Chapter 6

© Copyright 2014 by Elizabeth Delayne



Crystal listened to the silence. She knew the Petersons were out. They had left earlier that morning to visit families that lived several hours outside of town. Still, she half expected one of the Petersons to storm into the room and demand an explanation.

Instead, it was Lila and Lauren who waited with her in the silence. Lauren stared out the window. Crystal wasn’t sure if it was an attempt to give her privacy or her own private thoughts. Lila wrapped an arm around Crystal.

They were her friends. It was an odd thought to realize how long it had been since she’d felt the closeness of friends. She’d spent the last few years shutting herself away from the people of Cartersville, a town she’d grown up in.

Crystal shivered and Lila left her side to shut the window. There was a sudden chill in the air, a reminder that winter was coming. Soon the snows would come and blanket the trees and land in white.

As she leaned back from the window, Lila finally spoke, but it wasn’t to Crystal. “Lauren, where have you gone?”

Lauren blinked at Lila’s quiet words.

“What?”

“I wish you would talk about what’s going on in that head of yours.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because when I have talked and tried to explain what I was thinking and what I was feeling, none of you understood. None of you wanted to understand.” Lauren snapped. “Besides, this isn’t about me. It shouldn’t be. Not … it’s Crystal who needs us now.”

Crystal looked between the two women she’d come to know and consider her friends even as she had to fight against the lump in her throat. “I don’t know where to start.”

“It’s all right,” Lila took Crystal’s hand and led her to the kitchen table. “Come on and sit down. You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to, but its obviously hard on you. The Peterson’s won’t be back anytime soon. So there’s time.” Crystal looked at the door. How could she? How could she share what she’d promised to keep to herself? Lauren moved and sat across from them. She seemed to search as Crystal did for words. “We thought your mother had gotten ill and she’d died naturally, but you said…”

“If I tell you, you have to promise—“ Crystal looked first to Lila, than to Lauren. “You have to promise not to tell anyone.”

The two women agreed, but that did nothing to sooth Crystal. She’d already broken open the gates to the secret. She was afraid of what would come spilling out. She couldn’t share it all. It wasn’t just the words, or the knowledge, but the anger she’d held onto that only Jeff had seen.

“We all have our secrets, Crystal,” Lila murmured gently. “You don’t have to explain yourself to either of us. But if you do, as we said, we will keep it.”

“He came for her—“ The words trembled as they left her mouth.

“Who?” Lauren asked.

“You mean the mad man, Shatler?” Lila surmised. “He killed your mother.”

Crystal nodded.

“Then why not tell your father?” Lauren sat down on the other side of Crystal. “Why not tell people?”

“Because that’s what he wants.” He’d told her that much himself. “Shatler told me to tell him.”

“So he gets away with it?”

Crystal shook her head. “He’s already killed. My mother won’t be just another number. She won’t be used as a pawn for Shatler.”

There was the anger. Restless, Crystal pushed up. He hands trembled at her waist. She pressed them there and hoped to still the sickness inside.

“That day… it’s still so vivid. Not clear. I don’t think it felt clear even as it was happening. Something was wrong. I knew something was bothering my mother when she sent me to the store. She seemed … different. Nervous, maybe. So, I came home from the store. I came home without doing the errands,” she closed her eyes and tried to reign in the flashing memories and wandering thoughts. Only this. She would only share this.

“He was there when I got there. He stepped out on the porch. He told me to give my father a message.” She’d known who he was immediately, and she had stopped, afraid. His words—what he said—meant little to her then.

“I ran inside. I just ran past him and he didn’t stop me. He’d beaten her. He’d stabbed… She was laying on the ground bleeding and broken. She looked up at me. She said… ‘he wants your father.’ She told me not to tell him. Not to ever tell him. She took my hand and told me to promise. I promised and I ran for the doctor and we thought she was going to make it. The Doctor said … she talked to him. She told him how he was to say she had gotten sick. She wouldn’t let Shatler win. Neither wanted Shatler to win.”

“She didn’t get better.”

Crystal shook her head. “No. She fell asleep. She slept for days. And we told people she was sick. And we prayed…and hoped, but she never…she never woke up.” She turned back toward the log and took in a deep breath. “You can’t tell. He wanted my father to come after him.”

“But—“ Lauren stopped herself and looked first at Lila, then back at Crystal. “Your father is focused on Shatler. He’s in charge of the chase. He was already focused on him. He’s already going after him.”

“It’s different,” Lila answered, her eyes on Crystal’s. “Right now he’s a leader of men, but it’s likely if he knew he would react. Go after him alone. Lose his patience. Take risks and chances.”

“And others would question him. If other’s knew they would question his actions and pull him from leadership. Shatler would gain the advantage.” She was suddenly so cold. She lifted her trembling hands and wrapped her arms across her front. “He left two white pieces from a chess board. A queen. A pawn. His message was very clear.”

She pictured the pieces. He’d carved a woman’s face into the Queen’s piece, graced there with a scar that ran down the left side of her face; the face of a baby into the pawn, a face without a scar.

“I never showed my father those pieces. I’ve never told him. The only people who know the truth about how my mother died were myself and the doctor,” she looked toward Lila and Lauren. “Until today. I never should have said anything. I never should have---“

“You never should have had to keep that kind of a secret,” Lila argued. “And maybe you said it, maybe it slipped out because you needed it to, because it’s time, because you needed people who could pray specifically, who could life you up, lift your father up. And maybe you need to tell someone else. Maybe you need to tell the Foresters. Rachel.”

Crystal nearly protested that Rachel would tell the Judge, but she wasn’t so sure.

And she wasn’t sure she could, or should, share the burden of knowing.

“We won’t tell,” Lauren spoke up softly. She stepped over and took Chrystal’s hand. “But Lila’s right. We can pray about it.”

* * *

Lila watched Crystal walk away. She’d said that she needed time, that she needed time to sort some things out before meeting Rachel.

Lila understood. She could not imagine the burden that Crystal carried.

Nor could she understand what was going on with her other friend. There had been bitterness in Lauren’s voice when she’d mentioned her parents trip earlier.

Lila went back into the house. Lauren sat at the table where they’d left her. She was toying fitfully with the pendant of her necklace, clearly lost in her own thoughts.

“Are you ready to open up now?” she asked. “To me at least?”

The look in Lauren’s eyes was so weary. She slid the pendant back under her blouse. “I met someone.”

“Who?”

“His name is Jedediah. He has property a day’s ride from here. He doesn’t have money so he hasn’t opened an account at the bank, but he has plans and would one day like to go to Africa as well. To be a missionary.”

Lila frowned, wondering how much of Lauren’s ramblings were simply her own wishes. “Lauren, I haven’t seen that name at the bank. The land grants go through the bank as well.”

“I know you work at the bank and I had him explain it to me. It has something to do with the war and his comrade who died.”

“But—what about Matthew?”

Clearly aching with it, Lauren pushed up from the table. “What about Matthew?”

“You’re promised to him.”

Lauren shook her head. “No, my mother wouldn’t let me be promised to him and she’ll have something to say about Jedediah. Or she’ll try to. She wouldn’t let me go with them today. I thought maybe if we were visiting others and his name came up… then we could stop by his place and they could meet and…”

“But she wouldn’t let you go.”

“Not unless its back east. I have things to do, she said.” She looked around the clean kitchen. “I have nothing to do. Not here.”

* * *

Lauren was restless. She told herself it was because of the news of Shatler. It wasn’t because of her own actions and secrets. The idea of Shatler was a scary one. She was alone in the big house.

Not that she had anything to worry about. She had nothing to do with Shatler and his band. He wouldn’t harm her.

It was just that she missed him. She missed Jedediah. Her Jedediah.

Closing the door to her room, she walked over to the mirrored vanity her mother had ordered from the catalog. She unwrapped her braid and slowly began to wrap it up into an elegant twist as Lila had already been doing for years. It was something her mother forbade.

Such hairstyles were for married women.

There was a lot her mother didn’t like about Lila. She worked at the bank instead of preparing for a husband. She dressed too old. She could not cook or care for her own home.

Slowly, Lauren reached beneath the neckline of her dress and pulled out the long chain with the golden ring at the end. She watched the diamond sparkle as it hit against the sunlight.

Slowly she smiled.

Soon everyone would know and their expectations wouldn’t matter anymore. She wouldn’t have to please anyone or adjust her future to a dozen different needs.

Her future was set.

She’d slipped away at night and had married him in the moonlight.

She wasn’t the Reverend’s daughter anymore. If she had done with her parents and they had of stumbled across a new land holder today and paid him a visit, she would have simply been home. He’d slipped her away from town at night on several evenings, letting her sleep in the back of her cart along the way there and back. He’d taken her home.

She was already married.

She was Mrs. Jedediah Smith.




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