My brain has switched to autopilot. I’m not sure how I arrived at my small bungalow on the edge of town. At some point, I must have put the page back in Dad’s journal, cleaned the mess in the living room, fed the cats, and driven home. But it’s all a fog. I keep picturing myself as a little girl, donning my mother’s veil and her oversized white high heels, walking down a pretend aisle on my daddy’s arm toward Scooby, our very first family dog. A great stand-in groom, may he rest in peace. The memories wrap around my heart and squeeze tight while my mind worries those five words raw.
Walk Emma down the aisle.
The pit in my stomach grows—deepening and widening while I walk haphazardly through the yard. As sick as the discovery has made me, at least I saw it now instead of after, when it would have been too late. At least I have a chance to do something. My thoughts scramble this way and that, grappling for a solution, until one comes—wild and half-baked. What if I called up Chase and told him I changed my mind? Never mind the fact that I ripped his heart out two years ago; we should get married after all. Would he hear me out, or would he hang up the second I announced myself on the other end of the line?
I step onto my porch, over two loose floorboards, and stop. The front door is ajar. My brow furrows at the thin strip of space that leads into my home. Forgetting to lock up is one thing—a common side effect of growing up in a tiny northern Wisconsin town. But forgetting to shut the door all the way?
No, I wouldn’t do that.
Which means the latch must be broken—one of many broken things in my well-loved home. It’s a perfectly logical explanation, and yet I find myself clutching my purse tighter as I quietly open the screen door. This is the moment in scary movies when viewers scream, “You fool, don’t go inside!” I step over the threshold anyway. This is Mayfair. There are no serial killers. There probably aren’t even any burglars. Even so, the lack of greeting from Samson has me on edge. A vision of my beloved pooch drugged and dragged into the bathroom while some drug dealer strips my home for cash flashes through my mind. It is the epitome of far-fetched. Knowing this, however, does not stop me from exchanging my purse for the vase on the sofa table.
Muffled sounds come from the kitchen.
I raise the vase over my shoulder, prepared to hurl it at the perpetrator’s head. I am creeping toward the noise when, out of nowhere, Jake Sawyer steps into view. I yelp. He jumps. And the vase falls to the floor with a heavy clunk.
“You scared me half to death!” I say, clutching my chest.
“Who did you think I was—Ted Bundy?”
“I had no idea. You didn’t announce yourself.”
“My truck’s in your driveway.”
“It is?” I look over my shoulder, as if I might see through the walls of my house. How did I not notice Jake’s truck on my way in? Then I remember those five words on my dad’s bucket list, the ones that had me on autopilot. “Where’s Samson?”
“Out back chasing squirrels.” He cocks his head in that way he does whenever he’s concerned. “You okay?”
I wave my hand, then bend over and retrieve the vase. Not even a chip. The thing is made of thick, sturdy glass—the kind of material that probably wouldn’t have knocked out a burglar so much as killed him. I’m very thankful I didn’t chuck it at Jake’s head. “What are you doing here?”
He holds up a wrench. “You said your kitchen sink faucet was leaking.”
“Oh, right.” I return the vase to the sofa table and cup my forehead, trying to gain my bearings. “You didn’t have to come over on your day off.”
Jake runs his father’s hardware store. Arthritis makes it hard for Mr. Sawyer to do much besides chat with the customers, so Jake does all the real work. And whenever he’s not working there, he spends time in his gigantic man-shed, making and restoring furniture. He calls it a hobby, but I know better. Jake is a craftsman. If it wasn’t for loyalty to his dad, I have every bit of confidence he could turn his “hobby” into a lucrative, full-time profession.
“I figured I needed to fix the leak before Mayor Altman issued you a citation.”
I smile, but only just. Our mayor has recently gone on a crusade to make Mayfair a “green” town. His enthusiasm over the cause has failed to spread to the rest of us.
Jake scratches the dark stubble on his chin, studying me like I studied the vase a moment ago. I wonder if he sees any cracks. “I was on my way out to get my toolbox.”
“Oh, okay.” My conversational skills are riveting today.
He heads outside, the screen door whapping shut behind him. The shock of finding that list, followed by the onslaught of adrenaline, has me out of sorts. I need to go upstairs and get cleaned up for the Fall Harvest Festival committee meeting. My best friend is the committee coordinator and has finagled me into joining in the planning, which means I should march up the stairs, wash up, change into something nice, and forget I ever saw Dad’s bucket list. But chirping birds and late morning sunlight woo me outside. I sit on sun-warmed floorboards and rest my elbows on my knees.
Walk Emma down the aisle.
He never would have written those words if he would have known I’d see them, but I did see them and it can’t be undone. Those five words are seared into my conscious, worse than the most stubborn of stains.
Jake pulls his toolbox from the bed of his rusted-out Chevy.
I squint at him as he walks toward me—broad shoulders clad in a flannel shirt, unbuttoned over a simple gray tee, backward Milwaukee Brewers ball cap, with his perpetual five o’clock shadow and eyes the color of the sky overhead. I wait for him to walk past. Instead, he sets his toolbox on the porch and sits beside me, bringing with him the unmistakable scents of cedar and pine. It’s a fragrance that will forever and always be Jake. “Something on your mind, Emma?”
Should I tell him what I saw? Should I tell him about my crazy, half-cocked idea? This is Jake, after all. Buddies with my ex-fiancé, sure, but also my brother’s best and oldest friend—which would make him like a brother to me, if not for the giant crush I hid over the course of my growing-up years. He’s a guy who has the whole quick to listen, slow to speak thing perfected. I rub my eyes with the heels of my palms, thankful I’m not one for mascara. “I found my dad’s bucket list.”
“Bucket list?”
“Everything he wants to accomplish before he . . . you know.”
Jake gives a slow, comprehending nod.
“Almost everything is crossed off.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Three are left. One he’ll be able to cross off as soon as he returns from Door County. Another I’m sure is in the works. And then the last one is completely outside of his control.” I grip my elbows. “But not mine.”
Jake raises his eyebrows. “What is it?”
“Walk Emma down the aisle.” And there it is, gathering quicker than I can blink—moisture in my eyes. I swipe at a lone tear and look away. “On my way home, I was contemplating calling Chase.”
“Chase?” Jake says the name with disgust, like he can’t believe my nerve.
“I know, but it’s my dad. And this is finally something I can give him. You know how much I’ve been looking for a way to help. Well, here it is.” Selfishly, I want it for myself too. What girl wants the sole memory of her father walking her down an aisle to be of her six-year-old self saying I do to an overweight, crooked-eyed Boston terrier?
Jake scratches his jaw. “Do you still love Chase?”
I shake my head, hating the answer even as I give it. I’m not sure if I ever really loved Chase, at least not in the way brides are supposed to love their grooms. He was a safe bet. I knew exactly what our life would be together. Until Dad got cancer and all bets were off, even the safe ones. “But he’s a great guy. We get along. People get married for a lot less.”
Jake takes off his cap and runs his hand over his dark hair as he looks out at my overgrown lawn and the leaves rustling on the branches of my maple tree. I can guess what he’s thinking. Chase and Jake were friends, and I broke Chase’s heart. Surely there’s some sort of guy code that requires Jake to watch his buddy’s back. Keep the ex far, far away. He slides his baseball hat back onto his head. “If you’re looking for a groom, I can do it.”
“What?”
“I’ll be your groom.”
I laugh. “Be serious . . .”
“I am being serious.”
“You can’t be my groom.”
“Because you’re not . . . I’m not . . .” I fumble my words, trying to grasp one of a thousand different reasons. “You have a girlfriend.”
He pulls his chin back. “A girlfriend?”
“That mystery woman the bunco ladies are always gabbing about.”
He cocks his head, like he’s disappointed I would believe anything that comes from the mouth of a sixty-year-old woman wearing a pink T-shirt with the words Bunco Babe on it.
“What—there’s no mystery woman?”
He shakes his head, a hint of amusement in his eyes.
“But why?”
“The bunco ladies kept trying to set me up. I kept saying no. So they made an assumption I didn’t bother to correct.”
“No, I don’t mean why isn’t there a mystery woman. I mean why would you offer to be my groom? That’s . . . that’s . . . a little different than fixing my faucet.”
Jake’s cheeks turn pink, and Jake never blushes. He scuffs his work boot against the cement. Drags his broad palm down his face. My ravenous curiosity eats up more and more of my shock the longer he makes me wait. What could possibly motivate him to make such an offer?
“Ben.” The name escapes on an exhale—shockingly unexpected.
“You’re offering to be my groom because of your brother?”
“Remember when Ben made it to the Lumberjack World Championships in Hayward?”
“He was the town celebrity.” I smile a sad smile. Despite graduating in the same class, Ben and I were never close. Our link was always Jake. Whenever we ran into each other, like people do in small towns, that’s who we’d talk about—Jake, and how he was liking life in Milwaukee. But now Jake is back in Mayfair, and Ben . . .
“He begged me to come watch him compete. It was a big deal.”
“You didn’t know what would happen.” Nobody did. Not a single person on this earth could have predicted that two days into the tournament, Ben would die in a freak accident. Everyone had high hopes that Hayward would be the first of many world championships for the youngest Sawyer boy.
“Doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t go.”
I pull at the sleeves of my sweatshirt, wishing I could change the subject, wishing I could take away the sadness clouding Jake’s eyes. Seems that’s all I do these days—wish, wish, wish. Only there isn’t a genie in sight and the stars aren’t out yet.
“It was the only time Ben ever asked me for anything. And I didn’t give it to him.”
“Jake . . .”
“Trust me, Emma, you don’t want to live with regret.” He lets out his breath, then sets his hands on the floorboards behind us, leans back into his arms, and nudges me with his shoulder. “Besides, it’d get the Bunco Babes off my back. You can be my mystery woman.”
The words unleash a flutter in my chest. I tell myself it’s a silly, leftover reaction from days long gone. “Okay, but what happens after? I mean, you’d be . . . we’d be . . .” The rising heat in my cheeks makes me want to pull my hood over my head.
He clears his throat. “It wouldn’t be a real wedding. I mean, we wouldn’t sign the marriage certificate.”
“Oh, right.”
The crease between his eyebrows deepens. “Unless . . .”
I wave my hand, shooing away whatever his unless might be. I mistook his friendship once before. I promised myself a long time ago I would never make that assumption again. “No, of course that’s what we’d do. But Jake, you don’t have to do this. I mean, it would be . . .”
“Crazy?”
I laugh. “Beyond.”
“Crazy’s not all bad. I’ve actually heard that crazy can be fun.” He smiles at me then—the kind of smile that is bracketed between a pair of parenthetical dimples. “So what do you say, Emma? You want to be crazy with me?”
It’s nothing like my first proposal. There is no ring or flower bouquet or man on one knee professing his undying devotion. There is no hesitation either. Without letting myself think about the consequences or implications, I say yes to Jake Sawyer. For my dad.