by Lorin Grace
Colin wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
I’m not sure if the carousel will be finished anytime soon. The artist may or may not have quit.
—Candace? Why?
I proposed. I thought she would be willing after she came back from Blue Pines. I guess I don’t understand women. Colin typed the understatement of the year.
—You and me both, my friend.
I was serious when I said it is easier to hack the Pentagon than it is to understand a woman.
—My guess it is easier to hack North Korea’s military servers.
Nah. Only took me two hours. Just kidding. Haven’t tried that one.
—-I’m relieved to know that. Don’t.
Not that desperate. I still have Mandy, the secret weapon. She’s calling. Bye.
“Hi, Mandy.”
“Hey, how are you holding up?”
“Fine. Please tell me you’ve heard from her.” Any little clue, please.
“She went to her dad’s. She says she will meet us in Blue Pines.”
“She is taking the week off?” He rubbed his forehead. Day 564 wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be a countdown to day one of the rest of their lives.
“Sorry, Colin.”
“Do you think it’s a no?”
“She didn’t say no, which probably means she is working through things. I know fainting isn’t the best response, but she has a lot going on right now. Since she didn’t respond, there is still a chance she will say yes. Sorry.”
Colin hung up. He wanted to know more, to hear how she was in her own voice.
An hour later, he got a text from her.
Please come to Blue Pines. Premiere—November 2. I am visiting Dad.
—I’ll be there.
Thanks. 1 2 3
Maybe all was not lost. He went in search of Janie and found her in the kitchen. “What does it mean when a girl tells you one, two, three?”
She stopped stirring the pot on the stove in front of her. “I don’t know all of your young-people lingo. But when I counted at my children, it was never a good thing.”
The housekeeper could have added or counted at him. How many cookies had he lost over the years for not listening the first time?
There had to be another answer. Colin retreated to his office.
“Sabrina, what could one, two, three mean?”
twenty-two
Candace checked the slideshow she’d made again—well, her father had made, after she nearly sent her laptop through the window. She tried writing a love note first and decided that notes like hers were better off hidden in hollow swans than ever read. Hopefully this would convey the thoughts in her heart better than words on paper.
The week had been cathartic. Crystal had come down, and they’d had three days of crying and laughing, watching old videos, including one she had never seen. Mom had left a video letter to her. Candace wondered when her mother had found time to record it without her knowing.
Candace brought it up again and played her favorite part.
“I looked in your notebook last night. I know that makes me a terrible mom, snooping in your journal or life plan. But by the time you know about it, well, I won’t be around to yell at. I want you to throw that book away. I am not sure where you got the idea you had ten years to live. But you are wrong. No doctor ever said that about you. I wonder if you heard Dr. Kay discussing that old car of his. Anyway, please throw it away and plan to live, laugh, and love. Though I didn’t get to grow old with your father or see my grandbabies, I don’t regret a day of my life with you.”
“Please make a new plan for life . . .”
Candace turned it off.
She had a plan.
Reverend Cavanagh said he would pray for her and her plan. Before she left for the airport, she said one more little prayer.
Colin joined the others gathered in the private dining room of O’Malley’s for the pre-show party. He looked around the table at Daniel and Mandy, Tessa and Sean, Araceli and Kyle, and Abbie and Preston. Zoe sat next to Nick. Colin needed to ask Nick about that. The only empty seat was next to––Candace got up from her chair and came over to him. She reached up and pulled him down into a kiss.
All thought fled.
Gradually he became aware of clapping. Candace ended the kiss.
“Knock it off, you guys. You are making Colin blush,” Candace scolded their friends.
Colin didn’t care if he died of blushing as long as it was because he was in Candace’s arms.
“Come sit down, you two. You can do more of that later.” Tessa waved them over to the table.
The rest of the dinner seemed an eternity as Colin wondered when later would come.
As the closing credits of the Hearthfire Christmas movie that captured Tessa and Sean’s first kiss started to roll, Candace took a deep breath. In fifteen minutes, the room would empty and her encore show would play. Araceli started toward the side of the stage to make the announcement encouraging the majority of the audience to cross the street to the community center for refreshments. At the other end of the room, someone yelled, “Hey! Nick Gooding is engaged!”
Candace whipped around to see her cousin kissing Nick Gooding.
Kissing.
In public.
Engaged.
When?
She looked at each of her friends. One after the other shrugged as they clapped and cheered. Only Colin smiled. He had known!
Colin leaned over so only Candace could hear him. “That isn’t how they planned to tell us.”
“How do you know?”
“Nick asked me to keep everyone here when the crowd left.”
“Oh.”
Zoe worked her way down the row, gathering hugs from the roommates. When she reached Candace, they stared at each other for a moment.
Candace pulled her into a hug. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t have a chance to tell you. We wanted to tell my parents first.”
“And they were on the cruise.” Candace finished the sentence.
“We finally reached them on the way over.”
They hugged again.
Araceli took the stage and tapped the mike. “Ladies and gentlemen, Hearthfire and Blue Pines friends, we invite you to have refreshments at the community center, where you can mix and mingle. Locals, if you don’t have tickets for your families and friends for tomorrow’s shows yet, they will be available at the center.”
A few people gathered their coats, but most just stood around talking.
Araceli recaptured the mike. “Did I mention they are Mrs. Clark’s sugar cookies? Three-time winner of the Blue Pines Christmas bake-off? First come, first serve! Go eat!”
The room started to clear. Colin tried to leave.
Candace held on to his hand. “Stay for a minute.”
Soon only their row and a few security guards remained.
Araceli retook the stage. “It is the first Friday of November, and I hereby call the last meeting of the Friday Night Art Society to order. We are all going our separate ways and starting new projects and new lives. As the unofficial secretary, I have a few items of business, but first a word from Candace, our mentor, friend, and landlord.”
Candace’s legs shook as she took the mike from Araceli. “Lights, please.” She waited as the house lights dimmed and the video she’d made began to play.
“Ten years ago, I made a ten-year plan.” The spiral-bound notebook came up on the screen, the pages turning as she spoke. “I made a bucket list and started checking off each item.” Photos of Candace in various places around the country slid across the screen. “I made some goals, and broke some, like the time I tried being a vegan and deci
ded life was too short to live without ice cream or bacon. Or even bacon ice cream. But this July, I reached the end of my ten-year plan and found myself at a different place than I’d planned.” The last page of the notebook turned, revealing a sketch of a tree stretching over a headstone, a butterfly lifting off toward the sun. “At my annual cancer check, my doctor told me it was time to make a new plan, not a ten-year plan but a fifty-year plan.” A blank page showed on the screen. Candace’s hand appeared with a pencil in it. She started drawing on a blank piece of paper. “I struggled to come up with a plan.” On the screen, her hands ripped the paper and started on a new one. “My cousin Zoe was the first to say out loud what my plan should be. Now I know what my plan is.” The drawing moved in high speed. “In fifty years, I want to be surrounded by you, my friends, as I celebrate my fiftieth wedding anniversary.”
The lights came up. Candace took a deep breath, then whispered one last prayer. Please.
“Colin Ogilvie. You asked me a question a couple weeks ago. Now it is my turn. Will you start the new year as my husband?” There it was. She no longer had any secrets from her friends. Opening up to her father and sister had given her the confidence to share with her friends. These people were like family to her. She had reached the corner and was turned in a new direction. Please don’t be a dead end!
Colin ran up to the stage and grabbed her around the waist. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.” Candace stood on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her lips met his twice before she settled in for a deeper kiss to the cheering of their friends. The mike slipped from her fingers and bounced loudly on the stage.
Colin dipped her and broke the kiss. “One, two, three. I love you too.”
“I knew you would figure that out.”
“Actually, Sabrina did. I think I finally have the glitches fixed.”
Somewhere in the background, her friends were still cheering, but Candace ignored them and wondered how hard it would be to program Sabrina to lock them in after the wedding.
epilogue
Five years later on an Indiana airstrip near the Art House.
Colin greeted Candace with a kiss at the door to their new plane. As she boarded, she asked him where their kids were.
“My mother wanted to spoil them for a few days, and I decided I would spoil you.” Once Colin had guided her to one of the plush seats at the center of the plane, the copilot closed the door, then signaled for them to buckle up before he joined the pilot in the cockpit.
“They tire you out after only three days?” Seven-year-old Porter and his biological siblings—five-year-old Pollyanna and three-year-old Peter—had been with Colin and Candace for the nearly eighteen months since their widowed mother had lost her battle with breast cancer and the couple had adopted them.
“No, they did not.” Colin looked slightly offended. “It was Abbie and Preston’s triplets who did. Mathematically it should be impossible for three four-year-olds to cause so much chaos. Somehow they’d conned most of the other children into joining them, including Peter. None of us were too upset to break up the party when we got Mandy’s call. Poor Polly received more than enough teasing and was more than willing to go to Grandma’s for a visit, which apparently includes Disneyland. Although I think she might have been just as happy to go to the corner park as long as the triplets were not there.”
“So Mandy going into labor early was a blessing?” Candace braced for takeoff.
“Better now than during the ribbon cutting in two weeks.” The dream of an indoor amusement park for terminally ill children had taken the financial backing of all six families to complete. The invention of a bacteria-resistant polymer coating had allowed the old merry-go-round to be a central feature. Housed an hour west of Dallas in a multibuilding complex connected by tunnels, “Robyn’s Place” boasted not only a fun family escape but a fully staffed children’s medical facility hidden in a castle. Children who had been cleared by their physicians could stay up to one week at no cost, along with their immediate family. The dedication had been set for the day that would have been Robyn Wilson’s fifty-fifth birthday.
“It was definitely better that she cut the last meeting of the Friday Night Art Society short than miss the ribbon cutting. Kudos to you for your app working so well.” Candace took off her wig.
Colin kissed her before answering. “Daniel was glad to get her to South Bend for the delivery. The county hospital isn’t equipped to handle premature births. By the way, the doctor thinks they will be able to release little Mae from the NICU in less than two weeks.”
“I know. Mandy video chatted with me this morning. Other than being born six weeks early and being small, there are not any major complications.”
As the plane lifted above the intermittent clouds. Colin rubbed the back of Candace’s hand. “So, how was your week with the girls?”
“Let me show you. We made a video.” Candace pulled out her tablet and pushed play.
The former members of the Friday Night Art Society sat around their old painted kitchen table turning the pages of the photo books Zoe had designed.
“I love this shot. How did you manage to get it, Abbie?” Araceli pointed to Candace catching Zoe’s bouquet at her day-before-Christmas-Eve wedding.
Abbie turned to the same page in her book. “That was easy. We all knew Zoe would continue with tradition and aim it at Candace. So I focused my camera on Candace and waited.”
“Who caught Candace’s bouquet?” Tessa turned to the pages showing the New Year’s Eve wedding.
Mandy balanced her book on her rounded middle. “Daniel’s old secretary, Bonnie. She ended up marrying Daniel’s old lawyer, Morgan. They are the best stand-in grandparents. Joy and little Danny love them to death. Bonnie has already knitted this one her first blanket.” Mandy rubbed her bulging belly and made a face.
“Please tell me that is not a contraction.” Abbie half rose from her seat.
“No. Just a kick that makes me question this little one’s future. I am only thirty-two weeks.”
Abbie sat back down. “Well, you happen to have the worst timing when it comes to deliveries. First my wedding reception, then during the dedication of Candace’s teen cancer wing of the hospital. Forgive me if I am suspicious since this is the first day of our weeklong reunion.”
“Don’t worry. Mandy is testing out Colin’s new contraction app. If her body even hints at a Braxton-Hicks, there will be an ambulance at the door. You know Daniel. Besides, Nick, Daniel, and Colin are doing a ribbon cutting in three weeks at Robyn’s Place. If Mandy is going to disrupt anything, it will be the dedication since it will have national news coverage.” Candace flipped through the pages of her book.
“I have no intention of going into labor during the ceremony. I want the story to be about the children and the carousel that started all of this, not about me. Besides, Zoe is closer to her due date.”
Zoe groaned and stirred her ginger ale with a straw. “And I wish I was even closer. Nearly four years and a gazillion doctor visits so I could have morning sickness for seven months straight.”
Candace sighed as she watched the video of Zoe. Her cousin hadn’t shared much about her trial with infertility and multiple miscarriages. Candace wished Zoe had shared more as Candace had long-ago accepted the impossibility of having her own children. Zoe’s pain and grief were the catalysts for Candace’s decision to adopt.
Candace rapped on the table. “I have an item of business. I have been trying to decide what to do with the Art House for some time now. With my children, I don’t make it down here as often as I would like to. I am torn about selling the place as who else would appreciate all the Friday and Saturday nights we spent decorating? Araceli has proposed it become a scholarship house for some of her Haitian children. But before I donate it, I wanted everyone’s thoughts.”
> Tessa stood and went to the stained-glass window above the sink. “This was one of my first windows. I named it Morning Blessing because of the way the sunrise would light it up. I think I like the idea that it could bless future generations of students. I’ll be honest—I hoped my own daughters would want to come here someday, but they are going to find their own path, just like we did.”
Abbie’s phone rang. She shook her head. “It looks like the kids stole Preston’s phone again. I’ll be back in a minute.” She exited the room.
Abbie rejoined them. “Crisis solved. Don’t worry. The father and kids’ movie night is back on track, and none of your children were in any danger.”
The women laughed.
The video ended with a close-up of the quote wall in the laundry room.
Don’t let fences keep friends out. —Mandy
Broken glass doesn’t equal broken dreams. —Tessa
When added to the ugliest of walls, beauty brings a bounty of blessings. —Araceli
Embrace the unexpected in life, and it will bring you joy. —Abbie
When you meet one of the good guys, close your eyes and trust. That is the key. —Zoe
Never put limits on yourself that God hasn’t given you. —Candace
Candace blinked back the tears. Colin’s arms came around her. “Why are you crying?” He handed her a handkerchief.
“I am just sad it’s over.”
Colin shook his head. “It isn’t. You still have forty-five years to go. It’s in your fifty-year plan, remember?”
“How can I forget?” The sketch she’d used as one of the final slides of her proposal now hung in her studio. Candace leaned into Colin’s chest and watched the clouds float by the window. Or was the plane floating by the clouds?
