A Promise Kept (22 page)

That thought sparked something inside of Emma. A rage she hadn’t known it was possible to feel. “You brought her into
my
home! Into
our
bed!” She took two quick steps forward and slapped him.

She had no time at all to prepare for his reaction. The back of his hand struck her with such fury she flew backward, hitting the wall. Pain exploded in her head. Air gushed from her lungs. Then she screamed as he moved toward her, murder in his eyes.

Allison

Something unexpected happened to Allison during the weeks that followed. She became aware of herself as a woman again. She hadn’t realized the awareness was gone until it came back to her. She found herself looking at men and wondering if they were single. Which appalled her to no end. But Meredith found it funny when Allison confessed the realization to her one evening over the telephone.

“Why wouldn’t you wonder about single men, Mom? You’re not dead yet.”

“I know that, honey, but I’m not interested in men. Not in any romantic kind of way. I’m never getting married again, so what point is there in it?”

“Bet that drives Grandma crazy when she hears it.”

Allison leaned back in the deck chair and stared up at the soft blue-gray sky. “You have no idea.”

“Sure I do. Grandma can’t wait to get me married off. She’s always asking if I’ve met someone special.”

“Well? Have you?”

“Mom!”

Allison grinned. “Couldn’t help myself. And there was someone you liked last year. What happened to him?”

“Didn’t go anywhere. Hey, before I forget, have you talked to Dad lately?”

“No.” Out of habit, her stomach clenched. “Why?”

“I’m going to use my vacation time to come visit you both, but I really hate having to divide time between Boise and Kings Meadow. The time goes by so fast as it is.”

Disappointment replaced wariness. Allison was greedy enough to want Meredith with her the entire time.

“Would it be all right with you if Dad came to stay at your place for those two weeks? He’s got vacation time coming too.”

Allison opened her mouth, intending to refuse, but something stopped her. She wasn’t sure what. Perhaps because she always found it hard to refuse her daughter. Or was it something else?

“We got along great at Christmas, the three of us,” Meredith added, not knowing the battle was won.

“You’re right. We did.”

“Could you take some time off from your work so we could do a bit of traveling? Maybe go camping at Redfish Lake.”

“When are you coming?” Allison headed inside to check her schedule on the computer.

“Around Labor Day, if that works for you. I’m thinking the week before and the one after.”

Allison looked through her planner, estimating in her head. “Yes,” she said at last. “I could do
some
traveling with you. Couldn’t be gone the whole two weeks, though.”

Even as she said it, she knew once Meredith arrived, it would be the same as when she visited her brother in May. She would play instead of sitting down to work. Her desk and computer would gather dust until her daughter went back to Texas. But that was okay. She would just have to put in extra hours in the first weeks of August so she wouldn’t feel guilty during Meredith’s visit.

And Tony’s visit
.

“Mom? Did you hear what I said?”

“No. I’m sorry. I let my mind wander. What was it?”

“I said I’ll firm up the dates of my vacation and then let Dad
know so he can do the same. I’ll be in touch as soon as I have particulars, like my flight times and such.”

“Okay.”

They exchanged a few more words and then ended the call.

As Allison put down the handset, she wondered what she was doing, letting Tony come to stay a second time. When she saw him in April, he’d made her angry. Angry and confused because he’d manipulated her feelings. That was how it had seemed anyway. Would seeing him again, letting him stay in the spare room, bring those unwelcome feelings back?

When Tony was out of sight, he was out of mind. When he was out of mind, Allison’s life was easier. In these mountains she didn’t have as many reminders of him and the life they’d had, both good and bad. A few memories but not many. Not constant. She was certain that was why God brought her there to live. So she could heal. So she could move on. The Lord had told Allison to let go, and she had, though sometimes it seemed He’d pried her clutching fingers loose one stubborn digit at a time.

Emma

1931

“Emma?” Liza’s voice was loud and clear from the other side of the front door. “Emma, open the door.” She knocked again.

Emma leaned her back against the wall, holding her breath, as if afraid her sister would hear her breathing. She didn’t want Liza to see her today. Not like this. Not with her face swollen and bruises on her arms and legs.

“Emma, I am not leaving until you open this door. I know something is wrong.”

Make her go away. Please make her go away
.

“Please, Em.” Liza’s voice softened. “Please. I will stand here all day if I must. Or I’ll send for someone to break down the door.”

Liza would do it too.

Exhaling a breath of defeat, Emma pushed away from the wall and crossed the living room. She stood there for a few moments, fingertips on the knob. Finally, she opened the door, her gaze locked on the floor.

“Em—” Liza gasped, then she whispered, “Saints alive. What has he done to you?”

Tears blurred Emma’s vision. Her throat was too tight to speak. Her face hurt. Her body hurt. But it was the emptiness in her heart that was the worst of all.

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 already 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.”