The wedding was here.
Or, more precisely, the bride was about to arrive.
Josh had helped Jean and everyone in the valley as much as he could, grateful for something else to think about other than the looming issue of Hal Braddon’s offer. Matt checked in—impatiently—every day, and so far Braddon hadn’t retracted his offer and even showed a tiny glimpse of impatience when Matt informed the man Josh was busy giving his stepsister away at her wedding.
Now, as he picked Violet and her maid of honor, Lucy, up from the airport, Josh felt surprisingly settled despite the nuptial whirlwind that was about to start.
“Lyle and all his family will be in later this afternoon. They rented a van to hold everyone. I can’t wait to see the look on his mother’s face when she sees where we are having the ceremony,” Violet gushed, all eager and bubbly. “You, too, Lucy. It’s gorgeous, isn’t it Josh?”
“Really beautiful,” Josh agreed, although he wasn’t even sure the two women heard him as they chatted happily over plans and details.
“Oh, and wait until you meet Mayor Jean. She’s the mayor of the town and she runs the weddings—can you imagine? She and Josh go all the way back to college, and we didn’t even know it until we visited earlier this month.”
Josh marveled at Violet’s ability to simplify what felt like a mountain of complicated history. “All the way back to college”? The way Violet said it made him feel rather ancient, despite that he wasn’t even yet thirty. Still, that gave him a reminder of what this wedding meant to Jean, as well as to his stepsister. Jean was going to give Violet a spectacular wedding, he was sure of it. It was fun to be cheering for everyone involved, right down to the florist, the baker and the church janitor, “Boss,” setting up the chairs.
No one ever called Boss by his real name, whatever it was, but he’d met the man getting breakfast one morning at Wanda’s and they’d taken an immediate liking to each other. Boss had invited him to come back to church on more than just Potluck Sundays. Jean had invited him to church. Pastor Mitchell had invited him to church. With that level of evangelism he ought to feel surrounded, but instead it just felt like a great big circle of welcome.
“Did you eat on the plane?” Josh asked as he turned off the highway to the road that led into the valley. Something happened to his pulse every time he made that turn. A surprising combination of quickening and slowing—a peaceful eagerness, if that made any sense. It came over him every time he entered the valley, as though he physically registered the absence of the place and his return to it. “We could swing by Wanda’s if you want, or I’m sure Hailey could send something up to your room.”
“Listen to him,” Violet remarked, “chatting about everyone like a local. He’s become hung up on the place, Lucy, I tell you.”
“Really?”
“Well, actually, he’s a bit hung up on the mayor. They were a thing back in college.”
Josh gave Violet a look that said “no more details” through the rearview mirror. Lucy and Violet had climbed in the back together so they could begin going over Violet’s enormous bridal notebook on the drive. Honestly, he’d launched entire versions of software with less documentation.
“Really?” Lucy’s voice held more curiosity than Josh would have liked.
“Don’t press me for details—he’s not sharing.” That wasn’t exactly true, but it served as a good out for Violet. He gave her a grateful look and continued driving. “Let’s just go straight to the inn, Josh. I want to get unpacked before I take Lyle and his family out to the falls.”
Josh pulled up to Hailey’s Inn Love to see Jean standing at the entrance with a small bouquet of flowers. She was beaming. This was her big day, too, in many ways. Violet’s wedding was a victory for everyone in Matrimony Falls, and that gave him reason to smile with every check he wrote. Money was fun. He was good at making it. Lots of people he knew were good at hoarding it, but Josh loved using it. Watching the things it made happen, the experiences it brought him, the ways it changed people’s lives. This wedding was all that and Violet’s happiness wrapped up in one event. The extraordinary circumstances that had led him to this weekend in this valley? Well, that was all just icing on the wedding cake.
Or providence, depending on whom you talked to. Josh was becoming more and more comfortable with his new possible position on Team Providence. The smile on his face as he ceremoniously opened the car door for Violet seemed to spread all the way to his fingertips. Happy. People always used that word, but never with the meaning as deep as he felt right now. This is a happy time in a happy place. Does anyone here get how rare that is?
“Hello, Violet!” Jean enveloped Violet in a huge hug, with Vi hugging her right back. “I’m so excited you’re here!”
Lucy looked at him, surprised. He just shrugged, gave her a “yep, that’s the way it is around here” look, and popped open the trunk to fetch the bags. Silicon Valley CEO turned chauffeur—would anyone back at SymphoCync believe it?
Introductions took a few seconds, and then Hailey appeared on the steps to sweep Violet and Lucy up to their rooms. Josh was grateful for the brief moments alone with Jean—his last chance for a while, he suspected.
“You did it,” he said, daring to grab her hand. “Matrimony Valley’s first bride is here for her wedding.”
“I barely slept last night,” Jean said, squeezing his hand. “And when I did sleep, I dreamed of all the things that could go wrong. I’m pretty sure an enormous mudslide could not take over the falls and wash away the bride in a mountain of black dirt, but it made for a very unsettling nightmare.”
“I’m sure.” He laughed. “You’ll be great. Everyone will be great. As chief bill payer, I think I’m entitled to give a little reassurance in that department.”
Her eyes took on a soft glow. “You. Here. I mean, would you ever have believed it?”
“I’m changing the way I think about a lot of things, Jean.” Why couldn’t he be within ten feet of her anymore without having to tamp down the urge to kiss her? Now that he’d stepped into his role as Jonah’s father, he was starting to want much more. Would the wedding about to surround them make that better, or worse?
* * *
The bliss of Violet’s arrival lasted exactly three hours.
Kelly burst into Jean’s office and pulled the door shut quickly behind her, her face filled with a wide-eyed panic. Something major was wrong.
This is the event business, she reminded herself. Things go wrong. But in the wedding business, things had to be put right for a happy bride. And not just right, but perfect. What bride ever wanted to look back on her special day and think, “We came pretty close”?
“Violet just called me in tears,” Kelly began. “She wants all the flowers changed. On twenty-four hours’ notice. On a holiday weekend.”
Jean stood up and came around the desk. “What? Wasn’t she dead set on purple irises?”
“She was. I bent over backward to find her purple irises. And now, with no time left, she wants all tulips. Absolutely no irises, and nothing in purple. Forget the fact that it’s going to cost a fortune. I’m not even sure it’s possible.”
Perhaps it was a blessing that Josh was already here. As the man writing the check, maybe he could be persuaded to talk Violet down off this particular floral ledge. Only Violet hadn’t really struck her as the kind to change her mind on the fly. There had to be a reason—and it felt like an emotional one, if she had to guess. “Any idea why?”
Kelly collapsed into the guest chair. “Oh, there’s a reason. I’m sure of it. This was some sort of emotional crisis thing—bigger than wedding jitters. But I don’t have the faintest idea what it is, and she’s not talking.”
All the more reason to speak to Josh. “How can I help?”
Kelly nodded to the desk outside Jean’s office. “Can I borrow Cathy for the afternoon? I’ll need her to cover the register—it’s going to take me all afternoon on the phone and the internet to track down what Violet wants.”
“Of course.” Young Cathy Bolton divided her time between serving as the town secretary and counter help at Kelly’s shop. Usually, demand was never so pressing that the dual roles collided. Maybe that wouldn’t be the case for much longer. Jean added it to the ever-growing mental list of adjustments to be made as Matrim’s Valley grew into Matrimony Valley.
“And then there’s the cost,” Kelly went on. “This is going to triple her bill. Maybe more. I’ve got to tell her that, but I don’t think she’ll hear it. Not right now. What do we do?”
“Why don’t I put in a phone call to Josh. He may be able to shed some light on the drama—or at least take it down a notch.”
“Good idea.” Kelly’s arched eyebrow asked a dozen questions about Josh that Jean didn’t have time to answer at the moment.
Jean picked up her cell phone, intending to text Josh and ask him to walk over from the inn. “Anything else?”
“Not unless you can produce tulips out of thin air by tomorrow.” Kelly rolled her eyes and put her hand to her forehead. “Not exactly Bridezilla, but...”
“I have a feeling there’s something at work here,” Jean said. “Give me an hour to see if I can get to the bottom of it before you kill yourself hunting down last-minute replacements.” She typed My office ASAP? Re: V and hit Send.
“I’ll let you know what I discover. I’ll send Cathy over as soon as she finishes a set of school board documents.”
“Great.”
Kelly was barely out the door when Jean’s phone let out a ding and showed Josh’s reply: On my way. Everything OK?
She typed Not sure. She’d have brushed her hair and freshened her lipstick for anyone, she told herself as she waited for Josh’s appearance.
He pushed through her door just a few minutes later, a concerned look on his face. “What’d Vi do?”
“She sent Kelly into a fit by completely changing her floral order. Absolutely no purple irises, after insisting on them. Out of the blue. Do you have any idea what’s behind this? Because Kelly will try and make it happen, but she’s worried the bill will shock you.”
Josh sank into the chair much the same way Kelly had. “I did this.”
Jean couldn’t quite work out how that could have happened. “You want to tell me how?”
Josh ran both hands through his hair. “You know Violet knows about Jonah.”
What did that have to do with a drastic last-minute floral crisis? “Yes. I thought you told me she was really supportive about it.”
“She was. She is,” Josh replied. “She’s been all gushy and happy about it, and how I’ll make a great dad. But you know Vi. She goes overboard.”
Jean sat in the chair opposite him. “I still don’t see what this has to do with flowers.”
Josh pinched the bridge of his nose. “She was going on again before Lyle and his family got here. Talking about fatherhood got her talking about my dad. Vi loved my dad. She didn’t have all the baggage I had with him, you know? They were close. I think maybe his death hit her harder than it hit me, even though he was her stepfather.” When he seemed to sense Jean still didn’t make the connection, he offered, “Purple irises were Dad’s favorite. That’s why she wanted them. She said they would make her feel like he was there.”
This was heading to a dangerous place. “Oh,” she said, noting the regret in Josh’s eyes.
“She was going on and on about missing Dad, and that’s not my favorite subject these days, as you can imagine. So I don’t know what came over me. She was putting him on such a pedestal, and it was getting to me. I might have...told her what he did to you.”
There had been a time when only two people on earth knew what Bartholomew Tyler had done. There had been a time, after his death, when she carried that knowledge alone. Now it felt like an ever-widening ripple, sending shock waves out across the water in all directions.
It all comes home to roost. Over and over.
“Oh, no.” How strangely all their lives intersected—no, tangled—now. She was beginning to see how God could transform this situation into a kind of good, but that didn’t entirely outrun the widening circle of pain. Funny how she’d always seen the “Matrimony Valley” concept as bringing happiness into the valley. It would, she hoped, but today it was hard to see how they got there from here.
“She’s upset. I upset her. I don’t think she ever thought of Dad as someone capable of that. It’s always bothered me, how she saw him. I resented it, I suppose, how he never seemed to show that side of himself to her. As though she were exempt from the demands I was under.” He slumped back in the chair. “On some level, I think I knew what it would do to her to learn what he’d done. And I told her anyway. Today of all days.” He looked over at Jean. “Why did I do that? What was the point of her knowing? She didn’t need to know—I had no right to taint her memory of him. Couldn’t I have just let her have her happiness?”
Jean sighed. “Pain never feels fair. No one wants more than their share. I could have let Bartholomew’s sins die with him, but I didn’t. I know it explained my silence in some ways, but I also admit there was some selfish revenge in watching you hurt the way I had.”
Josh’s eyes darkened. “It’s not the same. You had every right to tell me. It’s important that I know. It shocked me that he’d go to that length, do that to you and to Jonah, but I can’t say it surprised me. I knew what kind of man my father was. You didn’t taint my view of him.”
“And now you’ve tainted Violet’s view of her father.”
“Tainted? I think Kelly’s trashed flower order tells us I’ve done a bit more than that. It’s like she can’t even stomach the idea of his memory at her wedding now. I didn’t have any right to do that, even if it is the truth.”
Jean leaned on the chair arm. “We’re all just trying to make sense of this, Josh. We all feel like we’ve been blindsided. It’s hard to take the route of grace when we’re still reeling ourselves.”
“But this is Vi and her wedding. This is Matrimony Valley’s first bride. This isn’t supposed to be about me, and I made it about me.” He shook his head. “How do I fix this?”
“Let’s start with you talking to Violet. Get Lyle to talk to her. This is about much more than which flowers are at the ceremony. Help her work through her emotions.”
Josh laughed. “Sure. Right after I figure out mine.” He held Jean’s gaze again, still with that unmoored look that caught her up short. “What do we do here, Jean? I’ve been a first-class jerk, and I don’t know how to fix it.”
Jean straightened, willing herself into uncharted waters. “I know what my dad would say if he were here.”
“What’s that?”
“Sometimes God takes us to a place where we have no answers to remind us that He does.”
“That sounds like something your dad would say.” He raised a dark eyebrow. “Do you believe that?”
She sighed. “I don’t believe in coincidences.” She waved her hand in the air between them. “All this is too much to be chance, don’t you think?”
“Are you asking me if I think God’s behind my appearance in Matrimony Valley?”
She paused for a moment, wanting to get the words right. “I’m asking you if it makes any sense any other way. Surely even you can see the divine design in this, how it’s far too particular to be random.”
It pleased her that he didn’t brush off the notion. She could see him reach out, pushing his brilliant intellect to wrap around such an idea. “It’s getting a little hard to ignore, I’ll grant you that.”
“Go talk to Violet. Help her see that what your father may have planned for bad still worked out for good. That what Bartholomew did to you doesn’t change who he was for her. Maybe that will help calm her down.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
She gave him a thin smile. “Then get your checkbook ready, because if she still wants to change her flowers, it’s going to cost you plenty.”