know you think I’m crazy. That’s okay. When you read this, you will understand. I want your wife to read it too. Then, if I sell you this house, you will know what kind of responsibility goes with it. I have been responsible for a long time. I accept that. I think He wants me to let it go.” Emory looked away. “I know she would tell me the same thing. Irene’s been telling me every night in my dreams to get away from here. I woke up every morning for years asking myself how I could ever leave this house. The answer never came. Then, yesterday, I decided to never leave this ridge. I even thought about doing what everyone around here thinks I am going to do. Then you walked back that ridge.” Emory paused while he let Paul think about what he had just said. “What do you think about that?” Then he laughed out loud. “Woo! Got you with that one, didn’t I?” He laughed again and slapped the manuscript in his lap. “You take this with you and read it tonight. Talk about it with your wife. Then you come see me tomorrow, and we’ll talk about your new house.”
Paul thought this whole situation was insane. He could not decide to buy a house because of a story he read about it. Yvonne had not even seen the house yet. However, he wanted to read that story so bad he thought he would promise anything to get his hands on it. “Mr. Story—”
Emory interrupted him immediately, “Call me Mr. Story one more time and I might ask you to leave.”
Paul apologized and said, “Em, this house is exactly what I am looking for. My wife is going to love it.”
Paul walked to his car with the manuscript in his hand. He half expected Emory to call him back. He got into the driver’s seat and looked back at the porch. Emory sat in his chair and rocked back and forth. He looked so peaceful sitting there. Paul drove out the lane and looked down at the thick notebook sitting on the seat beside him. The corners of the pages were smudged and had been turned a thousand times. He thought that if Emory’s wife had written this story, then Emory could very well be obsessed with whatever was written on those pages. Regardless of whether or not the story was true, Emory believed every word. That book might be the only memories he had of her.
Paul got home and told Yvonne about his morning. She was sympathetic to the old man’s sad life. She said that he was probably so lonely that he treated every visitor he ever received the way he had treated Paul. She looked at the notebook and asked, “How many people do you think have read that?”
“I don’t think that is the case. I really believe that he has never shown this to anyone. I think those pages only have his prints on them.” Paul picked up the notebook and thumbed through the pages. They were all typed and numbered. Stains were on so many pages that some of the words were smeared. It was at least two hundred and fifty pages. Paul told his wife that she had to read it too. He told her it was the old man’s wish, so she had to agree.
He left the manuscript on the coffee table and went to the kitchen to make a sandwich. He returned with two plates and two glasses of tea. Yvonne was already reading the first page.
“You didn’t tell me it was a love story.”
Part 1
Chapter 1
Going to War
May 1944
“I promise you, I will be back. The war will be over soon.” He looked at her, and he saw the tears forming in the corner of her beautiful green eyes. “I may not even go ‘over there.’”
“Emory, I love you, and you know I won’t try and stop you. But if you don’t keep your promise”—and here she paused before she wiped a tear from her cheek—“why, I’ll never forgive you.”
“Irene, you are the reason I have to go. If you can’t live where you are free, then there is nothing worth fighting for.” Emory looked at Irene with tears in his own eyes. He had known her for two years, and from the moment he had seen her, he had known there could be no other. It was 1944, and war was rampant in Europe and the Pacific. He knew he would enlist as soon as high school was over. There had never been a question as to whether or not he would join. His best friend, Corbin, and he had decided to do it together. They were to leave for the air corps training facility in Texas on the following Tuesday. Six weeks in Texas and they would probably be trained to do evacuations. The war would be ending soon; the radio said so every day. They would most assuredly never get to Europe or the Pacific. The sergeant from the office in Frankfort had told them that.
“Irene, I will think of you every single moment I’m gone.”
“Emory,” Irene said as she leaned into his shoulder and put her head against his neck, “you have to come home. I won’t allow you to be gone too long.”
They were sitting at the end of the long ridge across from Emory’s parents’ house. They loved to walk back here. Emory had brought Irene back here to see where he planned on building them a home. He especially loved the way the end of the ridge sloped. It fell steeply on all three sides like the back end of a horse. A house built here would be like a castle. He told Irene that he could see them sitting on a porch overlooking the lake that he planned to build. He told her it would wind around the bottom of the hill on all three sides. “It will be our own little deserted island, sort of.” He told her this the first time he brought her here.
“Mr. Story, I do think you’re rushing things a bit.” She smiled, and he saw the innocence in her sparkling green eyes as her cheeks turned crimson red.
“Irene, when I saw you in church on the day your family moved here, I told Corby that he was looking at the future Mrs. Emory Story.”
“Oh, Emory, how could you have known any sort of thing?” she asked.
“When I saw you and our eyes met, I swear I felt an arrow pierce my heart. Now, I feel my heart leap every time I see you.” Emory felt embarrassed by his confession. He reached over and squeezed her hand.
“Then tell me, Mr. Story, why didn’t you speak to me for two weeks?” she asked him.
“I was so scared that you would say no,” Emory said as he hung his head to the side, not wanting to look at her.
“Emory, I fell in love with you a little more every time that your eyes looked away. When our eyes met, I too felt Cupid’s arrow.”
They sat on the end of the ridge with the sun setting behind them. Emory turned to face her, looking into her eyes. “Irene, you are the reason I live. We will keep this country free or die trying.”
Irene shivered in his arms and said, “Now don’t you say things like that. When you get home, we’ll build that house right here.”
Emory just smiled and pulled her closer. “Do you mean that, Irene?” he asked.
“I know that I will never love anyone else. So don’t you go sticking your neck out to be a hero. Just come home.” Here she paused while she rubbed the corner of her eye. “You have to.”
*****
When the day came for Emory and Corbin to travel by train to Texas, Irene sat at the train station in a brand-new white dress. Emory thought she looked like an angel. He slowly walked toward her while dragging his oversized luggage. He knew that he probably would not get to keep many of his own things, but there were some things that he could not leave at home.
He pulled the suitcase up onto the platform and stopped right in front of her. Her dark
