“For how long?” Maureen asked.
“That’s a question I can’t answer,” the doctor replied. “I can’t predict if his heart will remain stable, and I can’t predict how his leukemia will affect him over the days and weeks to come. I will be very blunt and say that if you’d like him to stay in the center until he passes so he can have nursing care through the end, I may be able to arrange that. Or I could give orders that he be released as soon as possible so you can have him at home with you. Those are decisions you’ll want to ponder, and you may also want to play it by ear and see how he does day by day. I will be blunt again and say that it’s my belief that he will pass within a few weeks’ time. His body is simply worn out.”
Maureen nodded slowly, and Cara put her hand on her mother’s shoulder. “Thank you, Doctor,” Cara said when words failed Maureen.
Chapter Ten
The decision was made to move Gerald to the rehab center immediately, but with an open-ended release time. No one could predict the future, and he’d done so well for so long with the prognosis he’d been given that he might surprise them all and live for another six months. Cindy covered Cara’s shift through Tuesday as well, citing that she totally understood since she was going through the same thing with her father. Cara had forgotten about that until Cindy brought it up. Funny how someone else’s tragedy can totally slip your mind when you have one of your own.
Once Gerald was settled into the rehab and seeming to do well, Cara decided she needed to head back home. Thankfully, Denver was a short distance from Aspen Ridge, so she planned to drive out every evening after work and check on her parents. She hoped beyond all hope that her father would be able to recover enough to come home—her mother wouldn’t rest easy until he was back by her side.
* * *
Wednesday morning when she walked into work, a customer was almost on her heels, and she didn’t get a chance to kiss Brennan hello. Then another customer walked in, and then another—it was as close as they ever got to a rush. They worked companionably alongside each other for the better part of two hours until everyone finally made their purchases and left. Then Brennan reached out, caught Cara by the wrist, tugged her around the dividing wall and into the back room, and pulled her into his arms. She didn’t protest in the slightest.
“I missed you,” he said into her hair after he’d kissed her thoroughly. “I kept pinching myself to make sure this is real and that I really am with the most beautiful girl in the world. My arms are getting sore from all the pinching.”
Cara snuggled deeper into his chest. “I missed you too. I’m not sure this is real yet either, but I’m having an awful lot of fun, so if it’s fake, I’d just as soon live in a fantasy world forever.”
The bell over the shop door rang and the two of them sprang apart. Cara doubted anyone would be offended at the sight of the two of them hugging, but then again, it wasn’t very professional, so she supposed that some decorum was in order. As it turned out, it was Logan and Laurie, coming to pick up their rings. They hadn’t been able to make it in when Brennan called them. Cara thought neither of them would mind at all if they knew Brennan and Cara had been smooching thirty seconds before.
The rings fit perfectly, and Cara saw that Logan was reluctant to take his band off and put it in the box. Their wedding date was set for November, so they still had three months to go until he could put that ring on permanently. It made Cara wonder why men didn’t wear engagement rings too.
“This is everything I’ve ever wanted and more,” Laurie said, holding her hand up to the light.
“That’s exactly what I thought when I first met you,” Logan said.
Okay, so it was a little corny, but Laurie melted, and Cara did too. What a beautiful sentiment.
“I’m going to need you to take the ring off, Laurie,” Cara said.
Laurie did so without asking why, but with a confused look on her face. Cara took the ring from her and handed it to Logan, making a “you do the honors” gesture. He grinned and slid off his stool, going to one knee.
“Laurie,” he said, holding the ring in one hand and taking her left hand in his right, “you find me totally irritating and stuck up. You even compared me to a plague of bedbugs. And yet, for some reason, you said yes the first time I asked you to marry me. Well, we know each other a little better now, and hopefully, time has improved your opinion of me and you haven’t changed your mind. So I ask you again. Laurie, will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she replied, blinking away tears. “Yes, I will.”
He placed the ring on her finger while Brennan and Cara cheered.
“I’ve never heard anyone use the word ‘bedbug’ in a marriage proposal before,” Brennan said.
“Hopefully, this will be the last,” Logan replied.
As Logan and Laurie walked out of the shop, Brennan stood behind Cara and put his hands on her shoulders. “They are so perfect together,” Cara mused. “And here Laurie thought she was never going to find ‘the one.’”
“May we all be so blessed,” Brennan replied.
* * *
Max handed Cara a sheet of paper and then leaned back on the couch, appraising her for her reaction. She read it over. It was a list of the songs they would perform at Harpstrings, and he’d arranged them well—not too many fast songs or slow songs in a row, but a nice mixture, and the topics flowed well from song to song.
“This looks great,” Cara said. “I can’t think of a single thing to change.”
“I’m glad you like it. I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about starting us off with a solo, though.”
“Yeah, I noticed that.” Cara paused for a minute, examining her feelings. Was she being honest with herself and with him right now? “If you’d shown me this list two weeks ago, I would have curled up in a ball and cried for an hour. But so much has happened, so much has changed . . . yes. We’ll do the list exactly this way.”
Max grinned. “Good for you. You’ve really taken this on full throttle, Cara. I’m proud of you.”
Cara shook her head. “I don’t know about full throttle. It’s more like a sputtering start. But I have to say, I’m proud of myself too, for probably the first time in my life. And I have you to thank for it.”
“No, this was all you,” Max said.
“I disagree. I had to make certain choices and overcome certain fears, but you gave me the vehicle. You shared your once-in-a-lifetime chance with me, and now we’re both getting that chance. You deserve all my thanks. Forever.”
“Well, you may or may not thank me when you hear what I’ve done now,” Max said, looking a little uncomfortable.
Max did everything with such easy grace that to see him looking uncomfortable put a pit in Cara’s stomach. This had to be bad. “Just tell me,” she said. “Blurt it out. Less painful for both of us.”
Max took a deep breath. “I gave one of our CDs to a friend of mine who does video and stuff and he made us a placeholder music video for our duet and uploaded it to YouTube and it’s already gotten ten thousand hits.” He said all this without pausing, and then he looked at her hopefully. “Mad?”
Cara blinked at him a few times. “Ten thousand hits? Why would I be mad about ten thousand hits?”
“Well, because I was mad at him because he uploaded it without our permission. I thought that might tick you off too.”
“Permission’s nice, but how can we argue with ten thousand hits? I’ve got to check this out, make sure you’re not just pulling my leg.” She grabbed her laptop from the coffee table, went to YouTube, and punched in both their names. Sure enough, there it was. “Here goes nothin’,” she said, clicking on the start button.
Whoever this friend of Max’s was, he did a really good job. There was no live action, just a montage of photographs, but they told the story of the song really well. And sure enough, the counter at the bottom of the video now showed ten thousand, four hundred hits. Crazy.
“All these people are hearing and loving our son
g,” she said, the words sounding fake to her ears as she said them. How could something like that even be true? “Do you think they’re sharing it with their friends and that’s why we have so many hits?”
“Undoubtedly,” Max said. “And they’re probably listening to it multiple times, too.”
“This is incredible,” Cara replied. Suddenly she noticed the time in the corner of her computer screen. “Oh! Sorry to kick you out, but I’ve got to get on the road. My mom’s expecting me to show up sometime around six.”
“Yeah, you’d better go. Give your parents my best.”
“Thanks. I will.”
* * *
When Cara arrived at the care center, she wasn’t prepared at all for what she’d see. She paused in the doorway of her dad’s room, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her mother sat by the bed, her eyes red as well, while her father sat propped up against some pillows and spooned some soup into his own mouth. Cara’s CD played on the small machine next to his bed.
This moment was unutterably precious. Cara wouldn’t have disturbed it for the world. Instead, she tiptoed away before they saw her and found a small waiting area down the hall, where she took her notebook from her purse and began scribbling furiously, writing the lyrics to a brand-new song about high brick walls and beautiful flower gardens.
* * *
Between work and traveling back and forth from her father’s rehab center, Cara hadn’t had much time to meet with Max for rehearsals for their concert. Instead, she sang in the car and played her guitar for her father, hoping that would be enough to help prepare her for the concert that was rapidly approaching. Gerald expressed how much he loved her music, and that meant more to her than a thousand screaming fans ever could.
Now it was the twenty-second, the night before the concert, and as Cara and Brennan closed up the shop, she struggled to keep her mind on the task at hand.
“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this because it’s really not mine to tell, but Dad says he might have found an investor for the shop,” Brennan told her as he wheeled the vacuum cleaner to the front of the store.
“Really? That’s fantastic. I didn’t think it would happen so soon.”
“A lot of my dad’s investors are actually his friends, too, so he can push things through a lot faster than he could if he was approaching total strangers,” Brennan said. Cara was happy to hear that. Mr. Marchbanks wasn’t often her favorite person, but she didn’t want to see him lose his business, and of course she didn’t want to have to go looking for another job.
Brennan plugged in the vacuum and was just about to flip it on when a man came dashing through the door, breathing hard.
“I’m sorry, sir, but we’re just about to lock our doors for the night,” Brennan said. “Oh, wait. Chris, isn’t it?”
“You’ve got a great memory,” Chris said, trying to catch his breath. “You remember the butterfly pendant you sold me for Victoria? Well, I’m here for an engagement ring. And in fact, I know just the one I want, so I won’t even take much of your time.”
“So the necklace worked?” Cara asked, unable to disguise the excited squeal in her voice.
“It did. We’ve been dating constantly since then, and I’ve decided that I can’t let her get away from me again. This is my destiny—I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with her.”
“Which ring did you have in mind?” Brennan asked.
Chris pointed out a ring right in front of the bridal display case. “I saw that when I was here before and thought it would be perfect on her, and now I’m even more sure. Wrap it up, and then I’ll bring her back in to get it sized.”
If only every customer was that easy to please.
Brennan rang up the sale and gave Cara a grin as soon as Chris turned to walk away. Now they’d both made the requisite sales for the month, and for some reason, Cara started singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” in her head. Funny—it was the middle of summer.
“Good luck, Chris,” Cara said as the man walked out the door, and he raised his hand in a wave. What a sweet story.
“Okay. Now we’re really closed.” Brennan sprang into action, flipping the sign and then starting the vacuum cleaner. Cara checked the locks on all the display cases and counted out the till. They were able to leave the building only five minutes late, even after Chris’s interruption.
“And now what would you like to do?” Brennan asked, taking her hand and tucking it through his arm as they walked.
Cara thought about that for a minute, and then she smiled. “I’ll lead the way.”
* * *
Sloane walked up to their table with her notebook in hand. “What’ll it be?”
“I’ll have a banana split with extra fudge sauce,” Cara said.
Sloane wrote that down. “And for you?” she asked Brennan.
He seemed stunned. “What? Oh, sorry.” He tore his eyes away from Cara’s face. “I’ll have the same, please.”
As Sloane made her way to the kitchen, Brennan turned back to Cara. “A banana split? You know they’re huge here, right?”
“I do. And that’s the best part.”
Brennan began to chuckle. “What’s going on?”
“I was thinking about it today, and this is going to sound crazy, but I realized that what I eat doesn’t make me a bad person. If I eat a banana split, I’m not evil. If I eat a green salad, I’m not righteous. Those are decisions for the health of my body, not a decision to go to heaven or hell. And you have to understand, that was huge for me.”
“I didn’t realize you were equating healthy food with righteousness and unhealthy food with being evil,” Brennan said. “I knew you were laying a lot of guilt on yourself, but I didn’t understand why.”
“It just all ties back in with the way my mother would treat me when she saw me eating something unhealthy. I was being bad, and to a child, bad can equal evil. I mean, think about it. What do people always say when they reach for a dessert? ‘I’m going to be bad and have some cheesecake.’ Or when they turn it down, they say, ‘I’m being good today, so I’ll pass.’ So do you know what I’m going to do?”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to eat a banana split. I might even eat the whole thing. And I will not judge myself for one single second. Tomorrow, I’ll probably have a salad for lunch because I want my body to be healthy, but that doesn’t mean I’m being bad tonight and righteous tomorrow. It means that I’m seeking balance.”
Brennan reached out and grabbed her hand across the table. “You are amazing.”
Cara tilted her head to the side and considered him. “You know what, I kind of am.”
* * *
Once again, the auditorium at Harpstrings was packed. Cara’s roommates sat on the front row, along with Rory, Logan, and Brennan. The air was charged with electricity from all the well-wishers in the room and the excitement building up inside Max and Cara.
“Thrown up yet?” she asked him under her voice as they tuned up.
“Nope, and I don’t think I’m going to. You?”
“I feel great.”
They gave each other a huge smile and then turned to the crowd, ready to bring into reality everything they’d been planning for the last two weeks.
Cara had made an important addition to the lineup of songs, and she introduced it halfway through the concert. “I’ve been writing songs for a long time,” she said. “They’re my diary, my way of coping with the world around me. This last week, something happened to me that shook me to my core. I found out my dad has leukemia, and then just a few days later, he had a massive heart attack. He’s currently in a rehabilitation center and can’t be here tonight—at least, in person—but I’d like to invite him to join us now.”
She took her cell phone from her pocket, dialed her dad’s number, and waited until he answered. “Hey, Dad. I’m sorry you couldn’t come to the concert, but I brought the concert to you. And I wrote a song for you and Mom. Would you like to hear it?”
/>
“Of course,” he said.
“All right. Here it is.” Cara handed her phone down to Regan, who held it in the air so it would catch every note. Then Cara began the introduction. The song was rough—it was really rough. She’d asked Max to sing it with her and they’d only gone over it twice because of time constraints. But she knew her dad didn’t care, and her parents were the ones who mattered the most right now.
Max sang of a young man walking through the forest who noticed a high brick wall and wanted to know what was on the other side. Try as he might, he could only catch glimpses of the beautiful flower garden hidden away from the world. Through trial and error, he discovered that love was the key, and as the love in his heart grew and grew, the door in the wall blew open and he was able to see all the amazing flowers inside. This was her parents’ love story. Without Gerald’s love, Maureen would never have let down her walls, and no one would know of the sterling qualities she kept hidden inside.
At the end of the song, Cara took the phone back from Regan. She couldn’t speak to her father for a moment because the clapping was so loud, nothing else could be heard. Finally Max held up his hands and asked the audience to wait a moment.
“Dad, are you still there?” Cara asked.
“I’m still here,” he replied.
“What did you think of the song?”
“I . . . I loved it. I loved it, baby girl.” She heard a sniff come through the line. “I loved it.”
“I did it all for you.”
“I know.” Another pause. “Call me later. Right now, you’d better get back to those adoring fans.”
“Thanks, Dad. I’ll call you in about an hour.”
Cara hung up the phone, and the crowd erupted again.
She couldn’t have even named the songs in the rest of the concert. She performed them automatically, and the crowd responded just as she’d hoped. She was in a blur of adrenaline.
Five Golden Rings (Main Street Merchants Book 3) Page 12
