The Wedding Planners of Butternut Creek (30 page)

“A very successful business.”

“I love photography but not as much as I love and want to be with you. I don’t want to be away from you Monday through Friday.”

“Could you work your schedule around? Be in town for only two or three days? Or maybe we could move closer to town, so you could drive.”

Gussie rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure. We’ll move out of the parsonage and spend money on a house. What do you think Miss Birdie would think of that?” She held her hand up. “I know you’re going to say you don’t care what she says.”

“No.” He shook his head. “Actually, I wasn’t. I was going to say I appreciate her opinion but I want to be close to you.” He put his cheek on Gussie’s head and held her. “I want to spend evenings cuddled with you. Could you find any jobs up here to fill in? Maybe your school pictures?”

“I’ve thought about that, even put out a few feelers to schools around Creek County and checked with friends around Llano. I’ve also considered not renewing the lease on the studio and moving up north, closer to Highway 29, maybe only keep hours a few days a week. It’s not a long drive from here to Leander or Liberty Hill.” With a sigh, she stood and pulled Adam to his feet. “Come on. Walk me home. It’s getting late.”

“So we’ve decided?” he said as they strolled. “We’ve made the decision to think about this another time.”

“It’ll work out,” she said.

He knew it would.

The next afternoon, as Hannah sat in the window seat in her top-floor room and looked out at the street through the huge trees, she pondered her future. She had no more idea what she was going to do than her brother did. Besides not communicating with him, she’d been rude. Although Gussie and Gabe had helped her a lot with her people skills, she still scored far below average.

Yes, Gabe had helped her a lot, and she had no idea what to do about the man. With him, she felt treasured and cared for but she’d never considered herself a woman who needed to be cared for.

She’d enjoyed being with him—oh, she had to stop lying to herself: She loved being with Gabe. Every second spent with him felt like a moment outside of time and completely beyond her normal world.

Why can’t Hannah Jordan have a fling?
her inner voice of frivolity suggested.
Why can’t she stay in town for a few months and have a very moral and proper fling, but a fling nonetheless?

You’re not exactly the kind of woman who has a fling
, the voice of reason spoke up. She did not want to hear it.

What was she going to do?

“Hi, Hannah.” Janey appeared at the top of the steps. “Yvonne left part of a pecan pie. Do you want a piece?”

Pe
-can, stress on the first syllable. The Southern pronunciation.

“I knocked but I didn’t hear anything. Are you okay?”

“I’m sorry. Must have been thinking.”

“Do you want a piece of pie?” Janey repeated as she settled onto the window seat next to Hannah.

“Did my brother send you?” She shouldn’t have said that. Hannah didn’t doubt her brother might be underhanded in finding out information about her, but he wouldn’t use Janey. If she hadn’t known that, Janey’s confused expression would have told her. “Sorry. I’m grumpy today.”

“When are you going to leave here?”

After Hannah looked into Janey’s face, she put her arm around the girl. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe you’ll stay in town and live up here forever?”

Hannah shuddered. As much as she’d grown to love Janey, thought of her as a strong link to the rest of humanity, the idea of living up here for years, the maiden aunt to Adam’s future children, the old maid in the attic who spent her entire life reading journals, gardening, and running from life, terrified her. It frightened her almost as much as the thought of admitting she loved Gabe and wanted to be with him.

“For what I do, the kind of doctor I am, I have to be in a big city.”

“You could be a doctor here. We have to go all the way to Marble Falls or Austin to see a doctor. And you could marry Coach and have children and be my friend forever.”

“Janey, I’ll be your friend forever wherever I am.” She felt the warmth of Janey snuggled into her side and closed her eyes. She wished more than anything she could stay here, be happy with Janey as her best friend and loving Gabe and having his children.

But she couldn’t. At the seminar she’d realized Kenya still called her, that she still had work to do there. She’d learned so much in that week that could help people. As much as she’d attempted to deny the call, those few days at the conference had clarified her duty.

How hard it was to be torn between two countries, between what she loved and…well, another thing she loved.

At one forty on a Thursday afternoon, Adam stood in the church kitchen, looking at the ceiling to make sure all the tiles matched up. He knew they would. Charley expected perfection from his workers. With the new air-conditioning system, the entire building felt cool and the church treasurer mentioned that the utility bill had dropped.

“Hello, Preacher. I need to ask you something,” Blossom said. The other Widows flocked in behind her, each with a tote.

Adam had learned to hate the phrase
I need to ask you something
, because it concerned something he hadn’t done yet or didn’t plan to do. However, he had no choice but to smile as the wedding planners filed in. He might as well forget returning to his study to do…oh, one ministerial task or another. No, with no escape route open to him he had to face the inevitable.

The women sat in chairs around the kitchen table as designated by seniority, and Adam joined them.

“We’ve measured the fellowship hall,” Miss Birdie said. She handed him several pieces of stiff paper with diagrams on them.

“Here are some suggestions for the setup.” Blossom moved next to him to point and explain. Each design had been carefully drawn with tiny figures representing guests scattered around, every line to scale. In detail, she clarified each design and the Widows expounded further on its positive and negatives points.

Finally, after carefully studying them all, Adam wanted to do nothing more than say,
The only important part of the day is marrying Gussie. We can all stand on our heads at the reception for all I care
.

But he couldn’t. “I like this one.” He handed Blossom one.

“Really?” Blossom said. “You don’t want a gift table?”

“Lots of people bring their gifts to the church,” Mercedes pointed out.

“Which do you ladies like?” He attempted to hand the diagrams back to Blossom.

“No, no, no. This is your wedding. You choose.” Blossom refused to take the sheets.

For a moment he thought about holding them up one by one and discussing them as he did with a children’s sermon. Instead, he studied each again. On the third of the five plans, all the Widows perked up and nodded.

“I choose this one,” he said.

“Excellent choice,” Blossom said.

Not really a choice. If he hadn’t picked that one, they’d end up with it anyway.

“Now, tell us which napkin is your favorite,” Blossom said.

He chose one but knew it didn’t really matter what he liked.

Then Mercedes opened the box she’d brought in. “You need to make a final decision on the cake.” She took out a round container, took the top off, and handed it to him with fork and napkin. All four Widows watched him as if he were judging their entries in the Pillsbury Bake-Off.

He jammed his fork into the mound, came up with a hunk of cake, and placed it on his tongue. He chewed slowly before he swallowed. “Delicious,” he said as he closed the box. “What’s next?”

“Next?” Mercedes echoed, her voice colored with confusion. “There isn’t anything else.”

He hid a grin. This one cake constituted the only option he had. “Great choice.”

“We have some swatches we need to go over with you.” Winnie set her notebook and pen down and handed him an envelope.

What, exactly, was a swatch? “I think swatches are a Gussie decision.”

“We have some sketches and suggestions for the flowers,” Blossom said.

“I know Gussie wants you to decorate the sanctuary.” Actually he knew no such thing. Did it show a lack of love and commitment to toss his bride to the Widows? “But she’d want to choose the bouquets for her flowers and the bridesmaids.”

“Of course,” Blossom said.

“This is, after all, her wedding,” Mercedes added.

On Friday evening, Adam walked outside to check out the turtle and hand Hector the keys.

“Took a little longer than Rex hoped,” he started before he realized Hector hadn’t heard a word of what he’d said. No, the young man was walking around the car and touching it.

Rex had done a great job. He sanded and undented the body and painted it a brilliant orange with black racing stripes. He’d replaced the bumper that had fallen off a year earlier with one that was centered and shiny.

After scrutinizing every inch of the exterior, Hector opened the door and slid inside. “No spring sticking through the seat,” he said. Then he put the window down and back up, checked the clock, and turned on the radio, which now also had a slot for a CD.

Hector didn’t comment on the new tires and had no idea what Rex had done to the engine but Adam felt great relief that he shouldn’t have a flat or break down on the highway between San Pablo and here.

Rex had also said he might as well get a new car for all this one would cost to fix up, and it would still be an old car. But that hadn’t been the deal his father had come up with.

Hector got out of the car, strode toward Adam, and threw his arms around him. “Thanks, Pops. This is great.”

“Write my dad. He funded it.”

“Going to pick up Bobby and Bree.” Hector got back in the car and drove off.

For a moment, Adam felt a bit nostalgic. Things were changing. Hector would leave for college, the turtle ran, and life would be different. Different but good, because he and Gussie would spend their lives together and watch more of their children grow up and head for college.

With a wave at the turtle, he turned back toward the parsonage and into the kitchen, where Gussie handed him a basket of ripening tomatoes she’d picked.

“Too bad we couldn’t use tomatoes for the wedding instead of flowers or in place of the cake,” she said. “Might could hand them out as favors.”

“Even Hector begged for a moratorium on BLT sandwiches,” he said. “I never thought he’d turn down food of any kind.”

The parsonage garden had yielded tomatoes, beautifully red and delicious but far more than everyone could eat.

“Have you seen the shelves in the basement? They’re filled with vegetables Mom canned.”

“I stay out of the basement and the kitchen. There’s so much going on, I do my wash after your mother leaves. Otherwise, I get in her way or she tries to feed me.”

He looked out the window to the backyard, where Hannah was digging in her corner. He noticed her shoulders slumped. “I’m going to go out and talk to her,” he said to Gussie and headed out to the yard.

When Hannah looked up, Adam stifled a gasp, because Hannah really hated people to gasp when they saw her face. She didn’t look as terrible as she had when she arrived, but the glow she had around Gabe had disappeared. How could he have missed that? Oh, he knew. Gussie and the wedding distracted him greatly, but he should have noticed. He now realized he hadn’t heard her laugh since she got back.

She looked back down at the soil, carefully pulling out weeds. He stooped next to her and reached out toward a plant. He drew his hand back when she slapped it. “That’s not a weed.”

“Sorry.” He watched as she pulled a few more clumps that, to him, looked exactly like what he’d attempted to remove. “What’s wrong, Sis?”

“Wrong,” she said in a bright little voice, or at least what she thought might sound like a bright voice. “Nothing. Happy as a lark.”

“Sis.” He knew her well enough to say nothing more.

“Why…,” she began. She swallowed. “I…

This must be serious. Hannah was seldom at a loss for words.

“Okay, Preacher,” she said. “I need to ask you something.”

He nodded.

“About faith.”

He’d guessed that when she called him preacher. “Go on.”

“I have to go back to Africa,” she said.

“But…”

Before he could say more, she held her hand up. “Let me finish. Now I feel God wants me to return to Kenya. I’m as surprised about this as you are. I thought I’d lost my faith, but little by little it’s come back.”

“Wow.” He considered her words. “That makes it tough. You love Gabe but you think God is calling you to return to Kenya.”

“Good job of summing that up, brother. Yes, that’s it.”

“It’s good that you’ve found your faith.”

“Yeah. Not that mine was nearly as strong as yours, and the horror of those years in Kenya about destroyed it. At least, that’s what I thought.”

“Then?” he urged her.

“Then, at the conference, I listened to the lectures and realized how much I know and how much I care for the people in Kenya, for all those I can help. I realized God gave me this brain and filled me with knowledge and I can heal a bunch of God’s children.” She shook her head. “Odd. I rediscovered my faith during a PowerPoint presentation on updated nomenclature for H5N1 avian influenza and I don’t understand what happened.”

He waited.

“That’s it,” she said when she realized he wasn’t going to say anything. “I do not understand.”

“Go on. What don’t you understand?”

“You know I like facts, I deal with data. I like the world to be logical, but faith is not logical.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “Faith is not rational. It’s not scientific but I feel it. Faith fills me but I can’t quantify it. I can’t explain it but I know it’s there. Do you feel that way? That there’s this inexplicable force pulling at you?”

“That’s why I’m a minister.”

“But I’m a scientist, Adam. How can I, how can anyone, explain faith in a logical or scientific way?”

“No one can. That’s why it’s called faith, not certainty.”