Bossy Bridegroom

by Mary Connealy

  “I was a C student, and you were a genius. I was superficial, and you had real depth.”

  “I was a geek, two years younger than anyone in my class. I walked the halls alone and ran out of school to work because I had no one to talk to.”

  “Not even me.” Jeanie frowned. “Especially not me.”

  “I loved you, Jeanie. I understood how having your dorky, sullen, brainiac sister in class was embarrassing.”

  Jeanie looked at Emily. “Has she ever told you about when we first went to high school?”

  “It doesn’t matter now.” Buffy squeezed Jeanie’s arm and shook her head as if to warn her not to go on. “That’s ancient history.”

  “We’d moved that summer. We moved around a lot.”

  “Don’t talk about this, please.” Buffy begged with her eyes as well as her words.

  “I’ve never talked to you about it. Never apologized.”

  “I knew what you were going through.”

  Jeanie hugged Buffy. “That’s perfect, trying to stop me from telling this. Just like back then. You’ve always tried to protect me. Even then you got it that I needed protection more—more than you did.”

  Jeanie’s voice broke, but she steadied herself and went on, focusing on Emily. “We moved to Chicago. Dad worked for a manufacturing company that moved him around a lot. He claimed it was a promotion every time, but it wasn’t. He was an accountant, but they’d transfer him from place to place because, I think, no one wanted to work with him for long.”

  “He’d been there long enough that they couldn’t outright fire him, but I think they wanted him to quit,” Buffy added.

  “So we showed up at school and went our separate ways—Buffy to the gifted program, me to remedial classes.”

  “They weren’t remedial. They were just normal courses.”

  “Maybe. It might have just felt remedial compared to you.” Jeanie shifted away from her friends and went into the now-deserted café seating area, talking as she went. “I was, of course, immediately popular. I just knew all the moves, how to laugh, how to cozy up to the right crowd, how to dress and flirt and draw attention to myself for all the shallowest reasons.”

  “You were beautiful then, just like you are now.” Buffy followed her.

  Jeanie started wiping off the tables, and Buffy grabbed a rag while Emily bounced her sweet baby.

  “So, I never acknowledged Buffy. No one knew I even had a little sister.”

  “And I hadn’t talked to you either. We didn’t run in the same circles.”

  “We were in the lunchroom one day. I saw her sitting by herself.”

  “Not even at the brainiac table. I was always antisocial.” Buffy smiled at Emily. “I did homework during lunch, because after school I hung around at a wild animal park in Chicago so I could be near buffalo. I was one of those people who, if I’d snapped and done something crazy, everyone who knew me would have said, ‘Yeah, we knew she was a troubled, crazed loner. Yeah, she kept to herself, too quiet.’”

  Jeanie laughed. “They would not have.”

  “I thought you were from Oklahoma,” Emily said.

  Buffy shrugged. “We were from everywhere and nowhere. We came to Cold Creek from Oklahoma.”

  Logan started fussing. Emily settled on a chair near the center of the room as the sisters cleaned, straightened chairs, and talked.

  “So this day at lunch, one of the real crazed loners at the school came up to the table where Buffy was sitting and started hassling her. ‘You’re in my seat. Beat it shrimp.’ Stuff like that, shoving her.”

  “I was a shrimp. Small for my age, plus two years ahead of my grade level. I was twelve in the middle of a bunch of fourteen-year-olds, and smart as I was, I had a gift for making sure people around me knew I was smarter than they were. I was obnoxious. I didn’t fit in at all. I never should have skipped those grades. It made everything harder.”

  “Buffy got up to move, but the guy knocked her tray as she stood, and it splattered all down her front. Milk and some kind of pudding and some gravy or something, really messy. And the whole place started to laugh.”

  “That guy got in big trouble. I got even.”

  “And she looked up, her clothes ruined, people laughing at her, and she looked right into my eyes, even though I was across the room.”

  “Jeanie, it’s okay. It’s over.”

  “And she needed me.” Jeanie’s voice broke. She breathed slowly, regaining control before she went on. “She needed help. There I sat at that table full of cheerleaders and jocks. If I’d had the guts to go to her, to bring my friends along, we could have protected her.”

  “You were afraid. I understood.”

  “You understood that you were completely alone.” Jeanie stopped wiping her tears with her hand and fished a tissue out of her apron pocket to wipe her eyes. Then she tucked it away and braced both her hands flat on the table and looked squarely at Buffy. “On your own. Dad wouldn’t stop hassling you for being so different.”

  “He hassled you, too.”

  “Mom wouldn’t stand up for anyone against him.”

  “You included.”

  “The school kids picked on you.”

  “I got good at avoiding them. I always had a healthy knack for self-preservation.”

  “The way you looked at me, Buffy. Inside that brave, lonely shell you’d built around yourself, you needed me and you saw that I was not going to rescue you.”

  “You couldn’t have.”

  “That my shallow friends were more important to me than my own sister, my own flesh and blood.”

  “Jeanie, don’t. It’s over.”

  “You looked at me as if I’d … I’d stabbed you in the heart.” Jeanie’s tears spilled again, and she fumbled for the tissue.

  “No.” Buffy set her cloth aside and came to Jeanie.

  “Yes. I don’t think you meant to let me see I’d hurt you. I think consciously you knew better than to expect anything of me. But you stood there dripping, being laughed at, so humiliated, and I … I picked up my tray, got up, and turned away. I left. I didn’t even stay to see what happened next or if you had to wear those messy clothes the rest of the day.”

  Buffy put her arms around Jeanie, and Jeanie grabbed hold of her little sister—who was inches taller than her—and held on to her, too late, too much harm done.

  “I love you, Jeanie. I do. I’ve forgiven you.”

  “I can’t forgive myself.”

  Emily came up beside them. “You have to, Jeanie. It’s so long ago. We all did stupid things at that age. And I’m sure Buffy was a major embarrassment. I can totally see pretending not to know her.”

  “Hey!” Buffy whacked at Emily.

  Emily dodged, which wasn’t hard, because Buffy wasn’t trying to hit her. “Be careful of the baby!” Emily’s mock offended cry calmed Jeanie’s tears.

  Shifting away from Buffy, Jeanie gave up on her soggy tissue and snagged a paper napkin out of the stainless steel holder on the table beside her, dabbing her eyes. She knew they were trying to lighten the mood. “Maybe if that’s the only stupid thing I’d done, it wouldn’t cut so deep. But I spent my whole life doing stupid things. Like abandoning Sally.”

  Buffy patted her, and Jeanie knew, even now, she was taking more than she was giving. Buffy had always been the strong one.

  “You did the right thing for Sally. You weren’t able to take care of her. Leaving and finding God, finding yourself, were things you needed to do. You’re stronger now, a good Christian woman that I’m proud to have as a friend and a sister.”

  “Thanks. I’m trying to give enough to make up for the harm I’ve done.”

  “That’s not how it works, Jeanie.” Emily gave her a quick one-armed hug. Logan cooed, and he was close enough to Jeanie’s ear that she heard that perfect sweet innocence. “God forgives even though we don’t deserve it. We forgive others, even though they don’t deserve it. Why do you have to earn the right to receive forgiveness fro
m yourself? I don’t believe God asks that of us.”

  The baby whined, and Emily started a maternal bouncing that Jeanie recognized. She’d held Sally like that. And she’d given Sally up. A mother’s most basic instinct is to protect her child, to fight and even die for her child, and Jeanie had walked away, just as she’d walked away from Buffy all those years ago. A coward. A weakling.

  “We want you to be very strong, in keeping with his glorious power. We want you to be patient. Never give up. Be joyful. “

  “He asks us to start fresh.” Emily pulled Jeanie out of her self-inflicted pain. “Yes, if you have wrongs you can right, I believe you should do it. But to still hate yourself for knowing you weren’t able to take care of Sally? To still hate yourself for being self-centered in high school? C’mon, Jeanie, you’re a decent, hardworking, generous, loving woman. Everyone who knows you loves you. It’s time to learn to love yourself.”

  Jeanie nodded. “I know that’s true. I know God washes us clean and lets us start again. But just because it’s true, doesn’t make it easy to accept.”

  The baby turned up his whine to a cry, drawing the attention of all three women. “He’s hungry. I want to get him home before I feed him so he’ll take a good nap.” Emily smiled sheepishly. “I’m trying to get him on a schedule, but I’ve been running around so much, he can’t settle into anything.”

  “Thanks for taking the time to talk, Em.” Jeanie waved her off.

  Buffy headed for the door behind Emily. As she left she looked back. “I don’t think you see it, Jeanie, but you are letting Michael talk down to you, insult you. It’s not much, just little things, but I’m afraid you’ll let him go back to being a tyrant just because you feel like you deserve to be abused. If you can’t believe you deserve better, then how about you believe Michael deserves better. I can tell he’s a changed man, a better man, even though the big, dumb jerk has yet to sign those adoption papers. But he could backslide into the tyrant he once was if you let him, and that’s bad for him as well as you.”

  Buffy’s words hit home. “You’re right. He asked me to hold him accountable. I’ve been failing at that.” Jeanie nodded. Just another failure. “I’ll talk with him about it tonight.”

  “Good.” Buffy gave her chin a firm jerk of satisfaction and left, the doorbell jangling overhead.

  Jeanie stood alone in the tidy diner and wished she had as much confidence in her entire body as Buffy showed in that single nod.

  seventeen

  That night at supper, Jeanie wanted to bring up all that Buffy had said.

  She couldn’t.

  Michael was flying from the success of the holiday weekend and bubbling over with plans for Labor Day and to make Cold Creek a year-round tourist mecca.

  She did decide, though, to be brave and ask a few questions that had her worried. “You know, Mike, Cold Creek is a little town. You’ve been getting a lot of volunteer work out of the citizens here, and a lot of the ones who’ve helped most are retired. They’re the ones with the spare time.”

  Michael cut through the savory, steaming lasagna with his fork.

  Jeanie had used cottage cheese and a jar of store-bought sauce. Michael preferred ricotta and the sauce Jeanie made from scratch, but the local grocery store didn’t carry the more exotic cheese and she didn’t have access to fresh oregano and basil. The salad was poured out of a prepared bag of greens. The dressing was bottled. She braced herself for his cutting comments, but he ate with apparent relish.

  “The community support has been terrific. I’m starting on a new cabin tomorrow. I’ve got room for five more cabins, and I’m building a footbridge across Cold Creek. A rope bridge I think. It’ll look like something out of an old jungle movie, but it needs to be sturdy. I’ll find some plans on the Internet and order the supplies. Jake Hanson said he’d—”

  “My point is,” Jeanie cut him off, feeling very powerful, “that you may be asking too much from these elderly people.”

  “Jake isn’t elderly.”

  “Don’t pretend like you don’t understand what I’m saying.” Jeanie refused to flinch when he narrowed his eyes at her tone. “My senior center folks are all retired. They’ve been working long hours every day on this project, and they’ve loved it. But expect them to wear out pretty soon and want their quiet life back.”

  Michael frowned. “I thing the town is committed to this renewal effort, Jeanie. I think they’ll stick with me.”

  “They’re excited about it, it’s true. But most of your volunteers are one wrong step away from a broken hip. Oh, some of them are really spry, but a lot of them have serious health concerns. A few of them go south for the winter, and others don’t get out much when the snow flies.” Jeanie felt Michael’s disapproval. He didn’t like her contradicting him, but she remembered Buffy talking about Michael being critical and decided that if he said one wrong word, she’d hunt up her bat and have at him.

  “I think you need to assess the progress and start thinking in terms of making them real paying businesses. If we hired someone and paid a living wage, the employee might relocate to Cold Creek. A young man maybe, with a wife and kids. Maybe several of them eventually. That would be real renewal, new families, new homes, a real estate market, a growing school system.”

  Michael nodded. “That will happen, but the profit margin is pretty slim right now. I want to get more of the investment recouped before I raise the operating costs.”

  She let out a muted sigh of relief. He wasn’t going to criticize. He was listening and debating. She rested her hand on Michael’s and smiled. “Just so you have it in mind and understand when your work crew starts dropping out to play cribbage.”

  “I stand warned.” Michael nodded. “I’ve got rental agreements for Labor Day weekend for six cabins that don’t exist.

  Tomorrow I start building. You’re right about the volunteer help. I’ve been donating a lot of money to this. Several others, like Jake, have, too, but it needs to be a paying concern. And if I have to start paying for labor …” He tapped the table thoughtfully.

  “Well, I can build these six cabins myself. Maybe a few more. They’re such a simple design. I’ll set up the foundations tomorrow then pour cement the next day. Then start framing.” Michael finished his dinner. “This was good, honey. I haven’t had a real meal in a long time. Just one more way I was an idiot.”

  He helped her clear the table and for once didn’t have a dozen phone calls to make. He stayed and dried the dishes while she washed. He asked questions and nudged her with his elbow, grinning, if she didn’t answer him quickly enough, until she got fed up with him. Still feeling the power that had come earlier when she’d disagreed with him and he’d listened, she retaliated for his next nudge by splashing dishwater on him.

  “Hey!” He shoved the plate he’d just dried into the cupboard and turned on her. “Of course you know this means war!” He slung his dish towel around her waist, grabbed both ends, and pulled her close.

  Giggling, Jeanie reached for the water again.

  “Got to get you away from the dangerous water weapon.” He dragged her a few feet from the sink.

  She leaned back for the water, and he dropped the towel and put his hands on her waist to turn her fully away from her soggy arsenal. He gave her a slurpy kiss on the neck, making as much noise as possible, while she giggled and wrestled, screaming when the kiss began to tickle.

  “Say you give up.”

  “Never!”

  Michael’s strong arms circled her and he lifted her off her feet. “You’re helpless. Admit I’m a big, strong man and you’re a helpless female.”

  “Give me my bat. Then we’ll see who’s helpless.”

  Michael let her go with a mock shout of fear. “Not the bat. No, I’ll be good.”

  Jeanie leaned back against the sink, her face hurting from the laughter.

  Michael sat on one of the kitchen chairs, smiling until it nearly split his face in two.

  She loved him. S
he knew it was back, fully alive in her heart. Better this time, too. More honest, more of a partnership than their marriage had been before.

  Michael looked around the shabby kitchen. “I’ve spent so much time focusing on work, but we need to fix this house up, too.”

  “We will eventually. For now, you need to finish drying these dishes.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” His gaze settled on her as he stood and approached the sink. Nervous about the strange intent expression, she turned and pulled the plug on the sink. He finished putting the clean dishes away.

  Jeanie wiped out the sink. “The house is old, but I like it. There’s no rush with remodeling. Are you done with that towel? Can I use it?” Jeanie reached for the tissue-thin terrycloth in his hand, and when she pulled, he didn’t let go. Instead, he let her pull him right into her arms.

  She looked into his glowing eyes. He was so handsome it almost hurt. He leaned down and kissed her.

  He’d been really sweet tonight. And respectful. She was figuring out how to finally be his wife. How to find from God the courage to make herself and Mike better people.

  She kissed him back.

  Seconds ticked by. Her arms went around his neck.

  Minutes passed, he pulled her close.

  “I’ve missed you,” she whispered.

  He kissed her forehead, her eyes.

  He was her husband. She believed marriage vows were eternal. She’d missed him, but she hadn’t realized how much until right now.

  “I’ve missed you, too.” Michael breathed the words against her neck. “And we’re forever. Aren’t we?” He pulled back to plead with his words and his expression.

  The answer to his question was nothing more than the truth. She wouldn’t deny it. “Yes, we’re forever.” She pulled him back into another kiss.

  When it ended, Michael said, “I want this marriage to be a real one, before God, Jeanie. I’d like to say our vows again, with Pastor Bert there. And we’ll be married—and all that goes with it.”

  She studied his intent, sincere expression. “Yes, I think I’m ready, but I want to make our vows before God, too. First.”