to throw her out in the street, although she worried about the impact her unwed-mother status was going to have on her father’s congregation. She might get a cottage farther up or down the coast to prevent any gossip from harming his career. He’d find it hard to get another job at his age, despite his protests. He loved her, but she loved him, too, and she wasn’t going to be the cause of any grief to her parents. Well, she’d think about that later.
Right now, the thing was to get back on her feet. She’d grieved so for King that she could hardly function. She had to learn to live with the fact that he wasn’t coming after her. She’d spent the past few weeks gazing hopefully at the telephone and jumping every time it rang. Cars slowing down near the house threw her into a tizzy. She checked the mailbox every day with wide, hopeful eyes.
But there were no phone calls from Oklahoma. No visitors. And no letters. Eventually even her stubborn pride gave up. King finally had Bess, and Elissa was well and truly out of his life. So she began to make plans of her own. She was going to move someplace far away, and she wasn’t going to tell anyone where she was going, not even her parents. She’d write to them, but she’d find one of those forwarding-address places that would confuse the postmarks. Yes, she had to do this on her own. She and the child would grow close over the years, and someday she’d tell him about his father.
That was when she remembered that King didn’t know where his own father was and had always blamed the man for running out on him. She’d decided when Margaret told her about it that one day she’d tell King where his father was and make sure that he got to sit down and talk with him, to hear his side of it. But for now, she didn’t have the right to deny King at least the knowledge of this child. She’d promised.
She went home, resigned to do the right thing, no matter how much it hurt. Bess would be there, surely, whether or not the divorce was final. Maybe they were preparing for the wedding already. She hesitated, but in the end she reached for the phone and called the number King had once given her in case she needed to reach him at the ranch.
Her parents were visiting a sick member of the congregation, so it was a good time to make the call. She didn’t want them to see her go to pieces when she tried to tell King what had happened.
It rang once, twice, three times, four. She was about to hang up when a breathless, familiar voice came over the line.
“Hello?”
“Bess?” Elissa faltered.
“Oh, it’s Elissa, isn’t it?” came the enthusiastic reply. “Kingston isn’t here right now, I’m afraid, but...”
Elissa paused. “Do you know where he is?”
“Not offhand, but I can take a message.”
“No. Thank you.” She hesitated, desperate to ask if the divorce had gone through. She settled for, “Is Bobby doing all right?”
“He’s already back at work,” Bess said, her voice oddly soft, “cast, crutches and all. I... Are you sure I can’t take a message for Kingston? I’m not sure he’ll be home tonight, but I could—”
“No. I’m glad your... I’m glad Bobby is doing well. Goodbye.”
“Wait!”
But she hung up, trembling all over. So now she knew. Bess was living with King.
She almost let it go at that and made her plans without trying again. But that was the coward’s way out. She phoned his office, only to be told that he wasn’t in and they didn’t know when to expect him. She left word, but the secretary didn’t sound reliable. As soon as she hung up, she wrote a terse note and dropped it in the mail, addressed to his Oklahoma City office. Perhaps he could find time to read it, she thought unreasonably, and went back to her designs.
She’d finished her collection, mailed the completed designs to Angel Mahoney and picked out a nice town near Saint Augustine to move to. She packed her things, careful not to let her parents see the baggage. She’d leave in the morning. It had been over a week since she’d mailed that note to King, and she was sure he’d seen it by now. Perhaps he didn’t want any complications and was going to ignore it. That wasn’t like