“Yes, but I’m the one who has to catch Joshua if he faints. I also have to pin the flower to my lapel without bleeding on anything, and I have to entertain—”
“The hordes of rejected women?”
He shook his head firmly. “I’ll leave that to a younger and much more foolish man.” He was lost in thought for a moment before adding, “I was going to say, entertain the maid of honor.” He gestured to the deck, where they turned two chairs toward the meadow and sat down. Off to their right, near the edge of the meadow, Joshua and Caleb now seemed to be arguing about the fire pit while Uncle Jacob ignored them both and poured on some gasoline.
“You won’t have to be entertaining the maid of honor, your job as valet will be finished.”
“No. It’s in the job description; I looked it up at the Montana Wedding Job Services website. It specifically says I have to walk the maid of honor back down the aisle and keep her from either tripping or dancing too much. I have to dance my first dance with her, and just to make sure I did it right, at least the next six or seven dances, until she gets used to taking tiny little steps in her very snazzy, very green dress. That’s unless they play the Chicken Dance, because then you’ll have to fend for yourself. I am an expert, and no one can defeat me.”
“I bet Aunt Sonya could give you a run for your money.”
“Bring it on, Aunt Sonya.”
Whoosh. Meg felt the percussion of the gasoline fireball as the fire was lit fifteen yards away. A column of fire rose, turned to a ball of black smoke, and drifted up into the dark blue sky. Jacob nodded once at his handiwork, apparently pleased. Meg couldn’t be sure from here, but he seemed to still have his eyebrows. Gage applauded, and a smattering of other people applauded as well.
Meg was thinking about what Gage had said. She was also thinking about what Leah had said about his having a checkered past, and if she were to guess, that past had a lot to do with women. She decided she should let it drop, that there was no reason to get involved, but then the words slipped out of her mouth. “I’m glad to hear you’re not young and foolish. Although you’re not exactly old. You have to be about my age, and I’m not quite sure I can claim to be completely grown up.”
He gave her an appraising look. That look said he knew exactly what she was really asking about—the hordes of women. “Well, when I started college I was pretty normal, not too smart, not too dumb. Then instead of growing up, I just got stupid. About the time I moved in with Joshua I started growing up again, and I’ve had a lot of catching up to do. I’m not wise, but I’m not going to be foolish anymore. At least in some areas of my life.” He put his feet up on the railing and let those words hang in the air for a while. Then he added, “I’ll give you some of the gory details someday. For now, let’s just say that I may be a slow learner, but I’m a determined one.”
Someday. Not likely, she realized, and besides, it wasn’t any of her business. He would be heading back to Texas soon. “When do you fly out?”
“Sunday evening, a red-eye. I have to get back and move out of Joshua’s and my place by Tuesday night. The new tenants move in a few days after. Since I found out my roommate was going to ditch me for a bride, I’ve been thinking a lot about where I want to move.”
“Did you decide?” She told herself that she was just being polite, but there she was, being absolutely ridiculous and wishing he was about to tell her he was moving to Montana.
“I’ve been looking all over, but I think I’ll probably end up moving nearer to my hometown. That’s where my parents are, and my sister and her family. If I could be within a few hours’ drive of my nephew, that would be the best thing ever.”
She was going to ask more, but the sound of an engine caught her attention. She turned to see a familiar car coming up the drive. It was Catherine’s Expedition, but there was no reason for her to be back so soon.
“I thought Catherine just left,” Gage said. He put his feet down and leaned forward.
“She did, she went home to finish cooking the reception food before everyone invaded her home… and her showers.” She glanced at Gage. For the first time that she had seen, he looked worried, and it gave her a bad feeling.
Joshua started walking over to the driver’s side window, but Leah stayed by the bonfire, peering at him while she held a hand up to block the light from the headlights. As he approached, the passenger door opened and out bounded a tall woman. She ran forward into the beam of the lights and Leah opened her arms for the hug she got, one that nearly knocked her over.
The woman was wearing over-the-knee boots, skinny cream-colored jeans, and a leather trench coat with a belt that showed off her slim figure. Above that was a flood of shining red waves of hair. She had a stylish green scarf on and sunglasses on her head, although the sun had set. In the middle of the creek-washed, sweaty, smoky crowd in the meadow, she looked like a supermodel.
“Brie,” Gage said, but Meg had already guessed that.
I bet Brie looks great in Kelly green, she thought. And although she knew she should feel happy for Leah and relieved for herself, instead she felt a sad, sinking feeling that she couldn’t quite explain.
She talked herself out of that. It was wonderful that Leah’s friend was here for her important day. Brie certainly looked healthy enough, and she had run faster in her high-heeled boots than Meg probably could in tennis shoes. “Looks like I’m out of a job,” she joked to Gage, but when she turned back to him she saw him frowning, the knuckles of one fist pressed to his lips. He didn’t seem to hear her.
Meg stepped around him to go introduce herself, but Leah and Brie were already headed toward the cabin. Behind them Meg caught sight of Joshua taking two suitcases and a purse out of the Expedition. Leah threw Meg a distraught expression as she approached, and she touched her hand to her heart. The last thing Meg wanted was for Leah to feel badly about kicking her out of the maid of honor job. She never wanted it anyway, so what did it matter? She winked at Leah. “You must be Brie,” Meg said. “I’m so glad you made it! I know Leah was hoping you could.”
It wasn’t too dark to see the big, movie-star smile Brie gave her as she stepped up onto the deck. Meg had to look up at her. “Hi! And you are?”
“My name is Meg. I was going to be the backup maid of honor, but luckily you’re feeling better now.”
“Yes, it was awful. But I bounce back pretty fast.” She suddenly looked over Meg’s shoulder, and her eyes narrowed. “Well, if it isn’t the best man. I guess you finally found a way to meet up with me again after all.”
Meg glanced at Gage, who was standing behind her. His face was blank in the dim light.
“Well then! Shall we get you settled?” Joshua said, and he nudged them all forward, arms full of suitcases. Meg backed up and away from the wedding party. She stared at the faded wood of the porch, blue in the evening light.
“There’s no electricity?” she heard Brie say over lower conversation. She saw a dim light through the window and knew someone was lighting the lanterns. Well, I’m off the hook, she thought. But her head felt like it was on fire. She was thinking all sorts of things, and none of them had to do with her cousin’s wedding.
Leah came back out on the deck, arms outstretched. “I feel awful,” she said, and her tone of voice proved it.
“Well, don’t. I got to do all the fun stuff—decorate, hang out with you, and eat French toast. Leah, the fact is, I love you, and I’m really glad you’re going to be a Parks. I’ll be standing up for you whether I’m up front or in the back.”
Leah gave her a big hug and didn’t let go for a while. When she pulled back Meg spotted the sparkle of tears in Leah’s eyes. “Thanks for making me feel so welcome, Meg.”
Meg felt her own eyes well up, and she brushed her tears with her sleeve. “Oh, cut it out. I’m supposed to be saving all my sobbing for tomorrow.”
“Leah? Which is my room?” Brie was calling. Meg backed away and Leah headed for the door. As she opened it, Gage was coming out. �
�Bunk beds?” said Brie’s laughing voice from inside. Meg smiled, waved at both Gage and Leah, and headed for the bonfire.
But Gage ran after her. She could hear his loud steps on the deck. He touched her shoulder and she turned around, but all she could think was that she really didn’t want to find out what all the tension between him and Brie was about. “I just wanted to say thanks for the dance,” he said.
“You’re welcome.”
She was looking for a polite way out, but he seemed determined to say something else. Her Uncle Jeffrey’s voice saved her. “There you are, Gage! I am so sorry it’s taken me this long, I was caught up with finalizing a detail or two on the ceremony, and then the dinner, and then…” He looked at Meg and back at Gage again. “Do you have time to talk now, or am I interrupting something?”
“Not at all,” Meg said. She gave her pastor uncle a kiss on the cheek, waved cheerfully at Gage again, and took off across the little meadow.
There was something reassuring about the smell of wood smoke. It reminded her of the end of long days of work or play, the moment when the only thing left to do is go to sleep. It felt warm and bright and lovely, but after about three minutes, she was done. Leah was fine, Joshua was fine, and soon everyone would be heading toward their tents or to Catherine and Jacob’s house to sleep. It was time for her to get some rest. She had cobwebs to clear.
As she started down the dark road, she glanced back up toward the cabin. No one was following her. The day was over, and her own personal valet had moved on to another job. Part of her mind, the tricky part in the back, was imagining hearing footsteps coming up behind her and a hand on her elbow. It would be like Gage to insist on walking her down to the camper, wouldn’t it?
She slipped on some loose gravel on the steep drive. It was the only sound except for the murmur of laughter above her.
He had something more important to do, now. She tried to stop listening for footsteps that weren’t coming. It was a waste of time and made her head hurt. Not only did he have a new maid of honor to look after, but it was clear that they knew each other. There was no mistaking the familiarity in Brie’s expression or the tension in his when she arrived. It was as if he had been caught doing something wrong.
All he had been doing was talking to Meg. Maybe even flirting, if she could remember what that was like. Maybe he was flirting with one girl when he already had made promises to another. Meg slipped on another steep spot and sighed. She was too close to the camper to bother pulling the flashlight out of her bag now.
Had he been flirting? For heaven’s sake, had she? How embarrassing. She couldn’t help but smile when she was talking with him, or worse, dancing with him. Her face felt funny from all the smiling she’d been doing. She rubbed at her cheek—that’s what the world needed, cheek workouts. She could imagine opening a chain of stores where eager clients stood in front of a mirror and a perky girl in spandex told jokes.
Okay, now she was just getting silly. She tried to open the door and was surprised to find it locked. Oh yeah, she had locked Gage out this morning. Funny how your opinion of someone could change—or change back—in such a short time. She unlocked the door and went into her dark camper, closed the door behind her, and stood still. It was very, very quiet. All traces of the sun, the laughter, and color were gone. Instead of turning on the light, Meg sat down on her bed. She didn’t feel like reading, she still had nothing to write, and she didn’t have to do anything special and wedding-like with her hair anymore.
How long had it been since a man made her smile like that? It didn’t matter. Like just about all new friendship she made these days, someone would be leaving soon. Usually it was her, going from job to job. She liked that better than having people, even strange people who might already have girlfriends, leave her. She dragged herself through her bedtime routine in the dark, crawled into bed, and let her tired body drag her racing mind deep into sleep.
Saturday
Bam bam bam! Meg jolted awake, but she couldn’t make sense of what she was hearing or where she was. It was barely light. Her first coherent thought was that it was Gage and she didn’t have any coffee ready yet. “Margaret! Are you in there?”
She got up, pulled a blanket around her shoulders, and opened the door of the camper. “Mom! Dad! Hi… what time is it?” Hugs were exchanged all around. The cold morning air seeped in, and she heard her little propane heater kick on. “Come in!”
Her father’s blond hair had more gray, but other than that, he looked just the same. Gray eyes like his brothers and so many of the Parks clan, and a face that seemed always to be faintly smiling. Her mother had put on a couple pounds, as she usually did between missions, and she looked cute that way. Meg didn’t like it when she got stringy and tired looking. No doubt Catherine had been working hard to fill her out. Her mother didn’t like to cook, and she often just forgot about meals entirely.
Her parents squeezed past her to sit at the table, and her father fingered the newest painting on the walls. “Nice. I didn’t know moose like to go sledding.”
“Neither did he,” Meg said with a smile. She poured some drinking water into a pot on the burner and used a lighter to get it going since the flint had long since worn out. She pulled two mugs from the drying rack and rummaged through a cabinet to find some green tea for her parents. All the boxes in the cabinet were still jumbled, but if they noticed, they didn’t say.
“It looks like your mother and I will be going to Burma in a month.”
“It’s going to be so exciting! They are building an orphanage there. So many orphans, thousands of them, from the flooding and the warfare. It’s just awful.”
Meg adjusted the flame on the burner and swallowed down the worry that always came along with her parents’ plans. “Are you going alone?”
“No, we’ll be part of a team. We’re going to spend the next month doing a tour of churches in South Dakota, raising funds and getting ready.”
Her mother laughed. “Just when we thought we’d gotten every vaccine we could get, it turns out we have to get boosters.”
“Where will you be staying?”
Her mother shrugged, a peaceful smile on her face. “It always works out. Something always works out.”
“Where is Mark? What will he be doing before the dorms open up?”
“He’s been staying with some friends in Cody. Nice folks. He set up the computer for a camp there, and when he’s done he’s planning to stay with Jacob and Catherine.”
Meg nodded without comment. A decade younger than her, her little brother would be going to college a year early. It made sense. In many ways he was already raising himself. She worried about him, and these last few days without Internet access had been the longest she’d gone without sending him an e-mail or text in years. “I was really hoping he’d be here.”
“He might still come,” her father said. “He’s just very busy. You know how he is. In fact, he’s a lot like you. I wish you two could take a little more time to relax.”
Meg didn’t want to have this discussion again. She wished things were different for Mark, that he wasn’t on the run from home to home, living mostly with his face in the computer and always speaking in terms of video game metaphors. She wished his parents spent a little more time with him than they did saving the world. Meg closed her eyes. Of course homeless orphans in Burma would need her parents more than a seventeen-year-old almost-man. Anyone could see that. But where was the line? Every parent in the extended Parks family drew it differently. Her parents didn’t draw much of a line at all.
For no particular reason other than a sudden desire to throw a wrench in the works, Meg faced her parents and said, “I published a children’s book.”
“Oh, really?” her father said.
“Honey, I’m so happy for you! Can I see it?”
“I sold my last copy. I’m supposed to have more waiting for me when I get home.”
“That’s great, sweetheart,” her father said. “You’ll
have to send one to us when we get a post office box in Billings. We’ll be sure to let you know what it is when we get settled.”
And that was that. She poured the hot water and some honey in her father’s mug and hot water and milk in her mother’s, and they went on to talk about the project they would be working on and how they planned to get clothing for the kids past a million impenetrable barriers. Meg tried to listen. Her heart hurt for the kids, children with no mom or dad and very little medical care. Although she tried not to, she was thinking, why did I wait to tell them about the book?
Because they don’t really care. It sounded petulant, but in a way it was true. They were happy for her, they wanted her to be happy, and she knew they loved her very much. But her parents carried so much in their hearts that she always shared time there with other things. And when those other things were starving, dying, and persecuted… well. Publishing a book meant nothing compared to helping orphans, and she knew it. But the child inside of her wanted something else. Fanfare. Tears. Hugs. Something.
And if she’d gotten it, she would have been embarrassed, and she would have felt guilty.
“Margaret, is your little book a Christian book?”
Meg bit her lip. It was to her, but not the way that her mother would want it to be. “No.”
“Oh.” Her mother took a sip of tea. “This is wonderful, Margaret. Thank you for making this for us.”
Her mother’s hair was so gray, and she seemed too young for it. She remembered seeing her mother each fall of her life and feeling shocked at the change in her. It felt as if her mother died a little each summer while she was away, and it had frightened her. It still did. She wanted to ask her mom and dad about retirement, health insurance, having a little apartment of their own where they could retire when they weren’t strong enough to travel the world any more.
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