Drenched in Light (44 page)

The picture of him standing alone on the steps haunted me as I drove to the cleaners’. When I arrived, Mim and Granmae were playing dominoes at a corner table. Bett’s flowers were waiting, carefully packaged in three boxes from the grocery store. Mim pulled off the lids, and breath caught in my throat.

“They’re beautiful,” I gasped, and even though I knew Mim’s roses were outstanding, I was amazed anew by the delicate bouquets of butter-cream colored roses with soft pink tips, nestled in fresh greenery and laced with white baby’s breath and tiny clusters of periwinkle blue flowers that looked like miniature wine cups. The scent of old-fashioned roses wafted up and reminded me of trellises at Grandma Rice’s house, covered each spring with fragrant, red blooms.

“I have them in a little water.” Mim was obviously pleased with my response to her work. “And there is floral tape in the box, so that when you are ready to use the bouquets, you may take them out and tape the base of the stems.” Reaching into the container, she pulled out a small bouquet and illustrated the process. “I know these are to be for the rehearsal, but this one,” she said, holding it up, “is for your bride to throw during the reception.” Elbowing me in the ribs, she squinted upward, her blue eyes twinkling. “Perhaps someone very special will catch it.”

Blushing, I gazed into the box. “My luck hasn’t been running that way, lately.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Granmae wink at Mim. Looking at each other, they nodded. “Your luck’s about to change,” Granmae said, like she knew something I didn’t. “That angel there is smilin’ ear to ear, and she got a crafty look on her face.” Peering at my shoulder, she nodded definitively. “Yup. She got somethin’ up her sleeve, for sure.”

“I’d say so,” Mim concurred, and I felt like I’d stepped into a Disney cartoon. I doubted my fairy godangel was going to
bippity-boppity-boo
my life into shape anytime soon.

“She must know something I don’t know.” The comment sounded more cynical than I meant it to.

Shaking a finger back and forth, Granmae made a
tsk-tsk-tsk.
“Angels always do.”

We stood in silence for a moment, all three of us—all four, if you counted the angel—taking in the subtle mystery of Mim’s incredible roses.

“Now you’ll see that in each bouquet there is evergreen,” Mim said, fingering the flowers and pointing out sprigs of juniper. “Wedding bouquets should always be made with evergreen, to symbolize a love that grows in every season.”

“That’s beautiful,” I said, thinking that once Bett saw these bouquets, she would surely want to use them for the wedding. At the last minute, she and Mom had settled on silk flowers for the wedding, but nothing made of silk could possibly compare to Mim’s roses.

“It will be a beautiful day, a perfect day,” Granmae promised, after conferring with the angel on my shoulder again. “Expect a few surprises.”

T
he day of Bett’s wedding dawned bright and clear. She carried Mim’s bouquet as she walked along a path lined with daffodils and tulips. A cloudless March sky shone through the glass ceiling of the solarium and reflected in the waters of the meditation pool. In my mother’s dress, with my father at her side, Bett was radiant. Near the arbor, Jason stood with his groomsmen, drinking her in with his eyes, smiling tenderly.

Evergreen,
I thought. Bett and Jason had found the real thing, the kind of love that would grow through all the seasons. As Dad slipped Bett’s hand into Jason’s, the solo music started, and I realized it was “Evergreen,” originally sung by Barbra Streisand. Bett had chosen it because it was Dad’s favorite, but now it seemed incredibly perfect for the moment.

Keiler winked at me as he finished the guitar intro, and Dell began singing along with the music. In the second row, sitting between her husband and Barry, Karen was mouthing along with the words, holding her breath the way mothers do when their children perform.

She needn’t have worried. The song was beautiful, as was the ceremony and Dell’s final solo as Bett and Jason lit the unity candle.

At the reception, I stood with Keiler and Dell’s family as Jason and Bett cut the cake, and then shared their first dance as husband and wife. Barry was already pestering Dell to dance the next one with him, and Dell was telling him she didn’t know how.

“I can teach you,” he coaxed. “I’m good.”

He wasn’t, unfortunately, and as the next song began, they stood on the fringe of the open area, an awkward tangle of arms and legs swaying out of time with the music.

“Guess we’d better fill in, so it doesn’t look so bad.” James gave Karen a nudge, and the two of them moved onto the dance floor as other guests began to join in.

Keiler cast a rueful look at me. “I’d ask you to dance”—he glanced down at his cast—“but this is a two-step, and right now I only have one left foot.”

I chuckled as he held up the cast and did an impromptu hitch kick. “That’s all right,” I said. After I’d been rushing around with last-minute wedding preparations all day, my entire body felt like wet spaghetti. “To tell you the truth, I’d rather just sit down and enjoy the moment.”

The two of us moved to a quiet table near a water garden in the corner, and I waited while Keiler went for some punch and cake, then came back juggling all four items.

“I’m sorry I’m not being a very good hostess,” I said, taking the glasses from his hands.

Holding up the two slices of cake, he pretended to weigh them against each other, then handed me the smaller one and sat down. “I thought the maid of honor was officially off the clock after the ceremony.”

“I suppose that’s true.” I couldn’t help gazing wistfully toward the dance floor, where Bett was cuddled against Jason’s chest, the two of them unaware that there was anyone else in the room.
How would that feel?

“So are you?” When I turned back to Keiler, he was watching me intently, his eyes a warm, earthy brown with a frame of thick, dark lashes. I lost myself for a moment. The dance music seemed far away.

I was vaguely aware that I was leaning closer to him, resting my chin on my hand, kicking off one satin shoe, so that it hung loose on my toe. “Am I what?”

“Off the clock,” he repeated, holding my gaze, as if the question had meaning beyond the words.

I took a sip of champagne punch, and the bubbles floated around in my head. “Yes. I guess I am.”

“Then I can tell you now,” he replied mysteriously.

“Tell me what?” Drawing back, I frowned at him, then leaned in again, my interest piqued in more ways than one. We seemed to be falling into a strange sort of dance, right there at the table. It wasn’t like Keiler to be coy.

He made a show of savoring a bite of his groom’s cake, chocolate with white icing. The faintest hint of it remained on his bottom lip.

“Tell me what?” I repeated, growing more insistent. His brows rose playfully, and I slapped the table. “What?”

Turning his attention to the cake, he motioned to it with his fork. “This is good.” There was a lilt of laughter in his voice. “Really good.”

“Keiler . . .” I ground out between clenched teeth. “Tell . . . me . . .
what?
”

“You should try it.” Taking another bite, he added, “The cake, I mean.”

“Keiler . . .”

Pushing his plate aside, he grinned at me. “You’re kind of cute when you’re mad. Anybody ever tell you that?”

Torn between responding to the compliment and threatening to wring his neck, I blushed and settled for playing his game of cat and mouse. Turning my attention to the cake, I took a bite. “It really is good. You should try the white.”

Chuckling, he reached over and stole a hunk of my cake. “Not bad.” He pretended to savor it like fine wine, as if he had all the time in the world. Clearly, he knew he could outlast me in the patience game.

Unable to wait a moment longer, I set down my fork, which rang against the china plate like a gong. “All right. Out with it. What’s the big secret?”

“Things broke loose at Harrington yesterday.” When I reacted with a gasp, he held his hands up defensively. “I was going to tell you last night at the rehearsal, but it looked like you had enough on your mind, so I thought I’d leave it until the wedding hullabaloo was over. Anyway, I really wanted to wait until after I’d talked to Mr. Verhaden today to see what he’d heard. He said the board is going to call an emergency meeting and ask Stafford to take early retirement. By the time it’s all over, he thinks they’ll be offering you your job back.”

“What?” I gasped, the moment slowing down and turning surreal. Any minute, the alarm clock would go off, and I’d be pulled from dreamland. Bett’s perfect wedding, and Keiler telling me I might still have a job, would be only figments of my imagination. “That’s impossible. . . . How did . . . What happened?”

He responded with a knowing smile. “Cameron went to the office right after morning assembly on Friday and called his dad to come pick him up, sick. I guess it was more of an attack of conscience than an illness, because as soon as they got in the car, the kid spilled the truth about his meltdown in the hall the other day. Mr. Ansler brought him back, and they took it up with Stafford. Apparently, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened and Stafford swept it under the rug. Ansler had the superintendent call in a drug dog right then and there on Friday afternoon, and the dog hit on fifteen lockers in the middle school. Marijuana mostly, but there might also be some hard stuff involved. They did some swabbing to test for residues. The high school kids have been having the middle school kids hide their stuff for them, because Stafford doesn’t let the drug dog come in while school’s in session. When the drug dog does come to the high school, the place is clean, and so is the parking lot because . . . well . . . the stuff is in the middle school, so there you go. By Monday, you can bet there will be parents asking some serious questions.”

“Oh, my God.” Staring at the tabletop, I tried to take it all in, thinking of those few moments in the entryway Friday morning with Cameron, when he was still so determined to keep his secrets. “I can’t believe it.”

“Pretty amazing,” Keiler agreed. “Either the
‘Free Ms. C’
campaign worked, or it was Dell’s essay. Ada had her read it to the whole school during morning assembly Friday.”

“Mrs. Morris?” I repeated, gaping in disbelief. “Mrs. Morris asked her to do that?”

Keiler nodded. “Yeah. She even invited Karen and James to come.”

I tried to picture Dell—sweet, quiet, shy Dell—standing up in front of the entire school and her foster parents, reading that essay. “And Dell was willing to do that?”

Taking my hand, Keiler smiled. “She’s a tough kid,” he said, glancing at the dance floor, where Dell and Barry were finishing up a dance. “She did it for you. In fact, at the end she dedicated it to you. The kids fell into five straight minutes of
‘Free Ms. C’
. I thought Stafford was going to pass out. Right after that, Cameron went to the office and called his father to come pick him up.”

My lips started to tremble, and I pressed my hand over them, feeling the warm sensation of tears. Everything that had happened in the past months, every painful turn and surprising twist, now seemed worth it. Suddenly they were not disjointed events, but pearls on a string, each painstakingly selected, all perfectly matched to create something wonderful. A life. My life. Not the one I’d planned, yet something larger than I could have ever imagined.

My future hadn’t died that day on the dressing room floor at the KC Metro—it had only been washed white and then repainted with something new, something equally amazing. I was just beginning to see the whole picture. I couldn’t wait to find out what the next brushstrokes would be.

Sitting back in my chair, I took in everything around me—Bett folded in Jason’s arms, slow dancing despite the two-stepping music; and my father, the dad of my heart, stumbling through his usual off-tempo foxtrot while Mom patiently followed; and James and Karen swing dancing in the center while a crowd of Bett’s college friends clapped in admiration. In the corner, Dell and Barry were inventing their own step, colliding with each other, then laughing. As the song faded, Barry released her, and she spun away, her dark hair swirling, the diaphanous blue dress floating on an invisible breeze. Throwing her arms out, she sailed through patches of sunlight and shadow, unhindered, unashamed, caught in a moment of careless abandon, of perfect joy. A dancer lost in the music of her own soul, in the featherlight touch of God’s fingertip, in the mystery and beauty of herself, as free and light as the girl in the river.

Keiler’s hand tugged mine as the song changed. A soft, slow melody filled the air, and he smiled down at me. “I think even I can handle this one,” he said, drawing me from my chair. The light caught his eyes as he stepped back into an empty space where golden afternoon sun poured through the veranda doors. “How’s this?”