Tennessee Reunion

by Carolyn McSparren

  She hadn’t expected Vince to hover around her tonight, but she hadn’t expected him to disappear, either. He was one of the hosts. But he’d said he loved her. She was here. Shouldn’t he want to spend as much time as he could with her?

  Some women spent lifetimes trying to change men. It never worked. He’d warned her on the front end that he didn’t believe in marriage, that he ran from women who wanted permanence. Cody had warned her. Nell had warned her.

  Now that she had given in to loving him, served her right if he broke her heart. Vince had told her from the start he wasn’t suited to be married. She should have listened.

  She walked her back up the tree until she stood erect. She’d set herself up for heartbreak. It always seemed to happen.

  But even with Robert she had never felt what she felt for Vince. Love. She wanted to be with him. She felt complete when they were together, even when they disagreed.

  But he’d abandoned her among strangers at a party he’d invited her to. Not the way she’d been brought up. You “danced with the feller what brung ya.”

  If she could just find him, talk to him...find out whether this was the finale or a simple misunderstanding.

  But he was nowhere to be found. She asked several people if they’d seen him. No one had.

  She felt embarrassed asking perfect strangers if they had seen Vince.

  The fireworks were over. She’d barely registered them.

  At his size, Vince should be easy to spot. Nope, no Vince.

  Telling her he loved her was not good enough. She doggone well deserved a man who wanted her as much as she wanted him.

  She wouldn’t hang around waiting for him to give her more than words and the occasional kiss. She’d survived before she met him. She’d survive now. The very thought caught at her heart so that she could barely breathe.

  The caterers had broken down the buffet. Now they were setting up chairs around a portable dance floor. Musicians were plugging in equipment. Fairy lights flickered in the oak trees.

  This party showed signs of going all night, but she was exhausted. Her head was cranking up to a tension headache. There was not a Peterson in sight.

  “I want to go home,” she whispered. When she was sick she always wanted to crawl home to her nest to recover. At the moment she was sick at heart. She needed to crawl home to deal with it alone.

  What home?

  The only home she had was her little cottage at Martin’s Minis. She wanted to be there. As nice as the Petersons had been, they were strangers. She wanted her friends.

  And the horses.

  Her luggage was still in her bedroom. Tom’s harness was still in the barn. Nice people did not break off a visit early without saying goodbye to their hosts and definitely not to the family of the man she loved. She did not feel nice. She did not want to be miserable in someone else’s house, either.

  Across the lawn she spotted Mary Alice talking to Joshua. No Vince. She ran over to them and asked, “Have you seen Vince?”

  “He’s around somewhere,” Joshua said and waved his hand at the remaining guests.

  “Are you all right, dear?” Mary Alice asked.

  “Not exactly.” She took a deep breath and prepared to lie her lungs out. “Victoria, my boss, sent me a text saying there’s some kind of emergency. She needs me back as quickly as I can get there.”

  “Just call her,” Mary Alice said. “It could be your father.”

  That’s why she gave up lying, Anne thought. It always made things worse. “Barbara would have notified me if it were my father. When I called Victoria back it went to voice mail. I should just go.”

  “But it’s midnight. You won’t get there until dawn. At least let Vince ride with you.”

  “I really don’t want to wait until he surfaces. I’ve driven ten-horse trailers all over the country at night. I’ll be fine. I’ll call you when I get there.” She turned toward the porch and ran, head down. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Everyone’s been so kind.”

  “Happens all the time with people who have animals,” Joshua called after her. “I’ll find Vince for you while you pack up.”

  But he didn’t. With Joshua and Mary Alice’s help, Anne was on the road to Memphis in twenty minutes.

  Tom sensed she was upset. He leaned over the back seat and whuffled to her until she yelled at him to be quiet. Then she had to apologize.

  When Vince came back to Barbara’s, they would meet as colleagues. He would probably not understand why she had left because she couldn’t find him.

  In reality she’d never been able to find him. He’d always kept a wall between them as though she might disappear on him the way his mother did. As he had. He didn’t dare to get too close. Not loving Anne was safer than loving her and facing the possibility of losing her.

  Love was risky. You held hands and jumped off the cliff into life. She was willing to take that risk. Vince avoided it. Going through life alone was safe for Vince, but she was tired of safe. She hit the steering wheel with both hands. “All he had to do was be there, Tom. He chose not to be. I want a man who chooses me.”

  At Martin’s, Victoria helped Anne unload and fed her breakfast. Anne was aware that Victoria was tingling to know why she was home early, but she didn’t ask.

  Anne didn’t tell. She did talk about Tom’s rejection of Thor. She made the episode sound hilarious instead of embarrassing. She talked about the rest of the family, and how much she liked Mary Alice.

  She did not mention Vince’s name.

  “Victoria, how would it be if I went to that place in North Carolina that trains the minis earlier than we’d planned for me to go?” She avoided Victoria’s gaze. “It’s obvious I need the training if I’m going to get the minis ready to work on their own by the end of six months.”

  “How much earlier do you want to leave?”

  “Like now.” Anne held up a hand. “Just listen. Becca can train some of the basics with Big Mary and Harriett. Darrell and Calvin are looking after the barns and pastures. North Carolina should be cooler than here...”

  “Hades is cooler than here,” Victoria said.

  “I might take Trusty, so I can do some trail-riding in the Blue Ridge on a full-size horse.”

  Victoria nodded. “Let me make some phone calls. Maybe we can work it out. What’s this really about? What happened down there?”

  “Nothing worth discussing. Thanks, Victoria, you are a peach. Now, I need a swim while it’s cool. Then, if you don’t mind, I am going to sleep.”

  She didn’t swim laps often. Too much like work. This morning, however, she pushed herself until her arms and legs felt paralyzed, then crawled out, stretched out on the chaise longue, pulled her hat down over her face and cried. Who was she fooling? She’d never get over Vince. She loved him. Wanted marriage, a home, tall sons and beautiful daughters. She might even ask Elaine to teach her to cook.

  Without warning her chaise jerked to the side and upended. She rolled into the pool and swallowed a mouthful of water.

  “What were you thinking?”

  Vince.

  Sputtering from her sudden dunking, she brushed the water out of her eyes and looked up—way up—into Vince’s angry face. He was still dressed in the same clothes he’d worn to the party. Beard stubble stuck out along his jaw, and he hadn’t combed his hair.

  “What are you thinking? Vince Peterson. You might have drowned me.”

  “I considered it seriously. They used to dunk witches. Dunk you enough, maybe you’ll stop driving me insane.”

  “You? I was doing you a favor, letting you off the hook. Obviously, you went too far when you said you loved me. May not mean anything to you, but it does to me. In my family, love means you plan to stick around, make a life. You’ve said all along that’s not what it means to you. Last night I figured out I want my kind of lov
e. Your kind isn’t good enough. So I left.”

  He walked down the pool steps until the water reached above his knee, grabbed her around the waist, slung her up and sat her down on the lip of the pool. “What are you talking about?”

  “What else do you call it when a man invites a woman home to meet his family, then avoids her as if she’d developed Ebola? Even your stepmother had no idea where you’d got to. Then your sister-in-law says I should have an affair with you and not expect marriage, because you don’t do marriage?”

  “I do now.” He turned so that he could lean one hand on either side of her. “What if I screw it up? I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “There are two of us. I could screw it up, too.”

  “Then what?”

  She took his face in her hands. “Then, dummy, we unscrew it. Together.”

  He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her to her feet and into his arms. He kissed her not at all gently. Eventually, they broke the kiss. She said from the hollow of her shoulder, “Where were you? I looked everywhere. I didn’t want to wander around in the dark crying ‘Heathcliff, Heathcliff.’”

  “Good thing. I wouldn’t have answered.” He kissed her again. “I’m sorry I scared you. I’m not used to having somebody bother to know where I am. I was across the street at Cheryl’s, sliding a prolapsed uterus back into one of their cows. Her dad caught me and dragged me back across the road with him. Took longer than I thought. When I came back to the party, Joshua found me and said you’d taken your toy horse and left. Then Mary Alice said that you were upset and thought I’d abandoned you. So I came after you. Now, about this marriage proposal thing...”

  “What marriage proposal thing?”

  “The thing where I kneel at your feet...”

  “Vince, if you kneel where you are, you’ll be under water. Can you please get out of the pool?”

  He lifted himself out of the water and stood her up beside him. “Okay now?” His slacks were dripping. He still wore his boots.

  He sank onto one knee, which meant his eyes were nearly on a level with hers. “On the drive up here I finally figured out that I’d better do marriage with you, because I can’t possibly do life without you. I’ll try to protect you from my family to the best of my ability. Marry me. I promise I will cherish you all the days of my life.”

  She stared down at him with her eyes wide and her mouth open.

  “Say something!”

  “Uh-huh.” She paused. “Yes, yes, of course I’ll marry you. I have to marry you. I love you.”

  “And divorce will never be an option. Deal?”

  She nodded. “Deal.”

  EPILOGUE

  “I’VE SEEN COUPLES hang their wedding rings on their dog in place of a ring bearer, but this is my first ring-bearing horse. Are you certain you want to do this?” said Stephen MacDonald’s friend, Walt, the Episcopal priest who had confirmed Stephen and Barbara’s marriage in his small church in Holly Springs.

  Anne and Vince had chosen to be married at the equally small church in Williamston. Walt was still going to perform the service. He’d known Anne since he’d married Stephen MacDonald and Barbara Carew. He wanted to see Anne married.

  “What if he—uh—Tom Thumb—has incontinence issues during the service?”

  “He won’t, will you, Tom?”

  Tom rumbled deep in his throat and laid his head on Anne’s lap. She gave him a peppermint. He sighed.

  “The flowers draped all over him won’t scare him?”

  “Nope. We’ve been practicing. He might eat a couple if he can reach them, but we’re not decorating with anything poisonous. He’s only one small horse, Father Walt, not a herd of wild mustangs. We were considering using a couple of the others as ushers but decided that would be tempting fate. We didn’t think they could follow the seating chart.”

  “You are kidding, right? I suppose I should be grateful for that.”

  “We’re only taking four on our honeymoon.”

  “On your honeymoon? Horses?”

  “We’re driving them to North Carolina to spend two weeks polishing up our training skills and learning some new ones. Victoria already has a waiting list of people who want them.”

  “Are they expensive?” Walt asked. “Can those who need them afford them?”

  “They’re free to the people who need them, but the farm can now accept donations. Most people give as much as they can afford. There are grants out there that can work, too. The same groups who provide Seeing Eye dogs and helper dogs for the disabled support helper horses as well. You have to have room for them, of course. An apartment won’t do. Then there are compatibility and training tests. Some people are simply not suitable. They have requirements that a mini can’t meet or don’t have the temperament or space to look after them properly. The group that we’ll be working with in North Carolina has developed tests to match training with skills and personalities.”

  “Surely Martin’s Minis can’t afford to subsidize the program. Victoria is a businesswoman with a boarding barn, not a charity.”

  “Vince’s brother Joshua is now working with Victoria’s husband, Edward, setting up a trust so we can manage the revenue. Then the Peterson wives are planning a charity benefit for later in the fall after it cools off. Victoria won’t get rich, but she won’t starve either, and neither will the horses.”

  “Speaking of rich, is Vince’s father coming to the wedding?”

  “He said he wouldn’t, but his wife, Mary Alice, is bringing him whether he likes it or not. He still limps, but he’s using only one cane, not a walker. He hated the walker. He decided against divorcing Mary Alice, by the way, when she made him quit bullying her. They’re going to marriage counseling.”

  “Good for them.”

  “He’s had to give up driving automobiles since his accident, and is not happy about it because it tips the balance of power to Mary Alice. He has promised to behave today, but Vince doesn’t trust him. His bad temper is too ingrained. He likes to be the center of attention too much. His motto is, ‘If you can’t be a shining light, be a horrible example.’ Mary Alice says he’s going soft, because he’s scared of losing everyone in his family and winding up alone, but when you have that much practice being a curmudgeon, it’s tough to be Mr. Nice Guy. He knows he can’t touch me and Vince, and the wives are teaching their husbands to ignore him.”

  “I’m surprised Barbara and Victoria are going to let you two go off on your own for two whole weeks. How is Barbara going to manage?”

  “One of Vince’s friends is coming to fill in. The horses are our passport. When we get back to Martin’s I’ll be taking over the mini end of the business from Victoria, so she can go back to running her boarding barn full-time. Vince will move into the cottage I’ve been living in until we need more room.” She blushed and dropped her eyes.

  “Babies?”

  “At least one, if we’re lucky. But not right away. I’m sneaky. This way Vince has to move his stuff from The Hovel, while I don’t have to move a thing. Now, Father, if you don’t mind, I have to put Tom’s sneakers on and get dressed myself. Tom, slippers.”

  The little horse stood beside Anne’s chair and waited for her to tie his sneakers on his hooves.

  “See, Father, I’m using blue shoelaces as my something blue.”

  Outside the room Anne had used to dress Tom and herself, the little church was decorated with autumn flowers and foliage. Masses of rust-colored chrysanthemums banked the altar and hung in pots at the ends of each pew. The October temperature had dropped to eighty-five, and the leaves had begun to change color at last.

  Anne had chosen a sleek cream silk wedding dress with a short train that detached for dancing. All the white dresses she had tried on made her look washed-out, but the cream set off the rose in her skin tones perfectly.

  She and Vince
had planned to have a simple service followed by champagne and nibbles in the parish hall for a few family and friends. Once Emma, Barbara, Anne’s sister Elaine, Barbara’s daughter Caitlyn, and the Peterson wives found out about the engagement, however, the number of invitations sent out increased exponentially. Now the little church was filled to capacity.

  Joshua’s nose was a bit out of joint when Vince chose Cody to be his best man, but he lowered it when Vince decided to have both brothers stand up with him.

  “Unusual, but not unheard of,” Walt said. “I hope there’s enough room to fit all three of them in. They’re the size of a professional football team.”

  Becca had been elected to chaperone Tom as he walked down the aisle, while Seth’s mother, Laila, organized babysitting in the church’s Sunday school for Seth and Emma’s daughter, Diana, and any other prepubescent children that arrived with their parents. “Small children do not belong at weddings,” she said. “No doubt they would chase that horse down the aisle and cause a riot. Victoria agrees with me.”

  “Happy the bride the sun shines on,” Stephen MacDonald said when he met his daughter in the narthex at the rear of the church.

  “Does it mention how eighty-five-degree temperature affects the omens?” Anne said. “I told the verger to crank the air-conditioning down low enough to hang meat. With all these people in this little church, we’re going to need it.”

  “Don’t worry. It will be fine.” Stephen kissed her cheek and whispered, “I hope you know what you’re doing,” but he smiled when he said it.

  “This is not nearly as crazy as your wedding to Barbara.”

  At the head of the aisle, Elaine, Anne’s matron of honor, her baby bump just starting to show, handed Anne her bridal bouquet of meadow flowers with ribbon streamers in autumn colors.

  Anne had chosen not to wear a veil. She’d told Victoria, “I have nightmares of Tom wrapping himself in yards of tulle, galloping down the aisle and jumping the chancel rail. No veil.”

  At the front of the church, the organ burst forth with Trumpet Voluntary.