Sweet Annie (22 page)

She reached for his arm and
he tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and slowed his pace.
"You've never met me on the walk before," he said, and his voice
shook.

"I always wanted
to," she told him softly.

He patted her hand and
blinked.

"What
happened, Daddy?" she asked, unable to wait another minute.

They
had reached the porch stairs and Annie leaned on him to climb them. The screen
door opened and shut and Annie looked up to see her mother's disapproving
observation.

Annie
ignored her. "What did you and Luke discuss?"

"I am not going to fight
you," he said finally.

Annie
lowered her weight onto a wicker chair. Eldon sat across from her, but her
mother stood, her hands folded over her waist.

"He
made me see that this is what you want, and that you are old enough to make
that decision."

Elation
burst through Annie's ambivalent emotions. She blinked back tears.

"You
cannot be considering condoning this travesty!" her mother said sharply,
then turned to Annie. "You have no idea what you are getting yourself
into."

"I believe I do—"

"You're
too young to know what you want. This is a passing whim that you will regret.
When you're older you'll see that your father and I made the best choices for
you."

"I'm not a child. Why
can't you see that?"

"Because
you're not behaving like an adult," she retorted.

"Mildred,
the girl is of age," Annie's father said. "She has a mind of her own.
Would you rather she ran off and we never saw her again?"

"I
wouldn't do that, Daddy," Annie protested. She'd never even considered the
possibility, and didn't know why her father feared she had. “But I
am
going
to marry Luke."

“We
could
send
her away,'' Mildred said,
her entire posture rigid. "We can keep him from finding her."

"And
make our daughter a prisoner?" he asked, opening a palm toward his wife. “Do
you really think she would be happy living God knows where with strangers? She
would hate us."

“Do
you think she will be happy when she realizes she can't do all the things she
imagines she can? Do you think she will be happy when that man leaves her for a
normal woman?''

"Mildred,"
Eldon said in censure. "I give the man more credit than that."

A
quiver of unease ran through Annie's heart. Hurt and betrayal that her own
mother thought so little of her, had such small regard for her feelings,
pressed a braise into her newly gained confidence.

"I
will not place my approval on this abomination," she said.

"Annie is going to
marry him," Eldon said calmly.

"Not
with my blessing. I will not lift a finger to help you make a fool of
yourself," she said to Annie. "And he will never be welcome in this
house."

Hurt sliced through Annie's
chest.

Eldon
stood and faced his wife squarely. “Annie is our daughter!"

Mildred
turned her face aside. "Not the daughter I know."

He
glanced down at Annie. Heart breaking, she straggled to keep her features
composed. Why? Why had it come to this? It wasn't even
Luke
who was the problem. It wasn't that her mother considered him
not good enough for her—it was that she considered Annie not good enough for
anyone! It had always been this way.

"Luke
doesn't care that I'm not perfect, Mother," Annie said softly. "He
doesn't ask me to be anyone I'm not. He accepts me and loves me just the way I
am. Why can't you?"

"You
are trying to be someone you're not," her mother returned. “You are trying
to be the woman you think he wants. But you're not. You're not capable of being
that woman. I don't want to see you regret your impetuousness later, but you
will." She turned and stormed into the house.

Eldon
seated himself slowly, his expression full of sorrow.

"It's
not your fault, Daddy," she assured him softly. "You've done the best
you could—always. And I know you care about me—truly about me and what I
want."

"I
will not let her keep you away from this house," he told her with
conviction. "He has to properly court you, and that means calling on you
here. And after you're married, we will still have Sunday dinners every other
week."

An
irrepressible smile spread across her face at the idea of Luke properly
courting her, but disappeared at the thought of Sunday dinners. No way could
she picture anyone in their right mind handing Luke and Burdell croquet
mallets. "We'd better let time work on that."

Her
mother's impenetrable mind on the subject didn't give her much hope, either.
But there, above the hurt of her mother's lack of acceptance, was the unspeakable
joy of knowing once and for all that she and Luke would be together.

No more hiding. No more
secrets.

They
could be together. The concept was as liberating as being free of her chair.

And now she had real plans
to make.

Chapter Eleven

"Luke
is calling this evening." Annie read the note Glenda had handed her in
front of her mother and made the announcement.

It
was cleaning day, and Annie had dressed in one of the work dresses Glenda had
given her in exchange for the dresses Annie had cut down and sewn for her
daughters.

Mildred
said nothing, going about her dusting as though she preferred to pretend Annie
didn't intend to go through with this courtship.

Because
of his work on the house, he'd visited only once a week for the past few weeks.
Each evening that he'd arrived, Mildred had gone upstairs with a headache
while Annie entertained him on the porch. Soon it would be fall, and Annie
didn't plan to sit outdoors on brisk evenings.

“Did
you have much in your hope chest when you married Tim?" Annie asked the
young housekeeper.

"Oh,
yes, I had tea towels and aprons my grandmother made, and a cast iron skillet
my father bought from a traveling salesman. I do love that skillet."

"Does
a man expect his bride to have those things?'' This trousseau thing had become
a worry on her mind. She understood she was supposed to be bringing something
to contribute to the household, and so far it didn't look like she had much to
offer.

"You'll have wedding gifts," Glenda reminded
her.

"Yes, of course."
They had set a date, a date her father had frowned at and her mother had met
with stony silence because it wasn't a year or two away. Neither Luke nor Annie
wanted to wait any longer, so they'd chosen the last Saturday of October.

Her mother rarely spoke to
her anymore, as though Annie had done something to deliberately hurt her. It
grieved her that the woman could be so cold to her own daughter, that she
refused to share in her happiness or simply get past her objections and treat
Annie kindly. Annie watched Mildred polishing the brass candlesticks that sat
on the mantel.

“Where did those come from,
Mother?'' she asked, an attempt to spark some communication.

"Your father brought
them from a trip East when you were a baby," she replied.

"He's often brought you gifts, hasn't
he?"

Mildred's expression took on a faraway look.

“Was he terribly handsome
and charming when you first met him?" She'd never asked her mother anything
so bold or personal, and she didn't know what kind of response to expect.

The woman rubbed the base
of a candlestick vigorously. "He was the man my father preferred."

Annie's parents had moved
here with her widowed grandfather only a few years after their marriage.
Mother's father had been a banker, too, and had the vision to move to Colorado
and invest in real estate during the early days when land was cheap and lumberjacks
were free with their pay.

"What do you mean?
Didn't you have a say-so in who you married?"

"Young women did what
was best for their futures when I was a girl," she said.

Annie looked at her with
growing understanding. "Was there someone else you would have preferred to
marry?"

"No." Mildred
glanced at Glenda, who was occupied with the sooty task of cleaning the
fireplace.

"Something you would have preferred to
do?"

"I had some
talent," she admitted. "I might have liked to study the arts."

"What kind of talent? Acting?"

"Goodness, no. Painting."

"Really? Why didn't you pursue it?"

"Our future was here,
in Colorado. I wasn't one to waste frivolous thoughts on things that couldn't
be."

"Or things you were told couldn't be."

Mildred's lips pinched shut
and the conversation was over.

That evening, sitting
beside Luke on the wicker love seat, a warm breeze blowing across the porch,
Annie related what she'd learned that day. "She didn't come right out and
say it," Annie told him. "But I got the impression that she would
have preferred to wait for marriage."

"Plenty of people
marry for reasons of economy and politics," Luke told her. "It's been
happening for centuries."

"I wonder if my father
even knew. I believe he truly loves her."

Luke took her hand.
"You can be sure that your husband will love you."

She leaned her shoulder
against his. “And you can be sure I'm marrying you because wild horses couldn't
stop me."

He
grinned. "Are you sure you want to end this courting stuff? We're getting
pretty good at it."

Remembering
her mother's words, she asked, "We're supposed to be getting to know each
other better. Do you think it's working?"

"Sure.
I know you can talk about the wedding for thirty minutes straight without a
breath. I didn't know that before."

"And
I know you must have promised my father something, because we haven't had a
moment alone together since he found out about us. I mean
alone,
like we were at your place."

"I
did promise him something, and I'm a man of my word."

"Does
it have anything to do with my virtue?"

"It
does."

She
pressed against him and he wrapped his arm around her. "How many weeks
until the end of October?"

"I
don't know." He kissed her gently. "But it's seventy-three
days."

She smiled against his
lips.

Sometimes
those days crept by, especially when a week passed without seeing Luke, and
other weeks it seemed as if the time had flown by and there was always
something that needed to be done. Without her mother's assistance, Annie relied
on Charmaine and Aunt Vera and Glenda to help with the wedding plans.

After all the ruffled
dresses she'd taken apart and remade for Gerta and Gwen, her own wedding dress
was a simple piece of work: white satin with lace trim, capped sleeves and a
pinaforelike lace flounce in a V-shape with the edge of the lace hanging from
the side of her waist like a scarf.

Lizzy's
mother showed her how to stitch ruching of the same fabric as the gown along the
hem, and Lizzy made her a coronet of crystal-beaded flowers and leaves, to
which Annie secured the floor-length sheer veil.

"If
this is a dream come true, it might as well be the best dream I can come up
with," Annie told Charmaine and Lizzy one afternoon as they made the finishing
touches to the dress. A sultry breeze barely fluttered the curtains in Annie's
room.

"You
could earn a living with your sewing," Charmaine told her. "This is
the most beautiful gown I've ever seen."