A Promise Kept (23 page)

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, Alexander? 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?

I have decided, of all the things I am told to do as a Christian, to pray, “Thy will be done” is the most difficult. How do I pray it and mean it when I know God’s will may be for me to go through more trials, through more fire? I do not like the fire.

I went to see Liza and little Mark Thomas today. Holding the baby in my arms, I felt as if something died inside of me along with the baby I lost. Mark Thomas is so adorable. Even more so at four weeks old than on the day of his birth a month ago. Would his cousin have looked like him? Would they have been the best of friends? I cannot know.

Liza no longer seems like my little sister. She used to be such a flirt, a flibbertigibbet, her head full of boys, boys, boys. Now, at twenty, there is a maturity in her I wondered if I would ever see. Serene. That is the word I would use to describe her. I used to watch out for Liza. Now I feel her trying to watch out for me. But what can she do? I must find the courage within to face the world as it is. I must learn to be a good wife to Alexander, no matter what tomorrow brings. I must learn to be a faithful follower of Jesus, forgiving those who hurt me and not holding on so tightly to those things I want or think I deserve.

This morning I read this about Abraham in the fourth chapter of Romans: “And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb: He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.”

It occurred to me Abraham saw himself, saw his wife, as they really were and still believed God would keep His promise. I cannot pretend I am different than I am. I cannot pretend my life is different than it is. I must see the truth and trust God in the midst of it. Despite it.

Help me, Father, to do that. Amen.

Allison closed the journal. Something had shifted in her chest as she read the last of the entry. It was as if the truth slapped her on the forehead and shouted, “Pay attention!” How often had she pretended her life was well and rosy rather than accept reality and deal with it? How often had she failed to trust God when things were at their bleakest, as if He hadn’t been right there with her?

Too often.

Aunt Emma had been half Allison’s age when she wrote those words, but she’d been wiser, even then.

But the shift inside Allison wasn’t about her aunt. Not really. It wasn’t about wisdom or ignorance, youth or maturity. She sensed God teaching her something through it. Or at least He was using the diaries to get her attention. She closed her eyes, straining to hear Him, wanting to understand completely, not satisfied with bits and pieces of understanding.

The walk of a Christian, Allison had learned, was just that. A walk. A conscious action. Setting her face in a certain direction and moving forward with resolve. If—when—she stopped moving forward, she didn’t stand still. She went backward, like someone facing the wrong way on a conveyor belt.

Which am I doing? Moving forward or sliding backward? Am I believing You, God, for the future
?

No answers came, and a short while later Allison drifted off to sleep.

Emma

1932

It was a gray, drizzling afternoon in March when Liza, large with child, waddled into the bedroom and found Emma clutching her wedding photo to her chest and weeping. “That’s enough, Emma,” she said sternly. “Enough.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Yes, you can. Get off of that bed. Wash your face and fix your hair. Change your clothes. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You aren’t the first woman to be divorced, and divorce isn’t the unforgivable sin. Get up and go for a walk. Look at the world. Count your blessings.”

“It’s raining out.”

“A bit of rain won’t hurt you.”

Liza didn’t understand. Liza had everything she’d ever wanted. A husband who loved her. A healthy son and another baby soon to be born. Although not as rich as they once were, the Hendricks family wasn’t poor and destitute as so many were in these troubled times. As Emma was. Liza had a beautiful home and plenty of food on the table and could still afford to keep a couple of servants. Emma had nothing but emptiness and loneliness. It shamed her, this blanket of self-pity she wore like a cloak, but she couldn’t seem to crawl out from under it. She’d tried but she couldn’t. Her thoughts returned again and again to her life with Alexander, to what they might have had, to
actions she might have taken to make a difference before everything went wrong.