by Sandra Hill
“You have a point there.”
Matt wasn’t the only one calling him a fool. Laura called him a fool every time she saw him, for no particular reason, when she wasn’t alternating it with moron, idiot, and mush brain.
Then lots of other things took precedence.
Firstly, the fire on the new land he’d purchased, which might possibly be arson. Apparently, Jeb Parkins, a prime suspect, was having second thoughts about the sale after a failed trip to the Bahamas with his girlfriend.
Second, after a routine checkup, Cassie ended up in the hospital for another surgery. Having inherited the Rutledge gene for height, his daughter had grown two inches since her last visit and, although the current temporary joint was made of an uncemented, flexible material, it was deemed necessary to replace it.
Most people grew to their full height by age fifteen or sixteen, but some continued up into college. He could only hope that Cassie would be in the former category, and that they could put in a permanent device, earlier rather than later, that would hopefully last more than twenty years.
Third, the biggest crisis in those two months after Christmas, as far as Cassie was concerned, was that she’d broken her iPhone and it took weeks to repair it, and even then her contacts and apps were lost.
Lastly, once the arson case was settled and Cassie was home following the operation, Ethan’s grandmother went on some kind of half-assed crazy strike. She was no longer going to work in the Christmas Shoppe, which was open year-round, though the main business was landscaping in the off-season.
“No big deal! I’ve been urging you to take it easy for a long time,” he told her.
“And no more cooking or cleaning, or laundry.”
Huh? “Okay, I can accept having someone come in more often to clean and do laundry, but cooking? You love to cook.”
“Not anymore.”
“What are you going to do, then? Paint? That’s a good idea.”
“No, you fool, I’m not going to paint. I’m going to dance.”
Another person calling me a fool! “What?”
“Also, I’m moving into Mildred Patterson’s house on a temporary basis.”
Now, that hurt. “Why? Are you that unhappy with me and Cassie?”
His grandmother threw her hands in the air, as if he was hopeless. “I love you two, you know that. But I’ve come to realize that I’m an enabler. That’s what one of Mildred’s new guests said last week. He’s a retired psychiatrist.”
“A dancing shrink?” he joked.
His grandmother didn’t laugh. “Seriously, Ethan, you need to get off your butt and do something about Wendy. Either that, or forget about her, and find someone else. How about that Bonita woman, Raul’s daughter?”
He ignored his grandmother’s attempt at matchmaking. Besides, if she only knew! He’d already dated Bonita, in fact had a short affair, before he’d known it was her father who was living with Mildred Patterson. Bonita was very nice, but not really his type. If he had a type! “Can’t you see how impossible it is? Wendy’s life is in California, mine is here in North Carolina.”
“If I’m not here, maybe you’ll give it more serious thought,” his grandmother went on, as if he hadn’t even spoken.
“That is ridiculous. All I’ve done is think. The facts remain the same. No second chances at love here.”
She shrugged.
“Really, Nana, tell me what this is all about.”
“Sit down,” she ordered.
He sank to a chair at the kitchen table, and she did the same.
“Do you love the girl?”
He felt his face heat. “Yes,” he admitted, noticing that his grandmother didn’t ask if Wendy loved him.
“You know the story of me and your grandfather, and how we got together.”
Oh, crap! That again! “Yes. But that has nothing to do with—”
She put up a halting hand. “I couldn’t . . . wouldn’t move from the Outer Banks. He loved me enough to move here, even though his work was elsewhere.”
“And made a fool of himself perfecting that Rutledge Tree.”
“Is that what you think? That he made a fool of himself? You’re the fool in this picture if you believe that.”
I’m getting really tired of everyone calling me a fool. “Are you suggesting that I move to California?”
“I’m not suggesting anything.”
“Like hell you aren’t!”
“Don’t swear,” she said. Then she reached across the table and took one of his hands in both of hers. “Ethan, do something.”
Thus it was that two weeks later Ethan and Cassie were on a plane to San Diego. He had to wait that long for his daughter to be strong enough for the strain of travel.
Cassie, whose excitement was a palpable thing, thought that they should inform Wendy that they were coming. Ethan wasn’t taking a chance that she would nix the visit.
After renting a car at the airport, they drove to Coronado where Ethan got them a room at the famous Hotel del Coronado, which Cassie loved because it resembled a big white castle, albeit with a red roof. Soon after, he found the cottage where Wendy lived with two roommates. He left Cassie in the car while he went to the door, just to make sure he’d gotten the right place.
Diane, the WEALS known as Grizz, answered his knock. Leaning against the frame, arms folded over her chest, she just grinned. “Well, well, well! You lost, buddy?”
That is some welcome! Not a good sign for how Wendy is feeling toward me. “Hello, Diane,” he said, opting for politeness, instead of responding in kind. “Is Wendy here?”
“No, she’s over at the command center. It’s her turn this week to teach the newbie class.”
He breathed a silent sigh of relief. At least she wasn’t off on some dangerous mission that he would worry over. “Can we go over there?” he asked, indicating with a motion of his head toward the car that Cassie was with him.
Diane waved at Cassie, then told him, “I can give you a pass.” Belatedly, she asked, “Do you want to come in for a drink?”
“No, I’ll wait out here.”
She went inside and returned with a card which she handed to him. Then, she gave him specific instructions on which entrance to the base to use and where the command center was located.
“Thanks, Diane,” he said.
She studied him for a long moment and asked, “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a fool?”
“A few people. Why?”
“What took you so long?”
If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad . . .
Wendy was on the O-Course of the grinder, the asphalt-covered PT area that sat like a prison yard in the middle of the command center buildings. Working out a group of WEALS trainees, she watched and occasionally yelled out orders to the scrungy women, hot and sweaty and dirty, just like her. After a three-mile run on the beach, wearing shorts, T-shirts, and heavy boondockers, they were rolling around in the sand for sugar cookies.
She set her stopwatch for twelve minutes and called out, “Ready, set, go!” The women immediately began a regimented series of exercises that involved the cargo net, the balance poles, the “hoo-yah logs,” rope swinging, the “dirty name log jumps,” the weaver, the tower climb, the monkey bar ladder, and the Slide for Life.
She’d performed and supervised this rotation so many times, she could do it with her eyes closed. For these few minutes, she had a chance to think. And any time she had a chance to think, her thoughts kept going back to that blasted Forever Christmas Tree. The blue spruce flourishing—heck, even the fact that it had survived—held significance. She wasn’t sure what, but she intended to find out.
Because her Christmas liberty had been cut in half, she had another week coming. And a few more days on top of that because of the two live ops she’d engaged in since the Afghan mission. Maybe she would go home to Bell Cove for Easter and get some answers.
Like, why had Ethan failed to respond to any of her text messages? The
ones she’d sent soon after her departure from Bell Cove, and then shut down when she hit a figurative wall.
Surely, Ethan understood, without the details, that the curtailment of her liberty, and that of her teammates, had been made for an important reason. No sooner had they arrived back at Coronado than they’d been given a briefing. Three Marines captured and being tortured in a remote mountainous region of Afghanistan.
Being the professionals they were, a small team of two WEALS and four SEALs (her, Diane, JAM, K-4, Geek, and F.U.) were ready and HALOed within days onto a flat portion of the mountain. Wearing full-ruck, meaning about seventy-five pounds of equipment, including assault weapons in a sling over one shoulder, handguns in a thigh holster, and Ka-Bar knives in their boots, they had made their way leapfrog style out of the open area. Two operatives worked together, one running in a crouch position while covered by a partner from behind till the partner came forward and passed by to be protected by the first person in the same manner, over and over, till they reached cover.
They’d found the soldiers, one of them near death from injuries and repeated beatings, in a cave guarded by only two Taliban men, who were quickly eradicated. The whole operation took only two hours before they were back on the plane to Kabul. Easy peasy, which was not always the case. Like that 2005 incident in which sixteen SEALs and spec op troops had been killed when they’d tried to rescue four downed SEALs in those same mountains. Or the infamous Operation Gothic Serpent, which was the subject of the movie Black Hawk Down.
During SEALs and WEALS training, the instructors always drummed in the message that, in the most successful ops, the goal was accomplished with no shots being fired. That had not been the case for Wendy’s team that day two months ago. There had been three deaths. The two Taliban and the one Marine who died as he was being airlifted. Still, it was considered a successful mission.
Wendy was eight minutes into this PT rotation when Delphine, one of her roommates, came up to her and said, “Commander wants to see you. I’ll take over.”
She raised a brow. “What’s up?”
“You have visitors.”
“Me? Who?” Wendy couldn’t recall the last time she’d had a visitor. Probably when her dad came out to see her more than five years ago, but, no, there had been that guy she’d met on a blind date last year, who practically stalked her when she’d declined any further dates. He’d been barred from the base, eventually.
Delphine just shrugged, but she had an odd look on her face.
Wendy passed Commander MacLean as he was exiting his office and motioning her inside. “I’ll give you a half hour,” he said and closed the door behind her, after she entered.
Wendy couldn’t have been more surprised.
Standing by the windows that overlooked the grinder were Ethan and Cassie. Turning at her entrance, they both had smiles on their faces . . . Ethan’s rather tentative, Cassie’s wide open and enthusiastic.
Stunned, she just stared at them for a long moment. Ethan, whose eyes were shaded by a pair of dark sunglasses, wore a tapered, blue dress shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, unbuttoned at the top, untucked, over jeans and sockless loafers. Cassie was in pink, of course. A pretty pink blouse over white shorts with white sneakers and pink socks.
“Ethan? Cassie? What are you doing here?”
“We’re Muhammads,” Cassie announced, limping over to hug Wendy around the waist.
Wendy hugged Cassie back and kissed the top of her blonde head.
“There was a fire, and my phone broke, and Nana told Dad to get his butt in gear because he was so grumpy, but then I had an operation, and Nana moved out, and Dad wouldn’t let me call you, but Nana said . . .” All this Cassie said in a long rush of words, none of which made sense to Wendy, and still went on while Wendy turned to Ethan for an explanation.
Over Cassie’s head, Wendy murmured, “Muhammads?” to Ethan, who still stood by the window, leaning against the wall, gazing at her with an enigmatic expression on his face.
But then he pushed away from the wall, removing his sunglasses as he walked, folding and tucking them into a shirt pocket. Blinking slowly, his wonderfully silky black lashes rose, fell, then settled at half mast, just the way he knew she liked, the way she at one time could not resist. Only then did he say, “We’re coming to the mountain.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“Turns out I have a bit of my grandfather Samuel in me. You know how he moved to Bell Cove because he loved my grandmother so much, even though his work was elsewhere?”
“Yeah.” She still didn’t understand.
“Well, here I am.” He grinned at her.
“Are you trying to say that you would move here? For me?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“But . . . but what kind of work would you do here?”
“Have no clue. Maybe I’ll grow palm trees.”
“You would uproot Cassie from the Outer Banks?”
“Kids adapt,” Cassie interjected, even though Wendy hadn’t been addressing her.
“Ethan,” she whispered, unable to believe that he would make this kind of sacrifice for her. This was huge. The logistics were up in the air. But what did it matter? The fact that he would be willing was the most important thing. She took his face in her hands and said, “I don’t know exactly what you mean, but I’m glad you’re here.”
“Thank God!”
“He was afraid you would tell us to go home,” Cassie remarked from where she was now sitting on the edge of the commander’s desk, her legs swinging. A definite no-no. “Dad’s nervous.”
Ethan gave his daughter a chastising look, and she pretended to zip her lips, a smug expression on her cute face.
This was all so confusing. “You traveled roughly three thousand miles, to see me, and you thought I’d kick you to the door?”
“That’s just what I told him,” Cassie contributed.
Wendy exchanged a “Men!” look with Cassie.
“My daughter has been giving me love advice for the past two weeks, ever since we first decided to come out here,” Ethan told Wendy as he finally opened his arms to embrace her.
But, no, she couldn’t allow that. “Don’t get any closer. I stink,” she told him.
“If you think I traveled ‘roughly three thousand miles’ to be put off by a little stink, you don’t know me, sweetheart.” Ignoring her order, he yanked her into his arms, stink and all, and kissed her. A hello kiss, but much more.
Through the buzz in her ears at the headiness of his kiss, she heard Cassie say, “Good touch, that ‘sweetheart,’ Dad.”
“Hide your eyes, Cass,” Ethan murmured against Wendy’s lips and deepened his kiss.
“No way! I’m learning things. Wow! This is a great picture I’m taking with my iPhone, but maybe you should take your hands off her butt. Can I put it on Instagram?”
Ethan removed his hands from her butt and set her away from him, but he still held her by the shoulders. Turning to his daughter, he said, “Don’t you dare!”
“I was just kidding. Jeesh! Who wants to see two old people kissing anyhow? It’s not like you’re Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson.”
She and Ethan both looked at Cassie with surprise. How would she know about the Fifty Shades of Grey actors?
“Have I mentioned that my daughter is almost-twelve going on twenty?”
Cassie just grinned, pleased with having disconcerted them. But then, she said, “Can we get on with this, Dad? I’m hungry.”
Ethan rolled his eyes, then dropped to one knee. Taking one of Wendy’s hands in his, he asked, “Wendy, will you marry me?”
Wendy was shocked. It was the last thing she’d expected.
“Daaaad! You said it wrong,” Cassie complained.
With a grimace, Ethan said, “Wendy, will you marry us?”
“Yeah, Wendy, will you marry us?” Cassie said.
Wendy was speechless for a moment, which Ethan interprete
d as possible rejection; so, he launched into a pitch, which he must have practiced on the way here. “I love you, Wendy. I always have. Always will. Forever. If you won’t marry me, I’m chopping down that damn tree and burning it on the beach by the lighthouse. And then . . . and then I’ll probably move to friggin’ Alaska, or something.”
“I’m recording this, Dad. Maybe you shouldn’t swear.”
Without a clue as to how this relationship could possibly work, Wendy swiped at the tears that filled her eyes and said, “Yes.” That’s all, just yes. The love words would come later. The explanations for how this could possibly work out would come later. For now, love was the most important thing.
“You do know that I love you, too, don’t you, Ethan?”
“I hoped.” Ethan had tears in his eyes, too. After he slipped his great-grandmother Rutledge’s tiny diamond ring on her finger, the one he’d promised her twelve years ago, he kissed her softly to seal the deal.
And the weight of twelve years fell off them both.
Epilogue
And the wedding bells, they did ring, and ring, and ring . . .
Wendy Patterson and Ethan Rutledge were married on Saturday, July 6, in Bell Cove. It was considered the event of the year, next to the Grinch Christmas hoopla. The town used the wedding, which they considered theirs as much as the bride and groom’s, as an excuse to have an extended Fourth of July celebration. The décor was “patriotic nuptials.”
No invitations were needed; everyone came.
More than one resident was heard to say, “It’s about time!”
Or, “I always knew they would get together eventually.”
Or, “They were destined to be together. Everyone knows that.”
One person in particular mentioned something about “a Wendy kind of love” always winning in the end, whatever that meant.
Another person in particular, who was known to have a long-standing dislike of Ethan, said, “The fool! I wouldn’t take him if he were gold-plated and Hollywood handsome.”