“I think that will definitely make the book more interesting.” Ella fought to suppress a yawn. “I’m sorry, but I’m exhausted. If you don’t mind, I’d like to return to my room and go to bed. I have an early morning practice.”
“Of course. I was just about to bid good night to Mary.” Chris smiled at the dark-haired beauty. “Until tomorrow.” He kissed her hand in a formal manner, then released her. He bowed to Ella. “Sweet dreams to you both.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Mary said, leaning over to give Ella a hug.
“I’ll say good night as well,” Robert declared as Mary headed for the elevator.
“Are you going to the farm now?” Ella asked.
He smiled and nodded. “In the morning. I’ll catch an early train. One way or another, Ella, I promise I will figure out what’s going on.”
A sense of foreboding washed over her, and Ella hugged Robert close. She didn’t care that she was making a spectacle of herself. “Please be careful. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Father’s threats should never be taken lightly.”
“I promise I’ll be careful.” He held her tight, then bent to kiss her cheek. “Don’t worry, Ella,” he whispered in her ear. “Trust in God. He is our source of strength.”
She stepped back, nodding. “He is. He is indeed.”
four
Phillip DeShazer frowned as he saw a tall, beefy man embrace Ella Fleming. He didn’t know who the man was, and he didn’t care, especially since the man was leaning down to kiss Ella.
Phillip took a step forward and stumbled. A sudden sea of people momentarily stunned him. Of course, the excessive amount of whiskey he’d consumed that night certainly didn’t help keep him steady. He grabbed one of the lobby chairs, irritating the older gentleman occupying it.
“So . . . sorry.”
Phillip straightened, but when he looked again, the man was gone and Ella was standing alone. Phillip frowned. Had the man kissed her? Were they in love? Maybe he’d only imagined her companion.
He started out again, and this time his footing was surer. Ella had turned to go by the time he’d worked his way across the busy lobby. He thought about calling out to her but changed his mind. Wesley and Lizzy might be close at hand, returning from their evening out. He had refused to accompany them, telling them he planned to stay in the hotel all evening. And that had been the plan, but things changed when he learned of a great place for entertainment and libation just a couple of blocks away.
He reached Ella just as the elevator doors opened. “I wanna talk.” He took hold of her arm.
Ella pulled away. She turned and fixed him with a look of disdain, and then recognition and surprise filled her face. “Phillip. You startled me.”
“Going up?” the elevator operator asked.
“Yes. Sixth floor, please,” Ella replied and climbed into what to Phillip resembled a gilded cage. He followed her inside. She frowned. “You’ve been drinking. I can smell it.”
He grinned. “You have the cutest nose. I’ve always . . . liked it.” He staggered and leaned hard against the polished wood. As the wood-paneled doors closed, the cage disappeared, and in its place was a tiny, intimate wooden room. It might have been romantic except for the slender uniformed man operating the controls.
“Where’s your room, Phillip?” Ella put her arm around his waist as he started to slide toward the floor.
Her touch prompted him to straighten. “Six—six-oh-two.” He grinned. “Where are you?”
“I’m in six-ten. So I’m just down the hall.”
“I don’t like seein’ you kiss other men.” He looked at her, but her face was blurred.
“That was my brother, silly.”
“Your brother?” His tongue suddenly felt too big for his mouth. He rolled it around, trying to lessen the discomfort. “I got a brother.” He started to sink again.
“Yes, I know.” Ella drew his arm over her shoulder. “You’d better lean against me. I’ll help you get to your room.”
“Sixth floor,” the attendant called out.
Phillip forced his legs to move and let Ella half pull, half push him from the elevator. When they were clear of the contraption, the operator closed the door, and they were alone. The long hall was void of any other person.
“Your room is just over here,” Ella said, steering him toward a door with 602 clearly marked in gold lettering.
“Don’t go. Not now,” he whispered. “I wanna talk to you. I need to . . . talk to you. I care about you.” Ella looked up, and Phillip lost himself in her eyes. He thought her the most beautiful woman he’d ever known. “You’re so pretty.” He reached out to touch a blond wisp of hair. “No.” He shook his head hard. The motion sent his vision swirling. “You’re not pretty . . . you’re beautiful.”
“Well, thank you for the compliment, but it’s time to go inside and get some sleep. Do you have your key?”
He tried to force the words to make sense. Key? Did he have a key? Phillip rubbed his eyes and fought to stay upright and awake. A key for what?
“I care about you, Ella.”
“I think all you care about is alcohol,” she said firmly. “Now, find your key, or I shall be forced to find it for you.”
Again, the words didn’t completely make sense, but he felt his coat pockets, then patted the outside of his trousers. Something hard and metallic refused to yield. He reached inside and pulled out a key. With a happy laugh and a grin, he held it up.
Ella took the key from him and slipped it into his door. Once it was open, she gave him a nudge toward the room. “Go on now. We can talk more tomorrow.”
Phillip stepped over the threshold and promptly fell to the ground.
“Oh, Phillip, why must you do this?”
She sounded so sad, and Phillip struggled into a sitting position. He looked up at her standing just outside the door. He shook his head. What was he going to say? Hadn’t she just asked him a question? No . . . it was something else.
“Come on,” she said, coming into the room. She put her purse on a nearby chair and went to Phillip. “I can’t lift you, but if we work together, I should be able to help get you back to your feet.”
Phillip nodded and got on his knees. Ella took his arm and steadied him as he stood. Without another word, she led him to the bed. He sank to the mattress and sat looking at her.
“You’re always . . . good to me.”
Ella didn’t seem to hear him. She was pulling off his boots instead. Why was she doing that?
“What . . . are you doin’?”
“Taking off your boots so you can go to bed.”
“I care about you,” he muttered, feeling his body grow heavy.
“The only thing you care about is the bottle. Honestly, I don’t know why you drink.”
“My ma . . . said the same thing. My folks didn’t drink.”
“Then why do you?” Ella picked up his boots and straightened.
Phillip shrugged. “Helps . . . me forget.”
“I’ve heard you say that before. But what is so awful that you have to forget it this way?” She put the boots at the end of the bed, then came back to where he sat.
“I did a lot of bad things,” he murmured.
She helped him out of his coat. “We all do bad things—things we regret.”
“I knew these . . . these people, and they were bad.” He tried to keep the room from tilting by blinking hard, but it was no use. “My folks didn’t like them, so I ran off.” Ella went to the other side of the bed, and Phillip frowned. “Where’d you go?”
“I’m just turning down the bed. I can’t undress you any further, so once I go, you’ll have to tend to yourself.”
“Don’t go.”
She came back to him and prompted him to stand. “I can’t stay, Phillip. It’s inappropriate enough that I’m here with you now. It won’t be good for my reputation if I’m seen here.”
“If anyone says any . . . anything bad . . . I’ll punch
him.”
Ella nudged him to sit back down. “There. Your bed is ready for you, and now I need to go.”
“No. I didn’t tell you.”
She frowned. “Tell me what?”
“About the . . . the bad things.”
“You can tell me later. You’re drunk and sleepy now.”
“I ran away,” Phillip said, paying her words no mind. “My friends were bad. They made me . . . bad. We weren’t nice to folks. We got into fights and we gambled and drank.” His slurring only worsened as he rambled. “Pa—he came to get me.”
Phillip had been confident no one would even care if he left. With all the trouble he’d caused, he was certain his folks would simply say “good riddance” and be glad he was gone. Instead his father had hunted him down.
“He said he loved me.” Sadness and loss washed over him.
“Of course he loved you. Really, Phillip, I must go.” Ella turned, but Phillip grabbed her hand.
He glanced up at her and shook his head. “How could he?”
She gave him an odd look. “Fathers usually love their children. Just because you did bad things didn’t change the fact that he loved you. It’s just like with God. We sometimes do bad things that He doesn’t like, but it doesn’t change the fact that He loves us.”
The words struggled through the clouded images in his head. “I ran off, and he came after me.”
Phillip let the memory come, even though he’d fought it off a thousand times before. His friends were all worthless rowdies who cared only for themselves. They embraced Phillip as someone to mold in their own image, and mold him they did. Whenever someone dared to cross them, they would beat that person senseless, then rob him blind. They weren’t afraid of anyone, not even the law, and people feared them. As time went on, their antics only got worse and deepened his regret and shame.
“Phillip, you must go to sleep. You can’t think clearly in this drunken stupor.”
If only she knew. The memories were clear enough. “Pa came after me. They . . . they beat him.”
She frowned. “Your father? Your friends beat him up?”
Phillip nodded, feeling more than a little nauseated. “I tried to help him, to make them stop.” He closed his eyes. “They beat Pa . . . put him on the ground. I tried to stop them, but John Bryer hit me and knocked me down. Pa got up . . . got up bleedin’. He came to help me because he . . . he thought John Bryer was gonna hit me again.”
Phillip could see it clearly despite his drunken stupor. John Bryer was six feet five and had at least fifty pounds on his father. No one interfered with what John wanted.
“Pa tried to help me up. John hit him with the butt of his gun.” He closed his eyes, as if he could block the image from his mind. “He killed him.” Tears seeped out. “I killed him.”
When Ella sat down beside him, Phillip opened his eyes. Her expression was full of gentle kindness. “You didn’t kill him, Phillip.”
“He shouldn’t have come after me.”
“He came after you because he loved you. Did they get the man who really killed him, this John Bryer?”
Phillip nodded. “They hanged John Bryer. There were witnesses.” He sat in silence for several seconds, then jumped up. “You can’t tell anyone—especially Wesley. He doesn’t know what happened. He doesn’t know it’s all my fault—that Pa was saving me.”
“He’d understand. He wouldn’t blame you.”
“Yes, he would. Everyone would. You got to promise me you won’t say anything.”
She stood. “I won’t, but don’t you see? This secret is killing you.”
“Wesley doesn’t know Pa got killed coming after me. He’d never understand. He’d never forgive me, and he’s all I got left.”
“So you drink to forget that it ever happened,” she murmured. “Phillip, you have to stop.”
Her expression was so sympathetic, so sad. Phillip reached out to touch her cheek before he could stop himself. The effects of the alcohol were fading.
“I can’t stop. When I’m sober, I can still hear him.”
To his surprise, she didn’t move away. The softness of her skin was unlike anything he’d ever known. She was so beautiful.
“Hear who?”
Her question broke the spell. He pulled back his hand as if her skin had suddenly grown hot. “My father.”
Ella nodded. “What did he say?”
Phillip could still see his father’s bloodied face looking up at him—his life’s blood pouring from the head wound. He was barely conscious. “He said, ‘I’ll always love you, son.’” He looked at Ella and shook his head. “He loved me, and I killed him.”
“No. He did what he did because he loved you.”
“Then love killed him.”
Ella shook her head again. “No. Hate killed him. Hate killed him just as it nailed Jesus to the cross. Jesus died for us because He loved us. He even loved the people who killed Him. Your father came after you because he loved you. He had to know that what he was doing was dangerous, but the love he bore you was far stronger than fear. His final words were of love, Phillip. Don’t turn that into something ugly because of your fears or anger.”
He tried to understand her words. Tried to focus on the sweet lilt of her voice and the touch of her hand on his arm.
“Phillip, your father spoke those last words because he didn’t want you to focus on John Bryer or on the hatred. He didn’t want you to think that you’d disappointed him. He wanted you to know that none of that mattered. Only the love remained.”
A sob broke from Phillip’s throat as he bowed his head. Ella pulled him into her arms and held him while he cried. He wrapped his arms around her and forgot for a while how alone he truly was. Why couldn’t it be like this forever? Just Ella and him—together?
Because you aren’t worthy of her love.
The voice echoed from somewhere deep in his brain.
You’re worthless. You make everyone around you unhappy. You’re the reason your father is dead.
The accusations went on and on, and despite Ella’s closeness, Phillip couldn’t silence the voice.
five
Ella finished a grueling practice and rubbed her burning thighs. She’d started out with a new trick that Lizzy had helped her with. It was a series of spins, layovers, and drags that even had her looping around under the horse’s neck to pop up on the other side.
After that, she had worked with the other Roman riders to perfect their act. The Roman riding tricks used to be simple. The riders would mount in a variety of ways and then stand on the backs of the horses. Usually they handled just two horses at a time, which was more than enough. There were a couple of riders who were very good and could handle as many as four, but the more horses they added, the greater the danger.
Then Henry Adler got the idea that their tricks should become more acrobatic. He’d seen a circus act and was convinced it would add a certain dazzle to the show, so now the girls were performing more and more tricks. One of the girls would always act as anchor and handle the team, but then they’d add as many as three or four other performers who climbed all over the horses, executing dangerous stunts as they went. The audiences loved it, just as Henry had thought.
Ella didn’t mind doing both trick and Roman riding. She found herself craving the rush of excitement and the approving cheers of the crowd. All her life she had sought approval, it seemed. She could easily remember longing for her parents’ approval when she was young. It seemed only Lucille, her black nurse, had plenty of that to offer. Lucille always told Ella that no matter what she did in life, God would always love her, and so would she. Ella could count on one hand the number of times her father had told her that he loved her. Even her mother’s love was sparsely given. Or perhaps that wasn’t fair to say. Her mother’s presence was sparsely given, and Ella equated that to her love.
“You performed well, Ella,” Lizzy Brookstone said, coming to join her. “I was watching from the stands. You always amaze
me with your natural talent.”
Ella straightened. “I love working with your horses. I wanted so much to train my own horse, Pepper, to do the show, but you were right. His back is just too long, and it makes it difficult to do some of the tricks.”
Lizzy nodded. “Well, since I’m no longer performing, I hated to deny Thoreau the opportunity. Longfellow seems happy to do less, but even he wants to get out there and hear the applause.”
“They’re both incredible. You trained them so well.”
“Thoreau has really blossomed under your handling,” Lizzy said, her voice full of admiration. “I’m glad you two spend so much time together.”
“It’s like you said, the horse and rider need to become one and know each other’s moves.” Ella wiped her perspiring face with a towel.
Laughter sounded from across the arena. Ella caught the frown on Lizzy’s face.
“What is it?”
She turned and saw Lizzy’s uncle walking arm in arm with Amanda Moore. The seamstress was dressed in a beautiful new ensemble and seemed delighted to show it off.
“I assume that’s a new outfit,” Ella said.
“Yes. No doubt Uncle Oliver paid for it,” Lizzy muttered. “I wish we’d never hired her.”
Ella had to agree with her friend. “It’s not like she’s doing much work anyway. If she spent less time escorting your uncle around, I might not have to give my mending to Mara. Perhaps you could dismiss her.”
“Uncle Oliver would never allow it.”
“Yes, but maybe Henry Adler would.” Ella raised a brow.
Lizzy shook her head. “It’s getting ridiculous. Annie and Melba both had costume trouble when they performed their Roman riding last night. I told them to get with Amanda and see what could be done. She couldn’t have had time to fix their costumes already.”
As Oliver and Amanda approached, Lizzy planted her hands on her hips. Ella could see she was preparing for battle.
What Comes My Way Page 4
