me out.” Or maybe kill him. Both of his parents loved Victoria without reservation. Yes, she was easy to love. But he had no doubt they’d accepted her because they wanted to support him. If they discovered the depth of his deception, they’d be deeply hurt.
Victoria was studying his face, likely reading his indecision. “We don’t have to deceive them. We can stay together.” Her eyes lit again and the frustrated lines in her face softened. Hope seemed to come so naturally to her. If only he could find hope as easily.
“Please, Tom.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I love you.”
Her words dried his throat and radiated down into his chest, lodging there painfully.
She reached for his hand and her fingers twined around his.
How could he let her go? He closed his eyes and forced back his own declaration of affection for her. He’d gone over this a hundred times in his mind. He was determined to relinquish her, and he had to stay resolute this time.
“I can’t.” He tugged his hand loose but felt as though he were leaving his heart within her grasp. Then he strode away. And he didn’t look back, even though the empty, aching cavity in his chest begged him to.
Chapter 17
Victoria twisted the wooden cross in her chapped hands. The dark pieces of wreckage were smooth now with the passage of time. How many years had it been since her father had been shipwrecked and fashioned the cross? She guessed at least twenty.
Her father had given the cross to her mother. Eventually her mother had given away the cross too, with an accompanying letter that explained the story behind the cross and the hope found in God.
Over the years, the cross had apparently passed through many different hands, giving hope to all the lives it touched. Then finally, through circumstances that had surely been divinely ordained, Victoria had ended up with the cross during the summer she’d gone with her father to Michigan. A young school teacher by the name of Tessa Taylor had been living in Eagle Harbor, one of the mining towns her father owned. Her father had happened to see Tessa with the cross and had immediately recognized it as the same cross he’d made when he’d been stranded at Presque Isle Lighthouse in Michigan as a young unmarried man. Of course, Tessa had been delighted to return the cross to them, and Victoria had kept it close ever since.
Even though her mother’s original letter had instructed the bearer of the cross to pass it along to someone who needed hope, Victoria hadn’t wanted to part with the treasure. She’d felt as though the cross had come home, that it was hers to keep.
The breeze from the open bedroom window eased her discomfort from the heat just slightly, no more than the cross had eased the pain radiating in her chest.
She’d always believed the cross was supposed to bring her hope. Wasn’t it? At least that’s why her father had designed it all those years ago when he’d been stranded away from his family in the Michigan wilderness after a shipwreck had nearly killed him. It had been his reminder to hope and pray. Of course, all had ended well for her father. He’d met and fallen in love with Mother. They’d gotten married and were still happy together.
Ironically, Victoria had fallen in love and gotten married too, not quite in that order. But apparently she wasn’t destined to have the same happy ending that her parents had found.
With a sigh, she bent down and tucked the cross back into her carpetbag, which she’d packed several days ago after Tom had rejected her love with a finality that had broken her heart. She supposed she’d been harboring hope until then. But when he’d told her that he couldn’t love her in return and had walked away without a backward glance, he’d taken all her hope with him.
Before Jimmy had sailed away, she’d given him a telegram to deliver to the Western Union office in Provincetown, and ever since then she’d been waiting. Every day she had to stay was torture—being near Tom but knowing he didn’t love her or want her as his wife.
She pulled back the curtain to her view of the tower, where he was sitting on his makeshift platform painting for the second day in a row. He’d been avoiding her every bit as much as she was him. He hadn’t slept on the sofa, hadn’t eaten