Christopher continues to shout his demands from downstairs. I feel sorry for him. If he thinks that Scarecrow is the kind of man who would actually care or help a person chained up against his will in a cellar, then he is sorely mistaken.
Scarecrow shakes his head in disbelief and moves toward the door to leave but stops and looks over his shoulder at Papa Rich. “How long do you plan on keeping the man locked up down there?”
“That decision is up to him,” Papa Rich answers simply. “In time, the man will be just as eager to marry Ember as I am to have her married.”
“And if you’re wrong?” Scarecrow challenges.
“This isn’t about me. God spoke, and God is never wrong.”
Limping past the threshold and finally leaving our house, Scarecrow says, “I hope you listened correctly, and it was actually God speaking and not the Devil. Evil is alive and well, and it’s ravenous as hell.”
Help! Is anyone up there? Help, I’m down here! Help!
“Ember, go downstairs and quiet the man up,” Papa Rich orders, but he still remains calm. I’m grateful that I don’t see him angry… yet.
“Papa Rich?” I begin, risking not following his command right away. “Were you really going to have me marry Scarecrow?” I nearly whisper the words in fear that Scarecrow is still in earshot.
I truly had no warning, or even an inclination that it was a possibility, and I feel a sense of betrayal because of it.
He approaches me and strokes my cheek. “My sweet Ember. I would never make a decision that is not right for you. Nor would God. It’s why that man downstairs was brought to us. I prayed the right person would someday come, and he did.”
“I didn’t know you wanted me to get married… now.”
He continues to stroke my face like I stroke the head of my cat, Pine Cone. “It’s time. No father wants to see his little girl grow up, but the day will always come.”
“You want me to leave you?” I ask, sadness filling my heart. We never discussed this. I had always assumed… my place is with Papa Rich.
“Never, my girl. Never. Hallelujah Junction is your home and will forever be your home. But you are such a beautiful girl and have so much to offer that we can’t waste that gift.”
“But you just took him.”
“Yes, that is true. But God spoke to me. And even though the man downstairs doesn’t know it yet, he is destined to be your husband. To join our family.”
“Are we to live here in the main house? Married? Downstairs? My room? What if he says no? He can’t stay chained up forever.”
“Shh…” He still caresses my face. “These are my worries to carry. Not yours.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“You will,” he says, finally ceasing in his constant petting. “For now, I need you to focus on learning how to be a wife. You need to woo Christopher just as he woos you. Yes, many unions happen by arrangement only, and that is still a possibility if the Lord chooses that path for us. But I do want love for you. I would like to see that occur between the two of you if at all possible.”
“Love?” Thoughts of all the romance novels I read and fantasize about in the schoolhouse rush in. I never thought love was a possibility as I turned those pages lost in the fairytale of true happiness. I am in hiding. I can’t leave. I can’t find love.
But did love find me?
“It will take time,” he says as he leans against the counter as he had been while speaking with Scarecrow. “He may be resistant at first, and you may not know how to love anyone other than me. But I feel like it can happen if you both work hard enough.”
His talk of love wraps around me like a warm hug. I want it. I want it so badly. More than anything in my entire life.
A husband.
A man to love me like the men in all the books love their women.
I want the happily ever after too.
Papa Rich is finally giving me a gift. A gift of love.
“Thank you, Papa Rich. I’ll work really hard on being good and making Christopher want me as his wife.”
Papa Rich nods his approval. “I know you will, child. I know you will.”
The hollers come again from downstairs, followed by more pounding on the wall or ground, and even the rattling of the chain.
“But I won’t ask you again,” he says, his tone changing from light to dark. “Go silence him before he works my last nerve.”
6
Christopher
The tiny woman enters the room again, and any hope someone will hear my shouts for help is deflated. Someone was upstairs, and clearly did not hear me. Or maybe they did, and they were killed or tied up somewhere in their own prison.