Meet Me At The Chapel

“Hey! Don’t pick on Hercules!” Hannah scooped Hercules up and kissed him several times. “Though he may be but little, he is fierce!”

“Now it’s getting serious. You brought Shakespeare to the table?” Brock teased her.

Hercules gave a little yap and ran around in a circle.

“A little Shakespeare never hurt anyone.”

“Speak for yourself,” he retorted. “I took a class on Shakespeare in college. Worst semester of my life.”

“It pains me to shift the subject away from Shakespeare, because I happen to be a fan, but I think—” she nodded her head toward her pocket poodle “—he needs a bathroom break. He does have a microscopic bladder, after all—poor baby.”

“Okay.” Brock shook Hannah’s shoulder to wake her. “I think it’s safe to go topside.”

Ignoring the stiffness in her joints from sitting for too long in one position, Casey stood up quickly, shed the blanket, scooped up Hercules and tucked him into the crook of her arm.

She was the caboose, and followed Brock, his daughter and their dog up to the main floor.

“Oh, wow.” Casey walked to the closest window.

The storm had torn through the ranch, littering the yard with large, broken tree branches, overturned equipment and missing shingles from the roof of the barn.

“What a mess,” she said to Brock.

“I’m going to check on the horses.” The ranch foreman shrugged into a rain slicker. “Will you watch Hannah?”

She agreed to watch his daughter, of course. And, once both dogs had the chance to take care of business, Casey and Hannah took their canine companions back inside. It was drizzling outside, and the gray sky was so dreary, but it seemed as if the worst of the storm had finally passed them by.

“Do you have a landline, Hannah?”

Hannah showed her the phone on the other side of the refrigerator. She had periodically tried to get reception with her cell phone while they were in the cellar, without any luck. Now that they were out of the cellar, she still wasn’t having any luck with reception.

Relieved to hear a dial tone when she picked up the receiver, she dialed her sister’s number and silently begged her sister to answer.

“Hello?”

“Taylor! Thank goodness I got you!”

“Casey! I saw Brock’s number on caller ID. I wasn’t expecting to hear your voice, but I’m so glad it’s you! I’ve been trying to get you on your cell phone for hours!”

“I knew you had to be freaking out. I’m sorry—the truck broke down, then the tornado... It’s been a crazy day. How did you fare through the storm?”

“We’re fine—we’ll have to clean up the loose branches in the yard, but it could have been much, much worse. I’m just glad that you’re okay,” her sister said. “I didn’t want you to drive all of my stuff here by yourself, anyway. And you said the truck broke down?”

“Small fire in the engine, yes.”

“Ca-sey! I knew it was a bad idea!”

Casey heard the sound of her niece crying in the background. Penelope had been born premature and was prone to ear infections. She didn’t say anything to her sister, but Taylor sounded exhausted.

“Tay—I wanted to do it, so I did it. I’m fine. Brock happened to show up at an opportune time, so no harm done.”

There was a pause on the end of the line.

Then Taylor said, “I was wondering how you wound up with Brock.”

When her sister said her brother-in-law’s name, there was an underlying dislike in her tone. Casey knew from many conversations with her sister that Brock and her new husband, Clint, had a long-standing fractured relationship. From what she understood, Clint didn’t like Brock any more than Brock liked him. And the only glue that bound them together was Hannah.

“He kept me safe. And he’s been really nice to me.”

“Well.” Her sister seemed reluctant to give Brock a compliment. “That’s good at least.”

Casey smiled at Hannah, who was sitting at the table with an iPad while Lady took her position at Hannah’s feet.

“And I’ve had a chance to make friends with Hannah,” she said. “I hear my niece. How’s she doing?”

“She’s sick again.” This was said with the tired voice of a first-time mother. “She hasn’t slept, so I haven’t slept. Clint broke his collarbone down in Laredo...”

“Oh, no, Tay—I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“It couldn’t be worse timing—the only upside is that he’s coming home early. His best friend, Dallas, is going to drive him back and then we’ll buy her a plane ticket to get her to the next stop on the circuit.”

Taylor’s husband was a professional bull rider; Casey didn’t know how her sister, who was once married to a metrosexual man, could have wound up marrying a cowboy. But they seemed to just fit.

“He’ll be home all summer then.” Casey said the thought as soon as she thought it.

“That collarbone is going to be a tough one to heal, so I think he’ll be out of the running this season. Maybe this will be the one that makes him rethink his career.”

Still thinking about Taylor’s small bungalow on the outskirts of Helena, Casey didn’t respond right away. It must have clicked in Taylor’s mind what she was thinking, because her sister hastened to say, “There’s plenty of room here, Casey. I still want you to stay with us for the summer.”

“Let’s not worry about it now.” Casey rubbed her temples. “First thing I need to do is find out from Brock if the roads are even passable now so I can check on the truck. I don’t think he’ll mind taking me all the way into Helena if it saves you a trip.”

“Call me as soon as you know the plan. Promise?”

“Of course. I love you, sis. Give Penny a kiss from me. I’ll see you soon.”

Casey used the restroom and then joined Hannah at the table. Hannah was looking at a large diagram of a ladybug’s anatomy. Like many children diagnosed with autism, Hannah had become fixated on a topic, and that topic was ladybugs. The bathroom was decorated with ladybugs—ladybug shower curtain, ladybug toothbrush holder, ladybug towels. There was a ladybug on Hannah’s shirt and Casey had spotted a ladybug backpack hanging on one of the hooks in the foyer. Their dog was named Ladybug. One of the ways she had distracted Hannah from being scared in the cellar was to redirect to conversations about ladybugs. Once Hannah got started talking about the topic that interested her most, she forgot about the storm and talked at length about the insects. Although Brock was impressed with her ability to pinpoint Hannah’s interest, it wasn’t rocket science. All she had to do was pay attention to observable details, which was part of her job as a special education teacher.

“What else do you have on your iPad?” she asked, curious to see Hannah’s reaction.

“Stuff,” Hannah replied without looking up from the screen.

Brock’s daughter wasn’t interested in showing her any other apps on the iPad—not in the middle of looking at ladybugs.

The door to the house swung open. Brock peeled off his wet rain slicker and tossed it onto a rocking chair just outside the front door. He stepped into the foyer, stomped his feet on the rug and slapped the rain off his hat by hitting it across his thigh a couple of times.

“How’s it looking out there?” Casey asked.

Brock shook his head as he closed the front door tightly behind him. “It’s a mess.”