pictures of the area, Carrie,” the girl argued. “Pastor Gentry made sure I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. It’s a poor rundown neighborhood. But there are local shops and even a pub so I won’t need a car to get around. And there’s so much of a need for what I’ll be doing. You can’t imagine how hard-pressed the people are who live there. I know I’m supposed to go there and help. Carrie, I know I am.”
“I can see how passionate you are about this, Mags. I really do. It’s just that… well… it’s a long way away. And you’ve never really been on your own.” Even to her own ears the words seemed slightly condescending.
Maggie straightened to her full height. She looked the other woman straight in the eye. “I’m going, Carrie. Nothing will stop me. This is my life and my choice. And I truly hope and pray you can support me. I’ve written letters to Mama and Gage.” She fished two envelopes out of a drawer in her vanity table. “They explain everything I’ve planned to do and how to reach me if the need arises. I hope you’ll give them to the family, once I’ve left. If you could wait until tonight, I’d appreciate it. I’d like to avoid any more drama. I’ve had enough of that in the last few years to last me a lifetime. Just wait until this evening to deliver the letters, please. I’ll be in the air by then.”
“I don’t know if I can do that, Mags,” the redhead sputtered.
“Do you remember how it felt when you knew you had to hide and stay alive long enough to testify against the drug lord who killed your father?”
Carrie nodded. Pain flashed through her lovely eyes. She remembered the Hell of that pain very well. Dealing with it was part of the reason she’d come to the Lord. And for that, she’d forever be grateful. But the process had been excruciating.
“That’s how I feel now, Carrie. I feel like if I don’t do something to change my life, I’ll die. I’ll slowly wither away in a morass of regrets and gossip and mean-spirited retribution from people who’ve made a lot of assumptions about me and who I am.”
“Then tell them who you are,” the woman pleaded. “Tell everyone what happened to you in that car with Chase Brown. Be honest, not only with the folks who care about you, but with yourself and the community. The Bible is very clear about all things being revealed. Who are you protecting by refusing to be transparent?”
Maggie’s eyes began to fill with unshed tears. She dashed at them with one hand. She wasn’t ready to face this. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“I’m not protecting anyone. I just want a new start.”
“I don’t believe you, sweetie,” Carrie said with a great deal of sadness. “I want to believe you. But I just can’t. You’re in too much pain for that to be all this is about.”
“Some things are private.”
“Yes, some things are. But other things heal when folks are willing to talk about them with someone they trust. You can trust me. You know that.”
“Can you honestly say, if I told you something bad, something really bad, you’d be able to keep it from Gage?” asked Maggie.
Carrie blushed. It was a fact that she and her husband kept no secrets between them. It was part and parcel of their relationship, that complete transparency. And even though she loved the girl standing before her like a little sister. There was no way she’d ever compromise the foundation of her marriage.
So, with a very heavy heart, she shook her head. “No, I couldn’t. Especially if the thing you told me had a solution he and I could help you with. We just want the old you back. We want the girl who laughed and teased and was almost invincible. We want you to be that girl again, not for us so much, but for yourself, Mags.”
Maggie shoved the last of her clothing into a travel bag. She hoisted the suitcase off the bed. She sat it with a heavy thump onto the deep-piled carpet of her bedroom. She rubbed her palms down the length of the awful skirt of her equally awful jumper. She folded her shaking hands at her waist. She took a deep shuddering breath.
“That reckless girl is gone forever, Carrie. She took one risk too many and that was the end of her.”
“You were not reckless,” argued the other woman. “You were never reckless. You were just young and spreading your wings. There was nothing wrong with letting a boy take you out on an innocent date.”
“But it wasn’t innocent,” Maggie cried. “Don’t you see? Don’t any of you see? It was not just an innocent date.”
“What about it wasn’t innocent?” Carrie riposted as calmly as she could. “You even brought him by to meet us before you went out. We all thought he was a great kid. He was polite and clean cut. His parents are pillars of the community. Nobody knew what he’d be like once he started drinking. Nobody.”
“I did.” And there it was. The confession, or at least part of it.
“I knew he was kind of wild. All the jocks are, especially the ones on the rodeo team. They’ve got a reputation at school for partying.”
“But…but…” all Carrie could do was sputter in disbelief.
“He was hitting on me pretty hard at dinner that night. That’s why I asked him to take me home early. I should have called Gage. When I saw that Chase wasn’t headed in the direction of the ranch, I should have called home. But I didn’t. By that point, I was too ashamed. I should have refused to get in the truck with Chase, in the beginning. But I wanted to fit in with the others. I was so tired of being thought of as some kind of untouchable good girl.” She laughed but it was a hard, cutting kind of laughter. It showed exactly how disgusted she was with herself for her poor judgement. “Guess nobody will ever call me a good girl again, huh?”
She picked up the suit case and started towards the door. “So now you know why I want to travel. I just need to get away. Even if I can never fix what happened that night, I can at least go someplace where everything doesn’t remind me of how I ruined two lives by being too stupid to do what I knew was right.
Maggie was out the door, down the massive curving staircase and out the double front doors before Carrie could collect her thoughts and dash after her.
Poor Mags, the woman thought, poor, poor Mags. She was determined to find herself guilty. And no amount of talking seemed to bring her peace or make her feel less dirty. Carrie wished she knew what to do. But she didn’t. So instead of thinking she could find an answer, she turned to the Lord in prayer:
“Lord, I know you love Maggie. And I know you have a plan for her, one for good and not evil. It says as much in your Word. So I’m asking, no Lord, I’m begging you to make this right. Help her Lord. And, if it is your will, help others in the process.”
It was the best thing she knew to do. The only thing she knew to do. She wished Gage was here. He’d know better how to stall Maggie and keep her from flying across and ocean in a futile attempt at getting away from herself. It wouldn’t work. If anybody knew that fact, it was Carrie. But her husband and his foreman were out, somewhere on the vast Black Knife Ranch riding fences. Maggie was a smart girl to plan her getaway when nobody would be around to stop her.
Magnolia Ferguson gunned her little sports car down the long straight drive that led to the country road fronting a good portion of the ranch. Behind her were billows of dust swirling. They reminded her of the dark feelings plaguing her at the moment. She squinted her eyes to see first right and then left before she pulled the sleek, dainty machine out onto the black-topped two lane. There was nobody else on the road. Not that she’d expected any traffic this far out of town.
Her mind ran in tortured circles. She was sorry. Sorry for Chase Brown, who’d changed her life with his rough mauling. Yes, his treatment of her had left scars. And yes, she was now bitterly afraid of men, all men. And she was scared of enclosed spaces, like the front seat of a truck. Even a closet door closing behind her could make her tremble now. And the scent of beer sent her into panic attacks. She had recurrent nightmares about that night. They were more like horrible night terrors. Nobody knew about them because they, like so many other things, things Chase had done, were now her secrets.
Before this had all happened, she would have prayed in moment like this. But she’d prayed the night Chase Brown shoved her down on the bench seat of his truck. Her prayers continued in frantic sobs as she’d fought him. Those screamed prayers had been a great source of amusement to the drunken young cowboy. In fact, he’d taken an evil pride in slapping, punching, and taunting her again and again until she could no longer make even the weakest of protests. And he’d taken a video of the beating with his cellphone.
Maggie couldn’t pray any more. But she could feel sorry for what she’d done. And she did feel guilty for the fact that Chase had gone to prison. If she’d been a better person, she would have never gone on a date with him. She wouldn’t have cared that the sorority girls made fun of her for being so straitlaced. She would have paid no attention to the crude jokes the fraternity boys made whenever she walked past them. She would have stood firm in her faith, instead of bowing to peer pressure.
But she hadn’t done the right thing. That was a cold hard fact. She mindlessly swiped at a long strand of hair that had worked its way out of her severe bun. The fierce Montana sun was beginning to burn off the cool of the morning. This part of the world wasn’t called ‘Big Sky’ for nothing. The snow-capped mountains far in the distance had the dignity and majesty of wise old kings. A buffalo stood as a lonely sentinel in the huge pasture that edged the little-used country road. Maggie loved this land. It was a bone-deep sort of love. Her very DNA was rife with the vestiges of pioneer and tough-minded, independent Native American blood. But as much as she loved this place, as much as her heart belonged to the rocky crags and dry endless flats, she couldn’t see her way clear of the overwhelming guilt and pain associated with its familiarity.
She’d been humiliated when she’d first teasingly flirted with Hollister so many years ago. The speed at which he’d made her understand she had no place in his life had been stunning. It was only matched by the way he’d made himself absent for so many years. If that alone hadn’t been enough, his lack at any attempt to reach out to her over the course of those same long, hard years rang the final death knell over any budding self-esteem she might have developed as a woman.
When Hollister turned away from her with such cruelty, she’d just wanted to reassure herself that she was feminine. That somewhere there was a man who would want her. She’d needed to know she wasn’t a complete failure as a female. And that, truthfully, was why she’d agreed to go out with Chase Brown. A known lothario would surely respond to her in a flattering way. And, at that point, her poor battered heart sorely needed some flattering. She’d wanted to know what it felt like for a man to flirt with her. She’d needed to know she wasn’t some ugly, pitiful girl who hadn’t even been kissed. She knew other girls her age were already sexually active. That kind of casual hook-up had never appealed to Maggie. But she did want to know what a kiss felt like. Well, she thought cynically, now she knew. And she knew a whole lot more that now she wished she could forget.
Everything Chase had done to her had been done to shame her and cause her pain. And it had. Even so, she still felt bad he was in jail. But there was nothing she could do about it. She’d withheld her testimony, in part, hoping to spare him. But when that hadn’t worked, she didn’t know what else to do. She’d tried to go see his parents. She’d wanted to express her sorrow and let them know even though she’d suffered at their son’s hands, she bore some of the blame for that night too. They’d turned her from their door without hearing anything she’d come to confess to them. And to make matters worse, they’d started some very viscous gossip about her at church.
If Maggie had been completely bereft of her faith, she would have run her fast little car off an embankment. That would have solved everything. But she knew, even back then when the pain had been almost unbearable, that killing herself would solve no one’s problems but her own. And she was not selfish enough to leave her family in such a horrible circumstance.
No, what she was doing was for the best. Maybe in England she’d find some small glimpse of peace. Maybe there she’d find her way back to God. Pastor Gentry said a lot about working out personal pain through service to others. She only hoped she might be able to do that very thing.
She’d given up her dream of having a family and ranching alongside her brother. Getting out of Montana was just the next logical step to starting over. In London, she would work hard and live quietly. Maybe it would be enough.
The miles into Bozeman flew by. Before long she was pulling her car into the small airport’s parking lot. She got into a short line to check her luggage. She paid no notice as a beautiful, hard looking woman strode past on towering stiletto heels, dripping in furs and costly gems. But Maggie was the on
ly one, in the airport, who didn’t have their bulging eyes riveted to sight of the outlandish female.
The tall elegant lady put one in mind of a sleek, well-bred greyhound. One manicured hand gripped the triple strand of pearls at her long throat while the other caressed the handle of her Louis Vuitton purse. In her wake were several men. All of them obviously servants save one. He was just the woman’s height and so handsome he was almost pretty albeit in a very oily way. He flashed everyone who looked in his direction a wide, toothy grin. A few of the onlookers began whispering amongst themselves. But all that stopped when the woman called out in a strident, accented tone.
“Where is the limo, Harlow?” She turned to glare at the good looking man. “You did order one? If I have to come out here to the wilds of the American West, I need a suitable conveyance.”
“It should be here,” the man was quick to assure her.
“Good, very good, my love. Anything else would be too…too rustic,” she purred placated.
“Lady Fiona?” asked one of her servants timidly.
“What?” the woman barked. “What do you want? And why on Earth are you bothering me?”
“There’s been a little mishap,” answered the man nervously.
“Mishap?” she snarled. “Is the jewel case lost? Did you leave my trunk of purses? Has the maid misplaced my La Prairie lingerie?”
“No Ma’am, nothing like that.”
“Then, I repeat, why are you bothering me with niggling little details? I pay you to see to everything mundane and boring, don’t I?”
“Of course, it’s just… it’s just,” he sputtered and then swallowed his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down like a cork on a rough pond.
The imposing female turned to her friend. “Harlow, is this what I can expect when we travel together? I want you to know I’m not used to being importuned over stupid trivialities. I expect the man I’m with to handle such unpleasantness.” With that said she prowled over to a nearby chair, made a moue of distaste, and gracefully settled into the seat.