Letter to Belinda Read Online Free PDF Page B

he got home. Janice was in bed asleep with a book open on her chest. She had tried to wait up for him, but couldn’t. He closed the book and placed it on the nightstand, then turned out the lamp and slipped into bed beside her without her waking up.
    She stirred, changed positions and mumbled, “Must have been something really bad, for you to work over.”
    “Bad was not the word for it.”
    “What happened?”
    “I’d rather forget it even happened.”
    “Okay. I’ve got some news for you, though, concerning Jenny.”
    “Good or bad?”
    “It depends on how you take it.”
    “Go ahead, give it to me!”
    “Brace yourself. Jenny has gone back to Rodney. She says she loves him, and that’s all that matters. Are you angry?”
    “No, I’m not. In fact, I’m more relieved than anything. It defuses the situation. If the mess had continued, I was probably going to find a solution my way!”
    “I know.”
    “So that’s her decision? Okay, she is going to have to live with it.”
    “I know, and that’s what I told her.”
    “She understands the ramifications of her decision?”
    “She says she does, but who knows, with her? She said she would rather go back to him, than see you kill him.”
    He looked at her narrowly.
    “You don’t have to pretend with me, Travis! I know you, and your solution to things. I told Jenny that if she really loved Rodney, she had better go back to him, because if she didn’t, you were going to kill him!”
    “You actually told her that?”
    “Yes I did. Was I wrong in doing it?”
    “Well, you probably made her feel like she had to go back to him, instead of her wanting to.”
    “Maybe, but it will work itself out. At any rate, it’s her problem. I don’t need you going to jail for murder!”
    They both lay awake for some time in the dark, before finally going to sleep. Raising children was an ordeal that they hoped they could survive.

3  
    T he next morning, Travis was up early, making last minute arrangements for his and Drew’s trip to England. It would be easier to leave, now that Jenny’s situation had changed. The trip was more than just a vacation, it was the fulfillment of his promised gift to his oldest son. He had promised all his five children that he would take them somewhere overseas before they graduated from High School. Not all of them together as a family, but a personalized trip for each of them, taking them wherever they wanted to go. He had kept that promise to Jenny, his oldest, in 1996, by taking her to her to the rain forest in Peru. The next year, in 1997, he took his wife, Janice to Greece, because he sensed that she was a little jealous that he was taking the kids somewhere nice, but not her. He had originally planned the trip for Drew, but then Drew said he wanted to go to a country where they spoke English. So he went ahead with the trip to Greece, and took Janice instead of Drew. Now, in 1998, he was taking Drew to his choice of destination, which was England. He had learned that the English Department at the University of Central Alabama was sponsoring this seven day trip to London, and Southern England, to give their Literature majors a taste of Shakespeare’s homeland. Of course, this trip, like most other school trips, was open to more than just college students. Anyone could go, if they had a passport, and $1,275. So he signed up Drew and himself, and as a surprise, Travis’ mother said she also wanted to go, so all three of them signed up.
    Going to England had another benefit as well. In addition to being a coal miner, Travis was an aspiring fiction writer. Two years earlier, his first attempt at getting his works published had resulted in a Canadian publisher giving him a contract on ‘The Relic’, and it had taken a year and a half of editing to get the manuscript to the finished product. In the meantime, Travis had concocted an elaborate scheme to shamelessly promote his soon-to-be-released book. He had submitted a bogus story to