Skip Rock Shallows (26 page)

“Stay,” she said.

“Ma’am,” she heard a teasing voice call from the shadows, “call off your dog.”

Every heartache, every fear, fell away at the sound of Tern’s voice. Lilly’s heart snapped the scene like a camera snaps a picture. All was clarity and lightness of being. She would remember this moment forever.

With her word of release, Cleve bounded off the porch, all bark and no bite.

She waited, gathering her strength.

He didn’t come demanding, just took Cleve’s place beside her on the porch. His arm circled her waist and pulled her closer. Her quiet tears wet the front of his shirt.

“Please, don’t cry,” he said, kissing the tears from her cheeks before claiming her mouth with his.

His love broke down all of her barriers. She was safe at last. “Don’t ever leave me again,” she said.

Tern wiped her tears with his thumb. “I can’t promise to never leave, but I promise I will always come back. I’ll always come back to you, Lilly.”

Lilly could hear the music from the road. She might be riding in a wagon between her Daddy John and Stanley James instead of in a fancy white carriage, but there was organ music.

Daddy John patted her gloved hand. “Your aunt Alice will have her way,” he said.

Lilly straightened the restrung pearls at her throat. “Indeed, she will. Who else would bring an organ and an organist all the way from Lexington?”

“Looks like everybody turned out,” Mr. James said.

Lilly could see folks sitting on the low stone wall that outlined the church property. The church windows were all open as well as the door. Boys hung like monkeys from the branches of the big oak in the side yard. Under the trees were the two extra benches they’d taken out of the church to make room for the organ and two wheelchairs. But still there were buggies full of people who had not found seats.

“Hope they saved us a place,” Timmy Blair said from the bed of the wagon.

Lilly turned to the boy. “Remember, Timmy, you will be in the procession, so you won’t be seated.”

“Yeah, I remember,” he said, tugging the sleeves of his suit jacket down over his knobby wrist bones. Lilly despaired. The jacket had fit him perfectly less than a month ago when it was ordered from Sears and Roebuck. “But what if they eat up the cake?”

“What did Mother say while we were getting all dressed up?” Jenny asked, pretty as a picture in a frock of blue dotted swiss. The girl touched a finger to her tongue, then rubbed at a spot on her white patent-leather slippers.

“‘A wedding ain’t about the cake,’” her brother replied in a singsong voice. “But that don’t mean it ain’t important.”

Timmy scooted on his knees until he was just behind Lilly. He put one slightly sticky hand on her shoulder. “We should have brought Bossy, for she is why we know each other.”

Lilly laughed. “I think that would have been perfect. She would’ve enjoyed the show.”

“You ain’t leaving for good, right?”

“No, Timmy, Mr. Still and I will be gone for only two weeks. I’ll be back, I promise.”

She and Tern were taking a wedding trip to Troublesome Creek. Right after their engagement, her mother had come to Skip Rock. Lilly knew her intent was to meet Tern Still and take his measure. Her mother was the most generous, forgiving person in the world, but still Lilly had been filled with apprehension. Would her mother understand, as she did, that Tern had nothing to do with his father’s actions?

Her worry had been for naught. Mama took to Tern like a cat to cream. He softened after the time with her mother, as if someone had filed his sharp edges away. Mama explained to him what had happened to his own mother. Lilly herself had never heard the full story.

Adie Still had died in childbirth, weakened as she was from scarlet fever. Mama had attended Adie in her travail. His father, disturbed by grief, had kidnapped Lilly in an act of retaliation against Lilly’s family. Adie had loved her children, and she had loved Tern’s father.

“I don’t know why you would want me in your family,” Tern had said, “except that I treasure your daughter.”

Lilly could still hear her mother’s sweet reply.

“Son, your father has long since been forgiven, and you were never held at fault in any way. You brought our daughter home to us. I thank the good Lord for you. I think He meant for you two to be together all along.”

So they would go home to Troublesome and finish putting all the ghosts to rest. Tern wanted to visit his mother’s grave. He hoped he could locate his father’s, and he wanted to find his brothers. He might travel far and wide for his work, for he was still with the Department of Mines, but he was a drifter no more.

Lilly was proud of her husband-to-be. He was a settler of disputes, a champion of the workingman. The miners here gave him wide berth, but Mr. James said they would come around in time. Their mistrust of the government was hard-earned.

Mr. James pulled the wagon up to the walkway that bisected the stone wall. Myrtie bustled about in her glory, organizing the procession. She hurried Mr. James inside to take his place beside the groom before pulling Timmy aside for a quick dab of Vaseline to tame his cowlick. Lastly, Myrtie tweaked Lilly’s veil and straightened her train.

Lilly carried a white Bible and a corsage of white roses and orange blossoms bound with blue ribbon—the ribbon a special request from the groom.

Jenny walked in first, scattering white rose petals. Timmy followed with the ring that was loosely stitched to a satin pillow. Titters of amusement followed him up the aisle.

The maid of honor, Armina Eldridge, wore a dropped-waist gown of blue mull. Her short blue veil was edged in Brussels lace. Lilly’s sisters, Mazy and Molly, as bridesmaids, were dressed to match. Her brothers, Jack and Aaron, along with Cousin Ned, were handsome ushers. Soon there would be another wedding—Ned and Armina would marry after he’d been fitted with his prosthesis.

Lilly felt beautiful and cherished in her mother’s wedding gown. The cream silk had deepened in color over the years and brought a warm glow to her fair complexion. How thoughtful of Aunt Alice to save it. Myrtie had removed the bustle and added a ruffle of Brussels lace for length. Her floor-length veil was a cascade of tulle held in place by a coronet of orange blossoms. Resting in her right palm, underneath her elbow-length white kid glove, was the number 10 tally marker.

“Don’t cry, Daddy,” she said as they stood framed in the doorway.

“I won’t,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye.

Lilly thought she might cry herself from pure joy when she saw her handsome groom waiting for her at the end of the aisle. The strains of Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus” filled the air, but Lilly paused. She wanted to take it in: the church decorated with swags of jewel-colored fall leaves, the people crowding the windows looking in, her family by birth and her new family—Ned and Armina, Myrtie and Mr. James, Darrell, Turnip and Tillie. And oh, Hiram and Lynn and the children—she hadn’t expected them. On her way up the aisle she stopped to kiss her mother and Aunt Alice, then Aunt Orie in her wheeled chair. Everyone laughed when Elbows lifted himself halfway out of his chair. She kissed him, too.

And then her daddy was putting her hand in Tern’s. Her veil was lifted and she could look straight into those mesmerizing blue eyes. Everything else fell away. It was as if they were the only two people in the room.

Lilly’s something old was the love her husband-to-be had carried in his heart for her since he was just a boy. Her something new was the renewal of that love. Something blue was every second they would ever be apart. There was nothing borrowed. Everything from here on out was for keeps.

A former registered nurse, award-winning author Jan Watson lives in Lexington, Kentucky, near her three sons and daughter-in-law. Jan’s first novel,
Troublesome Creek
, was the 2004 winner of the Jerry B. Jenkins Christian Writers Guild Operation First Novel contest.
Troublesome Creek
is followed by
Willow Springs
,
Torrent Falls
,
Sweetwater Run
, and
Still House Pond
.

Besides writing historical fiction, Jan keeps busy entertaining her Jack Russell terrier, Maggie.

Please visit Jan’s website at
www.janwatson.net
. You can contact her through e-mail at
[email protected]
.