Victoria just drifted through the motions. From the house to the buggy to the train. She remembered her mother’s goodbye but didn’t remember leaving the house. Her life support was cut off, and her heart would not stay still even though it was in a million pieces. She felt her mouth move but didn’t remember what was talked about.

Her thoughts blocked out her ability to decipher the small talk going on around her, as well as the uncomfortable train ride. So foolish of her to believe that he loved her. He respected her as a teacher but nothing more. That would explain the times he was absent. He was with her. She wondered if her father had known and, if so, why he never said anything. Her father had been buried over a year ago, and Winston had been so compassionate during her family’s grieving process. If it had not been for him, she didn’t think she would have made it through. The first few months, he was glued to her side, and now he would be glued to ‘Miz’ Pierre’s side. She closed her eyes and laid her head on the window.

“Victoria, you lift your head this instance!” Ruby Samson said sharply. Victoria snapped her eyes open to the older woman’s stern tone. Ruby and Delores Samson were staring at her as if she were a leper.

“As much as that boy says he wants to see his color advance, he is forever chasing white women’s skirts. It is nothing you did or could have done. I told Edward that you had eyes for that boy and rest my poor cousin’s soul; he didn’t heed my warning. I told him it was un lady like for an unattached woman to spend so much time with a man who was not courting her. But no, your daddy wouldn’t listen!” Delores halfway shouted towards the end.

“I don’t understand,” Victoria stammered, wishing the old women would leave her to her thoughts. Her heart was broken, her bottom and back hurt, not to mention the sweat dripping down her back and under her arms from the hot summer heat. She knew they meant well, but they tended to meddle a lot. Delores first husband was her daddy’s first cousin, and the woman wouldn’t let up being a relative.

“That girl doesn’t have one drop of color in her other than negro and maybe creole. She may have Mr. Lewis fooled, but I see right through her. I always told you, Ruby, that the boy caused more trouble for the movement than the white people he tried to protect us from. If you ask me, he would give his right arm to be one. Yes’um, sir, yes’um, ma’am. The cottons in the gin master, sir.”

Victoria gasped. Ruby was nice with her approach, but Delores was brutal when it came to her say-so. She sugar-coated nothing.

“Delores, remember he just crushed this poor child’s heart. Mind your tongue!” her sister-in-law snapped.

“I’m sorry, Ruby, but he chose that pale-faced woman over my beautiful cousin, even if she is a little too old to be unmarried. All the men in the town falling over themselves for a second of her affection and this devil chaser who she was willing to give her heart to picks over it!”

“Delores, enough! Victoria, what she is trying to say is you are a beautiful young woman, and Winston is an idiot. There is nothing you could have done to change the outcome. He is what he is, dear, and he is not nor will he ever be good enough for you,” Ruby told her.

Victoria kept her mouth closed. That’s exactly what the problem is. Everyone thinks they know what’s good for her. She was tired of being the subject of discussion. They had been on this stuffy train for hours, and she was beyond cranky. “Where will we be staying?” she asked.

One of the ladies patted her hand with a knowing look. “Well, dear, we will be spread out across the town. I believe me and my husband are staying with a family by the name of Sinclair. Delores and her husband will be staying with the Whitmans. I’m not sure where Winston and the others are going to stay.”

“Where will I be staying?” she asked.

The older women gave each other nervous glances than Ruby spoke up, “He didn’t tell you? Delores, he didn’t tell her! That snake in the grass didn’t tell her!” Before anything else could be said, the door slid open, and Winston walked into the already too tightly confined compartment.

“You didn’t tell her!” Delores snapped. “Why didn’t you tell her? You talk about fairness, and you didn’t even give her a chance to decide if she wanted to come under these conditions?”

“Mrs. Samson, please clam down. Ladies, could you pardon us for a moment?” he asked.

The women left, but not before giving him evil glares and a couple of choice words. Victoria pulled on her collar. For some reason, she felt as if the air was leaving her body. What could they possibly be talking about, and what did he want to discuss with her? How could she face him knowing that he felt she wasn’t good enough for him?

“Victoria,” he said, bringing her out of her thoughts.

She quit pulling at her collar and picked at something on her dress that wasn’t there to avoid his piercing brown eyes. When he didn’t say anything else, she finally looked at him. “What do we need to discuss?” came out a tad bit snippy from Victoria’s mouth.

Winston was taken back by her tone but knew this issue had to be addressed before they made it to their destination. “Where you will be staying and why.” He couldn’t keep the nervousness from his eyes.

“I don’t understand all the quietness concerning where I will be staying. What could possibly be the big deal?” she snapped. The heat was really starting to get to her.

“Well, the issue is because you’re unattached, it would have been too obvious for a colored woman to come all the way down south for a teaching position with no family around. It’s not the way things are done,” he said.

“You’re rambling. What is this point you’re trying to make?”

“What I’m trying to say is that this time, we have to be more careful, so the organization that we are assisting has decided to stage a wedding of sorts.”

“Stage a wedding between whom?” she asked, feeling that funny twist in her stomach again.

“Trust me, Victoria, if I felt that it wasn’t for your safety, I would have told them no, and you would just be someone’s niece,” he said.

“My safety? Trust you? What is so different about this time from the others?” she asked, biting her lip to keep the tears from coming. He didn’t want her for his wife, and then he went behind her back and arranged a false marriage to a complete stranger.

“These people just lost another man to a lynching because they found out he was talking to someone about voting. Talking, he wasn’t even trying to vote, and then it came out that he was from up north. The white people down there are brutal, and just because you’re a pretty woman, you are not exempt. If they found out that after school hours, you’re teaching coloreds to read so that they can vote, they will kill you. I promised your father I would look after you, but now that I’m engaged to Penelope, I can’t do that. I had to find someone who could,” he said almost angrily.

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He was angry with her because he made a promise to her father, and it was conflicting with his pretty wife-to-be. This was a side of him that he hid well. “If I needed to pretend to be married, I could have picked from the men in our own town,” she snapped.

He looked at her and smiled. She was so naïve and beautiful. His anger wasn’t at her, but he couldn’t tell her. “Victoria, I know. Many men would have given their left leg to even pretend just to be your husband, but it would have been too obvious. That’s what they’re looking for. We have to make it seem real. I do respect your feelings, and I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do. I am sorry that I didn’t tell you before now; I meant to, but then Penelope…” He stopped himself before he went somewhere he didn’t want to go. “What I am trying to say is if you want to go back home, I will arrange it.”

Victoria let that soak in her brain for a moment. Even though it was unfair to be pulled into this, she couldn’t turn her back on the movement. Things couldn’t get better for her people if they couldn’t read. Things wouldn’t change for the colored students if they couldn’t get access to the same material as the white folk children. She couldn’t turn her back on the outcome just because her heart was broken by someone she never said ‘I love you’ too. She took a deep breath. ‘So how are we going to pull this off?” she asked.

He wanted to hug, kiss her, and never let her go. It was her dedication to the cause that made him fall for her. It’s always been her dedication; she listened, gave her input, and worked well with others. If it wasn’t for the promise he made to her father and now Penelope, things would be so different. So, instead, he stuck out his hand and gave her another huge smile.

“When we get there, we will be taken to the church for the local preacher to perform the ceremony. The five of us are your family, and Penelope is the heiress from France who funded our trip and the wedding. From there, we will celebrate the joining of the two families, and then that night, we will part ways until the first day of the following week.”

“A preacher, a ceremony, if this is just a pretend marriage, why is there a need for all of this? How does the preacher feel knowing that this is all an act?”

“Don’t panic, but he doesn’t know. They have a corrupt judicial system in this town, so, at every function, someone is there watching. The only people who know this is an act are the six of us and the groom-to-be,” he said, watching her.

She felt herself get lightheaded. How in the world was she supposed to fool an entire town into believing she was in love with a man she had never seen before? She put her head between her knees, which was extremely difficult with the thick dress skirt on.

“Victoria! Victoria, I know this is a lot to take on, and anytime you feel it is too much, just come to me, and we will work it out. Are you okay?” he asked, concerned that she was going to faint.

She set back up and pressed the back of her sweaty head and back against the seat, but her eyes remained closed. Three months, and then she would be back home with her mother and all her family and friends. “At least give me his name, Winston,” she whispered.

“His name is Garrison, Garrison Hurston, and I want you to be very careful. I trust him to protect you, but he is a bit of a hothead around there. The CTA is trying to prove that he is a changed man. From what I gathered, the townspeople say that when he was a boy in his teens, he saw his father murdered in front of him. He was a sharecropper and was accused of stealing from the owner’s house.”

“I’m not trying to be rude, but could you please leave me to my thoughts now? Please tell the ladies that I just want to be alone for the remainder of the trip,” she said quietly with her eyes still shut.

Winston wanted to say something that would comfort her, but he couldn’t come up with words. He got up, left the small space, and slid the door behind him.