The Scarlet Thread Read online

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  The Scarlet Thread

  Copyright © 1996, 2004 by Francine Rivers. All rights reserved.

  Discussion guide section written by Peggy Lynch

  Designed by Jennifer Ghionzoli

  Interior map copyright © 1996 by Kirk Caldwell. All rights reserved.

  Cover illustration © 2011 by Robert Papp. All rights reserved.

  Author photo by Elaina Burdo copyright © 2011. All rights reserved.

  Interior graphic pattern copyright © Roberto hartasanchez Castillo/iStockphoto. All rights reserved.

  Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible,® copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

  Scripture quotations used in the discussion guide are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

  The Scarlet Thread is a work of fiction. Where real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales appear, they are used fictitiously. All other elements of the novel are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rivers, Francine, date

  The scarlet thread / Francine Rivers.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-8423-3568-3 (sc)

  I. Title.

  PS3568.I83165S28 1996

  813 .54—dc20 96-3721

  Second repackage published in 2012 under ISBN 978-1-4143-7063-7.

  To Sue Hahn, Fran Kane, and Donzella Schlager . . .

  my traveling companions

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Part One: The Call

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Part Two: The Wilderness

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Three: The Surrender

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Part Four: The Reconciliation

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Discussion Questions for The Scarlet Thread

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Three very special people helped bring this story into being: Sue Hahn, Fran Kane, and Donzella Schlager, adventurers all, who shared a dream with me of traveling the Oregon Trail. With the blessings of our husbands, we took off in a Suburban and drove from Sebastopol, California, to Independence, Missouri. From there we followed the Oregon Trail to The Dalles, Oregon. Over five thousand miles together. We saw the beauty and vastness of our country, stopped at every historical landmark (and rest stop) along the road, visited every museum we could find (small town and large), and collected enough information to keep us reading for years to come.

  Thanks, gals. It was one of the best times of my life.

  When do we do the Lewis and Clark Trail?

  Many thanks as well to Ryan MacDonald, for sharing his expertise in computer games and trade shows.

  Part One

  The Call

  Chapter 1

  Sierra Clanton Madrid couldn’t stop shaking. Her stomach was quivering. Her head had begun throbbing with a tension headache the moment Alex had told her the news.

  She hadn’t had a headache like this since prom night during her senior year of high school. Alex had come to pick her up in his father’s beat-up Chevy three minutes before her father turned in to the driveway. It was the first time in her life her father had come home early from work. She might have known it would be on that night. She could still remember the look on her father’s face when he saw Alex—a drop-dead handsome, long-haired Hispanic boy dressed in a rented tuxedo—standing on the wide porch of her family’s Mathesen Street Victorian. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Alex was reaching forward to pin an orchid to the front of her fancy prom dress. When Sierra heard the slam of her father’s car door, she almost fainted in fear.

  The headache had started then and was only compounded by the inquiring look on Alex’s face. “What’s the matter?” he asked. What could she say? She had told her father about Alex; she just hadn’t told him everything.

  Words were exchanged, but, fortunately, her mother was there to intercede and calm her father down.

  In the end, Alex escorted her to his borrowed car and helped her in while her father stood on the front steps glaring at him. Alex didn’t so much as look at her as he put the Chevy in gear and pulled away from the curb. They were halfway to Santa Rosa before he said anything.

  “You didn’t tell him who was taking you to the prom, did you?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Yeah, right. You just left out a few important details, didn’t you, chiquita?” He had never called her that before, and it boded ill tidings for the night ahead. He didn’t say anything more on the drive to the expensive restaurant in Santa Rosa. She ordered something cheap, which made him even madder.

  “You think I can’t afford to buy you anything more than a dinner salad?”

  Her face aflame, she ordered the same prime rib dinner he did, but he didn’t look any happier.

  Things got worse as the evening wore on. By ten, Alex wasn’t speaking at all, not to her, not to anyone. She ended up losing the nice dinner he bought her in the bathroom of the Villa de Chanticlair.

  She’d been crazy in love with Alejandro Luís Madrid. Crazy being the operative word. Her father had warned her. She should have listened.

  Sierra’s eyes smarted with tears now as she drove along the Old Redwood Highway, which linked Windsor with Healdsburg. For all of its turmoil, she preferred clinging to the now-romantic past rather than facing the uncertain, terrifying present and future.

  Prom night had been such a disaster. When most of her friends were going to all-night parties in Santa Rosa, Alex took her home well before midnight. The front lights were turned on—and not discreetly. Her father had probably changed the 60-watt bulb to a 250 while she was gone. Even the inside lights were on that night.

  There was plenty of light for her to see how angry Alex was. But his expression revealed something deeper than just anger. She could feel the hurt that lay hidden behind the cold, remote expression on his face. She thought he’d just walk away then. Unfortunately, he didn’t intend to do so before he had his say.

  “I knew it was a mistake to ever ask you out.”

  The words struck like a shotgun blast to her heart. He wasn’t finished. “I’m not some character in a Shakespearean tragedy, Sierra. I’m not Romeo to your Juliet. And I didn’t ask you out because I wanted to play around!” He turned away with that and almost reached the steps before she could speak past the tears choking her.

  “I love you, Alex.”

  He turned around then and looked at her. “What’d you say?” His eyes were dark and hot, still filled with anger at her—with good cause. She hadn’t considered what her silence would cost him. All she had thought about was avoiding a confrontation with
her father.

  Alex stood waiting.

  “I—I said I love you.”

  “Say it in Spanish,” he told her in the same tone he had used when tutoring her.

  She swallowed, wondering if he only meant to humiliate her more before he walked out of her life. “Te amo, Alejandro Luís Madrid. Corazón y alma.” She started to cry then, hard wracking sobs. He caught hold of her and poured out his feelings in Spanish. Though she didn’t fully understand the words, she saw in his eyes and felt in his touch that he loved her.

  Infrequently over the years, he had fallen back into his first language during times of powerful emotions. He had spoken Spanish when he made love to her on their wedding night and again when she told him she was pregnant. He had wept and spoken Spanish in the wee hours of the morning when Clanton had pushed his way into the world and again when Carolyn was born. And he had spoken Spanish in tears on the night her father died.

  But that night on the porch, they both forgot about the lights. In fact, they both forgot everything until the front door was jerked open and her father ordered him gone.

  She was forbidden to see Alex. At the time, it didn’t matter to her father that Alex was ranked number four in a class of two hundred students. What mattered was that Luís Madrid, Alex’s father, was “one of those beaners” who worked as a laborer in the Sonoma County vineyards. Her father didn’t care that Alex was working a forty-hour week at a local gas station to save money to put himself through college.

  “I wish him luck,” he said, and it was clear that luck was the last thing he wished Alex.

  She reasoned, cajoled, whined, and begged. She appealed to her mother, who promptly refused to take her side. In desperation, she threatened to run away or commit suicide. She had gotten their attention with that.

  “You so much as talk to that beaner on the phone and I’ll call the police!” her father had yelled. “You’re fifteen. He’s eighteen. I could have him arrested!”

  “You do and I’ll tell the police you’re abusing me!”

  Her father called her aunt in Merced and made arrangements for her to spend a few weeks there “cooling off.”

  Alex was waiting when she returned, but he proved less malleable than her male parent. He had a few succinct Spanish words to say about her idea of meeting him in secret. Alex was a fighter who preferred facing wrath head-on. She had never expected that he would deal with the situation on his own. He just showed up at the house one day five minutes after her father had come home from work. She learned later from a neighbor that Alex had been waiting down the street for more than an hour. Her mother, sympathetic to their plight, invited Alex into the foyer before her father could get to the porch and order him off the property.

  Clutching the steering wheel of her Honda Accord now, Sierra remembered how she had felt that day, seeing Alex standing in the front hallway between her mother and father. She had been so sure her father would kill him or at least beat him to within an inch of his life.

  “What’s he doing here?” She could still hear the anger in her father’s voice as he dumped his briefcase on the floor. Sierra had been convinced he was only freeing his hands so he could get them around Alex’s neck.

  Alex stepped around her mother and faced him. “I came to ask permission to see your daughter.”

  “Permission! Like you asked permission to take her to the prom?”

  “I thought Sierra cleared it with you. My mistake.”

  “You’re right about that! A big mistake. Now get out of here!”

  “Brian, give the young man the chance to—”

  “Stay out of this, Marianna!”

  Alex stood his ground. “All I ask is a fair hearing.” He didn’t even notice her standing above them on the stairs.

  “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”

  They were like two dogs with their hackles up. “Daddy, please . . . ,” she said, coming down the stairs. “We love each other.”

  “Love. I doubt that’s what he feels for you.”

  “You don’t understand!” she wailed.

  “I understand plenty! Get back to your room!”

  “I’m not going anywhere but with Alex,” she said, reaching the hallway and taking a position beside her boyfriend, and she knew in that instant that if her father came at him, she’d do whatever she had to do to stop him. She had never been so furious!

  Alex clamped his hand on her wrist and firmly pulled her behind him. “This is between your father and me. Stay out of it.” The whole time he spoke, he never took his eyes off her father.

  “Get out of my house.”

  “All I want is a few minutes to speak to you, Mr. Clanton. If you tell me afterward to back off, I’ll back off.”

  “All the way to Mexico?”

  “Brian!”

  As soon as her father uttered the words, his face turned beet red. Alex, with his own prejudices, had no intention of letting him off easily.

  “I was born in Healdsburg, Mr. Clanton. Just like you. My father took his citizenship test ten years ago. Not that it makes much difference. He passed with flying colors. Red, white, and blue. He’s never taken a dollar of welfare in his life, and he works hard for what he makes, probably harder than you do in that plush real estate office you have downtown. We don’t live in a Victorian,” he said with a swift, telling look around, “but we don’t live in a shack either.”

  His little speech hadn’t made anything better.

  “You finished?” her father said, embarrassment burned away by anger.

  “You might enjoy knowing that my father and mother disapprove of Sierra as much as you disapprove of me.”

  Her mouth fell open.

  “Disapprove of Sierra?” her father said, insulted. “Why?”

  “Why do you think, Mr. Clanton? She’s white and she’s Protestant.”

  “Maybe you ought to listen.”

  “I do listen. I’ve got a lot of respect for my parents, but I’ve got a mind of my own. The way I see it, a bigot is a bigot, no matter what color he is.”

  A long, hot silence filled the foyer.

  “So,” Alex said bleakly, “do we talk or do I walk?”

  Her father looked at her for a moment and then back at Alex with resentful resignation. “We talk.” He jerked his head toward a room off the hallway. “But I doubt you’re going to like what I have to say.”

  They spent the next two hours in the small office at the front of the house while she sat in the kitchen with her mother, alternately crying and raging about what she’d do if her father wouldn’t let her go out with Alex. Her mother hadn’t said much of anything that day.

  When her father came into the kitchen, he told her Alex was gone. Before she had time to scream recriminations, he informed her she could see him again, after she’d agreed to follow the rules the two of them had established. One phone conversation a night, no longer than thirty minutes and only after her schoolwork was finished. No dates Monday through Thursday. Friday night she was to be home by eleven. Saturday night by ten. Yes, ten. She had to be well rested for church on Sunday. If her grades dropped a smidgen, she was grounded from Alex completely. If she missed church, same consequences.

  “And Alex agreed?”

  “He agreed.”

  She hadn’t liked any of it, but she had been so much in love she would have agreed to anything, and her father knew it.

  “That boy’s going to break your heart, Sierra.”

  Now, fourteen years later, he was doing just that.

  Wiping tears from her eyes, Sierra drove across the Russian River bridge and turned right.

  She knew her father had hoped things would cool off if he gave the relationship time to develop cracks. He hadn’t known Alex then, nor did he see the determination and drive that burned in him. Alex graduated with honors from high school and entered the local junior college. Sierra had wanted to quit school and marry him, thinking it would be romantic to work and help put him through col
lege. He squashed that idea. He told her in no uncertain terms that he intended to finish college on his own, and he sure didn’t want a dropout for a wife. He completed two years of work at Santa Rosa Junior College in a year and a half and transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, where he majored in business, with an emphasis in computer technology. She finished high school and entered a local business college, counting the days to his graduation.

  As soon as Alex returned to Healdsburg, he found a job with Hewlett-Packard in Santa Rosa, bought a used car, and rented a small bungalow in Windsor.

  When they couldn’t get their parents to agree on the kind of wedding they should have, they eloped to Reno. Nobody was very happy about it.

  They had been married ten years. Ten wonderful years. All that time she’d thought Alex was as happy as she was. She never suspected what was going on beneath the surface. Why hadn’t she realized? Why hadn’t he told her straight out that he was dissatisfied?

  Sierra pulled her Honda into the driveway of the Mathesen Street Victorian and prayed her mother was home. Mom had always been able to reason with Daddy. Maybe she could help Sierra figure out how to reason Alex out of his plans for their future.

  Unlocking the front door, Sierra entered the polished wood foyer. “Mom?” She closed the door behind her and walked along the corridor toward the kitchen. She almost called for her father before she caught herself.

  With a sharp pang, she remembered the call she and Alex had received at three in the morning two years ago. She had never heard her mother’s voice sound that way before. Or since.

  “Your father’s had a heart attack, honey. The ambulance is here.”

  They had met her at Healdsburg District Hospital, but it was already too late.

  “He complained of indigestion this morning,” her mother had said, distracted, in shock. “And his shoulder was aching.”

  Now, Sierra paused at his office door and looked in, half-expecting to see him sitting at his desk reading the real estate section of the newspaper. She still missed him. Oddly, so did Alex. He and her father had become close after Clanton and Carolyn were born—amazing the way grandchildren seemed to break down walls between people. Prior to her pregnancy, she and Alex had seen little of her parents. Her father always found some excuse to turn down dinner invitations; Alex’s parents were no better.