Writing Free

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Chapter Twenty

     The rambling ranch house was empty with Tank in the Pacific somewhere and Vic on his way to Europe. Dutch had hired a crew up from Mexico to help him, and one had brought his family. I loved watching the children play in the back yard, and Mrs. Sanchez sometimes brought fresh tortillas to share with us. Miss Grace urged me to slather them with butter and eat my fill.

     In time, I began to make myself useful in the kitchen and also at Miss Grace’s treadle sewing machine where I made curtains for Mrs. Sanchez and even some clothes for her two little girls, Carmen and Evita. On nice afternoons, I’d sit on the back porch and read aloud to them, and they were picking up English in a hurry. Since they were Mexican citizens, they couldn’t get ration stamps to use in town, and between Miss Grace and me, everyone stayed well-fed and clothed.

     After six weeks, as Miss Grace observed, I was “plumping up nicely”. The big black cloud was still around, but I didn’t feel as if I were always suffocating. Edward and Valerie came over from San Angelo every other weekend, and I always felt happier when they were there.

     Then Peggy turned up one weekend with the news that Miss Brewer had resigned because her sister in Dallas was in poor health and needed her. “I told Mr. Nunnally you minored in English lit and had your teaching certificate. He’d like to talk to you.”

     “She can’t work!” Francie said.

     “Shut up, Francie,” I snapped.

     Miss Grace turned around from the wood stove where she was taking out loaves of bread. “That’s enough, girls.”

     Francie glared at me, and I glared back. “All the English classes or just senior English?” I asked Peggy.

     “That’s the good part. He’d already had to hire an English teacher for the lower classes, so this is only the seniors. I think they’re thirty-five of them this year.”

     “All in one class?” I was beginning to get interested.

     “I don’t know, but you could drive in with me on Monday and talk to Mr. Nunnally.”

     “I’d have to live in town,” I said. “And I’d need a car, but that won’t be a problem. Edward will be here tomorrow. I’ll talk to him about it.”

     I thought Peggy’s smile resembled a cat licking the cream off its whiskers. “Sounds like you’ve already made up your mind.”

     Miss Grace came to stand behind me and put her hands on my shoulders. “We’d miss you around here, Marian, but you have to decide what you want to do. We’re always here for you.”

     “She can’t…” Francie said again.

     “I swear to God, Francie,” I screeched, “if you say one more word about what I can’t do, I’ll smack you!”

     Miss Grace’s fingers dug into my shoulders just a bit. “You’re not old for lye soap, Marian, and I have a ready supply.” Her tone was light, but I knew she was serious. I’d heard her threaten mouth-washings before and wondered if she’d ever done it to Tank or Vic.

     “Sorry,” I mumbled.

     “I need you to slice the bread as soon as it’s cool,” she said. “We’ll talk more about this when Dutch comes in for supper.”

     Peggy and I walked up to the parlor. “Don’t mind Francie,” she said. “Since Tank’s been sent overseas, and not knowing anything about   her mother, she stays upset.”

     “Ever the peacemaker,” I said. “Vic’s gone, and you don’t act that way.”

     “Well.”

     “I’d have to move to town,” I repeated.

     She licked more cream off her whiskers. “I live in the boarding house next door to the old Bates place. Remember it?”

     “Vaguely.”

     “Both the Bates have been gone awhile, but their daughter doesn’t want to sell the house. She grew up there.”

     “I’d burn mine down,” I muttered.

     “Oh, Peaches.”

     “And the Krolls in it. Sorry. Go on.”

     “Well, I ran into her—Wanda--the other day, and she told me that she was moving to San Angelo and wanted to rent the place out.”

     “It’s huge! We could put half the high school in it and…”

     “Just listen. She said she’d thought about moving all the personal stuff upstairs and closing that off. Downstairs, there’s the kitchen, a big bathroom, and an extra-wide entrance hall with the living room on one side and the dining room on the other. She said she just wanted the place taken care of, so she’d rent it cheap to anyone she could trust. Why couldn’t we rent it together? The entrance hall could be our living room, and we’d each have a private bedroom.”

     Could I live every day with Peggy and Rosie? My baby girl I’d had no choice except to give up? How could I be part of her life everyday and not regret what I’d done?

     “Think about it, Peaches. Talk it over with Edward and Valerie. Come into town with me on Monday and talk to Mr. Nunnally, and then we’ll take a look at the Bates place and see if it would work for us.”

     I didn’t trust myself to speak, but I nodded. It wouldn’t hurt to talk...to look...I had a choice about everything. I could always say no.

     Edward asked first if I felt physically able to work, and then he gave his wholehearted approval to the plan. Valerie said she wanted to stay over to see the Bates place and volunteered to help decorate. “I can take the bus to San Angelo on Tuesday,” she told Edward. “I’ll spend Monday night here at the ranch if Miss Grace will have me.”

     “You’re more than welcome,” Miss Grace assured her. We all knew Valerie wouldn’t stay with the Krolls without Edward around.

     Edward’s sweet smile filled my heart as he gazed at Valerie with his accustomed adoration. “Just the thing,” he said. “Stay longer if you need to. I’ll try not to waste away without you.”

     Mr. Nunnally couldn’t put a contract in front of me fast enough. Then he showed me the classroom where Miss Brewer was still holding forth. Between classes, she stepped into the hall to speak to me. “I know I can’t do as good a job as you, Miss Brewer,” I said, feeling suddenly like a fourteen-year-old again, “but I’ll do my best.”

     She placed a firm hand on my arm. “You always had a particular grasp of English literature. I always enjoyed your incite into Shakespeare particularly. I’m sure you’ll do a fine job. Just remember that excellence comes with experience. I was a new teacher once, too, and now, after forty-five years, I’m still trying to achieve that final goal.”

     Buoyed by her confidence and somehow comforted by the familiar school smells of chalk and old books, I followed Mr. Nunnally back to the office where Valerie was waiting for me. “Edward took the bus so we could have a car. He’ll get a ride home, and of course, we have the second car.”

     Wanda Bates met us at her parents home. “Peggy called me this morning to tell me what you were thinking about. I can’t tell you how relieved I’d feel to have the two of you here.”

     “Would you be open to fresh paint?” Valerie asked her. “Perhaps some new drapes?”

     “The whole house needs painting inside and out. Do whatever you want to do.” I thought she was going to cry with joy.

     Peggy didn’t get off until two, but Wanda came back to let her walk through then. I’d brought my checkbook—thankfully I’d left my account in Washington instead of moving it to Austin, so Peggy would never know—and offered to give Wanda a check for the first month’s rent and a deposit.”

     “No deposit,” she said. “Just fix it up any way you want to, and I’ll be happy.”

     When Peggy and I moved in two weeks later, I hardly recognized the place. Valerie had seen to a thorough cleaning, arranged for new linoleum in the kitchen and bathroom, had all the first floor rooms painted with colors we’d chosen, and helped us choose furniture from Mr. Birnbaum’s secondhand store. She insisted on paying for everything. “A gift from Edward and me, Marian dear. We’re so happy you’re staying close by.”

     Wanda Bates came by to see what we’d done burst into tears. “It’s beautiful! Mother was sick for so long, and Papa just didn’t have the money to take care of her and keep up the house, too. I helped where I could, but…”

     Peggy put her arms around her. “Thank you for trusting us with your home,” she said.

     Dutch had had the furnace checked out and brought his crew in to hang a thick tarp across the stairs to keep the warm air from going up to the unused second floor. Valerie grimaced at the army-green color, then laughed and admitted it was necessary if not decorative.

     Peggy’s former landlady agreed to continue caring for Rosie, and I volunteered—knowing I shouldn’t—to pick her up after school on days Peggy had to stay late at the hospital. I didn’t know anything about babies but reasoned I could learn. Lifting her would be a problem, but Dutch brought down an old-fashioned pram from the attic and cleaned it up. It would suffice for the time being.

     I’d never expected to like teaching, but I found it fascinating. The seniors were wonderful. I didn’t even mind correcting their essays. After two years of Miss Brewer, they knew how to write. I had four classes and helped out in the library the last two periods of the afternoon. A librarian had eluded a small town, so Mr. Nunnally paid me extra for taking charge there, too.

And I hadn’t counted on my living arrangements working out so well either. At night, Peggy and I drank cocoa in companionable silence while she wrote to Vic, and I corrected papers and planned for my next day’s classes, and Rosie snored peacefully in the big laundry basket on the floor.

     Truth to tell, I’d jumped at the chance to retrieve her from her sitter at four o’clock and have her all to myself until Peggy came home. Peggy even commented that I’d gotten to be a real pro at changing diapers and warming bottles. “It has to be done,” I’d said nonchalantly. I tried to ignore Rosie after Peggy got home, but it wasn’t easy.

     Sometimes I felt guilty about being there. I’d given my baby away, and now I was part of her life in a way I’d never expected. After the war, of course, Peggy and Vic would go back to Santa Fe, and that would be the end of that. The thought was both comforting and frightening.

     The one thing I didn’t do was go to the ranch most weekends. I liked being by myself. When Peggy had hesitated to leave me alone, I said, “Look, Peggy, I told you I wasn’t drinking, and I’m not. You know I’m sober as a judge at night, and I’m not hung over in the mornings either. I just like some time to do my own thing, and I’m not about to go to church with the rest of you on Sundays.”

      “I understand that,” she said. “I know it isn’t easy living in the same town as. . .”

     “Besides, Sue Friedman and I get together on Sundays. Milt’s parents keep Rebecca, and we go to a movie or just visit. She misses Milt as much as you miss Vic. Did you know she’s looking after Anna Lee’s grandmother?”

     “Yes. Anna Lee asked if she’d check on her occasionally.”

     “She does more than that. She takes her to the market and cleans her house.”

     “That sounds like Sue. I remember she came to see me in the hospital when she finished nursing school over in San Angelo. Mrs. Friedman was giving a big party for her, and she promised to bring me some cake. Milt was engaged to Sue by then, and Anna Lee laughed and said he'd finally found a good Jewish girl." Peggy's face softened. "All the time she ran around with Milt in high school, she knew it wasn't going anywhere. She said she even promised Mrs. Friedman it wouldn't. Then she laughed and said she'd also told Mrs. Friedman that when Milt found a good Jewish girl, she'd have to put her stamp of approval on her!"

     Anna Lee had been Danford’s first loss when the Japanese overran Corregidor. We’d heard that all the prisoners were interned in camps somewhere, but the word was that their living conditions were terrible. Still, we had to hope.

     Peggy bought her a tiny rocking chair at Birnbaum’s. I went to San Angelo the weekend before and came back with a package from Cox-Rushing-Greer.

     “It’s from Edward and Valerie, too,” I said. The blue velvet dress fit perfectly, and there were even some darker blue satin ribbons to tie in Rosie’s soft curls which were losing their reddish tinge and becoming more like spun gold. We took a picture of her all dressed up and sitting in the rocking chair. “You’re Daddy’s little princess,” Peggy cooed shamelessly as Francie snapped another picture. “Give Auntie Peaches big sugar for the pretty dress.”

     Rosie came to me willingly. We’d formed a bond, and I felt guilty about it—but not enough to break it. “She looks more like a Victoria in that dress,” I said, regretting my words instantly.

     “She does at that,” Peggy said, “but she’s just our little Rosie-girl.”

     Two weeks later, Harry Friedman was killed in the Pacific, and the war became frighteningly real to us. I went to see Mrs. Friedman whom I’d gotten to know better when she visited Peggy in the hospital while I was sitting with her. She was surprisingly resolute, but I knew she was thinking that Milt was still in harm’s way.

     “Milt’s devastated about Harry,” Sue told me. “They were so close.”

     I thought of Edward, thankful he’d been turned down for service. “I can’t imagine,” I said. And I couldn’t. Edward was all I had in the world. There was Valerie, of course, and I adored her, but she didn’t really belong to me the way Edward did.

     We had all thought—naively but desperately—that the war would be over in a matter of months. A year at most. But it went on, and so did we, not always willingly.

Chapter Nineteen

     Two weeks later, I went home from the hospital with Janey. Once I was out of bed, she told me she was going back to Richmond. “Why, Janey?” I asked, suddenly terrified of being left alone. “I still need you!”

     “No’m, you don’t,” she said. “You need to decide what you’re going to do now, and long as I’m here, you won’t.”

She was right about that. “I don’t know what to do,” I said pitifully, hoping to play on her sympathy. “I just don’t know.”

     “Well, honeychild, you better make up you mind.”

     The next afternoon, when she went to buy groceries and get a train schedule, I made it up. Unearthing the remaining sleeping pills and pain pills I’d collected from various doctors in Washington, I swallowed them all with the bottle of Scotch I’d been reluctant to throw out when I packed up in January. Unfortunately, a thunderstorm came up, and Janey came home early.

     When I woke up, I realized that I was back in the hospital. “Can you hear me, Marian?” It was Dr. Scully.

     My mouth felt full of cotton, but I managed to mumble something.

     “I should’ve seen this coming,” he said kindly. “Most women go through some emotional upheaval after delivery, and yours was worse under the circumstances.”

     I wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t.

     “Mrs. Roberts has been here all night. I sent her home to get some rest. We came close to losing you.”

     I gathered all my strength. “Why didn’t you just let me die?”

     “You don’t mean that.”

     “I didn’t take those pills for nothing.”

     “Now, now,” he said. I realized he meant to be kind, but he sounded patronizing, and I hated him for it.

     “Just leave me the hell alone!” I said and turned my face to the wall.

     When Janey came back the next morning, she told me exactly what she thought of me, and I cringed at her words. “Now, Missy, I’m going home. I’ve done all I can do for you, and I ain’t staying ‘round to wet-nurse you no more! I’m ‘shamed of you! I hope you’re ‘shamed of yourself!”

     I wasn’t ashamed, just furious because I’d been thwarted a second time. “If you’ll go home and get my checkbook, I’ll pay you what I owe you,” I said coldly.

     “I didn’t do this for no pay!” she said just as coldly. “You paid my train ticket. That’s fair, and I had a room and plenty to eat. Now I’m going. You do this again, when nobody be ‘round to stop you, you might get what you want!” She turned her back on me and walked to the door. She was halfway out when she stopped. “You told me when you was sick before that you was scared to die. I’d be scared to die that way, too. You done a good thing when you give that baby girl away to your friends. Now you better do another good thing for yourself.”

     And she was gone.

    The next morning when Dr. Scully made rounds, I asked him to help me get to the nurse’s station where I could use the phone. Then I called Miss Grace and told her I was coming home.

     Dutch came alone to meet the evening train that brought me back to Danford. He didn’t comment on how I looked, but I knew he saw it, which was exactly why I hadn’t told Edward and Valerie I was coming. I needed some time before I faced them. “Thank you for meeting me,” I said.

     “We’re all glad you’re home, gal. Gracie’s cooking up a feast with all your favorites, and Peggy and the little’un came out for the weekend. They’ve been staying in town because Doc needs her at the hospital.” He put my single suitcase in the back of the truck and helped me in. “I checked on your trunks. They’ll call us when they come, probably a couple of days.”

     I stumbled a little as they started for the steps. Just as I reached the porch, the door flew open, and Francie ran out. “Oh, Peaches, I’m so glad you’re home!” She threw her arms around me tightly. “We’ve missed you so much!”

    I stiffened and pulled away “I need to sit down.”

    Francie took my arm. “I expect it was a long trip.”

    Inside, Miss Grace appeared. “Welcome home, Marian dear,” she said, coming to embrace me..

    “Thank you, Miss Grace.”

    “Marian’s tired,” Dutch said. “Supper ready?”

     “Come on in the kitchen, Marian. Francie, call Peggy.”

   I sat down at the table and looked around. At one end of the table, in identical wooden highchairs, sat two tow-headed toddlers who were the image of Tank. “This is Will,” Francie said proudly, dropping a kiss on the top of his head, "and this is Ruthie. Aren’t they gorgeous? And wait ‘til you see Rosie!”

     I turned my face away. “They’re very nice.”

     “Very nice?” Francie bridled, “They’re. . .”

     Grace touched her arm. “Francie.”

     Francie frowned. “What?”

     Grace shook her head.

    “Peaches! Oh, Peaches, I’m so glad to see you!” Peggy burst into the kitchen, handed Rosie to Francie, and leaned down to hug me. “I’ve missed you so much!”

     “This is Rosie,” Francie said carefully. “She’s ten weeks old tomorrow.”

     I couldn’t look at the baby. “She’s nice. I’ve missed you, too, Krolik.”

     “You can’t imagine what she’s meant to me,” Peggy said, taking possession of her baby again.

     “Let’s eat,” Dutch interrupted. “I reckon Marian would like to go on upstairs.”

     After supper, I soaked in the tub until Peggy knocked on the door and said I was going to catch shrivel like a prune. “Need some help in there?”

     “No.” I struggled to pull myself up with the bars that Dutch had installed and made it to the edge of the tub and covered myself with a towel. “I’m decent.”

     “Dutch thought the bars were a good idea,” Peggy said as she dried my back and slipped my gown over my head. “I have a shower at my place. It’s just a room in a boarding house, but Mrs. Cowan, the woman who owns it, keeps Rosie while I work. She’s spoiling her rotten, too!”

     In the bedroom she helped me take off my brace again and lifted my legs onto the bed. “What can I get you?”

     “Nothing.”

     “I’ll leave both our doors open so you can call me during the night if. . .”

     “I’m all right.”

     Peggy bent to kiss me.. “We’re so glad you’re home, Peaches. We want you to stay this time.”

     I closed my eyes. “Goodnight.”

     “Goodnight, Peaches. Sleep good. Dream nice.”

     When I woke, I found Peggy going through my things. “Why are you snooping in my suitcase?” I demanded.

     She turned around and held up the bottle of wine I’d hidden under my clothes.” What’s this?”

     I considered a few choice words, but I was too tired to fight.

     “When did you start drinking?”

     “I’m over twenty-one.”

     “That doesn’t make it right. . .or good for you.”

     “It’s none of your business.”

     “It became my business when I had to stick my finger down your throat three years ago.”

     “If you’d left me alone then. . .”

     “Do you have any pills?” she asked, her eyes boring into me. “You may as well tell me the truth, because I’ll find them sooner or later. I’ll leave you stranded up here like a turtle on its back and search every inch of your trunk when it comes.”

     I glared at her. “No pills. I knew I shouldn’t have come back.”

     “Why did you come back?”

     “Didn’t you say we all needed to be together now?”

     “Oh, Peaches, that wouldn’t have made any difference to you.”

     “You don’t have a very high opinion of me, do you?”

     “I love you, Peaches. We all do. But I don’t trust you. You look awful. Tell me the truth.”

     “I’ve been sick. I needed. . .the doctor said I needed to rest.”

     “Sick because you’ve been drinking too much?”

     “I don’t know.”

     “Do you need this bottle? I mean, to wean yourself off...”

      "No. I haven’t had a drink in awhile.”

     “How long?”

     “I don’t know. Two weeks maybe.”

     “Then why do you have the bottle?”

     “Maybe I just needed to know it was there.”

     She started for the door. “Then I’m going to take it with me. I won’t get rid of it until I’m sure you’re all right, but I’m not going to leave it in here.”

     “I can always buy another one.”

     “Not very easily. We’re still a dry county, and it’s a piece to the next one.”

     “And I can’t walk there, can I?” I felt suddenly drained. “What time is it?”

     “Almost lunchtime. Miss Grace said to let you sleep. Do you need any help with anything?”

     “I shook my head. “I’ll call you from the top of the stairs when I’m ready to come down.”

     It had been a mistake to come back to the ranch. As I lay there listening to Peggy going downstairs with my bottle, I knew that clearly. She wasn’t a scared kid anymore. I couldn’t bully her or make her believe my lies. And the pain of seeing my baby in her arms last night had been almost unbearable.

     As I struggled out of bed, I resolved to get away as soon as possible. But where could I go? Certainly not to Edward and Valerie in San Angelo, and not back to Washington. Where then? Where could I go and never come back? Where could I go to end things once and for all? I’d failed twice now. Surely somewhere, somehow I could finally get it right.

Chapter Eighteen

      When I suspected I was pregnant, my first thought was Why couldn’t this have been Tom’s baby? And the second was What am I going to do with it? I made a doctor’s appointment under another name and bought a cheap wedding band to wear. He confirmed that I was four months along and made an appointment for me to see him again in a month.

     That night, I thought long and hard about the solution to my situation slowly beginning to form in my mind. Tank and Francie had twins now—Will and Ruthie—delivered by Peggy soon after she and Vic had returned from Brazil. Now, with the war on, Vic and Tank were both gone, but Peggy was back in Danford to wait things out. Who knew how long with war would last? After that, how long would it take Vic and Peggy to get their lives back together so they could adopt a baby of their own? But I could do something about that, and I would.

     I gave my two weeks notice at work, went back through all of Peggy’s letters until I found the name of the doctor she said had taken care of her when she and Vic were in school in Austin, then packed my trunk, and took the train to Holly Hill where Janey, the children’s nurse who had cared for me when I was so sick from being addicted to pills, still lived. She’d stopped working for my aunt and uncle out of disgust at their unwillingness to get proper medical treatment for me, but she still lived nearby.

     Janey was glad to see me, of course. Over tea and poundcake, I saw her looking me up and down. I finally blurted out that I was pregnant.

     “I ain’t fixing to help you get rid of it, Missy!” she replied immediately.

     “I couldn’t do that, Janey.” Her words shocked me.

     “What you fixin’ to do then?”

     “I’m going to give the baby up for adoption, of course.”

     She eyed me suspiciously. “So why you tellin’ me all this?”

     “I can’t do this by myself.”

     “How do you want me to help you?”

     “I’m going to Austin. That’s in Texas.”

     “I know where ‘tis!” she said, disgusted with me.

     “There’s a doctor . .he doesn’t know me, but he took care of a friend of mine when she was in school there. She. . .she can’t have children, but she and her husband would be wonderful parents. He’ll arrange for them to get the baby.”

     “You’ll feel different when you see it maybe.”

     “Maybe,” I admitted, “but you’ll make sure I don’t change my mind. . .won’t you?”

     “When?”

     “I’ll be all right, I think, until toward the last. It’s hard for me to get around anyway, you know, and when I get big. . . The baby’s due the end of November. I could send you train fare as soon as I get situated there.”

     She considered my proposal. Finally she said, “Why’d you get yourself in such a fix anyway, honey?”

     I shrugged. “I don’t know, Janey. Sometimes I don’t know why I do most of what I do.”

     It took some doing to arrange for my mail to be forwarded and to find someone who’d mail any letters I sent. I wrote to Edward that I was letting my phone go because I was looking for another apartment. “I don’t need it anyway,” I said. “It’s just an expense.” He argued that I did need the phone. . .but not too hard.

     I hadn’t touched my trust money, except to pay Edward, and it came in handy now. Apartments were scarce, so I had to stay in a hotel for several weeks until I finally found a small furnished two-bedroom basement apartment with a rear entrance. The owners of the house were in Florida, so I felt like Janey could slip in and out with no problem.

     The day before she came, I went to see Dr. Scully for the first time. After he’d examined me—and scolded me gently for not having seen a doctor regularly—he listened as I told him what I wanted to do. “I know Doc Barnes arranged for you to see Peggy when she was here. You can tell him something believable,” I said. “Peggy and Vic will never know.”

     “It’s not a good idea for you to know where. . .”

     “Maybe not, but that’s the way it has to be.”

     He argued with me halfheartedly, but in the end, he agreed as I knew he would.

     The next time I went back, he said my blood pressure was too high and put me to bed. I wasn’t that big, but I was uncomfortable, and my back hurt all the time because I had to stay in bed. Janey took wonderful care of me, but by the first of November, I was miserable and just wanted to get everything over with. I felt as if a big black cloud was hovering over me constantly, threatening to envelop and smother me.

     Finally, Dr. Scully put me in the hospital and arranged for Janey to stay with me. A few days later, my labor started, and after twenty-four hours, I was out of my mind with the pain. Between groans, I heard Dr. Scully telling me that if I hadn’t delivered in another few hours, he was going to operate. “My god, just get it out of me!” I shrieked at him. “I can’t stand anymore!”

     An eternity later, two nurses lifted me out of bed and onto a hard table and rolled me down the hall as I screamed in agony. Someone put a black rubber mask over my face, and there was blessed nothingness. When I woke up later, it was dark, and Janey was bathing my face with a cool cloth. “Is it over?” I asked her weakly.

     “It’s over, baby,” she said softly. “You was in a bad way, but it’s finished now.”

     “What. . .”

     “You got a sweet little girl,” she said. “A mighty sweet little girl.”

“I want to see her.”

     She nodded. “Doctor say tomorrow. You sleep some more now.”

     I closed my eyes.

     The next afternoon I had two hours alone with my baby. She had fine reddish-blonde hair that curled a little on top and Bix’s sky-blue eyes. Despite the nurse’s admonitions, I unwrapped her and examined every inch of her little body. She had my long fingers and curled them around mine. “Maybe you’ll be a concert pianist someday,” I said, “or a surgeon.” I was sure, from the way she fixed me with those huge blue eyes, that she understood every word I was saying to her.

     “This is how it has to be, you understand,” I told her firmly. “I’d keep you if I could, but it wouldn’t be fair to you. But if I could keep you, I’d call you Victoria and take you for walks in the park and to concerts and read poetry to you every night. I’d buy you a blue velvet dress and put blue satin ribbons in your hair.”

     I wrapped her up again and cuddled her.” She regarded me solemnly. “I’m giving you the best. You’ll know that someday. And this isn’t goodbye. Maybe I won’t see you except in pictures, but I’ll know you’re all right.”

     She yawned then, and her bottom lip trembled. “You needn’t act so nonchalant about it,” I said. “This isn’t easy for me, you know.” I put my lips against her hair. “I love you, precious. That’s why I’m giving you away.”

     When Dr. Scully came back, we were both asleep. He touched my arm gently. “Marian, it’s time for me to take her back to the nursery to be fed.”

     I was awake instantly. “When. . .when is she going?”

     “Sam Barnes is driving down tomorrow morning. There’s still time to change your mind.”

     “I’m not going to change my mind,” I said. “I can’t keep her. I can’t even take care of myself!” I burst into tears as he took Victoria out of my arms and handed her to a nurse.

     Then he went out and came back in again with two capsules. “These will make you feel better,” he said soothingly as he poured a glass of water for me.

     I gulped them quickly, and they did make me feel better. Actually, they made me not feel at all. I slept again, and this time it was Janey who woke me. “You didn’t wake up to eat any supper,” she said, “but you going to eat this breakfast.” I let her feed me every bite. It tasted like sawdust came right back up.

      I was sucking on chipped ice when Dr. Scully came in with some papers. “Sam just got here,” he said. “You’ll have to sign these papers before I can let him take the baby.”

     “Give me a pen.”

     “You’re sure you don’t want to. . .”

     “Dammit, I just want to forget this ever happened! Give me a pen!”

     After signing the papers with the false name I’d been using, I sobbed hysterically for the rest of the morning.

     The letter from Peggy forwarded from Washington contained two black and white photographs, taken by Francie and dripped with joy. “I couldn’t believe it when Doc put the baby in my arms! He even managed to get Vic a seventy-two hour leave through the Red Cross. We’ve named her Rosemarie Irene remembering his mother Rosa, his sister Maria, and my mother Irene. But we’re calling her Rosie. Vic says she’s like a little rosebud just opening up. I wish you could’ve seen Vic with her! He’s never handled a baby before, but he was changing diapers and feeding her like an old hand. She’s so beautiful, Peaches! I can’t wait for you to see her, but you’re so far away. Miss Grace says we all need each other more than ever right now.

     I’d done the right thing, but the ache inside me wouldn’t go away. And the black cloud hovered menacingly. 

Chapter Seventeen

   Three days after I left Danford, Valerie’s father met me in Washington, D.C. The apartment he’d taken for me was dark and stuffy and hardly bigger than the dormitory room I’d shared with Babbie. Fortunately, it was on the first floor.

   “Please let me know how you get along, Marian,” he said over supper that night. I want to do anything I can to ensure your well-being.”

   I thanked him politely and assured him that I would be fine. Back in my room, I fell across the pull-down bed later without undressing. In the morning I was stiff and sore, but I made myself unpack and settle in so that I’d be ready to start work on Monday.

   On Saturday, a boy delivered a basket of fruit and cheese. In the center was a large bottle of wine. With best wishes for happiness and success in your new home ,read the card signed by Carter Prentiss. I put the perishables in the electric refrigerator and stuck the wine under the sink.

   On Monday I began work in a tiny cubicle on the third floor of the Library’s office wing. My job, typing hundreds of catalog cards, was tedious and boring. By noon everyday the muscles in my back and shoulders were screaming. At five o’clock, I had to walk a block to catch the bus to my apartment and another block from the stop to my apartment where I hardly had enough energy to get myself up the front steps. Most nights, I didn’t even eat supper, and I slept badly on the lumpy mattress. Leg cramps interrupted my sleep at least once before morning, and there was no Francie to take care of them.

   My letters to Edward and Valerie and to the ranch were outright lies. I loved my job (in truth, I hated it already), had met many interesting people (no one spoke to me), and spent my weekends seeing the sights (I hoped no one asked me to be specific). In fact, the weekends were worse of all. The walls of the efficiency closed in around me, and the big black cloud all but suffocated me no matter where I moved in the small room.

   When the pain in my legs and back grew almost unbearable, I went to a doctor recommended by one of the other clerks. He was a fatherly old gentleman and practically patted me on the head as he ushered me out of his office with two prescriptions, one for sleeping pills and the other for pain. But on the way home, remembering what had happened with Doc’s pills, I passed the pharmacy without stopping.

   That night, reaching under the sink for some soap, my hand hit the bottle of wine. I’d never tasted wine before. As I uncorked the bottle, the smell of it reminded me of my mother and the night I’d finished high school, and I felt slightly nauseated. I poured some in a glass anyway and gagged at the first taste. The second wasn’t so bad, and after two glasses, my eyes felt heavy. That night, for the first time since Tom’s death, I slept soundly.

   The next night, Saturday, I drank two more glasses and slept without waking. On Sunday, with nothing better to do, I finished the bottle and fell asleep without bothering to turn down the bed or remembering to set the alarm clock. I was late to work the next morning, and my head pounded until noon.

   I bought another bottle on my way home from work, but I limited myself to one glass that night and for the rest of the week. On Friday night, though, I had three glasses and slept until noon. I didn’t remember emptying the bottle, but it was empty when I woke on Sunday morning. My head ached again, and my mouth felt full of cotton. I threw up the eggs I scrambled on the hotplate.

   On Monday, I was late for work again, but I stopped at the store on the corner that evening, and this time I bought two bottles.

   Letters from Francie and Peggy were the only bright spot in an otherwise bleak existence. Miss Grace wrote, too, and sent a box of cookies every month. She told me that Francie hadn’t received any letters from her mother since Germany invaded Poland and that things didn’t look good.

   Peggy relished life in Brazil, scrubbing for surgery with the missionary doctor and having all the baby-delivery business turned over to her. “Dr. Hughes says I should think about going to medical school, but all I want to do is be Vic’s wife, adopt lots of babies, and be a good nurse.”

   I met Valerie and Edward in Richmond at Christmas in 1939, but in 1940 I made my excuses. I couldn’t hide my escalating drinking from them, and I couldn’t give it up either. The wine and the pills were the only things that kept me functioning without horrible pain.

   Things seemed to happen fast in 1940. Francie wrote that David Perlman, the man who wanted to marry her, had called Tank to come to San Angelo to take her back to the ranch. “He said I was like a sturdy little cedar bush, but I needed the shelter of a good strong tree, and he wasn’t it. I love David, but I’m not in love with him—but he said if I’d invited him to the wedding, he’d come. We’ll be married in the parlor at the ranch. Matka told me to follow my heart, and I guess that’s what she did, too, when she went to Poland. I want to believe she’d feel I’m making the right decision. I have to believe she’s coming back, but it’s getting harder.”

   I wrote back immediately and assured her she was not only making the right decision but the only one she could make unless she wanted to ruin her life. That much was true. I added that of course her mother was coming home safe and sound. That wasn’t true.

   Peggy and Vic came home in the summer of 1941. The company assigned Vic to a desk job in New Mexico. “We’re saving money for a house so we can apply to adopt a baby,” Peggy wrote.

   In January, Francie wrote that she was pregnant and furious with Tank because he wouldn’t let her work outside with Dutch and him anymore. “He says I have to take care of little Francie. But working in the house with Miss Grace is more fun than I thought. She’s teaching me to sew, and we’re making baby clothes.”

The rumors had been swirling around Washington for months, but we were all shocked when we found ourselves at war in December. Edward felt I should come home and be closer to family. I told him I’d think about it, but I knew I had to stay as far away from everyone as possible. I had finally become my mother.

   Almost immediately after war was declared, the capital began to fill up even more with men in uniform. I was moved from the Library of Congress to a new office in the War Department, one behind closed and locked doors. I didn’t understand most of what I was doing, only that I couldn’t talk about it outside of that room. And when I realized that the work was too tedious to do right with a hangover, I actually managed to cut down on my drinking. I was, after all, part of the war effort now, and oddly enough, life had taken on more interest for me.

   Peggy wrote that Vic was taking her back to Danford “to wait things out.” Francie wrote that she was “big as a barn” and ready for the baby to get here. Valerie wrote that Edward had been rejected for service, but she didn’t really say why. I was glad though. Edward didn’t belong in a war.

   We worked late a lot of nights, and one night in March, I was waiting for my bus when Bix Matthews appeared at my elbow. “I heard you were here,” he said smoothly, looking revoltingly handsome in his Army Air Corps uniform. “But you weren’t easy to find.”

   “They lock me up every morning at eight-thirty,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

   “I’m stationed right across the river in Virginia. I just came up for the weekend when I found out you were here.”

   “Why would you care after all these years?”

   “Why not?”

   He took me to dinner and talked a lot, mostly about himself. He’d graduated from law school near the top of his class and decided to enlist. “I had an offer to work for a law firm in Houston, but I didn’t want to get started and then get drafted.”

   “Why the air corps?”

   “I’d rather fly than walk.”

   At my door, I thanked him for dinner, but he made no move to go. “Would you like to come in for some coffee?” I asked reluctantly.

   “I don’t suppose you have anything stronger?”

   “As a matter of fact, I have some wine,” I said. “Sometimes it helps me relax when I can’t sleep.” I hadn’t had a drink in several months and didn’t particularly want one now.

   “That would be fine,” he said, taking the key out of my hand and opening the door. “After you.”

   We’d had two glasses of wine when he kissed me for the first time, and he’d had a third when he started to unbutton my blouse. I reached for his hands to stop him, but then he kissed my throat and touched my breasts, and the feelings I’d buried when Tom died suddenly stirred. By the time he had my blouse off and my slip down around my waist, I only wanted him to hurry.

Chapter Sixteen

     Apparently Peggy didn’t tell anyone what I’d done, and we never talked about it again. She did say, however, that Miss Grace was concerned about me missing breakfast. “She asked me if you were pregnant.”

     Fortunately, I’d just gotten my period, so I could tell her honestly that I wasn’t. I wondered what I’d have told her in other circumstances. Tom had said it was possible, and I almost wished I could have something left of him.

     It nearly killed me to do it, but I got up for breakfast every morning after that and spent my day downstairs. I didn’t regret what I’d done, only that I’d wasted all those sleeping pills and pain pills which I desperately needed to help me get through the days and nights now. I thought about asking Doc for more, but then he’d want to know what I’d done with all the others. So I gritted my teeth, threw up occasionally from pain and fatigue, and put on a first-class performance that even fooled Peggy into thinking I’d repented my sins.

     The day that Peggy and Vic took the train for San Angelo to meet Mr. Jacobson, who would accompany them to Galveston and see them onto the boat for South America, Edward and Valerie came to get me, too. I told them what Doc had said about my back, and Edward wasted no time in contacting him for the name of a specialist. Valerie took me to Dallas where I saw a doctor who wanted to perform surgery and put me in a body cast for a year. I didn’t tell him what I thought of the idea, but I turned it down in no uncertain terms.

     We stopped in Brownwood on the way home to see the Sewards, who wanted me to stay. Babbie, who’d gotten a job as a music teacher in a grammar school, asked me to stay, too. I was torn, but Valerie smoothed things over by saying that Edward wanted me in San Angelo for awhile, and that was that.

     In August, Valerie’s father came from Atlanta and asked me if I’d be interested in going to work in Washington, D.C. “It’s only a minor clerk’s position in the Library of Congress,” he said, “but it would be a change for you.”

     Edward said that it was too far away and that my health wasn’t good enough to think of working. In the end, though, he agreed to let me go.

     He’d gotten my trust released on my birthday in June, so I wrote my first check to him to repay every penny he’d advanced me while I was in college. He protested that he’d been only too happy to help me, but I insisted that I wanted to pay my debts. Valerie and I shopped for a wardrobe appropriate for the nation’s capital and packed my trunks. She mentioned hesitantly that she’d brought all my gifts from the ranch and returned them with a personal note explaining why there would be no wedding. I thanked her politely, but I didn’t want to talk about it.

     I went back to the ranch for three days to say goodbye to Miss Grace and Dutch. “We’d hoped you’d stay with us,” Miss Grace said. “The house seems so empty already without Vic and Peggy.”

     “I have to get on with my life,” I said. It was a pat, carefully-rehearsed little speech that I gave in answer to every question these days.

     Tank looked oddly disappointed. “I told you awhile back that Cissy—which is what he’d started calling Peggy for some reason—was getting spoiled being the only sister around here. I was hoping to spoil you a little while she’s gone.”

     “And have us spitting and hissing at each other when she comes back? Thank you, no,” I joked back.

     But sitting on the porch after supper one night, he admitted how he really felt. “I dread going upstairs at night,” he said. “It’s pretty empty up there now.” He glanced over at me. “I guess you see Francie when you’re staying in Angelo.”

     “Yes.”

     “How’s she doing?”

     “She’s as miserable as you are.”

     He didn’t say anything for a few minutes. “Is she going to marry that Perlman fellow? I met him one time when I was there. He’s a nice guy all right, but...”

     “She doesn’t know what she’s going to do. She’s too worried about her mother going to Poland right now to think about anything else.” I shook my head. “What are you going to do now?”

     “Same as I’ve been doing. Work the ranch with Dad.”

     “Is that what you really want to do?”

     “I’d rather not do it alone.”

     “She still loves you, Tank. She told me as much.”

     “Well, I still love her. Maybe I love her more than I ever did. . .if that’s possible.”

     “Why don’t you go see her? Tell her how you feel. Maybe you could even talk Mrs. Walinsky out of going to Poland.”

     “I reckon I can’t do that, Peaches,” he said slowly. “She’s too. . .” he stopped, searching for the right word.

     “Vulnerable?”

     “That’s it. I don’t want her making any decisions right now. And I have too much respect for her mother to interfere. Maybe she can get those children out.”

     “Maybe she can’t get anyone out, including herself. Edward says…”

     “I know what they’re doing over there. Dad says it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. There’s going to be a war.”

     “That’s what Edward says. Will you go?”

     “Everybody will go.”

   “What is it you used to say? Life isn’t all Friday nights and football and pompoms...that Monday morning is coming.”

     “Yeah.”

     “Well, it’s Monday morning for me, too, I guess.”

     Tank reached for my hand and squeezed it. “I wish you wouldn’t go so far away. Mom and Dad are feeling like the whole family’s being torn apart.”

    “Peggy and Vic will be back, and I’m not family.”

     “Yes, you are, Peaches. The ranch will always be your home.”

     I latched my brace and struggled to my feet. “I’ve got to finish packing. Edward’s coming for me tomorrow.”

     He helped steady me on my feet. “If you see Francie…”

     “Sure. Sure, I’ll tell her to come home, too. But if you wait too long, she just might marry David Perlman. He’s a very nice gentleman, and he loves her. . .and he’s willing to wait as long as he has to.”

     “Well,” Tank said, getting out of the swing and going to lean on the porch rail, “so am I.”

     Edward and Valerie took me back to San Angelo where I’d take the train to DC. He’d insisted on getting a compartment for me so I’d be comfortable. Valerie asked me privately if I felt I had to go. “We love having you with us, Marian. You can find work here and a place of your own if that’s what you want.”

     “I have to do something. Maybe getting away from everything familiar will help.”

     She looked at me closely. “Getting on with your life is the best thing to do, and it’s what Tom would want.”

     “I suppose,” I said. “But I won’t ever stop grieving for him, no matter where I go. He was my life.”

     “I can understand that,” she said. “I feel the same about Edward.”

     “You’ve been so good for him, Valerie. I think you’re the only person who really knows him. I’ve shared a lot with him, but you’ve brought him out of himself.”

     “He loves you so much, Marian, as I do. He needs to feel you’re settled.”

     “What do you mean?”

     She shook her head. “Nothing. Just. . .nothing.”

     “Is everything all right? You? Edward?”

     “Of course, dear! We’re just fine, and we want you to be happy.”

     For some odd reason, I didn’t believe her. Not completely.

     Edward walked with me to board the train. “Sister, you can still change your mind.”

     “No,” I said, “it’s for the best.”

     He drew me close to him. “Be happy, my dearest little sister,” he whispered in my ear.

     Remembering what Valerie had said about how he wanted to see me settled, and still edgy over how she had said it, I held him tightly. “I will, Edward. I promise I’ll be all right.”

     But as the train pulled away from the station, it was as if a huge black cloud settled over me, threatening to suffocate me. My mouth went suddenly dry, and my heart pounded wildly.

     I’ll get off at the first stop and go back, I thought as panic and terror possessed me. I’ll get a job somewhere...maybe I’ll even go back to Danford and live at the ranch for a while.

     I was half out of my seat when the train slowed for its first stop, but a voice came out of the black cloud. You can’t go back. They’re not your family, and the ranch isn’t really your home. They just took you in because they feel sorry for you. You’re not like them. They’re good people, and you’re wicked. . .a mistake. . .an accident. Go on to Washington and earn your living and forget about having a life. You don’t deserve one. You never did. That’s why Tom died. You killed him because he was too good for you.

     I was struggling to breathe beneath the cloud. The train lurched forward again, and I fumbled with the window beside my seat, but it wouldn’t open. I pressed my face against the glass while the voice went on relentlessly. You want to die, so go to Washington and do it. No one will be there to stop you. . .or care.

Chapter Fifteen

     I woke to Edward’s face beside me. “What…”

     “You’re in the hospital in San Angelo, Sister,” he said softly.

     “Where’s Tom?”

      He looked away, and I followed his eyes to Valerie who was standing by the window. She joined him beside me. “There was an accident, dear.”

     “An accident?” I tried to remember but couldn’t.

     “You were stopped on the side of the road when a cattle truck skidded and…”

     Suddenly, I remembered. “I had a cramp. Tom stopped to take care of it.”

     “Your arm has a slight fracture,” Edward said, “but it will be all right.”

     “Where’s Tom? I want to see Tom.”

     The way neither of them spoke told me everything. I heard wailing and realized it came from me, but I couldn’t stop. “Tom, Tom, Tom...oh, god….Tom!”

     I felt a sharp prick in my hip, and everything faded. When I woke again, Valerie was alone with me. She held a glass with a straw to my lips. “Can you drink a little, dear?”

     I sipped dutifully. Then I remembered. “Tom’s dead.”

     “I’m so sorry. He was such a good man, and he loved you the way you deserve to be loved.”

     “I killed him.”

     “Oh, no, Marian dear, it was an accident!”

     “I killed him.” I closed my eyes. I knew the truth. I’d tempted him into what he felt wasn’t right, and now he was dead. All that was left was for me to die, too.

     When Edward returned, he kissed my forehead. “The doctor feels he can dismiss you, Sister. We’ll drive you to Brownwood for the services.”

     Valerie made a bed for me in the back of the car, but by the time we reached the Sewards’, I was in excruciating pain. He carried me upstairs to their guestroom and left me with Babbie.

     “It was my fault,” I said as she tucked the covers around me. “I killed him.”

     “Oh, Peaches, please don’t! It was an accident, a terrible, terrible accident!”

     “I killed him,” I insisted, almost enjoying her misery. “I should never have loved him. He was too good for me.”

     Tears rolled down her cheeks. “He loved you with all his heart, and you gave him more happiness as a man than he’d ever known.” She switched off the lamp. “Get some rest. I’ll be in and out checking on you.”

     At the funeral home the next day, Babbie took me to a small room and left me alone with Tom. It was like looking at a stranger. His face was sunken and unsmiling. Someone had trimmed his eyebrows and tried to hide his receding hairline by combing his hair forward. All that was vaguely familiar were the large bony hands folded across his chest, the hands with which he’d caressed me so passionately only days before.

     I recognized the suit he was wearing as the one I’d helped him select for our wedding. In the lapel was his medical insignia, the small gold caduceus I’d bought for him at Christmas. He’d been pleased, though he’d protested that he wasn’t a doctor yet. “You will be,” I’d told him stroking his angular features. “The best. The very best.”

     I fumbled in my purse for his wedding band and held it in the palm of my hand. “Is everything all right, Miss?” I startled painfully. “Is there anything I can. . .” A man with a white carnation in the lapel of his pinstriped suit stood in the door.

     “Yes,” I said, holding out the ring. “We were to have been married next month. I’d like for him to have this ring.”

     He took it out of my hand. “Would you mind stepping out a moment?”

     When he told me I could come back in, I only stayed long enough to note the gold band on Tom’s left hand. “Thank you,” I said politely. “I’ll join the others now.”

     The funeral the next day was a nightmare of people and words that meant nothing to me. I couldn’t understand why the Sewards, even Babbie, seemed somehow comforted, though Tom’s mother’s face was strained and white, and I heard someone describe his father as “broken.”

     Standing between Edward and Valerie at the open grave, I felt removed from everything that was going on. It occurred to me that the casket was very small to hold such a large man as Tom had been. I thought, too, that I might as well share it with him, because my life, like his, was over. Though I was still walking around, I was as dead as he was.

     Dutch, Miss Grace, Tank, Vic, and Peggy had driven up from Danford, but when they tried to embrace me, I pulled away. The slightest touch was painful, and the sorrow on their faces only deepened my guilt. I’d killed Tom and hurt his parents and Babbie, hurt Edward and Valerie, hurt everyone at the ranch who had planned my wedding with so much love.

     Back at the house after the funeral, I took refuge on the sun porch where Edward found me later. “Sister, Valerie and I want you to come back to San Angelo with us. She’s going to take some time off from work, and you’ll need your arm attended to by the doctor there.”

     “Whatever you want,” I said, not looking at him.

     He sat down beside me and took my cold hands between his. “I’d give my life to take all this heartache away from you, my dearest little sister,” he said in that kind voice that had, until now, always been able to soothe away my troubles. “I’d give my very life.”

     In a few minutes, Mrs. Seward appeared. “Marian, I missed you inside. Are you. . .”

     “I wanted some air,” I said guiltily. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

     She sat down on my other side. “Win and I. . .and Sandra, of course, hope you’ll stay with us awhile.”

     “Edward wants me to come to San Angelo,” I said, not looking at her.

     “Her arm will need more care,” he said quickly.

     “I see.” Her voice trembled. “Of course, we want what’s best for you, but. . .well, selfishly, we wanted the comfort of your presence a little longer.”

     “The comfort of my. . .”I began. Edward squeezed my hands. I looked at him helplessly. “I don’t know what to do,” I said.

     “Our family physician is quite good,” Mrs. Seward said. “Perhaps. . .”

     “Where will you be most comfortable, Sister?” Edward asked.

     I was suddenly aware that the several dull aches in my body had become hot knives of pain, and my control broke. “In that grave with Tom!” I moaned. “Oh, god, I wish I were dead, too!”

     Mrs. Seward’s arms went around me. “Oh, Marian, my dear. . .my dear. . .”

     “I’m sorry,” I wept. “I’m so sorry. . .so sorry. . .”

     The next morning before we left for San Angelo, Mrs. Seward brought me the platinum bank that matched my engagement ring. Inside was engraved, Loved forever. Tom had told me he would love me forever, but that wasn’t true. He’d left me. I hated him for going. I hated myself for living instead of him

     A changed Francie, working hard not to show the sadness she felt for my loss—and for her loss of Tank—spent as much time as she could with me in San Angelo.

     “Matka is determined to go to Poland to get her cousin’s children out. Terrible things are happening to the Jews there. If she goes…”

     “She’ll come back, Francie. Your mother knows the right thing to do, and she’s stronger than you think.”

     She shook her head, and those black curls danced. “She’s all I have, Peaches. Tank’s gone, and…”

     “Are you sure? If you love him, marry him, and everybody else be damned!”

     “I can’t. I can’t turn my back on who I am.”

      I wanted to lash out at her and tell her how stupid I thought she was, but I didn’t. I no longer had the right to tell anyone anything—even if I’d had it before.

     When Peggy wrote that she and Vic would be leaving soon for Brazil where he’d been hired by the mining company he’d interviewed with before graduation, I told Edward I wanted to go to the ranch. “I want to see them before they leave. They’ll be gone two years, after all.” I shook my head. “My timid little krolik. She’s going to live in the wilds of South America and work at the mission hospital located where the mining company headquarters are.”

     Valerie smiled. “I suspect the little rabbit is a big bunny now.”

     “I guess she is. I just wish…” I stopped. I didn’t have any right to wish for anything for myself except to die.

     Edward and Valerie drove me to the ranch where Miss Grace took one look at me and immediately put me on the daybed in the kitchen and told me to stay put. The expression on Peggy’s face told me how awful I looked, and I wished I cared, but I didn’t.

     That night, Tank carried me upstairs and said goodnight, letting Peggy take over. “Want a soak?” she asked.

     “I just want to go to bed.”

     She helped me take off my brace and put on my gown. “I can sit here with you for a while...until you go to sleep.”

     “Then you’ll sit here all night.”

     “Do you have trouble sleeping every night?”

     “I’d rather be awake anyway,” I snapped. “I dream.”

     “About the accident?”

     I didn’t want to talk about that. “About everything. Go to bed, Peggy. I’m fine” The light from the hall drifted into the room as she left. “I wasn’t good enough for him, you know. I should’ve died instead of him.”

     She slipped out, closing the door behind her.

     Most days I didn’t get downstairs for breakfast because I rarely fell asleep before almost daylight. But whenever I managed to get myself together, Miss Grace always fixed me something to eat, and I tried to eat in spite of the fact that nothing stayed with me very long.

     Everyone was busy except me. Vic and Peggy were packing their crates which had to be shipped in a couple of weeks, and Miss Grace was sewing for them and trying to can at the same time. I offered to help, but one morning of sitting at the table shelling butter peas left me in agony. Peggy was up with me most of the night trying to relieve the cramps and muscle spasms in my legs and back. After that, Miss Grace made me lie around on the daybed except for meals.

     One night, after telling Tank and Vic that I didn’t need their help, I fell on the stairs and twisted my back. By the time Doc got there, I’d bitten my lips until I could taste blood, and I still screamed the minute he started to examine me. Finally he gave me a shot of something that put me out for almost twenty-four hours. When he came back to check on me, he sent Peggy out of the room and pulled a chair close to the bed.

     “Marian, I called the doctor who took care of you in San Angelo after your accident. Your arm has healed all right, but the rest of you is a mess. . .has been a mess for a long time. Your parents . .”

     “I don’t want to talk about my parents,” I snapped.

     “Your parents didn’t see to it that your brace was adjusted properly as you grew,” he went on in an oddly patient voice. “Your left leg was about an inch shorter than your right one when you were in high school, and now it’s closer to an inch and a half. I’ve suspected for a long time that you were developing a curvature of the spine, and it’s more pronounced than ever. Accidents like you experienced can toss a human body around like a rag doll, and you’re not over that by a long shot.”

     I shrugged, and the movement was agonizing.

     “You need to see an orthopedic specialist, someone who can do more than just give you something to stop the pain temporarily. After the experience you had with those pills I prescribed back when you were in high school. . .”

     “Where do you suppose he got them?” I interrupted. “I know that Mr. Bascom didn’t keep refilling that prescription.”

     Doc frowned. “I’m not trying to stir a nest of rattlesnakes,” he said. “I’m just saying that pills got you into trouble once, and they could do it again. You need physical therapy. . .maybe some surgery on your back. . .”

     “No, thanks,” I said bitterly. “Who cares what I look like now?”

     “I’m not thinking about how you look.”

     “I’ll talk to Edward,” I lied.

     Doc got up. “That’s good. Tell him I’ll look up some specialists in places like Dallas and Houston.”

     “Sure,” I said.

     “Meanwhile, stay off the stairs by yourself, and. . .” he hesitated, then sighed. “I’ll leave you a little something for pain and some mild sleeping tablets. I think after your previous experience, you’ve got the good sense to use them in moderation. But the sooner you talk to your brother about getting you to a specialist, the better.” He put two containers on the table beside the bed. “Peggy will tell you when to take these.” He walked to the door and stopped. “Marian, I’m very sorry about Tom Seward.”

     “Thank you,” I said, trying to be polite.

     He nodded and stepped into the hall.

     Peggy let me get up again on Saturday. I wasn’t steady on my feet, and Tank carried me downstairs in the morning and back up again at night. When Peggy was helping me get ready for bed, she said, “Doc thinks it would be all right for you to ride into town for church tomorrow.”

     “No,” I said.

     “It might do you good to. . .”

     “Dammit, Peggy, I said I didn’t want to go!”

     “You needn’t yell at me,” she said quietly, straightening her shoulders defensively.

     “I’m sorry.” I sat down on the edge of the bed, and she began to unfasten my brace. “I don’t feel like seeing people yet,” I went on as apologetically as I knew how. “Maybe later.”

     She lifted my legs and tucked the sheet around them. “Do you want something to help you sleep?”

     “Just leave it where I can get to it if I have to,” I said. “I’m really tired tonight, so maybe I won’t need it.”

     “I’ll leave the door open a little so you can call me,” she said.

     “Krolik, I’m sorry I was. . .I’m sorry I raised my voice.”

     She patted me. “It’s all right,” she said, and I knew I was forgiven one more time. “Call me if you need anything during the night.”

     When she’d gone, I lay awake thinking about Tom. He’d talked so much about a loving God who would always take care of us, and for awhile, I’d thought maybe he was right. But now I knew he’d been terribly wrong. God—if there was a God—had let the wrong person die in that accident.

     The next morning I woke to the sound of the truck pulling out of the yard. The realization that I was alone made my mouth mouth dry and my heart began to pound. It was so strangely still. Even the birds weren’t singing outside the window the way they usually did.

     “Oh, Tom,” I whispered, “why did you have to die? Why did you go away and leave me alone? You promised we’d always be together, but you left me! I hate you! I hate you for leaving me alone!”

     The words echoed in the silent room, and I was horrified at having said them. But I felt in control for the first time in weeks. Doc’s pills were on the table beside me, and the ones I had left from the doctor I’d seen in San Angelo were hidden in the drawer behind Tom’s picture. Struggling to a sitting position, I poured myself a glass of water from the pitcher Peggy always left for me. Then I shook over fifty tablets from four bottles into my lap and began to swallow them two and three at a time.

     I was floating in a gray haze like the winter dusk that comes early, but I wasn’t afraid, though the sound of someone calling my name was vaguely irritating.

     “Peaches! Peaches, wake up! What have you done?”

     I couldn’t get my eyes open, but I could feel the pinch of Peggy’s small fingers digging into my shoulders and shaking me.

     “Open your eyes! Look at me!” My cheeks burned as she slapped them mercilessly, but I didn’t feel anything as she jerked me to a sitting position and hauled me to my feet. Without my brace, I was dead weight, but she was dragging me with her anyway.

     As I moved slowly down a dark tunnel, my face brushed something hard and cold, and Peggy’s hands were on the back of my neck, pushing my head down over the toilet. “Put your finger down your throat! Do it! Do it now!”

     Something went down my throat, definitely not my own finger though, and I retched violently as my stomach gave up its contents into the toilet. The narrow rounded edge of the tub bit into my thighs as I balanced on it while Peggy held a cold, wet cloth to my face. “Talk to me, Peaches!” Her finger went down my throat again, and more water and half-dissolved pills spewed out of my mouth.

     Then we were back in the bedroom, and she was putting on my brace. I tried to lie back on the bed, but her hands closed around my arms like steel traps. “Walk,” she commanded me. “You’re going to walk!”

     After awhile, I smelled coffee and realized she was pouring the hot liquid down my throat. I walked a few more steps and vomited, but she grabbed my face and pushed my head back, and more coffee burned my mouth.

     “Leave me alone,” I managed to say. “Just let me die!”

     “You’re not going to die!” she hissed at me, sounding like Francie. “Not in front of me anyway! How could you, Peaches? How could you do this?”

     I retched again, the sour liquid dribbling down my chin to my neck. “Let me die,” I moaned. “Dammit, let me die!”

     It seemed hours before I found myself back in bed, washed and wearing a clean gown that smelled of Miss Grace’s lilac soap. Opening my eyes with difficulty, I saw Peggy sitting on the edge of the bed. She was a sorry sight. Her hair was loose from its braid, and the new pink dress that Miss Grace had just finished the day before was stained with coffee and worse. But it was the depth of sadness in her wide, honest eyes that stirred a vague sense of guilt somewhere deep inside me.

     “Why, Peaches?” she asked, tears starting down her pale, delicate face.

     “I want to die,” I murmured. “There’s no reason to live without Tom.”

     She smoothed my hair. “Do you have anymore pills anywhere? Don’t lie to me, Peaches. I’ll tear this room apart if I have to.”

     “That was all,” I said.

     “Promise me you won’t ever do anything like this again.”

     “Why should I?”

     “Life is a gift, Peaches. I ought to know. I almost died when. . .”

     “Life stinks!” I spat inelegantly. “I don’t want to live anymore!”

She ignored that. “It was just lucky I stayed home with you today.”

     “Not for me.” I closed my eyes and turned my face away from her.

     “I’ve got to get cleaned up before the others come back,” she said.

     “Sorry about your dress,” I said, but we both knew I didn’t mean it.

     She picked up the glass and the pitcher and moved them across the room. Then she picked up my brace and started out the door with it.

     “Leaving me stranded like a turtle on its back?” I asked venomously.

     “That’s right,” she said. “I don’t trust you anymore, Peaches. I don’t even know you anymore.”

     “You never did,” I said bitterly. “Next time you won’t be around!” I called after her as she pattered down the hall like a busy child, but my voice was only a whisper. “Not you or anybody else!”

Chapter Fourteen

     For the next two summers, I accompanied Tom and Babbie to a small town near the Rio Grande River where they and others conducted summer Bible schools for the children. Most of them didn’t speak English, and many were dirty, but their eagerness wiped all that away from my thoughts.

     I found my niche in craft and art classes and in playing the out-of-tune piano in the assembly hall. Edward worried about my health, but I always returned without so much as a sniffle. For the first time in my life, I felt needed. The children needed me, and I needed them.

     Because I’d attended every summer session, I found myself eligible to graduate at the end of my junior year. Somehow I managed to convince the Dean of Women to let me take graduate courses while I continued to room with Babbie. Whether out of pity or my persistence, she agreed.

     In May 1939, Babbie’s parents as well as Miss Grace and Dutch—and, of course, Edward and Valerie—were in the audience to see us walk across the stage of Old Main to receive our diplomas. Tom couldn’t be there because he was knee-deep in his final exams at medical school, but he sent both of us flowers and included a note with mine.

 My Dearest Marian,

     After thinking it over, I feel you should freight your trunk to San Angelo and take the train to Dallas as soon as possible after the graduation exercises. Translated, that says I can’t bear one more day without you! Mrs. Crain, my landlady whom you have met, has her best room ready for you and promises to take very good care of you until my exams are finished.

     It seems only yesterday that you came into the reception room of the dormitory, your lovely chin held high, and then fell unceremoniously onto the sofa after forgetting to unlatch your brace! I hardly dared hope that I might be responsible for your lapse of memory, and I would never have dared to dream that this moment would arrive for us!

     You are always in my thoughts and prayers, my dearest girl. I love you so very, very much!

     Your devoted

     Tom

     I was waiting for Tom in the parlor with Mrs. Crain the afternoon he finished his last exam. “It’s over,” he said, sitting down beside me and leaning his head back on the sofa.

     “You’re so tired,” I murmured, stroking his thinning hair. “Go upstairs and go to bed.”

     “I want to take you to supper,” he said, but he didn’t move to get up.

     “I’ll eat later with Mrs. Crain,” I said. “You’re exhausted.”
      He let me walk upstairs with him and come into his room. “I’m usually not so disorganized,” he apologized.

     I went to the unmade bed and straightened the covers. “Go put on your pajamas and come to bed,” I said. When he hesitated, I laughed. “Oh, Tom, I’ll see you in your pajamas soon enough. It won’t damage my modesty to see them tonight!”

     When he came back from the bathroom, I tucked him into bed like a child. “Go to sleep,” I said. “As Mrs. Walinsky says, dream nice.”

     “I shall dream of you,” he said, his eyes closing wearily. “I love you so, my dearest Marian.”

      He was asleep before I left. I could have stayed there with him, watching him sleep, but mindful of Mrs. Crain waiting for me downstairs, I didn’t. As I left the room, I was overcome with the realization that in a few short days I could share his bed with him, hold him, comfort him, love him. . .the thought was more than wonderful. Why, I wondered, was I so afraid? And what was I afraid of?

     I went to bed early and woke before midnight in a suffocating panic. At first I couldn’t remember where I was, and then I thought of Tom upstairs. Buckling on my brace, I slipped out into the hall and toward the stairs. Mrs. Crain’s room was at the back, and she’d gone to bed even earlier than I had.

     I hesitated only briefly outside Tom’s door. Inside, I locked it behind me and switched on the floor lamp beside the untidy desk where he’d spent so many grueling hours in recent weeks. In the soft light, his features seemed even more prominent. . .the large, crooked nose, the faint white scar above a flattened portion of his lip where the cleft had been closed, the sunken eyes that seemed to belong to someone much older, and the jutting jaw that, closed in sleep, gave no hint of the deep, rumbling laugh that so delighted me. At that moment, he had never looked so wonderful to me. . .nor had I ever loved him more.

     He stirred, then opened his eyes. “Marian?”

     “I’m here,” I said, sitting down on the edge of his narrow bed.

     “Why. . .what. . .?” He struggled to sit up, but I pushed him back down and smoothed his tousled hair, thinner now than when we’d first met four years ago.

     “I woke up and couldn’t think where I was,” I said. “I was. . .afraid.”

“     Afraid of what, my darling girl?” His hands cupped my face.

     “I don’t know. Sometimes I just feel afraid that this can’t be happening to me. You’re so wonderful, Tom. I don’t deserve you. Maybe I’m afraid you’ll realize that.”

     He smiled and drew my face down to kiss me. “When we’re married, you’ll never have to be afraid again.”

     I laid my head on his chest while he stroked my hair. “I’ve always been afraid, Tom.”

     “Of what?”

     “The dark. . .being helpless. . .of no one caring about me. . .loving me. . .”

     “You are loved, Marian,” he said, and I shivered. “Are you cold?”

     “No, but. . .hold me, Tom.” Again he started to sit up, but I shook my head. “No, hold me in your arms the way. . .”

     “Two more weeks, dearest. Only two more weeks.”

“     But I need you now, Tom,” I said, my voice trembling. “I need you so much!”

     “Marian, it’s not the time. . .”

     I was already unfastening my brace. “It’s only the ceremony that hasn’t happened,” I said. “We’ve made our commitment to each other. Don’t you want me, Tom?”

     His face creased with pain, and I was consumed with guilt, but my need for him was greater than the guilt. I untied my robe, and he reached up to push it back from my shoulders, letting his hands caress them and drift down my arms, brushing my breasts. He closed his eyes and groaned. “I’m not strong enough to deny you anything you want,” he murmured. “But you’re strong enough to leave me now.” His hands fell away from me. “Please, dear. . .”

     I lifted the sheet and lay down beside him. “Love me, Tom,” I whispered. “Love me now.”

     All the feelings his intimate letters had stirred in me now consumed me. His huge gentle hands began to explore my body, and when at last no clothing separated us, I was warmed by his skin against mine. Even the brief sharp pain was sweet as we became part of each other, and when he had finished, I lay weeping for joy in his arms.

     “You do love me,” I repeated. “Oh, you do!”

     “How could you ever doubt it?” he asked. “I’ll love you for as long as God gives us life, Marian.”

     I must have dozed off because I eventually felt myself being shaken gently. “Marian, it’s almost daylight. You must go back to your room.” Tom, wearing his pajamas and robe, sat in the chair beside the bed. “Marian, my dearest, wake up.”

     “Tom, what. . .”

     “I’m afraid we had the honeymoon before the wedding,” he said apologetically, and then I remembered.     

     "I’m not sorry,” I said defiantly. “Are you?”

     “Well,” he said, “it’s done.”

     “You’re not angry with me?”

     He smiled. “I could never be angry with you. But you have to get dressed and go back to your room right now.”

      He helped me with my brace lifted me to my feet. “Marian, where are you in your cycle?”

     “What?”

     “Your cycle, dear. You realize that I had no protection last night.”

     I shook my head dumbly.

     “When did you last menstruate, Marian?” he asked gently.

     I felt myself blushing. “I don’t know,” I mumbled. “I’m not. . .regular.”

     He laughed a little. “It’s all right, Marian. I’m a doctor, you know. I understand such things.”

     “Why?”

     “Why do I understand such things or why do I want to know?”

     I shook my head again, unable to look at him.

     “You might have conceived a child last night,” he said. “Though I hope not. Not yet at least.”

     “Not the first time,” I said quickly. “I’ve heard. . .”

     He laughed again. “Unfortunately, that’s an old wives’ tale. Trust me.”

     “I’m sorry,” I said, still unable to look at him. “It was my fault. Everything’s always my fault. I’m. . .”

     His arms crushed me to him. “Hush, Marian,” he said almost sternly. “Hush now.”

     The joy of the night faded as I went downstairs. I was no better than my mother, and, like her, I’d be punished. In my room, I fell across the bed and wept.

     We left the middle of the morning in a pouring rain. I sat chastely away from him as we drove. “Tom, are you angry with me?” I after several silent miles..

     “No, of course not.”

     “Disappointed in me, then.”

     “Not that either.”

     “I’m sorry.”

     “I should have had the strength of character to send you away,” he said quietly. “I’m not a strong man, you see.”

     “Yes, you are!” I defended him.

     “I’ve yearned for you for so long,” he said. “Last night. . .you were so warm. . and soft.. .

     “And in your bed.”

     He smiled a little. “Was it good for you, dearest?”

     My face grew hot. “Yes,” I said.

     “I’ve wondered lately if I would please you.”

“     Everything about you pleases me.”

     He sighed. “As you said, we’ve already made our commitment to each other, but. . .but I feel it’s important to make it before God, too, my love.”

     “I never meant to it to happen,” I said. “I only came upstairs because I was frightened, but then. . .”

     “Perhaps it would be better not to speak of it again, Marian. Two weeks from tonight, we’ll be married.”

     “Yes,” I said, “two weeks from tonight. I made my own wedding dress. I hope you’ll like it.”

     “I’ll adore you in it.”

     “Francie and Peggy let me have all the handmade lace off their graduation dresses, and with what I took off mine and the extra Mrs. Walinsky gave me at Christmas, I was able to make six panels.” I thought about how Peggy’s dress had been so soiled in the accident that I’d had to bleach hers in the sun for days and then piece it carefully. “And I’m borrowing Valerie’s veil. It was imported from Italy.”

     “I can hardly wait to see you in it,” he said, reaching across the seat for my hand. “All our daughters must look exactly like you, and I’ll walk them down the aisle in your dress someday.”

     “Just how many daughters do you have in mind?”

     “Three or four anyway.”

     “No boys?”

     “Just one, our first. The girls will need an older brother to look after them.” He was quiet for a moment. “Marian, have you any concerns that perhaps our children might. . .might inherit my defects?”

      I hadn’t, but I considered it now. “I want all of them to be exactly like their father,” I said honestly. “Kind, compassionate, intelligent. . .wise. . loving. Nothing else matters.”

     He sighed. “I don’t wish to pass on the anguish I suffered.”

     “I don’t want any of our children to have polio and end up crippled either,” I said, “but we can’t look ahead and know what’s going to happen.” I moved across the seat until our shoulders were touching and held his hand in my lap. “Where are we going on our honeymoon? Before we go to the Valley, I mean.

“I wasn’t planning on the Valley this year,” he said in amazement.

     “Oh, but Tom, you haven’t missed a year, and Babbie’s expecting us, isn’t she?”

     “It’s hardly the place to begin our marriage. . .is it?”

     “I can’t think of a better place. You’re a real doctor now, and there’s so much more you can do. . .and the children would be so disappointed not to have an art class! Besides, I promised the little ones saltwater taffy from that candy shop in San Angelo. They’d never forgive me if I didn’t come and bring it!”

     I could see him struggling with his feelings. “Marian, I know you’ve gone in the past for my sake, but. . .”

     “It’s not just for you,” I said. “I want to go for the children. Honestly, Tom, I want to go. We’ll be together. That’s all that counts.”

     “You are the greatest blessing of my life,” he said softly. “The greatest blessing.”

     I basked in the warmth of his approval until we stopped for lunch. When we’d eaten, I took off my brace and shoved it into the backseat. “I’m going to stretch it a little,” I said, seeing Tom’s concerned look as I lifted my leg onto the seat. “I’m all right.”

     I nodded off against his shoulder until the excruciating pain of a leg cramp jerked me awake. Tom pulled to the side of the road quickly and began to massage my leg. When the cramp was gone, I tried to wipe my tears away, but he’d already seen them. “I can’t bear to see you in pain,” he said, continuing to rub my leg gently. “I want you to see a doctor in Houston. . .”

     “I’m marrying a doctor,” I interrupted, trying to smile. “My own personal physician.”

     He laughed and leaned toward me. “Then my fee, please, Miss Marian.”

     There was the sound of rubbing skidding on the wet road, then of grinding metal and Tom calling my name, and I felt a heaviness on top of me. Then strange hands were lifting and carrying me. “Tom,” I moaned. “Where’s Tom?”

     “You’re going to be all right,” a woman’s voice said. “We’re going to take you to the hospital in San Angelo.”

     “But I can’t go without Tom,” I protested, trying to fight off the blackness closing in around me. “Please. . .I have to wait for Tom. . .”

Chapter Thirteen

    It was raining the afternoon I moved into the plain red brick dorm, the first in a row of six that began at the corner of Locust Street and wound toward the other buildings. The first floor room I’d requested held two beds, a double desk, two sets of drawers built into the walls beside shallow closets, and a single washbasin. Having never shared anything with anyone before, I wasn’t looking forward to it now, but private rooms cost extra.

    I took the keys out of my purse and opened my trunk. “All my worldly possessions,” I said aloud, digging down for Dimples who was wrapped in an old robe. I sat down on the bed with her in my arms and looked around. The bare hardwood floors were a far cry from the polished ones in my room in Danford, and the dirty white shades on the windows would have to go somehow.

    I hugged Dimples tightly and felt slightly comforted.

    The door flew open then. “I nearly drowned getting in here!” a cheerful voice said.

    That was my introduction to the person with whom I’d share this drab room. She was a sorry sight with her long blonde hair was plastered to her head, and water running from her yellow slicker like so many rivers. “You’re dripping all over the floor,” I said coolly.

    She laughed heartily, reminding me of the Hardegrees. “Yep.” She peeled out of the slicker and dropped it on the floor in the hall. “I hear it rains like this all the time around here.”

    “God forbid.”

    “I’m Sandra Seward,” she said, offering me a very wet hand.

    I took it gingerly. “I’m Marian Kroll.”

    “Well, Marian Kroll, it looks like we’re roomies. Who’s your friend?”

    I realized I was still holding Dimples and felt my face grow hot. “I. . .I just tossed her in at the last minute,” I muttered.

    She looked around. “What a dump!”

    I put Dimples on the pillow and shrugged. “Perhaps it will grow on us.”

    “Have you already dibs on the window?”

    “One side’s as bad as the other,” I said.

    “Then I’ll take the window. I feel like I’m buried in a dungeon down here. I asked for the third floor, but there wasn’t anything left. How about you?”

    “I requested the first,” I said, conscious of my brace showing plainly beneath my skirt.

    She noticed it then. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, well, of course you did. I expect I’ll be just as glad not to climb all those stairs anyway. My brother drove me up here and said he’d take me to dinner tonight. You’ll go with us, of course.”

    “Oh, no, I won’t interfere.”

    “Of course, you’ll come. Tom has to approve of you.”

    “What?”

    She laughed. “He’s a senior at Baylor, and he’s already been accepted into medical school for next year.”

    “I have an older brother, too. He works in San Angelo.”

    “Well, he’ll have to come to see you, and I’ll get Tom up here again, and we’ll all be one big happy family.”

    I curled my lip. Little did she know.

    Tom Seward was quite possibly the ugliest boy I’d ever seen. Sandy brown hair, already receding from his high forehead, matched the shaggy eyebrows that came together over the bridge of a large, crooked nose. His almost-colorless blue eyes were so deeply set they appeared sunken, but they twinkled as a broad grin split his homely face. I noticed a pale white scar on his upper lip that flattened his face just under his nose. “I’m delighted to meet you, Miss Marian.” I picked up a slight hesitation in his speech, but his deep voice gave me chill bumps. He extended a hand which dangled loosely at the end of one long arm, much like Ichabod Crane’s. My hand disappeared between two huge, warm paws, and I fell head over heels in love.

    Tom called his sister Babbie. “When she was born,” he explained with no hint of discomfort, “my speech was still poor, and I couldn’t say baby.”

    “I like it,” I said. “Everyone at home called me Peaches. It’s a long story.”

    “Which I’d love to hear sometime,” Tom said.

    I gazed at him adoringly.

    When he delivered us back to the dorm, I went ahead to our room so Sandra--or Babbie--could have the last few minutes with the brother she obviously adored as much as I loved Edward. As we unpacked, she said, “What did you think of Tom?”

    “Think of him?”

    “When he was born, the doctor told our parents to put him away and forget him.”

    I started at her in horror, though I could believe it.

    “They didn’t, of course. So what did you think of him?”

    “I’ve never met anyone like him,” I said honestly. “He reminds me of Edward in some ways, but in other ways he’s just himself.”

    “The way you were looking at him. . .the way he was looking at you. . .well, Tom’s never shown any interest in girls before. He knew they’d never look twice at him except to stare. And you’re so beautiful, Peaches.”

    “It’s the curse I live with,” I snapped. “Just the way your brother’s face is his. But he wasn’t looking at my appearance, and I wasn’t looking at his.”

    She nodded. “You liked him then.”

    I looked straight at her. “I think he’s the most wonderful boy. . .the most wonderful man I’ve ever met.”

    I loved my classes, and all the girls seemed to accept me without question. When I woke screaming with leg cramps for the second night because of too much walking, Babbie said it was time to take action. She and several of the others found a used wheelchair at a secondhand store downtown and brought it home. “You owe each of us three dollars,” she said. “And we won’t charge you to clean it up.”

    The chair reminded me of the one Francie and Peggy had used to sneak me over to the laundry. I shuddered at the memory. But this chair rolled smoothly, and I made two cushions for it, one to sit on and one for the back. The girls used it to hang their book bags on as we traveled between classes. Babbie even convinced the Dean of Women to let me use the elevator in the few buildings which had one.

    Edward came for a weekend in mid-October, and as it happened, so did Tom Seward. Edward insisted on treating us all to dinner on Saturday night. While Tom and Babbie went to church on Sunday morning, Edward took me for a ride and told me he and Valerie planned to be married in June. “She wants you to be a bridesmaid.”

   “You know I can’t, Edward. Mother and Fa. . .Dan Kroll will be there. You haven’t even mentioned their reaction to my great escape.”

     “They reacted predictably,” he parried.

    “Were they angry with you?”

    “Actually, no.”

    “It was a relief to be rid of me, huh?”

    He patted my hand. “Sister, you did the right thing. Just be happy.”

    “I’m not ready to face them down yet, so please tell Valerie thank you but no.”

    “She said you’d feel that way, but we’ll come to visit as soon as we’re back in San Angelo and settled.”

    “I’ll look forward to it.”

    “What are you going to do for Christmas? I don’t want you to be alone.”

    “I told Babbie about my. . .situation. She seems to take it for granted I’ll come home with her.”

    “Excellent. I like your roommate, Sister. I like her brother, too.”

    “He’s wonderful, isn’t he?”

    Edward smiled. “Yes. Yes, I believe he is."

    I received letters from Francie and Peggy regularly. They’d been surprised at my exodus but said they were glad for me. Francie still couldn’t believe her good fortune even if Mrs. Shaw insisted on parading a string of nice Jewish boys up the front walk and made it plain she didn’t approve of Tank because he wasn’t. She stayed busy taking care of what she called the most beautiful house in San Angelo, going to class, and being part of the drama club. I laughed at that. It suited her.

    Peggy had found a job at a soda fountain in Austin and, at the last minute, the athletic director, Mr. Wiley, had told her about a special scholarship, so she was taking classes part-time. “I want to be a nurse,” she said. “I want to take care of people the same way Mrs. Matthews and Mrs. Bullock took care of me.”

    Bix didn’t write at all, but I hadn’t expected him to, and now I was getting a letter every week from Tom Seward.

    Miss Grace kept me supplied with enough cookies to feed the entire first floor. My popularity soared when the box arrived every two weeks.

    Life was good.

    As things turned out, I didn’t go to Brownwood with Babbie because Miss Grace wrote she expected me home for Christmas. Peggy and Vic came, too, and Francie and her mother spent a lot of time at the ranch during the holidays. But two days after Christmas, Tank put me on the train for Brownwood, where Tom and Babbie met me, and their parents welcomed me like a long-lost daughter. After a week’s visit, I went back to Danford and stayed at the ranch until school started again.

    Tom came up for Valentine Day and took Babbie and me to dinner. She made sure we had time alone together, and the night before he left, he kissed me for the first time.

    In May, Babbie and I finished our exams in time to meet her parents in Waco for Tom’s graduation. I’d never seen him look so wonderful as he walked across the stage in his cap and gown to receive his degree summa cum laude. That night we all went out for supper, and then Tom asked me to take a walk with him.

    As he tucked my arm through his, letting his other hand rest on mine, I swelled with pride as we left the hotel restaurant together. “Babbie tells me that you’ve decided to go both summer terms,” he said.

    “Yes.”

    “But you’ll be able to attend your brother’s wedding, of course.”

    “No. I can’t go, Tom. It would be too uncomfortable for everyone.”

    “I’m not sure I understand.”

    I knew the moment of truth had arrived.

    “I’m supposed to be at Vassar,” I said, debating how much to tell him. “I ran away from home.”

    “But your brother. . .”

    “It’s not a pretty story, but I’ll tell you if you want to know.”

    “I want to know everything about you, Marian, but only if you’re comfortable telling me.”

    “I’m afraid you won’t. . .care about me anymore.”

    “Nothing could make that happen,” he said. “Let’s sit here, shall we?” He guided me to a bench under a streetlight, waited for me to unlatch my brace, and held my arm until I was seated.

    “I’m not what you think,” I said, regretting I’d even brought it up.

    “I think you’re a lovely young woman,” he said. “Bright, witty, talented. . .and capable of being anything you choose to be.”

    “You didn’t say I was beautiful.”

    “Would you like for me to say it?”

    “No. I’ve been told that all my life. It doesn’t mean anything.”

    “Perhaps if I tell you that sometimes I feel as though I’m living a fairy tale. . .”

    “Which one?”

    “Beauty and the Beast.”

    The streetlight made his uneven features even more angular. “Oh, Tom,” I whispered, reaching up to touch his cheek. He smiled apologetically.

    I began to tell him what it had been like for me at home, how Peggy and Francie had made life bearable for me despite my parents’ disapproval. When I told him about finding my mother drunk on graduation night, he said, “I understand, Marian.”

    “No,” I said, breaking down completely and hating myself for it, “you don’t. It wasn’t that she was drunk. It was what she told me because she wasn’t in control. . .that her marriage to Daniel Kroll had been a sham from the very beginning and that I. . .I’m the product of an affair she had one summer she spent back in Virginia.” I couldn’t read his face through my tears. “Now do you understand? I’m a bastard child! My name doesn’t even belong to me. Daniel Kroll hated me because he had to give me his name to save it, and my mother hated me because I was crippled, and she couldn’t relive her glory days through me!”

    Tom gathered me protectively in his arms. “Oh, my dearest,” he murmured. “My dearest Marian, I’m so sorry for your pain.”

    He held me for a long time while I cried, stroking my hair and murmuring to me quietly. Finally he wiped my face with his handkerchief and reached back into his pocket. “I asked you to walk with me so I could give you this,” he said, holding out the blue enamel and gold pin he’d received as an honor graduate. “It’s not the fraternity pin that most girls covet, but. . .”

    “You want me to have your pin?” I asked incredulously.

    “Would you wear it, Marian?”

    I touched the pin resting in the palm of his large, bony hand. “Will you put in on me?”

    He fastened it to my collar so skillfully I hardly felt him touch me. “The pin is a promise, Marian,” he said, taking my face in his hands. “Someday I’ll exchange it for a ring.”

    My face must have mirrored my confusion and disbelief, and suddenly he laughed, a slow, rumbling sound from deep inside him. “Love is a peculiar thing, Marian. Love makes all things acceptable. In your case, perhaps it blinds.”

    I frowned and touched his face again. “I don’t deserve you, Tom,” I said. “I wish I did.”

    From the inside pocket of his suit he produced a thin book. “I have something else for you,” he said hesitantly. “Perhaps you’ll find time to read this during the summer.” It was a New Testament with my name embossed in gold leather on its rich blue leather cover. “I’ve marked a few passages, but I’d like for you to start with the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians.” He put it into my hands, then leaned down and kissed my lips not quite so lightly as he had before. “I love you, Marian, not only in the body, but in our Lord.”

    Babbie was asleep when Tom delivered me to our hotel room later. In the bathroom with the door closed, I sat on the edge of the tub and leafed through the tissue-thin pages until I found the passage Tom had mentioned. I’d heard it before, of course, but it had never held any meaning for me. Now it left me feeling oddly unsettled.

    Before I went to bed, I fastened Tom’s pin to my gown and slipped the little Testament under my pillow. Touching my mouth, where I could still feel Tom’s lips, I smiled into the darkness

    The next year I had a small scholarship and earned spending money sewing for the other girls on a second-hand machine I’d found in the same store where Babbie had bought my wheelchair. But Edward made up the slack, assuring me I could repay him when my trust money was released when I turned twenty-one.

    Tom started medical school that year and couldn’t visit as often, but his letters came regularly. We had everything in common except his devotion to what he termed, the Lord. Determined not to lose him, I began going to church with Babbie and reading the little Testament he’d given me, but I knew I was only pretending. The bitterness I still harbored against my mother and Dan Kroll left no room for believing in a Higher Power being in charge of my life.

    The next spring Francie finished her two-year course with honors and came home to Danford where she went to work in the county clerk’s office. She told me later nothing had given her more satisfaction than marching into Dan Kroll’s office to inform him her mother wouldn’t be scrubbing the stairs at the bank any more. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Peaches, but. . .”

    “I just wish I’d been a fly on the wall,” I replied with malicious satisfaction.

    But a few months into the year, she wrote, “The fat’s hit the fire, as Miss Grace says. Now I’m finished with college, and Tank’s ready to get married. So am I. Matka says she will let me follow my heart, but it would mean turning my back on who I am--a Jew.”

    A few months later she wrote again. “I told Tank I couldn’t marry him. I’ll never love anyone else, but it just wouldn’t work. I talked to Mrs. Friedman about Milt and Anna Lee, and she said there was never any question he wouldn’t marry her. She loves Anna Lee and keeps in touch with her--even gave her a big party when she graduated from nursing school in San Angelo and before she joined the Army nurse corps. But she said Milt couldn’t live in two worlds, and neither could I.

    “I’ve cried until I don’t have any tears left, and I’m going back to San Angelo to live with Mrs. Shaw and work for the county clerk’s office there. When I find an apartment I can afford, Matka will come, too. Mrs. Shaw says she can find some nice homes for Matka to clean to make her own money.

    “I remember you used to say happiness followed me around like a puppy, and I guess you were right. But I’m miserable right now. I love Tank, and I love Dutch and Miss Grace and the ranch. But I’m who I am, and I can’t be anything else.”

    The third Christmas, instead of visiting the Sewards in Brownwood, Tom telephoned he was coming to Danford. “I want to see that wonderful ranch,” he wrote, “and meet everyone--Dutch, Miss Grace, Tank, Peggy, Vic, Francie, and Mrs. Walinski.”

    Everyone loved him immediately. After dinner he folded his napkin and said, “It seems the old fellow with the white beard left something in my stocking belonging to someone else, so I thought I’d better deliver it before he scratches me off his list.” He produced a velvet ring box and opened it to reveal a ring with a single lustrous pearl.

    “My dear Marian, you are my pearl of great price. I've spoken with your brother, and he's given us his blessing. Will you be my love forever?”

Chapter Twelve

Peggy held on. When Mr. Marrs at the newspaper said he had to have Vic’s help again, we organized a rotating schedule so Peggy would never be alone. Doc didn’t seem to like it when I showed up three days a week, but Mrs. Bullock and Mrs. Matthews found a comfortable chair for me and brought pillows for my back and even a stool for my feet. Francie could only pop in between jobs, but Miss Grace and Coach Mack’s wife took up the slack on the other two days. Vic slept in her room every night and on weekends.

After a while, when Peggy could have real company, everyone in the senior class came to see her at least once. Everyone but Bix. I didn’t understand it, because he’d been nicer to her this year. I reasoned he was busy working, too, and shrugged it off.

After Mother and Dan Kroll left, Grover taught me how to drive Mother’s coupe. Now I had all the freedom I wanted and needed, though I made sure to let Mrs. Flowers know where I was all the time. On the days I didn’t sit with Peggy, I had Grover bring down boxes out of the attic and sorted through all my outgrown clothes and toys. Why Mother had kept them, I wasn’t sure, but I reasoned they were mine to do with what I pleased. I cleaned out my jewelry box, too, and finally, this time without telling anyone, I drove to San Angelo and hunted up a pawn shop. It took three attempts before I got the kind of money I wanted.

I was late getting home. Grover, looking like a thunder cloud, waited for me in the garage. “Where’ve you been, Miss?”

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

“I looked all over town for you. Even called the Tankersley Ranch.”

“I’m sorry.”

He opened the door and helped me out. Then he stuck his head back in and looked at the mileage gauge. “You’ve been out of town.”

“That’s right.”

“I’d say San Angelo.”

“Yes.”

“I’d have taken you over if you’d asked.”

“I know.” The thought of Grover driving me around San Angelo to three different pawn shops almost made me laugh.

He sighed. “All right. Mrs. Flowers has supper waiting for you.”

“Thank you, Grover.” I started out of the garage, then stopped. “Grover, you’re too nice to work for Dan Kroll.”

He remained stoic.

“Anyway, I’m sorry I worried you. I won’t do it again, I promise.”

“All right, Miss. Go have your supper.”

I locked the door to my room after supper and counted my money. I had more than I’d calculated in my head. Added to the allowance I’d saved ever since giving Pauline and her mother the money to leave Danford, I had almost a thousand dollars. A fortune. My jewelry had brought in the most, but the Neiman Marcus label on my dresses and coats had helped.

I reached for Dimples, my old doll. I hadn’t been able to part with her, not that she’d have brought much in her shabby, much-loved state. Holding her close, I said, “You and me, Dimples. We’re going to college. We’re going to be real people and live a real life.”

Smiling, I lay back and closed my eyes. I was almost free.

Later, I never knew why I went to the hospital on that Friday night three weeks later, but I was drawn there the same way I’d felt compelled to follow Vic and Doc to Peggy’s room the first night. I’d just stepped off the elevator when I saw Vic holding Doc by both arms, shoving him out of Peggy’s room and against the wall. They were about the same size, but Vic was younger, stronger, and a whole lot madder.

“You bastard!” he screamed at Doc. “You leave my Peg alone! I’m the one who should’ve told her what happened, not you! I didn’t do in that rotten monster who got to her, but I swear I’ll kill you if you ever make her cry again!” I could see his face, about an inch from Doc’s, twisted with rage. Doc’s glasses had fallen down on the end of his nose. Behind me, I could hear Peg calling Vic’s name.

My first instincts moved me toward Peggy, but Vic was out of control as he thumped Doc against the wall again. He might just do such as thing as kill him. Maybe he’d killed that Johnson guy after all.

The elevator clanged behind me, and Dutch, Miss Grace, and Tank stepped off. Mrs. Bullock came running and went into Peg’s room, and Miss Grace followed her. Tank started for Vic, but Dutch stopped him. “Vic, that’s enough, son,” he said quietly.

Vic dug his fingers further into Doc’s arms. “Get away from me, or I’ll take you out, too, while I’m at it!” he snapped.

I sucked in my breath. Nobody talked to Dutch Tankersley that way. But Dutch didn’t react. He took a step closer to Vic. “You could,” he said, “but you don’t really want to do that. Turn him loose now, Vic.”

Vic slammed Doc against the wall one more time and stepped away from him. “Don’t you ever hurt her again!” he snarled sounding more animal than human.

I stepped around the corner and out of sight. “We need to have a talk, son,” Dutch said.

Vic’s voice said all the fight had gone out of him. “Dutch, I’m sorry,” I said.

“I know you are.”

“I’d never. . .”

“I know it. But you’d have done Doc some damage if we hadn’t come along.”

“He deserved it! He told her she couldn’t have anymore babies. I’m the one who needed to do that.”

“He saved her life, son.”

“None of this was Peg’s fault,” Vic said, “but she’s the one who’s suffered for everything.”

“It wasn’t your fault either.”

“I got her pregnant. I thought I knew how. . .”

“Nothing works all the time. I could’ve told you that.”

“We should’ve gotten married and come straight home and never. . .”

“Well, son, there’s a lot of should’ves in life, and it’s too late for any of us to do anything about them. All you can do now is to go on, and this time you and Peggy aren’t by yourselves.”

“I love her so much, Dutch. It’s not just some schoolboy crush either. I really love her. She’s good and sweet, and when I’m with her, I feel like I can do anything.”

“I reckon the two of you were supposed to be together.”

“I don’t want anything to hurt her ever again.”

“You can’t keep hurt from happening to people you love,” he said. “It happens. It’s part of life. But you can keep from being the cause of it.”

Silence prevailed for an interminable minute.

“Vic, I’m going to ask you this just once, and then it’s forgotten. Did you kill that man over in Angelo?”

“No, sir! I beat him up all right and told him I would kill him if he ever showed his face in Danford again, but. . .”

“All right. You’ve never lied to me that I know of.”

“I’d never lie to you, Dutch.”

“That pleases me to know that. And it would please me if you’d tell Doc this won’t happen again.”

“He told Sheriff Hatcher about Peg.”

“I figured he would. Did Hatch come by to see you?”

“I told him what happened.”

“Did he believe you?”

“I don’t know. He just said the man needed killing. Said he’d done it before and gotten off scot-free.”

“I heard that, too. Well, it’s over now. When Peggy can leave the hospital, Gracie and I want the two of you to come to the ranch for a while. You can either work with Tank and me, or you can drive one of the trucks into town and keep working at the newspaper. Up to you. But Gracie will take care of the little gal, and you can catch your breath a little.”

“We don’t need. . .” I heard Vic flare up again. Then, like air going out of a balloon, it was over. “Thanks, Dutch. Thanks a lot.”

I didn’t know if Vic apologized to Doc, but the next time I was at the hospital, I caught Doc in his office. “What do you want?” he growled at me.

“Why are you mad at me, Doc? I haven’t done anything to you.”

He shook his head. “Come on in and sit down.”

I closed the door behind me first.

“We all knew what happened to Peggy last year,” I began. “But she was scared of you. You scare people, you know?”

He muttered something under his breath.

“You’re the only doctor we have in Danford, and I know you’re good. I know you kept me alive long enough for my parents to take me to Temple when I had polio.”

“Just barely.”

“And those pills. . .”

“No refills! None! I told Dan they were dangerous in the long run, but you were in bad shape, and I had to give you some relief.”

“I know, Doc. I’m not mad at you, and neither is Edward.”

His expression told me how he felt about Dan Kroll. “You understand you were addicted to he damned things. If I could’ve gone after him for getting you more of those things. . .”

“I know that, too, but it won’t ever happen to me again. And I know my biological father--Earl Clifton--drank himself to death.”

He sat forward in his chair. “Who told you that?”

“Mother was drunk the night of graduation and told me I was a. . .was illegitimate.”

“Dan Kroll’s name is on your birth certificate.”

“You know as well as I do it doesn’t belong there. Edward told me the rest of it.”

“Alcoholism is an addiction. I’ve always thought the tendency could be passed on.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“Why’d you come in here anyway?”

“I wanted to tell you something about Vic.”

“That hot-headed little wop!”

“You’re wrong, Doc. Ever since he met Peggy, he’s been different. I’ve never seen anybody care for someone else like that. Not kids in high school anyway. You know they had to get married before the scholarship was announced.”

“Is he going to take it?”

“I don’t know. It’s his ticket out of here. His and Peggy’s.”

“Hell, she’ll never go anywhere!”

“Yes, she will, Doc. She and Vic will get out of Danford together, and fifty years from now, they’ll still be together loving each other even more. I know you think she’s scared of her shadow and cries all the time, but she’s got something inside her. . .a strength I wish I had. . .and Vic does, too. I heard and saw everything the other night, and he was wrong. Dutch told him to apologize to you, so I guess he did.”

Doc jerked his head.

“When we had to tell him what happened to Peggy last year, he cried. That’s how bad it hurt him to know she’d been hurt. And maybe you don’t know he’s been helping her clean that nasty kitchen at the boarding house every night for three years. Before she went to work for Mr. Bascom and had some money of her own, he made sure she had everything she needed. Things like gloves and a warm scarf. Hair ribbons even. There’s a lot more to Vic than you think.”

“I told him if he ever came after me again, I’d have him barred from the hospital.”

“I guess you had a right to do that.”

“I by god did.”

I struggled to my feet and latched my brace. “Well, I’ve said what I came to say. Thank you for everything you did for Peggy. And for me, too.”

His face softened just a little. “What about you, Marian? Are you going to be all right?”

“I’m leaving for college in September. I’ll be fine.”

“Going up East, are you?”

I shook my head. “Edward approves of what I’m going to do, and he’s all that counts.” I opened the door. “Goodbye, Doc.”

Francie and I were having a cherry lime at Bascom’s when the man who’d questioned Peggy came in. I leaned across the table and whispered the story to her.

“Where’s your help?” I heard him ask Mr. Bascom.

“In the hospital.”

“What happened?”

Ben Bascom glanced past the man at Francie and me and shook his head. “She had an accident, but she’s going to be all right.”

“What kind of accident?”

“A fall. What can I get you?”

“Coffee, I guess.”

Tank chose that inopportune moment to appear. “Hey,” he called from the door. “Peggy’s going home to the ranch this afternoon!” He crossed the store and slid into the booth beside Francie.

“That’s good news,” Mr. Bascom said. “Grace Tankersley’ll fatten her up in no time. What’s Vic going to do?”

“Drive in from the ranch and keep working at the paper, at least for a while. Mr. Marrs says he can’t get anybody else right now. At least anybody who’s as fast as Vic when it comes to setting type.”

“He was fast on the football field,” Mr. Bascom said with satisfaction.

Joseph Cambaugh turned around on the stool to face the three of us. “Are you talking about Vittorio Gianchinni’s boy?”

Tank nodded. “Yes, sir. Vic Gianchinni, that’s right.”

I kicked him under the table.

“What’s his connection to Peggy Bailey?”

Tank slid out of the booth again, walked to the soda fountain, and extended his hand. “I’m Neill Tankersley. We haven’t met, have we?”

The man didn’t shake hands. “Joseph Cambaugh.”

“Oh, sure, you own the chemical company where Vic’s daddy worked.”

It always amazed me how Tank, quiet as he was, could talk to anybody. But then, so could Dutch.

“That’s right.”

Tank seemed to consider his words. “Well, Vic graduated this spring. We all did. He got the football scholarship to the University, so he’ll be going in September.”

“What about Peggy Bailey?”

Tank affected a look of pure innocence. “Peggy? Why, they’re married, and she’ll go with him.”

As he’d done before the man tossed a nickel on the counter and left in a huff.

“What was all that about?” Tank asked. He came back and sat down. Mr. Bascom brought him a cherry lime. “Thank you, Mr. Bascom.”

“I’ve got that salve made up for Dutch. Don’t forget it when you leave.”

“No, sir, I won’t. That’s what I came in for.”

When Mr. Bascom had gone back into the pharmacy, I filled Tank in.

“What’s he so curious about? Did you see that picture?”

“It looked like Peggy. Like she’d have looked if she’d been grown up twenty-five years ago. She was upset and told me not to tell, but I think keeping secrets has gotten us all into enough trouble.”

Tank frowned as he considered the information. “Well, maybe I’ll run it by Dad.”

“Are you driving Peggy and Vic out to the ranch?” Francie asked.

“Mom’s at the hospital getting her packed up, and Vic’s at the newspaper doing the same. Mrs. Birnbaum must’ve brought Peggy four or five frilly things. . .”

“Negligees,” I said.

“Gowns and robes,” Francie said.

I curled my lip.

“And Mrs. Bascom loaded her up with powder and creams and that sort of stuff.” He stopped to take a swig of his cherry lime. “Mom says to give Peggy a couple of days to get settled before you two come out.”

Francie sighed. “I’m working straight through the next two days anyway, but it’s money.”

“Seen Bix lately?” I asked Tank.

“Yeah, here and there.”

“Oh.”

He peered at me over the rim of his glass. “You haven’t?”

“No.”

“When are you leaving for college?”

“I’m not sure. Just remind Bix I’m alive if you see him.”

Tank nodded. “Sure.” He finished his cherry lime. “I better go get Vic and get over to the hospital now.”

“Tell Peggy we’re glad she’s getting out of there,” Francie said.

“And we’ll be out when Miss Grace says it’s okay to visit,” I added.

Mr. Bascom handed Tank a jar. “This ought to fix up that cow’s udder all right.”

Francie giggled.

“Wonder if it would make Peggy grow any you-know-what?” I asked.

The looks Tank and Mr. Bascom gave me made me laugh, too.

Early the next morning, Francie scratched on my screen and handed me a note from Bix. “He came by yesterday to leave the laundry from the market. I’ve got to go clean house for Mrs. Birnbaum. She’s having company this weekend.”

I waved her off and went back to bed to read Bix’s note. He said he’d missed seeing me and hoped I could meet him at the park on Sunday afternoon about two. “I’ll bring us a couple of cold bottles of pop,” he wrote. I wondered why he’d never suggested meeting until now, but I had to admit feeling excitement that he’d finally asked.

On Sunday I drove to the park, mainly because I couldn’t walk that far. Bix waited for me at the main entrance and hopped in so we could drive down by the river and away from prying eyes. I’d brought a box of Mrs. Flowers’ sugar cookies, and Bix popped open the bottles of soda. The river lapped the bank just below the flat raised rock I used as a seat, while Bix sprawled on the grass.

“I guess you know Peggy and Vic went to the ranch,” I said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Did you ever go to see her?”

He changed positions and looked away. “No.”

“You’ve been busy working, I guess.”

“That’s it,” he replied too quickly.

“When are you going?”

“The end of August. I have a job, I think. Sort of general jack of all trades for the football team.”

“That’s nice. You’ll get to see Vic and Peggy.”

“Yeah.” He reached for another cookie. “So when are you going?”

“End of August.”

“You were joking about not going to Vassar, I guess.”

“I wasn’t joking at all.”

He sat up. “Mari, you won’t get another chance like that!”

“Like what?”

“Well, to go somewhere with. . .with. . . “

“Prestige?”

He nodded. “Right.”

“I’m not interested.”

“What about your parents?”

“What about them?”

“Don’t they have some say in all this?

“They don’t know.”

His stared at me in disbelief. “I don’t understand you. You’ve had everything. They’ve given you advantages the rest of us can only dream of, and you don’t even appreciate it!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snapped back.

“I just can’t believe you’re turning your back on an education from a school like that.”

“Believe it. I want an education not an entrance into society.”

“So you’re just walking away from all of it.”

“I’m liberating myself from a life you don’t know anything about, Bix. Just leave it at that.”

The rest of the afternoon went downhill from there. When he said he had to go, I drove us back to the gate and let him out. “Good luck at school,” I said.

He nodded, but he didn’t wish me good luck, too.

Edward came the next weekend, and I confessed everything I’d done, including the visits to the pawn shops in San Angelo. I could tell he was trying hard not to smile. “You shouldn’t have driven by yourself,” he said.

“I’ve already had my lecture from Grover.”

“Good for Grover. So, you’re headed to the girls’ college in Denton.”

“It’s the cheapest school in Texas, but it’s got a good reputation. I’m going to study to be a librarian, and I’ll get my teaching certificate, too.”

“Those are good choices, Sister. I admire your courage.”

I basked in the warmth of his approval.

“I’ll help Grover bring down a trunk or two from the attic while I’m here so you can start packing whenever you like.”

A heady feeling swept over me. It was really going to happen.

Before he left, Edward gave me a check. “Buy what you need to take with you,” he said. “How far will the money you have take you?”

“Through the first year, I think. But I’ll find a way to earn more, and I’ll try to get a scholarship for the second year.”

“Remember what I said about the trust money. I’ll be back before you leave and get your train ticket for you.”

“Thank you, Edward. I don’t deserve you.”

“You deserve a great deal more than you’ve had, Sister.” He kissed my cheek before getting into his car.

I managed to get to the ranch several times. By my second visit, Peggy was plumping up nicely. “Miss Grace gave us the front room upstairs,” she told me. “The one with the window seat. Vic and I like to sit there at night and look at the stars and listen to all the ranch noises. It’s real peaceful.”

She chattered on about how Miss Grace was getting things together for their student apartment in Austin. “Vic thinks I should stay here until after Christmas, but I told him I’m going. He’s had to take care of himself long enough.”

“So have you.”

“Vic’s taken care of me, Peaches. You know he has.” She ducked her head a little. “I’m sorry about all the trouble I caused.”

“What trouble?”

“Making you all keep secrets.”

“I guess we thought they needed keeping. I just wish. . .”

“Miss Grace says what’s happened is done, and Vic and I just have to go on from here.”

“She’s right.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Not until the end of August.”

“New York sure is a long way.”

I saw no reason to enlighten her about Denton. I almost wished I hadn’t told Bix, but he wouldn’t tell. He didn’t want anyone to know the girl he’d liked in high school was crazy.

A couple of weeks later Francie scratched on my screen again and scrambled inside. “Guess what? I’m going to college!”

I waited for her to go on.

“Tank drove me over to San Angelo yesterday to see the new junior college. Well, it’s been there a few years, I guess. Anyway, I ended up with a Massie scholarship--the Massies are rich oil people--and then I got a job. I’m going to live with a real nice Jewish lady and do some housekeeping for her and drive for her.”

“I didn’t know you could drive.”

“Mr. Birnbaum taught me in his delivery truck the first summer I worked for Mrs. Birnbaum.”

“You’re full of surprises, Francie. What’s your mother going to do?”

“Stay here, of course. But Tank said he’d check on her every time he came to town.”

“I guess she’s excited for you.”

“She can’t believe it. She says it’s a miracle.”

“Moses parted the Red Sea for you, huh?”

Her black curls bobbed wildly. “That’s right. So when are you going?”

“End of August,” I said. “But I’ll write.”

“Oh, Peaches, things really are getting better for everyone, aren’t they?”

Dutch barbecued again the week before all of us were leaving. It was the last time I’d see Bix for five years, but I didn’t know it then. I managed to get him aside to remind him not to mention I wasn’t going to Vassar. He just looked at me and shook his head disaprovingly and didn’t have much to say to me the rest of the evening. That night I wrote letters to Peggy and Francie explaining what I was doing and why and gave them to Grover to mail after I’d left. He didn’t ask any questions.

Chapter Eleven

     Vic stumbled out the door as Peggy disappeared down the hall still calling for him “I’m here, Peg,” he called hoarsely. “I’m here!”

     Tank caught his arm. “She’ll be okay.”

     Vic sank down on the bench against the wall and put his head in his hands. “I’ve killed her,” he said brokenly. “Oh, god, I’ve killed my Peg!”

     Tank and Bix had to practically carry me upstairs to the waiting room on the second floor. Vic isolated himself at the window. On the torn leather sofa, Francie and I huddled together. I wished I could cry with her, but the scene with my mother kept replaying itself in my head. Most of the rest of the senior class drifted in and some of their parents who’d been chaperoning the graduation party. The Nunns and the Macks talked together just outside the door, occasionally looking in at Vic.

     Miss Grace and Dutch arrived back from the ranch in response to Tank’s call and went straight to Vic, but he turned his back on all of them. Dutch took Grace’s arm and led her over to the sofa.

     “She’s going to die,” Francie sobbed, “and it’s all my fault! If I hadn’t gone up there and showed off one more time. . .”

     “Stop that, Francziska,” Miss Grace said. “You know it’s not anybody’s fault.”

     Jo Matthews came in then. “We’re going to need blood, so anyone who’s willing to be typed needs to come on down to the lab with me now.”

     Vic was the first one to the door, and Tank was close on his heels. The rest of the boys followed. I recognized Doc’s nephew Aaron Barnes with them when they came back. He’d played football for Robert Lee and graduated the year before. “Tank matched,” he announced, “and so did I. She’ll have the blood of the patriarchs now.”

     I looked blank.

     “You know, Abraham, Isaac, and all that crew. I’m half Jewish.”

     Francie looked up. “I didn’t know that.”

     Edward arrived and came straight to me. “I went by the school when you weren’t home at midnight. The custodian told me what happened. How is she?”

     I shook my head. Tank moved over to make room for Edward to sit down. “I don’t know,” he said. “But it’s bad.”

     “Uncle Doc’s not going to let anything happen to her,” Aaron said.

     I leaned against Edward’s shoulder. “I’m going to stay until we know something.”

     Edward nodded. “Of course. I’ll stay, too, Sister.”

     “But I’m never going back there! Never, do you hear?”

     When the others looked at me curiously, Edward helped me to my feet and walked me into the corridor. “She shouldn’t have said those things to you tonight, but. .”

     “I mean it, Edward. I’ll never go back to that house as long as I live!”

     He sighed. “If you’ll come back and stay until I leave, I’ll take you to Atlanta to be with Valerie.”

     “She wouldn’t want me. Who wants a. . .”

     “She knows, Sister.”

     “You told her?” I looked at him in horror.

     “I told her so she’d understand. She loves you for yourself.” He held me against him. “You’re overwrought tonight,” Edward soothed her. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.” We went back into the waiting room and sat down.

     Ruby Bullock appeared and whispered something to Miss Grace who went directly to Vic and took his arm firmly. “Come walk down the hall with me, Vic,” she said.

     When they’d gone, Mr. Nunn stood up. “It’s time for everyone to go home now,” he said. “There’s nothing more we can do. Go on home and get some rest and pray.”

     The room emptied slowly except for Dutch and the five of us on the sofa. When Vic came back with Grace, he sat in a chair in the farthest corner and put his head in his hands. “I had to tell him it didn’t look good,” Grace whispered to us. “He took it hard.”

     Bix looked at his watch. “The sitter goes home at six. I need to be with Laura."

     “I’ll run you over,” Tank said.

     “No, it’s okay, I’ll walk.” He stood up. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Mari, all right?”

     I shrugged.

     I jerked awake when Doc burst through the door still wearing his blood-spattered surgical gown. The clock on the wall said 4:30. He walked straight to where Vic was sitting, grabbed his shirt, and jerked him to his feet. Then he delivered a blow to his jaw that sent him reeling back into their chair. “You worthless wop sonofa.. . .!” He leaned into Vic’s uncomprehending face. “You’ve been all over that little thing and nearly killed her!” He swung at Vic again, but Vic put up his arms to shield himself. Dutch and Tank were beside him immediately.

     “None of that,” Dutch said, stepping between Doc and Vic.

     Francie, startled awake from a fitful sleep against Tank’s shoulder, sprang up from the sofa and flew at Doc, beating his bloody gown with both fists. “Stop it! Stop it!” she screamed. “He didn’t do anything! Vic didn’t hurt her!”

     Doc grabbed her wrist. “You’re telling me he isn’t the one who got her in a fix?”

     “He didn’t hurt her!” she screamed again, struggling to get loose. “It was that man at the boarding house!”

     Vic groaned. “Francie, don’t!”

     “He did things to her,” Francie said, her voice faltering a little. “He hurt her bad, but she wouldn’t let Matka call you because she’d heard how mean you were. She said you’d say it was her fault, and it wasn’t!” She had one hand free now and began to pummel the doctor again. “Don’t you yell at Vic! They’re married. Vic takes care of her. He got rid of. . .” She stopped, horrified at what she’d said.

     Tank pulled her away. “Just take it easy,” he said. She collapsed against him in tears.

     “Is she telling the truth?” Doc asked Tank.

     Tank nodded tightly.

     “She was raped?”

     Tank winced at the word, but he looked Doc in the eye and nodded again. “He beat her up. Francie’s mother said she was hurt. . .inside. . .but Peggy was too scared everybody would know what happened. She was threatening to do crazy things if we told.”

     Dutch stepped up beside Tank and put a hand on his shoulder. “This is what wasn’t yours to tell, wasn’t it? That night last year when I asked you about Vic and Peggy. . .”

     “Dad I wanted to tell you. . .I knew you’d know what to do, but. . .but Vic said everyone would find out, and Peggy’d be ruined. . .” His voice broke.

     Dutch squeezed her shoulder. “I understand, Son. You did what you felt was right. That’s all a man can do.”

     “Dad, I’m sorry. . .I’m so sorry. . .” His voice broke.

     Dutch shook his head. “It’s all right, Son.”

     Stripped of his fury, Doc seemed smaller. He turned back to Vic, who flinched and instinctively raised his arms again. “Vic, I. . .” He ran his hands through this hair. “When I got in there and sat that mess, I thought. . .” He ran his hand through his hair again and looked around the room. “Come on. I’ll take you to her.”

     For the first time there was hope in Vic’s eyes. “She’s alive?”

     “Just barely. Come on, boy.”

     I’d struggled to my feet while all the yelling was going on. Now I told Edward I needed to be excused. He nodded.

     No one noticed me as I followed Doc and Vic down the silent corridor. Outside the closed door at the end of the hall, Doc stopped. “Before you go in, I have to tell you I don’t think she’s going to make it more than a few more hours.”

     Vic clinched his fists. “She’s not going to die!”

     “She’d already lost the baby. I had to take damn near everything she has to keep her alive this long. That bastard made one hell of a mess. I can’t figure out how she lived through it, much less got herself knocked up later!”

     “She’s not going to die,” Vic repeated. “She’s all I’ve got in this world.”

     Doc shook his head and opened the door. “She won’t know you’re here, but you can stay with her a little while.”

     I edged toward the door where I could see inside. I’d come close enough to death myself to recognize its presence in the dim room.

     Vic approached the bed slowly. “Can I touch her?” he murmured to Jo Matthews who was standing beside the bed talking Peggy’s blood pressure.

     She nodded, and Vic reached down and removed the surgical cap from Peggy’s head and straightened her braid. Then he picked up one hand and brought it to his lips. “Don’t die, Peg,” he whispered. “Please don’t die!” He sat down beside the bed and laid his face against Peggy’s limp hand.

     Daylight was filtering through the closed blinds when I heard Doc say, “I’m sorry, boy,” he said. “There’s nothing else I can do.”

     Vic stirred in his chair and blinked groggily. “What?”

     I startled and realized I’d dozed again, only I was sitting down, and Edward stood behind me protectively. He understands, I thought disconnectedly. He knows why I have to be here.

     “We’re losing her. Pressure’s almost gone.”

     Edward’s hands tightened on my aching shoulders.

     Vic jumped up, turning the chair over. “No, Doc! Please, you can’t let her die. She’s all I’ve got.”

     Doc gripped his arm. “Come on out now. You shouldn’t be here when. . .”

     Vic wrenched away from him. “She’s not going to die! I won’t let her die!”

     Peggy stirred. “Mamma. . .Mamma. . .” She took a hoarse breath and was still.

     Jo pumped the rubber bulb in her hand and released it, listening. Then she looked at Doc and shook her head. He walked to the other side of the bed and put two fingers on Peggy’s neck. “She’s gone, son.”

     I was sure Vic’s loud wail was heard down the hall in the waiting room. “No, Peg!” He leaned over her. “You can’t die. You promised you’d never leave me. You promised me, Peg.”

     Before Jo could comfort him, Peggy’s eyes flew open. “Mamma, wait! I want to come with you, Mamma. Wait for me.”

     Vic grabbed both her hands. “No, Peg, you can’t go yet. You’ve got to stay here with me. Do you hear me, Peg? Do you hear?”

     “Where’s Mamma? I want my Mamma.”

     Jo pumped the bulb again, listened, and looked at Doc in disbelief. “Her pressure’s coming back up,” she gasped.

     Doc felt for a pulse. “My god!”

     “I want my Mamma,” Peggy murmured again.

     “Your mamma just came to see if you were all right, sweet girl,” Vic said, stroking her face. “I told her you were okay, and that I’d take care of you. She said you could stay here with me.”

     Peggy’s eyes closed. “Mamma. . .Mamma. . .”

     Vic bent to kiss her forehead. “You go to sleep now.”

     “Vic”?

     “I’m here, Peg.”

     “Don’t leave me,” she whimpered.

     “Not for a second,” he said. “Not ever. I’ll be right here holding your hand all the time.” He kissed her fingers again. “I’m right here, sweet girl. I love you so much!”

     I heard her breathing become regular.

     “She was gone,” Jo said to no one in particular. “No pressure, no pulse. . .”

      Doc came out of the room and blinked at Edward and me. He didn’t even seem surprised to see us. Then he stopped and looked back. “I spent almost six hours last night putting the pieces of that battered little body back together. In twenty-five years of practicing medicine I’ve never seen anything as bad, and I never saw the dead brought back to life.” He frowned and shook his head. “I don’t believe in miracles. I don’t think I even believe in God.”

     Edward put a gentle hand on Doc’s arm. “You saved her life,” he said softly. “Perhaps God helped a little, too.”

     “You’re my sweet girl,” we heard Vic say softly. “”My sweet, sweet girl. I’ll love you forever, Peg, I swear it! You and me, we’ll make it. I’ll give you everything someday. Oh, Peg, my sweet girl, I’m so sorry. . .so sorry. We should’ve waited! Oh, god, Peg, I’d have died before I hurt you.”

     “I came close to killing him tonight,” Doc said. He looked at Edward again. “And you know why.” He took a long, shuddering breath. “You two get out of here now.” Then he stalked off.

     As we walked toward the stairs I said, “What did he mean, Edward? What do you know?”

     He shook his head. “Tomorrow, Marian. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

     Edward brought breakfast to my room the next morning. “I telephoned the hospital,” he said. “Peggy’s holding her own.”

     “She’s going to be all right?”

     “They think so.”

     “I was so scared, Edward. I’d figured out she was going to have a baby. Vic didn’t know.”

       “What happened last year. . .”

     “We all knew about that, too, but we thought we did the right thing by not telling.”

     He gazed out the window for a few seconds. “Well, it’s over and done with now. The man who did it. . .”

     “He’s dead.”

     Edward frowned.

     “Vic didn’t do it. He beat him up and tossed him in a boxcar. Someone killed him in San Angelo. It was in the paper.”

    “I see.”

     “He didn’t do it, Edward.”

     “All right.”

     I picked at my cooling eggs. “How long have you known about me?”

     “Since the summer you were a year old. We were in Richmond, and your father came to Grandfather’s house and demanded to see you.”

     “Earl Clifton.”

     “He’d had too much to drink. Grandfather Fancher got his Confederate pistol out of the drawer and threatened to kill him if he didn’t leave.”

     “Did he ever come back?”

     “No. I was six then, old enough to understand but still quiet enough that no one ever realized I was around.”

     “Now I understand why Father. . .why Dan Kroll hates me.”

     Edward’s sad eyes caressed my face.

     “Is Earl Clifton still alive?”

     “He died some years ago in New York. After his father died, he ran the mills into the ground, sold out, and left Virginia for good. I heard later he married and divorced twice before he drank himself to death.”

     “Does all that have anything to do with what Doc said last night?”

     “I’m not sure you should know that story, Marian.”

   “What can be worse than knowing I’m a b. . .”

     He put his fingers on my mouth. “Never say that word again, Marian. You’re my precious sister. I love you, and it hurts me to hear you say things like that.”

     “I’m sorry.”

     He nodded. “The summer you were so ill. . .when I brought you home, I went to see Dr. Barnes. I wanted him to check you over from time to time, but he said he couldn’t. I asked him why, and he told me about his connection to the Cliftons and how Mother had threatened to tell everyone. . .” He stopped and looked away.

     “Tell everyone what?”

     “The Barnes family had its roots in Virginia, too. When Dr. Barnes finished medical school, he started practice in Richmond and met Earl Clifton’s older sister Evelina. Apparently her family opposed the match, but they. . .”

     “I get the idea.”

     “The inevitable happened, of course, and she came to him and demanded he do something.”

     “Get rid of the baby.”

     Edward nodded. “He told her he couldn’t and asked her again to marry him. She refused. Then he said he’d take the child, but she said she couldn’t have it, that her family would disown her. So, she went to one of those backwoods women, and she died. Her body washed up on the riverbank several days later. That’s when Doc left Richmond and came to Danford.”

     “He ran as far as he could.”

     “Yes.”

     “It wasn’t his fault.”

     “He’s always blamed himself, and when he thought Vic had done all that damage to Peggy, he lived it all over again.”

     “So Mother knew all this and said she’d ruin him.”

     “He never thought they’d move to a little place like Danford.”

     “Why did they?”

     “I don’t know, Sister. I really don’t. Opportunity, I suppose. Father is president of the bank besides having other business connections around the state.”

     “You made them call him when I had polio.”

     “There wasn’t time to get you to Temple, which is what they planned to do, though they took you later.”

     “So he saved my life like he did Peggy’s.”

     “In a manner of speaking.”

     “Does he know about me?”

     “I have no idea.”

     I pushed my plate away. “Edward, I’m not going to Vassar.”

     “So you’ve said.”

“I want to go to college, but I don’t want any more to do with Dan Kroll. Or even Mother. I guess I feel sorry for her, but she doesn’t care about me, and frankly, I don’t care about her.”

Though he looked sad, he didn’t argue the point.

     “There are other colleges, and I’ll find one. I graduated third in the class, so my marks might get me a scholarship, and I can find some kind of job I can do. I can sew. . .maybe play the piano for groups. You know I’ve kept up with my music.”

     “I can send you, Sister.”

     “No! No, you’re going to get married and have your own home and probably children someday.”

     “I make a good salary, and there’s the trust money. You’ll have your own when you’re twenty-one. Consider it a loan and repay it if you like.”

     I thought that over. “If I need it. Let me see what I can do on my own.”

     “I won’t have you do without anything you need. Promise me.”

     “I promise.”

     “Now, I’ll be here through the weekend, but I have to drive back for work on Monday morning. Pack your things and go with me, and I’ll put you on the train for Atlanta. I’ll telephone Valerie to expect you.”

     A plan had begun forming in my mind as he spoke. “As much as I’d like to see Valerie, I want to stay here. I can’t leave anyway until I know Peggy’s going to be all right.”

     “You said you didn’t want to stay in this house.”

     “I know, but when Father...Dan Kroll... comes home from Dallas, he and Mother will go to Richmond and then to Maine. I’ll just tell them I’m not going. They won’t drag me to the depot and put me on the train forcefully.”

     Edward smiled. “It would tarnish their image.”

     “Exactly.”

     “Since I’m only sixty miles away, I’ll let you manage. But you know I have my spies.”

     “Grover and Mrs. Flowers.”

     “In your words, exactly.”

     “I’ll be good.”

     He leaned over and kissed my forehead. “Just be happy, Sister.”