Issued to the Bride: One Soldier

by Cora Seton

  When she thought back to her college days she realized her belief in a golden future had really been a pipe dream. Some of her classmates were doing fine. But most of them were struggling to keep their heads above water, just like her. A few had given up and moved back in with their parents.

  When she got back to the balcony with a tray of snacks, she saw Savannah pluck a dog-eared copy of Pride and Prejudice out of a small basket that sat next to the door. Riley had been reading it in the mornings before work this week as she drank her coffee—until she’d been let go. A little escapism helped start her day off on the right foot.

  “Am I the only one who’d trade my life for one of Austen’s characters’ in a heartbeat?” Savannah asked, flipping through the pages.

  “You want to live in Regency England? And be some man’s property?” Nora asked sharply.

  “Of course not. I don’t want the class conflict or the snobbery or the outdated rules. But I want the beauty of their lives. I want the music and the literature. I want afternoon visits and balls that last all night. Why don’t we do those things anymore?”

  “Who has time for that?” Riley certainly hadn’t when she was working. Now she’d have to spend every waking moment finding a new job.

  “I haven’t played the piano in ages,” Savannah went on. “I mean, it’s not like I’m all that good anymore—”

  “Are you kidding? You’ve always been fantastic,” Nora said.

  “What about romance? I’d kill for a real romance. One that means something,” Avery said.

  “What about Dan?” Savannah asked.

  “I broke up with him three weeks ago. He told me he wasn’t ready for a serious relationship. The man’s thirty-one. If he’s not ready now, when will he be?”

  “That’s tough.” Riley understood what Avery meant. She hadn’t had a date in a year; not since Marc Hepstein had told her he didn’t consider her marriage material. She should have dumped him long before.

  It wasn’t like she hadn’t been warned. His older sister had taken her aside once and spelled it out for her:

  “Every boy needs to sow his wild oats. You’re his shiksa fling. You’ll see; you won’t get a wedding ring from him. Marc will marry a nice Jewish girl in the end.”

  Riley wished she’d paid attention to the warning, but of course she hadn’t. She had a history of dangling after men who were unavailable.

  Shiksa fling.

  Just a step up from Tagalong Riley.

  Riley pushed down the old insecurities that threatened to take hold of her and tried not to give in to her pain over her lost chance to adopt. When Marc had broken up with her, it had been a wake-up call. She’d realized if she waited for a man to love her, she might never experience the joy of raising a child. She’d also realized she hadn’t loved Marc enough to spend a life with him. She’d been settling, and she was better than that.

  She’d started the adoption process.

  Now she’d have to start all over again.

  “It wasn’t as hard to leave him as you might think.” Avery took a sip of her tea. “It’s not just Dan. I feel like breaking up with my life. I had a heart once. I know I did. I used to feel—alive.”

  “Me, too,” Nora said softly.

  “I thought I’d be married by now,” Savannah said, “but I haven’t had a boyfriend in months. And I hate my job. I mean, I really hate it!” Riley couldn’t remember ever seeing calm, poised Savannah like this.

  “So do I,” Avery said, her words gushing forth as if a dam had broken. “Especially since I have two of them now. I got back in debt when my car broke down and I needed to buy a new one. Now I can’t seem to get ahead.”

  “I don’t have any job at all,” Riley confessed. “I’ve been downsized.” She closed her eyes. She hadn’t meant to say that.

  “Oh my goodness, Riley,” Avery said. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. Paint?” She laughed dully. She couldn’t tell them the worst of it. She was afraid if she talked about her failed attempt to adopt she’d lose control of her emotions altogether. “Can you imagine a life in which we could actually pursue our dreams?”

  “No,” Avery said flatly. “After what happened last time, I’m so afraid if I try to act again, I’ll just make a fool of myself.”

  Savannah nodded vigorously, tears glinting in her eyes. “I’m afraid to play,” she confessed. “I sit down at my piano and then I get up again without touching the keys. What if my talent was all a dream? What if I was fooling myself and I was never anything special at all? My wrist healed years ago, but I can’t make myself go for it like I once did. I’m too scared.”

  “What about you, Nora? Do you ever write these days?” Riley asked gently when Nora remained quiet. When they were younger, Nora talked all the time about wanting to write a novel, but she hadn’t mentioned it in ages. Riley had assumed it was because she loved teaching, but she looked as burnt out as the rest of them. Riley knew she worked in an area of Baltimore that resembled a war zone.

  Her friend didn’t answer, but a tear traced down her cheek.

  “Nora, what is it?” Savannah dropped the book and came to crouch by her chair.

  “It’s one of my students.” Nora kept her voice steady even as another tear followed the tracks of the first. “At least I think it is.”

  “What do you mean?” Riley realized they’d all pulled closer to each other, leaning forward in mutual support and feeling. Dread crept into her throat at Nora’s words. She’d known instinctively something was wrong in her friend’s life for quite some time, but despite her questions, Nora’s e-mails and texts never revealed a thing.

  “I’ve been getting threats. On my phone,” Nora said, plucking at a piece of lint on her skirt.

  “Someone’s texting threats?” Savannah sounded aghast.

  “And calling. He has my home number, too.”

  “What did he say?” Avery asked.

  “Did he threaten to hurt you?” Riley demanded. After a moment, Nora nodded.

  “To kill you?” Avery whispered.

  Nora nodded again. “And more.”

  Savannah’s expression hardened. “More?”

  Nora looked up. “He threatened to rape me. He said I’d like it. He got… really graphic.”

  The four of them stared at each other in shocked silence.

  “You can’t go back,” Savannah said. “Nora, you can’t go back there. I don’t care how important your work is, that’s too much.”

  “What did the police say?” Riley’s hands were shaking again. Rage and shock battled inside of her, but anger won out. Who would dare threaten her friend?

  “What did the school’s administration say?” Avery demanded.

  “That threats happen all the time. That I should change my phone numbers. That the people who make the threats usually don’t act on them.”

  “Usually?” Riley was horrified.

  “What are you going to do?” Savannah said.

  “What am I supposed to do? I can’t quit.” Nora seemed to sink into herself. “I changed my number, but it’s happening again. I’ve got nothing saved. I managed to pay off my student loans, but then my mom got sick… I’m broke.”

  No one answered. They knew Nora’s family hadn’t had much money, and she’d taken on debt to get her degree. Riley figured she’d probably used every penny she might have saved to pay it off again. Then her mother had contracted cancer and had gone through several expensive procedures before she passed away.

  “Is this really what it’s come to?” Avery asked finally. “Our work consumes us, or it overwhelms us, or it threatens us with bodily harm and we just keep going?”

  “And what happened to love? True love?” Savannah’s voice was raw. “Look at us! We’re intelligent, caring, attractive women. And we’re all single! None of us even dating. What about kids? I thought I’d be a mother.”

  “So did I,” Riley whispered.

  “Who can afford children?�
� Nora said fiercely. “I thought teaching would be enough. I thought my students would care—” She broke off and Riley’s heart squeezed at Nora’s misery.

  “I’ve got some savings, but I’ll eat through them fast if I don’t get another job,” Riley said slowly. “I want to leave Boston so badly. I want fresh air and a big, blue sky. But there aren’t any jobs in the country.” Memories of just such a sky flooded her mind. What she’d give for a vacation at her uncle’s ranch in Chance Creek, Montana. In fact, she’d love to go there and never come back. It had been so long since she’d managed to stop by and spend a weekend at Westfield, it made her ache to think of the carefree weeks she spent there every summer as a child. The smell of hay and horses and sunshine on old buildings, the way her grandparents used to let her loose on the ranch to run and play and ride as hard as she wanted to. Their unconditional love. There were few rules at Westfield and those existed purely for the sake of practicality and safety. Don’t spook the horses. Clean and put away tools after you use them. Be home at mealtimes and help with the dishes.

  Away from her parents’ arguing, Riley had blossomed, and the skills she’d learned from the other kids in town—especially the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—had taught her pride and self-confidence. They were rough and tumble boys and they rarely slowed down to her speed, but as long as she kept up to them, they included her in their fun.

  Clay Pickett, Jericho Cook, Walker Norton—they’d treated her like a sister. For an only child, it was a dream come true. But it was Boone who’d become a true friend, and her first crush.

  And then had broken her heart.

  “I keep wondering if it will always be like this,” Avery said, interrupting her thoughts. “If I’ll always have to struggle to get by. If I’ll never have a house of my own—or a husband or family.”

  “You’ll have a family,” Riley assured her, then bit her lip. Who was she to reassure Avery? She could never seem to shake her bad luck—with men, with work, with anything. But out of all the things that had happened to her, nothing left her cringing with humiliation like the memory of the time she’d asked Boone to dance.

  She’d been such a child. No one like Boone would have looked twice at her, no matter how friendly he’d been over the years. She could still hear Melissa’s sneering words—No one wants to dance with a Tagalong. Go on home—and the laughter that followed her when she fled the dance.

  She’d returned to Chicago that last summer thinking her heart would never mend, and time had just begun to heal it when her grandparents passed away one after the other in quick succession that winter. Riley had been devastated; doubly so when she left for college the following year and her parents split. It was as if a tidal wave had washed away her childhood in one blow. After that, her parents sold their home and caretakers watched over the ranch. Uncle Russ, who’d inherited it, had found he made a better financier than a cowboy. With his career taking off, he’d moved to Europe soon after.

  At his farewell dinner, one of the few occasions she’d seen her parents in the same room since they’d divorced, he’d stood up and raised a glass. “To Riley. You’re the only one who loves Westfield now, and I want you to think of it as yours. One day in the future it will be, you know. While I’m away, I hope you’ll treat it as your own home. Visit as long as you like. Bring your friends. Enjoy the ranch. My parents would have wanted that.” He’d taken her aside later and presented her with a key. His trust in her and his promises had warmed her heart. If she’d own Westfield one day she could stand anything, she’d told herself that night. It was the one thing that had sustained her through life’s repeated blows.

  “I wish I could run away from my life, even for a little while. Six months would do it,” Savannah said, breaking into her thoughts. “If I could clear my mind of everything that has happened in the past few years I know I could make a fresh start.”

  Riley knew just what she meant. She’d often wished the same thing, but she didn’t only want to run away from her life; she wanted to run straight back into her past to a time when her grandparents were still alive. Things had been so simple then.

  Until she’d fallen for Boone.

  She hadn’t seen Uncle Russ since he’d moved away, although she wrote to him a couple of times a year, and received polite, if remote, answers in turn. She had the feeling Russ had found the home of his heart in Munich. She wondered if he’d ever come back to Montana.

  In the intervening years she’d visited Westfield whenever she could, more frequently as the sting of Boone’s betrayal faded, although in reality that meant a long weekend every three or four months, rather than the expansive summer vacations she’d imagined when she’d received the key. It wasn’t quite the same without her grandparents and her old friends, without Boone and the Horsemen, but she still loved the country, and Westfield Manor was the stuff of dreams. Even the name evoked happy memories and she blessed the ancestor whose flight of fancy had bestowed such a distinguished title on a Montana ranch house. She’d always wondered if she’d stumble across Boone someday, home for leave, but their visits had never coincided. Still, whenever she drove into Chance Creek, her heart rate kicked up a notch and she couldn’t help scanning the streets for his familiar face.

  “I wish I could run away from my dirty dishes and laundry,” Avery said. Riley knew she was attempting to lighten the mood. “I spend my weekends taking care of all my possessions. I bet Jane Austen didn’t do laundry.”

  “In those days servants did it,” Nora said, swiping her arm over her cheek to wipe away the traces of her tears. “Maybe we should get servants, too, while we’re dreaming.”

  “Maybe we should, if it means we could concentrate on the things we love,” Savannah said.

  “Like that’s possible. Look at us—we’re stuck, all of us. There’s no way out.” The waver in Nora’s voice betrayed her fierceness.

  “There has to be,” Avery exclaimed.

  “How?”

  Riley wished she had the answer. She hated seeing the pain and disillusionment on her friends’ faces. And she was terrified of having to start over herself.

  “What if… what if we lived together?” Savannah said slowly. “I mean, wouldn’t that be better than how things are now? If we pooled our resources and figured out how to make them stretch? None of us would have to work so hard.”

  “I thought you had a good job,” Nora said, a little bitterly.

  “On paper. The cost of living in Silicon Valley is outrageous, though. You’d be surprised how little is left over when I pay my bills. And inside, I feel… like I’m dying.”

  A silence stretched out between them. Riley knew just what Savannah meant. At first grown-up life had seemed exciting. Now it felt like she was slipping into a pool of quicksand that she’d never be able to escape. Maybe it would be different if they joined forces. If they pooled their money, they could do all kinds of things.

  For the first time in months she felt a hint of possibility.

  “We could move where the cost of living is cheaper and get a house together.” Savannah warmed to her theme. “With a garden, maybe. We could work part time and share the bills.”

  “For six months? What good would that do? We’d run through what little money we have and be harder to employ afterward,” Nora said.

  “How much longer are you willing to wait before you try for the life you actually want, rather than the life that keeps you afloat one more day?” Savannah asked her. “I have to try to be a real pianist. Life isn’t worth living if I don’t give it a shot. That means practicing for hours every day. I can’t do that and work a regular job, too.”

  “I’ve had an idea for a screenplay,” Avery confessed. “I think it’s really good. Six months would be plenty of time for me to write it. Then I could go back to work while I shop it around.”

  “If I had six months I would paint all day until I had enough canvasses to put on a show. Maybe that would be the start and end of my career as an artist, but at
least I’d have done it once,” Riley said.

  “A house costs money,” Nora said.

  “Not always,” Riley said slowly as an idea took hold in her head. “What about Westfield?” After all, it hadn’t been inhabited in years. “Uncle Russ always said I should bring my friends and stay there.”

  “Long term?” Avery asked.

  “Six months would be fine. Russ hasn’t set foot in it in over a decade.”

  “You want us to move to Montana and freeload for six months?” Nora asked.

  “I want us to move to Montana and take six months to jumpstart our lives. We’ll practice following our passions. We’ll brainstorm ideas together for how to make money from them. Who knows? Maybe together we’ll come up with a plan that will work.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Avery said.

  “I don’t know,” Nora said. “Do you really think it’s work that’s kept you from writing or playing or painting? Because if you can’t do it now, chances are you won’t be able to do it at Westfield either. You’ll busy up your days with errands and visits and sightseeing and all that. Wait and see.”

  “Not if we swore an oath to work on our projects every day,” Savannah said.

  “Like the oaths you used to swear to do your homework on time? Or not to drink on Saturday night? Or to stop crank-calling the guy who dumped you junior year?”

  Savannah flushed. “I was a child back then—”

  “I just feel that if we take six months off, we’ll end up worse off than when we started.”

  Savannah leaned forward. “Come on. Six whole months to write. Aren’t you dying to try it?” When Nora hesitated, Savannah pounced on her. “I knew it! You want to as badly as we do.”

  “Of course I want to,” Nora said. “But it won’t work. None of you will stay at home and hone your craft.”

  A smile tugged at Savannah’s lips. “What if we couldn’t leave?”