Five days after leaving Washington, the train arrived in Carson City, Nevada, a small, prosperous town of fewer than five thousand people. It bordered the Sierra Nevada mountain range and had an arid desert quality mixed with hints of green mountain scrub and pine trees.
Marianne was a mass of jumbled nerves as she disembarked at the train station. The only thing she knew about her aunt was that as of six years ago, she lived at 5 Dover Street. The coming meeting had her tense with anxiety. What happened to a woman who sacrificed everything for love? Marianne was about to find out.
The air in Carson City felt fresh and crisp. The sky was the bluest thing she’d ever seen, but this landscape was so alien. Was Stella even still here?
Marianne headed straight for the train station ticket window. “What time does the train leave?” she asked.
“They’ve got a two-hour break to water and refuel,” the clerk replied. “They leave at one o’clock sharp.”
“Thank you.”
The man gave her directions to Dover Street, and she paid extra to store her heavy portmanteau in a storage room at the depot. It was too heavy to lug the half mile to Dover Street, and she wouldn’t be staying if Aunt Stella was no longer here.
Dover Street was lined with small but respectable homes. Number 5 was an immaculately kept single-story house painted white with purple shutters. It had a low-slung hip roof and a wide front porch. There was a man on the roof, nailing shingles into place.
Was this the man Stella married? With his straight dark hair and bronzed skin, he looked like he could be an Indian.
He also looked angry. He was shouting down to a woman who stood in the front yard with a bowl of something in her arms.
“I’m not coming down for lousy egg salad,” the man said. “I can tell just by looking at it that you made it wrong again.”
“I didn’t make it wrong,” the woman hollered up, one hand on her hip and spine stiffening in anger. “I made it exactly like I did last time, and—”
“And it was wrong last time!” the man interrupted.
“Maybe if you weren’t so persnickety, you could appreciate healthy food.” The shrewish woman had the same shade of chestnut hair as Clyde, with a few threads of silver and lines fanning from the corners of her eyes.
“You tossed out the yolks,” the man growled. “What’s the point of egg salad if you toss out all the yolks? I may as well eat shoe leather.”
“Oh, the unspeakable horror,” the woman bellowed in a tone so loud it echoed off the neighboring houses. “The torture of enduring poorly prepared egg salad! I can hear the angels weeping for your agony.”
The woman continued shouting insults, but the man had gone back to hammering and probably couldn’t hear her over the racket.
Marianne recoiled in dismay. She could turn around and get back on the train to keep heading west. It would spare her having to speak to these people who were so petty as to argue on a public street over egg salad.
But was it possible this wasn’t even her aunt? Maybe these horrible people had bought the house from Stella, and her daring aunt was living happily with her husband somewhere else. She couldn’t leave without asking.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” she asked, interrupting the woman’s tirade. “Are you by chance Stella Magruder?”
The older woman gasped. The man on the roof dropped his hammer, and it skittered down the shingles to plop harmlessly into the shrubs.
“I used to answer to that name,” the woman said. “I’m Stella Greenleaf now.”
“Oh.” The last hope that Stella was blissfully sheltered within the loving arms of her forbidden lover in a high-desert paradise evaporated. Marianne wished she could run away and pretend this meeting had never happened, but she was here now and had to see this through. “I’m Marianne Magruder. Clyde Magruder is my father.”
The older woman pressed a hand to her chest. “My goodness,” she finally stammered.
The news seemed to have rendered Stella speechless, but not so her husband. Mr. Greenleaf was standing on the roof, both hands braced on his hips. “Who threw you out?” he called down. “Clyde or old Jed?”
“No one,” she answered. “I figured out it was time to leave all on my own.”
“Hang on. I’m coming down.” Mr. Greenleaf was remarkably nimble as he reached the edge of the roof, lowered himself to plant a foot on the porch railing, then sprang to the ground. He wiped a grubby hand on his trousers before offering it to her, his eyes dancing with laughter.
“I’m Joseph Greenleaf,” he said. “This is my wife. You’re welcome to join us for lunch if you can stomach lousy egg salad.”
Stella threw a dish towel in his face, but he caught it, and both of them started laughing.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.
Perhaps she’d been naïve, but Marianne had assumed she would be automatically welcomed into Aunt Stella’s home. That wasn’t the case.
“You have the whiff of a girl who is running away,” Stella said as she brought Marianne a sandwich in the compact kitchen near the back of the house.
“I’m a photographer,” Marianne defended. “I’m taking pictures out west.”
Joseph scrutinized her, chewing his disagreeable egg salad sandwich while his dark, relentless gaze made her shift in her chair. He finished his sandwich, drained a glass of milk, then slammed it down. “Tell us what really drove you all the way across the country, and we’ll be glad to support you however we can. But I don’t want any trouble from the Magruders, and I don’t want to open my home to a woman with secrets.”
She told them everything, including the scandal of her illegitimate birth and the ill-fated romance with a man her parents disapproved of that led to his imprisonment.
“I agreed to leave Washington in exchange for his freedom, and my father took the deal.”
“And you intend to honor your word?” Joseph demanded, his voice and face stern. “No running off to your young man now that he’s out of jail?”
She would honor her word to the letter. “I vowed not to initiate contact with him, and I won’t. I’m more than two thousand miles away.” If Luke managed to contact her, however, all bets were off. “All I ever wanted was a normal family. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for.”
“That’s it?” Joseph demanded. “You ran away to the desert hoping that it would magically give you a normal family?”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that,” she said, glancing uneasily at her aunt. Why was Stella letting her husband interrogate a virtual stranger like this?
“Maybe you’re hoping for the wrong things,” Joseph said. “Maybe you should start looking for a stronger faith, or victory over temptation, or the strength to extend a bit of grace to someone even if they don’t deserve it at all. How about demonstrating a bit of godly obedience?”
Resentment built inside her. She just saw this man practically shout himself hoarse over his wife’s egg salad, and he had the gall to challenge her character?
“I don’t know what I’m looking for!” she burst out. “I’m not a perfect person, and I’m lugging around an avalanche of guilt over what I’ve done. If I knew how to fix it, I wouldn’t be here.”