A Time to Love (29 page)

“Must’ve been a sight to see,” commented Sadie.

“Yes. Haman is in jail now and will be extradited to Sacramento to face charges of grand theft. He will also be charged with purchasing the bank here illegally.”

Linda put her hands to her face and sighed. Relief flooded her entire being as the dreadful secret was shared with someone who cared.

Sadie left her chair and patted Linda’s shoulder. “I’ll make some tea, honey.”

While Sadie put the teakettle on and took cups and saucers from the cupboard, she revealed to Linda her own thoughts about the impostor and told her some of the cruel things he had done and said to her before Linda arrived from Boston. She had refrained from saying anything before now because Haman Warner was paying her a salary, and she felt she could not speak against him to anyone.

Linda expressed her sorrow that Sadie had been subjected to Haman’s cruelty.

Sadie passed it off and said, “So now what?”

“In the morning I’ll go see Pastor and Carla and tell them all about it. They need to hear it from me.”

“Yes.”

“I must stay here until I know the real Blake Barrett is out of prison. Once I know he’s free, I’ll return to Boston. But don’t you worry. I’ll see that you’re taken care of financially until you can find other employment.”

The teakettle began to whistle, and Sadie poured tea into a pot to let it steep for a bit before pouring cups for both of them. They sat quietly for some time, sipping the hot, soothing liquid, each lost in her own thoughts.

That evening, Linda and Sadie were sitting in front of the fireplace in the parlor when there was a knock at the front door. Linda started to get up, but Sadie beat her to it. “You just stay there and rest, honey. You’ve been through a lot today. I’ll see who it is.”

Moments later, Sadie returned and said, “Pastor and Carla are here to see you. They learned of the incident at the bank from the town’s grapevine.”

Linda rose from her chair. “Of course. Bring them in.”

When the Fryes entered the room, Carla rushed to Linda and embraced her, saying, “I’m so sorry for what’s happened.”

“Me, too,” said the preacher, standing close by.

Linda nodded. “I was planning to come and see you in the morning. Right now I still feel numb. But since you’re here,” she said softly, “if you’d like to sit down, I’ll tell you the whole story.”

The Fryes listened intently as Linda told them of how she was jilted by Lewis Carter, who ran off with her sister on the very day of her wedding. She then told of her mail contact with Blake Barrett, and the subsequent trip to Cheyenne City to possibly become Blake’s bride. She filled them in on the newspaper clippings and Haman’s arrest.

“The rest of the story you already know,” said Linda.

Carla moved to her and put her arms around her. “You poor dear. You’ve been through more heartache and mental anguish than the average person suffers in a lifetime. I’m so glad you haven’t let it embitter
you toward life, and even more, toward the Lord.”

When Carla had returned to sit beside her husband, Linda said, “I won’t say that I understand why the Lord allowed all of this to fall on me, but I can’t be bitter toward Him. The Lord Jesus went to the cross for me and saved me. He’s never failed me, and I know He never will.”

“You’ve stayed close to the Lord through all of this, Linda, and kept your faith in Him,” the pastor said. “He’s going to reward you for it. Well, we need to be going, but first we’d like to pray with you, Linda.”

“Of course,” she said, giving him a weary smile.

After the prayer, the Fryes offered to help Linda in any way they could. She thanked them, saying she would let them know if there was anything they could do.

That night, Linda chose to sleep in one of the guest bedrooms. She couldn’t bear the thought of sleeping in the bed she’d shared with Haman.

Sleep escaped her, and as she lay awake in the darkness, her thoughts turned to Blake Barrett and the sweet relationship that had developed between them through their letters. What a kind and loving Christian gentleman! So vastly different than Haman!

“Linda,” she whispered, “you have to admit it. Now that you’ve seen the real Blake’s photographs and you know he looks almost exactly like you pictured him, there’s a flame in your heart for him. You never met him in person, and in spite of the scarred heart Lewis left you, you had actually fallen in love with the man whose letters drew you westward.”

Tears welled up in her eyes, and her lower lip trembled as she said, “Linda, you’ve been soiled by Haman Warner, and you’re his wife, no matter how much you hate it. What might have been with Blake is gone forever. But somehow, you’ve got to work up the courage to go to that prison and meet him face to face. He deserves to hear the whole story from you.”

How long will Blake be kept there?
she wondered. Certainly he wouldn’t be released until Haman was convicted of the crime for which
Blake had gone to prison. That could take weeks, maybe months. She must go as soon as possible!

While Linda lay awake, making plans to go to California, Haman wrestled with his conscience in a jail cell. The only light came from the partially open door leading to the sheriff’s office where Deputy Ted Larkin was doing some paperwork for the sheriff.

Haman was the only prisoner in the cell block that night. The silence surrounding him was suffocating. Or was it guilt pressing down on him like a shroud?

He flipped and flopped on the cot, trying to go to sleep, but it was no use. After a while, he sat up, holding the blanket around him.

“Haman, what have you done to yourself?” he said quietly. “You should have burned those clippings. Or better yet, there shouldn’t have been any clippings! There shouldn’t have been a prison sentence for Blake. You let your greed ruin you, that’s what you did!”

His mind flashed back to a sermon Pastor Frye had preached a couple of weeks ago. Somewhere in the Old Testament … Numbers, was it? Or Leviticus? No. Numbers. “Behold, ye have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out.”

Those last six words seemed to taunt him, over and over again:
Your sin will find you out! Your sin will find you out! Your sin will find you out!

Haman buried his face in his hands. Hot tears surfaced as he regretted his evil deeds. Why? Why had he been so greedy? Bradley Barrett had left him in a comfortable situation. He had an excellent salary, which Blake would have raised every year, and he had 5 percent of the net income of the bank.

“That should have been enough for you, Haman,” he whispered. “But no, you had to have more! Your sin has tracked you down like the wild beasts Pastor Frye told about in that sermon. With what the authorities know, you’ll be convicted and given Blake’s fifteen years behind bars. But it will be more than fifteen years, Haman! You falsified yourself in every way to buy the Great Plains Bank! They’ll probably add
twenty years to the sentence! You’ll be an old man when you get out. Thirty-five or forty years in prison—that’s not life, that’s only existence!”

He stood up and began pacing the cell. Tears coursed down his cheeks. His entire body trembled, but it wasn’t from the cold air in the jail. It was from the horror rising up within him.

No!
his thoughts screamed. I
couldn’t stand being locked up in that prison! I couldn’t stand it! No! No! No!

He moved to the barred door and shouted, “Deputy Larkin!”

He heard the scrape of a chair on the wooden floor, then footsteps walking the narrow hallway between office and cell block. Yellow-orange light flooded the room as Larkin’s long, tall silhouette stopped at the door, which he had shoved all the way open.

“You want something, Warner?” said the deputy

“I need a pencil and a piece of paper.”

“At this time of night? Go to sleep.”

The deputy slammed the door and stomped back to the office.

“No!” cried Warner. “Come back! Please! I need pencil and paper!”

When there was no response, he shook the cell door hard, making it rattle. “Larkin!” he shouted. “Come on! I need pencil and paper!”

Rapid footsteps thundered in the hallway, and the door burst open. Larkin charged in and stopped inches from the bars, his face heavy with anger. “It’s late, Warner! Why can’t you wait till morning? What are you gonna write tonight?”

“I … I want to write a note to my wife. She won’t come here to see me. That deputy U.S. Marshal could show up here in the morning, couldn’t he? Denver’s only a hundred miles away.”

Larkin thought on it. “Yeah. He could show up in the morning.”

“Then have a heart for my wife. At least let me leave a note for her. There are some things I’ve got to say to her. I did her wrong. Let me tell her I’m sorry.”

Larkin shrugged. “All right. One sheet of paper.”

“That’ll be enough.”

Less than a minute had passed when the deputy returned with pencil and paper. Haman reached through the bars to take them. “Is it all
right if I light my lantern so I can see what I’m writing?”

“Sure. Go ahead. But don’t stay up all night writing it. I’m going home now. I’ll get the note from you in the morning.”

“Fine. Thank you.”

Larkin halted at the door, letting the light from the office flow into the cell so Haman could get his lantern lit. “Thanks,” Haman said. Larkin nodded and closed the door.

Haman sat down on the wooden chair by the desk and picked up the pencil. He paused to think, running splayed fingers through his thick black hair.

His conscience struck him with the impact of a sledgehammer. “Blake,” he said, with a quiver in his voice, “you were nothing but good to me. You thought I was your friend. If you hadn’t believed that, you would no doubt have figured out who framed you. And you were such a good and true friend to me. There’s no way I could ever face you.”

He heard the outside door of the office close. Deputy Ted Larkin was gone.

More tears spilled down his cheeks as he said with a choked voice, “And then there’s Linda. Beautiful, sweet, innocent Linda. She tried to make a go of it, even when she was disappointed in the man she thought had written all those letters. Oh, Linda! I was angry at first that you had broken into my trunk. But I can’t blame you. You were seeing through me more all the time, yet trying to be a good wife. I understand why you had to find out what was wrong.

“Linda, I can’t blame you at all for the anger you feel toward me. I may very well have ruined your life. Blake sure won’t want you, now that you’ve been married to me.”

Linda couldn’t sleep. After a while she left the bed, put on her wool robe and slid her feet into slippers, then went to an overstuffed chair by the window and sat down.

She hugged herself and looked out at the cold night sky, alive with a
sliver of moon and millions of stars. She was still numb from all that had happened in the past twelve or thirteen hours. Sitting there, looking through the window at the dark night, she thought of the time she had stood at her bedroom window in Boston on that fateful night that was supposed to have been her wedding night. Again, the shimmering stars seemed aloof … distant.

Twice now Linda Forrest had been shaken to the very foundation of her being. As she looked through the window toward heaven, she said, “Lord, what is wrong with me? Am I not taking enough time to listen to You, and to know Your will? You said in Your Word, ‘They that wait upon the L
ORD
shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.’

“Please help me to wait upon You, and please renew my strength and lead me in the right paths. I want Your will in my life. And I want peace. You said You would give me perfect peace if I stayed my mind on You. Right now, I very much need that perfect peace.”

She sat in the chair and fixed her mind on the Man who had gone to Calvary’s cross, bore her sins, died for her, and rose from the grave. Soon God’s perfect peace warmed her heart and soul. She finally rose from the chair and slid back under the covers. Smiling in the darkness, she said, “Thank You, Lord. My heart is still scarred from all it has endured, but Your blessed peace is indeed my balm in Gilead!”

Before she dropped off to sleep, Linda thought of her parents, and how all of this was going to affect them. They were under the impression that her marriage was wonderful, and that she was happily married to the man whose letters had so captivated her.

“Lord,” she prayed, “they have to know. Please prepare their hearts so it won’t hurt them too much when they find out.”

She would write to them after she went to California and visited Blake. They would want to know the whole story.

She thought of the handsome man whose picture was in the
Sacramento Gazette.
What a horrible nightmare this had been for him.

“Lord,” she whispered, “let Blake be freed real soon. What a terrible
thing to be locked up when you know you’re innocent! Put his life back together for him, Lord, as only You can do.”

She fell asleep praying for Blake Barrett.

The next morning, Deputy Jay Bounds carried a breakfast tray down the narrow hallway toward the cell block. Deputy Larkin walked ahead of him, telling Bounds about Haman Warner’s request for pencil and paper late last night.

“Well, after what he did to that poor woman,” said Bounds, “I don’t know if a letter will be apology enough.”

“That’s for sure,” said Larkin, stopping at the door and turning the knob. He shoved the door open and stepped into the cell block, saying, “That pretty lady deserves a whole lot better than him, any—”

The breakfast tray bumped Larkin’s back as he froze in his tracks, staring at Warner’s cell.

“What’s the matter, Ted? What’re you stopping for—“Jay Bounds’s mouth fell open at the sight before him.

Larkin said something low and indistinguishable as they beheld the lifeless form of Haman Warner. He had wound his sheet tight and formed a noose and rope with it, then tied it to one of the rafters in the cell.

The chair that came with the small desk lay on its side beneath his dangling feet.