Angel Sister (21 page)

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Nadine softly rubbed Victor’s hair. It was wet with sweat from the heat of the night, the same as it had been that night so long ago when she’d sat propped up in the bed in Maudie McElroy’s attic room and watched him sleep before he had to board the train to go away from her to the war.

She was so frightened that night. And angry. The anger had surprised her. He’d courted her, made her fall desperately in love with him, and then he was leaving her. He hadn’t had to volunteer for the army. He wasn’t draft age. Her anger that night had been childish, selfish, but easier to feel than the heart-rending fear that she might never look on his face again.

Now all these years later she was angry with him again. A different kind of anger. A slow-burning, sorrowful anger. How could he have gone out and found a bottle on this night when Kate needed him? When she needed him. She pulled her hand away from his head and went on into her lonesome bedroom.

She sat by her open window and tried to imagine a breeze coming in as she wondered what better things she might have said to comfort Kate. Dear Kate who couldn’t bear standing in front of a door that she couldn’t open. Even Victor’s drinking wasn’t that big an obstacle for her. She was used to it. Not happy about it, but used to it. It was different having a father who drank than a husband who did. There was no reason for a daughter to think she shared any of the blame for a father who chose booze over her. But what else could a wife think? Something wasn’t quite right between a man and his wife when that man had to get comfort from a bottle.

Nadine loved Victor every bit as much—even more, much more—than she had loved him the day she held his hand in front of that preacher in Edgeville and promised to stand by him through sickness and in health till death parted them. Then she hadn’t really known much about love except what she read in the Bible and in her poetry books. Two people becoming one, cleaving together. Jacob working fourteen years for Rachel. David’s desire for Bathsheba leading him into sin. Evangeline searching for her love only to find him too late. Romeo and Juliet.

It seemed in literature the greatest loves always ended in tragedy. And sometimes tragedy struck in real life. She was a firsthand witness to that when her mother had reached for her father’s hand and pulled it to her cheek before she breathed her last. So it was no wonder that she imagined all the worst possible things when it was time for Victor to board that train to go over there to fight the war. People you loved too much died. Tragically.

And what could be more tragic than a war? She’d read reports in the newspapers of American soldiers dying in France. Regular doughboys just like Victor.

So she clung to him that last night and begged him to promise her he would come back. “I can’t live without you.”

He held her and stroked her cheek as he tried to allay her worries. “You won’t have to. I’ll be back.”

“Promise me. Swear to it on my mother’s Bible.” She twisted away from him to reach for the Bible on the table beside the bed, but he stopped her.

“Look at me, Nadine.”

She turned back to him. He put both hands on her cheeks and held her face very close to his. His breath was warm against her lips. Her heart began beating faster. She loved him so much.

“Please promise me,” she whispered.

His eyes were intent on hers as he said, “You and I both know that some things can’t be promised. We can want to promise. We can even make promises in our hearts, but tomorrow isn’t promised to any of us. We trust that tomorrow will come. We pray that tomorrow will come. We have hope for tomorrow, and tomorrow does come for most of us.” He paused for just a second as if to be sure she understood how important his next words were. “So while I can’t swear to it on your mother’s Bible, I do believe we will have a tomorrow. And I want you to believe that too.”

“I do believe it,” she whispered.

He dropped his lips down to cover hers. She wrapped her arms around him and gave every inch of herself to him. She thought he was through talking, but then he lifted his lips away from hers. Again he was looking into her eyes as though he could see into her soul.

“This promise I can make. Be assured, Nadine Reece Merritt, and know without any doubt in your heart that I love you more than life itself, but if that life is taken from me before I see you again, then you can still be sure that my love for you will live beyond the beating of my heart and on in eternity.”

She didn’t have to wait for eternity. He came home to her and brought his love back to her. Armistice was declared in November, but it took time to get the paperwork for his release through and the released soldiers transported back across the ocean. Each day seemed a week long as she waited to feel his arms around her again.

Finally the day came late in January 1919 when Father Merritt went with her to Louisville to meet Victor’s train. He said he needed to buy stock for the store, but she thought he needed to lay his eyes on Victor to be sure he was all right the same as she did, even though he would never admit to it. They caught the train in Edgeville. Nadine stared out at snow-covered fields and didn’t try to force idle chatter between them. Instead she thought about the last time she’d seen Victor almost a year and a half ago. She knew that man. The man who had ridden the train away from her. She loved that man. Would the man riding the train back to her be the same? Was she the same? She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, and she couldn’t be sure whether it was from excitement or fear. Perhaps they would both be too changed.

Victor’s father’s thoughts mirrored her own. “He’ll be different,” he said abruptly as they bounced across the countryside toward Louisville. “War changes men.”

Nadine pulled her eyes away from the window to look at the ramrod-straight man in the seat beside her. He wasn’t looking at her, but instead was staring toward the front of the train as if he could already see Victor and knew how changed he’d be.

She said softly, “We’re all changed.”

“Not so much,” he said.

She didn’t say anything to that. She’d learned it was an exercise in futility to disagree with Father Merritt. The man did not entertain the possibility of being wrong. And perhaps he wasn’t wrong. Perhaps he hadn’t changed. But she knew the changes in herself. She wasn’t the same girl Victor had left behind and promised to love forever. She’d mourned a baby. She’d watched the influenza take Victor’s mother and many friends. She’d separated herself from her father. She’d learned to work beside the hard man who sat beside her without caring if he ever offered her a kind word.

She looked away from Father Merritt’s face down at her hands clutching her purse. Through the soft velvet cloth she felt the edges of the last letter she’d gotten from Victor. She took courage from the memory of the words crowded on the thin paper.

I can’t wait to see your beautiful face and hold you in my arms once more. I want to kiss you until our lips are numb. The other guys talk about going home to their wives and sweethearts, but I pity them because they aren’t coming home to you. I am the luckiest man in the world to have you for my wife. Sometimes I think my heart will explode—it’s so full of love for you. So I try to count the ways I love you but I never get through counting. If I did, the ways would number more than the stars in the sky.

He hadn’t forgotten his love for her, and she hadn’t forgotten her love for him. It would be all right. Love would conquer any problems or changes the months they had been apart might cause.

Until he spoke, she had almost forgotten Father Merritt there beside her while she shut her eyes and mentally read Victor’s words of love. His voice was not only an intrusion into her thoughts, it was almost as if Father Merritt had read her mind. “Young people think love will solve everything. It doesn’t. It doesn’t even come close.”

“Were you never in love?” Nadine asked.

“Once, long ago.” He stared straight ahead, and his voice was matter-of-fact, with no more feeling than if he were talking about how much sugar was left in the sugar barrel at the store.

His words surprised Nadine. She hadn’t expected an answer. She’d never known the man to share any personal feelings with anyone, and yet he seemed to be waiting for her to ask more. The throb of the train wheels carried them forward toward Louisville, but there were miles to go before the outskirts of the town. “With Miss Juanita?” she asked.

“No. Juanita and I were ill matched. I should have let her go back to Virginia, but she was already carrying Preston Jr. I couldn’t give up my son.”

“Then who?” Nadine was curious not only about his past, but why he was telling her.

“Her name was Estelle Glynn.”

Nadine’s mouth dropped open. She couldn’t believe what he was saying, but why would he lie about such a thing? Her throat felt tight as she pushed out her next words. “My mother?”

He didn’t seem to notice the shock in her voice or even that she had spoken. Instead he almost seemed to be talking to himself. “She was a beautiful woman. Much like you.” He glanced over at Nadine and then turned his head back to the front.

Nadine stared at his chiseled profile and could not think of one word to say.

After a moment he started talking again. “I didn’t think she’d turn me down, but she said she’d made a promise to a man of God. That no matter how she felt in her heart, she was honor bound to live up to that promise and the calling she felt from the Lord.”

Nadine’s world rumbled and shook just as the train did when they went over some rough track. She couldn’t quite take in what the man was telling her. Surely he wasn’t saying that her mother had once been in love with him. Her mother and father had been devoted to one another. That had been plain enough to see. While her father might have always been stern with Nadine, he’d been gentle and loving with her mother. Their house had been filled with peace and contentment until her mother died.

“My mother loved my father,” Nadine said, with no doubt at all in her voice.

“Perhaps she did. I couldn’t say for sure about that, but I know she loved me. As sure as I’m sitting here beside her daughter, she loved me, but she had a calling. A man can fight another man. A man can’t fight against the Lord.” He stared down at his hands resting on his knees. Slowly he curled them into fists and then opened them back up and stared at his empty hands. “I turned my back on her, wished her dead. Love can turn to hate, you know.” He looked over at Nadine.

“Not true love,” Nadine said.

“True love.” His voice was scornful as he shook his head at her. “You’re not that young, are you? That you still believe in fairy tales and happily ever after?”

“I’ll be twenty soon.” Nadine refused to let him beat her down. She was not a child, and no matter what he might say, she did believe. If not in fairy tales, then in love.

“Then perhaps you are that young.” He looked back down at his hands. “Time will teach you many lessons as it has me.”

Nadine looked out the window and saw they had gotten to Louisville and the station was just ahead. She started to stay quiet, allow their conversation to die, but her curiosity got the best of her. “What lessons?” she asked.

“That with discipline a man can overcome anything. Anything. Love. Loss. Even hate.”

“I don’t want to overcome love. I want to feel love.”

He turned to pin her against her seat with his hard gray eyes. “There may come a day when you change your mind. When love hurts too much.”

The train screeched to a halt and he stood up. He pushed his way through the other passengers toward the door. He didn’t look back to be sure Nadine was behind him. He expected her to follow him.

They stood together on the platform and waited for Victor’s train. She was glad for the silence between them. She tried to push what he’d told her on the train into a far corner of her mind, but it kept sneaking out to worry her. She’d never known him to lie, even for kindness’ sake, but he must have been deluded when he thought her mother loved him. It simply could not be true.

A train whistle sounded in the distance. The train bringing Victor home to her. Nadine let loose the past. What difference did anything Father Merritt said make? Even if it were true. The past was gone. This very moment in time was all she had for sure, and she intended to rejoice in the moment. She was going to grab happiness with both hands and let it pull her into the future with the man she loved.

Father Merritt stood back and watched with a disapproving eye as Nadine threw herself into Victor’s arms as soon as he stepped off his train. Victor lifted her off her feet and hugged her as though he’d never turn her loose. Her worries dissolved like mist on a hot summer day. He was changed. She saw that as soon as she looked at him. Lines creased his face that hadn’t been there when he left. His eyes looked older, sadder. But at the same time his love for her had not changed. He paid no attention to his father there beside them as he laughed and then kissed her until she had to push him away to get her breath. He laughed again. It was a good sound. A sound she needed to hear.

Finally she said, “Aren’t you going to say hello to your father?”

He kept his eyes on her face. “First things first.” Then he kissed her again.

At last he pulled her close against his side and turned to look at his father. Neither man smiled or made the first move to embrace or even shake hands. “Hello, Father. It was good of you to come meet me.”

“I had to buy stock for the store anyway, so it worked out.”

“Yes, of course. Have you gone to see about that already?”

“No. We just got here a few minutes ago. I have time before the train back to Edgeville. We have three tickets for the five o’clock train.”

“That’s kind of you, but Nadine and I are going to stay in Louisville and see the sights tonight. I’ll see if they will exchange our tickets for tomorrow’s train.”

Father Merritt’s eyes narrowed. “It’s a little cold for taking in any sights.”

Victor’s arm tightened around Nadine. “Not for the sights we’re going to be seeing.” He smiled down at her.