Four Weddings and a Fireman

by Jennifer Bernard

  She giggled, feeling giddy. “Maybe it’s not so bad, telling you this stuff.”

  “Like I said, the truth will set us free. But I’m still not connecting all the pieces here. Your father was a wacko who set up camp in the middle of the woods and started spitting out children.”

  “Well, he had some of us already. Seven. My mother died having Humility. Then my dad married Lily, my stepmother, and she started multiplying like a bunny in heat. She was always either pregnant or recovering from being pregnant. I grew up watching the little ones from the age of about eight.”

  “Okay, so far so good. How did the man come into it? Mackintosh. What happened with him?”

  Darn it all, she’d been hoping he’d get distracted by her oddball family history. She nervously twisted the sheet between her fingers. “Well, see, my father wanted his little kingdom to expand as much as possible. He wanted us girls to get married right away and add our children to the cause. So he struck up some friendships with a few other people who thought like he did. He wanted to find us the right kind of husband, one who would stay close by and live the same sort of lifestyle. My older sister got married the day she turned eighteen. Her husband had done some work for Prophesize. We all knew him and liked him okay. Grace seemed happy enough. She got pregnant right away. Trixie told me she has three kids now. I’m surprised it’s not more.”

  Realizing she was babbling, she took a deep breath, flicking one more cautious glance toward him. “Then it was my turn. The man he picked out for me, Mr. Frank Mackintosh, was completely different. He was older, and his wife had run off. He owned the adjoining land to ours. He had a bunch of kids, and they were terrors, let me tell you. The oldest one, Robbie, was only a little younger than me. My father decided I should marry Mr. Mackintosh. But that man scared me. There was something off about him. I heard rumors he’d been part of some sort of standoff with the FBI. I overheard him talking about do-it-yourself bombs once. He . . . well, I didn’t want anything to do with him.”

  She swallowed hard. Here’s where things got difficult.

  “I told Prophesize I didn’t want to marry that man, but he had his mind fixed on it. I think he worked out some kind of deal with Mackintosh. Me for Lord knows what. More land or something. Maybe a few milk cows.”

  Vader shifted forward and cupped her elbows. “He couldn’t make you marry someone you didn’t want. This is the twenty-first century.”

  “Not in Prophesize’s world. To his mind, we were his kids and he could do what he wanted with us. He said I was marrying Mackintosh and that was that. He went ahead with all the planning, and I made my own plans.”

  He ran his thumbs along the insides of her forearms. “Your plans to run away.”

  She nodded, then lowered her head to her knees. Her hair fell across her shoulders. He scooped it out of the way, so her face was exposed. She couldn’t hide anything from him.

  “Are you sad because you had to leave home?” he asked gently. “Do you miss it?”

  What a strange question. She’d left in such a state of terror, and that fear had tainted all her thoughts about her family. But now that he mentioned it . . . “Sometimes.” She lifted her head. “But I had Jacob. I never could have managed without him. Being on our own was kind of exciting. We came to California because it was such a big state with lots of farms. We knew farm work. We camped out in a tent and got jobs nearly right away picking oranges and strawberries.”

  “How’d you end up in San Gabriel?”

  “We wanted to try something different. I had all these other things I wanted to do. Dancing and getting educated. Someday I want to work with kids, like I told you.”

  He snapped his fingers, as if something had just clicked. “All your jobs pay cash. I can’t believe I didn’t see it earlier. Is that why you can’t work with kids?”

  “Yes. I don’t want anyone checking into my background. We didn’t want to leave a trail. We saved up some money for rent. We looked at a map. As soon as I saw San Gabriel I had a good feeling. I liked the name. I grew up with all those crazy Old Testament names, but Gabriel felt more like an angel who’d look out for us. I was always fascinated by angels. They can be pretty powerful.”

  “So you came to San Gabriel.”

  “And that’s pretty much the end of the story.”

  From his bullheaded expression, he wasn’t buying it. “Except Mackintosh holds a grudge.”

  She gave a microscopic little nod. “I don’t think my father knew what he was dealing with. Mackintosh is scary. He acted like he owned me as soon as my father and him started working out their deal. I had to watch his horrible kids. He wanted me to do his laundry. All sorts of little chores like that. He’d come over to our place with presents like dish towels and yarn from his brother’s sheep. That was bad enough, but he also brought me a new dress, new underwear. It was so disgusting. He expected me to put them on right then and there. He didn’t bother waiting for the wedding.”

  “He didn’t bother waiting,” Vader repeated. She turned her head away. “You mean he . . .” He started to say the word “rape,” then seemed to gag on it. “Violated you?”

  “No! No. I already told you he didn’t get that far. I hit him on the head. I gave him brain damage and now he hates me.” She scrambled backward until her spine touched the headboard. She’d said too much. But she couldn’t help it. Once she’d started talking, it had been so hard to stop. “That’s enough answers. You said one question, one answer.”

  “What am I missing here?” He dragged his hand through his hair. “Why is this such a big secret? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  Oh, what a mistake this was. Jacob was right, she should never have said one word. Because once she told him a little bit, he’d keep asking questions. More and more questions. “I never said I’d tell you everything. You said one question, and I answered it.”

  “You’re dreaming if you think I’m going to just leave it at that, Cherie. I’ll be back here tomorrow night, and the night after, and maybe some of the hours in between too. Something’s not right here.” He pressed his hands into his thighs, which made her think he was going to come closer.

  If he did, she’d lose it. She felt too raw, too exposed. The thought of how she’d broken her promise to Jacob made her want to throw up. She flung up a hand. “Don’t touch me.”

  His head snapped up. He fixed her with a look of outrage. “Are you nuts, Cherie? I haven’t moved one finger. I’m not forcing you to do anything.” His voice shook with passion. “I’ve never hurt you. Never done anything but love you from the moment I saw you.”

  “I didn’t ask you to!”

  “No, you didn’t ask me to. I did it, all on my own, because that’s just the way it is. I can’t help it. I love you, Cherie, and it’s not going anywhere. I’ll love you tomorrow, and the next day, whether or not you ever decide to let me in on all your secrets. Or even one secret.”

  “Vader.” Her voice trembled. “I’ve just told you more than I’ve ever told anyone. More than Soren, more than Nick, the Hendersons, my friends, anyone.”

  “I’m supposed to be satisfied with that? I beat out the emo boys and the babysitting family. Now I get to sit in a corner until you call on me again.”

  “That’s not fair!” Furious, she scrabbled for a pillow and hurled it at him. He caught it in one hand and tossed it to the side.

  “Fair?” He scrambled off the bed and surged to his feet. “Fair? How does ‘fair’ come into any of this? Was it fair for your father to try to make you marry someone you didn’t want? Was it fair for my mother to get hit by a car? Was it fair for my dad to run off because he couldn’t handle it?”

  She gaped at him in shock. Where had that come from?

  “Yeah. He came into my bedroom and explained that he hadn’t signed up to take care of a cripple for the rest of his life.” He struggled for a ragged breath. “It’s not about ‘fair.’ It’s about taking what life dishes out and doing the best you can, giving
it everything you’ve got.” He pointed at her. “You’re hiding, Cherie.”

  She wanted to defend herself, tell him how wrong he was. But was he? She hugged her knees close to her chest, needing her own body heat.

  “There, now you know my story.” He upturned his hands in a helpless gesture. “I just gave you the perfect excuse to push me away. It’s too much to handle. It’s not what you want in your life. Go ahead, say it.”

  A heavy, electric silence vibrated between them. Was that what he thought of her? How could she make him understand . . . without telling him everything?

  But she couldn’t do that.

  But she had to.

  Oh Jacob, I’m sorry.

  “You feed me little crumbs, Cherie. All I want to do is love you and take care of you and . . . and . . .”

  “I can’t. Marry you.” Low and abrupt, with a passionate tremor, her voice barely whispered into the moonlight.

  “You keep telling me that. But you still haven’t made—”

  “I can’t because I’m already . . . sort of . . . married.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Vader took a stumbling step backward. Of all the things Cherie could have said, nothing could have shocked him more. She was married? And she’d never told him? And what the hell did “sort of” mean? Through the thick fog of betrayal, he grabbed on to something he’d learned from firefighting. Keep your feet on the ground. Deal with what’s in front of you.

  “What are you talking about?”

  From his position, standing near the foot of her bed, she was a dark lump huddled against the headboard.

  “I mean, I signed something that made me married. Prophesize arranged it. I didn’t agree to it, not consciously,” she said in a voice so shaky he could barely hear it. “I was confused. I’d never drunk any alcohol before, and Mackintosh brought a bottle of champagne to celebrate. We were in our old henhouse, me, Prophesize, and Mackintosh. I only had a few sips, but I got kind of woozy after that. It was like I was floating up on the ceiling away from my body. He had some documents and a pen, and I signed where he said to. And then he said, ‘Welcome to the Mackintosh clan.’ My father and him shook hands, then my dad left. Mackintosh started talking about stuff like what he liked for dinner—I remember he mentioned Sloppy Joes, because I started picturing hot dogs and chili beans and feeling so queasy. I wasn’t floating anymore, I was right there in my body, feeling sicker and sicker. Then he changed the subject to sex, and how many times a week he liked to do it, and I just lost it. Everything was spinning around like I was doing cartwheels. When he came after me and grabbed me, I threw up a little, and caught it in my hand. He said I was disgusting and told me to go outside and take care of myself.”

  “He drugged you,” said Vader flatly. He knew it as clearly as if he’d been there himself.

  She clenched the bedcovers as if they were Mackintosh’s neck. “Oh sweet Lord. I think you must be right. Two sips of champagne won’t make you throw up. I can’t believe I never thought of that before! What a lowlife scum he was. Is.”

  She shuddered. Vader cracked his knuckles, wishing Mackintosh would walk through the door so he could beat him up.

  “Anyway,” she hurried on, “I went outside to puke my guts out, and there was Jacob, waiting for me. He had our little rucksacks, and the money we’d been saving. Mackintosh came after me, and I grabbed an old piece of pipe and smashed it over his head. Jacob kicked him in the groin, and maybe in the throat too. It’s all pretty blurry. I thought maybe I’d killed him. After that, we ran. I was so ill I could barely move, but every time I thought about what was waiting back there, I made myself do it. Jacob half carried me part of the way. When we got to the highway we hitched a ride with a trucker who took us all the way to Texas. I lay down in the backseat of the crew cab. I kept throwing up, but I didn’t want the trucker to stop so I’d do it in my rucksack, really quiet. First thing we did when we got out of the truck was wash everything in that bag. It felt like I was washing away that slimy man.”

  Before he realized what he was doing, Vader was at her side. She was gripping the sheets tightly enough to rip them. He sat on the edge of the bed and gently enclosed her hands in his. A weird sort of relief filled him, because that didn’t sound like any sort of legal marriage to him.

  “What happened next?” he asked. He sensed that she needed to spill the whole story, now that she’d started.

  “Texas didn’t seem far enough away from Arkansas, so we kept on going, hitchhiking until we got all the way to California. That was a great feeling—all that space, all those fields going on forever and ever, those wide highways. We figured they’d never find us here.”

  He ran his thumb along the pad of her palm. “So no one tried to find you? Was no one worried about you?”

  “Well, about two months after we left, we took a bus to Nevada and found a phone booth. My hands were shaking so hard I could hardly dial the number. The Harpers don’t even have a phone, you know. You have to leave a message at the feed store, ’cause the owner’s a friend of my father. That’s how I found out that Mackintosh was in the hospital and the police had filed charges against us.”

  “Charges?”

  “We weren’t there to tell our side, were we? I was too afraid to go back. We just decided to stay here and never go back to Arkansas. And hope Mackintosh didn’t come after us. And never tell anyone about what had happened. We made a pact, Jacob and I. And I just broke it.”

  She took in a shuddering breath, but right now Vader wasn’t worried about some idiotic pact with Jacob.

  “This Mackintosh . . .” Even the name tasted bad in his mouth. “If you were forced into marriage with him—an illegal marriage—why don’t you just file for divorce?”

  “Because of my sisters.”

  He looked at her with complete incomprehension. “Is this more Harper family craziness? You’re going to have to spell it out for me.”

  “In my eyes, Mackintosh is not my husband. Why, it was never even consummated. But if Prophesize thinks me and Mackintosh are married, then he won’t let the man near my sisters, once they start coming of age. Bigamy’s a sin. See what I mean?”

  He scrubbed his hand through his hair. “Not really. Keep going.”

  “Mackintosh only wanted me because I’m a Harper. He made a deal with my father. Humility or one of the others would be a perfectly fine replacement. The only reason he didn’t go after Humility was that he thought his son was going to marry her. But she ran away. So now I don’t know what he’s going to do. But I know that Prophesize doesn’t believe in bigamy, and he doesn’t believe in divorce. So as long as my father thinks Mackintosh and I are married, my sisters are safe. Get it now?”

  “Yeah. I get it. You’re sacrificing your future to protect your sisters. You know what, Cherie? This is the craziest story I ever heard. But I’ll tell you one thing. You’re not married.” His certainty rang through the room like church bells. “First of all, how old were you? Seventeen, you said?”

  “Yes. Seventeen.”

  “That’s not even legal.”

  “It is, with parental consent. I checked the Arkansas statutes online. My father was there and I signed the paper . . .”

  “I don’t care what you signed. Did you sign it in front of anyone official? Like a clerk or a judge?”

  “No. Just a few stray hens.”

  Vader brushed a strand of hair off her face. “Hens don’t count. On top of that, you were given some kind of drug and you were unwilling. No judge in his right mind would consider that a legal marriage.”

  “I know that. But it doesn’t matter,” she said in a firm voice. “As long as Prophesize thinks it’s legal, Mackintosh can’t touch my sisters. Besides . . .” She let out a deep whoosh of breath. “You might as well know everything. There’s probably still a warrant out for my arrest in Arkansas. I don’t want to go near the legal system. I have Jacob to think about too. Mackintosh hates him even more than me. He’s a terrible homoph
obe.”

  If Vader ever met this Mackintosh face to face, he’d tear him apart. “There has to be a better way to deal with the situation. Why don’t you file charges against him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He drugged you and forced you to sign something. You were defending yourself when you hit him. He should face charges, not you. I know a lawyer who helped my mom with her insurance stuff. I’ll make an appointment with her.”

  “Vader.” She scrambled to her knees, the bedsheet falling off her bare shoulder. She grabbed one of his hands. “I don’t want you to charge in like some sort of warrior king. This isn’t your problem.”

  He frowned. From where he was sitting, it sure as hell was. This crazy situation had kept him and Cherie apart all this time. “How can you say that? You say you can’t think about marrying me because you’re already married. Why isn’t that my problem?”

  “Mackintosh is scary. And if Trixie’s right, he’s even scarier now. I made him worse when I knocked him on the head. I don’t want him coming after you. It’s between him and me.”

  Vader leaned forward, his hands on either side of her, making sure she met his eyes and saw how serious he was. “Believe me, I’d love it if he came after me. Bring it on, Farmer Dude who drugs girls he wants to marry.”

  She gripped his forearms, her fingernails digging in. “This is exactly why Jacob didn’t want to tell you. He was afraid you’d make a big fuss and alert the legal system, and then Mackintosh—”

  “Calm down, Cherie. I’m just trying to help.”

  “Listen. I’ll think about calling that lawyer. But you have to promise me not to do or say anything. To anyone. I don’t want you involved.”

  He flinched. “I’m already involved,” he said tightly.

  “Yes, okay. I know. And I know I haven’t been fair to you. I should never have gotten involved with you. It was wrong and I’ll probably rot in hell, but it would make it so much worse if you got hurt somehow, and . . .”

  Vader couldn’t stand to listen to another second of her so-called reasoning. She was trying to protect him? Didn’t she understand anything about him?