Journey, The (23 page)

Michelle laughed.

"You know, April, there are worse things than not being called by a guy who only wants to fool around. Maybe you should consider this a blessing in disguise."

Michelle tried to be empathetic but was secretly relieved. If Tony no longer had any use for April, then he no longer had a reason to drive her around town. Michelle began to see an April Burke who made it to graduation and lived a rich and meaningful life, just as she began to see a Shelly Preston who went to Yale or Oregon and fulfilled a different destiny.

"I do, most of the time," April said. "I'm really not that upset. I'm not looking for a boyfriend. I've watched Shelly and Scott interact for months and that's enough to turn any girl into a nun. But I do want to go to the prom. I
really
want to go to the prom. I didn't go last year."

"You can always go with Brian," Shelly said.

April glared at her friend.

"Brian is not my type, smarty pants. Besides, I've already done my BSA this year," April said. She lifted her nose and shifted to a condescending tone. "What's more, it is my clear understanding that Mr. Johnson has a girlfriend now."

Shelly stopped chewing a brownie.

"No way," she said.

"Like Abraham Lincoln, I cannot tell a lie."

"That was George Washington, dummy."

"In any case, I have it on good authority that our precious Brian has been spending some quality time with Darla Hicks."

"How do you know this and I don't?" Shelly asked. "I'm his best friend."

"You don't know because you've wasted all winter obsessing about Yale and watching your male baboons fight over you."

Michelle smiled. She loved watching the two friends banter.

"I thought Darla was going out with Tommy Friedman," Shelly said.

"She was, but now she's going out with Brian. He called her on Friday and asked her to a movie and she said yes. My source also said she saw the two of them at the roller rink on Saturday and at Big Bill's yesterday."

"Have you confirmed these 'reports' by your 'source'?" Shelly asked as she made quotes with her fingers.

April looked at Michelle and shook her head.

"She's so clueless at times."

"Of course I have," April said to Shelly. "Do you think I would let a juicy rumor like this go uninvestigated? I talked to others this morning. Brian and Darcy are already like Mickey and Minnie."

"Well, I'm happy for him," Michelle said. "I know Brian has had some confidence problems with girls and it looks like he's worked them out."

"I'm happy for him too," Shelly said as she looked wistfully out a window. "I wish I could solve
my
problems with a phone call. I wish I could solve my problems period."

Michelle walked up to Shelly and put a hand on her shoulder.

"You will, Shelly, you will," she said. "I wasn't sure before, but I am now. You will solve your problems. You will live your dreams. Your future is brighter than you think."

CHAPTER 43: MICHELLE

Monday, March 17, 1980

Michelle shifted into third and cringed when she heard the grinding of metal. She had not operated a vehicle with a manual transmission since college and berated herself for not keeping her skills up to speed. She wanted to ring the neck of the person who said that driving a stick was like riding a bike or learning to swim. She had forgotten a lot in thirty years.

"Keep trying. You'll get the hang of it," Robert said with a friendly laugh. "It took Karen and Susan days to get it down."

Michelle gave her fiancé a not-so-friendly glance as she pulled up to the intersection of Main and Broadway. He clearly was enjoying this and she clearly was not.

She had requested the lesson not because she needed her license but because she needed the practice. She had earned her Oregon driver's license in October, using Marsha Zimmerman's Buick, and now needed to learn how to drive the only vehicle in her future household.

Robert had been a good sport. Apparently anticipating some frustrating moments, he had insisted on taking Michelle out for dinner before the lesson. So they had driven to Giovanni's, an Italian restaurant on Eighth Avenue, where the best spinach lasagna in town awaited.

"Yes, but they were teenagers. I'm just a big girl who never mastered a stick."

Robert smiled as he grabbed hold of the door handle.

"That's why we're out here. We'll fix that, if you don't fix my Jeep first."

Michelle hit him in the shoulder with her free hand before placing it back on the stick and proceeding through the intersection. After five more minutes of putting the gears through a grinder, she pulled into the driveway of the house on Crestview Lane. She got out of the Jeep, walked to the back of the vehicle to meet her passenger, and shook the keys in front of him.

"Thank you for the lesson, Mr. Land. I think I'm ready for the Baja 1000."

"I believe you are," he said. "But keep the keys. You'll need them to get into the house and pour us two glasses of that Riesling in the fridge while I fetch my bills."

Michelle put her arms around Robert and kissed him softly.

"Am I your domestic servant now?"

"I'm not sure. How good are you with a vacuum?"

Michelle finger-flicked Robert on the side of the head and smiled as he walked down the hill to a row of mailboxes. If this was a preview of life as the new Mrs. Land, she was ready for it.

She walked in the house a moment later, flipped on a few lights, and made a beeline for the kitchen, where she found the half-full bottle of Riesling and a corkscrew. She sat two glasses of wine atop the coffee table and plopped on the couch in front of the fireplace just as Robert entered the living room with a short stack of envelopes.

"Anything interesting?"

"Not unless you consider medical bills and utility statements riveting reads," Robert said. "There is a card from Susan and something from Jerry and Janet."

Michelle watched Robert put the stack on the table and open two of the envelopes. He laughed at the contents of the first, the greeting card from Susan. But he frowned and sighed when he began reading what looked like a letter from the second envelope.

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

Robert did not reply immediately. He instead walked away from the table toward a picture window that overlooked Crestview Lane. He stared out the window for more than a minute before Michelle got up from the couch and moved toward him.

"Robert, is something wrong?"

"I don't know," he said. "Perhaps you can tell me."

"I don't understand."

"The letter from Jerry contains some interesting things."

"Such as?"

"Such as some information on East Shore High School."

Michelle felt her stomach form a knot.

"What kind of information?"

"The school did not exist in 1949. It was built in 1951."

"Oh."

The knot turned into nausea.

"He writes that the first senior class graduated in 1953."

"I see."

"He also informs me that no Michelle Jones graduated from any Bellevue high school in 1949 or 1950 or any year from that time."

Michelle yielded to a flash of anger.

"Were you snooping on me, Robert?"

He turned away from the window and stared at her with eyes that betrayed irritation and hurt.

"No. I was not. Jerry did this all on his own."

"Is that all he had to say?" Michelle said with an air of defiance.

"No. There is more, much more. Jerry found no evidence that a Michelle Jennings had recently lived in the area and no evidence that a Michelle Jones had married a Scott Jennings in the state of Washington. Not twenty-four years ago. Not ten years ago. Not even five. He also checked the local newspapers and found no obituaries for a man named Scott Jennings, much less one who had died last June in a mountain climbing accident."

Robert crushed the letter in his hand and tossed it to the floor.

"Who are you?"

Michelle stood her ground but did not know whether to cry, faint, or fight back. She had always feared the question and had often worked out plausible answers in her mind. But she had never expected to be hit from so many directions at once. Jerry Nelson had done his homework and, this time, the target of his inquisition had no answers.

"I'm someone who loves you."

"You're someone who lied to me."

The anger returned.

"I lied because you would never believe the truth. No one would."

"Try me."

"I can't, Robert. If I told you the truth, I would only invite your contempt. You're already angry with me. The truth is just too much."

"Are you married?"

"No. I'm not married. I'm widowed. My husband died last June. You can hook me up to a polygraph on that one."

"Are your running from the law?

"No. It's nothing like that. It's nothing I'm ashamed of."

"Then what is it?'

"I can't tell you!"

"Why? Is it so awful to bring truth into a relationship?"

"This is not about the truth. It's about us. It's about whether you love me enough to accept me as I am. I am the same person you met in September. I am the same person you asked to be your wife. I am the same person I was ten minutes ago!"

"That's not good enough."

"Why? Why is it not good enough?"

"Because you're not just anyone. You're the woman I love. I need the truth."

Michelle sighed as her anger succumbed to tears. This was a battle she could not win.

"I can't give you the truth, Robert," she said in conciliatory voice that rose barely above a whisper. "I can only give you myself. You're going to have to marry me as I am or not at all."

Robert glared at Michelle, shook his head, and looked away. He returned to the window and for nearly five minutes stared blankly through the glass. Dusk swept over the street beyond, darkening an environment that seemed to get bleaker by the minute.

Michelle's heart ached as the silence in the room went from uncomfortable to unbearable. She hated deceiving Robert. She hated hurting someone who had already suffered an unimaginable loss and needed comfort, not complication. But she knew that she did not have a choice. She would have to hold her secret, at least for now, and hope for the best.

When Robert finally returned to Michelle, he returned with a softer face. His eyes betrayed sadness and hurt but not anger.

"If that is your final position, then I see that I have no choice. I love you and cannot bring myself to leave you," he said. "I will marry you as you are."

Michelle tilted her head and looked at him with searching eyes.

"Next month?" she asked, almost fearfully.

"No," Robert said.

He grabbed Michelle's hands, pulled her close, and smothered her in his arms.

"Tomorrow."

CHAPTER 44: MICHELLE

Reno, Nevada – Wednesday, March 19, 1980

The bride in the skimpy nightgown awoke with the morning light, walked to a sliding door that led to her tenth-floor balcony, and took a good look at the Biggest Little City in the World.

"It's beautiful," she said.

"Yes, it is," Robert said with a thoughtful smile from a disheveled bed.

Michelle turned to face her husband of less than a day and raised an eyebrow.

"I meant the city and the mountains, Mr. Land, not me."

"They're all beautiful, Mrs. Land. I would say they're all incomparable."

Michelle laughed to herself as she pondered her new name and the names she had used in the past ten months. She was Mrs. Land to the man in the bed but Michelle Preston Richardson Jennings Jones Land to God's scorekeepers. She could give Sybil a run for her money.

"Thank you, dear."

Michelle studied the man she had almost lost two nights earlier. How long ago that fight now seemed. She could not believe it had led to this. She could not believe she had been able to salvage a relationship built on a foundation of lies and salvage it so quickly.

They had not wasted even an hour before jumping into the Jeep and driving all night on U.S. Highway 395 to a town where marriage chapels outnumbered the blanks on marriage applications. Robert had not asked more questions about her past and she had not volunteered more answers. They had apparently reached an understanding that what was done was done and that only their future mattered.

Michelle smiled inwardly when she thought about that future. She had plans for her husband and their house and even a second wedding. Mindful that they had cut two daughters and several friends out of the loop with their midnight ride to Reno, Michelle and Robert agreed to repeat their vows at Wayne Dennison's lake house after school got out. When informed of their father's eleventh-hour elopement, Karen and Susan Land expressed not disappointment but rather excitement at the opportunity to plan and manage a "real wedding" in June.

Robert had spent more than an hour on Tuesday calling others, including his brother; his 87-year-old father, who lived in a Houston nursing home; and Jerry and Janet. The last phone call had been difficult as Robert had had to answer why he had married someone who had misled him about her past. He had finally told Jerry what Michelle had told him: accept things as they are or find a new friend.

Michelle's outreach to family and friends had taken five minutes. She had called Shelly on the fourth full day of her spring break. She had not explained to Robert why she had not called her siblings "with their own busy lives" or anyone else she had known before coming to Unionville, but she vowed that she would. She had decided that she would spend the spring gathering facts and courage and tell Robert the truth before they restated their vows. It was the least she could do for a man who had just taken an astonishing leap of faith.

She looked forward to their life together and to fulfilling new goals and dreams. But as she returned to the bed and snuggled next to her husband, Michelle could not help but think about fulfilling an old dream – a dream that had all but died when she had married Scott Richardson and one that she had never discussed with Robert Land.