Fourteen months later
“Winnie, you throw the best parties. You should charge for these services.” Greg dropped a kiss on the top of her head as she sat at the table set up in the rose garden.
Miranda loved watching her husband interact with her family. They got together much less frequently these days, but this weekend held so many events she’d seen her parents and sisters nonstop.
“Nonsense, Greg. It wouldn’t be any fun if I did it for any reason but sheer pleasure. And believe me, this anniversary party is sheer pleasure.” Winnie beamed, reaching next to her for Tate’s hand and giving it a squeeze. He smiled back and Miranda thought once again how wonderful it had been to watch her aunt and the man she now called Uncle Tate grow into the loving married couple she saw now.
Even more amazing was the couple on the other side of the table. Ronald and Trudy Blanchard still had their moments, but the relationship God had built from the ashes of their former lives was a true miracle.
“What about tomorrow’s dedication? Will that be pure pleasure, too?” Miranda sat down in the empty chair on the other side of Winnie, where she could see her aunt and still keep her eye on Greg’s reaction.
“It’s pleasant in an entirely different way,” Winnie said, still smiling. “This place needed a new life and I’m so happy to be a part of making it come about.”
“I’m just glad to see it stop taking up your time,” Tate harrumphed. “How am I supposed to teach you the finer points of golf when you’re always party planning?”
Winnie shook her head. “You know I don’t spend any more hours on my volunteer work than you do ‘consulting’ for the company.”
“All right, no sniping. You’ll start sounding like us,” Ronald said, wagging a finger at his sister.
“Ron, honestly. The girls will think you mean that,” Trudy chided gently.
“They’ll think nothing of the kind,” Ronald said jovially. This openness was a side of her father Miranda never got tired of. “They are all too busy sighing over their own husbands and thinking dreamily of their first anniversaries to come, like ours and the Connellys’, to worry about what I’m saying.”
“Hey, I heard that!” Delia, who cruised by the table with an icy fruit drink in hand that almost matched her flowing Hawaiian sundress, put her free hand on her father’s shoulder. “And I’ll have you know I’m not thinking about anniversaries at all. I’m trying to figure out how I sweet-talk you into lending me Mom alone for about a month to help set up the nursery and look after me and this new grandbaby when it’s time.” She sighed dreamily. “Shaun has already put together the most beautiful bassinet, and now I want to decorate the room around it.”
“You might have to put up with both of us. I don’t know if I can let her out of my sight that long,” Ronald said, his eyes only on Trudy.
“That would mean you’d have to let somebody else run Seasons while you’re gone. Do you think you could stand that?” Trudy was forever testing his devotion to the reformed fabric company that now bore part of its original name again.
“For you, my dear, I’d walk away from it permanently. You know that,” Ronald told her.
Hearing that proclamation made Miranda’s heart swell in amazement at what God had worked in her father.
“Hawaii? Did I hear somebody’s going to Hawaii?” Kaitlyn Campbell raced up to the table, all seven-year-old high spirits. “Mom and Dad said next time we would all go, but we’d have to wait until after the baby’s born.” Portia and Mick, gathered with a few others from Unity, seemed to know their daughter was talking about them. From across the garden Portia waved, her other arm around her husband’s waist.
Delia leaned down to embrace her niece. “You can come whenever your parents say it’s all right, kiddo. Maybe they’d let me borrow you for Christmas break and we could start putting you on a boogie board.”
Miranda thought about telling Delia that she might not feel up to that only a few weeks after giving birth, but she kept silent. Her sisters were all grown women, happily married with lives of their own. Besides, they had a mother to point out such things. Her job as the oldest sister was just to watch it all happen and enjoy it now.
“You’ve got to be careful what you say around here,” Juliet broke in. “Next thing you know, the word’s going to go around that Delia and Shaun are having us all come for a Christmas party. Do you think you’d be ready for a baby dedication by then, too? We could get there from Paris, couldn’t we, Brandon?”
“Probably, if the design house lets you off and I could figure out some way to let somebody else run the European branch of Seasons, International, for a week or so,” her handsome husband said. “But that would mean celebrating our first anniversary in Hawaii with the family. Are you up for that?”
“Always,” Juliet said with a grin. “If this keeps up, we’re going to need to find some kind of bed-and-breakfast inn on Oahu to accommodate everybody.”
“And who’s paying for this? New York City police officers don’t make the kind of bucks corporate lawyers and business tycoons do,” Drew said. Rissa’s husband looked stern for a moment and Brandon began to apologize. Then Drew couldn’t hold his expression any longer and laughed. “Don’t worry about it, man. Rissa’s play will open off-Broadway by then and I think we can manage. It’s just fun to annoy you.”
“Who’s annoying who over here?” Bianca joined the group. “Somebody who isn’t being annoying can help me find Leo. I think he’s slipped off somewhere to make a few business calls on his cell phone and I want help reminding my husband that we agreed this was a ‘family only’ weekend.”
“Surely you can find some creative way to do it yourself,” Trudy suggested, bringing a slight blush to her daughter’s cheeks.
“Back to the dedication tomorrow,” Winnie said, her attitude more businesslike. “How much time should we allow for your talk, Greg?”
Miranda could see her husband pale for a moment, and then straighten up. “Not long. Only about ten minutes at the most. I figured that you and Ronald would be doing most of the talking. After all, it’s your parents that this place will honor.”
Miranda looked across the lawn to where the newly finished Howard and Ethel Blanchard Memorial Clinic stood ready to open its doors. The sprawling brick building was a far cry from the mansion her family had left after the fire. No one wanted to live there anymore after Peg’s destruction of the place.
“It has our name on it, son, but you better get used to talking about it. The director of New England’s largest Christian counseling center will need to have a voice,” Ronald told Greg.
“I suppose you’re right, sir. I’m still getting used to that, especially since I only consider myself the acting director until I finish school. That’s going to take years.”
“You’ve got such a gift for counseling, Gregory,” Trudy put in. “I can’t imagine finishing a doctorate in psychology will be overwhelming, especially at such a fine Christian school.”
Greg shrugged. “I’ll need the family prayer chain surrounding me for a while. I know that God has His hand on this undertaking, but it still overwhelms me at times.”
“This family can always surround us with prayer,” Miranda said, getting up and putting an arm around her husband. “They’re very, very good at it now that they’ve come back together with God as the head of the clan.”
“Amen,” Gregory told her, sealing the statement with a kiss. There in the garden, life continued with a celebration around them and Miranda knew, no matter what happened next, that with God’s love and her family’s help, life would unfold as He intended.