Tucker's Bride

by Lois M. Richer

  “The good stuff, huh?” He thought for a minute. “Going around the horn of South America. That was good stuff.”

  “How come?”

  He told her about the storms they’d endured on the sailing vessel, the unusual animals, the exotic islands where Robinson Crusoe might have stopped.

  “We were doing a documentary on Scottish miners traveling to Vancouver Island during the eighteen fifties. It was a rough, rugged trip, but it was gorgeous.”

  “Hm.” She cupped her chin in her hands, her eyes huge as saucers as they gazed into the night. “What else?”

  “Alaska. Oh, Gin, you’ve got to get up there sometime. It’ll steal your breath away.” He clasped her hand in his, trying to describe the majesty and wonder he’d seen. “There are caribou, Ginny. Thousands of them. They migrate across the Canadian Yukon every year. How can our government possibly think of desecrating such unspoiled beauty for an ugly thing like oil?”

  “I wish I’d been there, Tuck.”

  “Not in those shoes, you don’t.” He smiled at her sniff of disgust. “You would have loved Alaska, but you wouldn’t have enjoyed my next assignment, and that’s for sure, a place no one should have to see again. Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia. Poor, miserable suffering souls in a country decimated by fighting.”

  He didn’t tell her of the horrors. She didn’t need to know them to understand how awful it was. That was one thing you could count on with Ginny. She understood. Her hand flicked his cheek.

  “Where else, Tuck?”

  “Oh, India.”

  “What’s that like?”

  “Crowded.”

  She shook her head at him in reproof. “Details, Townsend. I want vivid, exotic details.”

  “It’s hard to describe. The heat, the desperate poverty. The crowds. What bothered me most was the caste system. Children left to fend for themselves, cardboard shacks.” He shook his head. He wouldn’t go there. Tonight’s memories had been dark enough.

  “You’d have enjoyed the Great Barrier Reef, though.”

  “Australia,” she whispered on a breath of awe. “Really? Tell me.”

  She sat there like a little girl awaiting a birthday gift, body arched slightly toward him as she listened to his description of the diving he’d done.

  She was gorgeous. She lapped up everything, storing it away like a squirrel hiding nuts for winter. Her face telegraphed every emotion, and right now Ginny was smiling.

  For the sheer joy of spinning out her pleasure, Tucker drew on every memory he could remember, pleased when she laughed at his description of eating shark.

  “I think I’d be too chicken to even try it.” She turned her shining eyes to him. “Or snake, or any of those other exotic things you mentioned.”

  “You should go there, Gin. Don’t waste your li—”

  Fool! As if she could get up and leave when her father had cancer? How stupid could he be. He clenched his fist against his leg in frustration.

  Her hand covered his. Her mouth brushed against his ear in a whisper filled with certainty.

  “God willing, I’ll go there someday, Tucker. Not to those danger zones where you were. Not to see the poverty and desperation you covered. There’s enough of that in the world.”

  Her arm slipped through his as she hugged him, infusing Tucker with her vision of the world.

  “I want to see the awesome things, creation at its most exotic. I want to watch zebras on the veld, hear the cockatiels in their native Amazon, watch the sun never go to sleep in the Arctic.”

  “And then what?” He smiled into her face, caught up in her dreams.

  “Then I’ll come home and tell my children that God is better than they could ever dream. That He’s got impeccable taste in world-making.”

  “Even with all the problems?”

  She smiled, eyes dreamy. “God didn’t make the problems on this earth. People did.” She hugged him. “Oh, Tucker, thank you. Thank you for giving me this little peek into your world.”

  He turned his head, just a fraction to tell her she was welcome. Instead, his lips brushed hers, and Tucker was lost. His emotions had run the gamut in less than an hour, but of all the things he’d felt, Tucker knew without a doubt that he wanted to kiss Virginia Brown. She was everything fresh and wonderful, hopeful, joyful. And just for a moment, he needed to savor her inner strength and beauty. Just for a moment he needed her strong belief in the future.

  He bent his head and pressed his lips closer, twining one arm around her waist as he drew her warmth, her vibrancy, closer. For a minute he was eighteen again and life was full of delightful possibilities.

  Ginny kissed him back, her soft arms clasped around his neck as if she’d never let him go.

  But she did.

  All at once she jerked backward, tugged herself out of his embrace.

  “No.”

  He stared, surprised by the word. Didn’t she love him anymore?

  “Gin, I—” He felt like a fool. Of course she didn’t love him. That was gone. He’d ruined it, like he’d ruined everything else.

  “No, Tucker.” She held up a hand. “I can’t do this. I can’t kiss you knowing that there’s no meaning in it for you.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “You’ve told me often enough that the past is dead, that there is no future for us. I can’t kiss you tonight and go back to being your pal in the morning. So unless something has changed—” She peered at him hopefully.

  Reality hit him squarely between the eyes.

  Tucker pulled his arms away, let her stand on her wobbly shoes without his help.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “But I can’t love you, Ginny. Any love I was capable of died. It was killed the day Quint died. All I have left are questions. I told—”

  “You told me all of this. I know.” She stood on the ridge above him, staring down. “You’re wrong about love, Tucker. Totally wrong. But I’m not going to argue with you anymore.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “No, I’m facing reality. For once.”

  He got up and walked toward the house with her, steadying her when she would have fallen.

  “I’ve done my best to help you, to try and show you a different view of God than the one you cling to. I’ll go on doing that to the best of my ability, just as I promised. But in the end, you’ll only be seeing Him through my eyes just as I saw those exotic, foreign places through yours. That’s not life, Tucker. That’s going through the motions.”

  She stepped onto the deck, pulled open the screen door and smiled at him.

  “There’s a whole lot more of your life left, Tucker. What are you going to do with the rest of it?”

  He wanted to answer her, tell her big plans, hopes, share his dreams. But he didn’t have any. And anyway, she’d disappeared inside.

  Tucker let himself out through the gate and strode toward the Bains’, her question ringing in his head.

  What was he going to do with the rest of his life?

  Chapter Nine

  You didn’t have to go to the Arctic to watch the sun rise.

  Ginny crouched in the window seat of her bedroom and sipped the steaming mug of coffee she’d just made. Iridescent pink streaks wavered across the sky, heralding the sun’s ascent. It had been a long night.

  Though she listened, she couldn’t hear her father moving. Good. Any sleep he could manage would benefit him after the long, troubled night. Why couldn’t they find whatever was wrong with him? Why was it taking so long to make a diagnosis?

  As she sat there, mulling it over and praying about it, a movement on the street caught her gaze.

  Tucker. Her heart hiccuped with joy in that millisecond before she could tamp it down, order it to be quiet.

  He walked to the park across the street, shoulders hunkered down, obviously deep in thought. Ginny recalled his face, his words from the night before. She’d wanted to help, erase it all from his mind.

  But that was impossible. Tucker didn’
t want her as anything more than a friend.

  She accepted it now. Not happily, but with a resigned submission that burned deeply into her soul. Before she’d only said the words, but now, with her heart cold and heavy as a stony weight in her breast, she accepted that Tucker was back for a very short time. He’d find answers to the doubts, regain his beliefs, get rid of the guilt and fear and go to the next exotic location.

  Someday he’d find someone he could love. But it wouldn’t be her.

  Ginny would be alone.

  The meaning of those words stung as they penetrated from simple head knowledge and seared straight to her very soul. Her father was terribly sick. He hadn’t needed to tell her. She saw it in the pale twist of his lips, in the frail shakiness of his hands. And after last night, she felt as if her father had begun to give up his struggle for life. Last night had given Ginny a foretaste of what her future would be like if he died.

  Despite her brave words to Tucker, it seemed a bleak and barren forecast, one she didn’t want to believe God would ask of her. But hadn’t He? Even now, this morning, wasn’t He giving her time to reflect on what was to come?

  She watched Tucker as he climbed a tree, then sat clasped in its branches.

  She loved him so much. It wasn’t the same love, the bubbly high school ecstasy that blazed from her seven years ago. It had matured into a steady fire that would not be put out. She would do anything for him, give anything she possessed to see him drop that mantle of pain and regain his relationship with God, even if it meant she never saw him again.

  Are you truly willing to practice real love—to give everything you can to him with no thought of gain? Is your love big enough to let him go?

  Ginny flinched at the thought. Let Tucker go? Let him walk away without ever telling him how much she longed to fulfill the promise he’d made? Put away her dreams of a future together and never resurrect them again?

  Agonized tears filled her eyes.

  Is that what you ask of me, Lord? It’s too hard.

  Tucker swung himself down from the tree, his motions rough, angry. He kicked a stone out of the road, then stalked off down the street, his back toward her.

  His pain was like a physical sword that reached out and pierced her heart. Was having her way, getting Tucker to stay here, even if it made him miserable—was any of that worth the cost to him?

  As she sat listening to the birds drenching the morning with their song, Ginny counted the cost of letting Tucker Townsend go. Of never kissing him again. Of never having his child, never riding his motorbike, never sharing his achievements. She forced herself to picture endless evenings sitting in this house, alone.

  Then a new vision swept into her mind. Tucker, in a cathedral somewhere far across the sea, lifting his face to heaven as he knelt to worship—a beautiful, pain-free countenance that shone with the wonder and glory of the God who’d forgiven him.

  He’s my child, Ginny. I love him more than you can even imagine.

  The truth of it washed over her like a smooth soft blanket of peace. She had to let go. It would hurt. It would be the most painful thing she’d ever done. But Tucker was worth it.

  “All right, Father. I’ll take each day You give me, each golden moment You allow me to share with Dad and Tucker, and use them the best I can. I won’t ask for more than You’re willing to give. All I ask is that You be there. Always.”

  The sun was completely free of the horizon, lifting into the sky in blazing brilliance, bathing her in a warm wash of heavenly comfort.

  Ginny stared out her window for a long time until a heavenly peace eased some of her hurt. Then she turned and prepared for the day the Lord had given.

  “We’d like to know when you think you might return. Not that we’re rushing you, of course. You’re entitled to take all the time you need to heal. You certainly deserve it.”

  The phone call from last night would not be silenced.

  Tucker stalked home, disgusted by the way his mind cringed in the face of this recall. He’d turned them down, of course. Just as he had last week. Just as he would next week.

  “The network is happy to cover any further medical treatment you might need, Tucker. They know you put your life on the line to get that coverage.”

  Not only his own life. But nobody ever said that out loud.

  “We’ve got a story just waiting for you, if you’re interested.”

  Tucker wasn’t interested. Not in the least. So he’d stalled them, lied that his eye wasn’t yet up to par. It wasn’t perfect, true. But he could have managed. He’d used it long enough to get another column ready for Marty’s paper last week. No, it wasn’t the eye.

  If he understood the reasons God had done that awful thing, if he could figure out why God let him down so badly, recapture that tenuous thread enough to start a relationship with the Almighty, he could have gone back.

  But not yet.

  Jubilee Junction didn’t boast the danger or excitement he was used to, but at least here he was in control of his fate. Here one misstep wouldn’t cost someone his life. Here he was safe.

  Tucker walked into the Bains’ house and reluctantly joined the couple for breakfast. Not that the food wasn’t good, but he felt uncomfortable during their devotions. Lately his former coach had taken to reading passages about forgiveness. Deliberately, Tucker was certain.

  He tucked his head onto his chest, listened to the verses, the prayers that followed, then helped clear the table.

  “You going to give Ginny a hand in the store today?” Coach snuck another cinnamon roll off the plate and scurried out the door before his wife caught him.

  “Give her a hand? Why?” Why would Ginny need his help?

  Coach shrugged, savored a big hunk of cinnamon sugar, then finally spoke.

  “Saw the lights on at their house last night when I took the dog out. Doc’s car went past during breakfast, and she was up when I went running this morning.”

  Coach ran every morning at six. Tucker knew something was wrong.

  “Her father?” He remembered the news Adrian had shared yesterday and caught his breath.

  “I’m guessing. Didn’t look too good yesterday when I stopped by, but I doubt if he told Ginny how poorly he was feeling.”

  Tucker doubted she knew, either. He didn’t know what to do. On the one hand he felt Ginny should be prepared, but on the other, Adrian’s words were said in confidence.

  “I think I will stop by the store, offer a hand. There must be odd jobs I could do.”

  Tucker hurried upstairs, anxious to find a clean shirt and another pair of pants. As he combed his hair, he saw his reflection and realized that for once, he felt a sense of purpose. At last he’d found something he could do. That, and maybe, just maybe, he’d write another column. At least it would keep him busy. And maybe it would atone, at least partially, for his other mistake.

  “Hey, man, where are you going? This tree house ain’t half finished!” Tom’s eyes stared as Tucker began storing the tools he’d borrowed from the coach.

  “I know, but it’s all I can do for tonight. I’ve got to write a column.”

  “A column? Why?”

  Tucker couldn’t very well tell him the truth, that he’d been dared into it. Or couldn’t he?

  “Because your foster father promised he’d do something very nasty if I didn’t fill the space he’s got left because he didn’t plan properly.” He winked at Tom.

  “That’s a lie!” Marty dropped the can of nails on the floor and scurried down the ladder. “You promised you’d do it. Now you’re trying to welch like some hotshot reporter who’s too good for the local rag.” Marty’s grin dared him to rebut that.

  “Am not.”

  “Big hero! Is my paper too petty for you?”

  Ouch! That one stung until Tucker caught the glint in Marty’s eye. Ah, he was showing off.

  They argued good-naturedly for a while. Tom’s head swiveled from left to right, watching.

  “You guys c
an make a big deal out of anything,” he muttered, raking a hand through his sawdust-covered hair. “What’s so hard about writing a dinky little column? It’s not like you haven’t been enough places, Tucker.”

  “Yeah.” Marty grinned as he patted his foster son on the back. “You tell him, son.”

  “And you, you’re just the same. Moaning every single morning about how you’re too old to be running a newspaper, how you should be retired.” Tom shook his head in disgust. “Man! It’s not like people actually depend on you for the news, Marty. They can tune in Tucker’s channel anytime and find out what’s happening in the world.”

  Marty’s mouth dropped to his chest in consternation.

  Tom missed that because he bent to pick up some fallen nails. “I mean, it’s a newspaper, guys. No big deal, okay?”

  “No big deal?” Tucker blinked. “Did you hear that, Marty? This little brat thinks our work is no big deal.”

  “I heard.”

  Marty looked so pained by the admission, Tucker almost laughed. But one glance at Tom kept his lips straight.

  “I think it’s time for some formal education for our little friends, don’t you?” An idea stirred in the back of Tucker’s brain.

  “What did you have in mind?”

  Tucker drew Marty away from the kids who’d come over to see what was going on. He laid out his idea in a few choice words, then stepped back to see what his friend would say. A huge smile covered Marty’s face. His eyes sparkled with fun.

  “Education’s wonderful,” he agreed, clapping Tucker on the back. He winked, then turned toward Tom. “Since a mind is a terrible thing to waste, let’s consider that school’s in, boys. Get that stuff put away. We’re heading over to the paper.”

  “But I thought we didn’t have enough cash to finish the wings on the plane?” Paul and Kent looked to the rest for an explanation of the grown-ups’ odd behavior.

  “We don’t.” Tucker grinned. He could hardly wait to see what these smart-aleck kids did with his latest brain wave.

  “So?” Ira, John and Nick joined in, their faces blank. “What’re we gonna do at the paper?”