“Well, now. That is a disappointment. It would have been a nice reward, paid those embarrassing debts.”
“You needn’t concern yourself. There are other means.”
“Still, based on what I saw as a member of the family, I can’t help but wonder if more than God helped Rosemary’s end along.”
“That’s scandalous. Don’t repeat it.”
“I wouldn’t want to, of course. . . .” My husband hesitated. “But I might need incentive.” There was a long moment of silence while his words sank in.
“What do you want, Gerald?”
“I don’t need money. Nothing so coarse.” Gerald waited another long moment. “The thing is, your daughter’s not . . . stable. I believe you’ll agree.”
“Lilliana’s emotional like her mother.”
“An emotionally unstable young woman in my estimation. She’s also physically healthy and liable to live a long while.”
“As I said, marriage is for life. The elders would never agree to divorce, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Yes, marriage is for life. Unless . . . it’s not.” My husband’s measured words sent chills up my spine.
“The church permits one cause for divorce. You have no case.”
“Not adultery . . . but instability, leading to insanity, is cause for divorce by Pennsylvania law.”
“Not by the laws of God or the church.”
“Not unless the insanity might lead to adultery or justifiably strong suspicion of adultery.”
“You’re reaching.”
“I need witnesses. It would be best to have her institutionalized—avoid scandal and guarantee me appropriate sympathy. The kind of sympathy I saw exhibited for you today.”
“You’ll never find ‘witnesses’ to such a lie. Lilliana’s well-thought-of, well-liked. And she’s already gone to the police about your . . . heavy hand. No one would believe it.”
“That was unfortunate and might be a stumbling block, unless someone else brings the allegation of her instability and the suspicion of promiscuity. Someone who’s known her a long time. Someone respected in the community who can testify in court and intimate the possibility of more than indiscreet behavior.”
I heard the pew creak as my father sank into it. “She’s my daughter. You can’t be serious.”
“Never more. I have friends in high places who are willing to be influenced for you or against.”
“This is blackmail. You can’t force me, and you can’t prove anything. I may have been firm with Rosemary—she tried my patience—but I didn’t kill her.”
“Reputations are easier to ruin than incarcerations are to achieve, I grant. You value your eldership, your standing in the church and in the community. I imagine you’re counting on both in plotting your future. I’ve noticed your roving eye.”
“Pastor Harding severely reprimanded Lilliana for airing your dirty laundry before unbelievers. That’s precisely what you’d be doing based on lies.”
“I should never have married a child.”
“She’d turned sixteen when the agreement was made. Seventeen when you married. That may be child enough, but you wanted her then and I agreed. You can’t plead that she’s a child now.”
“I won’t need to, not if I produce witnesses to testify against her.”
“There’s another woman. Is that it?”
Gerald hesitated. “The point is, I’m still a young enough man and I don’t want to wait until your daughter dies an old woman to get on with my life, any more than you wanted to wait for Rosemary’s demise. I need the church’s blessing to remarry. Anything less is untenable.”
A minute passed. No more. “Let me think about it . . . if there is a way to proceed.”
“Lilliana’s grief for her mother weighs her down unnaturally. Now is convenient—and timely. Don’t wait too long.”
Tense and barely breathing, I willed my father to take up for me, say how ludicrous, how unfair this scheme was, but there was no more. Finally footsteps echoed down the aisle and through the doorway. The vestibule light disappeared, and the outer church door closed. The engines of two cars started; then came the sound of gravel spewing as they pulled from the parking lot.
I lay in the hard pew a long time, fearing to get up and find a way home and fearing not to.
•••
When at last I walked out of the church and into the empty parking lot, I stood beneath a streetlamp. Barely shielded by shrubbery, I counted the money in my purse. One dollar and fifty-eight cents left over from the purchase of groceries. Eighty dollars given into my keeping that day by a well-to-do parishioner as a donation toward my mother’s funeral—which I was instructed to give to my father. I’d not been entrusted with so much money in my life—not in my father’s house and certainly not in my husband’s.
It was pitch-black beyond the streetlamp—a mile and a half to Gerald and home. But I dared not go home. There was no way to pretend I hadn’t heard; one look at my face and Gerald would know that I’d discovered his plans. What he might do, I could imagine.
I couldn’t take sanctuary in my father’s house or in the house of any one of the church members. It wouldn’t be fair to draw anyone else into the mess of my marriage—the stink of my “dirty laundry”—and whom dared I trust? Who wouldn’t be afraid of the disapproval or discipline of the church elders or even of their own husbands?
When I’d run to my father for help four months after I’d married, he’d shaken his head and expressed disappointment in me. “Perfect love casts out fear, Lilliana. Your fear of Gerald proves that you lack love for him—and worse, for God. God is love, and without love, without forgiveness in your heart, you cannot hope your Father in heaven will forgive you.”
The time Gerald had beaten me black-and-blue and I’d run to the police, they’d told me, “All men knock their wives around a little from time to time. Don’t worry. Go home. He’ll settle down.” My husband had threatened to kill me if I ever told another soul about his outbursts—kill me and then himself.
No, I couldn’t go home.
In the opposite direction lay the center of the city and the Philadelphia train station. Eighty dollars. I wondered how far it could send me.
There was only one person, other than Sarah, whom my mother had trusted with the secret shame of her marriage—the year I was five and we ran away together. I fingered the lining of my purse and the shape of Grandaunt Hyacinth’s ruby ring . . . a sort of secret friend, a talisman of comfort. Thinking of it so had seemed silly and perhaps childish at the time of my mother’s directive—as if I’d ever have an opportunity to deliver it. Now it was a lifeline . . . I hoped.
Chapter Two
NO CREEK, NORTH CAROLINA
Eleven-year-old Celia Percy tore a muslin square from her petticoat. Her mama would be fit to be tied at such loss and utter destruction, but how else was she to pretend she had a pocket-handkerchief like the girls in Edith Nesbit’s book, The Railway Children? She needed to make sure that the owner of the Southern Railway, who surely rode the train to its end each night, glimpsed her waving madly as the whistle pierced its way up the mountain—although not so much that he stop the train, at least not yet. Not until the day she could truly save the train and every passenger from sure and certain death. Then, and only then, could she beg him for help to free her daddy from jail, just as Roberta had begged the railway owner for help for her own dear father. Tonight was practice.