“Six more hours?” Kelly watched Hailey slump against the inn’s kitchen wall as she held the phone to her ear. “I can’t run an inn full of people without power for that long. I barely made it through breakfast and the hot water’s all but gone.”
Kelly scribbled Watson’s Diner—sandwiches? on the clipboard that hadn’t left her hands in hours. The papers that kept hosting an ever-growing list of tasks and challenges. She was starting to feel like a general on the battlefield. How Mayor Jean handled wedding planning all year long on top of running the Matrimony Valley community was beyond her.
Of course, Mayor Jean never tried to coordinate a wedding in the middle of a snow-and-ice storm. Jean had already called and offered to come over to help in any way she could, but the last thing Kelly wanted was to be worrying about a pregnant and nauseated mayor slipping on her bad ankle on a patch of ice. Couldn’t just one of today’s problems be uncomplicated?
Hailey hung up the phone. “The county power company says we might get power back on by eight tonight. Might? We need power back on before the rehearsal dinner. We need power back on before lunch.”
“I know.” Kelly sighed. Tina and Darren were impatiently waiting for word that some—even half—of their wedding guests would be able to arrive. And then there was the reporter waiting to cover a wedding that might not happen. “Has anyone seen how Samantha is doing this morning?”
Hailey wiped her bangs out of her eyes. “How should I know? I’m still trying to figure out how to keep the second floor warm.”
The second floor, where all the wedding guests were staying. Astonishingly, six guests had actually made it to the valley, but the tales they told of icy roads and closed highways didn’t hold out much hope for others arriving anytime soon.
“I can’t put it off any longer. Lulu, honey, stay here with Hailey while I go find out just how happy our happy couple still is. Bruce said Tina’s nerves are strung a bit thin.” That was putting it mildly.
“You can say that again,” Hailey muttered. “And who can blame her?”
“It’s hopeless,” Lulu proclaimed with eight-year-old drama.
“No,” Kelly cautioned, “we can’t say that. We can think it, we can worry, but we’ve got to stay positive in how we talk to the guests. To everyone. Come on, girls, we can pull this off. I know we can.” Kelly heard the words coming out of her mouth, but she wondered if anyone could see how little she believed them.
* * *
“The ‘before party’ is supposed to be tonight,” Carly said as Bruce tried to get her to take a nap back in their room. She hadn’t gotten enough sleep last night—and he’d barely had any—so they both needed to rest if tonight had any hope of being fun.
If tonight had any hope of being at all.
“Did God send that big awful storm?” she asked as she rolled over to look out the window.
Where had that come from? “Well, now, that’s a big question for a little girl,” he said, grasping for an answer. “God created the earth, and the sun and stars and winds, so I guess you can say He creates weather. But I don’t think He set out to ruin Miss Tina and Mr. Darren’s wedding, if that’s what you’re thinking. I think they’ll still get married tomorrow, don’t you?”
“We’ve got the four things Miss Kelly said we needed, don’t we?”
He was impressed Carly remembered. Together, they ticked them off on Bruce’s fingers. “A bride, a groom, a minister and God.” He felt a bit silly boiling down a wedding to those simplistic terms, but he supposed he did believe what the florist said was true—sort of. Life felt anything but simple and God-sent these days. These years.
“Did you have those things when you married Mommy?”
Bruce’s memory cast back to the sunny fall day he’d made Sandy his wife. He did feel as if God had smiled down on his life that day. The world was filled with possibilities and adventures, and he felt blessed to have such an incredible woman by his side for life.
It was just that “life” hadn’t lasted nearly as long as either of them had planned. The “till death do us part” phrase rang ominous in his ears these days, and he wondered if those fateful words would be part of Darren and Tina’s vows tomorrow. “We had those things, sweetheart,” he answered his daughter. “And we had more. We had electricity, and nice weather, and all our friends could come celebrate with us.”
“Did God know I was coming?”
It took him a minute to work out what she meant. “Mommy and I asked God to bless us with children, so yes. You know Mommy always called you her gift from God.”
“Did God know Mommy was going away when she did?”
She asked the weighty question with such an innocence it made his heart twist. Bruce sat down on the bed. “What makes you ask that?”
“Mr. Darren told me yesterday that he was sad God called Mommy home before she could be here to watch him marry Miss Tina. But she isn’t home, she’s in heaven. Did God know that would happen like He knew the storm would happen? Or the storm that took Lulu’s daddy away?”
Wow—he was in way over his head. Sandy was always so much better at the hard questions. Bruce thought for a moment, smoothing down Carly’s wild hair while he groped for an answer. “I see it this way—God always knows what’s happening to us, and He’s around to help us. Sometimes that’s hard to see, especially when things feel sad or wrong. Like all of the people who can’t get here right now to come to the wedding. That feels sad, and wrong, and it’s okay to feel disappointed about it. But it doesn’t mean God’s not watching over us, or that He isn’t in the sad or hard places.”
Even as the words left his mouth, Bruce wondered if he still believed them. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t continually tamp down a boiling anger at God for taking Sandy from him. That’s not what he wanted Carly to learn about God, but he didn’t want to hand her platitudes he didn’t feel, either. His brain accepted the fact that God could still be found in the sad or hard places. His gut told him that he’d stopped looking for God in those places. That thought woke up the startling notion that given how sad and hard his last two years had been, it meant he’d stopped looking for God altogether.
Were his fog and the lack of God connected? Bruce wasn’t sure he was ready to think about that right now. He settled on an answer to satisfy Carly even if he didn’t have one to satisfy himself. “I know God will be there tomorrow for Tina and Darren. Even if a whole bunch of things go wrong.”
Carly stuck her chin out. “But they won’t. Ms. Kelly said that everything that could go wrong already has.”
Bruce wasn’t quite sure that was true. A lot could still go wrong in the next twenty-four hours. “What I know, little girl, is that things will go a lot better if you and I get some rest before tonight’s party.” He settled her back into her blankets and handed her the pink bear that was her bedtime companion. “Can you do that for me?”
“I’ll try.” The yawn she gave with the words told him Carly would succeed.
Much better than he would. Bruce shut the door partway and sunk into the comfy chair in his adjoining room. Catch a nap of your own, he commanded himself. Despite the tiring drive, and even chopping Kelly’s wood, he knew it wouldn’t work. His brain was in too much of a tangle over Carly’s big questions, the threatened wedding and the pretty florist who wouldn’t leave his thoughts.
He wasn’t ready to let someone else into his life—he knew that. But he also knew how bone-weary he was of being alone. He’d felt less alone in Kelly’s kitchen this morning than he’d felt in months. As if he’d been sitting in a dark room and someone struck a match. Just one match, but it was enough to let him see things he wasn’t sure he was ready to see.
Bruce laughed at himself. He wasn’t a guy for metaphors—that had been Sandy. The only match you need to worry about right now is Darren’s match with Tina. You’ve got to help find a way for this wedding to happen.
I’ve not asked for much, Lord, Bruce found himself praying. In fact, I’ve not asked for anything. Or even paid attention to You lately. I didn’t see the point when all I’d do is complain. But seeing as weather seems to be Your department, could You step in here? Reduce the catastrophe factor by even a little?
He doubted God would suddenly lend an ear to the crisis pleas of a man who’d abandoned church until this weekend. Still, maybe the fact that he was asking on someone else’s behalf would earn him a shred of attention from the Almighty. Surely God was on the side of happy marriages.
Carly made a small, sleepy noise, and he glanced through the barely open door to see her small figure shift under the blankets.
Thank You for her. I’d never have made it without Carly. I’m not sure I’m making it now, but she’s such a gift to me.
Even as a baby, he’d loved watching her sleep. The way her eyelashes fluttered, the rosy curve of her cheek, the way her little pink mouth always hung just a little bit open, the way one hand still clutched the pink bear Sandy had picked out for her first birthday. When I look at her like this, I can believe You’ll let her turn out okay. He could cling to the hope that the gaping hole in her heart would heal faster than the one in his. Dear God, let her grow up into someone Sandy would be proud of.
I don’t know how to do this.
He’d said those exact words one night during Carly’s first fever as he and Sandy stayed up the whole night.
No one knows how to do this, Sandy had said. Everyone’s just making it up as they go along.
So make it up as you go along. Bruce picked up the receiver for the monitor he’d been wise enough to pack so he could venture down the hall while she slept. Sleep wasn’t going to happen. So he might as well buck up and go see how Darren was faring. If nothing else, he could tell the groom-to-be that any first year of marriage ought to feel easy after the strain it was taking them to actually get married.
Bruce wasn’t ten feet outside his room when he turned to see Kelly slumped in a hallway chair just down the way from Darren’s and Tina’s rooms. Her hands covered her eyes. Bruce started to ask, “Are you okay?” but swallowed the question. A sniff and a shuddering breath told him she’d finally given in to the tears she’d fought back earlier this morning. He could see without asking that she wasn’t anything close to okay—the whole event was falling down around her. She heard his approach and looked up, clearly upset at his discovery of her at such a loss.
“Tina’s sobbing,” she said, waving a soggy tissue in the direction of the rooms he’d been approaching. “Our bride’s in there crying.”
Bruce knew he ought to say something like “It’ll be okay,” but that seemed trite given the circumstances. Instead, he sat down next to her and put his hand on her shoulder the way he had done this morning. “Sometimes, the weather wins. Not the war, just the battle. Darren and Tina know you can’t control that. They know you’re trying.”
“I am,” Kelly groaned as she wiped her eyes. “It was going to be perfect.”
Bruce leaned back. “Now it’ll just have to be a different kind of perfect. Come on, we know how to do that, you and I. We’ve been having to create a different kind of perfect for our families since...you know.” He groped for some good news, any shred to cheer her up. “Carly’s still excited for tonight. She told me it’s been her best vacation ever.”
“I don’t see how,” Kelly muttered.
“No, really. Somehow you and Lulu have made this all a grand adventure for her instead of the fiasco I know it feels like to you. I should thank you for that.”
She gave a low laugh. “You can’t honestly tell me this turned out to be the vacation you planned.”
He laughed, as well. “No, you’re right there. But somehow, it’s fitting the bill of what we really needed. We’ve had fun.” When she looked at him, he amended, “Odd fun, unexpected fun, but fun. If the goal was memories, we’re definitely making ’em.” After a moment, he hit upon the news he knew would bolster her spirits. “Carly told me she saw a unicorn this morning. An ice unicorn. New species, evidently. She gave a very detailed description, and you should have seen her smile while she did.”
Kelly tucked her hair behind her ear. He liked the way it curved around her cheek when it wasn’t behind her ear. It framed her face in a simple way that suited her. Shiny and straight, but bouncy and full of movement. “Does that whole business baffle you? Her imaginary unicorns?”
“Sure it does. But I also figure it’s her way of telling me she’ll be okay. She seems to see it as Sandy telling her she’ll be okay, and since it’s her own imagination, I see it as her telling me.” He shifted his weight on the small, fussy chair—most of the inn’s furnishings felt too small and fussy for him at his size. “It makes me feel better to know she’s seen one, because they seem to stop coming when she’s sad or bothered.”
“Well, then, bring them on. In fact, can we send a herd of those ‘feel better’ unicorns Tina’s way?”
Bruce laughed. “Wasn’t that the original plan? Well, elk anyway.” They had, in fact, planned to take some of the wedding photos out by the elk herd the day after the ceremony. That wouldn’t be happening now. Lots of things weren’t going to happen the way they’d been planned. “I really do think you’ll pull this off.”
“There’s no power. There are nearly no guests.” She held up her ever-present clipboard. “I like it much better when things go according to plan,” she admitted.
“But you’re coping like a pro. Adapting, improvising. Seriously, if you manage to make this wedding happen, I guarantee even Samantha will be impressed.”
Kelly shook her head. “Rob brought her sandwiches and a flashlight, and the man looked positively smitten with her. Talk about opposites attracting.”
“Must be something in the air in Matrimony Valley.” He was coming to think of the valley as a special place despite his earlier irritation. Parts of him that felt tied in knots for so long seemed to loosen here, to unfurl out of the grip of grief. As if he were thawing out at the same time the valley was icing over. Was it the town, his time away from the pressures of work, the consuming nature of the wedding-in-crisis...or the friendship of the woman sitting next to him? He couldn’t trust that the wedding, the stress and simple lack of sleep weren’t messing with his perspective.
“There you are!” An older woman came trotting down the hallway. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“What now, Rose?” Kelly clearly expected the woman to heap yet another problem onto her shoulders.
“We’ve solved the problem of the rehearsal dinner—chili in slow cookers. Bill’s got a generator and a strip of outlets. Half the town’s cooking up a batch, and Yvonne’s got ingredients for a s’mores bar. We can make this work.”
“A chili and s’mores rehearsal dinner?” Kelly looked skeptical.
Talk about making it up as you go along. “Actually,” Bruce found himself saying, “I think it works. Kind of fits in with the rest of the wedding. You don’t get any more backwoods than chili and s’mores.” Bruce offered Kelly a supportive smile. “I think Darren will approve. And the rehearsal dinner is the responsibility of the groom, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes,” Kelly said, brightening.
“As best man, I endorse it. So let’s go get the groom’s approval,” Bruce said, rising off the chair.