Tessa McDermid - Family Stories

Family Stories - Tessa McDermid

Harlequin Everlasting Love #8

Why do some marriages last for decades, while others barely make it past the wedding?

Frank and Marian Robertson would tel you there's no easy answer. Love, yes, but more than that—a willingness to be guided by love, to be changed by it... If Frank and Marian have a secret, that's it.

When they met in 1929, they realized they were destined to spend the rest of their lives together. However, wanting a life together and making one are two different things. And the obstacles they faced—parental disapproval, even tragedy—sometimes seemed too much to bear. But through it al , Frank and Marian shared a love that's lasted, a love that affects everyone in their family, right down to their great-granddaughter Hannah. She's busy planning their seventy-fifth wedding anniversary, and is doing some digging into her family's past, her family's stories. Stories that explain what shaped her family...

Prologue

Summer 2004

Hannah scrambled up the last few rungs of the rickety ladder and then tugged her brother into the attic.

"You've got to be quiet, Preston," she whispered. "We don't want Grandma to find out we're up here."

"Wow!" He straightened, his head bumping the single light-bulb. Shadows danced around the wal s, creating silhouettes of a forgotten Christmas tree, complete with decorations, a dressmaker's dummy, a rocking horse and other remnants of the owners' lifetime in this house.

"Didn't anybody ever throw stuff away?" He stepped over a broken chair, the arms crooked, and bent to examine an old chest, its lid askew and clothes spil ing out.

"I don't know. But we're not here to look at the junk." She headed for a waist-high pile of boxes stacked neatly against the far wall. "We need pictures. Lots and lots of pictures."

She sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the boxes. Preston plopped down next to her. Dust flew into the air and he sneezed.

"Be quiet!" She held her hand under his nose. "We're almost directly over the kitchen. If Grandma hears us..."

She opened the top carton. Inside were stacks of folders, each labeled with a date from decades past and kept together with colorful rubber bands.

"Here, you look at these." She handed him a stack, then pul ed out another one for herself. She slid off the rubber band, and photographs spil ed into her lap.

Several minutes passed quietly, the only sound the soft rustle of paper. "Okay, these might work." She flipped over a photo of a man standing stiffly behind a young woman seated in a stuffed chair. "G.G. labeled al of them on the back, with the date and the names of the people in the picture. I think these are G. G.'s mom and dad. Our great-great-grandparents."

She held the photograph by one corner, peering at her ancestors' faded expressions. G.G., her great-grandmother, was 93. That meant the picture was more than a hundred years old.

"How do you know who any of these people are?" Preston shuffled through his photographs, barely pausing at any of them.

"Because I listen to stories. Stop it, you're gonna rip them." She scooped the pictures out of his lap and careful y placed them back in their folders.

"I don't want to look at old pictures. Hey—some of this stuff is probably worth a fortune now." He crawled over the floor to a wooden trunk perched under the window.

"Fine. I don't need your help, anyway." She'd actual y invited him because the attic made her nervous. The few times she'd managed to slip up unnoticed by her grandmother had been at night, with only the single light-bulb for il umination. With the afternoon sun shining through the smal oval window, the room seemed less eerie. She could have left Preston downstairs.

Except that he might've gone looking for her, which would have alerted their grandmother to her absence. She sighed and opened another box.

Her great-grandmother hadn't fil ed this one with neatly cataloged folders. Instead, Hannah stared at old albums stuffed with envelopes of pictures and loose bundles of photographs al tumbled together.

"Wel , crap."

"Umm." Preston scooted back to her side. "Mom doesn't like you to use that word."

"Oh, shut up, Preston." She squinted at the top picture. Not even a date from the developing. "Okay, this seems more recent than the others but who are these people?"

Preston peered over her shoulder. "Maybe Grandma and her sisters?"

Hannah glanced at him in surprise, then studied the black-and- white picture again. "I think you're right." Three girls, wearing fril y dresses, stood hand in hand. Behind them was the fuzzy outline of a house and a tal tree with a few leaves on it. "Easter," she said out loud. "The trees are budding."

"Or maybe autumn, with the leaves fal ing off."

She'd give him credit for guessing the identity of the three girls, but these leaves weren't the dry leaves of fal .

"We'll go ask Grandma if she remembers this picture."

Preston jumped to his feet. "But if you show her the pictures, she'll know we were in the attic."

Hannah shrugged and stood up. She thrust two boxes of pictures into his arms and gathered two for herself.

"You don't care that she'll know we were up here?" he continued. "Then what was that big deal about being quiet and everything?" His steps left footprints on the dusty floor.

Hannah careful y deposited her boxes near the attic entrance.

"I wanted pictures. Now that I have them, I don't need to worry about being caught."

"You're crazy." He grabbed the sides of the ladder and made his way down the steps.

Hannah leaned over the edge and passed him a box of photos. When al the boxes were stacked in the hal way, she fol owed him down. She pushed the ladder back up.

"Come on, let's show Grandma." She didn't wait to see if he was behind her, knowing he'd be curious to find out whether she got into trouble.

Their grandmother sat at the kitchen table, her two younger sisters on either side. She stopped talking when Hannah and Preston entered the kitchen. "You've been in the attic. Hannah, you're not supposed to go up there without tel ing me."

"And then you say it's too dangerous and I shouldn't go up at al ." She placed the boxes on the table.

"Grandma, I'm sixteen. I know how to be careful. I'm not going to fal through the ceiling."

"Your father did and he was a grown man."

Preston giggled. "Dad fel through the ceiling?"

His grandmother nodded. "It wasn't funny. He could've been hurt." But a corner of her mouth lifted in a lopsided grin. "He was here for Christmas and said he'd get the tree out of the attic for us. We were sitting in the living room and suddenly, a leg came right through the ceiling. Your great-grandparents stil lived here.

G.G. screamed and Grandpa Frank couldn't finish his TV show. He had to help your dad."

She tapped the box in front of her. "So, tel me what you found."

Hannah settled on the chair between her grandmother and great-aunt Alice. This was the part of the visit she always enjoyed most. Hearing the stories. "Pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. We can use some for the party."

"Mom and Dad don't want a party," Aunt Alice said.

"It doesn't have to be a big party." Hannah wrapped her own hands around her grandmother's worn ones.

"Grandpa Frank and G.G. have been married for almost seventy-five years! Doesn't that deserve a celebration? I mean, people hardly stay married for a decade anymore, let alone seven of them!"

Aunt Margaret chuckled. "You can be pretty persuasive, Miss Hannah. But I don't think even you can convince Mom and Dad." Her expression sobered. "Mom got very upset when we mentioned a family dinner at the retirement home for their anniversary."

"The party for their sixtieth anniversary was the last time we had any kind of celebration for either of them."

Aunt Alice picked up the photograph Hannah and Preston had been studying earlier. "Oh, look! The dresses we wore for the wedding of some cousin. Mom spent al week sewing them."

They lowered their heads over the picture. Al three were mostly gray now, but strands of their natural hair colors stil peeked through. A blonde, a brunette and a redhead, their appearances just as different as they were inside.

Another picture caught Hannah's eye. A tal , dark-haired man stood at attention in his navy uniform, his eyes bright and his bearing rigid. One corner of his mouth curved up as if he were having a hard time staying serious for the photographer.

Grandpa Frank. Her great-grandfather. The father of the three women sitting at the table. The love of G.G.'s life.

She reverently touched a finger to the picture, her mind racing across the years and past the generations as she recal ed the family stories she'd heard.

**********

Chapter 1

Winston, Missouri

July 1929

Frank Robertson leaned against the railing of the neat frame house and studied the door. The setting sun slanted across it, reminding him that he hadn't eaten yet and that he stil had to find a place to sleep that night.

"Just one more," he promised himself. He was going to prove himself to the merchant whose wares he carried. When Frank had proposed going from town to town with a selection of items the man displayed in his general store, Mr. Samson had expressed nothing but skepticism. He'd final y agreed but only after requiring Frank to leave a security deposit, in addition to paying for each item he carried away from the dingy building.

Frank jingled the loose coins in his pocket and used his foot to shove the worn suitcase away from the doorway, scowling at the memory. His first reaction had been to deliver a pithy discourse on the man's antecedents and then slam out of the store. But he had hesitated. He was hungry, he was miles away from the next town and none of the other shopkeepers had listened to even the beginning of Frank's practiced spiel.

Taking a deep breath, he'd acquiesced to the old man's terms. Now he stood in front of the last house in the smal vil age he'd trudged through during the long day. His sales had been successful, even better than he'd anticipated, but he was tired and ready for his dinner. The women he met were eager to invite him into their houses and browse through the things he pul ed out of his case but they weren't prone to buying on impulse.

Of course, maybe they just wanted to visit with a handsome young man, he thought with a grin and a jaunty toss of his head.

While he knew that his technique was good, he wasn't foolish enough to think he'd sel a thing if he didn't present a polished appearance that appealed to the women who answered the door. After years on the road, he'd learned to cultivate his dashing good looks. The other salesmen he met teased him about the amount of time his grooming took but he didn't care. His sales record spoke for itself.

He smoothed down the gray suit that comprised his wardrobe and brushed his hands over his dark hair.

Satisfied, he rapped on the door with his knuckles and let his lips curl upward in a slight smile as he waited.

When the door opened, his prepared greeting spil ed out of his mind and landed in a heap at the feet of the young woman standing there. The late-afternoon sun glinted on hair as shiny as the sun itself. He stared at the sparkling curls escaping from the loose bun and dancing across her soft cheeks.

She tilted her head to one side and watched him, drying her hands on the apron tied around her narrow waist.

Her arms were tanned and a dimple showed in each elbow. "May I help you?"

Frank cleared his throat."I—I—I..."

A dimple appeared in the smooth skin of one cheek, matching those on her rounded arms. "If you're here to see the reverend, he isn't in right now."

Frank swallowed and forced himself to glance away from the bright sheen of her blue eyes. He lowered his gaze to her soft red lips, then wrenched it back to the relative safety of her eyes. "I'm looking for the lady of the house," he managed in a more normal voice. "Is she in?"

The lovely creature in front of him held the door open and took a step backward, her actions inviting him into the dark hal way beyond. "I'll see. You can wait in here."

She ushered him into a dimly lit room. Some sort of workroom, he guessed from the sparse furniture. He wasn't offended. Salesmen weren't high on the social scale and while he knew that his scruples were as high or higher than any of the store owners he met, he accepted society's judgment for now. He wouldn't be a salesman forever.

As he waited for the lady of the house to join him, he wondered if he should start thinking about more serious work now, maybe a job that didn't require so much traveling. For the past five years, he'd lived on the road, leaving home when he was sixteen. Twice a year, he wired his mother and gave her his current address, waiting until she responded before moving on. Each time, she implored him to come home, at least for a visit, and each time he sent back a glib answer and most of his earnings.