Say You Love Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

without a doubt the two most miserable people she had ever encountered. Her mother seemed to cry all the time, and her face was a cross patch of wrinkles; her father practically lived at the blacksmith shop, working when he didn't have to, to keep from going home.
    They had fights, especially when Jacie's mother drank too much cider. She would whimper that Jacie's father didn't love her, and when he got mad, so would she, and they would curse each other. Jacie had confided everything through the years to Mehlonga but assured him she had no fears her marriage to Michael would be like that.
    "It might be if you do not love him as he loves you," Mehlonga countered. "He might turn to drink, as your mother did, which would make you angry, and then the trouble would come."
    "That won't happen. I won't let it."
    "Listen for the spirit to talk to your heart," he warned again, "as it spoke to mine to tell me I loved my Little Crow."
    Jacie made no comment, knowing he was slipping into painful memories of how he had lost his wife. He had told her about it, how when the soldiers came to take the first Cherokees forcefully to a reservation west of the Mississippi, he had been away, gathering herbs high in the mountains. When he returned, Little Crow was gone. He tried to follow after her, only to learn she had been among the first to die on the arduous journey when hunger, cold, and disease took the lives of one of every four Indians. Mehlonga had gone home and avoided the soldiers ever since, not wanting to leave the place where he and Little Crow had been so happy together.
    Finally he spoke. "Sometimes I think I would like to go there, to the west to join my people. I am getting old, and I would like to live my last years among them."
    "Would you really travel so far, not knowing whether you would be happy after you got there?"
    "I have not been happy since I lost Little Crow, so it makes no difference. It's just something I want to do."
    Jacie knew Mehlonga had loved Little Crow with a love too deep for her to comprehend and wondered if her parents had ever loved each other at all. Once, during one of her mother's drunken tirades at her father, she had screamed at him that he probably wished she had also died in the Comanche massacre that had killed her sister, Iris. He had stormed out of the cabin without answering. Her mother had become hysterical then, and Jacie remembered being horrified by it all.
    "Mehlonga," Jacie said quietly, "I've listened to all you've told me about love and spirits talking to the heart, but the fact is, Michael is going to ask me to marry him at my birthday party, and I'm still not sure I love him. He expects me to say yes. So do my parents. I don't know what to do."
    "And I cannot tell you what to do. Just keep listening, child. Just keep listening."
    Jacie was more confused than ever but told herself she had to forget about whether or not she loved Michael and just accept his proposal and endeavor to make him a good wife.
    After all, what else was there for her?
    * * *
    Michael took the white velvet box from the wail safe and went to sit down at his desk before opening it. Lifting the necklace from its satin cradle, he held it up to the light streaming through the window. It was exquisite, the diamonds glittering to compete with the stunning purple of the amethysts. The jeweler in Atlanta had followed his design but had to rush to complete the piece in time for the party. The amethysts had to be ordered all the way from South America and were a long time arriving.
    Michael was proud and pleased over the creation. He had wanted to give Jacie not only a special gift for her eighteenth birthday, but also something as a memento of the night he asked her to be his wife.
    It was hard to remember a time when he had not loved Jacie. They had grown up together, and by the time he was twelve and she was ten, Michael knew he'd never meet anyone prettier. She had hair the color of a crow's wing, but it was her