Come Rain or Come Shine (29 page)

‘That was wonderful,' she said. ‘Perfect.'

His legs were H
2
O. He had blanked and couldn't remember what he said. And who did he leave out? He'd rather neuter a boar hog.

Vanita pulled the minivan onto the shoulder of the state road and foraged in the camera bag for her notebook and pen. She was almost home, which was south of Mitford and halfway to Holding, but if she didn't write this stuff down—
sayonara
.

She scribbled the headline, she could see it now.

Local Couple Says I Do,

Bull Says You Do Not!!!

She couldn't stand it another minute—the smell in here was driving her crazy. She retracted her seat belt and picked up the plate from the floor of the passenger side and peeled back the foil and so what if she didn't have a fork.

Two and a half cherry pies and two OMCs, down the hatch.

Cynthia had gone to the house; he could hear the musicians tuning up on the porch. He scraped the minute remains off the two cake plates into a Ziploc.

He could not have a slice, but he could sure have crumbs. He zipped the baggie and folded it and put it in his jacket pocket.

‘Rose Watson lives!' he said to Lily, though she didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

‘How would you like to have some fun?'

She didn't know how to process this remark; it sounded like a pickup line that nobody used anymore.

‘I know this song,' Tommy said. He was holding the sheet music Doc Harper wanted him to play tonight. ‘If you'll sing it with me, we could step in the front room and do a quick run-through. Nobody's in there and we have a few minutes.'

A song she'd never heard in her life? With only a quick run-through? Just
out there
?

‘I've never heard this song.'

‘But would you sing it with me?'

She was going to say no, but when she opened her mouth she said, ‘Yes.'

She found Dooley in the living room, waiting for Lace to come down for the first dance. Regret wasn't enough, it would never be enough.

He made eye contact with her and she was grateful.

‘I'm so sorry,' she said. ‘For everything.'

She tried to remember him when he was little, but she could not.

‘Thanks,' he said. He waited, looking down, and then up again. ‘It's okay.'

She understood that this was all he had to say. He said it was okay, not in the same way Pooh meant it, but in a good way.

He watched her turn and walk out to the porch and wanted to go after her and give her something more, but he couldn't. As a child, he had loved her desperately, no matter what, the way God loved him, no matter what. He was glad she said something from a place beneath the surface; he had felt the current of it.

It was like on TV, the way the mom looked in the shining dress and the music in the yard started playing really loud and the Tommy person was singing and people were clapping and the dad walked across the porch to the mom and then they were dancing really slow.

I set out on a narrow way many years ago

Hopin' I would find true love along the broken road . . .

The lady whose husband died and went up to heaven said that when people die everything in heaven is perfect. Everybody is happy. Maybe this was heaven, but he hoped he had not died, but if he had, he didn't know when it happened. Maybe when he ate a piece of cake tonight that made the stars go off behind his eyes and somebody said it was to die for. He felt all over himself and he was still here and not dead and his ring was here that said forever.

He wanted to be with them and not the grannies, so he ran over to where they were dancing and looked up and the dad stopped and laughed and picked him up and they all three danced together wearing rings that said something special inside and the people watching clapped again.

When they twirled around like on TV, the lights ended up being a big circle shining. And all the people watching ran together in a circle, too. He was as tall as Big Bird.

This guy in a collar, dancing with a Boston woman, was someone he didn't know. No, wait. It was someone he knew, but from a very long time ago.

Now the band was playing a number he'd heard Randy Travis sing. He liked Randy, who was somebody who had scrambled up mountains and fallen off more than a few.

They say time can play tricks on a memory

Make people forget things they knew . . .

Where to take it from here? When you're doing a big hike, you make rest stops. He had talked way too much, it was time to be quiet and listen to the words . . .

Crazy thought. That means he'd have to go home tonight and clean out his Jeep and wash it in the moonlight and remember to vacuum the seats coated with Daisy's dog hair and take the gum out of the ashtray. But tomorrow was Monday, alleluia; he could do this.

‘So how about if I pick you and Beth up in the morning, we get your car back to the rental place, and I drive you to the airport?' This was going way out on a limb—a place he'd always enjoyed going, actually.

He held her closer, but only a little closer. He was clergy, after all, on view to the world twenty-four/seven.

She didn't say yes and she didn't say no. She said, ‘Aioli.'

He laughed. They both laughed. He wanted to kiss this woman. Just once. Once! Surely that wasn't too much to ask—after all, she would be leaving in the morning.

When he picked her up at the hotel, he would bring her a bloom from his
Gardenia jasminoides
.

‘Look,' she said to Dooley.

Hoppy and Olivia dancing. She thought they were beautiful, the way they fit together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

And there was Jack Tyler dancing with Etta and Cynthia
and Father Tim, and in the yard, Buck and Pauline dancing, and Katherine in her super-great jeans and really expensive pearls dancing with her husband of forty-nine years, and Henry smiling his lovely smile at Rebecca Jane, who had caught the bouquet even though she was joining a nunnery if she didn't get accepted at UNC.

And there was Harley sitting with Miss Pringle on a bench beneath maples lit by fireflies.

‘I don't understand it,' said Dooley.

‘Maybe we don't need to understand it,' she said.

Sammy and Kenny and Pooh and a few others were shooting pool, so she and Dooley danced with Julie and Jessie, and then Henry danced with Cynthia, very stately and sweet, and Rebecca Jane hauled Danny off the porch and made him dance with her.

‘I don't want t' dance!' said Danny.

‘Dance!' said Rebecca Jane. ‘It's what you do at weddings! Show some manners, for gosh sake!'

Rebecca Jane Owen had tormented him all his life. One time when he was seven and she was twelve, he took the rungs off the ladder to her tree house and hid them in the woods. She was totally overdue . . .

‘Look,' said Dooley.

Tommy had stepped away from the band and was dancing with Beth.

‘Why can't life always be lived under the stars,' she said, ‘with great music and family and friends?' A purely rhetorical question, but she had to wonder.