Entangled Hearts

Chapter 27

Laura Mae took a cool, refreshing bath, powdered her face, and then applied just enough rouge to hide the paleness in her cheeks. She put on the pretty afternoon frock that Gene had bought for her. She knew that her appearance might mean much in winning the approval of Mrs. Chatterton. She called a cab and gave the address, "8103 Colonial Heights." She imagined the look the driver gave her said, "What takes a common girl like you into the wealthy section of the city?" He started the car, and it didn't take long for it to weave its way through the line of traffic until it reached the wealthy residential section. There, it stopped in front of an elegant home built in the Colonial style. The lawns and shrubbery were beautiful even with winter approaching. Laura Mae stepped out of the cab and paid the driver, telling him that he need not wait. She was confident that she could find her way back to the business section and from there, she knew the way back to her room.

With a trembling hand, she pressed the doorbell and then gave her name to the butler, as she had done at the rooming house, "May Elison, a friend of June Malcolm's." There was nothing certain about this place becoming her home, and she was not yet ready to reveal that she was the wife of Eugene Whitmer, homeless and alone in a city of strangers. She was shown into a spacious room; the whole place matched her mental image of a palace. The butler announced her, and soon Mrs. Chatterton entered the room, approaching the girl with a smile that bid her, "Welcome." Mrs. Chatterton was a lovely lady with natural dignity and poise. Her hair was streaked with silvery gray, which only helped to soften the lines of her kind, motherly face.

"Are you the friend of June Malcolm, whom she said she was sending to see me?" Emily Chatterton asked in a musical voice.

"Yes, Mrs. Chatterton, I am. Here is the letter she spoke of." Laura Mae handed the note to the charming lady.

"Won't you sit down?" she asked with a pleasant smile as she offered the girl a place on the divan. Laura Mae accepted the offer graciously; she was weak and tired and somewhat afraid. It was easier for her to regain composure when she was seated. June's aunt took a chair opposite her and watched as the lady read the letter through and then glanced back over it a second time before looking up.

"Your name is Laura Mae?" she asked.

"Just call me May, please," came the short reply.

"Very well, it shall be May, then. You used to be a Porter girl from Oakdale before you were married, Mrs. Elison?"

"Why, yes," the girl flushed at being addressed as Mrs. Elison. "My sister and June are very close friends." She already felt at home in the presence of one so kind.

"Will you tell me about yourself?" Mrs. Chatterton suggested.

"There is not much to tell. I graduated from high school and have had two years of business training after that. There was a boy I had learned to love from the time we were just young children in school," the girl began, "Father did not like me to go with him because there was another young fellow there that he liked so well; he wanted me to go with him, but I just could not learn to like him. When the United States entered the war, the fellow Father liked was exempt. I knew he would be after me all the time, so my lover and I were secretly married before he went into the army, it was my only defense against the other fellow. Father has kept my husband's letters away from me, so I have not heard from him since he went—I don't know where... he is." She choked and tried hard to hold back the tears.

"I see," Mrs. Chatterton said in a soothing voice. "What happened then, did your folks find out about the marriage?"

"Yes, Father was so disappointed in me that I could not stay there any longer. I hoped to find work here in Kingsford." That was all that she felt was necessary to tell to a stranger.