by Liz Isaacson
Callie directed people this way and that as stacks of plates, napkins, and silverware got put out. “Where’s Liam?” she called, and he raised his hand from the back of the crowd, where he’d been standing with Jeremiah and Tripp. “We’re ready, baby,” Callie yelled to him. “Get us started.”
Liam pulled a chair out from under the table and stood on it. “All right,” he called, and a couple of seconds passed before people actually quieted down. “The boss says we’re ready to start. We’re going to eat first and have cake second.”
“No,” Denise said. “Daddy, that’s not right.” She had the sweetest drawl on the planet. “Mama said we could eat first and open presents second. Then cake last.”
“Oh, all right,” Liam said, smiling down on her. “I know we’re eatin’ first.” He looked out at everyone. “So let’s see….”
Micah’s heart raced. He wasn’t asking for announcements. Maybe he could just send the news on the family text.
“I have something to say,” Daddy said, and Micah actually made a squeaking noise. His hand tightened on Simone’s, and they exchanged a worried glance.
“We have an announcement too,” Skyler said. “Can we do announcements, Callie?”
“Announce away,” she said, though she didn’t look particularly pleased about it.
“You go first, Daddy,” Skyler said.
“My mother and father are coming to live with us in Three Rivers,” Daddy said, his smile big and bold. “I’m going to need all the boys to help when we go down to the Hill Country to get them. My momma…knows how to save for a rainy day, and we’re not just talking money.”
“That’s a nice way to say she’s a hoarder, Daddy,” Jeremiah said, tacking on a laugh. Several others laughed too, including Micah.
“Yes, well, maybe plan on a few days,” he said. “Momma and I are going in a couple of weeks.” He nodded and looked at Skyler.
“Mal’s having a baby!” He lifted their joined hands as if they’d just won a gold medal.
“Oh, how wonderful,” Momma said, stepping over to Mal. All the congratulations went around, and most eyes went back to Liam. Micah saw his window to share their news dwindling, and Simone’s hand in his became a vice grip.
“Okay—”
“Simone and I are married,” Micah blurted out, interrupting Liam. A hush fell over everyone, and even the little children stopped playing and fussing. He took a big breath. “She’s moving in with me tomorrow.”
Chapter Thirteen
Momma knew Micah’s news was coming, but it still stunned her how he could stand there so calmly. None of her boys seemed to understand how hard marriage was, and she knew Micah didn’t.
No one does, she told herself. And besides, the rest of them had made it work. That was what marriage was—one day at a time, working through things, making it work.
“So that marriage license was real,” Jeremiah said.
“It was,” Micah said, and several people started talking at once. Evelyn and Callie converged on Simone, and the three of them disappeared down the hallway toward the master suite, leaving Micah to face the crowd alone. And that was saying something, as Evelyn could barely move these days. And she’d moved fast.
Momma stepped over to his side, and he looked down at her while questions got thrown around.
How did that happen?
You didn’t invite us?
What do you mean, audition?
Momma put her hand on Micah’s arm and said, “All right, now. Everyone quiet down.” She had to hold up both of her hands, and Gideon whistled through his teeth before everyone stopped talking.
“He and Simone got married by accident,” she said, realizing how ridiculous that sounded. “But they’re going to give it a try.” She glared at Rhett. Then Liam. Then Tripp. Then Jeremiah. Then Wyatt. Then Skyler. “Just like the rest of you. So leave him alone. We’re here for a precious little girls’ fifth birthday. Now where’s Denise?”
“Right here, Gramma.” She stepped out from behind her father.
“There you are.” Penny’s whole heart spread into a smile on her face. “Let’s say grace, okay? Then we can eat.”
“Let me get Callie,” Liam said. “She won’t want to miss this.” He pushed through the others. “Okay? Just give us a minute.” He gave Micah a pointed look as he dashed down the hall.
“Sorry,” Micah called after him. He turned to face everyone else, and it did Penny’s heart and soul some good to watch Skyler and Wyatt approach him first, the trio forming a three-way hug. Words were said that she couldn’t hear. Probably didn’t even want to hear.
She took Denise’s hand and went back to Gideon’s side. They’d been talking a lot about getting his parents up to Three Rivers so they could be looked after better. Gideon’s brother still lived in Llano, but he was getting older too. He’d only made the trip up to the Texas Panhandle once while Gideon was in the hospital, but Momma didn’t blame him one bit.
He was seventy-seven-years-old and still working the ranch he’d lived on for fifty years. And tending to a lot around his father’s home.
In fact, Gideon was trying to get Jonas to come to Three Rivers too. Land could be sold, he said. But Jonas didn’t want to lose the ranch, and he was trying to convince his daughter to take it over.
Penny didn’t think that would go well, because if Jenni had wanted the ranch, she’d have taken it over a decade ago. No matter what, Jonas wasn’t going to be happy. She and Gideon had told him all of this, but he simply wasn’t ready to hear it.
“When are you moving back to the farmhouse?” Skyler asked, coming up beside her. “I didn’t realize that was happening.”
She looked at her son, seeing right past his forced casualness. “We’ve loved being with you and Mal,” she said. “But it’s been over three months. Daddy is doing really well. Rhett is only five minutes away, and the rest of you twenty.”
“I’m closer than twenty minutes, Momma,” Tripp said. He picked up a cup and poured some punch into it. “I’ll come if you need me.”
Of course he would. Any of the boys would. Their wives would too. She smiled at him. “Thank you, dear. Marcy’s hired a cleaning service for us to get all the dust and cobwebs out of the house, and we’re going to go down to see what Gramma and Grampa have. They really do have a ton of stuff.” And Penny was actually worried about it. There was no way they could fit even a quarter of what they owned in the farmhouse.
“Once we know what will have to be sold, thrown away, or put in storage, we’ll have a better idea of when they’ll be ready to move.”
“It’s not going to be easy,” Tripp said. “They’ve lived in that house for seventy years.”
“Don’t remind me,” Penny said with a smile. “You’ll probably find jars of homemade grape juice that old. Grandma Lucy tried to get me to take some every time we visited.” She giggled at the memories she had with Gideon’s parents. They’d been kind to her their entire lives, and they’d taken in Gideon and Penny—and all seven of their rambunctious sons—after Gideon’s first company had failed spectacularly.
“What about Micah?” Tripp asked.
“Oh, that boy,” Penny said, though. Micah was not a boy. None of them were, as Gideon liked to remind her. “I tried to tell him that marriage wasn’t something you tried on like a pair of boots.” She sighed. “But well, he says he loves her.”
“Is that right?”
Penny turned toward Jerome, Simone’s father. “Oh, dear,” she said. “Did they tell you in advance?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. Penny couldn’t tell if he was pleased or upset. “But Simone’s always had a good head on her shoulders. They’ll be okay.”
Micah drifted by, and Simone and her sisters still hadn’t come back down the hall. Penny did what she’d always done best—she worried about what was going on back there. “I’m sure it’ll work out,” she said. She’d said that a lot in the past nine months, because she didn’t have anything el
se to say. She wanted to rely on the Lord and trust that everything would work out. But she had doubts sometimes, just as she had many nights while Gideon lay in the hospital and no one knew if he’d come out of his coma.
But he had. And he was okay. Things had worked out.
Penny also knew for every situation like Gideon’s where things did work out, there was one that didn’t. People died in car accidents all the time, and by all accounts, Gideon should’ve died. So why did God save him and not someone else?
It was questions such as those that kept Penny up some nights. They also kept her on her knees, pouring her entire thought process out to the Lord. Her reasoning was then He’d know what she wanted and how she felt. After that, He could do what He wanted.
“Okay,” Callie said, and Penny turned toward her. She’d loved Callie from the moment she’d met her, as the woman possessed some of the greatest strength Penny had ever seen in a woman. She’d struggled when she first became a mother, and she didn’t have one of her own to go to.
So she’d come to Penny, and it had been Penny who’d shown her how to get a fussy baby back to sleep in the middle of the night, and Penny who had taught her to give time warnings so Denise didn’t have a meltdown every time they needed to go back inside the house.
She reached for her daughter-in-law, noting the pure exhaustion on Callie’s face. “The cake is beautiful, love,” she whispered as she hugged Callie.
“Isn’t it?” Callie pulled back and smiled at the cake. “Mal is a genius.”
“That she is.” Penny sure did love Mal too, and she’d miss being in the same house with her and Skyler. Not only that, but Mal always brought pastries home from the bakery, and Gideon was definitely going to miss that. In fact, Penny saw trips to the bakery to appease her husband in her future.
“We’re ready now,” Liam said as Evelyn and Simone returned to the main part of the house. “Micah, you’re the man of the hour. You get to say grace.”
“All right,” Micah said, not even bothered by the slightly acidic tone in Liam’s voice. He swiped his cowboy hat off his head and closed his eyes. Penny usually did too, but today, she kept her eyes open and looked around at all these people she loved so fiercely.
Rhett stood with one hand on Evelyn’s arm and the other holding his hat. Tripp held his son, swaying back and forth while Ivory had one of her hands twined with Oliver’s. Liam had taken up a spot next to Callie, and Marcy and Wyatt stood in the back corner, Warren asleep in the swing beside them.
Skyler and Mal held hands, and Micah and Simone did too. Jeremiah and Whitney had their hands full with their two small children, but they did a spectacular job with them, keeping them quiet as Micah asked for health and safety and blessings.
Penny loved these people with her whole heart and soul. She didn’t know if Micah and Simone could make their marriage experiment work, but she prayed that they could.
“And Lord,” Micah said. “Thank you for everything we have. For this ranch and the one next door. For bringing Skyler and Mal to us. For saving Daddy’s life. For the babies and the kids and the noise and the horses. Oh, and the dogs. Thank you for all these people here, our family. Amen.”
The man seemed to be able to call down silence from the heavens above when he spoke. Several others said “Amen,” after him, but for the most part, everyone took a moment to look around at the people gathered there for the birthday party.
Family.
An overwhelming sense of gratitude filled Penny, and the only way she knew how to release her emotions was through tears. She wept as the noise level picked up again, and she turned to Skyler. “Baby? Will you get me some food and bring it over to me? I’m feeling like I need to sit down.”
Skyler looked at her with concern in his eyes, saw the tears, and smiled. “Sure thing, Momma.”
Penny looped her arm through Evelyn’s and told Rhett, “I’ll take her. Come on, dear. You need to sit more than I do.”
Penny pulled up to the cute little gray house with the right number on it. She reached for the gift bag on the passenger seat before getting out, and Jerome stood in the doorway on the porch before she’d made it to the bottom of the steps.
It was getting harder to lift her feet to climb steps, but with the help of the railing, Penny made it. “Good afternoon, Jerome,” she said, extending the gift bag. “I hear congratulations are in order.”
“Thank you.” He took the bag and held the door for her as she walked inside. “At least we had the decency to tell our families about the wedding.”
“Before it happened,” Penny said with a smile. Jerome and Belinda Murphy had decided to get married, and they’d invited Penny to a small shower. “Are you going to stay here or move to Belinda’s?”
“Oh, I’m movin’ in here,” Belinda said from the kitchen. She set down the wooden spoon she’d been using to stir the sweet tea. “Thanks for coming, Penny.” Belinda had the energy Penny wished she still did, and she was just as old as Penny.
Seasoned, she liked to think of herself. She could not imagine getting married at her age, and yet there were Jerome and Belinda, getting ready to do it.
“Someone has to take care of me,” a voice behind her said, and Penny turned to find Elaine Foster sitting in her recliner. She had a flash of what her life would be like once Grandma Lucy and Grandpa Jerry arrived in Three Rivers, and she told herself it could be months away still.
She put a big smile on her face and approached the elderly woman. “I feel like I need someone to come take care of me too.” She patted Elaine’s hand, noting how cold she was. “Do you need a blanket, dear?”
“A blanket would be lovely,” Elaine said. Penny thought she could see right through her skin for a moment, and she peered at the older woman. Something was wrong; her mother heart could just tell. Just like she knew when Wyatt had contracted pneumonia as a baby. He hadn’t been able to tell her what was wrong, but Penny knew.
“Let me get you one.” She got up and asked Jerome where she might find a blanket.
“In the hall closet,” he said. “Is she cold again?”
“She doesn’t look well, Jerome.”
He watched his mother and then looked at Penny. “Simone took her to the doctor. They said there was nothing wrong.”
“There’s something wrong.” Penny went part way down the hall and got out a blanket, taking it back to Elaine. She covered her up, snug and tight, and sat on the edge of the couch next to her. “Tell me about the girls as babies,” she said.
Elaine’s whole countenance lit up, and Penny basked in the warmth of it. “You should’ve seen little Callie when she was born. She was like a kitten, with all this dark hair everywhere.”
Penny smiled and let the older woman talk and talk and talk. Once the food was served and she finished eating, she fell asleep, right there in the armchair, amidst the party.
Penny watched her, unable to truly look away. Something writhed in her veins that told her Elaine Foster wasn’t going to be on this earth for much longer. She’d had feelings like this before, and she’d always been right.
Her next dilemma presented itself: Tell Callie, Evelyn, and Simone? Or keep her suspicions to herself?
Chapter Fourteen
Simone absolutely had to have all of her kitchen appliances, despite what Micah said he owned. She needed her electric stand mixer, and her hand mixer, and the toaster oven. She could make the perfect avocado toast with that, and she had not seen one at Micah’s.
“Is that it?” he asked after he’d carried out yet another box of kitchen equipment.
“I think so,” Simone said, looking around the kitchen. She was forgetting something, but she couldn’t think of what. She flinched as Micah touched her waist.
“You live half a mile from my house,” he said. “Anything you’ve forgotten, I’ll come get.” He smiled at her, the gesture sweet and soft and sexy.
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s not like I’m leaving the state.”
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br /> “Can you imagine?” Micah asked, clearly joking. “I don’t feel Texan enough, because I’m the only house out here without a Texas wreath on the front door.”
“I can fix that,” she said. “I have at least half a dozen in my shop.”
“Texas wreaths?”
“Yes,” she said. “They’re a big seller, cowboy.”
“Huh,” Micah said. “I had no idea.”
“I’ll pick one once I get back to the shop,” she said. “Which better be soon, because I have a big event coming up.”
“Yeah?” Micah turned to leave, catching Simone’s hand in his. “You know, you don’t have to do the events and fairs if you don’t want to.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to?”
Micah shrugged as he walked out the front door. “I’m just saying.” He turned back to her before going down the steps. “You know I have a lot of money, right? I guess we should’ve talked about that.”
Simone swatted his chest. “Of course I know that.”
He grinned at her and caught her around the waist, gazing down at her. The moment sobered and lengthened, and Simone couldn’t look away. “You know I’d give you whatever you wanted, right?” Micah asked, ducking his head to nuzzle her neck.
Simone clung to his shoulders, enjoying the slip of his lips along her skin.
Someone catcalled, and Simone pulled away from Micah, who likewise jumped away from her. Anita and Soren were walking by, and Soren waved her cowgirl hat at Simone and Micah. “Hey, y’all,” she called in a high, almost singing voice.
“Hey,” Simone said, waving back. “You know Soren and Anita, right?” she said to Micah, now leading him down the steps.
“Not particularly well,” he said.
“Well, now’s a good time to meet them.” Simone took his hand and went toward her friends. “Hey, guys.”