One True Love (Cupid, Texas 0.5) (8 page)

Immediately, we both turned away. Me to the children. Him to Elizabeth.

My pulse throbbed at my throat and my mouth flooded with a briny taste. It was only then that I realized I’d swallowed my tears. What else could I do?

Love was one thing.

Reality, quite another.

Chapter Eight

I
DID MY BEST
to reconcile the fact that John was getting married on Christmas Eve. I stayed busy, worked hard cleaning and decorating, helping Mabel with the cooking and watching the children. I went home to see my family on the fourth Sunday of every month, and while I enjoyed visiting there, it seemed each time I was moving further and further from my roots.

I felt detached, adrift, caught between two worlds. I wasn’t really part of the Fant family, but I no longer fit in with my own family either. I’d changed too much. I’d danced and worn short skirts and cut my hair and . . . and . . . kissed a man who was engaged to another.

Shamed, I kept to myself as much as possible.

Wedding plans were in high gear now that Elizabeth was back in town. There were fittings for Penelope and Addie’s dresses to wear to the wedding and new shoes ordered from the Montgomery Ward catalog. Elizabeth came to call on occasion, asking Penelope’s opinion on this or that.

She was a vapid girl who prattled on and on and on about nothing and everything, but I harbored no ill will toward her. She’d had her claim on John long before I’d come to Cupid. I was the interloper, not she. My poor luck to have fallen for a man I could not have.

The butcher’s son asked me out and I agreed to go. We shared an ice cream sundae at the drugstore soda fountain. He talked of the various cuts of meat as I stared out the plate glass window, watching people go by.

John and Elizabeth came into view. He had her little hand tucked in his big one. My heart careened in my chest and I heaved in a deep sigh.

With uncanny timing, John turned his head and stared right at me. Kissed my face with his eyes. We both startled at the unexpected whap of silent contact. He jerked his attention back to Elizabeth at the same time I cupped my chin in my palms and said to my date, “Tell me more about the New York strip.”

By the week before Christmas, I stopped pretending not to care about John’s upcoming nuptials. I couldn’t eat. Mabel noticed my weight loss. She pinched my ribs, clicked her tongue, said, “Pining ain’t gonna help nothing, eat sumpthin’.”

Penelope said I could have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off to visit my family, and that was a relief, not to be in Cupid on John’s wedding day, but when I wrote my mother to tell her this, she said she and the kids were going on the train to visit my aunt Sweenie in San Antonio for Christmas. She invited me to come, but I couldn’t be gone the length of time it would take to get to San Antonio on the train and back.

So I was stuck.

“You’ll come to the wedding with us,” Penelope said cheerfully. “You can’t spend Christmas Eve all alone.”

“It’s not my place, ma’am,” I said. “I’m just the help.”

She pondered that a moment. “Do whatever makes you comfortable, Millie, but you’re welcome to sit with my family.”

After she left the kitchen, Mabel shook her head. “That woman can be dense sometimes. No wonder Ruthie got in a family way right underneath her nose.” Then she invited me to come spend Christmas with her and her oldest daughter in Marfa, but I turned Mabel down too.

All right. I will admit it. Two days before Christmas Eve I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. I had decorated someone else’s tree. Baked Christmas cookies with someone else’s children. Watched someone else prepare to marry the man I loved madly.

I lay in bed that night, buried under thick wool blankets, staring up at the ceiling, recalling what had led me to be here. Losing my daddy. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I felt so utterly alone.

How could John marry Elizabeth when he was simply fond of her? She could never love him the way I did.

Cupid! What cruelty to have flung his arrows at John and me when we could never be.

I lay there cursing Cupid, but then I remembered the story Rosalie had told me in the Cupid Caverns about Mingus Dill and Louisa Hendricks. How in despair Mingus had gotten down on his knees and prayed before the stalagmite and his life had been spared by Louisa’s love.

Praying to a stalagmite seemed a bit too blasphemous for me, but what if instead of a prayer, I wrote Cupid a letter? Might that work just as well?

Besides, what did I have to lose?

Inspired, I leaped from the bed and went to the small writing desk in the corner of my little room. I lit a candle, pulled out a piece of paper and the inkwell from the desk and sat down to write.

Dear Cupid,

How heartless of you to make me fall in love with a man who is out of my reach.

My love for John Fant took me unaware. It was not planned nor anticipated nor even wanted, but once it was upon me, I can think of nothing else but him.

He is my beloved, my one and only, my one true love, and yet I can never breathe the word of this to anyone. It is my sorrow that he belongs to another, and even if he didn’t, the chasm between us is so wide. Him on one side, me on the other.

We pass each other in the street, our eyes meet, and the longing is so big you can punch it, but we must not touch, must not say what’s on our minds. Quick, we look away, scurry off, unfulfilled and aching.

So hard. We hide our love. Not only from prying eyes, but from each other. I want to shout my love for him to the world. Stand atop the Davis Mountains and shout it down into the valley for everyone to know. I cannot. I dream sweet dreams of the hot fires of perfect love and wake to cold embers.

Such a misery. Such a curse. This love that can never be.

Oh, Cupid! Don’t be cruel. Break his bond with the other woman. Build a bridge we can cross. Bring him to me. Let my dreams be fulfilled or let me fall forever asleep, and awaken only when his lips touch mine.

I beseech you with all my heart. Help him find a way to me or release me from this desperate burning love.

Forever Hopelessly in Love

My tears dropped on the paper, smeared the ink. I folded the letter, slipped it in an envelope. I had no plan in my head. Driven by pain, sorrow, love, and longing, I tucked the letter into one pocket of my thin wool winter coat, a flashlight in the other. In the dead of night I crept from the servants’ quarters. The half moon lighted my path through the silent streets of Cupid. My breath chuffed out in frosty puffs, but I felt no cold. I was on a mission.

The walk was long and steep. I toiled up the mountain to the Cupid Caverns, my fingers curled around the letter in my pocket. I felt as desperate as Mingus Dill must have felt the night the sheriff’s posse cornered him in the cave. But I was at my wits’ end. I had nowhere else to turn.

Coyotes yipped in the distance. Creatures rustled in the bushes. I might have been afraid if I hadn’t been raised in the country, knew the night sounds like an astronomer knew the stars. I trudged and daydreamed. Thought about the marathon. “It Had to Be You” circled around and around in my head. Finally, I reached the caverns.

The night road might not have scared me, but stepping into that cavern took extra courage. Only thoughts of John kept me going. This was my last-ditch effort. Useless, most likely, but it was all I had. Something was better than nothing.

Please, Cupid, please.

A fresh cold blasted my face as I stepped into the cavern. My hands shook as I shone the thin flashlight beam around, found the wandering path, and started my journey.

At one point I thought I was lost and a breath-stealing panic grabbed my lungs as I realized no one knew where I was. If I took a wrong turn and found myself wandering endlessly, no one would know to come look for me.

I contemplated going back, but then there I was, in the cave with the Cupid stalagmite looming over me. I crouched beside it. Imagined Mingus Dill in this spot pleading for his life.

Love had saved Mingus. Maybe it could save me too.

I left the letter at Cupid’s feet, left my beating heart and endless hopes and shattered dreams there too.

Have it all, Cupid. It was all or nothing. John or a lifetime of unfulfilled yearning.

I stumbled from the cave, made my way through the cavern, and popped out into the moonlight. I remembered the last time I’d left the caverns and walked this road. John had come upon me and given me a ride.

I touched my cheek. The one that I had rested against his back.

“John, I love you!” I yelled the words out loud. It felt so good that I said it again. And again. Spilling to the heavens the words I could never ever say to him.

“I love you, John. Marry Elizabeth if you must, but it will never change how I feel. I’ll love you until my dying day.”

The wind whistled through the mesquite trees and a light sprinkling of snow started to fall. My toes were cold. Nothing to do now but let go.

My fate was in Cupid’s hands.

I
SPENT
C
HRISTMAS
Eve morning in my room. I did not want to get in the way of the family’s wedding day preparations. Nothing had happened since I left the letter at Cupid’s feet. I don’t know what I expected. A bolt of lightning from the sky? John’s life path had been set long before I ever met him. It was unreasonable to expect him to change it for me.

Hope is a terrible thing. It keeps you clinging when you should let go. It sails you straight onto rocky shoals.

Nothing is going to happen, Millie
, I told myself.
Go back to sleep. When you wake, John and Elizabeth will be married and all hope will be gone.

But sleep was impossible.

I got up, got dressed, and with hands clasped behind my back, I paced the small room. The wedding was at eleven, with a reception brunch to follow at the Fants’ home. All I had to do was peek out the window and I’d be able to see the guests arriving with presents when the time came.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stay here and watch.

Out. Get out of here.
I wrestled into my coat and put on mittens my mother had knitted me for Christmas. She’d sent them in the post on the same day she told me that she and my brothers and sisters were going to San Antonio.

For the longest time, I simply wandered around town. Everywhere I went people smiled and wished me Merry Christmas. I forced a smile, wished them the same, but inside I was hollow as a Halloween jack-o’-lantern.

I swear I had no intention of stepping into the First Methodist Church of Cupid. Why torture myself by watching John hitch himself to Elizabeth for life? But as more and more people, decked out in their Sunday best finery, streamed past me headed for the church, I found myself helplessly following the crowd.

Don’t do it, Millie. Don’t.

I stopped on the sidewalk outside the limestone church with a tall silver steeple reaching for the sky. Had the silver come from the Fant mine? Could my daddy have mined it? Were there other silver steeples stretching across the Southwest? A trail of my father’s work. A legacy linking past to future for generations to come. The notion pleased me.

A relentless wind whipped down off the mountains, stirred the skirt of my work dress around my legs. I wasn’t dressed for church services, much less a Christmas Eve wedding.

The crowd was thinning as eleven o’clock approached, and still I stood rooted. Paralyzed by indecision.

I pictured myself running up the aisle and just as the preacher asked if anyone knew a reason these two should not be joined to speak now or forever hold their piece, yell out,
I know a reason. John loves me and I love him.

Of course I would not, could not do that, no matter how much my heart was breaking. If there was to be a miracle, John would have to come to me. I would not throw myself at him.

An image of my letter, lying at Cupid’s feet, drifted into my mind. I’d have to go back up there and retrieve the letter before someone else found it and learned of my lovesick secret.

But not today. I was too weary. Maybe tomorrow as everyone else celebrated Christmas.

The bell clock in the tower of the Catholic church across the street chimed the hour. Eleven o’clock. Elizabeth would be walking down the aisle.

I curled my hands into fists, waited. The sidewalk around me was empty. The final stragglers had already entered the church. I should leave. Go back to my room.

My feet ignored my brain. Before I knew it, I had climbed the steps and my sweaty palm was on the doorknob. Strains of the bridal march drifted through the heavy wooden door.

“No. No. Don’t do it,” I whispered.

Was I talking to myself? Or John?

I twisted the knob, eased open the door. Lighted candles flickered. The ends of the pews were decorated with red poinsettias and white bows. The scent of pinecones filled the air. A wizened old lady pounded the keys of the organ, pumping out the slow-paced song. Elizabeth, looking like a china doll, was being escorted down the aisle on her father’s arm. Every seat was taken and numerous guests stood along the back wall. Rosalie and Buddy Grass were among those standing. Apparently, they had gotten back together. It seemed most everyone in town had come out to see Cupid’s heir apparent take his bride.

There was no room for me here.

Go.

Common sense finally sank in and I was just about to turn away when I spied John standing at the end of the aisle, dressed in a dapper black suit, his hands clasped in front of him. My stomach flopped over and I forgot to breathe.

His eyes met mine.

I saw in them anguish that mirrored my own. I wanted to flee, but my feet were rooted to the spot. I knew one thing with absolute certainty. If I moved, my knees would collapse, so I stood in the doorway, hung in darkness as black as the Cupid Caverns at midnight. Why, oh why had I opened that door?

Elizabeth and her father reached the altar.

But John was not looking at his bride. He only had eyes for me.

My lips parted and I whispered inaudibly, “My one true love.”

Elizabeth’s father turned her over to John, stepped back, and seated himself in the front pew. John took Elizabeth’s hand.