Meg's Best Man: A Montana Weekend Novella (8 page)

Meg felt her own eyes well up, and she brushed her tears with her sleeve. “Oh, cut it out. I’m supposed to be saving all my sobbing for tomorrow.”

“Leah? Which is my room?” Brie was calling. Meg backed away and Leah headed for the door. As she opened it, Gage was coming out. “Bunk beds?” said Brie’s laughing voice from inside. Meg smiled, waved at both Gage and Leah, and headed for the bonfire.

But Gage ran after her. She could hear his loud steps on the deck. He touched her shoulder and she turned around, but all she could think was that she really didn’t want to find out what all the tension between him and Brie was about. “I just wanted to say thanks for the dance,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

She was looking for a polite way out, but he seemed determined to say something else. Her Uncle Jeffrey’s voice saved her. “There you are, Gage! I am so sorry it’s taken me this long, I was caught up with finalizing a detail or two on the ceremony, and then the dinner, and then…” He looked at Meg and back at Gage again. “Do you have time to talk now, or am I interrupting something?”

“Not at all,” Meg said. She gave her pastor uncle a kiss on the cheek, waved cheerfully at Gage again, and took off across the little meadow.

There was something reassuring about the smell of wood smoke. It reminded her of the end of long days of work or play, the moment when the only thing left to do is go to sleep. It felt warm and bright and lovely, but after about three minutes, she was done. Leah was fine, Joshua was fine, and soon everyone would be heading toward their tents or to Catherine and Jacob’s house to sleep. It was time for her to get some rest. She had cobwebs to clear.

As she started down the dark road, she glanced back up toward the cabin. No one was following her. The day was over, and her own personal valet had moved on to another job. Part of her mind, the tricky part in the back, was imagining hearing footsteps coming up behind her and a hand on her elbow. It would be like Gage to insist on walking her down to the camper, wouldn’t it?

She slipped on some loose gravel on the steep drive. It was the only sound except for the murmur of laughter above her.

He had something more important to do, now. She tried to stop listening for footsteps that weren’t coming. It was a waste of time and made her head hurt. Not only did he have a new maid of honor to look after, but it was clear that they knew each other. There was no mistaking the familiarity in Brie’s expression or the tension in his when she arrived. It was as if he had been caught doing something wrong.

All he had been doing was talking to Meg. Maybe even flirting, if she could remember what that was like. Maybe he was flirting with one girl when he already had made promises to another. Meg slipped on another steep spot and sighed. She was too close to the camper to bother pulling the flashlight out of her bag now.

Had he been flirting? For heaven’s sake, had she? How embarrassing. She couldn’t help but smile when she was talking with him, or worse, dancing with him. Her face felt funny from all the smiling she’d been doing. She rubbed at her cheek—that’s what the world needed, cheek workouts. She could imagine opening a chain of stores where eager clients stood in front of a mirror and a perky girl in spandex told jokes.

Okay, now she was just getting silly. She tried to open the door and was surprised to find it locked. Oh yeah, she had locked Gage out this morning. Funny how your opinion of someone could change—or change back—in such a short time. She unlocked the door and went into her dark camper, closed the door behind her, and stood still. It was very, very quiet. All traces of the sun, the laughter, and color were gone. Instead of turning on the light, Meg sat down on her bed. She didn’t feel like reading, she still had nothing to write, and she didn’t have to do anything special and wedding-like with her hair anymore.

How long had it been since a man made her smile like that? It didn’t matter. Like just about all new friendship she made these days, someone would be leaving soon. Usually it was her, going from job to job. She liked that better than having people, even strange people who might already have girlfriends, leave her. She dragged herself through her bedtime routine in the dark, crawled into bed, and let her tired body drag her racing mind deep into sleep.

Saturday

Bam bam bam!
Meg jolted awake, but she couldn’t make sense of what she was hearing or where she was. It was barely light. Her first coherent thought was that it was Gage and she didn’t have any coffee ready yet. “Margaret! Are you in there?”

She got up, pulled a blanket around her shoulders, and opened the door of the camper. “Mom! Dad! Hi… what time is it?” Hugs were exchanged all around. The cold morning air seeped in, and she heard her little propane heater kick on. “Come in!”

Her father’s blond hair had more gray, but other than that, he looked just the same. Gray eyes like his brothers and so many of the Parks clan, and a face that seemed always to be faintly smiling. Her mother had put on a couple pounds, as she usually did between missions, and she looked cute that way. Meg didn’t like it when she got stringy and tired looking. No doubt Catherine had been working hard to fill her out. Her mother didn’t like to cook, and she often just forgot about meals entirely.

Her parents squeezed past her to sit at the table, and her father fingered the newest painting on the walls. “Nice. I didn’t know moose like to go sledding.”

“Neither did he,” Meg said with a smile. She poured some drinking water into a pot on the burner and used a lighter to get it going since the flint had long since worn out. She pulled two mugs from the drying rack and rummaged through a cabinet to find some green tea for her parents. All the boxes in the cabinet were still jumbled, but if they noticed, they didn’t say.

“It looks like your mother and I will be going to Burma in a month.”

“It’s going to be so exciting! They are building an orphanage there. So many orphans, thousands of them, from the flooding and the warfare. It’s just awful.”

Meg adjusted the flame on the burner and swallowed down the worry that always came along with her parents’ plans. “Are you going alone?”

“No, we’ll be part of a team. We’re going to spend the next month doing a tour of churches in South Dakota, raising funds and getting ready.”

Her mother laughed. “Just when we thought we’d gotten every vaccine we could get, it turns out we have to get boosters.”

“Where will you be staying?”

Her mother shrugged, a peaceful smile on her face. “It always works out. Something always works out.”

“Where is Mark? What will he be doing before the dorms open up?”

“He’s been staying with some friends in Cody. Nice folks. He set up the computer for a camp there, and when he’s done he’s planning to stay with Jacob and Catherine.”

Meg nodded without comment. A decade younger than her, her little brother would be going to college a year early. It made sense. In many ways he was already raising himself. She worried about him, and these last few days without Internet access had been the longest she’d gone without sending him an e-mail or text in years. “I was really hoping he’d be here.”

“He might still come,” her father said. “He’s just very busy. You know how he is. In fact, he’s a lot like you. I wish you two could take a little more time to relax.”

Meg didn’t want to have this discussion again. She wished things were different for Mark, that he wasn’t on the run from home to home, living mostly with his face in the computer and always speaking in terms of video game metaphors. She wished his parents spent a little more time with him than they did saving the world. Meg closed her eyes. Of course homeless orphans in Burma would need her parents more than a seventeen-year-old almost-man. Anyone could see that. But where was the line? Every parent in the extended Parks family drew it differently. Her parents didn’t draw much of a line at all.

For no particular reason other than a sudden desire to throw a wrench in the works, Meg faced her parents and said, “I published a children’s book.”

“Oh, really?” her father said.

“Honey, I’m so happy for you! Can I see it?”

“I sold my last copy. I’m supposed to have more waiting for me when I get home.”

“That’s great, sweetheart,” her father said. “You’ll have to send one to us when we get a post office box in Billings. We’ll be sure to let you know what it is when we get settled.”

And that was that. She poured the hot water and some honey in her father’s mug and hot water and milk in her mother’s, and they went on to talk about the project they would be working on and how they planned to get clothing for the kids past a million impenetrable barriers. Meg tried to listen. Her heart hurt for the kids, children with no mom or dad and very little medical care. Although she tried not to, she was thinking, why did I wait to tell them about the book?

Because they don’t really care
. It sounded petulant, but in a way it was true. They were happy for her, they wanted her to be happy, and she knew they loved her very much. But her parents carried so much in their hearts that she always shared time there with other things. And when those other things were starving, dying, and persecuted… well. Publishing a book meant nothing compared to helping orphans, and she knew it. But the child inside of her wanted something else. Fanfare. Tears. Hugs. Something.

And if she’d gotten it, she would have been embarrassed, and she would have felt guilty.

“Margaret, is your little book a Christian book?”

Meg bit her lip. It was to her, but not the way that her mother would want it to be. “No.”

“Oh.” Her mother took a sip of tea. “This is wonderful, Margaret. Thank you for making this for us.”

Her mother’s hair was so gray, and she seemed too young for it. She remembered seeing her mother each fall of her life and feeling shocked at the change in her. It felt as if her mother died a little each summer while she was away, and it had frightened her. It still did. She wanted to ask her mom and dad about retirement, health insurance, having a little apartment of their own where they could retire when they weren’t strong enough to travel the world any more.

“God supplies our needs, Margaret,” her mother said. “I see that worried look on your face. It’s not your job to worry about us, honey. We step out in faith, and He does the rest.”

“I know. But you can’t keep this up forever.”

“And when it’s time to stop, we will stop, and He’ll find a place for us,” her father smiled.

“Margaret, you know I don’t like to tell tales,” her mother said, and it was true. “I just wanted you to know that I heard Leah had mixed feelings about her maid of honor coming back. Catherine said last night that you did a great job of smoothing things over. I just wanted to tell you that I’m very sorry that you won’t get to be the maid of honor today.”

“I’m okay, mom. This way I just get to enjoy the company and have a nice time.”

“Well, we are going to head up. We have the big tub in the back of the truck.”

“The big tub?”

“Oh, you didn’t know? Joshua promised Leah a bubble bath.” Her mother laughed. “He’s very excited about heating up the water for her like in the olden days.”

“And,” her father added with a wink, “we also have three of Catherine’s biggest pots and two extra propane tanks, and I’ve heard he’s got a fancy new oven or grill or something. So it’s not quite like in the olden days.”

“No, thank goodness,” Meg said. “But it’s still sweet. I did wonder how she was going to get all dolled up for today. She said she was going to stay up here all weekend. She was determined.”

Her parents stood up to go, so she backed out of the way. “We’re going back down to town for a while after we deliver the tub and pots,” her mother said. “Do you need anything, honey?” When Meg shook her head, she added, “Well, we’ll see you then. And maybe you can tell us a little more about your book.” She got hugs from both of her parents, and they left.

Meg crawled back onto her bed to get a glimpse of them leaving. She had wondered about them saying they were driving a truck, and as they backed down the road she recognized it. It was Uncle Jacob’s truck they were driving. She wondered what that meant about their old Subaru. Maybe it had finally given up the ghost.

She collapsed onto the bed. Although they didn’t ask outright for funding for their mission work, the request was always there. They would ask that she pass on information about their work to her friends. If they met her for coffee Meg always paid the bill. And while they had homes when she was young—one after another—it seemed that they had trouble staying put for even a couple months at a time. Mark wasn’t bothered; he seemed to always have a friend’s house to go to. Why should it bother her so much?

She buried her face in her pillow and moaned. She hated worrying about her own finances and not knowing if sooner or later she would be paying for her parents as well. There was a lot more to worry about, too. What if they were seriously injured in Burma? What if they were captured and someone had to go to Washington and plead for the government to rescue them? Or what if Mark got in trouble? Her parents seemed to think he was an adult, but he wasn’t. He had spending money from his computer work now, and time on his hands. What if he got into drugs?

And what about her? There were only so many jobs for muralists, especially one who specialized in cute and funny. She was saving her income from the book, but that was less than what she needed to fix the Jeep and the bent axle on the trailer. Which was now probably cracked. Meg packed a pillow over her head.

There was another firm knock on the door. Meg was sure it was her parents stopping by again on the way down. She pulled the pillow off her head, tossed off the blanket, and opened the door. “Is everything all right?”

“Well, no, not really,” Brie said. She was standing on Meg’s doormat in her very stylish leather coat and her hair pulled into the perfect updo, where just the right amount of hair went rogue and broke free, framing her face. Pretty blue eyes. And the movie-star smile.