The Bride of Willow Creek(4)

When Sam finally looked at her, his eyes were hard. That’s what she had remembered most, how blue his eyes were. Dark shining blue like the waters of Lake Michigan. Like twilight when the sky began to shade toward indigo. Or like blue ice, a comparison she’d never before had cause to notice.

When his silence began to unnerve her, she completed an explanation she had naively hoped not to make. She had foolishly expected Sam to step in and agree to do the right thing. She should have known better.

“My mother died a year ago, following a long and expensive illness. I didn’t know how expensive until a few weeks ago.” Letting a pause develop, she rolled a flake of croissant into a little ball, then carefully balanced the ball on the rim of her plate before she rolled another. “After Papa died, I discovered a basket of unpaid bills. Even our home was mortgaged.”

First Papa had sold the gig and horses, then the silver began to disappear. But she hadn’t suspected finances were a difficulty until Mrs. Dom stopped coming to clean. Once she had attempted to discuss the inconvenient changes, but Papa’s pride erupted in shouts. She hadn’t raised the subject again. Then Papa died and she experienced the shock of discovering herself nearly penniless.

“Do I understand this correctly? You want me to pay for the divorce and support you for—what?—a year until the divorce is final?”

“That doesn’t strike me as unreasonable.” Anger, swift and hot, scorched the back of her throat. Her head snapped up. “I’d hoped it wouldn’t be necessary to remind you that you haven’t contributed one single penny toward my support during the ten years that we’ve been married!”

His mouth thinned into a line as hard as his eyes. “Maybe you need a reminder that your father made it abundantly clear that he would care for you as he always had. He didn’t want money from me. The only thing he wanted was for me to disappear. Or did he say that after you walked out on me?”

“Wait a minute.” Stiffening, she stared hard, feeling her pulse pound in her ears. “You can’t possibly be suggesting that I abandoned you?” It was unbelievable.

“You’re saying that you didn’t? We agreed we would tell your parents we’d gotten married, then we would go to the Grand Hotel. It was you who told me that your parents would be upset. I figured you would at least stand by me since you knew what to expect. Like a fool, I assumed we’d confront your father together, then leave. It never occurred to me that you’d run out of the room and vanish right in the middle of the worst of it.”

“That isn’t fair! I left the parlor because my father ordered me to my room!”

“For God’s sake, Angie. You were a married woman with your husband standing next to you.”

“I was sixteen and accustomed to obeying my father! You knew that. Why didn’t you take my hand and support me? Why didn’t you help me stand up to him? But you didn’t ask me to stay. You let me go!”

“I would have welcomed some support myself. Your father accused me of seducing you, of destroying your innocence. He told me I wasn’t good enough for his daughter and I would never amount to anything . . . and where were you through all that? Maybe he would have believed that I hadn’t seduced you if you’d been the one to deny it.”

“All you had to say was Don’t go! That’s all it would have taken!”

“How was I supposed to know that? You burst into tears and ran out of the room.” He shrugged. “I expected you to come back. Why wouldn’t I? We were married. We’d agreed to leave together and begin our lives. Instead, you disappeared and your father ordered me out of his house.” He leaned forward. “I waited outside for three hours. I thought for sure you would come.”

“I wanted you to rescue me before you left the house. You should have,” she said, her voice tight.

“Push past your father in his own house and invade his daughter’s bedroom? That sounds reasonable to you?” Making a sound deep in his throat, Sam shook his head and dropped backward in his chair.

They sat in steely silence, too angry to talk. What surprised Angie was how immediate the emotions felt. As if he’d abandoned her yesterday, not ten years ago. The shock and hurt and devastation were right here, right now, aching behind her chest. She’d been crazy to believe she could be indifferent to him. Being with him again triggered all the bitterness and pain that she had felt on that terrible night when she realized he had left without her.

Striving for calm, she willed her hands to stop shaking, irritated that she was only partially successful.