Thanksgiving
There were three Thanksgivings that would always stand out in my mind. The first was the last one I remember with my parents in our house amid the sprawling fig groves on the floor of the valley in California. Mom had cried that year because the oven hadn’t worked properly and the turkey hadn’t cooked. She’d complained that Thanksgiving was ruined, but Dad had made a run to some fast-food chicken place, and we’d ended up with fried chicken and mashed potatoes and been every bit as happy. It was always just us anyway—no one else around to impress—and I remember a look my parents shared as we ate, a look of complete trust or understanding. I was too young to have the tools to decipher the meaning of the look, but it was something that I knew meant that no matter what, they were in it together.
The second Thanksgiving I couldn’t forget was the first one we spent in Vermont, when my aunt and uncle did their very best to make us feel welcome and loved, and my sister and I huddled together at the other side of the table, wishing with all our hearts we could just have fried chicken with our parents instead. There hadn’t felt like much to be thankful for that year, but I was fourteen and angry at the world. No amount of perfectly cooked turkey would have fixed that.
And this Thanksgiving.
This would be another one that would always linger at the top of my memories. The year I stopped being afraid of losing the people I loved and finally lived my life fully. The first year I spent the holiday with Heather by my side.
“Love what you’ve done with the place,” Kevin drawled as he carried a dish of sweet potatoes through the front rooms, which were hung with plastic as the renovation proceeded to make a master suite on the main level.
“It’s a new style,” I quipped. “Nouveau plastique.”
Kevin stopped in the center of the hallway, swiveling to face me with the dish in his hands and his eyebrows high. “Mason Rye. Did you just make a corny joke?”
I had. I’d been doing it more and more lately. I grinned at my old friend and gestured for him to continue to the kitchen, where Amelia, Heather, and Billy were all laughing around the little round table where they sat having a pre-dinner drink. Rascal sat in the corner, his nose on his paws, big eyes watching us all.
“They haven’t shipped you out yet?” Billy asked Kevin, rising to give him a hug. “Mason never seemed to get more than a week or two off when he was active duty.”
“Then he was doing it wrong,” Kevin joked, but as soon as he’d said it, his eyes swung to me, daring me to contradict him.
Something was wrong. Heather had been right about that. Kevin had left Vermont at the end of the summer but had reappeared at the end of October and had been in town since, staying at the cottage and keeping to himself as much as Heather would let him. We were both concerned, but tonight, Kevin made a show of wearing a wide smile and joking with Billy whenever the old man allowed it. Amelia continued staring at him like he was the best thing she’d ever seen, and I couldn’t tell from the way he acted whether there was anything actually happening there.
“Not that Kevin would tell me,” Heather had said when I’d asked. “But Amelia probably would, and she hasn’t said a thing.”
I’d let it go, but a big part of me wanted my sister to find the kind of happiness I’d found with Heather, to experience a love so consuming that you’d take one day of that over the rest of your life if you had to make a choice.
Maybe Kevin wasn’t the right guy for her though. Not if he was keeping secrets. And I was sure he was.
“Let’s have a toast,” Billy called, raising his beer high from where he sat. He looked healthy now, having recovered from his pneumonia, and his scans had thankfully been clear. But the incident had scared us all, made us aware of his age and his mortality. He still helped with milking, but only in the afternoons, and he had taken to working the farmers' markets with Heather in my place. Evidently his cheerful demeanor was better for attracting customers than my surly intensity.
“This is the first year in a long time that it feels like a real holiday,” Billy said, looking around the room at us all. “And a lot of that has to do with this blond beauty right here.” He winked at Heather, and I pulled her closer to my side. “She showed up here and fixed all the things that had been broken for a long time.”
No one disagreed, but I was thankful Billy didn’t expand on that thought.
We all sipped our drinks, and then Heather stepped away from me and lifted her own glass. “Well, I’d like to make a toast too,” she said, her smile lighting the room and my heart. “To all of you. I finally feel like I’ve found the place I belong, and I couldn’t be happier than I am right now. I’ve got a family I adore, a man I love with everything I am, and this incredible place to enjoy it all. Thank you, all of you.”
“Cheers!” Amelia said, grinning widely.
“Thanks for having me,” Kevin said, his smile thin, like a mask that was beginning to dissolve. “It’s been a bit of a rough year on my end, and it’s nice to have a place to land.” He gave a sharp nod of his head, and I sensed that was as much as we were going to get out of him. I lifted my mouth to drink, but then he turned toward me and spoke again. “How long you think you need to wait, Rye?”
I lowered the glass I’d been holding to my lips.
“Wait? For what?”
“To propose to my little sister. Make her an honest woman?” He chuckled at this last question, and I felt Heather stiffen at my side.
“Kevin!” she hissed.
It was inappropriate, bordering on rude—but it wasn’t wrong. There was no reason to wait. I didn’t need to marry her to know I’d spend the rest of my life trying to make her smile, but I loved the idea of celebrating our love with a wedding—a ceremony to officially mark the incredible thing we shared.
I put down my drink, setting it on the little table with my eyes on Heather. She was watching me uncertainly, and I realized I was wearing a wide smile as I sank to one knee before her.
“No, you don’t have to,” she whispered, but I ignored her, taking her hands in my own. Rascal seemed to sense that something was happening, and he got to his feet, padding over to sit at my side and stare up at Heather with adoring eyes.
“Oh my god!” my sister whispered.
“I do want to marry you, Heather,” I said, loudly enough for them all to hear. “But not to make an honest woman of you.”
Heather’s eyes were shining and wide as she stared down at me, a half smile playing on her gorgeous lips.
“I want to marry you because I can’t imagine spending a single day of my future without you by my side. I want to marry you because you are the person who taught me how to love, how to really live, and how to appreciate every second you get with the people you care about. And I care more about you than I ever thought possible. You are my light and my air, my summer and my fall. In a short time, you’ve become my whole world, and I want to share the rest of my life with you. If you’ll have me.
“Heather Brigham, will you marry me?”
Heather was nodding slowly now, tears standing in her eyes.
“Don’t leave the man hanging, sis,” Kevin said quietly.
“Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
I was about to get to my feet, but Heather was already dropping to her knees before me, wrapping her arms tightly around my neck. She buried her face under my chin, and I wrapped my arms around her.
“I love you, Mason,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.
“I love you too,” I told her, the rest of the room fading to a blur as I held the woman I loved in my arms.
Heather pulled back a bit, and I leaned down to kiss her tenderly. I heard Rascal whine his approval at our side, and the sound made Heather chuckle.
Billy, Amelia, and Kevin cheered and slapped us on the backs. As we stood, my heart fell. I shouldn’t have done it like that, I realized. Heather deserved a complete proposal, a real engagement, and I didn’t have a ring.
I held her soft hand in mine and looked down at the slim fingers laying in my own. “I’m so sorry,” I said softly. “I didn’t plan that, so I don’t have a—“
Amelia stepped to my side, almost forcing herself between us, and lifted her hands to her chest, struggling to pull a ring from her finger. “Here,” she said quietly. “It was Mom’s.”
I stared at the little ring my sister laid gently in my palm, remembering it gleaming in the overhead kitchen lights of our house as my mother had placed a glass of milk in front of me at the table, recalling the way the metal band had felt against my forehead when she’d placed her hand there to check me for fever. For a moment, I couldn’t speak because emotion clogged my throat as I looked at the simple diamond ring in my hand.
I lifted my eyes to my sister’s, wanting to make sure this was really something she wanted, and what I found there was love, acceptance, and joy. She nodded her head. “Go on.”
I looked at my fiancée again. “May I?” I asked her, and she lifted her left hand toward me. I watched as the ring slipped down the length of her slim finger, feeling a circle click shut inside me as it found its new home, gleaming there on Heather’s hand.
“It’s amazing,” she said, glancing between my sister and me. “Thank you.”
I kissed her again then, not caring if the kiss was a little over the top for your run-of-the-mill Thanksgiving display of affection. This was not a run-of-the-mill Thanksgiving. It was the one I would remember over all others, the Thanksgiving when the woman I loved agreed to become my wife.
T H E
E N D
Thank you for reading Fireproof by Delancey Stewart! Want a bonus epilogue for Mason and Heather? Get it here.
You can get all the links to all the Busy Bean books here. Or turn the page for more great recommendations for Delancey Stewart and World of True North titles.