True Love Awaits

Wild Horse, Wyoming 1864

"Marybeth, take your little beedy eyes away from the window and help me stock the shelves, now."  Olive shouts from the back room of the Mercantile.  "Yes Ma'am."  I mumble as I spare one last glance out the window.  "Mary, I thought I told you to forget about the runner...he ain't ever gonna be a'comin back, darlin'."  Olive mumbles as she walks past with a sack of flour in her hard worked, calloused hands.

Shaking my head to clear my mind, I turn towards Olive.  "He was my everything Olive.  How can all the folks in this town just expect me to forget...to act as if he wasnt ever here.  No Olive, he was here.  The way he took me into his arms the night before he left....I remember it all.  Just as if it were yesterday."  I whisper through clenched teeth. 

Olive shakes her head vigourisly as she places the flour sack on the top shelf.  "Honey, there is something that you need to understand about men, now that you are that age..."  She mumbles before turning to meet my intense stare.  "You are nineteen years old, and I do understand what it feels like to be so deeply in love, to be held close to that warm body late in the evening...but men run when you want a commitment, and to tell you the truth darlin'...most of em' dont ever a'come runnin' back."

Marybeth Louise Carmikle...you are nothing but fifteen, you know nothing of true love.. 

The words that my mother whispered to me the night before my father beat her to her death replayed in my head, again and again.  I might have been fifteen, just a young girl, but I knew that my mother should have ran while she had the chance, but no, she did not....she said that I knew nothing and that what her and my father had was true love, even while he beat her, and did the most unmentionable things to my mother...she stayed.  

"Olive, do not tell me that I know nothing of love.  Do you know who said those words to me?  Well, do you?  No, you do not.  The woman who spoke those words to me was my mother, and they were the last words that she ever spoke to me..."  The burning sensation began behind my eyes, and I knew that the tears were nearing the time to fall.  "My dispicable father beat my mother to her death....she chose to stay, she told me that what her and my father had was true love, if one person knew nothing about love, then that would be her Olive...definantely not the other way around."  I grumbled, the last few words leaving my lips in a hoarse whisper as the tears begin to fall.

"Sweetheart, Parson is never coming back...."  Olive murmered as she wrap her arm around my frail shoulders.  "That is where everyone in this town is wrong, Olive.  Never say never, and keep your hope, faith, and relationship with the good Lord strong, and everything is possible."  

'Dear Lord, please help me to understand what it was that made him leave....I am having his child and I cannot do this alone.  Please Lord, please just show me the way...that is all that I am asking.  Just show me the way and allow me to follow the rest of the path on my own.  In the name of The Lord, I pray.'