Almost eighteen years earlier. Damien and Madi’s wedding day
Marcus climbed the steps to Damien’s flat and knocked on the door. They’d arranged to meet for breakfast but Damien had failed to turn up. Marcus glanced at his watch and knocked again. He heard shuffling inside and suddenly the door was flung open.
“Marcus.” To Marcus’s surprise, Damien looked shocked to see him.
Marcus pushed past his cousin. “It’s your wedding day or have you forgotten?” A movement caught his eye and he spun around. He turned back to Damien in disbelief. “What’s she doing here?”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Tell me what I think.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Anyway, I don’t have to talk about this.”
“Yes, you do.” Marcus slammed the door shut and turned to face the half-dressed girl standing in the bedroom doorway. “And you can get dressed and leave. Now!” His voice had raised several notches and he was relieved to see her scurry.
“Now, wait a minute –”
“No, you wait a minute.” Marcus grabbed Damien and turned him around to face him. “Today is your wedding day. You’re marrying Madi, remember? The most beautiful girl in the world – or so I heard you tell her last night at the wedding rehearsal. Or have you changed your mind about that already?”
“No, I haven’t changed my mind. This meant nothing. I don’t even know why I did it, but it means nothing. I promise.”
Marcus abruptly let go and took a few steps away. “I can’t believe you did this to Madi. What is she going to say when she finds out?”
“Why will she find out? You’re not going to tell her. If you do, I’ll tell her that you’re secretly in love with her and jealous and trying to break us up.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“Why not?” Damien shrugged. “It’s true. Oh, I know – but you’re no threat to me. Madi would never look twice at you. So there’s no need to tell her – is there? She’d never believe you anyway.”
Marcus sunk into a chair. “Is that why you asked me to be your best man – to torture me – because you knew how I felt about Madi?”
Damien gave a nasty laugh. “Of course.” He stretched and yawned. “I need to have a shower if I’m to make my own wedding. Help yourself to coffee.”
“What about Madi?”
“What about her? This was just a mistake. A once off. It won’t happen again. There’s no need to upset Madi. Once we’re married, I’ll be faithful.”
Marcus snorted.
“You have to believe me. What is that verse we discussed the other night at study? Something about the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak: I do what I don’t want to do and don’t do what I know I should? Well, I wanted to do right – truly I did – but I got carried away. I guess I still have a lot to learn.”
Damien sounded contrite, but Marcus wasn’t convinced. The reference to the verse seemed almost glib – as if Damien had rehearsed it for just such an occasion as this. And he was appalled that Damien could use that particular verse to excuse his sin.
“You do believe me, don’t you?”
Marcus nodded. Not because he believed him, but because he didn’t know what else to do.
*********
“Uncle Marcus?”
“Huh?”
“Are you all right? You can go now. The light went green ages ago.”
“Oh. Sorry. Of course.”
But as he drove the rest of the way and pulled into the parking lot, Marcus couldn’t get the memory of Madi as a bride on her wedding day out of his mind. She had looked so beautiful that day. His heart had ached to see her married to his cousin, but he had hoped – prayed – that Damien had indeed repented of his sin and would never hurt Madi again. If only he’d known then what he knew now he would’ve stopped the wedding.
**********
“If anyone knows of any reason why these two should not be joined in marriage …” Madi’s father read the wedding service in a clear strong voice. Marcus couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw Damien smirk when the ceremony continued. For the remainder of the service he felt a weight like lead in the pit of his stomach. He loved Madi –oh, how he loved her – but Damien was right: she’d never looked at him and never would while ever there were men like Damien around. Tall, dark and handsome and with abundant charm, he would melt any woman’s heart and had been doing so since he had discovered his power over the opposite sex.
On the other hand he, Marcus, was of average height and average looks. Shy and nervous around women – especially ones as beautiful as Madi – he didn’t have Damien’s easy manner that immediately put others at ease. Whereas women flocked to Damien’s side, they rarely gave him a second look and he couldn’t blame them. What did he have to offer? Even Damien’s career in TV journalism appealed more to women than his own occupation as a police officer.
Madi’s father asked for the rings and Marcus reached into his pocket and handed them over. Feeling as a man about to face the gallows he watched as the rings were exchanged. The kiss, the signing of the register, and Damien and Madi were pronounced man and wife. Marcus wanted to cry, but as long as Damien loved Madi – truly loved her – then Marcus could at least know she was happy.
The only problem: he wasn’t sure he believed it.
**********
“I don’t understand my mother,” Jaena stated one day as she adjusted the rear vision mirror and waited for Marcus to instruct her in a driving lesson. They’d been doing this regularly for six months and Jaena was feeling pretty confident, but Marcus insisted that she still wasn’t ready to sit her test.
“What’s she done now that you don’t understand?” Marcus asked with some amusement. Madi had done a wonderful job raising her daughter alone, but sometimes she got it wrong. Not as often as Jaena seemed to think – but definitely on some occasions. Fortunately for Jaena’s sake, Madi was willing to listen to advice and the few times that Marcus had taken Jaena’s side, Madi had reconsidered. Some times she had changed her mind and some times she hadn’t, but, as Marcus reflected wryly, Jaena had learnt that if she wanted a second chance she just had to complain to her Uncle Marc.
“She’s been divorced for how long now – twelve years? – but in all that time she has never dated another man.”
“Your mother’s what you would probably consider old fashioned. She believes that marriage is for life. Divorce might have dissolved those legal bonds, but not the emotional and spiritual bonds – at least for your mother. I guess she’s never felt free to remarry.”
“But my father’s dead now. Even if she still felt married to him all that time when he was alive, now that he’s dead, she’s free of him. And good riddance, I say.”
“Jaena!”
Jaena grinned as she turned the ignition key. “I always wondered if you could be shocked Uncle Marc.”
“Yes, I can be shocked – especially when a well-brought up young lady talks like that. Go down to the end of the street and turn right.”
“As I was saying, Mum’s now free, but she’s still not dating.”
“What do you want me to do about it? Go straight through the roundabout. Slow down, Jaena, slow down. You have to give way first.”
“Well, you said to go straight through.”
“Yes, after you’ve given way.”
“Oh.”
Jaena successfully negotiated the roundabout before speaking again. “You could ask her out.”
“Me?” Marcus’s voice revealed his astonishment.
“Yes, you. Why not? Which way now?”
“Keep going straight until I tell you when to turn.”
“You’re both single and you’ve known each other for years. It wouldn’t be like a date, but it would get Mum used to dating.”
“I think you’re worrying unnecessarily about your mother. I’m sure she’s quite capable of finding a date – and dating – if that’s what she wants.”
“But that’s ju
st the thing. She doesn’t seem to want to. I’ll be finishing school soon and going off to university and Mum will be all on her lonesome. But if she found someone to love, it wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Who for? You or your mother?”
“Well, I do feel guilty about going off and leaving her. I guess I could stay but …” Jaena’s voice trailed off.
“Pull over and do a U-turn. Check over your shoulder. And use your mirrors, Jaena. Better … better.” Marcus waited until Jaena had successfully negotiated the turn before returning to her comment. “Your mother wouldn’t want you to give up your plans for her. It seems to me that she’s happy to be on her own.”
“But doesn’t she want to be loved? To have someone to come home to her at night? Someone to tell her she’s valued?”
“I think we all want that, but it has to be with the right person.”
“But how’s she going to find the right person if she never goes out with anyone? I think that perhaps she’s afraid to love again and that’s why I think you should take her out – help her to see that it’s possible to trust men.”
Marcus shook his head. “She trusts your grandfather and uncles – and me – at least I think she does. I’m sure she recognises that it’s just some men like your father who are untrustworthy. She knows that not all men are like that. She knows that she can trust men.”
“But she won’t let them into her heart.”
Marcus laughed. “You sound as if you’ve been reading too many romance novels. Take it from me, when your mother’s ready, she’ll date again. And if she never does, well that’s okay, too.”
“I just don’t understand why you can’t take her out.”
“I can’t. I just can’t.”
“Well, it’s not as if you’re going to fall in love with each other. You’ve known each other too long for that.”
Marcus closed his eyes in pain. “Take the next street on your left.”
“Um, Uncle Marc?”
“Yes?”
“It’s a one-way street.”
“So?”
“We’d be going the wrong way.”
Marcus opened his eyes and gave a wry smile. “So it is. Turn right then.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes.
“Uncle Marc?”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t offend you, did I? I didn’t mean anything by what I said. It’s just that you and Mum … well you’ve always been there for us … like a father for me really ... but there’s never been any romance between the two of you.”
“I think you’re worrying unnecessarily about your mother. She’s a strong woman and,” he groped for words, “and a beautiful one. That’s obvious to any man with eyes. Perhaps because she hasn’t dated doesn’t mean there has not been opportunity, but that she doesn’t want to.”
“But –”
“Leave it, Jaena.” He had no idea his words reflected his pain, but Jaena, despite her youth, and her romantic notions gleaned mostly from novels, heard the pain and intuitively knew what lay behind it.
Jaena turned and stared at him. “You love her! I knew you did, but I didn’t know how to –”
“Eyes on the road, Jaena. The road!”
Jaena brought the car back to her side of the road. “Did I scare you?”
“I’m a police officer. I’m not easily scared.”
“But you’re too scared to ask Mum out because you love her.”
Marcus sighed. “Your mother has never thought of me as anything more than a friend.”
“But if you took her out she might.”
“I’m not going to ask your mother out.”
“Why not?”
“For a start, she’d probably say no – Jaena keep up with traffic: you’re way under the speed limit – and then a beautiful friendship would be ruined. I’d rather things stayed the way they are.”
“I think you’re being silly.”
“Perhaps. But it’s not really any of your business. And Jaena?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t you dare breathe a word to your mother.”
“I won’t. But if I drop some hints?”
“No! If I have any suspicion that you’ve said anything at all remotely connected to this conversation to another person, that will be the end of these driving lessons.”
Jaena sighed dramatically. “You drive a tough bargain, but okay – I agree.”
She kept her word.
**********
Jaena got up from where she was sitting and walked over to Marcus, placed her arms around him and hugged him tight. “Mum and I are so blessed to have you. I hope that I can find someone like you when the time comes.”
Marcus patted her arm. “You will, honey. You will. We’re all praying for you and that you’ll make good choices.”
“Well, while you’re at it can you pray that I pass these exams without studying?” She straightened and stretched.
Marcus laughed. “Sorry, honey, but it doesn’t work like that.”
“No, I didn’t think it would.”
And picking up her texts she gave him a smile and then left the room.
Jaena and Mitchell
Chapter Eight
“So this Marcus is your uncle?” Mitchell and Jaena were sitting in the café drinking coffee. Most of the other students had left and the waitress had started placing the chairs on tables. Mitch had asked for more of her family history and Jaena had told him Marcus’s story.
“My father’s cousin actually. I guess that makes him my second cousin.”
“And he was like a father to you?”
“He’s the only father I’ve ever known. He took me to father-daughter nights at school and Girl Guides. He built me a gym set in the backyard when I went through my I-want-to-be-an-Olympic-gymnast stage. He helped me with my homework – especially physics which was never Mum’s strong point – taught me to drive, and was always there.”
“And he was around from the time you were a baby?”
“Not quite that early. But for as long as I can remember. He took me to see my father’s parents, too. And his family. So that I would know my roots.”
“And it never struck you as unusual that he was always around? That he never married?”
“Oh, I can explain that. He was in-love with my mother but she always considered herself married to my father even after the divorce was final. It’s just the way she was. Even after my father was killed she had a hard time thinking of herself as single again. I guess she held marriage in high esteem – despite what your family said about her.”
He ignored the jibe – or appeared to, but his next words made Jaena wonder later if he was getting back at her for what she’d said.
“A single man and a single woman all those years. I’d say there was something suspicious about that, wouldn’t you?”
Jaena pushed back her chair so violently that it fell to the floor and caused the waitress to look at them in surprise.
“Mitchell Gallagher, you have a dirty mind filled with sordid thoughts of the worst kind,” she hissed at him and stormed out.
*********
“How’s it going with your young man?”
Jaena stopped where she was sorting through jars of buttons and looked at her mother. “My young man?”
“Mitchell Gallagher. You should invite him home one day.”
“First, he is not my young man. Second, I am not going to invite him home. Ever. Third, we’re not even talking. And fourth, I never want to see him again.”
Madi walked over to the French doors and swung them open. Winter had been, for the most part, mild this year and Madi was making the most of the sunshine. It wouldn’t last – in fact snow was predicted for higher altitudes the following week – but for the moment they were enjoying the respite from what would soon be unrelenting cold and dampness. “What happened?”
“He had the audacity to suggest that you and Uncle Marcus had been having a relationship all thos
e years when I was growing up. Can you believe it? How rude and obnoxious is that?”
“He wouldn’t be the first to think so.”
Jaena stared at her mother. “How can you be so calm about it?”
“I’ve heard it before, Jaena. People whispered the same thing when I was a single mother bringing you up on my own and Marcus was so kind to help out. When Marcus and I married they said it just confirmed that they were right.” Madi returned to her seat.
“I would’ve thought it would have confirmed the opposite.”
“They said that Marcus waited until you were old enough that he no longer had to provide for you before he married me, but that something must have been going on all those years for us to decide to marry so quickly.”
“But Uncle Marcus isn’t like that. He would have married you sooner if he hadn’t been so afraid that you’d reject him. And I was the one that wanted you to get married straight away.”
“I know. But people don’t know that. They think what they like.”
“How can you bear it?”
“Honey, I’m not answerable to man. Only to God. Marcus and I had done no wrong and we didn’t need to defend ourselves.”
“But it just makes me angry that anyone would say something like that.”
“Anyone or Mitchell?”
“Well, both,” Jaena admitted.
“People like to judge and point the finger. Few people understand the concept of personal purity even in the church. People judge by their own standards.”
“Well, I think it’s wrong.”
“It is. But there’s nothing we can do about it. However we can do something about how we react.”
“You’re saying I should ignore what Mitch said?”
“More than ignore. Forgive.”
“But that’s impossible.”
Madi picked up a button and slipped it over her needle. Jaena would return to university with all her buttons matching and securely fastened to each item of clothing. “Not impossible. Hard, yes, but not impossible.”
Jaena sighed. “Why is it whenever I come home you give me something else to think about?”
Madi laughed. “Get used to it.”
*********
Mitch was able to regularly visit his grandfather in the hospital even though it meant many weekends away from Uni and therefore away from Jaena. It probably didn’t make a lot of difference since she was no longer talking to him, but it bothered him, especially since he didn’t seem to be making any progress in courting this girl he had decided he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. He had also noticed that there were several other young men willing to take his place, and that certainly didn’t ease the frustration he was experiencing. But his grandfather needed him and so he had to trust God that if He wanted Mitch and Jaena to be together, He would work it all out. But sometimes Mitch found even that hard to believe.
The Scent of Rain Page 11
