Cope with what? For all his dislike of his previous emotional fog, it was better than the way he felt right now. Numb was much less messy, asked less of him than whatever this was. He needed hours, days, a space the size of the Grand Canyon to sort all this out, and instead he was shackled to his role in a crazy Matrimony Valley elk wedding that was still missing its bride.
When the knock came on his door, he almost didn’t answer it. Kelly’s pushy nature surely wouldn’t let her leave him be after what had happened. She’d want to talk about it, and that was the last thing he wanted to do.
“Dad,” Carly called from her spot on the floor in front of the television. “There’s someone at the door.” There was no avoiding life with a five-year-old watching your every move.
Darren stepped into the room when Bruce opened the door. “You want the good news or the bad news?” the groom asked.
“Good news,” Carly answered for him.
“Tina and her parents got on a flight.”
“What’s the bad news?” Bruce asked.
“It isn’t direct, and they land in Charlotte.”
That was a drive, but doable.
“At two o’clock in the morning.”
Bruce grimaced. “Well, that’s lousy, but at least they’ll arrive.”
Darren stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, about that. They’re all together—which is better than the separate flights we thought they might have to take—but my truck...”
Bruce could all too easily see where this was heading.
“Besides, you’ve got the only truck with a real back seat, and we need to seat five,” Darren said, raising one pleading eyebrow.
“Five?” One groom, one bride and two future in-laws made four. Unless...
“You’re not going to make me do this alone, are you? Tina’s mother in a good mood is challenge enough. Her mom, and dad, and her after the day they’ve had? I’d never make it back here alive.”
Bruce stared at his friend, wondering just what part of the best man protocol included middle-of-the-night rescue missions.
“Who’ll look after Carly?” he asked Darren.
Carly had a ready answer for that question. “I can sleep over at Lulu’s! Oh, Dad, it’d be so much fun.”
Darren shrugged. “Problem solved.”
When Bruce looked unconvinced, Darren continued. “C’mon, you gotta help me. Tina and her folks got the last three seats on what may be the last plane for hours. If I don’t pick her up—believe me—there won’t be a wedding. And they won’t bicker if you’re with me. I mean it, man, don’t make me do this alone.”
“Pleeeeaaaassseee, Daddy? Can I? Can I? I know Lulu’s mom will say yes. She likes you a lot.”
That last remark brought a questioning glance from Darren, which Bruce shut down with a dark look he didn’t have to work at all to call forth. And he’d just watched Kelly head back to Love in Bloom, so he didn’t even have the flimsy excuse of not having the florist’s home phone number.
Some days the world just ganged up on you without asking permission.
Five minutes later, Bruce swore he could hear Lulu’s squeal of delight clear across the avenue. “We’ll be happy to host Carly for the night,” Kelly said. “Anything to get Tina safely into town.”
* * *
I really should be asleep.
Kelly shut the door silently after checking on the girls a second time. She told herself she was worried Carly would wake up in the middle of the night and get scared in the unfamiliar surroundings. Then again, Carly had Lulu close by. The girls had become instantly inseparable. Like sisters, Kelly couldn’t help thinking, wild as that thought was.
Wrapping her robe tighter against the growing howl of the wind outside, Kelly padded downstairs to make herself a soothing cup of herbal tea. The staccato tap of freezing rain against the kitchen windows told her the temperature had indeed warmed up just enough to turn the snowstorm into a more dangerous ice storm. More dangerous. Kelly hated how those words planted themselves in her head and dug under her composure.
She was worried about Tina’s safe arrival in this threatening weather, but another thought niggled at her brain, too—what had happened in the aisles at Rob’s hardware store. It was as if she’d somehow convinced her body to forget what it was like to fall into a man’s strong arms, and today had woken up the memory. And now she remembered what she was missing. And she did miss it. Fiercely. How was it possible that tonight, after all this time of coming to terms with being alone, she felt more alone than ever?
An unwelcome worry over Bruce, out on the road in this storm with Darren, chewed at her. She wasn’t overreacting; it was dangerous on the roads. Keep them safe and get them here, she prayed as she heated water in the microwave.
Middle-of-the-night “keep him safe” prayers. Oh, what familiar territory this was. An old wound long scarred over. Scars were supposed to be tougher and less sensitive than unmarked skin, but that worked only with bodies, not souls. Being in the kitchen in the middle of the night with one small light on, a prayer in her heart and a cup of herbal tea in her hands—this was a posture she knew all too well.
She’d always worried over Mark, even before Lulu’s arrival made those fears more acute. I’m safer than every car on the road, he would always tell her. Statistically, she knew that to be true. Only the facts had never stopped the worry—and neither the facts nor the worry had saved Mark. To this day, bad weather could send her pulse skyrocketing on sheer remembered fear alone.
Think about possibilities, not problems, she told herself. Years from now, Darren and Tina would tell the story of how the snowstorm threatened their wedding but how it came off beautifully in the end. There’d be jokes about how smart it was for the bride to dress her attendants in flannel and boots, how the sun outside the church reflected off the drifts of fresh snow.
How a single patch of ice could reduce the weekend to tragedy. You never know. You can never know.
Bruce had brushed off the danger of the drive with the same confidence Mark always exhibited. I know what I’m doing, he’d said in reply to her Be careful! admonition on his way out the door. She believed he did know what he was doing, but so did Mark. She shook her head, trying to shake the way her thoughts were meshing the two men together. While they refused to say it, she and Bruce both knew the girls hadn’t made things up out of thin air; there was a genuine attraction brewing between Bruce and her.
Bruce’s circumstance and his profession, however, were clear red flags warning her off. Sign on for a second tour of middle-of-the-night worries? No, sir. Not for anything or anyone.
“Mom?”
She turned to find a sleepy-eyed Lulu leading a teary-eyed Carly down the stairs.
“The storm is scaring Carly.”
Not just Carly, Kelly thought as she came toward the girls and gathered both of them in a big hug. “Let’s come snuggle on the couch and I’ll relight the fire.”
“Where’s Daddy?” Carly said, sniffling.
“He’s with Darren picking up Tina and her parents at the airport. Do you remember?”
“Oh.” Her tiny voice was a mixture of tearful whine and sleepy yawn.
“Your daddy is being very brave and helpful. After all, we need our bride, don’t we?”
When the three of them had settled into a cozy trio on the couch in front of the fire, Lulu looked up into Kelly’s eyes. “Is the storm bad?”
As if responding to her question, a burst of freezing rain scattered ominous tap-tap-taps across the living room window. “It should be fine by morning,” Kelly reassured, even though she wasn’t sure of that at all. “But I think your bus driver is right. I doubt you’ll have school tomorrow.”
“Oh, goody,” Lulu said, snuggling in closer. “Carly and I can play together all day then, can’t we?”
“That’d b
e fun,” said Carly, who was now half-asleep against Lulu in the most heartwarming pile of girls and blankets Kelly had ever seen. Well, if I’m going to be up, I can’t think of a better place to be than right here. She reached out and brushed the hair out of each girl’s face, marveling at the perfection of closed eye lashes fluttering against each pink cheek.
“Mmm.” Carly sighed at the touch, her eyes fluttering open for a moment to focus with uncertainty on Kelly. “Mom?”
Kelly’s heart twisted. Carly couldn’t have been more than three when her mother died. Did she have a clear memory of her mother anymore? She knew it haunted Bruce, the way keeping Mark alive for Lulu weighed on Kelly’s mind.
“Your mama’s in heaven, darling,” Kelly replied, the words barely making it past the lump that rose in her throat. “Looking down on you and smiling wide.” It was what she told Lulu all the time; that Mark looked down and rejoiced over the girl she was becoming.
“Not here.” For their simplicity, Carly’s words held the whole weight of the problem. Lots of things weren’t here. Heaven was far away, and lives still had to be lived here, where people were gone and not everything worked the way it should. Where little girls woke up in the middle of the night without mommies and daddies.
“No, sweetheart, but I’m glad to be here.” She was. There was something about Carly that had latched onto Kelly’s heart and refused to let go. She enjoyed all the bridal parties, took pleasure in the steady stream of new people who came to Matrimony Valley for weddings. It was the best of both worlds—old reliable friends and new visitors. But Carly? She couldn’t quite say how Carly was different, only that she was.
“Daddy?” Carly roused again, looking around the space.
“He’s off to get Miss Tina, remember?” When Carly looked a little alarmed, she added, “He’ll be just fine.”
He’ll be just fine. She’d said that to Lulu the stormy night Mark did not come back. A perfectly ordinary promise to make to a child, and the worst one in the world not to keep.
The wind howled against the windows again, tugging at the frayed edge of her confidence that all would truly be well. If the doubt pulled too hard, that frayed edge threatened to unravel.
She couldn’t unravel again. She wouldn’t survive it. A life alone, sustained by memories, was far better than ever risking anything like the shattering loss of Mark again. And the impact would not only affect her—she couldn’t bear the thought of Lulu growing up thinking everyone you loved died and left you alone.
Kelly closed her eyes and told her pulse to remember that God hadn’t taken His eyes off her, Lulu or even the whole of Matrimony Valley. Help me remember how grateful I am for all You’ve done here, she prayed. Mark could always remind her how gratitude was the best antidote to her controlling nature. Oh, how I miss your wisdom and love, Mark.
She let herself admit it for the first time in a long time: I’m lonely. I’m capable, I’m independent, but I’m lonely.
There. She’d said it—silently, yes, but even that felt like a monumental shout into the shimmering sleet as it slanted down to complicate her life. I’m lonely. Everything is stretching me lately, and it would be so nice to have someone to lean on.
She did, of course. She had a sovereign God, good friends, her own parents and even Mark’s.
None of those blessings counterbalanced the startling ache that rose up when Bruce Lohan stepped back after holding her. Someone else who knew the size and shape of the gaping hole Mark had left in her life. Who understood the particular endurance required to hold it together for a child’s benefit even while you felt your world was being ripped in a dozen pieces. The sadness in his eyes somehow reminded her she wasn’t truly happy. Coping, yes. Succeeding—that was definitely in progress. Content? Most days.
But truly, profoundly happy? The actual deep truth was that she didn’t think that kind of happiness could be hers again. Mark would tell her to be grateful she’d had it at all, wouldn’t he? She could name several people who’d had nothing near the happiness she and Mark had known.
She knew better than to think any one life was more protected than another—people died in their beds asleep, healthy people suddenly took ill, lives ended in all kinds of unexpected and unpreventable ways. But to walk toward risk, to invite it back in when it had done such massive damage already? No, she couldn’t do that. Ever.
So why was the color of Bruce’s eyes the last thing she remembered as she drifted off to sleep?
Chapter Twelve
The insistent knocks startled Kelly awake. It took her a second to recognize where she was and who was under the two lumps of blankets beside her on the couch. Bits of pink were just poking their way through parchment-gray skies. A set of knocks came again to the front door.
As quickly as she could, Kelly extracted herself from the mound of blankets. The girls roused a bit, but settled back into sleep as she rushed to the door and saw a worried Bruce peering through the glass.
“I’ve sent half a dozen texts,” he said loudly until she put her finger to her lips and nodded toward the couch. “You didn’t answer.” He added a weary glare to his insistent whisper.
“I was at the counter when the girls came down in the middle of the night. I must have left the phone over there while we all slept on the couch.” Her neck pinched from the awkward sleeping arrangements. Today was going to be tough enough without the ravages of a poor night’s sleep.
Bruce’s eyes widened. “Up in the middle of the night? Was Carly scared?”
Kelly yawned and ran her hands through what must be a tumble of her hair. “More like confused. Once I reminded her where you were and that you’d be fine, she and Lulu conked out on the couch with me. They slept like babies. Me—” she yawned “—not so much.” Remembering his vital mission, she added, “You made it there and back okay?”
Bruce winced. “We made it there and back. ‘Okay’ remains to be seen.”
“What do you mean? Is Tina here?” She pulled a bag of coffee grounds from the kitchen cabinet and raised it toward him in a “want some?” gesture, to which he nodded.
“Remember when I said Tina was a laid-back kind of bride?”
“I do.”
“She’s not. Well, not anymore. I think she was grateful we drove two and a half hours in a storm to get her from the airport, but that gratitude was buried under two and a half hours of worried arguing with her parents and Darren for the whole ride back.” He sank onto the stool, rolling shoulders that looked as sore as Kelly felt. “I felt like the truck cab shrank with every mile. I was glad to help Darren out, but by thirty minutes west of Charlotte I was wishing I’d convinced him to just take my keys and leave me here.”
“Oh, dear.” Kelly laughed softly as she scooped grounds into the coffeepot. “That sounds tense.”
“Yeah.” Bruce yawned. “You can say that again. You might not want to let those two anywhere near Samantha today.”
Samantha. In all the worry over the bride and groom she’d forgotten about Samantha, her injury and the long-postponed interview she supposed Samantha expected to happen now that Tina had arrived. “Well, maybe everyone will be in better spirits after a few hours’ sleep.” She pressed the button to start the brewing, only to have the lights flicker. No. No, no, no. A power outage was the absolute last thing anyone needed. It still wasn’t light enough to make out anything in the backyard. “How bad is it out there?”
“Not good. Things are pretty iced over. Tina said the airline told her they were the last flight in—cancellations were piling up fast.” The lights flickered again, and Bruce looked at her. “I don’t think anyone else who’s flying in today is going to make it. And I’m not so sure about anyone driving, either.”
“It’s got to clear up between now and the wedding, right?” What a foolish question. The weather reports she’d been trying to ignore all told her the storm wouldn�
�t let up anytime soon. As if they had heard her question, the lights flickered again and then went out. The coffee maker halted midprocess. A lot of things halted.
“Lord have mercy.” Kelly sighed, thinking mercy and grace would be needed in gigantic proportions today. She salvaged the tiny amount of coffee that had made it into the carafe and poured it out into two meager half-mug portions. The first part of the pot was always stronger than she liked, but she’d need all the caffeine she could manage today. “This won’t be enough.”
Bruce took the mug and downed it in one gulp. “It’s a start.”
The house phone rang, startling the girls awake. “It must be five forty-five,” Kelly said, reaching for the receiver. “That’s when they call to cancel school.”
“Mom?” Lulu’s voice came from the couch.
“Dad?” came Carly’s voice right behind.
“Here,” Kelly and Bruce said in unison. It struck an odd note with everyone.
She hadn’t even hung up on the recorded “school is canceled” call when Carly and Lulu cheered “No school!” in unison. Things were “pairing off” far too fast in this impromptu foursome.
“So can we make pancakes?” Lulu asked with wide eyes. Why was it children had such a talent for being wide awake on days parents would have dearly loved them to sleep in? Kelly was drowsy, Bruce was exhausted, but Carly and Lulu had apparently found boundless energy despite the early hour.
Kelly opted for surrender. “Have you eaten?”
Bruce made a face. “Does gas station food count?”
She could just imagine what had passed for middle-of-the-night sustenance on Bruce’s bridal-recovery mission. “I don’t think so.”
“Do you put chocolate chips in your pancakes?” Carly asked as she got up off the couch and planted herself expectantly on one of the two kitchen stools.
“Mom puts bananas in ours.” Lulu looked up at Kelly with a sweet face and wide eyes. “But I think bananas and chocolate chips go really well together. Don’t you, Mom?”
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