Summer hated seeing Ben so hurt. With his father back in town, it was almost as if all the progress he’d made in coping with his depression was now wiped clean. She recognized the sullen expression and dull look in his eyes from when they’d first met almost a year ago. He’d been ready to take his own life then, and while depression wasn’t an illness that could ever fully be cured, Ben had taken great strides toward living a happier life.
For her part, Summer had learned to read his body language, to figure whether he needed to be redirected toward something positive or given a bit of time to unwind and clear his brain. This time, though, neither of those techniques seemed to be the solution.
She smiled as much as she could and told him again and again how much she loved him during their rehearsal dinner, but his posture remained overly stiff and his face stayed stuck in a frown. This wasn’t depression, but rather anger—which was almost the exact opposite.
Ben had always been a sensitive, kind man, and she had never seen him quite like this before. Maybe her idea to spend the rest of the week apart was a bad one, after all. Her fiancé needed her, and she needed to be there for him.
“Ben,” she said, turning to him as they walked toward the door of Mabel’s and prepared to go out into the night.
He grunted, which she took to mean he was listening.
“I don’t want to—”
The moment they pushed the door open, a dark cloth covered Summer’s face. She heard laughter and shrieks but couldn’t see anything.
“Bye, I love you!” Ben shouted as Summer was forced into the front seat of a car.
“What’s going on?” she demanded. “I need to get back to Ben. He—”
“Will be just fine,” Elise answered from beside her, just seconds before the engine roared to life.
The familiar fragrance of strawberries drifted forward from the back seat as Jennifer leaned forward and said, “We promise to be kind and benevolent captors,” and then exploded in a giggle.
Kristina Rose spoke up next. “Guys, it’s not really a surprise if we’re all going to talk and give ourselves away. Maybe we should just take off her blindfold?”
“No!” Elise insisted. “This is the way they do it in the movies, so this is the way we’re going to do it, too.”
“Who cares about the movies?” Kristina Rose argued, but she seemed to be alone in her opinion.
“Oh, I wish that I could offer you a drink to calm your nerves,” Maisie said, “but there’s that pesky no-open-containers rule, and the last thing we need is a ticket. After all, it’s your car.”
“You kidnapped me and stole my car?” Summer squeaked. It was hot beneath the blindfold, and she longed to yank it off.
“As your maid of honor, it’s up to me to make sure you end your single life in style,” Elise pointed out. “Believe me, this will be a night to remember long after you become Mrs. Ben Davis.”
“Speaking of Mr. Ben Davis,” Summer said sadly, “I’m worried about him. Can I get a raincheck on whatever this is?”
“Why, I never,” Elise gasped.
Jennifer leaned forward and spoke much too loudly right next to Summer’s ear. “No way! You only get one chance at a bachelorette party. Take it from someone who skipped out on hers. You don’t want to miss this.”
“Aww, Jenn,” Maisie said. “I had no idea you felt that way. Maybe we can make tonight your party, too. Do you mind sharing, Summer?”
Summer shrugged. Sure, Jennifer could have this night all to herself. Summer had other things to worry about. She tried to answer, “I—”
“But I’m already married!” Jennifer argued.
“So what?” Elise crooned. “It’s not like we’re the kind of girls to hire a stripper and invite him back to our hotel room. This is just wild and crazy girl-bonding time, Sweet Grove style.”
Kristina Rose spoke next. “I know you’re worried about Ben, sweetie, but Pastor Bernie and the others will make sure he’s taken care of. Susan, too. In fact, I’ll call Jeffrey right now, if it will put your mind at ease.”
They all waited as Kristina Rose placed a call to her boyfriend with the phone on speaker.
“Yes, of course. I have some bachelor party ideas of my own,” Jeffrey said.
“Oooh, scandalous!” Jennifer said.
Jeffrey chuckled. “Nothing like that. We’re having an all-night Call of Duty marathon.”
“Sounds boring,” Maisie said.
“Did you invite Liam?” Jennifer asked.
“Yeah, but he said no. It’s not like we can’t all play games after Ben gets married, so we’ll get him another time.”
“Okay, thanks, babe. I’ve gotta go.”
“Bye. I love you,” Kristina Rose said softly, and Summer could just picture the lovesick grin she most likely wore on her face as she said those three little words to her very own dream man.
“Love you, too,” Jeffrey answered, then made a smacking noise in imitation of a kiss.
Everyone in the car howled and teased Kristina Rose.
“Oh, shut up. We’re all adults here, and half of us are married or almost there anyway.”
“Speaking of almost there,” Summer said, at last feeling better about leaving Ben behind for the evening now. “Where are we going?”
“I told you, it’s a surprise,” Elise said at the exact same moment that Jennifer said, “To Austin.”
“Well, there goes the surprise!” Elise groaned.
“Really, Elise. Get over it. I mean, where else were we going to go?” Kristina Rose asked. “Were we going to drive into the Gulf of Mexico?”
“Maybe, but now we’ll never know,” Elise whined. “Fine, fine, just take the blindfold off. The whole surprise is spoiled now anyway.”
Summer rubbed at her eyes after the heavy cloth was untied. “I really don’t know why you had to kidnap me, or why we couldn’t have just gone to the Rusty Nail.”
“We do that every week,” Elise said as she took one hand from the steering wheel and used it to fiddle with the buttons on the radio. “Tonight needs to be special. It’s not every week one of our best friends marries one of our other best friends. Right, Kristina Rose?”
“Pressure much, Elise? Yeah, I’ll probably marry Jeffrey one day, but he hasn’t exactly asked yet. Besides, we have a lot to keep us busy with the restaurant. We’re not in any hurry.”
“Yeah, not like Miss Cinderella’s Castle over here,” Maisie teased Jennifer.
“What? It was perfect for us. I regret nothing.”
“How about you, Summer?” Maisie asked. “Any regrets?”
“About marrying Ben? Not a single one,” she said, feeling with every beat of her heart that this was the greatest truth she had ever known.
“Well, Maisie, I guess it’s up to you and me to hold down the fort,” Elise said with an exaggerated sigh.
“What fort?” Maisie laughed. “Fort spinster? Yeah, okay.”
“Get with this century,” Elise teased. “We’re not spinsters. We’re strong, independent women who don’t need a man to define them.”
“Excuse me!” Jennifer and Kristina Rose cried together.
Then an old song by Destiny’s Child came on the radio, and they all belted out the lyrics at the top of their lungs as they drove deeper into the night.
Summer could barely see the road before them, but somehow she knew it would be okay—this bachelorette party, her life with Ben, all of it. That’s what taking a leap of faith was all about. It meant continuing forward even if you didn’t have all the steps figured out just yet.
First, she’d have whatever fun her friends had planned for tonight, and then she’d go back to the business of living out her forever with Ben at her side.
* * *
Ben watched as Summer’s friends wrapped a blindfold around her head and stuffed his bride-to-be into the passenger’s side of her own car. He would have laughed at the ridiculous, over-the-top antics of Summer’s bridesmaids if he weren’t so distracted by his rage.
“Ben,” his mother said softly, coming up behind him. “Can we please go home now?”
“Sure, let’s go.” Ben and Susan started the walk toward home, seeing as they still couldn’t afford a car with his low-paying job at the Market and Susan out of work for the past several years. They didn’t make it too far past the edge of the parking lot when an old truck pulled up beside them. The window rolled down to reveal Pastor Bernie.
“Hop in,” he said, and Ben knew the pastor wouldn’t take no for an answer, no matter how much Ben needed the fresh night air to cool his head.
A few short minutes and they were home. Unfortunately, so was another former resident of 1701 May Lane.
“Should I stick around?” the pastor asked, looking from John Davis to Ben and back again, worry furrowing his auburn brow.
“I’m going inside,” Susan announced, hopping out of the car and walking on unsteady feet toward the door.
“Please don’t upset him,” she said to her ex-husband, her voice drifting in through the truck’s open windows as she reached around John to unlock the door, then disappeared inside.
“Thanks for the ride home,” Ben told the pastor, and he took a deep breath before getting out of the truck and slamming the door behind him.
“I told you to stay away,” he said through gritted teeth, trying his best not to look at the man he had once called “Father.”
John strode confidently toward his son and placed a hand on Ben’s shoulder, but Ben shook it off and gave the man the coldest look he could summon, once again wishing his eyes had the ability to produce actual daggers.
“Ben, I love you, and I want to be a part of your life.”
“Now?” Ben spat. “Now! Where were you when Mom practically killed herself with drinking? Where were you when I was about to follow in Stephen’s footsteps and shoot my brains out? Where were you when we couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage? When anything important happened during these last few years? That’s right. You were off with your younger, happier family, pretending we didn’t exist.”
“Son, it’s not like that. I can explain—”
“Why bother? Actions have always spoken louder than words. Except there’s one word that speaks volumes—Stephanie.”
“Your little sister? She—”
“She’s not my sister, and you’re not my father. How could you do this to Mom? How could you do that to Stephen’s memory?”
The other man looked genuinely distraught, but Ben didn’t care. Even if he regretted things now, this fresh remorse came much too late. “Please, let me talk,” Ben’s father begged. “I’ve never stopped—”
“Why should I let you talk? It’s way too little way too late. You’re not part of this family anymore, and that’s a choice you made. Not Mom. Not me. You.”
John drew closer to his son and opened his arms, whether to request a hug or give Ben an easy shot wasn’t entirely clear.
Still, Ben mumbled, “If you try to touch me again, I’ll punch you in the face.”
Another car door slammed, and a second later Pastor Bernie was standing there beside them. He towered over both the Davis men by a good half foot, giving him an exaggerated sense of authority. “John, it’s been a long time,” he said. “Can I take you out for a drink? To catch up?”
Ben’s father cast another doleful glance at his son before clapping Bernie on the back and turning back toward the driveway. “Yeah, that sounds good. As long as you let me treat.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Bernie said with a chuckle, which cut through the tension at once.
Ben stood rooted in place until the illumination from the truck’s headlights faded back to black night. Mom, he remembered in a panic and raced inside, hoping it wouldn’t be too late.
He found his mother on the sofa. A single lamp lit the room as she stared down at a full bottle of vodka. She held the liquor firmly with both hands, staring at it so intently Ben wondered if she could even see it at all.
He racked his brain for the right words. Should he tell her he understood, remind her of how much she stood to lose, how far she’d come? Before he could settle on what to say, Susan spoke out in a strange, emotionless voice.
“We alcoholics are good at hiding. We hide our sickness, hide our problems, even hide our booze. Did you know I had this one stashed away in the attic just in case?”
She laughed, but it held no mirth, no anger, nothing.
“I still remember the day your father left. It was a Tuesday, like today. He took everything he could fit in the car and then just drove away. I didn’t stop him. I wanted him to go. Somehow I had come to blame him for all our problems, even for what happened with Stephen. I looked at him, and I just felt so angry.” Her entire posture stiffened as if also recalling a muscle memory from those rage-filled days.
“The hate had become so huge that there was no more space for love, for understanding, for anything else. Our marriage was dead long before your father left.” She looked up at her son and studied him as if only just realizing he’d joined her. “He did the right thing, Ben. I’m every bit as much to blame as he is. Probably more so.”
“Mom, no, that’s not the way it was. He—”
“Is a flawed human being just like you, just like me, like Stephen. You can’t hold on to your rage forever. Otherwise you’ll never learn how to cope. You’ll run straight to a Band-Aid solution. Maybe you’ll become a drunk like me. Maybe your hate for your father will fill you up so full that you won’t have any room left to love Summer.”
Ben bristled. His voice came out harsher than he intended, but that was one accusation he could not allow to slip by. “I will always love Summer,” he said through clenched teeth.
Susan sighed and set the bottle of vodka down on the coffee table. “And believe it or not, I will always love your father. It’s not the same as it was, but we had many good years together. He gave me the best things in life. He gave me you, Ben.”
“But he hurt us.”
“I hurt us far more than he did. I hurt him, too. When I was drinking, I wasn’t myself. It’s like I surrendered myself completely to the drug, and the drug possessed me, became me. Your father had married the smart, funny, good singer, Susan. He hadn’t married Booze-an.” She laughed at her own joke, the light began to return to her eyes.
“Please forgive your father. Let go of the resentment, start your married life with a clear head and heart. And for the love of all that is holy, take this bottle away from me before I forget my head.”
Ben grabbed the bottle from its spot on the coffee table and headed toward the kitchen to empty it down the drain, but his mother stopped him. He turned to face her, but she’d gone back to staring straight ahead. He fixed his eyes on her wavy brown hair as she spoke.
“Just because our marriage didn’t last doesn’t mean yours is doomed to fail. Learn from the mistakes your father and I made. You love learning, so learn this: People make mistakes, but they are not defined by them. Learn, grow, and never forget to put love first. Put God first, and you’ll have many happy years together.”
“Thanks, Mom.” He wanted to hug her then, but he didn’t want to upset her in her fragile state, and the full bottle of vodka burned in his hands. He needed to expel this poison from their lives.
“And please find a way to forgive your father,” his mother said when he returned from emptying the bottle in the sink. “If not for him, do it for yourself. Ben, you deserve everything in life. And above all else, you deserve to be happy.”
“So do you, Mom. So do you.”
She let out a dry laugh. “I’ve been happy in my life. Now, more than anything, I want you to have everything you’ve always dreamed of for yourself and everything I’ve dreamed of for you as well.”
“But what about you, Mom?”
“You being happy makes me happy. One day you’ll understand. When you’re a parent yourself.”
Ben smiled to himself as he pictured a future version of Summer wearing the blue-patterned smock of St. Joseph’s as she delivered their first child into the world. There was so much in life he had yet to experience, so much more he wanted.
But he couldn’t understand why his mother had given up on those things for herself.
“Besides Summer, you’re the only family I’ve got,” he pointed out. “We need to take care of each other. I’m not giving up on you, Mom.”
“Okay,” she whispered. “Then don’t give up on your father, either.”