Free Here to Stay by Margot Early

with Clark and her yielding at last to the impulse. And her professor before that…
    Without turning, Elijah said, “You just ran out on your wedding. You can’t think you want to marry me. You can’t know.”
    Her chest seemed to swell with emotion. What if she told Elijah how she felt? He certainly wasn’t the kind of man who would tell other people should he not return her feelings.
    How can he return your feelings, Sissy? He hasn’t seen you for years.
    Yet there was something so much the same about Elijah, and she was, too, in so many ways the same as she’d been when they’d dated. At her core, she still knew him; he still knew her. “Oh, I’d marry you,” she said. “You wouldn’t try to make me be someone I’m not.”
    Elijah froze, his breath shallow.
    She wants to marry me.
    He wheeled around, sank into the chair next to hers and impulsively grabbed her hands. She was so intensely beautiful, her skin every cliché for white and flawless, her bones sharp and interesting, her mouth wide and inviting, her eyes such a deep blue they reminded him of violets. He gazed into those eyes and said, “Sissy, you’re acting crazy because you got out of that wedding. I’d marry you in a heartbeat, but you don’t know what you’re doing. Your family doesn’t want you to marry me. That might even be why you want to. They approved of Clark, and you don’t love him. They don’t approve of me, so…” He shrugged. “Do you hear what I’m saying?”
    She nodded, and to his horror, he saw that she was crying.
    “What is it?” he gasped. “What did I say? Sissy, I like you. I’m not saying I don’t.”
    “And I like you—I always have. It was you who broke up with me, not the other way round.”
    “If I made love with you now—” his voice was unsteady “—even were to marry you, I’d feel like I was taking advantage of your vulnerability.”
    “Why does no one think I know my own mind?” she exclaimed, tears now running down her cheeks, washed free of makeup in his bathroom.
    Impulsively Elijah reached for her, pulled her toward him and up into his lap. Her body felt so warm and taut and small, though she was a tall woman. He stroked her smooth straight hair, buried his face in it. She cried harder, shaking against him.
    “You’ve had a bad time, haven’t you?” he said, holding her more tightly, feeling her rear pressed against his legs, wanting her. I can’t stand this. I can’t stand it. What am I going to do?
    She lifted her face, put her mouth near his.
    Elijah yielded.
    July 3, 1969
Echo Springs

    T HEY DROVE BACK to Echo Springs as newlyweds in Sissy’s car, which was more reliable than Elijah’s. He left Five in the care of his coworker Barbara, who hadn’t stopped shaking her head since he’d requested her helpearlier that day, asking her to follow them to the courthouse and act as a witness.
    Elijah wished he and Sissy could have married in the Catholic church and hoped they could get a priest to bless their marriage at some point. Though he believed elopement was cowardly, Sissy had said, “We’re not eloping. We’re both adults, and my parents have just paid for a big church wedding that I decided not to have. Let’s just find a judge.”
    So they had. Unwilling to involve Kennedy, Sissy had accepted Barbara as witness, along with Elijah’s friend Paul.
    When they emerged from the courthouse after the brief ceremony, a policeman stood ready to hand Elijah a ticket for Whiteout’s cratering of the flower bed beneath the window of the judge’s chambers. Learning Elijah and Sissy were just married, the policemen tore up the ticket and suggested Elijah be more careful where he tied his dog in the future.
    Now they were headed for Echo Springs, already driving slowly down the Strip to cross the dam. Determined that they would have a real honeymoon, Elijah had rented a small cabin for them on the Lake of the Ozarks—a good ten miles by boat from Sissy’s parents’ place