A Damaged Trust Read Free Page A

cowboy quite powerfully. She had presented it as a Christmas present to her father, and Cliff was immediately caught by the power of the picture. It was the only picture that Carrie ever drew that he could understand, but it was enough to give him a glimmer of enlightenment as to the key to her own personality. He promptly had the picture framed and hung in the large, dark brown-paneled front hall of the house where it held the position of honour and drew the attention of all that entered the house.
    He also sent Carrie to art school when she had graduated from high school so that she could study under people who would understand and guide her intelligently. It was something Cliff afterwards regarded as a mistake, for Carrie immediately began to plan for a career as a photographer. He had been sure that she would want to come back home after college and marry someone suitable from the valley to start a family of her own, under the parental regard and guidance of her loving parents—father, to be specific. It was a misunderstanding that eventually led to a glorious argument.
    Carrie had no intention of falling in with her father’s wishes, and she told him so quite emphatically. Outraged and furious at her “adolescent show of rebellion”, as he called it, Cliff threatened to cut off all of her considerable allowance, and would not pay for her last year of college. It didn’t bother her in the slightest. She merely packed her things and headed off for Chicago to start a life of her own. She called up an old acquaintance who in the past had admired her artwork and photographs, and she told him of her situation. He immediately offered her a job as a photographer for his modeling agency, and it was the true start of her career.
    Carrie loved her work, loved it so much that she would spend as much as fifty hours on the job in a week’s time. She built up a good working rapport with her models and became more and more in demand as her photographs became more and more known. Also, she worked on projects of her own and hoped to soon have an exhibition of photographs and artwork in Chicago. Negotiations with the art gallery had been arranged and all her work had been completed. All she had to do was wait for the last-minute preparations and advertisements, and everything would be all set for the opening of the exhibition in August, two months from now.
    In the meantime, she was on a much-earned and much-needed vacation for as long as she wanted. It really should have been heaven.
    It wasn’t.
    But she didn’t want to think about that now. Carrie spent the next fifteen minutes convincing herself of that as she finished her preparations for bed. She tried to ignore the fact that she would have to think about it, sooner or later, and deal with her messed-up life. There would be time to face it tomorrow. Sleep came very easily for her that night, tired as she was from driving to Grand Junction from Chicago in two days. Her slumber was deep and unbroken.
     
    Morning dawned with a brilliance as the Colorado sun blazed over distant mountains in a golden splash of radiance. Instantly, as the first tip of that glowing orb crested the line of mountain tops, the whole valley was awash with a vivacity of colour that changed the scene from the lavender and pastels of a watercolor painting to that of a brilliant oil, and yet was still subtle in its changing hues.
    Carrie was unaware of the magnificence of the scene outside her window, however, caught as she was in the throes of sleep. A noise gradually began to sink itself into the well of her consciousness, and she surfaced slowly back into the waking world. Opening her eyes and looking about her, still fuzzy around the edges of her brain, she moaned as she caught sight of her bedside clock.
    “Oh, for Pete’s sake!” she grumbled, closing her eyes in horror. The early hour was enough to turn one’s stomach. The pounding at her door came again. It was too much to take lying