Wedding Cake Wishes

“She doesn’t need to worry,” Logan assured her.

“Oh, she knows that, sweetie. She’s just keeping the business in her thoughts as her brain heals. She’s processing all those memories as she works her way back.”

Works her way back. Trina’s words reverberated through Logan’s thoughts. Had he been praying for his mother’s recovery without really believing it could happen? The question convicted him in a way that even thoughts of his empty seat at all those family dinners hadn’t.

It was difficult for him to imagine his mother entertaining big crowds or running her fast-paced business when so far she hadn’t even mastered her aim for lifting her fork to her mouth, but he couldn’t allow himself to think that way. Who was he to limit his mother’s recovery or God’s ability to heal? Faith was about believing without seeing, and his mother needed them all to believe.

“Is everyone ready for dessert?” Trina asked as she pushed back from the table.

“I am,” Lizzie announced.

The adults just stared at each other. Matthew’s daughter was too young to understand, but the others couldn’t forget that Amy Warren’s scrumptious cakes were a tradition at every Warren-Scott family gathering. Not having them there didn’t feel right. Logan caught Caroline’s gaze, and she gave him a sad smile.

“You know, Mrs. Scott, I’m pretty full already,” Logan told her.

Trina had started toward the kitchen, but she turned back. “Oh, that’s too bad. My brownies are cooling on the counter. I thought we’d put scoops of vanilla ice cream on top.” She paused, resting her knowing gaze on Logan. “Are you sure you’re too full?”

Logan pushed back from the table and patted his belly. “Oh, I think I could fit a little.”

“Good.” Trina took orders from the others and continued into the kitchen.

No one mentioned the cakes or their absence, but Logan was grateful Mrs. Scott hadn’t purchased one of his mother’s desserts for the occasion. She understood that the effort for continuity would have hurt more than it soothed.

Soon they were all gushing over Trina’s brownie dessert and laughing together about old times. That, too, was a Warren-Scott family tradition.

Logan smiled as he thought how much his mother would hate missing tonight. But there would be other times, he was suddenly certain. His mother would even host her infamous dinner parties again. He just knew it. And when she did, he would happily attend every one.

Chapter Four

The pews were only half-full at Community Church of Markston that Sunday morning, reminding Caroline again that it was a holiday weekend. As odd as it felt for her to be sitting in her mother’s church, she would have felt just as out of place at her own church in Chicago as seldom as she’d darkened its doors lately.

With Jenna and Dylan on one side of her and Haley and Lizzie on the other, Caroline couldn’t resist peeking farther down the pew to her mother. She fully expected one of her mother’s knowing stares, cueing her in that Trina had guessed about her sporadic church attendance. She hadn’t exactly given up her faith, but she’d had a hard time squeezing church into her Sunday work schedule.

But Trina wasn’t paying attention to her at all, her focus on the doors at the rear of the sanctuary. Suddenly, it made sense. Mrs. Warren had always been annoyed by Dylan and Logan’s continual tardiness at church. Jenna had reformed Dylan, but Logan was probably still playing beat-the-church-bell. In Amy’s absence, Trina must have seen it as her duty to censure Logan.

At the front of the sanctuary, Matthew sat in his music minister’s seat, his focus on the back door, as well.

“He’s not going to make it,” Jenna said, glancing at her watch.

“I should have called him before I left my apartment,” Dylan murmured.

Jenna chuckled. “Don’t worry. My mom will make him toe the line.”

“Like you did me?” He took her hand.

Caroline shifted in her seat. She’d never noticed before how many family jokes were directed at Logan. About small things from his Casanova ways to his job as “Ranger Logan,” but they all came with mild disapproval for his choices. Had he taken on the role of the family comedian to deflect some of that?

Her sudden temptation to tell both of their families to knock it off made her smile. Logan would not appreciate her defending him. He didn’t need her to be his champion now any more than he’d needed her to step in when he’d been dealing with that difficult customer. She understood that he was fine on his own, but that didn’t keep her from watching the door and rooting for him to show up tout de suite.

Just as the organist played the first notes of the processional music, Logan breezed through the door, a weathered leather Bible tucked under his arm. Although most of the men in the sanctuary wore polo shirts and slacks, Logan was dressed like it was Easter Sunday. He’d paired his navy suit with a crisp white shirt and a blue tie with geometric designs in the exact green shade of his eyes.

“What?” Logan asked in a low voice as he came to the end of the pew. His left eyebrow lifted in question, that same side of his mouth rising, as well. “Good morning, everyone.”

He might have said everyone, but he was looking right at Caroline. Only then did she realize she’d been staring at him with her mouth hanging open like a landing pad for flies. She clicked her teeth shut and shifted again. It didn’t matter how amazing he looked; she had no excuse for staring. But a glance around told her she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the man who wore a business suit with the same ease as he sported jeans and hiking boots.

Logan didn’t pay attention to the fuss as he waved to Matthew up on the podium and scooted into the pew next to Caroline’s mother. As Trina reached over and patted Logan’s arm, Caroline couldn’t help thinking of the service last Christmas when her mother and Mrs. Warren had made a display of standing and shifting seats so that she and Dylan were forced to sit together.

Caroline hadn’t really expected her mother to try something like that this morning, but she couldn’t explain her mild discomfort when she didn’t. She should have been relieved. Was she disappointed that her mother and Mrs. Warren hadn’t tried to set her up with a third Warren brother? That couldn’t be possible.

Her gaze slid to Logan’s end of the pew. No, not possible, she decided, choosing to ignore the annoying seeds of doubt that lingered.

“Let’s get this morning started off right,” Matthew said as he stepped to the lectern. “I can’t imagine a better way than by singing ‘How Great Thou Art.’”

Caroline smiled up at her brother-in-law, grateful to him for interrupting her strange thoughts. This was what she needed to clear her head: good hymns, good meditation and a thought-provoking sermon on grace or the destructive power of sin.

But when Reverend Leyton Boggs directed everyone to turn to a passage in Mark Chapter 10, her hope faltered. It was the same passage she’d read aloud for Haley and Matthew’s wedding.

“Jesus is a real proponent of marriage,” Reverend Boggs began. “Not the temporary kind like we see so much today but the enduring kind.”

He read from the beginning of the chapter, but when he reached Verse 7, Caroline found herself quoting the Scripture with him.

“‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh,’” she whispered.

Looking up from her open Bible, Caroline glanced at the couple seated to her right. Dylan was cradling Jenna’s hand and moving it so that the sanctuary lights caught on the facets of her diamond engagement ring. Soon those two would be “one flesh.” Caroline looked up in time to catch Matthew and Haley exchanging a warm look. They already had melded their lives into one.

A knot formed in her throat, surprising her. Her gaze moved again to Logan on the opposite end of the pew. Did their siblings’ cozy togetherness ever make him uncomfortable, the way it did her? More than that, did their obvious happiness ever make him wonder if he was missing something like—

No. She cleared her throat, uncrossing and then recrossing her legs. Logan wasn’t the settling-down type any more than she was. If he was committed to anything, it was to playing the field. And her life was complete. Not a thing was missing. But had she been happy, even before she’d received the pink slip? Had she truly been fulfilled? Did she have real friends or just colleagues? She praised the joys of her solitary life, but sometimes wasn’t she just lonely?

“I don’t need a wrap-up when Jesus said it so well for us in Verse 9,” the minister said when Caroline finally tuned back in to his message. “‘What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.’”

Reverend Boggs had taken his sermon full circle back to the passage in the Book of Mark. Her thoughts had been just as circuitous, but unlike the minister, she had no answers to her questions. Clearly, her job loss was causing her to rethink all her choices, but was it more than that? As much as she didn’t want to admit it, her general ennui just might have something to do with a park ranger who was trying his hand at running a bakery.

After Reverend Boggs spoke the benediction, Caroline had the urge to make a break for the parking lot. But how could she explain her sudden need to avoid spending time with the two families she loved most in the world? Or that she wanted to avoid a particular Warren family member?

Because there was no way she would admit any such thing, she followed Dylan and Jenna into the center aisle and braced herself for the crush of another Scott-Warren family reunion.

Lizzie reached her first, wrapping her arms around her skirt-clad legs.

“Church is over, Aunt Caroline,” she announced. “Did you think I was good in church? Mommy and Daddy let me have dessert after lunch if I’m good.”

Caroline reached down and tugged one of the child’s sandy-brown braids. “You were great in church. I think you deserve two desserts.”

“Just one will be fine,” Haley said as she reached them. “Thanks for the help, Caroline.”

“Anytime.”

Dylan elbowed Jenna and leaned close to speak to her in a loud stage whisper. “Remind me not to let your sister anywhere near our kids.”