The Year of Chasing Dreams (25 page)

“Soon as the Aussie and his ‘sheila’ come back, let’s set our wedding date.”

Ciana was brushing Firecracker after a long ride, when Jon’s words came from the barn’s tack room as he stood watching her. She turned, gave him a beguiling smile. “Is that a request or an order?”

He came over, took her in his arms, and took her breath away with a kiss.

“Wow,” she said, coming up for air.

“Wow, yourself. I want to get married. Sooner the better.”

She poked at him with the brush. “Plans are in the works. These life events do take a little planning, you know—a dress, a location, a guest list, food, a minister.”

“Look, I don’t care if we hire an Elvis impersonator and get married here in the barn.”

That made her laugh. “What about guests? Who’s on your list?”

He shrugged. “My mother, my grandparents if Granddad’s able to travel. Oh and Bill and Essie Pickins.”

“That’s all?”

“I don’t have a lot of friends. The rodeo crowd breeds competitors, not close friends. And other than family, there’s no one back in Texas I want here either.”

She tossed the curry brush aside. “What about your father, Wade? Do you want him to come?”

Jon scoffed. “No love lost there.”

It hit Ciana then that she had no father to walk her down the aisle. She’d grown up without one. Losing him at age six had turned him into a shadowy memory. He and Grandpa Charles were always flying away in their little airplane to sell their farm produce. Her earliest memories were of going to and from a little airfield with her mother and grandmother to wave goodbye. She had images of waking late at night to him bending over her bed and kissing her forehead and saying, “Daddy’s home, sweetheart.” Then one day, the plane didn’t come back and everyone around her was sobbing. She’d been confused, frightened, but as time passed she understood that her daddy and Grandpa would never come home. After their deaths, Olivia became an overwhelming presence, and Alice Faye sank further into the background, retreating into her sweet tea drinks. Olivia hung tough, and Bellmeade was such a ton of work, Ciana adjusted to it being the three of them. Friends, chores, school, the flag corps, her horse had filled any daddy void she felt. In time she had to look at old photos to remember what her daddy had looked like.

Now she told Jon, “Maybe I can hire that Elvis impersonator to give me away.”

Jon looked stricken. “Hey, I’m sorry. I forgot about that part. Were you thinking Wade might do it?”

“No. I guess not.” The vivid scene of Wade once yelling for Jon to stay clear of Beauchamp women returned in a flash as she recalled the day she’d met him in an extended care unit and he learned she was a Beauchamp. “Did you ever learn what he has against us Beauchamp women?”

“Who cares? He’s just crazy.” Jon pulled her to himself again. “I, on the other hand, just want to marry this Beauchamp woman and take her to bed.”

“You don’t have to marry me to get me in bed,” she said.

A lazy smile drifted across his face. “I want to take a whole night with you. And after we sleep a bit, I want to take the whole next day to do it all over again.”

She met his eyes, spoke her heart into her answer “Sounds like a very good plan to me.”

He laughed, twirled her away, then back to himself. “And then I’m going to take you to Montana.”

“Rodeo?” she asked, half joking, knowing how he liked following the circuit and riding broncos.

Jon laughed. “A honeymoon.”

“Sounds romantic.”

He winked. “And a wild mustang auction. We’ll buy a few horses, make arrangements to have them brought here. Now please set a date, woman.”

Ciana loaded the dishwasher that evening while Alice Faye sipped sweet tea at the kitchen table.

Her mother asked, “Have you heard from our road warriors?”

“Eden sent me a text. They’re going to take a few days in the Florida panhandle. I suggested it before they left. It’ll do them both good,” Ciana said.

“I miss them. It’s been wonderful having this house full of people again. So much company and all your comings and goings. That Garret is a dear. He just walks in a room and fills it up, doesn’t he?”

“He does,” Ciana conceded. But listening to her mother voice her satisfaction about everybody living under the same roof gave Ciana new insight about all the years Alice Faye had spent alone since her husband’s death. Just two women raising one child—her—and holding Bellmeade together. Suddenly, now that Ciana was in love with Jon, she grasped just how long and lonely the years must have been for her mother. She’d never dated that Ciana could recall.

She finished cleaning the kitchen, went to the table, and pulled out a chair. “Okay, Mom, here’s the thing. The fields are planted, so the rest is up to Mother Nature. It’s time to plan this wedding.”

“I’ve been wondering when you were going to get around to that.” Alice Faye patted Ciana’s hand and smiled. “What are you wanting to do?”

“Mom, I’m not into any Cinderella syndrome. I just want to get married with as little fuss as possible.” Ciana hoped she wasn’t disappointing her mother. She thought back, but couldn’t dredge up family stories about her mother and father’s wedding day. “What was your wedding like?”

“It was Olivia’s show.” Alice Faye leaned back in the chair. “Jackson and I were simply decorations for a Bellmeade social event. Olivia expected a certain degree of ‘festivity,’ and I complied. I’m not bitter,” she added quickly. “Just stating facts.”

“I know you aren’t,” Ciana assured her. With what Ciana had discovered in her grandmother’s diary, she clung to Eden’s counsel.
Do no harm
. Best to forget the entry and protect Alice Faye. “What about your dress?”

“This was back in ’79, and the hot new look was bustiers, with the bride showing cleavage. The gowns had lace appliqués, sequins, and lots of beads.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

“It wasn’t. Plus Olivia would never have let me step inside the Baptist church with even a hint of my boobs showing.”

Recalling how dour Olivia could look when she disapproved of something, Ciana laughed. “What did you do?”

“We found some dated frilly concoction in Nashville with lace that went all the way up under my chin and lacy sleeves that fully covered my arms. I almost passed out from heat exhaustion.”

Ciana giggled. “What happened to the dress after the wedding?”

“Eventually, I made curtains out of it. They’re hanging in Olivia’s bedroom. Eden looks at them every day.”

Ciana laughed harder. “Priceless.”

Her mother’s expression turned stricken. “You weren’t going to ask to wear it on your wedding day, were you? Oh my gosh! I hated the thing. Never thought about you wearing it one day before I cut it up for curtains.”

“It didn’t cross my mind,” Ciana said. “Frankly, I’d wear jeans if I could.”

“It’s your wedding, but for what it’s worth, a groom likes to see his bride in a pretty dress. Your father did.” She stopped, and Ciana watched Alice Faye’s eyes grow soft with memories. After a moment, she cleared her throat, asked, “Assuming you do decide on a dress, what would you want it to look like?”

“Simple. Clean lines. Nothing froufrou. And no lace up to my throat.”

Her mother nodded sagely. “We can run into Nashville on Saturday afternoon and look around if you’d like.”

“We can do that. Maybe Jon and I should elope,” she mused.

“Your father and I thought about that, too, but in the end, we danced to Olivia’s tune. Don’t get me wrong. It was a lovely wedding,” she added quickly. “Besides, maybe Jon’s mother wants to see her only child get married.”

Ciana straightened, thinking of the magnificent family ring Jon’s mother had given him to bestow on a complete stranger. She grew anxious. “I’ve never even met her. What if she hates me?”

“She won’t hate you. How could she? You’re a Beauchamp!”

Ciana shook her head, bemused. “That bromide can’t be the answer to everything.”

“Okay, so tell me, what kind of wedding do you and Jon want?”

Ciana told her Jon’s wishes, adding, “I don’t want anything big. And the only people I care about showing up would be Arie’s mom and dad, Eric, Abbie, and the new baby. I just want to get married. I want Jon, plain or fancy.”

“If that’s what you want, then that’s what you shall have,” Alice Faye said emphatically. She reached over and smoothed Ciana’s hair. “One more question. Would you like me to move into town once you’re married? There’s a new condo complex going up—”

“
What?
You move? This is your home.” She’d never thought about living arrangements until this moment, and to dispossess her mother of the only home she’d ever known would be barbaric.

“Ciana, it’s all right. The two of you may not like having me hanging around all the time. House isn’t big enough. Maybe a change would be good—”

Ciana held up her hand. “I can’t think about this now.”

“Lot of work in this old house.”

“Not now, Mom.”

“Fair enough. But do think about it. Talk it over with Jon. He gets a say now too.”

Ciana slept fitfully, waking and dreaming, her head flooded with thoughts and worries. Her marriage would change everything. Growing up, she had been a bystander, someone looking at Bellmeade from the sidelines, certainly one who belonged, but belonging as a child had belonged, not an adult. True, Olivia’s death had impacted the farm’s dynamic, but marrying meant her life would make a drastic turn. Like the changing of the Swiss Guard she’d watched that afternoon in Italy at the Vatican, the old left … the new came. Her friends would leave. Her mother might move and would one day die. She and Jon would build the future. Doubts assailed her. Was she ready for this? Was she willing to share her heritage, her ownership?

She tossed and turned, twisted the bedding into wads, kicked off her covers, only to grab and pull the sheets over her head minutes later. She stared at the clock that glowed with accusatory, crawling hands. Dawn was coming, and with it a hard day’s worth of work, and her not ready or rested for it. She was still wrestling with her thoughts when a noise made her bolt upright. In the distance, out of the darkness, she heard the unmistakable blasts of a shotgun.

Eden sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the blue duffel bag beside her.
All that remains …
 This bag contained what was left of Gwen McLauren’s worldly goods, the scraps and pieces of her life and existence. Pitifully little. Across from the bed in the motel room, on the dresser, stood the plain gray box that held Gwen’s ashes, a human body, once flesh and blood, muscle and bone, heart and soul, now reduced by fire to a fine gray dust.

When Eden and Garret had returned to Crossroads House to claim the ashes, Liz had also given them the bag, saying, “These were her things. She kept everything she held dear stored in it. Took it with her if she left here, brought it with her whenever she returned.” During the drive from Tampa to Destin in the panhandle, Eden had set it between her feet, sometimes touching the handles, sometimes recoiling from the sudden flop of the handle against her bare ankles. The once-hated duffel that had always taken her mother away was hers now.