Least Likely Wedding?

by Patricia McLinn

  Kay added feathery strokes out from the center.

  “They’ve done a wonderful job. It already looks so much better than I ever remember it.”

  “Tobias must have changed a lot since you left.”

  Her grandmother chuckled. “The houses look smaller and the trees bigger. Ah, yes. Deep cobalt-green does well for that shadow under the leaf. Very nice. When I lived here the library was in a ramshackle old house….”

  And in the neutral subject of Tobias and Bliss House— Dora’s memories and Kay’s recent education—they found a rhythm to talk, to work, to be together in their plastic cocoon.

  Rob arranged to be outside Bliss House’s back door when Kay emerged from her first day of painting with her grandmother.

  He arranged it by hanging around out there for the better part of three hours.

  He knew all the reasons—solid, logical reasons—their relationship shouldn’t go anywhere. Shouldn’t have gotten this far. But put her in his vicinity, and it was like his experiment with homemade gunpowder—unpredictable and likely to singe.

  So the logical answer was to stay away…. Yet here he was.

  Kay looked pale. She and Dora came down the stairs together with a hesitation that said they didn’t know what came next when they reached the bottom. Kay saw him, then looked away, her expressive face impassive and unreadable. He felt like a brick had landed on his chest.

  Before Rob could move forward, Eric, one of the young men on Max’s construction crew, stepped in front of Kay. He seemed to have come out of nowhere, but then Rob hadn’t seen anything but Kay.

  “Hey, I hear your dog is going to have puppies,” he said to her. “I’ll take one of those puppies.”

  Kay frowned. “Do you have a house?”

  “Apartment.”

  Her frown deepened. “A fenced yard?”

  “No, but I live across from a park where dogs play. So he’d have company.”

  “You only want a male?”

  “Uh.” He glanced at Rob, who had joined the group. “No, I used he in general, ya know?”

  Kay sniffed. The way Rob imagined a dowager empress might sniff. He stifled a chuckle. Not only would Kay not be amused at his chuckling, but if Eric laughed, his chance at a puppy—already on shaky ground—was a goner.

  “What about when you’re at work?”

  “Well, depending on the job, he—or she,” Eric added quickly, “could come with me.”

  “To a construction site? With all the ways a dog could get hurt?”

  “Be fair, Kay,” Rob said. “You found Chester at this construction site. Or, she found you.”

  Kay’s bristles eased slightly. Rob was aware of Dora looking from her granddaughter to him, but he kept his attention on Kay.

  “She’s an adult dog. And street-smart. A puppy wouldn’t know all those things.” She gave Eric a stern look. “A careful owner wouldn’t want his dog to have to learn those things.”

  “I’d look after the dog real good. I love dogs, and I miss having one.”

  Kay’s attitude softened at that, but Eric left without any promises.

  “Planning to call in the FBI to investigate people who want puppies?” Rob asked Kay.

  “Not a bad idea,” she said with cool politeness. “Do you have any contacts?”

  “Sometimes it’s hard to find homes for puppies. Especially mixed breed. And you won’t be here to—”

  “I know.” She cut him off. “That’s all the more reason to make sure the puppies go to people who won’t need to be checked up on after…later.”

  “I’ll check on the puppies after they’re settled if you want.”

  She sucked in a breath, let it out slowly. “Thank you. I’d like that.”

  She turned away, but he’d seen the sheen in her eyes. So had her grandmother.

  “I’d like to invite you—both of you—to dinner at The Toby,” he said.

  “No thank you, Rob, I’m going to pick up Chester from Miss Trudi, have a sandwich, catch up on projects for the opening and crash,” Kay said.

  She didn’t meet his eyes.

  Worse, he realized, he was being watched by Kay’s grandmother.

  “Thank you for your offer,” Dora said with a small smile. “But I will likely follow a similar regimen to Kay’s. Although I would like to take you up on your invitation another night.”

  The smile didn’t fool him. The menu that night would be grilled Rob.

  “Did you see this?” Dora asked Kay the next morning.

  How could she have missed it? A bushel basket filled with chocolates sort of stood out in their plastic room. Just the scent could put you on a chocolate high.

  “Terrific, isn’t it?” Kay enthused. “Card says it’s from the committee to help stir our creativity.”

  “How lovely.” The rustle of a wrapper came from behind her. “Trudi tells me that young man who came by yesterday evening, the one you arrived with at Trudi’s, has been your tour guide around Tobias these past weeks. Rob Dalton, is that his name?” Dora asked. As if she didn’t know. At least she couldn’t know the basket must have come from Rob, since he and Nell were the only ones she’d told about Dora eating chocolate while painting.

  Kay didn’t look up from adding highlights to golden tulips. “Yes.”

  “He’s a very attractive young man.”

  “Yes.”

  “Not at all like Barry.”

  That did get Kay to look up. “You know Barry?”

  “Slightly. He has been part of your parents’ set for some time and I… When your engagement was announced I was particularly interested.”

  “Oh.” She had wondered if Dora might show up at the wedding—speculation she had banished as soon as it popped up. “Knowing how you feel about keeping commitments, you probably disapproved of my breaking the engagement as much as Mother and Father did.”

  “To the contrary. I thoroughly approved of your calling off that wedding. You would not have won your parents’ love by marrying a man they like, and you would have been miserable.”

  Kay gawked at her grandmother, but Dora continued to work on a background lilac bush in that awkward, tentative movement she now had. “How could you….?”

  “I know your parents, and I know you, at least I knew you as a girl.” There was such sadness in her voice that Kay blinked at the sting behind her own eyes. “I made it my business to know more about your Barry, too.”

  “He’s a good guy,” Kay said automatically.

  “He’s the best of your parents’ set,” Dora said. Kay realized that was an entirely different thing than ‘good.’

  She couldn’t talk about this anymore and keep working.

  “Well,” she said brightly. “Nothing like their set here in Tobias.”

  “Oh, I believe Lana Corbett might try her best to qualify.”

  Their eyes met, and for a moment connected with that sympathy of understanding they’d had all during Kay’s childhood.

  Kay broke the look first. “It must have been a shock to leave Tobias and go to New York the first time. What was that like?” she asked.

  “Amazing, terrifying.”

  Dora not only accepted Kay’s change of subject, she launched into an entertaining account of a starry-eyed girl from Wisconsin stumbling into the art scene of Greenwich Village. And of first finding the studio that Kay had known so well as a child.

  “By the time you came along, I owned it and it had been renovated—rebuilt, really,” Dora said. “But when I first rented it…oh, my. Paul said it made a foxhole look like five-star accommodations.”

  “Paul?”

  Dora’s brush stopped as she turned to Kay. “Your grandfather, dear. Paul Pelten.”

  “Oh. Of course.” Although there was no “of course” about it. Kay had rarely heard Dora refer to the father of her son.

  “We had a wonderful time. We lived the most bohemian existence.” Her eyes twinkled. “Now, don’t get any ideas about orgies or anything. I was
blessed in Paul. What’s that song? I was a one-man woman who found my one-woman man. Not that we didn’t have opportunities.”

  She laughed, a sound rich with memory and love.

  “I’ve never heard you tell those stories, Dora.”

  Her grandmother gave her a considering look. “No, I don’t suppose you have. He was gone long before you were thought of.”

  But the pain hadn’t been—Kay understood that in Dora’s answer. How long did it take to get over losing the man you love?

  “What was he like?” she asked simply.

  And her grandmother gave Kay her first real introduction to the man Dora Aaronson had loved.

  Rob was waiting at the end of the driveway when Kay brought Chester out for her walk that evening.

  Chester wagged her tail and pranced out the length of the leash to greet him. It was the warmest welcome she’d ever given him, the traitor.

  “Thank you for the chocolates,” Kay said.

  “The committee—”

  “Rob, aren’t you the man who means what he says?”

  He expelled a breath, bending to pet Chester. “Actually I said I think before I speak. You’ve put a few dents in that, but you’re welcome. I’ll go if you want, but I’ve missed our walks.”

  This was dangerous. Yet there were things she’d wanted to talk to somebody about. She could call her friends, she supposed. But she knew what they would say before she called them. The small group in her parents’ camp would tell her to get her butt back to New York, stop being an idiot and patch it up with Barry. The majority would tell her to get her butt back to New York, stop being an idiot, and forget her parents and Barry.

  She didn’t know what Rob would say, and that was his value. That and when it came to being in a camp, she knew he was in hers. Odd to feel this way when she hadn’t sorted out any of her emotions about him.

  “You can walk with us with a few conditions. First, no touching.” Because she might disintegrate if he touched her again without following through on it. He held his hands up in surrender. “Second, I get to ask the questions.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, then.”

  She related what Dora had told her about Paul Pelten and the fact that it was the first time Kay had heard about her grandfather.

  Then they walked three blocks in silence, the day’s warmth cooling quickly toward night. The leaves on the arching branches still green and full overhead, yet with a slight whiff of dryness that spoke of autumn coming. Of weeks passing. Of departures drawing nearer.

  It made her think back to the beginning. When Miss Trudi had walked in to the frenzy of the shoot with this broad-shouldered island of calm.

  “Do you ever regret not taking me up on my offer to make the most of those thirteen hours that first night?” she asked.

  “No, because you would have regretted it. You’d already kissed and regretted the first time, during the shoot.”

  “I did not.” Indignant, she stopped and faced him. “You wasted all that time, and now things are so complicated, but I was willing to explore from the start.”

  “Bullshit.” He made it a level challenge. A challenge to be as truthful as he’d been.

  She drew in a steadying breath then let it out in a stream. “Maybe you’re right. You’re not like the men I’ve known.” He wanted honest, that’s what he was going to get. “You’re considerate, solid, responsible, not the least boastful, but sure of yourself. It’s unnerving.”

  “What the hell kind of men have you known?”

  She didn’t answer directly. “Rob, you’ve told me about your divorce. I want to tell you about my engagement. About why I broke it off.”

  “Okay.” Under his level tone she heard surprise, and tension.

  “When I say why I broke it off, I mean what I’ve realized recently about why I’d broken it off. At the time it was gut instinct.” She smiled slightly. “Literally gut instinct. I kept getting an upset stomach. Dealing with the wedding stuff I was fine, but when Barry showed up, or I thought about him and about living with him, I’d run for the john. I knew I couldn’t go through with it. He truly is a decent person. So it had to be me. That’s what I’ve worked out over the past months—what about me.”

  She stopped to let Chester inspect the post of a stop sign.

  “It wasn’t Barry’s love I was after when we got engaged, it was my parents’. I’ve spent most of my life trying to get them to love me.”

  It was why she’d let Barry take over the apartment when he’d come back from South America. At some level she’d recognized that she’d used him.

  Rob reached for her, but she stepped back.

  He swore. “Sorry. I know I promised. But…what the hell is their problem?”

  “I get to ask the questions, remember? Besides, I’m working on my problems, not theirs. That is one thing I’ve learned. And my problem was wanting more than they had to give. Love, attention, time. For a long time Dora filled that gap. But in the month before she found out about the forgeries, she’d been distracted, not herself. I knew she was having medical tests, but it didn’t sink in…. It must have been when she received the diagnosis about her hands, knew her time to paint was limited.

  “Anyway, when the crisis hit, I already felt adrift. And then my parents came to me—came to me!—to ask Dora not to prosecute Father. They needed me. I was important to them. I could do something that would gain their attention and gratitude. And Dora would surely say yes, because she’d always been my rock, my shelter.

  “But Dora said no.”

  She bent and stroked Chester’s head, finding comfort in the contact.

  “I can’t even describe how devastated I was. I had failed. I was even less to my parents than before, because I had failed. What good was all the time I’d spent with Dora if I couldn’t get her to do what I wanted? That was their viewpoint. And I…I was so angry at Dora. Because she’d kept me from winning my parents’ love.”

  “But—”

  “Yeah, I know it’s not logical. But that’s how I felt. Besides, I was a kid. And I hadn’t realized any of the underlying stuff. Neither did any of the therapists my parents sent me to.” He raised a questioning eyebrow, and she shrugged. “It was the thing to do in my parents’ circle.”

  They’d walked back to the Hollands’ block. Twilight’s shadows had lengthened into night and streetlights popped on like miniature full moons.

  She let out a long breath, not entirely steady. Rob faced her, his eyes dark and hidden by the shadows.

  She wished she hadn’t made that no-touching edict.

  “And that brings me back to Barry,” she said. “See, he was part of their group. One of their favorites. And somewhere deep down I thought that if I married Barry, it would make them love me, too, so we would turn into a real family. That’s what I thought about when I said yes to Barry’s proposal. And I kept trying to make it right, to make it work. But my gut told me that even marrying Barry wouldn’t make a real family of the Aaronsons. And I finally listened to it.”

  Silence, along with the shadows, closed around them.

  “End of story,” she said.

  “Do you know what an amazing woman you are, Kay Aaronson?”

  “No, I—”

  “Amazing.” He overrode her. “And all the more amazing because you did it yourself—you raised yourself.”

  He reached for her then, and she had no strength to remind him of the rules. His palm smoothed her hair, stopping to cup the back of her head. He closed the space between them. He was going to kiss her. He was…

  His lips touched her forehead, warm and solid.

  Her heart pounded so hard he had to hear it, feel it. If he kissed her now, really kissed her…

  He stepped back.

  “Good night, Kay.”

  He got in his car and drove off, and still she stood there, with patient Chester sitting beside her.

  “Dora, I want to tell you something.” Without looking up from her
work on peony petals, Kay felt her grandmother’s sharp attention.

  They had worked silently all morning. Kay’s brain felt mushy and foggy, the way it could after a crying jag. But she hadn’t cried.

  Last night after her walk with Rob, she’d gone inside and worked like a fiend. She’d drafted news releases, written four crafters profiles, gathered media outlet addresses on the Internet, listed tasks to be done, made up a schedule, pulled together a roster of volunteers, roughed out a brochure layout and begun a proposal for workshops and classes to be taught at Bliss House. Filmmaking, mobile-making and even sculpting, among others. The sky had started to lighten before she fell asleep with her head on the desk.

  At least she hadn’t cried.

  “I want to tell you about a conversation I had last night.”

  Before her grandmother could respond, Kay launched into an account of her discussion with Rob. It took quite a while because there were detours to fill Dora in about Rob’s background, his idiotic ex, and how he and she had worked together these past weeks. The one thing she didn’t tell her grandmother was what Rob intended to do when he returned to Chicago.

  In all the talking, she kept coming back to her realizations about her family and herself.

  “You’ve become a very wise woman, Kay.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.” Would a wise woman have gotten engaged to Barry in the first place? Would a wise woman have that emotional blender going so hard? “But I have a question for you, Dora. And I hope you’ll give me an honest answer.”

  “I will do my best.”

  Kay almost smiled. The way Dora said that reminded her of Rob. That make-a-promise-and-stick-to-it attitude.

  “Did you love Father?”

  “Oh, Kay, yes, I loved him. I love him now, with all my heart. As you love your parents. It did not—does not— blind me to who he is. Or you to who he and your mother are. The difference is, I bear responsibility for who Ronald is, and you do not.” She sighed and put down the brush, using her other hand to gently unbend the fingers that had held it. “Kay, I need to tell you things that perhaps I should have told you a long time ago. So you can understand.”