Elizabeth was making notes. So far, she had three long notebook pages filled front and back and knew she was forgetting something. The phone rang just as she jotted down another idea she wanted to suggest to Kellan.
“Hello?”
“I just want to know one thing, Elizabeth.” Her mother’s voice signaled she was on the warpath and Elizabeth sighed.
“What do you want to know, Mother?”
“Is she pregnant?”
Elizabeth blinked. “Who?”
“Blast it all, Elizabeth. Kellan!”
Elizabeth started laughing. It was too stupid a question to even bother putting into words. “No! Mother, how could you even think such a thing?”
“Well, why are they having to get married so fast? I mean, it is absolutely breaking my heart at how everyone has to rush this way and that, when we could plan such a beautiful, lovely wedding if only we had time. So I asked myself this morning, Why? It’s the only answer that makes sense.”
Elizabeth’s smile was gentle as she shook her head. Only her mother. She wished she had time for such foolish pondering. No, she was not going to get rattled this morning; she simply had too much to do. Besides, nothing could destroy her peace today. She was helping her daughter put together her wedding, and it would be beautiful.
“Kellan is not pregnant. They are getting married in a month because that’s what they want to do.” Her voice made their wishes perfectly understandable.
She almost broke into a smile as she heard her mother utter a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort. “What do they know? I mean, Elizabeth, when I think of how absolutely enchanting your wedding was, how it was the envy of all my friends, and good Lord, it took us the better part of nine months to pull it off.”
Elizabeth’s memory was a little different. Her wedding had grown from the simplicity she wanted into an ostentatious event that had been mildly embarrassing. From having only a maid of honor, Carol, and Michael’s best man, the wedding party had mushroomed to ten attendants each because Virginia Mae insisted extended family had to be included, which meant second cousins on her husband’s side. Disagreements arose daily and were always decided based on what Virginia Mae wanted. Elizabeth always felt like her mother would know best and had acquiesced. Ultimately, her mother had the wedding she’d always wanted.
It was one of many memories that weren’t really hers, Elizabeth thought.
Virginia Mae was making a suggestion, her voice sweetly cajoling. “I think I have a solution. Why don’t I give Kellan her wedding dress and pay for the honeymoon? By doing that, I should be able to leverage a little more time out of them, don’t you think? And perhaps we could talk about not having it at the river. I mean, most of our friends and family live near the city; it would be so much more convenient, not to mention more spacious, to have it at our church, don’t you think?”
“Mother, we don’t need a solution because there isn’t a problem.”
She waited for her mother to think of a response. She couldn’t help but feel a little giddy with the freedom of no longer feeling an obligation to her mother’s happiness. How on earth that had happened in the first place, Elizabeth hadn’t a clue.
It seemed she had spent most of her adult life letting this woman finagle her way into every crevice and then changing to suit her, always hoping it would make her mother happy.
“Yes, I know, but Elizabeth, don’t you think you could talk to them and—”
“No, Mother, but thanks for asking. Now, I have to hang up because I have a lot of things to do to get everything ready for June fourteenth. Good-bye.”
Invigorated, she picked up her notes again and added several more ideas, then got the phone book and began looking up numbers. It was good to be busy; it helped her ignore the discomfort in her legs. While the numbness had not gotten worse, it had not got better either, and Elizabeth was undecided over what to do, hoping either she could live with it or it would get better on its own. She had thanked God more than once that it was no worse.
Michael. At odd times Elizabeth would suddenly start thinking of him, wondering what he was doing at that precise moment. She hadn’t seen him since the day he brought Kate Wilkins to see her and everyone else had come. The day Carol talked Mehalia and Serenity into going to New York.
That was someone else she really missed. Mehalia would have great ideas for the food next month. Elizabeth sighed, thinking again of how pleasant it had been to have someone to talk with, work with. The new house cleaners she had hired were straight-by-the-book businesspeople. The young girl with two older helpers would screech into the drive precisely at 9:00 a.m. every Tuesday morning, fling open the van, and each worker would come in laden with cleaning tools, buckets, a vacuum cleaner, and no time for idle chatter. Two hours later she would be presented with a bill, the house smelling of cleaners and lemon polish. And silence.
Michael’s face edged back into her thoughts, and she did what she had started doing on the same day she saw her first and only sun dog. Without thinking, she started praying for him that afternoon.
It was late in the day, long after she returned from church, brimming with the magic that had been divined just for her. She almost called him, she felt so wonderful, but at the same time she didn’t want to chance hearing the habitual coldness in his voice.
Without thinking, her spirit suddenly leaped up and started praying for him. Asking God to protect him, fill him with joy, wanting him to be as happy as she was. It made Elizabeth feel more connected to him, somehow, than seeing him in person.
She had not told anyone of that remarkable day, had not been able to even write about it. It was still too shiny, too immense. Sometime later, when she had lived with this new knowledge, absorbed it more fully, then perhaps she could find the words. Perhaps.
After a brief, quiet moment of holding her husband in her heart, she sat up, looked at the clock, and started making phone calls.