Page 41 of My Heart Will Find You

Right now, all that seemed unreal. It was like that was the dream and this was the actual world.

Alice’s letters!she thought. They would be her way out. “Did Alice read you the letters she wrote to me?”

“No, just your replies.”

Etta sighed in relief. “She told me about people here and I put the bits together. I shouldn’t have told you that. Swear you won’t tell her that I betrayed her confidence.”

“Alice knew about the preacher? She’s never met him.”

“I guess you told her more about him than you thought, then she told me.” She spoke quickly, before he asked more questions. “When you had trouble with the accounts, I realized there might be a solution.”

He took a moment to think about that. “But—”

Etta didn’t want to answer more questions about how she knew things. She interrupted. “Do you isolate Alice or does she do it to herself?”

He didn’t take offense at her words but thought about them. “She and I both tend to stay away from other people. We meet who we have to. We don’t have parties. Cornelia used to...” He stopped.

“It’s all right. You can talk about her.”

“She gave parties and she made sure Alice went to them.”

“And now with Cornelia gone, there is no more socializing, so you and Alice stay home. Alone, just the two of you.” Etta thought how much that sounded like Alicia and her father. After her mother died, it was Etta who got them to move and do and go. When Phillip entered their lives, he took over a lot of Etta’s job as the “social director” as her father called her.

“I didn’t know she liked the lawyer,” he said. “I would have...” He didn’t seem able to come up with what he would have done.

“Invited him over for canned peaches?”

“Yeah, maybe I would have.” He turned to look at her. They were facing each other, quite close. “I can’t imagine my little sister married. It seems like yesterday when I was fishing her out of the river.” He smiled. “She tried to catch fish with her hands and always fell in. I taught her how to swim.”

“Did she talk to many people? Listen to them?”

“She always has. More than once I found her alone with some stranger and they were whispering.”

“Telling her things they told no one else on earth.”

“That’s true. One time I got really angry when I saw her with some old man and he was crying. I thought... Never mind what I thought.”

“He was telling her his life story.”

“Yes. Later, she told me about it. He built a big house for the woman he was going to marry, but she died right after the wedding. He never went back to the house. It’s in Mason, Kansas, not far from here.”

Etta drew in her breath. Mason was where Henry and Ben bought the desk and the trunk. The desk that was now in Max’s office. It was also where Henry’s ancestor built a house. Was he the man of the tragic story?

She knew what he was feeling. Strangers on planes, in restaurants, everywhere, told her sister horrible stories. They poured out their hearts to Alicia. “It’s a shame to hide away someone who has the superpower of empathy.”

He chuckled at that. “‘Superpower.’ You say odd things. So what’s your superpower?”

Dreaming!she thought, but he was waiting for her to answer. “I guess it’s that I tend to take care of people. It makes me feel good. Needed.”

“You’ve certainly turned Alice and me upside down.” For a moment they looked into each other’s eyes.

“I haven’t meant to be abrasive,” she said. “I just feel that I need to do some things. Once I get them done...” She had no idea what to say. He was such a good-looking man! The extreme masculinity of him surrounded her.

“I’m sorry I made you want to leave. Alice and I, and now even the men, want you to stay.” He looked at her for a moment. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve known you for a long time. I just can’t quite place where and when we met.”

Instinctively, Etta moved her face a bit closer to his. Was it time for kissing? He didn’t move away.

“Maybe we could—”

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