Least Likely Wedding?

by Patricia McLinn

  It was like their relationship—they couldn’t go back to how they’d been years ago any more than Dora could go back to her controlled brushstrokes. But they could find a new relationship, as Dora could find a new expression for her creativity.

  “We?” Dora asked almost meekly.

  “We.”

  “Are we going to paint?” Nell demanded.

  Without looking away from Dora, Kay said, “We’re going to paint.”

  She and Nell dug into the pots with gusto. Kay tried her best not to watch Dora, but she knew the moment her grandmother dipped two fingers in the green and smeared it across the white paper.

  Nell chattered about school and the video camera she was sure to get for her birthday in November, with an Academy Award soon to follow. And Kay felt a pang that she would not get to teach Nell how to capture moments and tell stories with that camera.

  Dora stepped back from her easel, staring at Kay’s. Kay had barely noticed what she was creating. She’d been concentrating on stealing glances at the broad swaths of greens and blues flowing across her grandmother’s page without letting Dora know she was being watched.

  But now she focused. Orange dominated her work, an impressionistic image of a man in orange…an orange prison jumpsuit.

  “Hey, Dora,” Nell said, tearing both women’s attention away from Kay’s painting.

  Nell was peering at Dora’s work. “That’s neat!”

  All three of them looked and saw that Dora’s gnarled fingers had added a texture and depth to her painting that the others lacked.

  Dora tipped her head and considered it. “Yes, it is. It’s neat.”

  “Rob, what’s going on?”

  Rob tore off the top sheet of his legal pad, folded it and slid it in his wallet. He’d finally been able to write a pro-and-con sheet. First one this summer.

  Fat lot of good it did him.

  “Sit down, Fran. I have a long story to tell you.”

  Kay didn’t fool herself that Dora Aaronson was going to take up finger panting seriously, but she hoped this experiment would open up possibilities for her grandmother.

  “It’s my responsibility that he is the way he is,” Dora said abruptly, nodding toward the back seat, where her painting lay with Kay’s.

  Kay turned off the car in the Bliss House driveway. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what she could say. She felt hollow, the adrenaline of pushing her grandmother into trying finger painting drained into emptiness.

  “I know you don’t want to talk about this, Kay.” Her grandmother hesitated, as if waiting for Kay to refute that statement. She couldn’t. Dora sighed. “Come, let’s get back to work. We’re so close to finishing, and you and Nell have inspired me.”

  Kay produced a smile, but as she and Dora pulled on their paint clothes and returned to their plastic room, the hollowness threatened to overwhelm her. After all these years, they couldn’t talk about what really happened? She couldn’t talk about it?

  And if she couldn’t, would the scars ever truly heal?

  Kay dabbed cerulean-blue onto the lobelia Dora had painted in the front border, but the image that held her thoughts remained her painting of a man in prison-jump-suit orange.

  She remembered one blustery March day sitting in the prison visitors’ room waiting for her father to arrive. She hadn’t been listening to the conversation at the next table until familiar words had caught her attention.

  If I hadn’t done it, someone else would. How many times had she heard her father say that? If they didn’t want to buy, I couldn’t sell.

  Slowly, she’d turned her head and looked at the speaker. Not her father, but a grizzled stranger in the same prison garb he wore. Saying the same words, making the same excuses.

  A criminal. A dishonest man.

  That March day, she’d dropped a gate in front of those thoughts, letting them go no farther. But not today. She let them take the final step.

  A criminal. A dishonest man… Like her father.

  This was the cliff, the precipice she’d avoided since she was thirteen—or maybe all her life. Now she’d gone over it. Seeing her father as he really was. For the first time.

  Even as she’d grown up and accepted on the surface who her parents were, underneath she’d clung fiercely to the dream that they could be different, that their family could be a real family. She’d nearly married Barry in an effort to preserve that fantasy.

  She’d long refused to see her father’s guilt for the same reason.

  It was what had kept her away from Dora all these years. It was what had made talking to her, even just a few months ago, so frightening.

  Loving Dora threatened the fantasy.

  She couldn’t have Dora fully in her life as long as she maintained the myth that her grandmother had betrayed her father. But she had to believe Dora had betrayed him, because otherwise it meant he’d deserved his punishment. Making someone face the consequences of their actions wasn’t betrayal, it was justice.

  There’d been another threat to the fantasy—those reporters. With their cynical faces and knowing looks and their questions. Questions she couldn’t answer, couldn’t even think about, because if she thought about them she would know…she would have to face her father’s guilt.

  They’d become her nightmare, those questions. A nightmare that had made her sick every day for months as a thirteen-year-old. And had resurfaced just a few days ago, when Rob had posed the final threat to her fantasy.

  Yes, Rob posed the greatest threat.

  Because he was a good man, a man determined to do the right thing. A man offering her love and support and acceptance. All the things her parents had not given her. To see Rob as he really was showed them as they really were and ended the hope that her family would ever be a real family.

  “Kay?”

  She swung around, startled by her grandmother’s voice.

  “Are you okay, dear?”

  “Wh—Yes. Fine. I’m…fine.”

  “Do you love him?” Dora asked quietly.

  “Yes.”

  “Then why…?”

  “It’s complicated.” Her throat closed, tears flowed. But her stomach didn’t flip.

  Dora wordlessly handed her tissues and a glass of water.

  After a long pause, her grandmother began to speak in a soft voice. “In a life as long as mine, with as many twists and turns as mine has had, I don’t know if it’s possible to avoid regrets. Certainly I regret not being a better mother to your father, not raising him to be a better man and father. I regret not fighting for you. But in my heart, the largest regret is that I didn’t say yes to your grandfather when he asked me to marry him.”

  Kay turned to her, her eyes burning with unshed tears.

  “Not because of the name, or even how your father felt about not having his father’s name,” Dora said. “Whether we married or not, I wouldn’t have this regret if I had told Paul yes right away, so that he knew, not just that I loved him, but that I appreciated how much he loved me.

  “Loving someone can be the easiest thing in the world, but sometimes allowing one’s self to be well-loved takes a great leap of faith. Some people need to be pushed into that leap. I was one of those people.”

  Kay stared at the mural.

  Her own words of advice to Dora came back to her. Forget everything but how it feels.

  Didn’t they apply to her? Couldn’t she forget everything but how she felt with Rob, about Rob?

  “What are you thinking, dear?” Dora patted her hand. Kay turned her hand over and gently clasped her grandmother’s.

  “I’m thinking about a man who needs to allow himself to be well-loved. And about going over cliffs.”

  She had to talk to Rob.

  “I’m sorry, Kay, Rob’s not here. He’s out sailing. Said it was his last sail before he goes back to Chicago. He told me what he’s going to do—finally. And he told me about your past and—”

  “I’ve got to find him, Fran. I�
��ve got to find him now.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone for a moment, then Fran said, “Give me your cell-phone number. I’ll call around, see where he is on the lake.”

  “Thank you, Fran.”

  “And Kay? When you find him, make him show you the pro-and-con list he’s carrying around with him.”

  “I will. Thank you, Fran. Thank you so much.”

  The desultory breeze wasn’t offering much of a sail, but at least he had to keep his mind half on what he was doing. And that meant half his mind wasn’t thinking about what happened next, or about how Fran’s eyes had filled with tears when she’d asked, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner, Rob?” or about Kay.

  Only a little over three weeks until the opening, then Kay would return to New York. He wouldn’t risk running into her when he returned to Tobias for good, though he doubted there was a corner of his hometown that didn’t hold some memory of Kay for him now.

  “Rob! Rob!”

  He twisted around. That sounded like Kay. But…

  It was Kay. Standing at the end of Max and Suz’s pier, waving and calling.

  Without the wind behind him, he tacked the boat toward her, a zigzag path that seemed to try her patience. She gave a hop, then ran back down the pier to the shore, shed her shoes on the bank and waded in. The water was halfway up her thighs when he reached her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Help me get in.”

  He helped her crawl in the boat without either of them getting too much wetter or sinking the boat.

  “If you’d waited a couple more minutes, I would have gotten to the pier and you could have gotten in without getting wet.”

  “I don’t mind getting wet. And I couldn’t wait, I had to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  She opened her mouth, closed it, then blurted, “Chester taught me about love. How to give it and how to get it. Chester and Dora.”

  “Kay—?”

  “I love you, Rob.”

  He sat back, feeling as if a wind had just caught him and swirled him around in the air like a leaf.

  But that leaf had to come back to earth sometime.

  “I love you, too, Kay. But—”

  “No buts. I love you and not only do I believe in what you’re doing, I’m going with you.”

  “I don’t—”

  “I’ve learned from you, Rob. After all these years of not questioning what happened, I’ve been thinking. Thinking and talking with Dora. And then something happened today. You could say I painted myself an epiphany. What it comes down to is I understand what you’re doing. I support you. I’m proud of you. We’ll get through this together. So when do we leave for Chicago? I’ll have to find someone to take care of Chester and—”

  “Now wait a minute. Kay. You can’t just come out here and say you’ve changed your mind and now you’re coming with me—”

  “Why not? Although, actually I haven’t changed my mind. I just started listening to my heart and not listening to childish fantasies.”

  “But things haven’t changed, Kay. I’m going to be tied up with this investigation for a long time. I could have to testify. And there’s still the fact that my career’s over. There’s no reason for you to go through this. Once things settle down and—”

  She leaned forward and kissed him. Lips touching lips. That was all. He kissed her back, capturing her bottom lip between his, taking in her taste.

  His hands grasped her shoulders, pulled her to him, brought her onto the seat beside him.

  “Oh, Rob, don’t you understand? I wouldn’t care if you were selling pencils on the street.” She grinned. “Although the fact that you’re going to live in Tobias is a definite point in your favor.”

  He shook his head, even as his hand smoothed over the wispy ends of her hair. “Kay, there’s still going to be media attention. They could dig up the story about your family. I won’t let you make that kind of a sacrifice. For what?”

  “For you. But I don’t think it will be such a horrible sacrifice. I finally figured out the reason those reporters upset me so much was because their questions were pushing me to recognize my father’s guilt. But I could take on every reporter in the country now, because you’re doing what’s right. And I love you.”

  “I don’t want you caught up in something and then be miserable because of me.” He shook his head. “This has been too fast, too intense.”

  “Like something we can’t control. Something that’s bigger than us.” She smiled, yet there were tears in her eyes. “You don’t trust it because it’s not something you mapped out or worked for, Rob. But that doesn’t make it less real. I wish I could make you—” She leaned closer, so he had to look at her, see her. “It’s like the wind.”

  He opened his mouth. She spoke over him.

  “Yes, exactly like the wind. And sailing. You don’t work for the wind when you sail, Rob. It certainly doesn’t appear according to some plan. You take it when it comes and make the most of it and enjoy it. You don’t mistrust it. You accept it. And you adjust so it will fill the sails. That’s what our feelings for each other are like. Something you can’t control, can’t predict, can’t schedule. But you’re a talented and patient sailor and if you work with it, you— we—can get wherever we want.”

  “Kay, it’s because of how I feel about you that I want you to go back to New York. It’s the sensi—”

  “It’s not sensible or reasonable for us to be apart. It’s insane. You have to let me love you.”

  “When this is over—”

  “You listen to me, Rob Dalton. The worst thing I can imagine is not being with you.” Abruptly, she sat up straight. “Show me the pro-con list.”

  “What?”

  “The pros-versus-cons list you wrote up. Fran said you had one and to make you show it to me.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Rob, if you show me that list, I’ll stop arguing with you.”

  He reached into his back pocket for his wallet.

  Just before he unfolded the list, he wondered if he was doing this because he hoped to win this argument or lose it.

  Kay’s hands trembled as she read the sheet.

  “Oh, Rob… Oh, Rob…”

  Clutching the paper in one hand, she put her other arm around his neck and kissed him.

  He could do nothing but pull her to him and kiss her back, because that sheet of paper told the whole story.

  Under the heading Propose to Kay, one side carefully listed all the logical cons, from her parents’ certain disapproval to his uncertain future to the necessity of waiting until the investigation ended to win her. The other side had a single word: Kay.

  And beneath it, he’d written, “Pro wins.”

  Kay sat pressed against him in the car she’d borrowed from Suz to track him down, wrapped her arms around his neck and prepared to pick up where they’d left off.

  They’d brought the boat in only because Rob finally noticed it was nearly dark. If they ever stopped kissing, he was going to take her back to the Hollands’ and up to that bed in the guest room and…

  He held her off one second. “I’ve been thinking.”

  She groaned and he grinned.

  “You borrowed me to play a groom in a pretend wedding at Bliss House. How about making it the real thing?”

  “Oh, Rob…” Her voice shook and her eyes glistened. “It’s not sensible or planned out or reasonable—that’s the most wonderful thing you could ever say to me.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “That’s a definite yes.”

  She stretched up, he bent his head, and their mouths met.

  Kaboom!

  The Bliss House committee and the mural artists, along with a canine guest of honor, stood in front of the mural in Bliss House, toasting its completion.

  “We’re so sorry you won’t be able to be here for the opening, Dora,” Fran said.

  “I wish I could be, but I’ve had t
his trip to France planned for some time and I have commitments there. But I will be back.” She smiled at Kay, who stood snug in the curve of Rob’s arm. “For the wedding.”

  They had told only Dora and Fran, but the news didn’t appear to come as a big surprise to anyone else, though it did seem to please them all.

  After another round of champagne and enthusiastic congratulations and hugs, Annette asked, “So are you going to be okay living here in Tobias, Kay?”

  “Are you kidding?” Rob said. “It’s one of the conditions of getting married. I don’t think she’d take me, otherwise.”

  Grinning, Kay kissed him. “As long as we stay here in Tobias, you’ll never have to know.”

  “But what about your film career?” Steve asked. “I heard the producer was hot on your video.”

  “I’ve realized that I’d much rather teach all the skills I’ve learned than be limited to doing just one of them myself. It turns out my varied résumé is the perfect background for one particular job—teaching all kinds of art here at Bliss House. If you’ll have me.”

  “Are you kidding? That’s fantastic!”

  After a quick discussion of how courses in mobile-making, video-making, sculpting, drawing and painting in several media would work into Bliss House’s offerings, Kay wrapped it up, saying, “So we’ll go to Chicago first, then after the wedding here—”

  “You’re getting married here?” Suz asked. “I would have thought New York.”

  “I wouldn’t think of having our wedding anywhere but Tobias. In fact, we’re going to have the wedding right here in Bliss House. I thought we’d re-create when we met, with Rob in that old-fashioned suit and—”

  “No way. I love you, Kay Aaronson, but I’m not getting married in that suit—and you’re not dyeing my hair, either.”

  While everyone else chuckled, Miss Trudi Bliss sighed with the air of someone who’d completed a difficult but worthwhile task.

  “A wedding is exactly what Bliss House needs.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-2482-7