Page 36 - MailOrderBrideFlipBook

worked to clean the house. He had soon learned not to ask too many questions; Jim didn’t want to share much. Though he and Jim lived there comfortably together, he still knew so little about the man. Now, as Eli sat down on the end of his bed, he picked up the only picture he had of Molly. It was just a hand- drawn sketch, but she seemed to be looking out of it at him all the way from England. He had always imagined that she was smiling at him, but now she seemed to be laughing. He threw the picture to the floor. He pulled out the box of letters he had received from Molly through the last year, as well as the ones from his mother. How could he not have known Molly was married? It did take letters over a month, sometimes even two or three, to arrive, but it appeared she had been married more than a year. He began reading. He started with the notes that would have been written shortly after he assumed Molly was married, and started working his way to the present. His mother was never one to tell anyone’s news outside of the family, for fear she’d be gossiping. She did tell him how his brothers and sisters were doing. She told how his older brother, Jacob, and Jacob’s wife Marissa, had their first baby - a little girl. She was their pride and joy. The whole family spoiled her. Oh, how Eli wished he could be home - home in England. But could that really be home now? He had changed so much. Then he spotted something in his mother’s letter that he now understood differently. “Eli,” his mother wrote in her letter, “with all that has happened with Molly, are you considering coming home?” 33