Page 82 of The Rules We Broke
She opened her eyes, regret flickering beneath the surface. “I said no. I was young and wanted to see where the pageant circuit would take me. I had a good shot at Miss Alabama the next year, and Isaac said he’d wait.”
She sighed. “So I went off to Auburn. We wrote letters and met on weekends when we could.”
I continued rolling her curls gently as if anchoring her in the memory.
“I won Miss Alabama the following summer, and Isaac asked me again. That time, I said yes. But I was obligated to compete in Miss America.”
Her voice cracked slightly. “Isaac said he’d wait again. I didn’t think we’d be waiting long—I didn’t believe I stood a chance. In truth, I hoped I’d lose. All I wanted was to become Mrs. Isaac Jackson. We had our whole life planned out.”
As her voice trembled, I unpinned the final curl and began brushing it out. My own eyes blurred with tears. I remembered doing the same with Brady—and the ache when our plans unraveled.
“I was even going to transfer to that school for him,” she whispered.
“Really?”
“That never leaves this room, Ella Lu.”
I smiled. “My lips are sealed.”I would’ve done the same for Brady.
She settled back into the pillows. “Everything was lined up for me to start there in the fall. But then, I won Miss America. Who would’ve thought a girl from Kaysville, Alabama, would wear that crown?”
Her voice softened.
“Isaac was proud. Even though it meant postponing the wedding for another year. We adjusted. He’d finish his senior year, and I’d travel the country.”
I finished styling her hair and sat beside her, folding her hand into mine. “So . . . what went wrong?”
She closed her eyes again. She didn’t speak for several minutes. I think she was trying to regain her composure. When she reopened her eyes, she looked straight at me.
“I’m not entirely sure where things went wrong,” she said, her voice low. “I was constantly traveling for Miss America, and communication wasn’t as easy back then. Mostly letters and postcards. Sometimes a phone call if we were lucky, but that was expensive and unreliable.”
“When I came home for Christmas that year, everything felt on track. We mapped out our wedding, right down to the honeymoon. Isaac was joyful, maybe even more than usual. We’d missed each other so much, and he never gave any hint that he had eyes for someone else—not Elizabeth, and certainly not anyone else. If anything, he seemed irritated by her.”
She paused, then added, “You know, she came back to Kaysville with me. Her home life wasn’t great, and we’d gotten close during the pageant season. I wanted to help her. Honestly, I was rooting for her to win Miss America. It meant more to her than it did to me.”
Her face tightened, the softness fading.
“When she didn’t win, she was devastated. She had nowhere else to go, so I helped her get a teller job at the bank Isaac’s daddy owned. She even lived with Momma and Daddy.”
I swallowed. “Did you have any sense of something happening between them?”
She shook her head. “No, not even a glimmer. And if it had started by then, they hid it well. Honestly, Isaac didn’t even seem to like her. I asked him once why, and all he could say was that something about her rubbed him the wrong way.”
She clenched her fists, her voice sharp now.
“Well, apparently she figured out how to rub him the right way.”
The color in her face deepened, and I worried she was getting too worked up. I gently rubbed her hand. “Maybe we should talk about this later.”
“No, sugar.” Her grip tightened. “This is a one-time-only discussion. I don’t ever want to speak aboutthat womanorthat managain after today.”
That might be hard if I marry their son.
“Isaac went back to school, and I resumed my tour—completely unaware of how different life would look when I came home in April.”
She shifted her gaze to the window, staring into a past I could feel weighing heavy on her chest.
“I was anxious to get back. I hadn’t heard from him in weeks. I figured he was busy with his last semester. He was never a great letter writer, but I kept mine coming every week.”
