The Mistletoe Promise by Richard Paul Evans Read Free Book Online

meto do. He made me go out and move the entire woodpile from one side of the house to the other. It took me four hours. And I was terrified the whole time, because snakes hid in the woodpile. Twice I found rattlesnakes when bringing in firewood.”
    Nicholas looked sad. “I’m so sorry.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “More than anything, I just wanted to be loved. In a small town like that, there aren’t a lot of romantic options. Once I told my father that a boy walked me home from school, and my father beat me and sent me to my room for the night. He called me a tramp. I believed him. I felt so guilty about it.”
    “You couldn’t see that you’d done nothing wrong?”
    I shook my head. “The thing is, when you grow up with crazy, you don’t know what sane is. You might suspect that there’s something better, but until you see reality, it’s impossible to comprehend.
    “A year after I was married I caught my father with another woman. They were kissing. He lied about it at first, but when he saw that I didn’t believe him, he admitted that he was having an affair and told me not to tell my mother.”
    “Did you?”
    “No. But not because he said not to. My mother was kind of a doormat. It would have done nothing but humiliate her. She found out later on her own. It’s the only time I ever saw her yell at him. But she still didn’t leave him. He had alienated all of her family, so she really had no place to go.
    “By the time I turned eighteen I couldn’t take it anymore. I left high school and got a job more than three hundredmiles away, at Bryce Canyon Lodge as a waitress. It was a good gig. They paid almost nothing, a dollar six an hour, but there was free food and lodging, and we got to keep all our tips. We just had to work two meals a day. The people at the lodge were really nice, and I made a lot of money in tips. Enough to pay for my first year of college.
    “Every now and then celebrities would come through. I met Robert Redford once. He was really nice. He told me that I smelled like lilacs. I met people from all over. That’s when I knew that I wanted to travel and see the world. But I think it was probably more that I wanted to get as far away from Montezuma Creek as I could. I wanted to get as far away from my father as I could.” I forced a smile. “I didn’t get too far, I guess. I carried a lot of it with me.”
    “It’s hard to leave some things behind,” Nicholas said. “So how did you turn out so lovely?”
    I just looked at him. Suddenly my eyes welled up with tears. He reached over and took my hand. When I could speak I said, “Thank you.”
    “Is your father still alive?”
    “No. He died of cancer. Both of my parents did. They both grew up near the Nevada Proving Ground, where the government tested nuclear weapons. For dates they used to go out and watch them detonate atom bombs. Crazy, huh? They didn’t know better.”
    Nicholas just shook his head. “He was a downwinder.”
    “You’re familiar with that?”
    “Intimately. Our firm handled a massive lawsuit against the federal government involving downwinders.”
    “Well, I’m sure my father was part of it.” I sighed. “I remember going back and seeing him before he died. He was so frail and weak. I thought, Is this really the man who filled me with such terror, who towered over my past? He was nothing. His meanness drained out. He was like a snake without venom. He was nothing but a hollow shell.”
    Nicholas looked at me, then said, “They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms? Isaiah 14:16.”
    “You read the Bible,” I said.
    “At times,” he replied. “So you went to college in Salt Lake?”
    “No. I went to Snow College. My best friend from Montezuma Creek asked if I wanted to be her roommate, so I took her up on it.”
    “Snow College,” he said. “Isn’t that in Manti?”
    “It’s the