Least Likely Wedding?

by Patricia McLinn

“The theme I worked with—” she paused, then swallowed “—was Come Home to Tobias… Even if It’s Your First Trip. The first trip phrase is to instill the idea that they’ll return frequently. If you like the slogan, you can use it throughout the year—Come Home to Tobias…for Christmas or Come Home to Tobias…for Spring. For the opening, the idea is to make this the kind of homecoming everyone dreams of.”

  She launched into specifics. How the high-school band would play, how Miss Trudi or a crafter would give each visitor a personal welcome, how there would be homemade food, chances to try hands-on crafts, sing-alongs and storytelling. She had arranged special rates at the closest motels plus two B and Bs. She’d wrangled discounts with tour-bus companies from Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison.

  “Wow, you’ve been busy,” Suz said.

  “Eventually you can offer special sessions for people interested in learning crafts. But at the start it’s important to hit with a splash. Without an advertising budget—” her eyes cut toward Rob for the first time, but didn’t make contact “—we need the media to incite people to come. To get the media to do that, we have to do two things. First, make it easy for them.”

  The next two poster boards had sample feature-article layouts and ad layouts. She passed out sheets with pitches for newspapers and magazines. She showed them a tape she’d made to give regional TV stations ideas for potential feature articles.

  “This is terrific, Kay,” Steve said. “We can—”

  “There’s something more. Maybe the most important.”

  Rob couldn’t look away from her. Her eyes sparkled, her cheeks had pinkened. Along with the blue tank top, she wore a red-and-blue scarf through the waistband of deep red slacks, as if she’d discovered all the colors in the paint box for the first time.

  “Every visitor will receive a packet of seeds so they can take a bit of the Bliss House gardens home. Because the gardens are going to be spectacular, and the greatest draw for Bliss House.”

  “Oh, my,” Fran said under her breath. “But they won’t be blooming at the opening.”

  “I know. But we need to make the gardens Bliss House’s trademark, a year-round feature. I propose a mural celebrating them. A mural, right here—” She swept her arm across the white expanse of the back kitchen wall. “It can’t be simply a painting of the gardens. That would be redundant during the summer and second-best during the winter. It needs to give viewers a deeper appreciation of the gardens in summer and bring them to life in the winter. The way a whiff of a scent can put you totally in a moment from the past.”

  “Like the smell of cookies can give you a full sensory memory of home,” Suz said.

  “Count on Suz to connect with baking,” Max murmured.

  Everyone laughed except Rob. He’d seen a longing in Kay’s eyes, the same longing he’d seen when he’d talked about his parents and his childhood. He wanted to heal that for her. But how could he fault her for keeping her pain to herself when he wasn’t telling her about the complication in his life?

  “I have painters in mind to ask for proposals, and I hope whomever we select will waive at least a portion of the fee.”

  With color in her face deepening, Kay removed two sheets and handed them to Fran to pass around. Rob recognized her sketches from his white legal pad.

  “These are amazing, Kay. Amazing.”

  “They’re rough, but they’ll give artists an idea of what might work. I’ll keep it as inexpensive as possible. But we can’t afford to take the lowest bid. We need someone special to paint this. Someone with the right vision. Then it’ll be worth the money, Rob—I know it will,” she said, as if he’d disagreed. “To make the most of it, we need to have it finished before the opening. We can preview it for the media to build excitement. If you give me the okay, I’ll line up painters to consider—”

  “No.”

  She went stiff at Rob’s single word. “No? But it’s perfect. It—”

  “It’s almost perfect, Kay. It will be perfect if we use your sketches for the design and if your grandmother does the painting. Think about it—famous artist donates a mural to her hometown. Dora Aaronson comes home to Tobias—it fits your theme perfectly.”

  Exclamations of “What a terrific idea!” came from around the table. He didn’t take his eyes off Kay.

  “No.” Her mouth formed the word, but no sound came out.

  “Yes,” Miss Trudi said. “That is a wonderful idea. The sketches will serve admirably as a base for the mural design.”

  “And if you ask your grandmother, Kay,” Annette started, then looked more closely at Kay and stopped. “Unless that’s a problem, of course.”

  “Problem?” Kay’s voice skidded. “Why should it be a problem?”

  “We can discuss the details later,” Miss Trudi said firmly. “For now, are we agreed to pursue this vision?”

  “Absolutely,” said Suz. In quick order the committee made it official.

  Kay remained silent, offering only nods and quick, tight smiles. She quickly packed her tote bag, grabbed the poster boards and exited.

  He caught up with her just past the patio. “Kay.”

  She kept going. Three construction workers by a bench saw at the far corner of Bliss House turned to watch as he reached her and took her arm.

  “Okay, what was that about?”

  She didn’t resist but didn’t look at him. “What? The decision to ask Dora Aaronson to come here? You know. You led the discussion.”

  Two people walking past on the sidewalk craned their necks to look at them. “Yeah, I did. We can’t talk here. We’re going out on the lake. Let’s go.”

  “The lake? Sailing? I do not want—”

  “On the lake you can yell at me as much as you want without anyone overhearing.”

  The appeal of that made her hesitate just long enough for him to hustle her into the car. She said nothing as they took the boat out. But her fingers tapped, her foot jiggled.

  In a calm cove, he dropped the sail and turned to her. “Say it.”

  “You knew… I told you there was a break with my grandmother. How could you suggest bringing her here? How could you betr—”

  “Because we can’t afford not to.” He talked over her. He could not hear that accusation from her. “Because Bliss House can’t afford another artist. Because you can’t afford not to.”

  She said nothing.

  He wasn’t letting this go. “Okay, there’s tension in your family, yet she’s the reason you’re here. But you go white at the idea of her coming, and even whiter at the idea of you asking her. That makes no sense.”

  “My New York pallor.”

  “Kay, tell me to go to hell, but don’t give me that crap.”

  He saw her teetering on the edge, wanting to tell him to go to hell, and more. And then she sighed and slumped, retreating from that edge, and whether that was good or bad he had no idea.

  “I didn’t… I don’t know if I want her…here.” Her voice barely had sound behind it.

  “Why?”

  Her gaze went to his forehead. He was rubbing it. He dropped his hand.

  “You’re right—Dora is the reason we came here for the shoot. When I told her about needing a location, she said she knew the perfect place. I could have found somewhere closer to New York eventually, but… It was the first time we’d talked in years.”

  He waited.

  “I…I was making conversation. That’s the only reason I mentioned the shoot. To fill the silence.”

  “How’d you come to talk at all after all those years?”

  “We ran into each other.” Her mouth twisted. “I was standing in line at the Second Avenue Deli. She turned around with her sandwich. Hard salami, extra tomato, lettuce and mayo. That was always her choice. She stood there. Neither of us said anything. I couldn’t walk away. Then it was my turn to order, and she said, I could wait.

  “I didn’t say yes, I didn’t say no. She was at a table by the windows. I didn’t know if I would walk out
or sit down until I found myself in the chair. It was…strange. When I was a girl, no matter how absorbed she was when I arrived at the studio, she would stretch out one hand to me, just to touch, you know? But that day, she never touched me.”

  “But at least you started talking. About the past?”

  “Not in my family. We talked about how she’d spent a month in France and was returning there this fall. How I’d gotten the Donna Ravelle video job. How she’d been in touch with her first art teacher, the person who’d started her on her career. How I hadn’t married Barry. She…she liked my haircut.”

  That had some sort of significance, but he didn’t get it.

  “And when we hit this huge, yawning silence, I started babbling about the shoot, and how every location I found looked like an antique, but I needed it to look new, because in 1899 it would have been new.”

  “And she came up with Bliss House.”

  She nodded. “I found myself going along.”

  “Because you didn’t want the connection to end.”

  She stared beyond him, toward the shoreline where Max and Suz’s house sat.

  “I guess.”

  “Kay. It’s obvious you love her. It sounds like she loves you, too. What could have been so terrible that caused a break between you two?”

  “You don’t know? There must have been talk here, gossip…”

  “I don’t know.” And he needed her to tell him.

  She lifted her head. The shine of tears brightened the surface of her eyes, but pain dulled their deeper life.

  “She sent my father—her son—to prison.”

  Chapter Eight

  Rob swore under his breath.

  “That about covers my father’s view of the situation, too.” She tried for a smile, but didn’t succeed.

  “They wouldn’t have sent him to prison on your grandmother’s word. He must have done something.”

  “It’s complicated. My father always felt he belonged in the top echelon of society, and Mother had grown up in that life and expected it.” Kay expelled a breath. What was the point in trying to explain? Better to stick to the facts. “Dora saw to it that Father had income from a trust. He wanted more income, but an ordinary job wouldn’t do. When I was about eight, Dora helped Father buy a gallery and, to help him out, gave him exclusive rights to sell her work. That started the gallery off with a bang. Owning the gallery was acceptable in his circle and lucrative.

  “I should have said it was lucrative at first. I don’t know the ins and outs, but apparently he made bad business decisions.” She shook her head. “It wasn’t just about bad decisions. He was a bad businessman. After five years under my father, the gallery was in deep financial trouble, despite all Dora’s help. In an effort to recover the losses, he handled paintings that weren’t…” No, she would give Rob the truth, uncluttered with euphemisms. “They were forgeries. He was charged with selling forgeries.”

  She saw grim shock in Rob’s eyes.

  “Forgeries of paintings long lost or stolen. He had nothing to do with stealing them, but he would drop a word to certain clients. You understand? They were people who didn’t care if the painting they had hanging in a private room was stolen from a museum or a rightful owner. Maybe it added a thrill.

  “And if these people, these buyers, discovered they had a forgery, what could they do? Certainly not sue him or raise a stink, because they would be revealed as having been dishonest for buying a painting they thought was stolen and stupid for being duped. But none of them did discover it, because the forgeries were very, very good. The man who did them had worked similar schemes all over Europe. Interpol is still looking for him from what I hear.”

  “But your grandmother recognized the forgeries.”

  “Yes, but she knew her son. She’d heard about the gallery’s financial situation, yet Father hadn’t come to her for money, so she wondered. One day she delivered her new canvas to the gallery, and she saw a painting in back that she wasn’t supposed to have seen, a small Rembrandt lost during World War II. She became suspicious. So suspicious that she walked out with that supposed Rembrandt and took it directly to an expert who owed her a favor. In a few days she had her answer. And then she went to the police.”

  “Your father must have known the painting was gone. Did he know who took it?”

  “He pieced it together. He tried to talk to her. He told her he hadn’t done anything wrong, he never stole a painting, never accepted a stolen painting. Just gave greedy people what they wanted.”

  “And you?” Rob’s voice seemed to come from a distance. “Did you think he’d done anything wrong?”

  “All I thought was he was my father, and he was going to jail.”

  And that Dora had sent him there.

  “They told you all this at the time?”

  “No. I knew something was wrong, but the specifics—those I found out from the tabloid reporters. A hot story, they called it when I asked them to leave me alone that first day. A Thursday. Odd that I remember that.”

  “They came after you? You were a kid.”

  “Thirteen.” She laughed, a dry, harsh sound. “But, oh, yeah, they came after me. They followed me to school, taking pictures, shouting questions. About my father, about my grandmother, why she would turn him in, if we all knew he was a crook in league with forgers. That’s how I found out.”

  He reached toward her, but she shifted away. She might shatter if he touched her now. And he needed to hear this if there was any hope for… An instinct stopped her from letting specific words form. Better to leave it vague. Any hope.

  “After that first time,” she continued, “I got better at getting out of our building without the reporters knowing.”

  Even when she’d succeeded in avoiding them, though, she hadn’t avoided how they made her feel. She’d thrown up every day. The good days were when she only got sick at home, not at school.

  “It was easier to get away from them after school because there were so many of us dressed alike. I figured out they were spotting me because of my hair—I had long, long hair then—so I cut about a foot off. In the end it didn’t matter, because the tabloids kept using pictures from when my hair was long. They’d run stupid stories, calling me Rapunzel and saying if I let down my long hair my father could climb it to escape.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It meant asking my grandmother to help my father.”

  “Did you?”

  “Not then. Because I already had, and she’d said no.”

  I already had, and she’d said no. How could so few words cover what had happened in those days?

  She remembered her father crying—oh, God, crying—and begging her to talk to Dora. And Mother talking, talking…

  You’re the only one she cares for. If she cared for your father or the family name, she wouldn’t be doing this. If she cares anything for you or your prospects, she won’t pursue it. You have to make her see that. Make her understand. You have to save us, Kay. You have to.

  But she hadn’t.

  She’d asked her grandmother—begged her. And Dora Aaronson had looked straight at her and said, so very, very softly, I have no choice, Kay.

  That statement, more than anything else ended Kay’s childhood adoration of her grandmother. No choice? Of course she’d had a choice.

  “She said no? That’s all?” Rob said.

  She blinked at him, resurfacing from memories. “She said she could not be a party to diminishing the purity of art. What it came down to was she valued paint on canvas more than her son. More than…” Me. “My father was convicted and went to prison. Twenty-three months. His share of the gallery went to fines and legal fees. The irony is that he was forced to put our finances in the hands of a manager who got Father into tech stocks when they were low and sold before the bubble burst, so he and Mother have far more money now than they ever would have had with the gallery.

  “But he and Dora haven’t spoken since. Mother pret
ends she doesn’t exist. I failed to save my family—”

  “Kay, you were a kid. It wasn’t your job to save anybody.”

  He reached for her, and she went into his arms, accepting the strength and comfort. And there she sobbed. Gulping gasps of sorrow and pain that seemed to have been inside forever.

  “Kay…Kay…”

  Rob murmured her name, not urging her to regain control, but letting her know she was safe to release it. He shifted, and she followed. Down to the bottom of the boat, cradled between his body and the sloped side. She felt the damp. She felt it, knew it, but didn’t care. She held onto Rob and set free decades worth of sorrow and loneliness and loss, until her ribs ached and her body went limp.

  “Rob…”

  She sucked in a deep breath, and exhaled slowly and gradually. How did she even start to explain this? To apologize? To thank him?

  He made a sound deep in his throat that she felt more than heard. A hushing, calming sound.

  He kissed her hair, her temple. She wiped her fingers across her cheeks and he kissed where she had just removed the tears. Once, twice. She lifted her face, needing. And he kissed her lips.

  A gentle kiss of comfort and compassion.

  Neither moved, a breath separating them, a balance holding them.

  And then he brought his mouth down on hers. The solid, satisfying slide of lips to lips. His tongue pressed at her mouth, and she opened to him, meeting his tongue with hers.

  Their first kiss hadn’t lied.

  She touched his face. Then lower, her fingers and palm caressing the cords and columns of his neck.

  Heat flared through her, less an explosion now than an infusion. A cleansing heat, searing a thousand small never-healed cuts on her spirit. A heat where she had been cold, so cold for too long. In her bones, deeper than her bones.

  And he did this all with his lips and his touch. Ah, his touch.

  She was not alone in exploration. He kissed down her throat and across her shoulders, all the way to the end, then trailed back, lower, finding the ridge of her collarbone.

  He drew the strap of the tank top down over her shoulder, carrying her bra with it. She shrugged to further lower the new angle of the neckline. He palmed the point of her shoulder, followed it with a kiss. Ah, yes…. His hand slid lower, fingers creating a delicious friction on her skin.