Promises To Keep. Shirley Hailstock

win the battle for friendship. Lydia, Sara and Adrienne were as close to her as sisters. She’d known Lydia and Adrienne since they’d all played in the same sandbox. Sara she’d met in college, but she fit into the group as if she’d always been a part of it. They had been there for each other during most of the joys and hardships of their lives, but they were also the worst critics to her creativity that anyone could choose. And though she loved them, she would not allow them to run her life.

      For most of her thirty years McKenna Wellington had fallen in step with others. Whenever she tried to assert herself, there was always a reason for her to forsake her plans and comply with someone else’s.

      Well, she was done with life by committee. Life was too short for her to put off doing things until it was palatable to the group. Marshall’s death had brought that realization home.

      She’d allowed her friends to talk her out of moving to Alaska after college and to ditch her plan to make a fortune and then return to the mainland. When she wanted to invest money in an upstart computer software company, they’d convinced her she’d lose her bra. That company was now a worldwide multibillion dollar enterprise. Before she married, she wanted to buy a house. They’d been there to explain all the maintenance nightmares that could happen and how she was unprepared to cope with them. So she’d remained in her apartment. Only after marriage had she and Marsh bought a small three bedroom bungalow. Then, when the business exploded, a larger home in the Chicago suburbs where she resided now.

      Well, not anymore.

      If she kept that up, she’d die never having lived her own life. Now she was planning to go to California—her way.

      “I never heard anything so silly,” Sara stated, pushing her shoulders back and rising up to her full height of five feet, five inches. Placing a hand over her mouth, Sara began to laugh as if McKenna’s announcement was a joke. “McKenna Wellington, have you finally lost your mind?” Lydia and Adrienne snickered.

      McKenna closed her eyes and took a long breath, pulling her anger under control. She knew this would be her friends’ reaction. They had long since given up on their dreams. So had McKenna until three years ago when the man she’d married and expected to spend her life with had suddenly died of a heart attack, leaving her behind. Marshall was only twenty-eight. He would never be twenty-nine.

      It had taken a while for her to stabilize the business, deal with the grief and assure the employees that their jobs were secure. But she was stronger for it now. And her dreams had returned. Dreams she’d put on hold so long ago she was surprised the door locking them still had a key. Marshall’s death opened that door. McKenna was going to act on her own dreams and no one, not even her friends—her best friends—were going to talk her out of them.

      “My mind is completely intact, Sara. And I don’t think this is funny.” She stared across the car in her garage at her three friends. “I’m doing something I’ve always wanted to do. I’m telling you because you’re my friends, but I am not asking for your consent or approval.”

      The group looked a little stunned. It was natural that they should. McKenna had never spoken this way before. But she wanted them to know up front that she was not accepting any criticism or attempts to dissuade her from her plan.

      “McKenna, you can’t be serious,” Adrienne jumped in. “First you invite us to dinner. A wonderful dinner, I might add. You outdid yourself with the Lobster Newburg. It was superb.” Lydia made a French gesture of kissing her fingers and saying ooh-la-la. “Then you bring us out here to the garage and show us this...this car.” She pointed a finger at the Corvette as if it would bite her. “A car you say you built.”

      “This is not a secret,” McKenna said. “You’ve all known for a year that I was building this car.”

      Sara’s face screwed into a frown. She looked at Lydia Osbourne for help. “We didn’t actually believe you when you said that,” Lydia told her. “Selling auto parts doesn’t qualify you to build an entire vehicle. Where would you learn how? We just thought it was your way of saying good-night or that you didn’t want to do something we did.”

      McKenna scowled at her.

      “You know,” Lydia tried to cover. “Like when Margaret Mitchell told her friends she was going home to work on her novel.”

      “Well, it was true when Margaret said it and it’s true for me.” She turned toward the red and white 1959 Corvette and spread her arms with pride. “As you can see.”

      “McKenna, be reasonable,” Sara stated. She always began her arguments with be reasonable. “You can’t turn over the management of Marsh’s company to that idiot George Hightower and run off on this harebrained scheme.” Sara was the only person who dared to call Marshall Wellington “Marsh” to his face. Sara was Marshall’s sister. It was through her that McKenna had met him. And, like family, she protected her brother’s interests even after he was no longer alive to do it for himself. McKenna was also protecting Marshall’s interest. She would never do anything to intentionally hurt the company. It was her livelihood, too.

      “It wasn’t just Marshall’s company. My sweat, tears and several years of my life are embedded in the walls of that business.”

      McKenna and Marshall decided on the idea at the same time. Both loved cars and both had contacts in the automobile industry. It was McKenna who first broached the subject of starting a business to service vehicles, but Marshall jumped right in as if they were both of the same mind-set.

      Marshall knew the economy affected car sales, but people were willing to buy more efficient cars in a bad economy. Those that didn’t, took better care of the car they already owned. Their business, of a full line of automotive products sold to both retail outlets and the automotive industry, had taken off.

      The business didn’t just sustain them, it turned them into millionaires. But when Marshall got into the high-end, custom-made conversions, the carriage trade lined up and the business’s annual income became serious money.

      “I didn’t mean to imply that Marsh did it all himself,” Sara was saying when McKenna’s attention came back to her. McKenna gestured for her sister-in-law to stop talking.

      “George Hightower is not an idiot. He’s a capable manager and Marshall trusted him implicitly. So do I. George will keep things moving if he has to go out on the floor and run the machines himself.” She paused, waiting for Sara to refute her statement. Sara looked as if she disagreed, but she remained quiet.

      “Good. Then there’s nothing to keep me from pursuing my dream. Marshall is gone and I’m free and single. I’m alone here and I want to do this before I die.”

      “You’re not dying...” Sara said but then questioned, her expression changing to concern.

      “We’re all dying, Sara!” McKenna shouted. Fighting to quickly compose herself, she continued, her voice at its normal volume. “When Marshall died, I wanted to die, too. My life had been so much his life. Without him I didn’t know what to do, but after I was running the company alone for a while, I felt the old me emerging.”

      McKenna looked at her friends, studying their faces. “You remember the old me, don’t you? I used to be brave, yearning for new experiences. I loved Marshall, but he held me back.”

      “Held you back. How?” Sara challenged.

      “He didn’t mean to, Sara. And I let it happen.” She said the words gently. “I was happy to run the house, take a backseat to his decisions. I was happy to do what he wanted. We planned to have children, but our efforts were focused on the factory. We started the business and settled in. It took all our time and energy. But he’s gone now and I don’t want to die thinking I shoulda, woulda, coulda followed my heart and I didn’t. If I fail, at least I’ll know I gave it a chance. Can’t you understand that?”

      For a moment it was quiet in the garage. Silently she pleaded for their understanding. Lydia, Sara and Adrienne all had different expressions. McKenna didn’t know if they were reviewing the younger versions