A Bride for Dry Creek by Janet Tronstad Read Free Book Online

school. A few pieces of costume jewelry. The letters Garth had written her when he was overseas.
    She’d filled up two suitcases when her father came in to say he’d called Las Vegas and found out that the justice of the peace was a fake.
    At that moment, Francis had not worried about her father’s words. If the justice of the peace was a fake, she’d calmly reasoned, she and Flint would only find someone else to marry them again. Flint had made a mistake in locating the proper official, but they would take care of it. They’d marry again. That’s what people in love did. She started to fold the aprons her mother had given her.
    When she finished packing, Francis went down to the kitchen to prepare supper for her father. It was the last meal she’d make for him for awhile, and she was happy to do it. She decided to make beef stewbecause it could simmer for hours with little tending after she left.
    Four hours later her father invited her to sit down and eat the stew with him. She knew Flint could have driven into Miles City and back several times in the hours that had passed. Francis refused the stew and went to her room. He must have had car trouble, she thought. That was it. He’d call any minute. She stayed awake all night waiting for the phone to ring. It was a week before she even made any attempt to sleep at nights.
    â€œIt was my father,” Francis said calmly as she looked Flint’s boss in the eyes. “He must have arranged it all.”
    â€œI’m sorry.” The man said his words quickly.
    The inside of the cold house was silent. Francis sat with the open Bible on her lap, staring at the page where her marriage vows had been recorded and a scripture reference from Solomon had been added. As she looked at it closely, she could see that the faded handwriting was Flint’s. She wished she could have stood with him when he recorded the date in this Bible. It must have had meaning for him or he wouldn’t have stopped on his way into Miles City to write it down.
    â€œSurely Flint—” she looked at the man.
    He was twisting the handle that gave energy to the emergency lantern on the table. He didn’t look up from the lantern. “He didn’t want to tell meabout you. Didn’t even mention your name. But he had to tell me the basics. I was only checking out his story. Part of the job. We needed to find out about the arrest. It was on his record.”
    â€œSo he thinks it was me who got him arrested.”
    The temperature of the night seemed to go even lower.
    The man nodded.
    Francis felt numb. She had never imagined anything like this. She had assumed Flint had been the one to have second thoughts. Or that he had never intended to really marry her anyway. He wasn’t from around here. She never should have trusted him as much as she did. She repeated all the words she had said to herself over the years. None of them gave her any comfort.
    â€œHe should have come back to talk to me.”
    â€œMaybe he tried,” the man said. He’d stopped cranking the lantern and sat at the table.
    The silence stretched between them.
    â€œMind if I smoke?” the man finally asked.
    â€œGo ahead,” Francis said automatically. She felt like her whole life was shifting gears and the gears were rusty. She’d spent too much of the past twenty years resenting Flint. Letting her anger burn toward him in the hopes that someday her memories would be light, airy ashes that could be blown away. But instead of producing ashes that were light, her angerhad produced a heavy, molten chunk of resentment that wouldn’t budge in a whirlwind.
    There had been no blowing away of old, forgotten memories. These past weeks in Dry Creek had already proven that to her. She was beginning to believe she would be forever shackled by her memories. But now it turned out that the whole basis for her anger was untrue. Flint had not left her. She had,