Liza entered the house. “Alexander’s at the dairy?”
Emma nodded.
“Good. Get your things. Get whatever is important because whatever you leave behind you leave for good. You are never coming back to this house again.”
Never coming back?
Liza reached out to touch Emma’s cheek, then drew her hand back, as if afraid she might cause her more pain. “What sort of monster would hurt you this way?”
Out of habit, Emma wanted to leap to Alexander’s defense. She wanted to say he wasn’t as bad as Liza thought. She wanted to say he loved her. She wanted to believe things would be better tomorrow. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t say anything, and she hadn’t any strength left to believe in a lie.
While Emma remained immobilized by the front door, Liza sprang into action. She went into the bedroom, flung open the top of Emma’s hope chest, and began filling it with clothes from the small chest of drawers.
Never coming back.
“When you didn’t come for Mark Thomas’s party and you didn’t send word or call, I knew it was something like this.” Liza practically threw the items into the chest. “Has he hit you before?” She stopped and stared sadly at Emma.
She shook her head and mouthed the word no.
“I never did know what you saw in him, Emma. I never understood why you liked him in the first place. Oh, he’s handsome and charming. No one could deny that, but he’s a scoundrel, through and through.”
“No, he—”
“He drinks. He flirts. He’s thoughtless and selfish. And he’s been unfaithful, hasn’t he?”
The memory of yesterday afternoon flashed in Emma’s head—the woman in bed with Alexander, how he’d blamed Emma for it, the first blow as it connected with her cheek. “He’s my husband,” she whispered.
“Not for long, he’s not.” Liza turned to the chest. “Is that everything you want?”
Emma shook her head. “No.” She went to the cabinet in the living room where she kept her journals. There were six of them now, representing nine years of her life. She gathered them into her arms and took them to the bedroom, dropping them into the chest. Afterward, she removed a framed photograph from the wall, the one of her and Alexander on their wedding day, and added it to the chest. Liza raised her eyebrows over that, but Emma ignored her as she went to retrieve a shoebox of photographs and a few more personal items. When she couldn’t think of another thing she would need or want, Emma put on a hat with a veil, hoping to hide her face from any watchful eyes. Then each of them took hold of an end handle on the cedar chest and they carried it outside to Liza’s automobile.
By the time Emma was settled into the passenger seat, she was exhausted. Where would she find the strength to go through the days ahead? How many people would have to know what Alexander had done to her? Would the identity of that woman in Emma’s bed come to light? Emma had suspected he’d been unfaithful, had known it in her heart. But she’d never imagined he would bring his floozies into their home. How he must hate her to do something like that.
Liza turned to look at her. “John and I will help you every step along the way. You can stay with us for as long as you need. We’ll protect you.”
“I don’t want Father and Mother to see me like this. They can’t know about it. It’s too . . . too humiliating.”
“They’ll have to be told you’ve left Alexander and why you’re getting a divorce.”
Divorce. The word was black and cold and hopeless. Shame coursed through Emma. Whatever the reasons her husband couldn’t love her, whatever the reasons for his unfaithfulness, whatever the reasons he’d become angry enough to strike her, he had never mentioned divorce. And he hadn’t always been unkind or thoughtless or cruel. There had been good moments in their marriage. Hadn’t there?
The ache in her chest became too intense to bear, and she began to weep.
“Sis,” Liza said softly but with steel in her voice, “marriage does not give a man the right to beat his wife. A husband is supposed to love her so much he would die for her, like Christ for the church.”
Emma turned her face away, staring out the passenger window at a world that seemed remote, distant, unreal.
Surely she would never be happy again.
Allison
The Lyles held a barbecue on the Fourth of July—an annual event. Friends and neighbors from all over the area were in attendance. The backyard teemed with people.
What surprised Allison was how different she felt this year from last year. Last year she’d been a newcomer, a stranger, an outsider. A flatlander, she thought with a smile.
At the moment, she was alone in Susan’s large kitchen. She lifted the lid of the cooler she’d brought from home and took out the last container of ambrosia salad she’d contributed to the barbecue. She popped off the lid and scooped the yummy mixture into several smaller serving bowls. To brighten the salad, she added maraschino cherries to the top.
This had been her great-aunt’s go-to recipe for picnics. Allison remembered standing on a stool in the kitchen—before it had been modernized—Aunt Emma watching as Allison mixed the marshmallows, sour cream, mandarin oranges, pineapple, and coconut together in a bowl. Dear Aunt Emma. In the memory, she had a cap of curly gray hair and she wore large round eyeglasses, so fashionable back in the eighties.
Allison continued to read the journals, although not as quickly as she would like. Her pleasure-reading time had been limited as of late due to an especially difficult-to-please client who shot off a barrage of e-mails that Allison had to answer every day of the week. The client kept changing her mind about what she wanted, and finding the right design was like trying to shoot a moving duck. Bless her.
This past week she’d reached her aunt’s entry from October 1928, the one about her miscarriage. The miscarriage that had come the day after Emma’s nephew’s birth. Mark Thomas Hendricks. Allison’s Uncle Mark. Her mother’s big brother. Allison had never met Uncle Mark. He’d died in the Korean War at the age of twenty-two or twenty-three. Since he’d never been a part of her life, she’d never given him much thought. But reading Aunt Emma’s diary made the experiences of that generation of her family feel so much more personal to her. Made her realize the hurts and triumphs they’d gone through.
How much do I not know about Mom, let alone Grandma and Aunt Emma? What does Mom keep secret from me, even today?
In recent months Allison had asked a number of older residents of the valley if they knew what year Emma Carter moved to the house outside of Kings Meadow. None could say for sure. Allison had then tried researching tax records, but a fire at the county courthouse many years before had destroyed the information she sought. It seemed she would have to wait for the answer until she read about it in an entry in one of the upcoming journals. And as tempting as it was to jump ahead, she was compelled to wait. She was discovering more than mere facts as she read the diaries. She felt as if she’d met a different woman from the one she’d believed she knew so well. She was convinced that if Aunt Emma could survive loss and an unhappy marriage, if she could blossom from the uncertain young woman and wife of these early entries into the amazing older woman Allison had known and loved, then maybe there was hope for her. Maybe—
“Are you hiding in here?”
She looked up to find Chet Leonard framed in the kitchen doorway.
“Need any help?” he asked without waiting for her to answer his first question.
“Yes.” She lifted two of the serving bowls. “You can carry these outside for me.”
He grinned. “Glad to.” He reached for them.
Allison picked up the remaining bowl and followed Chet out onto the deck and down the steps to the back lawn. Two long tables, borrowed from the Methodist church, had been placed in the shade to the right of the patio. Pale smoke rose from the grill where Ned cooked more hamburgers and hot dogs for the still-hungry crowd.
As he set down the serving bowls, Chet said, “Did I tell you I’ve alrea
dy made a couple of sales because of the new website?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Can’t thank you enough for what you did.” He cocked one eyebrow. “Are you sure you charged me enough?”
It was true she hadn’t charged him her usual fee, but she’d charged him enough. She answered him truthfully, “I’m sure.”
He hesitated a moment, then said, “I don’t suppose you’d care to go with me to a movie sometime.”
Was he asking her out? On a date?
“We can wait until there’s something playing you’d really like to see. But I hear there’re some good ones out.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Maybe one day next week?”
A shiver of nerves passed along her spine as she nodded. She hadn’t been on a date in forever.
“Midweek okay? Next Wednesday? We could leave early enough to have dinner first.”
“Okay.” Gracious! What would her mother and Meredith have to say about this unexpected development? Well, unexpected for Allison. Not so much for her mother.
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Okay,” she repeated.
He took a step away. “I’d better go spell Ned at the grill. You staying for the fireworks?”
“Yes.”
His smile broadened, and the nerves erupted in her stomach this time.
Meredith’s words whispered in Allison’s memory: “You’re not dead yet.”
Apparently not.
Allison
Allison inspected her reflection. She’d received her dark hair and olive complexion from her dad’s side of the family. But she hoped she’d inherited her mom’s youthful complexion. Grandma Elizabeth had still been a stunning beauty at the age of eighty—oh, her flawless skin!—and Aunt Emma had looked a good two decades younger than her years well into her nineties.
Allison turned sideways toward the mirror. She liked the look of her figure since losing a few more pounds. Ten or twelve of them since last year. All of her walks with Gizmo on these mountain trails had paid a nice bonus.
But she wished she were more creative about how to wear her shoulder-length hair. Her hair stylist in Boise had wanted to experiment, but Allison always put her off. Besides, when her hair didn’t play nice, she could capture it in a ponytail and forget it. And that was what she’d done today. A ponytail said, Casual, not serious. We’re just friends. Dinner and a movie isn’t anything to be nervous about. But that wasn’t what the butterflies in her stomach said.
Gizmo barked, letting Allison know Chet had arrived. She grabbed her sweater off the foot of the bed. The heat of summer had come to the forest, but the sweater would be welcome when the chill of night returned. She went out onto the deck, locking the door behind her. There was no breeze today, and the towering lodgepole pines were dead still. Dust swirled in front of Chet’s truck after he brought it to a halt.
“You’re ready, I see,” he called to her.
“I’m ready.” She went down the steps.
Chet hurried around the pickup to open the door for her. “You look nice.” He offered a hand to help her into the cab.
He looked good too, but she didn’t tell him so. “Thank you, Mr. Leonard. Your mama trained you well.”
“She did, indeed, Ms. Kavanagh.” He grinned.
How strange this all seemed. She was forty-six but she felt fourteen. Awkward and unsure. Her mother would be delighted to know Allison was going out with a nice man. Meredith would be pleased too. But whatever God’s opinion, He’d chosen to be silent for now. At least, Allison hadn’t heard an answer to her prayers about this night. She didn’t sense His disapproval, but neither did she sense that this was a doorway He wanted her to walk through.
Chet got in behind the wheel and turned his truck around. “Care for some music? I’ve got Brad Paisley in the CD player.”
She squinted at the slot in the console. “Really. I wouldn’t have thought he was thin enough to fit in there.”
Chet laughed.
Allison felt both imprudent and guilty. It was the kind of thing she and Tony used to say to each other after one of them opened the doorway for a zinger. It felt wrong to say it to someone else. It felt . . . fickle.
Chet must have taken her silence as consent for he turned on the music, setting the volume low enough to allow for comfortable conversation.
After about a mile, Allison asked about his boys.
“Sam’s struggled in school this year. Not sure if it’s being fifteen or if it’s having his folks get divorced or if it’s Rick’s death. Probably a combination of all that. Pete’s doing a little better than his brother. Both of them are in counseling with Pastor Josh. I think that’s helped them navigate these rough waters better than they would have otherwise.”
“And you?”
“Most days I’m navigating okay. I never pictured myself as divorced.”
“I know what you mean. Neither did I.”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “When we’re young, we don’t realize how complicated life can get. I thought that as long as I loved God and tried to walk the straight and narrow nothing bad would come my way. Naive, wasn’t I? Certainly I never thought anything like the death of a child or my wife walking out the way she did would happen.” He glanced at Allison, then back at the road. “I’m luckier than many. I’ve got a good group of Christian men to lean on. Got a good pastor to talk to when I can’t make sense of my feelings.”
“And none of your friends had to choose between you and Marsha.”
He gave her another quick look. “Is that what happened to you?”
“Yes. Good friends don’t mean for that to happen, of course. They try to stay friends with both parties in a divorce. But it rarely works out that way.”
“Do you mind if I ask why you and your husband split up?”
“I don’t mind talking about it.” But before the words Tony is an alcoholic could come out of her mouth, they seemed to lodge in her throat. Plenty of times during the year they were separated she’d told others about her husband’s problems. Even before. But now that Tony was doing well in recovery, it felt wrong to speak of it. Maybe not to tell a close friend and spiritual mentor like Susan, but definitely wrong in this situation. “But it’s rather complicated. Like you said.”
He was a true gentleman, changing the subject to something benign and nonthreatening. “What kind of food do you want to eat? We’ve got lots of choices when we get down to the city. Not like in Kings Meadow.”
No wonder she liked this cowboy.
Emma
October 5, 1931
That man came to Liza’s house today. Mr. Smith. The bootlegger Alexander works for. He was looking for Alexander. He wanted to know where he is. I had nothing to tell him. I do not know where he is. How could I? I do not think he believed me.
After he left, I had no choice but to tell Liza about Alexander’s illegal activities. I think this surprised her more than anything that has happened. And I think it frightened her too. She told me I am not to answer the door again. I cannot blame her.
It would upset her even more should I confess that I still love Alexander, despite everything. She thinks love should have died with the first blow. I would have thought so too. But it did not die. My heart is broken. I thought nothing would ever hurt me as much as losing our baby, but this hurts every bit as much. This is a death of a different kind, but still a death.
God, I am afraid of what tomorrow will bring. I went from my father’s house to my husband’s house. I have never been anything other than a daughter or a wife. I do not want to go back to depending upon my parents to care for me. But what else can I do? Able-bodied men cannot get jobs, and I cannot live on the little I earn from the grocery. Please tell me what to do, Father. You tell us not to fear, but I am afraid anyway.
I am twenty-four, but I feel so much older. Sometimes I feel ancient. Dried up. As if a strong wind could blow me away and I would exist no more.
Why couldn’t you love me, A
lexander? Why did it have to end this way?
Allison
The following Sunday Chet asked Allison if she would like to sit with him and the boys in church. She agreed, although she knew people would talk. She treasured the community of believers who made up Meadow Fellowship, but like every church, large or small, it had its share of gossips. She decided not to let that stop her from accepting Chet’s invitation.
The truth was, she liked him. She liked him a lot. And despite all of her nerves last Wednesday, she’d had a good time. They’d visited about a wide range of topics during their drive to and from Boise, as well as over dinner at a steakhouse. They’d both enjoyed the movie and, afterward, discussed how it differed from the book. And when they arrived at her home, he walked her to the door, waited while she let Gizmo out, and only when he knew she was safely inside for the night did he return to his truck and leave.
When the service was over that morning, Chet invited her to join him and the boys for a bite to eat at the restaurant in town. Although she was tempted to accept, she decided she’d given the gossips enough fodder for one day and declined.
At home, she watered the flowers in boxes and pots on the front deck as well as the ones planted alongside the house in the backyard. Early in the summer she’d had a fence installed in the back to help protect Gizmo from bears and coyotes. Still, she kept a watchful eye on him as he ran around the yard.
Once inside, Allison changed into cropped pants and a T-shirt, then she made herself a tuna fish sandwich for lunch. When she was finished eating, she decided to make the afternoon a true time of rest. She went into the bedroom, grabbed the latest leather journal, and headed for the sofa in the living room. With a comfortable pillow behind her head and a light throw across her legs, she opened the diary and began to read.
November 3, 1928
Why is it time seems to pass so quickly when I am happy and it creeps along when there is sorrow in my life?
A Promise Kept Page 17