The Escape (41 page)

I bit my lip until I tasted blood.

I’d met Julian Willis when I’d come home to visit for the Christmas holiday, though if the truth be told, my visit had more to do with my horse, Serenity, than seeing my parents. At my mother’s insistence, I’d tagged along on their invitation to attend a party thrown by the Willises. I hadn’t minded going, once I met Julian. If his blond good looks and toned physique hadn’t won me over, his attentiveness and charm would have. After countless trips to Phoenix on his part and numerous weekends home on mine, the inevitable had happened: we’d fallen in love. He asked me to marry him, and I said yes.

Two weeks later, my father and Julian’s had negotiated a business arrangement to take effect after the wedding. The Willis family owned a huge frozen food conglomerate, and my father produced a line of breakfast cereals, where I managed the swing shift. With the help of the Willises, our business would expand to new markets my father had never before reached. I wasn’t sure what the Willises were getting out of the deal since our business was stable but not growing. Maybe they would simply have in-laws who were up to their standard of living.

Not that we’d ever been poor in my lifetime—thanks to my grandpa who’d worked himself into an early grave to create that first bowl of sugar-coated cereal. I still missed him terribly.

What am I going to do?

The awful thing was that a part of me wasn’t all that surprised. Julian was attractive, thoughtful, and a big flirt—a hit with ladies of every age. Half of the marriageable women in Flagstaff had chased him at one time or another, and before we’d met he’d had a bit of a reputation—one he’d assured me was complete fabrication.

I won’t marry a liar and a cheat.
Every woman deserved better than that. I wondered if I’d purposely been blind or if he’d been good at hiding things. Perhaps his betrayal had been a momentary lapse, but if so, what did that say about our future? If I couldn’t trust him now, how could I trust him for the next sixty or more years?

Maybe it’s all a mistake.
I latched onto the idea. Yet in the next minute I had to discard it. Sadie had been my best friend since kindergarten, and I’d trust her with my life. There was no way she would have spoken unless she was certain it was true. More likely she hadn’t told me everything she knew, not wanting to hurt me further.

A knock on the door startled me from my thoughts. “Who is it?”

“Your mother.”

“Come in.”

Elaine Crawford didn’t so much as enter a room as sweep into it. She was the epitome of grace and elegance. Even at eight o’clock on a Thursday morning, her hair was styled in an elaborate twist that was both attractive and left her beautiful neck bare.

“My, Sadie was in such a hurry this morning. I’ve never seen her run off so quickly. Did you two have a disagreement?”

I shook my head, unwilling to trust my voice.

My mother’s eyes didn’t leave my face. “What happened? We can’t be losing your maid of honor at this late date.” She smiled to show she was teasing, but there was a warning under the words.

“Sadie and I are fine.”

“Wonderful.” She walked to the closet and peered inside. “You’re going to look like a princess in this dress. Even without you in it, I could stare at it all day. Julian won’t be able to take his eyes off you.”

I gave her a weak smile. I did love the dress—a good thing, since it had taken so much time to find one we both agreed on. My mother wasn’t a woman to give up on any goal, and her goal had been to find a dress that not only would I agree to wear but that would make people sigh with admiration for years to come.

She rambled on, going over a last-minute menu change and reminding me we needed to pick up my father’s tuxedo. “I hope Lily’s man comes dressed appropriately,” she said, almost as an afterthought.

“Mario’s wearing a suit. Lily said he looks great.”

“I wish you hadn’t insisted on their coming.”

“Lily’s my sister. Of course she’ll be at my wedding.”

“You weren’t at hers.”

I didn’t say anything. Lily had done what she felt she had to, and I’d been happy for her.

“He will never amount to anything,” my mother added.

“And you think Julian will?” I couldn’t hold it back any longer, though I knew my mother was the worst person to confide in. She’d never been the kind of mother to bake cookies, to take her kids to the park, or sit and discuss school and boyfriends. As teenagers, Lily and I had agreed that she was like Mary Lennox’s mother in the
Secret Garden
—too occupied with her own life and goals to really care about her daughters. “Well, you’re wrong. I just found out he cheated on me. Maybe more than once.”

My mother didn’t gasp. She didn’t hug me and ask me how I knew. She showed no sympathy for me or anger toward my fiancé. She simply stared.

“I can’t marry him,” I said.

That brought her to life. “Of course you’ll marry him. It’s you he loves, no matter what you’ve heard.”

Something in her demeanor tipped me off. “Wait. What do you know about this?”

“I know that Julian is good for you. He’ll take care of you. His family’s business is doing well, and our contract with them will do wonders for our company as well. Your company someday.”

“You knew? All this time, you knew?”

It was one thing for my mother to disown a daughter because she’d married a man she didn’t approve of, but I couldn’t believe she’d want me to commit my life to a man who cheated before he was even married.

“How long has it been going on?” I asked. “Does everyone in town know?” I could imagine it now, people wagging their tongues and in the end sympathizing with Julian because he was oh-so-handsome and exciting, as if that excused everything.

Not in my book.

“The truth is,” my mother said, “marriage is little more than a business arrangement. Eventually you will realize that, and then you will understand this is a problem you can overcome. Besides, Julian will see the error of his ways. He’ll always come back to you.”

I hadn’t even known he’d left me. I shifted on the bed, searching for something to make her see reason. “Would you have married Dad if he’d been cheating?”

“I would and I did.”

I gaped at her. I knew my parents’ marriage wasn’t perfect. Growing up, Lily and I had often clung to each other at night as they’d argued loudly in their bedroom. I’d been glad to escape to college, though it had hurt me to leave Lily behind. But she was far more resilient and determined than I ever was, never wavering from her dreams of leaving and building her own life. It was she who’d fallen in love and eloped in the middle of the night two years ago when she was only eighteen. She’d waited until I came home for the Fourth of July and awakened me during the night. I’d never forget how happy she looked. “I love him so much!” She’d told me. “He’s like the air that I breathe. He’s a hard worker, and I know we’ll make it. You don’t have to worry about me anymore.”

They had made it, at first, while both were working, though they were in school full time. They’d even bought a big, old, run-down house to fix up. Then the scholarship money ran out, and now Lily was expecting and so sick she had to quit her job. Worse, she’d filled every vacant space in her house with teenage girls who had nowhere else to go except the street or back to the unloving homes from which Lily had rescued them. In a few years, Mario would finish school and be able to support them, but for now they survived on love, what little money I could spare, and the funds I begged for them from my parents.

Now thinking of how Lily’s face lit up every time she talked about Mario, or whenever he entered the room, and how careful he was of her, made me strong. I wanted that for myself.

“I can’t go through with the wedding,” I told my mother. “I’m sorry.”

“At least talk to Julian. He’ll make it right. I know it.”

I knew it, too, and that was exactly why I didn’t want to talk to him. When I was with Julian, he was all too persuasive. He should have been a televangelist, because he could convince anyone of just about anything. Since he’d been over sales in his father’s company, he bragged that the business had doubled in profits.

My mother drew herself to her full height. “Think of the caterer. All our friends coming from out of town. I swear if you do this, you’ll be making the biggest mistake of your life.”

“The mistake would be marrying a man who doesn’t love me!” Tears were coming, despite my effort to stop them.

“He does love you. Every bit as much as you love him. Please, Tessa, you must talk to Julian.”

Would it be too much to ask to have her on my side for once?

I jumped to my feet and walked past her. “I’m going to see Serenity. Then I’m e-mailing Julian to tell him everything’s off.”

“What about Lily? She’ll lose her house without our help.”

I froze at the door. “What?” I turned, feeling stupid and slow.

“You heard me.” My mother lifted her chin, and not for the first time did I notice her beauty. Lily took after her, with her blond hair, even-toned skin, and swan-like neck. My hair was altogether something else, looking as though someone had upended a diluted bucket of orange paint on my head. Strawberry blond, they called it, though that was a big stretch of the word strawberry. A genetic gift from my grandmother, I’d been told. I didn’t remember her myself, but when my grandfather had been alive, he’d touched the splotchy freckles that nearly covered all my face, and told me I looked exactly like her. I’d heard the love in his voice, and it was the only time I’d really felt beautiful.

“I’ll give her my money,” I said without thinking.

“You forget that if you aren’t married, you won’t have your trust fund. Not until five more years. And your father has already filled your place at the factory. Lily’s house can’t wait five years, which means all her girls are going to end up in the street.”

She was talking about the trust fund my grandfather had set up—a half million dollars up front at age twenty-five if we were married or thirty if we weren’t, and monthly payments of one thousand dollars thereafter. Lily was married, but too young at twenty to receive anything. Being twenty-five, I qualified, and I’d planned to lend Lily my money to buy her house outright after my wedding. Now it looked as though she’d have to wait five more years.

I stared at my mother, fury racing through my body. “Are you saying you won’t help Lily anymore if I don’t get married? I don’t believe this! Being angry at her because of Mario is one thing, but letting her lose her house because you’re upset with me is—” I couldn’t think of a word bad enough, not one I would say in my mother’s presence, so I quit speaking.

My mother’s eyes narrowed, and when she spoke her voice was as brittle as ice. “It’s not for you to judge my relationship with your sister, but what I’m saying is that we’re not in a position to help Lily further—that’s why we’re pushing for this merger. With the economy the way it is, you are the only one who can save your sister.”

“Then I’ll drive to Vegas and marry the first man I meet!”

She laughed. “Oh, Tessa. Stop this. You love Julian. Go talk to him. There’s been a mistake, that’s all. Go ride Serenity, or take a walk or whatever you need to do, and then get this taken care of. All the relatives will be here tonight. All your friends from Phoenix.” She swept past me. “Or you can let Lily finally see what a big mistake she made marrying that boy.”

She was gone before I could protest. Before I could remind her about the baby, who would be her grandchild, regardless of who his father was. Neither Lily nor I had ever discovered why our parents hated Mario so much, but it seemed to go much deeper than his race or his family’s blue-collar status in society. I didn’t understand their objection. Mario came from good, hard-working parents, who’d taught him the meaning of love. He was fun and intelligent, and he loved Lily more than anything. That he was handsome was simply an added bonus. He was also good with the girls she fostered, helping them realize how special they each were by the courtesy he extended them. The example he was of an adoring husband changed the way many of them thought about love.

If I couldn’t help Lily, and my parents couldn’t or wouldn’t, my little sister would lose everything she’d been working for. Except Mario, of course. And the baby.

I went out to see Serenity, putting a few sugar cubes in my pocket as I always did without thinking about it. I was on autopilot. What was I going to do? I couldn’t marry Julian, not if what Sadie said was true, but neither could I leave Lily without help. I’d been mothering her since I was five and she so tiny that all she could do was suck at the bottle the short-term nanny taught me to give her. After the nanny left, I was more a mother to her than our own mother.

Serenity was out in the far pasture near the copse of trees that marked the border of our three-acre plot, almost as though she was trying to get as far away from the house as I was. When she saw me, she trotted over with a soft whinny, her brown coat glistening in the morning sunlight. She was beautiful, grace incarnate, and for a strange instant, she reminded me of my mother.

She put her face close to mine in greeting. I could feel the heat of her breath and the smell of freshly chewed grass. “I know what you want.” I gave her a cube of sugar, which she ate greedily, her soft brown eyes begging for more. I gave her another before walking toward the trees. She hesitated a moment, as if confused about why I didn’t head for the barn to get the tack so we could go for a ride, but I didn’t feel like riding now. I felt like collapsing into a ball and crying my eyes out.

I wanted a mother to turn to for guidance.

Yeah, right.

There was a gate at the end of the pasture, which bordered a wide path on the other side of the fence line. The city had built the path before selling the land beyond it to a developer, who had promptly put up a myriad of tract houses that had infuriated my mother and the other neighbors. Thus the thick row of fast-growing trees that almost hid the abomination from our sight.

I, on the other hand, had been the one to put in the gate. I loved riding Serenity on the path that extended for several miles. I liked seeing mothers jogging behind strollers, children on bicycles, runners stopping for breath after their runs.