Snowbound with the Best Man Read online

  “For her, maybe it is. I still get near hysterical on an airplane.” She sighed. “I don’t think there are rules to this. Not with kids, not with us.” She paused for a moment before saying, “I think maybe one of the reasons Lulu is so taken with Carly is that they’ve both lost someone. Lulu has friends who have single parents from divorce, but Carly is the first person in her age group Lulu knows who’s had a parent die.” She squinted her eyes shut. “I hate that verb, you know. ‘Die.’ ‘Passed’ sounds like it isn’t enough, and ‘die’ sounds like it’s too much.”

  Bruce nodded his agreement. He hated most of the words associated with what happened. Deceased. Lost her battle to cancer. Widower. Bereaved. None of the language ever came close to describing the thing anyway.

  “Have you had friends do the pushy date thing?” he asked, just to change the subject.

  That brought a real, full laugh from her. “Oh, yes. And believe me, there aren’t a lot of eligible bachelors my age in a place like this. Plus—no offense to your gender—having a child in tow doesn’t exactly light up your prospects with most guys.” She looked at him. “You’ll have it easier, though. It may be a gross generalization, but I think women take to blending families easier than men do.”

  He couldn’t believe he was asking. “But you’re looking?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. I don’t know about you, but what I had with Mark was better than lots of thirty-year marriages I’ve seen. Absolutely too short, but oh, it was terrific. I hit the jackpot on the first time out. Trying again just feels like inviting disappointment.” She pulled in a deep breath. “No, I’d rather spend my time helping other people get married.”

  Kelly sounded so content, so in control. She’d made peace with the parts of her life that had been taken away. She had plans and goals, wasn’t lurching though life in survival mode, doing the bare minimum to get by. Was it the constancy of her faith that had done that? His own faith had seemed to evaporate into a thin film of anger for him on the day of Sandy’s funeral. Was she just better suited to this survival journey than he was? Or was it just that time healed like everyone said?

  Maybe it really was time. He could almost believe, listening to her, that he could get to where she was one day. Right now, he just needed to get through the upcoming wedding, and maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world if she helped a bit with that.

  Chapter Five

  Bruce and Carly managed to have a pleasant “vacation” day Monday. Visiting Darren and his elk herd up at the national park, they’d had a whole long, unhurried day out in nature. Darren’s elk had always fascinated Carly; he’d often wondered if they were the source of her imaginary unicorn thing. She’d “seen” one of her unicorns in the forest, playing among the elk herd. Was that good? Or bad? Whatever it was, the sighting had put her in a good mood, which at least meant his plans to spend quality time with Carly might succeed.

  Until Tuesday morning anyway. The first words out of his daughter’s mouth were a whiny, “I’m tired of outdoor stuff. I wanna go play with Lulu today.”

  Had anyone ever thought about bottling a five-year-old’s bored whine as a deterrent? To anything and everything? He loved Carly, but that girl had a pitch to her whine that could set his teeth on edge. He’d been expecting a request for a repeat visit to Lulu’s, but he’d thought it would at least come after breakfast. Not his daughter’s first waking words. “Good morning to you, too, sunshine,” he said.

  “Can I?” She padded over in bright yellow pajamas covered in rainbows.

  He put down his newspaper and pulled her up onto his lap. “Lulu has school today, remember? I thought you and I could have fun.”

  “Is it gonna snow today? Can we go sledding?”

  Bruce turned to the weather page at the back of the paper and pointed to the pictures that showed the week’s forecast. He pointed to the big snowflake on the box marked for Thursday, the one after the box with the big heart on Wednesday for the holiday. “The snow isn’t coming until after Valentine’s Day.” He noticed, but didn’t explain, the warnings about significant snowfall for the weekend. “But there are lots of other fun things we can do before then. We haven’t gone to see the bakery, or the fishing store, or visited the frozen waterfall yet.”

  “Lulu said her favorite bookstore is in the big city nearby. Can we go there today?”

  It was starting to feel as if Lulu’s and Kelly’s suggestions or invitations were scheduling his vacation. Maybe getting out of Matrimony Valley and making the short drive to Asheville was a good idea. He wanted at least one more day with just the two of them, and that might not happen if he stayed in town.

  And it might be good to get Carly someplace out of the woods, where he wouldn’t be continually watching for her to see unicorns. Because unicorns didn’t live in the city, right? If that was how this worked. Truth was, he had no idea how the whole unicorn thing worked, or what it was supposed to accomplish—if it accomplished anything other than making Carly smile. The conversation earlier with Kelly had made him feel slightly better about it, but had brought up a whole bunch of questions, as well.

  “Hey, kiddo,” he asked, snuggling her close and hoping to effect a change of topic, “do you have any questions about Mr. Darren’s wedding? You’ve got a big role to play, you know.”

  That perked her up. “Not as big as yours. Will you be really busy being bestest man?”

  Bruce found her version of the title heartening. “Bestest” at anything felt far beyond his reach these days. “Not so busy that you can’t be my date. And you can stay at the reception as long as you like, even way past your bedtime.”

  She giggled. “I’m your date. That’s funny.” She settled in against him, measuring her small hand up against his. He wondered if she thought the space on his ring finger looked as empty as he did, if she had any memory of the rings tucked away in a velvet box at the top of his closet. “Did you and Mom have a flower girl at your wedding?”

  He’d been waiting for the impending wedding to bring up her curiosity about his and Sandy’s ceremony. But even if this was expected, he still didn’t feel prepared. How could he talk about it with the joy and warmth it deserved, not with the huge sense of loss the memories invoked? He put on a smile. “We did. A little girl named Nancy. She stole the show, just like I expect you will. We looked at the pictures, remember?” Carly loved seeing her mother glowing and gowned like a princess. He’d looked at the love in Sandy’s eyes in those photographs and felt an ache that took his breath away.

  Carly’s eyes were so much like Sandy’s. He hugged his daughter tight. “It’s okay to feel a bit sad about the wedding. It’s okay if it makes you miss Mom.”

  “It kinda does.” She looked up at him, and he thought he saw a bit of relief in her expression. Finally, he thought, I got something right in helping her through this.

  He gave the only answer he could. “Me, too.”

  “But Lulu doesn’t have a daddy anymore. Her mom is like you, and she goes to weddings all the time.”

  He wasn’t quite sure where she was headed with that, but it fascinated him that Lulu and Carly had shared about their missing parents. How did kids open up with no hesitation like that? Then again, hadn’t he and Kelly done much the same thing? And yet Bruce couldn’t think of an instance before Kelly where he’d shared about Sandy in a first conversation. He used one of Sandy’s tricks when Carly said something mystifying: “So...?”

  “So it has to be fun. The wedding, I mean. Otherwise why do it?”

  Carly had a point. A wedding could be fun. Bittersweet, maybe—especially since this would be the first he’d attended since Sandy’s passing—but maybe he could push himself toward looking forward to the happiness of his good friend. “Good point. Hey, what do you say we practice our dancing again before breakfast?”

  He pulled her upright and held out his hands. She stepped ginger
ly onto his feet and looked up at him with a baffled grin. “We’re in our pj’s. And there’s no music.”

  “Who cares? We’ll make our own. Sing me a song.”

  Carly launched into a silly number from one of her favorite television shows, and he slowly began to move his feet with hers atop his. He’d been a good dancer—Sandy loved to dance—but the lilting one-two-three of this father-daughter version always felt more like a swaying hug to him. A tiny demonstration that they still constituted a family, broken as they were. She loved it as much as he did. It was one of the few things that still felt as good as it had before Sandy died.

  Bruce danced around the room with his daughter, humming along with her, lifting his feet in careful, rhythmic steps and relishing the small weight of her bare feet wiggling on top of his. Something close to joy—like the start of a sunrise or the sparks of a fireplace just catching—pulled at the edges of his numbness. The smile he gave Carly didn’t require so much effort; it came up naturally. With ease. How few things came with ease anymore.

  He thought about Sandy’s love of weddings. He pictured the ruffled red plaid flannel jumper Carly was going to wear in the ceremony with her white tights and little hunting boots—Sandy would have found it adorable. Sandy would have known what to do with Carly’s hair for the occasion. As it was, he was stumped. A ponytail was the extent of his skills, and surely this required something a bit fancier. He’d need to ask Kelly or Tina what to do.

  “Daddy...” came Carly’s voice as her hands squeezed his. “Where’d you go?”

  Bruce wanted to kick himself. Even here, now, in this tiny moment of joy, Carly still recognized he wasn’t fully present. He hated how she noticed. He should be looking into his daughter’s eyes, not thinking about how he could almost feel happy with her dancing on his feet. The whole point of this vacation was to spend time with her, not just beside her.

  He didn’t have an answer to Carly’s question. Not one he could explain to a five-year-old, at least. Instead, he hoisted her up and wrapped her in a hug, snuggling his nose into her neck in the way that always sent her into fits of giggles. “You’re gonna be so cute at that wedding. I’ll be dancing with the prettiest girl in the room.”

  “Daddy,” she admonished with an air of authority, “the bride is s’posed to be the prettiest. Everybody’s s’posed to be looking at her.” She rolled her eyes in a way that made Bruce fearful of her teenage years. “You can’t say that in front of Miss Tina.”

  “Can I say it to you?”

  The way she furrowed her brows was all Sandy. “Just here. Not later.”

  “Okay, then, let’s get dressed and get this day started. Asheville’s waiting for us.”

  * * *

  Indulgences came few and far between in Kelly’s life these days, but a really good cup of coffee from the shop near the floral wholesaler in Asheville topped the list.

  Superior caffeine was necessary, given how crazy today had been at the wholesale flower market. Well, tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day—what did you expect? At least she’d managed to get most of the hardier wedding greenery today as well, making Friday’s wedding run a tiny bit easier. I might pull off this crazy busy week after all, she mused.

  “Hi!” came a small voice from behind her on the sidewalk.

  Kelly turned to see Bruce Lohan and Carly, loaded down with shopping bags. Why was it this man was suddenly everywhere in her life? “Well, hello there,” she greeted. “Looks like you two had a fun morning.” Yesterday the state park, today Asheville. Other than to get married, most people came to Matrimony Valley to relax. Bruce Lohan’s idea of “vacation” certainly was a busy one.

  “We went to the bookstore,” Carly said, holding up a small bag.

  Kelly recognized the logo. “Oh, that’s Lulu’s favorite.”

  “And the cupcake shop,” Carly added.

  Kelly peered at the collection of bags Bruce carried. “And the toy store, and the craft store, and the museum. It’s barely lunch—you’ve been busy.” Ah, but five-year-olds could be an energetic lot, couldn’t they?

  “We haven’t had lunch yet,” Carly proclaimed. “We just had cupcakes. Hamburgers are next.”

  There was something to be said for a man who could embrace a dessert-before-lunch mentality. Usually it was grandparents who indulged like that. “What books did you buy?”

  Carly set down her bags. “I got two about unicorns.” She pulled out a pair of picture books and a small stuffed unicorn with a rainbow hair and tail.

  Kelly smiled, remembering how little girls could be with their animal fixations. Lulu obsessed about kittens at Carly’s age. Kitten books, kitten sheets, kitten pajamas, stuffed kittens...it was a wonder they had managed to come this far without acquiring a family cat. Yet. She’d heard a rumor about Maureen Rogers’s cat getting ready to have kittens—a rumor Lulu had brought up many times.

  “Did Dad buy any books?”

  Bruce maneuvered his own load of bags to reach into another one from the bookstore. He produced 101 Things to Do with Kids. She offered him a polite smile. He’d been Carly’s father for five years. He ought to be past the deer-in-headlights quality she kept seeing behind his eyes. Didn’t he know how to spend time with his child without an instruction manual? Stop that, she told herself. Grief does different things to everybody.

  “So, what brings you down to the city?” he asked as he returned the book to its bag.

  “Flowers for Valentine’s Day, mostly, but also getting a head start on your friend’s wedding. Their style calls for much more greenery than floral, and since that lasts so much longer I can pick up things on this trip and save Friday for the more delicate stems.”

  Kelly ignored the rusty squeak as she pulled open the van doors. Inside, the cargo area burst to the brim with blooms in red, pink and white along with a generous supply of green boughs. Carly “oohed” as the dual scent of roses and pine wafted out onto the sidewalk.

  Bruce let out an impressed whistle. “Going to be a busy week for you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but I always try to remember that busy is good.”

  “Busy is good, yes—frantic, no. I don’t think I ever realized what a double load a just-after-Valentine’s-Day wedding was for a florist.”

  Kelly thought four shops and a museum before lunch was rather frantic, but Carly seemed happy enough. Lulu would have been fussy after a morning that packed at that age. Then again, not everyone gravitated to the slower pace of small-town life, did they? “Maybe a bit frantic. I can’t afford to complain when business piles up. I just try to stay grateful—” she held up her cup “—and caffeinated.”

  Bruce smiled. “I hear you there. Hey, would you like to join us for burgers before we head on to the Biltmore Estate?”

  The huge Biltmore Estate? In a short afternoon? With a five-year-old? That took courage...or foolishness. “I can’t,” she replied. “Gotta get all this back to the shop and get ready for tomorrow.” She was going to be working half the night at the shop as it was—lunch would be little more than the yogurt and crackers from home sitting in the shop cooler. The coffee in her hands had been her single splurge for the day.

  “Can Lulu and I play together tomorrow?” Carly asked.

  “We might be able to work something out,” Kelly offered. The little girl really was sweet, and Lulu seemed to adore her.

  “I like Lulu.”

  “I know you do, sweetheart,” Bruce replied. “But remember, everybody’s got a big week ahead.”

  True enough. Kelly waved as she shut the van doors. “We’ll see how it goes, okay? Have fun, you two.”

  “We will!” Carly called as the two of them set off down the street.

  Kelly smiled, remembering Bruce’s activity book. Her version would read, 101 Things I Have to Do before Tomorrow. Two months back, Lulu had asked to go to the special Christmas events at the
Biltmore, but Kelly had never managed to find the time. And a vacation? She hadn’t taken one since Mark had died. What would I do with that kind of time? she wondered.

  If this feature in Southeastern Nuptials does what I hope, I’ll finally get the chance to find out. To be able to hire a second full-time person in the shop would be such a luxury. Lulu loved the shop, and was great about spending afternoons there and evenings when needed, but Kelly wanted to do better by her girl. She wanted to do better for herself, to stop feeling the constant pressure of making ends meet. To get to a place where a surprise like van repairs or a doctor’s visit for Lulu didn’t feel capable of pulling her under.

  As she got in the van, Kelly caught her reflection in the rearview mirror. I look tired. I am tired. But that’s okay, I can deal with tired. I’m finally getting ahead, things are finally starting to feel solid. She just had to hold out till the June weddings pushed things over the top.

  Until then, it was Valentine’s Day and elks and flannel and coffee.

  Lots of coffee.

  Chapter Six

  It hadn’t worked.

  He’d been busy for two days, he and Carly had done a dozen fun things and distracted themselves in a host of different ways, and the dread for Valentine’s Day tomorrow and the wedding after that still filled his stomach like rocks.

  Really? he thought to himself as they walked back into the inn lobby after their full day in Asheville. You thought escaping to an entire town built on matrimonial bliss, and staying here over Valentine’s Day to boot, was a good idea? Sure, it wasn’t home, where memories of Sandy loomed everywhere, but Matrimony Valley was proving to be a bad escape plan. Terrible, actually.

  It’s not the town’s fault, he told himself. You’d likely be miserable this week no matter where you were. It was similar to what he’d told his boss when he’d asked to come back from bereavement leave a week early. It hurts at home, he’d told the man. Might as well hurt here where I’ve got something useful to do. The grief counselor told him to get Carly back into her usual routine—which meant part-time day care—and he certainly had no desire to wander the house in a lonesome fog.