The Wedding Letters

by Jason F. Wright

  A while after that I got a job where I was a day worker. I got a job in St. Louis. Then Cleveland. All jobs with the same company. I slept in a trailer on the job site and they never kicked me out. I liked it there.

  I am in Detroit now. There are not many jobs here, but I have one. And I like it. I work hard. I live in an apartment.

  Rachel, I still get mad sometimes. But I don’t get mad that I have not seen you or your mother. I get mad that I gave you a list of reasons to leave.

  I am going to try to come to the wedding. I wrote down the date and the address from the web page. And I have some money saved up. I don’t have very much. But I have enough, I hope.

  If I do not come, will you write me back? If I do come, will you talk to me?

  I am very proud of what you are.

  Sincerely,

  Your father

  • • •

  The gazebo was quiet.

  Rachel’s eyes hadn’t left A&P’s since she’d begun to read. She felt as if she’d been swept up in a tornado and dropped back down in a different place and at a different time.

  She turned around and faced those remaining within earshot of the post-ceremony drama. Her mother had retaken her seat and seemed to fumble her hands in her lap as though knitting some imaginary blanket. The color had drained from her face.

  Rachel looked up and saw an aged man with cowhide-toned skin and tears catching in a thick black-and-gray beard. She made a step toward him.

  “Dad?”

  Stephanie stood and looked at the man for a flash. Then her eyes fell shut and she watched a slide show on a black wall. She saw a kitchen with peeling linoleum flooring. She saw a tool belt scatter. She saw a screwdriver, a list, a flashlight, Rachel’s little face, veins popping, spit, a table leg breaking, another list, a man—her husband—rushing toward her with threatening eyes.

  Then came sounds to accompany the images. The screams and curses, breaking glass, a thud, a thud she had heard in her sleep for years, a thud she still heard on too many nights.

  She forced her eyes back open, but immediately the light at the edges crowded and pulsed toward the center. The scene shrank into a tiny white dot like an old television powering down. Then her mind powered down, too, and she collapsed to the ground.

  A crowd converged, but Malcolm, Rain, and Rachel waved them off and someone soon arrived with a cold washcloth and a bottle of water. Stephanie wasn’t out long, but later wouldn’t have known whether it was sixty seconds or six hours. After being helped into a sitting position, she insisted on returning to her bedroom inside the Inn. She tried to walk on her own, but when she wobbled and nearly fell again, Malcolm carefully picked her up and carried her in his arms. Rain and Rachel ran ahead, opening and holding doors, and he placed Stephanie on her bed in her second-floor guest room.

  Malcolm excused himself to find a doctor, Rain left to freshen the washcloth and to make some tea, and Rachel sat on the edge of the bed, brushing her mother’s hair off her clammy forehead.

  Her mother’s first word after a long period of quiet calm was, “Go.”

  “What, Mother?”

  “Go.” Stephanie opened her eyes and patted Rachel’s hand. “It’s all right. Go.”

  Rachel kissed her cheek, whispered something so soft not even her mother heard, and turned to leave. She paused at the door and swiveled back to face her mother. “Are you sure?”

  “Go, Rachel.”

  She found him in the crowd between the gazebo and the first row of chairs. She studied the man with the lines in his forehead and the deep, dark, tired eyes. His hair was still thick, though grayness threatened to overtake his temples. His eyebrows were a wiry mix of black and gray.

  He took a step from the crowd and met her in the open. “Hi, Rachel.”

  Chapter 46

  You’re very beautiful.” He said the words so quietly they were almost reverential.

  She would have spoken if she could have.

  “I hope it is all right that I came today.”

  Rachel opened her mouth, but closed it when no words came.

  The remaining surrounding friends and family began to withdraw, and soon only Rachel and the man remained. Noah hovered nearby, unwilling to leave Rachel alone, but knowing she needed privacy for this reunion.

  She had so much to say and every possible combination of questions and emotions blended in her mind. She offered a simple, “You’re here,” but later wouldn’t recall it.

  “I am,” her father said, taking a seat by her. “I’m here. . . . Where do we start?”

  Rachel said nothing.

  He smiled at her and felt the sting of not having smiled more. “I don’t remember much about the time you left. I woke up in a hospital. I don’t remember which one. I had an accident. During a fight. I went home after a day and you were gone. Both of you were gone. The man—the man next door? I don’t remember his name—he said you left after the fight. He told me to leave you alone. He said you had gone away and were not coming back. He said you would not ever come back.”

  This is my father, she thought, and she couldn’t fight the impression that his eyes looked as if life had been unfair and terribly unforgiving.

  Rachel pushed out the words with all the air she could spare. “I thought you were dead.”

  “I guess I was,” he said. “But I’m alive now. I am alive.”

  From the privacy of Malcolm’s office inside the Inn, Samantha placed calls to police and legal contacts in Phoenix and Kansas City and shared the news. Later, she and Angela sat inside the gazebo and tried to put into words the colossal page that had turned in their family’s history. Neither was successful.

  Rachel excused herself and made a call to Daniel. He was both stunned and speechless. As the conversation ended, he made Rachel promise to relay his warmest feelings to Stephanie and to let him know if Rachel needed anything as her new life with Noah began. He also offered the use of any of his properties for a last-minute honeymoon.

  Some guests left, but others arrived late for dinner and dancing and were oblivious to the drama of the afternoon. Rumors swirled, and soon not even the Coopers could have distinguished fact from fiction.

  Dusk arrived and Rain, Angela, and Aunt Allyson sat scrunched in the swing. The tree branch bent to its limit and the women giggled and chortled. They wondered what Jack and Laurel would have made of the day and wished they’d been there to experience it. Rain was quick to comment that she didn’t believe the Coopers had missed a single moment of the good-bye celebration.

  Malcolm and a nervous Jake sat inside the Inn, and Malcolm gave Jake a crash course in his new life as the owner of Domus Jefferson. “I’ll be as close as you want me to be, all right?”

  Stephanie remained in her room inside the Inn processing memories and fighting the drift from reality to dreams and back again. A&P sat on the bed next to her doing what she did better than anyone. She listened.

  Rachel’s father spent much of the evening keeping his distance and wandering the grounds alone. He didn’t know what September 28 would bring or whether he’d ever see his small family ever again. Still, he was quite content that if the reunion became nothing more than a moment in their history, another memory for generations to debate, it had been worth it.

  Everyone, no matter their role in the latest chapter, wondered if the evening was happening right in front of them or in some blurry world they wouldn’t remember when they awoke the next morning. But all were awake; all felt a sense of early resurrection.

  As the evening’s first cool wind gathered at the river and rolled up the hill and over Domus Jefferson, each actor looked up into the fall valley sky and saw exactly what they needed to. Nothing. Not a star to be seen and not a moon to show the way.

  No matter—each knew exactly where their loved ones were. And why.

  Chapter 47

  Noah and Rachel spent the late evening in one another’s arms in the small two-bedroom cottage Noah had grown up in. In whispers and
between kisses they discussed whether to let the drama and weight of the day’s events pass by and to share their first intimacy together the next night, in some far-off, exotic location. A place where the humidity wasn’t stifling and the bed would be big enough for both of them. But as the minutes rolled by, the whispers fell too shallow and the kisses too deep for anything but what they’d long anticipated.

  Soon after, the whispers returned and they wondered aloud whether they would be a king-size- or queen-size-bed couple. They imagined what their first home might look like. They discussed Noah’s art, a doctorate for Rachel, and a baby for both.

  The pace of conversation slowed and grew more serious. Rachel finally began to share with Noah the weight she’d been carrying alone. She apologized for leaving him on the swing weeks earlier and for processing the greatest emotional stress of her life alone when she didn’t have to. Through warm, grateful tears, she promised never to leave him alone on any swing ever again.

  Sleep won sometime after midnight and they drifted into dreams.

  In the morning they ate a final breakfast with Malcolm, Rain, and the guests at Domus Jefferson’s generous dining room table. Angela followed Rain around the kitchen just as Rain had once followed Laurel two decades earlier.

  After showers and with fresh clothes on their backs, Noah and Rachel said good-bye to the Coopers and the other guests. Samantha and Shawn stopped by to offer another round of congratulations and good-bye hugs. Neither had stopped smiling since learning Angela, Jake, and especially Baby Taylor would soon be much closer than they had ever dreamed.

  Rachel shared a private moment with her mother on the swing. Stephanie remained uneasy and unsure about the days ahead, but promised that when she returned to Phoenix she would take some time for herself. Rachel also made her promise not to drive outside her neighborhood.

  Later, as Malcolm loaded Stephanie’s things into Rain’s car for the long drive to the airport, they noticed A&P rolling and bouncing a wheeled suitcase across the grass from her home to theirs. She said on arrival, “I’ve always wanted to visit Phoenix. You have room for a friend? Maybe a week?”

  Stephanie’s mouth said nothing, but her eyes said yes and thank you.

  Rachel and Noah made a stop at the Woodstock Hampton Inn on their way out of town for a short conversation with Rachel’s father. Noah stayed in the car while father and daughter met in the lobby for no more than five minutes. When she returned, she carried a slip of paper with an address and phone number.

  “What’s next?” Noah asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  Rachel knew exactly where they were headed when Noah bypassed the freeway and headed north up Route 11, Old Valley Pike. It didn’t take long to snake up the switchbacks and pull off the gravel road at the trailhead to the Woodstock Tower.

  The trail was empty on that Wednesday morning, the air thin and refreshing, the sun bright and warm. They climbed the stairs and stepped onto the metal platform. While Rachel leaned against the western railing and counted the seven bends of the Shenandoah River, Noah covertly pulled a black Sharpie from his front pocket and drew something on the floor in the corner.

  “What are you doing, Noah Cooper?” Rachel faced him and wagged her finger.

  “Just leaving something behind.”

  Rachel moved closer and crouched down to admire his work. She laughed at the cartoonishly obese squirrel. “Brilliant work,” she said. “You’re a shoo-in for the Graffiti Caldecott Award.”

  He put his initials next to the squirrel and tucked the Sharpie back in his pocket. “So where to?”

  She put her hands in his jacket. “I don’t have a care in the world about where in the world we go.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Rome? Brazil? Buffalo?”

  “Anywhere we can sleep in, read some Wedding Letters, and, if you’re lucky . . .”

  Noah pretended to look embarrassed and covered his open mouth. “Oh my.”

  “I’m serious, Mr. Cooper. You pick. Let’s go.”

  “Are you sure? Last chance to vote.”

  “Will you be wherever we end up?”

  He nodded, smiled, and kissed her.

  Then, with their lips still touching, she breathed the words, “That’s all I need to know.”

  Visiting Woodstock and the Shenandoah Valley?

  Make your first stop the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce, located at 103 South Main Street, and ask for Jason’s Special Trivia Question. Answer correctly and there could be a surprise in store for you. Also, be sure to ask for a map of places of interest in The Wednesday Letters and The Wedding Letters.

  Before leaving town, take time to visit some of my favorite places:

  Ben’s Diner, Woodstock

  Blue Canoe Crew, Woodstock

  Community Theatre, Woodstock

  Edinburg Village Shops

  The Farmhouse, Woodstock

  Four Star Printing, Woodstock

  Historic Shenandoah Valley Courthouse, Woodstock

  The Inn at Narrow Passage, Woodstock

  Joe’s Steakhouse, Woodstock

  Katie’s Custard, Woodstock

  Meems Bottom Bridge, Mt. Jackson

  Shenandoah Caverns and the Yellow Barn, New Market

  Shenandoah County Fairgrounds, Woodstock

  Three French Hens, Woodstock

  W. O. Riley Park, Woodstock

  Walton & Smoot Pharmacy, Woodstock

  Woodstock Café

  Woodstock Museum

  Woodstock Tower

  Woodstock River Bandits Baseball

  Praise for The Novels of Jason F. Wright

  “Plenty of uplift and tradition-affirming sentiment.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Beautifully written. I believe the Christmas Jars tradition will change lives.”

  —Richard Paul Evans, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Christmas Box and The Christmas List

  “Just like It’s a Wonderful Life, Christmas Jars is American storytelling at its best. Jason Wright has written the next Christmas classic.”

  —Glenn Beck, talk radio host, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Sharp prose, clever characterizations, thought-provoking insights . . . fresh and spiritual.”

  —Don Piper, New York Times bestselling author of 90 Minutes in Heaven and Heaven Is Real

  “In the tradition of Catherine Ryan Hyde’s Pay It Forward, Wright’s holiday novel could inspire others to Christmas generosity.”

  —Library Journal

  Other Books by Jason F. Wright

  Christmas Jars

  Christmas Jars Reunion

  The Cross Gardener

  The James Miracle

  Penny’s Christmas Jar Miracle

  Recovering Charles

  The Seventeen Second Miracle

  The Wednesday Letters