“Daddy…you took such good care of me, if you don’t mind, I would appreciate it if you’d do the same for my mother. She’s been alone for a very long time, but I think you and Hannah will like her. She’s a lot like me.”
Once the grave was covered, they laid a single wreath of roses at the foot, then walked arm in arm back through the dusk to the brightly lit ranch house. It was symbolic of new beginnings as they walked out of the dark into the light.
Epilogue
“B
ud! Bud! They’re here!” Holly cried, as two cars pulled up in front of the house.
Without waiting, she burst out of the house and then leaped off the porch. Her sisters were home!
Maria got out first, accompanied by a tall, lanky man wearing jeans and a sport coat, but it was the Stetson and the cowboy boots that made Holly smile.
Of course Maria had fallen for a cowboy. Just because he wore a badge, it didn’t change the facts.
“Maria! Maria! Welcome home!” Holly cried, and then hugged her sister fiercely before stepping back to give her a once-over. “Are you healed?”
“In body, yes. In spirit…I’m getting there,” Maria said, then grabbed her fiancé, Bodie, and pulled him forward. “Honey, now is not the time to stand on ceremony. Come meet the heart of our home, my sister Holly. Holly, this is Bodie Scott.”
Holly held out her hand. Bodie grinned, then bypassed the hand and swept her off her feet with a big hug and kiss. By the time he put her down, Bud was coming out of the house and smiling.
That was when the doors of the second car opened.
Savannah was squealing and waving even before she got out of the car. Both sisters headed toward her on the run.
“Be prepared,” Bud told Bodie. “These three are bonded like glue. You may as well meet the baby of the family now, so we can get back inside.”
Back in the house, Maria and Savannah cornered Bud, giving him grief for keeping his feelings for Holly hidden for so long.
“I can’t believe all this happened behind my back,” Savannah said. “I’m so happy about these weddings I could die.”
All of a sudden there was a hush in the room.
“Seriously poor choice of words, baby sister,” Maria said.
Everyone laughed, grateful for the break in the tension, and then Holly began organizing the crowd.
“Since your flights landed so late, you do realize there’s not going to be a wedding rehearsal, right?”
“I don’t need to practice saying ‘I do,’” Bud drawled. “I’ve been saying it in my heart for years.”
“For that you win a prize,” Holly said, and kissed him soundly. “So now that that’s settled, we’ll talk details while we eat. I’ve been cooking for days.”
They bypassed the dining room, gathering instead in the big warm kitchen, filling their plates from the casseroles and platters lining the sideboard, and then sitting down to eat at the long wooden table that had held many a meal.
It had been decided that the men would all spend the night at Judd’s ranch, giving the sisters their last night together alone.
Later, after the food had been eaten and the dishes washed and put away, they went into the living room to trade horror stories about what they had gone through. Savannah was holding court with a harrowing story when the phone began to ring.
Maria was closest and answered it without thought.
“Triple S.”
“Is this Holly?”
“No, I’m her sister Maria. May I ask who’s calling?”
“Tell her it’s Detective Carver from St. Louis. I need to speak to her.”
Maria put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Hey! Holly. There’s a Detective Carver on the phone for you.”
Suddenly Holly looked nervous. “I’ll take it in the other room,” she said, and bolted before Bud could stop her.
As soon as Maria heard her pick up, she replaced the receiver, but she could tell by the look on Bud’s face that all had not been revealed.
“What’s going on?”
Bud put a finger to his lips, indicating silence. The room went quiet. In the distance, they could hear the faint murmur of Holly’s voice, although they couldn’t hear what was being said. Then they heard a sharp cry. Bud got to his feet, but Holly was already coming back into the room.
Her step was light, and there was a smile on her face that went all the way to her soul.
“I just got the best wedding present ever,” she said. “The DNA results just came back. There’s a 99.99 percent certainty that Harold Mackey is
not
my father. Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!
”
She started to laugh—a high-pitched crazy kind of laugh that, once started, had no place to stop. Bud flinched.
Here it comes.
He had known this moment would happen. The wall she’d built around her was coming down. By the time he reached her, she was sobbing.
It was evident to everyone what the news meant to her: no more fear of tainted blood being passed through her to generations to come.
Judd and Bodie left the room, giving her the space she needed to both grieve and rejoice. Holly was prostrate, her legs too weak to stand. Bud got her to her feet and into a chair, then knelt beside her.
“It’s okay, baby,” he said softly. “It’s okay. You go ahead and cry. It’s about time you let go.”
Maria and Savannah pushed past him and surrounded her chair, touching her hands, her face, reminding her that the family she really belonged to was already here and surrounding her with love.
Holly couldn’t quit crying. Even when she tried, a fresh set of tears would well back up. It was killing Bud, and she knew it, but she couldn’t stop.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and started kissing his face and neck and lips, over and over.
“I’m fine, Bud, I swear. I’ll quit when all the bad stuff is washed from my soul. It’s late. You take Judd and Bodie and go. We’ll see you tomorrow morning at the church, and I promise I’ll have the happiest face of all.”
Bud didn’t know how he was going to walk out of this house when there were tears on her face.
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“We’ll be with her,” Savannah said.
“We’re all sleeping together anyway,” Maria added. “We’ll put her in the middle like always, so she doesn’t fall out of bed.”
Holly’s eyes widened, and just like that, the tears turned to laughter. The first few years of her life when they’d all been small, they really had always put her in the middle to keep her from falling out of bed.
By the time Bud kissed her goodbye and left the room, they were laughing. That was the sound that followed him out the door.
Later, the house was quiet. Outside, the night was broken by the occasional howl of a coyote and an answering yip from another on a faraway ridge.
They’d all crawled into Andrew’s bed to sleep. It was the closest they could get to him now that he was gone. As promised, Holly lay in the middle, flanked by the sisters of her heart. They’d been talking and then stopping, swearing they needed to sleep, and then one of them would start a conversation all over again.
But it was Savannah who finally topped the night off with an announcement.
“You know that I’m now sinfully rich, right?”
Holly giggled.
Maria poked her. “Don’t brag.”
“It’s just a fact,” Savannah said. “I got both of you a special wedding present. Thomas Jefferson, who is my lawyer and whom you will meet tomorrow, helped me get them for you.”
“I didn’t get you anything. We all said we weren’t buying each other presents,” Maria said.
“I didn’t get anything, either,” Holly said.
“I don’t need anything but you two,” Savannah said. “Since my grandmother’s murder, you two and Bud are all the family I have left. My entire birth family is either dead or in prison because of that money. It’s time it was put to good use, so FYI…I had a million dollars deposited into each of your bank accounts.”
They gasped in unison.
“Savannah! You can’t do that! It’s too much!” Holly insisted as Maria nodded furiously in agreement.
Savannah shrugged. “I can and I did, and you’re welcome. Now be quiet. We need to get some sleep.”
Suddenly she was bombarded with pillows, and the house was filled again with laughter.
The John Wesley United Methodist Church in Missoula was packed to the walls, the pews filled with longtime friends of Andrew and his girls. The open invitation to the triple wedding had been announced a week ago in church, and anticipation had been mounting.
The brides had commandeered a Sunday school classroom at one end of the church and were using it as a dressing room, while the men had taken over the pastor’s study at the other end.
A florist was running madly from one end of the church to the other, pinning miniature white roses on the men’s lapels, and then dashing to the far end of the church with three wedding bouquets. The church was awash in flowers and greenery, but there were no bridesmaids and no best men. By the time the three couples got lined up around the altar, there wouldn’t be room left for anyone else but the pastor who would marry them.
The ushers, however, were strangers to the crowd, and whispers abounded as they were being seated.
One was a bald giant of a black man in an elegant suit named Thomas Jefferson, who was in fact Savannah’s lawyer and the man who’d helped save her life. The shorter, older man with cropped graying hair and hard, steely eyes went by the name of Whiteside and was the ex-CIA man who’d sacrificed everything he owned to keep her safe.
Coleman Rice, the family lawyer, was the only one who knew the answers to the questions everyone was asking, and he wasn’t talking.
Finally the last guests had been seated.
The music began, and the congregation quieted. Up front, two grooms entered and took their places at the altar.
The music swelled, and then the wedding march began.
The congregation stood, watching as Robert Tate escorted Maria, the first of the brides, to the altar. At that point Bodie Scott stepped forward.
“Who gives this woman to this man?” the preacher asked.
“I do,” Bud said, then stepped back as Maria slipped her hand through Bodie’s arm.
There was a titter of amusement as the music swelled again and Robert Tate made a beeline back to the foyer. Seconds later, as the wedding march played again, he came back down the aisle with Savannah on his arm. She was still tiny despite three-inch heels, and resplendent in white satin.
When they reached the altar Judd stepped forward, and again the pastor asked, “Who gives this woman to this man?”
“I do,” Bud said, and then moved back as Judd Holyfield claimed his bride.
Once more Bud headed back up the aisle, and this time the congregation was laughing aloud.
When the wedding march began again and he came back a third time, it was with Holly. Her hair was down and loose over her shoulders, while the sleeveless ice-white gown she was wearing hugged every curve of her body to perfection. They walked down the aisle toward the altar arm in arm, and when they reached the pastor, again he asked, “Who gives this woman to this man?”
“I’m keeping this one for myself,” Bud said.
The congregation roared.
And so it began, the ritual that would bind these women to their men.
It had begun with laughter.
It ended in vows and promises.
For Andrew Slade’s daughters, the end of their wedding was just the beginning of the rest of their lives.
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