Sunsets (5 page)

“I came home,” Chet said. “Shocked my mother so, an ambulance came and carted her off to the hospital.”

“Your poor mother!” Alissa said. “After everyone thought you were dead.”

“Everyone but Rosie. She knew I was still alive.”

“But you still married Joe? How did you know Chet was alive?”

“Here,” Rosie said, patting her heart. Her lips bore their red flame well today. “I knew his soul hadn’t left this earth. I knew he was still alive. But there was nothing I could do. The wedding was set, and I had agreed to marry Joe.” She shook her head. “Oh, the things we do when we’re young and foolish.”

Don’t I know
.

“I managed to postpone the wedding for a month,” Rosie continued. “I convinced Joe we needed to have everything in order. Every day I prayed and watched out the window, waiting for Chet to walk up that pathway to my front door. Finally, I couldn’t stall any longer. The night before our wedding I went into my parents’ room and sat on their bed and told them everything. How Chet and I were promised to each other, how I knew he wasn’t dead. I told them I couldn’t marry Joe. I had to wait for Chet to come home.”

“What did your parents do?”

Chet shook his head. “She doesn’t like to talk about it. But I’ll tell you. Her father struck her. Right across the mouth. Told her never to speak such foolishness again. She would marry Joe Elderidge, and that was that.”

“How awful,” Alissa said. She couldn’t imagine anyone hitting this delicate-boned woman with the flame red lips. Her face was made to be kissed, not slapped.

“Joe was nearly the only man in town available for marriage,” Rosie explained. “He was partially deaf in his left ear, so the army issued him a 4-F classification, and he stayed home while all the other boys were shipped off. I knew I should be grateful for the chance to marry. Many of my girlfriends were
destined to become spinsters.”

The phone rang, but Alissa ignored it, hoping Cheri or Renée would see how involved she was. “So you married Joe,” Alissa said, prodding. “And then Chet came home. What happened when you saw him?”

“I didn’t see him. My mother made sure of that. The week after Joe and I were married, she and Joe’s mother arranged for us to move to Houston.”

“Why? Did they think Chet was alive, too?”

“I don’t think so. I think they wanted to teach Joe and me how to get close to each other. As long as we were in Des Moines we both had lots of family and friends. In Houston we only had each other.”

“Each other and the bottle,” Chet muttered, shaking his head.

“Joe drank,” Rosie explained.

She didn’t need to say any more. Alissa’s mother had died of alcohol poisoning after many years of struggling to kick the addiction. Because of that Alissa had never gotten drunk, even during her wildest, most rebellious years. She had sipped wine coolers and shared bottles of beer with boyfriends, but she never had let herself get drunk. She knew what it was like to live with an alcoholic, and her admiration for Rosie swelled to the point she wanted to reach across the desk and take this sweet woman in her arms and hug her close.

“I’m sorry,” Alissa whispered.

Rosie looked down, then lifted her cheerful, hope-filled face back up. “You can imagine what happened the day Chet actually showed up! He shocked his mother and then went to my house and nearly sent my mother to the hospital with a fainting spell as well. But my mother was strong.”

“Strong!” Chet said, making a face. “The woman was a tyrant! She wouldn’t let me in the house and cast me out as if
I were a demon returned to haunt her. All she would tell me was that Rosie didn’t love me. Rosie loved Joe, and they had left town as soon as they married. The woman threatened my life if I ever tried to contact her daughter.”

“But you did, didn’t you?”

“Not right away. It was all pretty overwhelming to me, as you can imagine. I’d lie awake at night doubting that Rosie had ever loved me. I almost convinced myself that as soon as I’d left, she had taken an interest in Joe.” Chet looked at his halo-haired fiancée, and a tender smile warmed his face. “Then I got the letter.”

“Excuse me,” Renée said, stepping up behind Alissa. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but it’s a little after five, and I wondered if you needed some more time.” Renée always wanted to be the last one to leave and lock up. It was obvious she was ready to go now.

“I didn’t realize it was that late. We haven’t even gone over the itinerary yet,” Alissa said, hunting for their file.

“We need to be on our way, too,” Chet said.

“Why don’t I take two minutes to go over this with you,” Alissa said. “And then we can finalize everything after you’ve had a chance to study the plans more carefully.” Gathering her thoughts, she opened the folder and tried to find her voice. Her mind was filled with questions.
Who sent the letter? What did it say? Did Chet go to Houston in search of Rosie?

She went over the departure times with them, smiling at Chet’s relief that their flight didn’t leave until late morning. “I’m not much of a morning person anymore,” he commented.

“Now,” Alissa continued, “I have you flying out of LAX on the morning of the sixteenth. I thought since the wedding was on the fifteenth you might like to stay at one of the hotels near the airport your first night and then get a fresh start in the morning.”

She opened the hotel brochure for them, pointing out the pictures of the bridal suite. “It’s a lovely room. You’ll be treated to complimentary champagne, chocolates, breakfast in bed the next morning, and the room has a hot tub.”

Rosie appeared to blush. “Sounds lovely,” she said. “What kind of a room did you find for us in Venice?”

A smile spread across Alissa’s face. “Just wait until you see this.” She opened the next brochure in their file and with great pleasure described the luxury hotel she had found for them near the romantic Piazza San Marco.

This is why I love being a travel agent
, she thought as she watched the couple’s eyes shine in anticipation of their honeymoon travels.

A
lissa attacked the chore of packing up her condo with vigor. She still had to meet with Shelly on Monday before the final decision was made, but it all felt so right. Certainly everything would fall into place.

By Saturday afternoon she was in the thick of it, going through her bedroom like a twister, leaving nothing in her path that could be wrapped and boxed. She used to joke about how she never had to spring clean because she always moved before the task became necessary.

Digging through the back of her closet, Alissa pulled out four boxes that were still wrapped with packing tape from her last move. Or maybe it was from the move before that. Hard to tell.

Why am I hauling this stuff around if I don’t even know what’s in it? I probably won’t miss it
.

She plopped down on her bedroom floor and tore open the boxes. They were full of clothes—two sizes smaller than
what she wore now. Alissa remembered packing them and telling herself she would fit in them again. Now, even if she lost that much weight, the outfits were so different from her current style, she probably wouldn’t wear them.

As she pulled out a few of the pieces, each item seemed to release a picture in Alissa’s mind. Each snapshot was of events that had happened when she had worn that outfit. The navy blue mix and match pieces she had taken on her trip to Japan. The white shirt she had worn for seventy-two hours straight when her grandmother went into the hospital.

Then came a neatly folded dress, short and black. She had chosen that dress for the first time she had met Thomas at Chang’s. Alissa sniffed at the bodice. Did she imagine it, or did it smell like Chinese food? What a wicked night that was. She let the dress crumble into a mound in her lap. Then she allowed her memory access to the places in her mind and heart she had kept locked for two years. Every thought and memory of Thomas Avery tumbled over her with frightening clarity.

They had met at church. It was a mutual attraction. He was on the worship team, and she spotted him her first week there. She was living in Phoenix at the time. A large travel company had opened a corporate office and had transferred her from the agency where she worked in Atlanta. The first thing she did after moving into her apartment was find a “rockin” church. That was her style at the time—contemporary services, seeker friendly, lots of people, and a platform for her to stand on and sing out her heart.

She found the perfect church, and tall, gorgeous Thomas Avery was the perfect man. There was only one problem. He was married.

Alissa was a different person then. She was so on fire for Jesus. And she was slim and energetic with a healthy salary to
support her clothes habit. Never did she wear the same outfit twice on Sunday mornings. Lots of single men were interested in her. But she was used to that. None of them intrigued her the way Thomas did.

The first time she shook Thomas’s hand and looked into his strong face was right after she had given her testimony at a Sunday evening service. She had been attending for almost two months and had shared about her past with one of the women in the singles group. The next day the pastor had called her at work and asked if she would be willing to share on Sunday night. He also said he had heard she liked to sing and would she grace them with a song after her testimony. Of course she saw it as a high honor and went out that afternoon to buy an appropriate outfit.

She practiced in front of the mirror all week. By Sunday night her words were honed.

“I led a rebellious life as a teenager. My father died when I was sixteen, and my mother was an alcoholic.”

Alissa went into detail about the party scene she became immersed in and the different guys she was involved with. “I remember one time we were staying at Newport Beach for summer vacation, and my mother was so drunk she threw a vodka bottle at me. I was used to that from her. What I remember the most wasn’t being upset with her but being mad at myself because I’d forgotten to take my birth control pills, and my date was waiting for me. He drove off without me, and I broke down and cried all over this girl I hardly knew. She was so innocent and sweet, and I felt so used up. I wished I could be like her.”

After more details of the wretchedness of her life, she told how she had been with one guy who died in a bodysurfing accident while he was stoned. She hadn’t really cared.

“Everything inside me was dead. Then I found out I was pregnant with his child. It seemed impossible that something could be alive inside me when I was so sure I was dead.”

She told of her difficult decision not to have an abortion, and then how she had given up the baby girl for adoption. There wasn’t a dry eye in the congregation.

“Then Christy, the girl I cried all over that one night, shared with me how to become a Christian, and I got saved.”

A roar of applause had filled the church, the pastor had given her a warm handshake, and Thomas had gazed at her from the front row with piercing eyes. Alissa had felt higher than a bird.

Then, like a bird, she sang her heart out in a praise song she had learned at her church in Atlanta. She tried not to stare at Thomas as she sang. He cried through the whole song. The tears only made his strong face more desirable.

When he stepped forward after the service to shake her hand, his rumbling voice said, “I wrote that song.”

They stood in front of the church talking until only four other people were left in the building. Then he walked her to her car and stood there another hour, opening up his heart to her.

Thomas had graduated from a Christian college as a music major and wanted to become a worship leader at a church. But he was hindered by his wife refusing to attend church. They had married his second year at college and both had worked hard to make it through. After college he was hired as a music pastor in Idaho. They were married only two years when his wife turned against him. He didn’t know why. He couldn’t understand.

As they stood in the parking lot, he told her how hard the last eight years of his marriage had been. He had lost his position at the church in Idaho and had moved to Phoenix when
his brother offered him a job. After ten years in his miserable marriage, he was about to give up everything until hearing her testimony and song. Maybe he should try writing more songs.

Even though it felt a little awkward for this married man to be so open with her, Alissa’s heart went out to him. All those years in a loveless marriage. All his musical talent going to waste.

He called her at work two days later saying he had written a song and would she be willing to meet him that night at Chang’s Chinese Restaurant to help him with one part he just couldn’t get right.

Alissa lifted the black dress and sniffed for the scent of Chinese food again. Was it her imagination? No, the essence of sweet and sour sauce was definitely still there. In her flood of memories there was only the sour. All the sweetness she had felt when she drove to meet him that night was long gone.

Perhaps she had been too trusting. Or perhaps she knew exactly what was happening and didn’t have the maturity to resist this older man. Whatever the problem, the trap set for Alissa had been a wide one, and she had fallen in without hesitancy.