The Letter
Rebecca Bernadette Mance
Copyright Rebecca Bernadette Mance 1997
Published by Finnegan’s Run, LLC.
If I had a dollar for every predicament I have caused by the flash of my own pen, I would be very rich indeed…
Rebecca Bernadette Mance
CHAPTER 1
Fort Worth, Texas - January 20, 1888
Dear Mr. Worthington:
You could not possibly understand the very delicate situation at your hardware store, “Worthington’s.” Why you have neglected your business for so long is beyond my understanding. Your accountant, Mr. Adkins, has been taking all of the profits and threatens to close down the store if we do not comply with his demands.
I have explained to him that we are barely making ends meet, but he only continues his threats and leaves me with almost nothing to sustain the store and my family. We struggle each month to keep the doors open. I request that you send another accountant to handle this immediately, or better still, allow me to handle these affairs myself. We can negotiate the amount of profits the store can afford to send to you.
I am disturbed that you have allowed these details to go unattended for so long, and I can only hope you will see to them at your earliest convenience.
Regards,
Charles Riley
***
It was a fine letter. In fact, it was a grand letter.
Except that Charles Riley could not possibly have written that letter because the fact was Charles Riley had passed on.
“Don’t do this,” Mandy urgently demanded to her sister Victoria as they trotted swiftly down the main street that was little more than dusty road cutting through the center of town. “Don’t you dare mail that letter.”
Mandy’s pleading words fell on deaf ears, numb from Mandy’s arguments and coercions of the last few days. Victoria had a purpose and she would see it through. Consequently, she continued with her determined stride to the General Store.
“Mandy do you remember when Mum told us we make our own magic?” Victoria deliberately ignored her sister’s previous command.
“Of course I remember but what has that to do with this terrible mistake you are about to make by mailing that letter? Magic, indeed! A letter impersonating our deceased father – of all the hair-brained schemes by the way – and to be so insensitive…” Mandy scolded.
“You only say that because you never believed in magic as much as I did.”
“Of course I don’t believe in magic, you have always been quixotic believing such things.” Mandy declared.
“That isn’t true, I am very sensible!” Victoria defended. “But a little whimsical is not so bad!”
“Magic left with Mother and it isn’t coming back,” Mandy said her voice dropping hollow with melancholy. “Which has nothing to do with what you are up to right now.”
Victoria paused mid-step turning to Mandy. “Mother was right we make our own magic.”
“You can’t do this, Victoria Riley. It is a real life terrible mistake,” Mandy pressed. “This isn’t magic.”
“It doesn’t matter, now that you make me feel so chimerical I don’t believe in magic anymore,” Victoria lied, shifting to pragmatic as she spun around on her boot heel and resumed her determined march.
It was early morning and those who headed out to the fields early had already done so. In another hour, Fort Worth, Texas, would be booming with activity. But at this moment, the street was deserted except for two young boys throwing a ball made from a hay-filled feed sack.
“Good, if you don’t believe in magic, then let’s stop and go back home,” Mandy called as she quickly closed the gap to her sister.
“Going home without mailing the letter won’t solve anything. We have run out of options,” Victoria tossed back and continued her spirited pace as if Lucifer himself were after her.
The magic just hadn’t found them, so they had to find it.
Granted, the post box located at the back of the General Store was not a particularly magical place to begin a possible life-changing-fate-altering journey. In fact, launching such a letter from the innocuous, unassuming postbox and located just down the street from the sisters’ own small hardware store seemed rather prosaic.
“You are going to be sorry, Victoria, I tell you now, you are going to be terribly sorry for this absurd plan,” Mandy predicted with an ominous quiver. “I must add here that you are also the most bull-headed sister ever…bent on bringing about our certain destruction.”
“It is just a letter Mandy — just a silly letter,” Victoria neatly sidestepped Mandy and kept walking.
Victoria moved faster racing against her own doubts as they approached the store and mounted the creaky, weatherworn steps. Time was something they simply didn’t have.
The bell on the door chimed merrily sounding, almost mocking under the circumstances.
“Hello Mr. Hastings.” Speaking in unison, the girls hurried in, sending the familiar storeowner distracted smiles as they passed him and proceeded to the post box at the back of the store.
“What can I help you girls with?” Joshua Hastings put aside his morning paper to peer at them over small spectacles perched at the end of his nose. A testament to the years he had spent in the grueling Texas sun, his leathery, lined skin creased into a warm smile. Today, his thick shock of snowy-white hair was as unruly as ever.
“You could help me by stopping my sister from making a terrible mistake.” Mandy’s fiercely whispered words caused Victoria to stop and glare at Mandy before continuing.
“Thanks, but we are only here to mail a letter,” Victoria responded lightly to Mr. Hastings with an unconvincing attempt at levity.
The sisters advanced down the first isle toward the mailbox their worn leather boot heals clicking on the wooden floor.
Joshua had owned the general store as long as Victoria could remember and for as long as Victoria could remember their Pap, Charles Riley, had come to Joshua’s store to play checkers on Saturday evenings.
Even now, every time Victoria came to the store, she still half expected to find Charles Riley bent over the checkerboard opposite Joshua, playing a competitive game and bantering with his old friend.
Of course, their Pap would never play Joshua a game of checkers again because Pap had passed on leaving his two grieving daughters in dire straits.
Victoria quickly banished the bittersweet memories of their Pap from her mind.
Victoria couldn’t think of that now or succumb to the grief that had threatened to overwhelm her in the months following first their mother’s death, then their father’s death. With so many other things to worry about, grief was not a luxury she could afford.
Which was precisely why they had come to mail the letter.
Correction, why she had written the letter that she had come to mail with Mandy dragging her pace, Victoria thought with tender annoyance.
“Mail wagon will be here any minute,” Joshua called after them, his newspaper rustling back into position. “Not so much going out in the way of mail this time.”
“Thank you Joshua.” They were already at the post box at the back of the store.
Mandy grabbed Victoria’s hand as she started to insert the letter into the mail slot. With their hands hovering over the box, the sisters silently stared at each other while teetering on the abyss of a major, life altering event.
Victoria adored her beautiful younger sister, who was the sweetest, kindest person Victoria ever knew. Mandy’s sky blue eyes were wide in her small, oval face. Her golden hair was pulled back into a neat bun accentuating her delicate frame. Her thread bare faded calico could no longer disguise her too-slender shoulders.
“We have done all th
at can be done. We have stretched every coin we have. I am tired Mandy — and I am hungry. More than that, I cannot abide to see you go without any longer. You are my little sister and I must do what I think is right no matter what the risk. You would have me give into helplessness as if these problems can somehow solve themselves.” Victoria’s whispered scolding was threaded with the weariness that saturated her to her very bones.
“That isn’t fair Victoria, giving into helplessness isn’t the same as acting in this rash fashion,” Mandy whispered, exasperated and weary herself.
“We will not let this go any longer Amanda Riley,” Victoria said firmly.
Victoria took one last look at the address on the envelope blurred before her eyes.
It was printed in her own neat, handwriting.
“Mr. William Worthington III.”
It was a faceless name for a man unknown but who undoubtedly held their fate in the palm of his hand.
Perhaps he was the magic…or would bring the magic.
But most likely, he was their worst nightmare.
“Anyway, this is Worthington’s doing and Worthington’s responsibility to correct,” Victoria stated firmly.
“Alright Victoria, you win because I have run out of arguments.”
With burning determination Victoria slid the envelope into the slot of the crudely painted wooden box before she had a chance to change her mind.
The thud of the envelope hitting the bottom of the box echoed through the small store, like a gong of doom.
If doom had sound, that is.
Of course Victoria could sense the trouble to the very depths of her being. Why she didn’t heed the warnings of her sister only the Almighty knew. However, the need to send the letter far outweighed whatever doom would descend upon them as a result anyway.
“What is William Worthington going to do when he reads the letter?” Mandy voiced the mutual question, her gaze transfixed on the box.
“He will make the magic,” Victoria whispered. Her heart pounded in a panicked rhythm that belied her calm façade.
Victoria knew when she looked at the heart breaking portrait her sister made that she had done the right thing.
“Do you really believe that?” Mandy asked.
“I don’t know, but confronting him and engaging him is the only solution we have.” The overwhelming desire to put her hand into the box and snatch the letter back surged through Victoria. After all, pretending to be her deceased father in a letter to a complete stranger was beyond bold and risky and bordered on insane.
The question was what would Mr. Worthington do when he received the letter from “Charles Riley?”
CHAPTER 2
It really was magic wasn’t it?
February 20, 1888
Dear Mr. Riley,
I have received your letter and considered what you have told me.
After some deliberation, I have decided that you should come to San Francisco and meet with me to discuss your requests. Enclosed please find a voucher, both for the train trip and for your stay, at the Palace Hotel, my compliments. I look forward to meeting you.
Regards,
William Worthington, III
Worthington’s words, written in a fine strong hand of absolute power and arrogance, lifted off of the page like tentacles in a tacit demand to be obeyed. She stared at the page trembling in her hand dumbfounded that she had actually received a response at all, let alone one so quickly.
Victoria sat at the rough oak table her father had built long before she was born and Mandy stood behind her peering over her shoulder.
“I told you this was a terrible mistake.” Mandy’s whispered words cut through her shock.
“Look Mandy, enclosed with the letter is a first class train ticket and a voucher for The Palace Hotel, just like he said there was.”
Victoria pulled out the two vouchers and they stared at the gold printing in awe for an instant before Mandy launched into a fresh batch of worry. “You can’t go, Victoria, you need to tell Worthington you . . I mean Pap, can’t make it!” Mandy’s voice trembled with distraught. “You must stop right here and right now before this situation gets any worse. This is not magic or a fairytale, do you hear me Victoria?”
“I know Mandy. You have said it over and over.”
“If I am becoming repetitive it is from living with you and your hair-brained schemes,” Mandy grumbled.
Was it at all possible that she might actually go all the way to San Francisco ....on a train no less? The notion was something straight from the pages of a fantastic book.
“I just can’t believe he actually sent a ticket and a voucher for a hotel,” Victoria carefully inserted the ticket and voucher back into the envelope with a gleam of anticipation in her eye barely able to contain her excitement. She was wildly curious about the man who sent them. The possibilities raced through her mind.
“Victoria Riley!” Mandy exclaimed. “How could you actually feel excitement rather than grave concern over this?”
“I know, I know, you are right to worry,” Victoria admitted, holding her hands up in mock surrender, meeting her sister’s outraged glare. “First of all, Worthington did invite Pap, not me, to San Francisco, which does present at least a small problem.”
“Small?” Mandy’s voice quivered. “This is more than a small problem. This is a very large lie that is going to be quickly uncovered.”
Victoria smiled confidently while doubt crept into her enthusiastic thoughts. “Well, perhaps it is more than a small problem.”
In fact, now that she considered it, every instinct Victoria possessed screamed that she should not go to San Francisco even if she could think of a plausible story about why her father could not make it. There was a potent and sinister presence woven into the polite words of Worthington’s letter. Yet, even as fear and doubt set in like a cold hand around her heart, Victoria knew she had to go.
“It will not be so difficult to resolve the problem of substituting me for Pap. I’ll just say Pap was too ill to travel,” Victoria said with far more confidence than she felt.
Lord forgive her for lying about such a thing, but Victoria knew that her father would certainly understand and applaud her actions. Of course, if he were alive to applaud her ingenuity she wouldn’t be in this fix to begin with.
“Shame on you Victoria! When you walk into church, the roof is going to fall right in on top of you for lying like that,” Mandy declared with a preacher’s fire and brimstone tone during a Sunday sermon.
“You are probably right Mandy, but maybe he won’t care if I lie a little.”
Mandy’s eyes grew as wide as teacup saucers and her mouth opened and shut several times in soundless shock.
Guilt washed through her so she covered it with a devil-may-care smile. “Don’t get your petticoats twisted up Mandy, it won’t hurt anyone, least of all Worthington, because I posed as Pap in that letter. Why, it was his own neglect of the store that brought about this situation to begin with….Besides, I have started down this path and now there is no choice but to follow it to whatever end it leads,” Victoria reasoned.
An angry flush suffused Mandy’s face. “Really Victoria Riley, that is like wondering how you got drunk after drinking a whole bottle of whisky, then opening another one. I told you something bad was going to happen and now it has.”
“You assume the invitation is bad, but maybe it isn’t. I have to go. Or he will come, Mandy — he will come.” Victoria picked up the letter and waved it for emphasis. “Then he will know Pap is gone and that we are managing alone. And more importantly this letter demands to be obeyed. It is obvious, I have to go now before things do get any worse,”
Mandy frowned. “How can a letter demand? He invited you, that’s all. It was just a polite invitation. The rest is just your imagination.”
“I can’t explain it to you, Mandy. I am not even sure I understand myself. That letter is disguised as a polite invitation, but I know it is a demand. And I know
that I have to go to him because if I don’t, he will come here.” Victoria sighed. “And that would be far worse, can’t you see that?”
“I hear what you are saying, and I agree to a point, but how are you really going to explain about Pap? I mean, what kind of illness is he going to have?” Mandy choked over her words and tears filled up in her eyes. “It is a travesty to Pap’s memory to talk about him being alive, pretending to be him, when he’s — he’s — gone.”
Victoria caught her trembling bottom lip and her own vision clouded with tears. They both sat in silence for a moment, each lost in a private memory.
Victoria’s gaze moved to the window of their small kitchen and through the thick glass she could see rolling hills green with the winter rains.
Beyond those hills was a place where hope lie. When there was nothing else, there was hope that kept one going. Believing in magic. Believing somehow everything would work out if you just try moving things in the right direction.
“Pap would understand. I know it is what he would have wanted me to do.,” Victoria whispered. “I am going to tell Worthingon that Pap contracted a fever right before he left and sent me in his place. It isn’t a perfect solution and it will not be easy, but it is the best I can do and I must do it.” Victoria tweaked Mandy’s cheek and laughed softly. “Stop looking like that Mandy or your face will soon be permanently creased. There is nothing to worry about.” Victoria gave Mandy’s hand another reassuring squeeze.
If only Victoria could believe her own assuring words.
“Oh my gracious Victoria, you take this grave situation so lightly!”
“It isn’t so terrible if you think about it. I will see the city of San Francisco. You know how I have always wanted to travel. Please Mandy, don’t fret, I really do need your help.”
“I am so worried about this Victoria,” Mandy said wearily, wiping a tear off of her cheek with the back of her hand. “But perhaps you are right, I don’t think Pap would want us to starve or beg. Maybe this is our way of helping ourselves.”
The Letter Page 1
