Lilac Wedding in Dry Creek

by Janet Tronstad

  Just then Cat heard the door to the kitchen slam shut and the clatter of feet sound on the linoleum floor.

  “That will be Jake and Lara back from their walk,” Gracie said, her voice warm with some emotion that Cat didn’t even want to think about. “You just rest a minute. I’ll see that your purse is brought in and I’ll fix you some toast.”

  Gracie straightened up.

  “Thank you,” Cat murmured for lack of anything better to say. She watched as the older woman turned and used the cane to walk steadily out of the bedroom.

  Cat closed her eyes again, but this time it wasn’t because she was fainting. She heard the sounds of whispering in the kitchen, first Gracie’s low voice and then Jake’s deeper answering one. She figured no one would say anything while Lara was there, but the dog would make a good distraction for her if either Jake or his mother decided they needed one.

  Cat barely had her eyes closed before Jake came in carrying her purse and a small plate with a piece of toast.

  “I understand you want these,” he said as he laid the purse on the bed beside her and put the plate on the nightstand to her left.

  He stood there for a moment looking awkward until he stepped over to the wall and brought back an old spindle chair.

  “You could have told me, you know,” he said as he pulled the chair to the bed and sat down close enough to her head that she didn’t have to strain to see him. “I have enough money to help you with two children.”

  “What?”

  “I can see why you might have been nervous about telling me,” he continued. “And I hope I never meet the man who is this baby’s father, but we can’t blame the baby for anything. I’ll provide for it.”

  “There is no baby.” Cat almost gritted her teeth as she lifted herself up slightly just to make her point. “I’m not pregnant. I gave my life to God just a few months ago. I’m certainly not running around with men. And I never have. Is that understood?”

  She closed her eyes at the end of her speech. When Jake didn’t answer, she opened them again. He was sitting there with a grin on his face.

  “So there’s no other uncle somewhere?” he finally asked.

  “No, you’re the only uncle,” she said, exaggerating the word to let him know it was an annoying question. “And it shouldn’t matter to you if there was another one.”

  “Well…” He began his thought and then let his voice trail off. “I’m glad, anyway.”

  “If you’ll bring me some water, I can take that pill I need,” she said. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the satisfied look on Jake’s face. She had always considered it a defect in her character that she hadn’t been able to get over him enough to form an attachment to another man.

  She must have scowled because Jake got up quickly to get her what she needed.

  The room seemed empty without him, but it was more peaceful. She pulled herself up so she was sitting with her back against the pillows. She glanced down and saw that she’d been right about the quilt. Someone had put a lot of hours into piecing old denim squares together. She wondered if Gracie had been the one to make it.

  The room was large, but there wasn’t a lot of furniture in it. Straight ahead of her the closet doors were closed. A dark walnut dresser to her right held a hairbrush and an assortment of old photos in silver and gold frames. Even one in brass. She supposed they were family photos. A mirror with what looked like an oak handle sat next to the hairbrush and a scattering of bobby pins lay in a white saucer close to the back. A bottle of lilac hand lotion sat nearby. On her left, the window was open and the scent of damp earth came inside through the screen.

  She wondered how the room felt so peaceful after what Jake had told her about his father. It would seem as if violence would leave its mark here someplace. Maybe it was the passage of time that had wiped it away. Ten years was a long time. And then she saw a crack in the plaster of the wall by the door. Someone had tried to repair it, but the line was still faintly visible when the sun was shining on it like now. The man was still remembered by the room, after all.

  Chapter Eight

  Jake stepped into the kitchen and saw that his mother had filled the dog’s dish with water and given it to Lara. He wished he had a camera so he could take a picture of the two of them with their heads together, one with her black hair pulled back and the other with golden curls falling all over her neck and shoulders.

  “Just put it outside by the door,” his mother instructed the little girl as she helped her put her hands far enough under the bowl so she could carry it. “And don’t worry about spilling some. It’s only water and that’s what I have a mop for. Just take your time. Walk slow and you can do it. It’s the first step in learning how to take care of a pet.”

  Lara let out an impatient sigh. “I need a doggie like Honey.”

  “I know you do,” his mother assured her as she patted the top of the girl’s head.

  “Don’t let Cat hear you say that,” Jake cautioned with a grin as he walked farther into the room. Lara had already spilled a drop or two on the linoleum floor. “There’s no pets allowed in their apartment in Minneapolis.”

  At his words, his mother straightened up and faced him. “A child needs something to love.”

  Lara interrupted her slow journey to the door by turning to beam at his mother.

  “I need a doggie,” she agreed, before continuing on her way.

  His mother waited for Lara to go through the door before saying anything, but he could tell by her indignant stance that the words were forming in her mind while her lips were pressed together.

  “That is one precious child,” his mother said finally, her voice low and intense. “I just met her and I already feel like I’ve known her forever. You can’t be sending her and her mother back to that place.”

  He wasn’t sure if it was a question or a command.

  And then his mother added, “Not when Cat might be pregnant.”

  “She says she isn’t, Mom,” Jake answered. He needed to put that hope to rest. “She’s not expecting.”

  “I know a fainting woman when I see one,” his mother retorted as she leaned forward on her cane. “She might not have taken a test yet, but—”

  Jake shook his head as he walked over to the sink. “She says she hasn’t been with anyone. And now that she’s so much into God and prayer, I believe her. Well, I would believe her anyway. Cat has never lied to me.”

  “Oh.” His mother’s shoulders slumped at little. “I know it’s not right when two people aren’t married, but I guess I was just hoping that you and she—well, a woman can’t be blamed for wanting her sons to have babies she can spoil.”

  Jake didn’t trust himself to answer that. His mother had a granddaughter; she just didn’t know it.

  “I better get some water for Cat,” he said instead as he reached up to grab a glass and started filling it from the tap. When he was finished, he walked across the kitchen floor again. He went through the living room along the path he’d known as a boy. He was careful not to walk on the big rug his mother had near the sofa. He did glance up at the oil painting of the coulee behind their farm that some great-uncle had painted decades ago.

  He arrived at the bedroom and Cat invited him in.

  When he stepped inside, he squinted. The bedroom had two large windows and more sunlight flooded in here than in the living room. Both of the windows were half open and looked out on the back pasture. He heard the sound of a vehicle driving up to the house, but he couldn’t see the road from this side of the house. He wasn’t sure if it was the engine of a car or a pickup that he heard. Somewhere in the distance he heard a bird of some kind, too.

  He was standing there when Cat opened her eyes and looked up at him. He forgot all about who might be driving to the house. Sh
e smiled at him and the feelings he had for her rose up and filled him with wonder and then despair. Seeing her lying on his parents’ bed reminded him of the promises of marriage at the same time that it brought up the pitfalls for a woman who was foolish enough to marry a man like him.

  “I’m surprised my mother has kept the same bed,” Jake muttered as he walked close enough to set the water down on top of the nightstand.

  “Of course, she’s probably not doing it for sentimental reasons,” he added as he sat on the chair that was still sitting where he’d left it. “This is the only bedroom on the first floor and, since she hurt her ankle, it’s the only one that makes sense for her to use.”

  “This is her room and always has been,” Cat agreed. “I doubt she’s changed anything in it. Lying here, it just has that feel of being old. Your father’s clothes are probably still in that closet over there. I’m guessing she can’t bear to part with them—and maybe she doesn’t even realize they are there because she’s so used to seeing them.”

  Jake didn’t have the nerve to go and check that out. “I suppose my mother did have some affection for him,” he finally admitted. “In the beginning, at least. But things changed.”

  He realized as he said the words that he was describing the nightmare he hoped to avoid by sidestepping marriage. In the beginning, everything probably had been wonderful for his parents, but his father had carried the seed of some consuming anger in his soul and it all came out. Jake wasn’t sure if he’d inherited that seed or learned that same way in his childhood or not. He tried never to raise his voice, at least not much. But he didn’t know what he was capable of if he was drunk or caught in the grip of some powerful emotion. He tried to avoid finding out by not drinking any alcohol, but a man couldn’t escape all emotions no matter how he tried.

  “I doubt my mother felt much fondness toward my father at the end,” Jake emphasized. He’d do well to remember that as he saw the softness in Cat’s eyes. The way she was looking at him now was more temptation than any man should have to face. She might care about him, or think she did, and he had to admit that the thought of having her for a wife made him tremble with hope. He didn’t have any guarantee she would accept if he proposed, but he knew he’d give his life to protect her.

  That wasn’t enough, though.

  “You know I’d beg you to marry me if I could,” he finally said, the words bursting out of him. She deserved to know that. “But I can’t risk saddling you with who I might become.”

  “You’re not like your father,” Cat answered back, her voice low and serious. She understood.

  He stared down at his hands.

  “Jake,” she called him back with a whisper.

  He gave himself permission to look into her eyes. Maybe it was the golden flecks in her green cat eyes that made him feel as if she was looking deep inside him. She almost made him willing to throw common sense away and let the present be enough. But then his eyes followed the delicate lines of her cheeks and her chin. His mother used to have bruises along her jaw on a regular basis along with the black eyes. Beauty could be broken with violence.

  “No one knows what would happen, though, do they?” Jake managed to say as he forced himself to stand up. He would never risk that. “I could turn out worse than my father. Children from abused homes often become abusers themselves. I’ve read that in books.”

  “But those are only statistics,” Cat protested, her eyes darkening. “God is not limited by statistics.”

  “Yeah, well,” Jake mumbled. Now that she had become religious, she was only more vulnerable to foolish hopes and dreams. He started walking toward the door. “I better go check on Lara.”

  Cat didn’t say anything as he left the room and he turned to carefully close the door behind him.

  Some dreams were not meant to be.

  Jake walked through the small hallway and entered the living room. He heard voices in the kitchen, but he wasn’t ready to talk to anyone. He needed a moment alone so he sat down in the stuffed recliner by the large window. He leaned back in the chair that had been his father’s. To his dismay, the lumps in the chair fit his body. He’d grown to the size of the man who used to sit here on winter nights and drink himself into oblivion. Jake was surprised he couldn’t smell the alcohol. Ten years didn’t seem as though it would have been long enough to erase the presence of his father so completely.

  He ran his fingers over the tough texture of the chair’s brown cloth upholstery and then looked out the window. He saw his mother’s lilac bushes. She always said his father had planted them for her when he first brought her to this house as his bride. She had loved those bushes even though she had to tend them every year to bring them through the winter. When they were in full bloom, their scent filled the house and, in season, she would bring tall clusters of the branches inside and set them in glass jars around the house. The fragrance reminded him there had been some days of peace in the nightmare that had made up their lives. The one time he’d seen his father lean over and kiss his mother had been such a day. Maybe that’s why he liked to give Cat things that smelled of lilacs.

  Jake heard a footstep in the doorway that stood between this room and the kitchen. He looked up and saw his older brother leaning against the doorway, with a grin on his face.

  “Wade!” Even though he hadn’t seen the man for ten years, Jake had seen enough pictures of him accepting rodeo prizes that he would know him in a dark alley anywhere. His brother had grown into a man from a lanky teenager, but he still had a cocky tilt to his head that marked him as the same.

  Jake started to get up from the chair, but his brother waved him back down.

  “I don’t know how you can manage to sit in that chair,” Wade said as he pulled a brown folding chair over that had been sitting by the sofa. “I always keep expecting Dad to come in the room and demand to know what I think I’m doing making myself at home in his chair. Although these metal chairs aren’t a joy to sit in, either. The truth is, if he were still alive, I’d be sitting in his chair every chance I got. I think it’s him being dead that keeps me away.”

  A line marked Wade’s forehead where his hat usually sat; he must have taken his Stetson off and left it in the kitchen. He had dirt on his denim shirt and a hole in his jeans that looked as though it had been made by catching on some machinery part. The man had been working in the fields somewhere.

  “Looks like you’ve put on a couple of pounds since you left the rodeo,” Jake said as he eyed his brother. Wade had the same part-Cherokee coloring that he had.

  His brother grunted. “You’d pack on some, too, if you were eating Mom’s cooking these days. She says she didn’t, but I’m convinced she took cooking classes when she was away.”

  “Probably just all those cable cooking shows in that place,” Jake added. It didn’t escape his notice that neither he nor his brother could manage to say she had been in prison. They made it sound as if she’d been away at a resort.

  “It’s good to see you,” Jake said, not wanting to dwell in the past. “I’m glad to be here for your wedding.”

  Wade looked at him for a moment as though he was waiting for something.

  “That’s it?” Wade asked. “No more advice telling me I shouldn’t do it?”

  Jake grunted. “Well, you shouldn’t do it, but I figure if I haven’t convinced you by now, I’m not going to be able to before tomorrow afternoon. Besides, it’s too late to call it off.”

  Wade smiled slowly. “You’re not fooling me. You’ve gone soft on the subject of marriage. I figured that much out when you showed up here with a woman of your own. Mom told me about her. Says she’s real nice.”

  Jake’s grin faded. “I’m hoping you’ll go easy on Cat. No kidding her about marrying me or anything. You’ll scare her to death.”

  “Hey.” Wade spread his
hands. His eyes were amused. “I’m not the kind of guy that would tease a perfectly innocent young woman who just happened to be riding around the countryside with my little brother.”

  Jake recognized the look in his brother’s eyes. “Just remember, I can take you in a fair fight.”

  Wade laughed. “Since when? You didn’t build any muscle hanging around those poker tables, I can tell you that much. I’ll ease up on the marriage talk, but I’m not making any promises about not trying to convince you to come back to the ranch. A man can make a life here. Amy and I are going to build a house on the rise over by the coulee, but there’s other good places for a house.”

  “Nobody makes any money ranching these days,” Jake said, just to keep his brother talking about the ranch instead of his love life. “Unless you’re one of those big corporations.”

  “Well, at least a man doesn’t lose his shirt in ranching like he does in Las Vegas.”

  Jake just grinned. “My shirt is doing very nicely there.”

  Now that they were away from the topic of Cat, Jake was feeling pretty good about seeing his brother again. He had never told him how much he won at the poker tables.

  “Seriously, you don’t need to worry about me and money,” Jake said. “I’ve got enough.”

  “Well, however much you have, you’re going to need more now that you’re expecting a baby.”

  “I told Mom there is no baby,” Jake said, starting to rise. He felt like he was a teenager again and no one believed him about anything. “No one is expecting.”

  Wade stood up, too. “Yeah, she said you’d say that, too. But she keeps hoping.”

  Jake shook his head as he finished standing up. “I don’t know why she won’t believe me.”

  Wade chuckled as he started walking back to the kitchen. “Claims she just knows you’re a father.”