Big Sky Wedding

She needed flowers, the way she needed air and water; to her, they were sacred, a form of visual prayer.

A knock sounded at her back door just as she was setting Snidely’s bowl of kibble on the floor. Glancing up, she saw her teenage niece, Clare, grinning in at her through the oval glass window.

“In!” Brylee called, grinning back.

Sixteen-year-old Clare, a younger version of her mother, Casey, was blessed with copper-bright hair that tumbled to her shoulders in carefully casual curls, bright green eyes and a quick mind, inclined toward kindness but with a mischievous bent. If she looked closely enough, Brylee could see Walker in the girl, too, and even a few hints of herself.

Not for the first time, she marveled that Walker and Casey had been able to keep their secret—that Walker had fathered both Clare and Shane—for so long.

“I think I’ve got a date,” Clare confided, in a conspiratorial whisper, tossing a bottle-green glance in the direction of the inside door that led into the main part of the ranch house. Maybe she thought Casey was on the other side, with a glass pressed to her ear, eavesdropping.

If anyone was listening in, Brylee reflected, amused, it was more likely to be Clare’s brother, fifteen-year-old Shane, with whom the child shared a sort of testy alliance—with an emphasis on the testy part. She and Walker had been that way, too, growing up, though they’d had each other’s backs when necessary.

Brylee lifted her eyebrows and quirked her mouth up at the corners, in a way that said, “Go on, I’m listening,” and opened the refrigerator door to take out a diet cola for each of them. As she understood prevailing parental policy, Clare wasn’t allowed to go on one-couple car dates or to go out with the same boy more than three times in a row, and her parents practically ran background checks on anybody new to her circle of friends. Now, her twinkly air of secrecy indicated that something was up and, at the same time, belied any possibility that an executive exception had been made.

Clad in jeans, boots and a long-sleeved yellow T-shirt that made her hair flame beautifully around her deceptively angelic face, Clare hauled back a chair at the table and said a quiet thank-you when Brylee set the can of soda in front of her, along with a glass nearly filled with ice.

Brylee sat down opposite Clare and poured cola into her own glass of ice. And she waited.

“It’s not even an actual date,” Clare confided, blushing a little, shifting her gaze in Snidely’s direction and smiling at his exuberant kibble-crunching.

“How is a date ‘not actually’ a date?” Brylee ventured, but only after she’d taken a few leisurely sips of soda.

Clare gave a comical little wince. She’d basically grown up on the road, accompanying her famous mother and an extensive entourage on concert tours, and, though sheltered, overly so in Walker’s opinion, she was bound to be more sophisticated than the average kid. She’d been all over the world, after all, and met kings, queens, presidents and potentates. In Parable County—which had its share of troubled teens, like any other community—it was a good bet that Clare was considerably more savvy than most of her contemporaries.

“I guess a date isn’t really a date when it’s part of a youth group field trip,” the girl said sweetly, showing her dimples. “Mrs. Beaumont—Opal—and the reverend are chartering a bus and taking a whole bunch of us to Helena. We get to tour the capital buildings and stay overnight.”

Brylee smiled. She knew Opal and her husband, the Reverend Walter Beaumont, quite well, even though their church was in Parable and she attended one in Three Trees. They were beyond responsible, and both of them took a keen interest in the teen members of their congregation or any other.

“I see,” she said. “And this nondate is a date—how?”

Suddenly, Clare looked shy, and her lovely eyes turned dreamy.

Uh-oh, Brylee thought. Up to that moment, she’d been ready to dismiss a nagging sense that something was off. Now, she guessed she’d been right to worry, if only a little.

“Luke and I are going to sit together on the bus, that’s all,” Clare said. “And just sort of, well, hang out while we’re in Helena. You know, hold hands and stuff, when nobody’s looking. Spend a little time alone together, if we get the chance.”

“You don’t know Opal Beaumont very well if you think she won’t be keeping an eagle eye on every last one of you the whole time,” Brylee pointed out, with a little smile. She’d had a lecture or two from Opal herself—mostly on the subject of finding herself a good man and settling down—and she knew the woman didn’t miss much, if anything at all. A matchmaker extraordinaire, she was credited, sometimes indirectly, with jump-starting at least four relationships, all of which had led to marriage.

By the same token, though, Opal was devout, with the corresponding firm morals, and she’d guard her younger charges, girls and boys, with the ferocity of a tigress on the prowl.

Clare moved her slender shoulders in a semblance of a shrug. “Mom and Dad already said I could go,” she said, cheeks pink.

“And they know it’s an overnighter?” Brylee pressed, but gently.

Clare nodded. Then, guiltily, she added, “It’s the sitting together and the holding hands and the alone-time part I didn’t tell them about.”

Holding her palms up and opening and closing the fingers of both hands, Brylee imitated the sound the refrigerator made when she hadn’t shut the door all the way. “Danger,” she said, smiling again. “If you had a clear conscience about this, my girl, you wouldn’t feel any need to keep secrets from your folks. There’s something you’re not telling me.”

Clare sighed and looked at Brylee through lowered eyelashes, thick ones, like her mother’s. Like her father’s, for that matter. “Honestly, Aunt Brylee, Luke and I aren’t planning to do anything.”

“Then why sneak around?” Brylee challenged, though carefully. She’d been a teenager herself once, after all, and she knew coming on too strong would only cause more problems.

Clare answered with an uncomfortable question. “Are you going to tell Mom and Dad?”

Until several months after her parents’ long overdue marriage, Clare had persisted in referring to Walker by his first name, angry that he and Casey had kept the truth about their parentage from her and her brother, and, for that matter, the rest of the world. Both Clare and Shane were indeed Walker’s biological children, but calling him “Dad” was a relatively recent development, at least for Clare. Shane, already full of admiration for the man he’d always believed was a close family friend but wished was his father instead, had been thrilled when Casey and Walker broke the news.

Not so Clare.

“No,” Brylee said, after due consideration. “I’m not going to tell your mom and dad anything. You are.”

“They’ll just make a big deal out of it—maybe they’ll even say I can’t go on the trip at all,” Clare protested, temper rising. “Especially if they find out Luke’s a little older than I am.”

“How much older?” Brylee asked. Clare tended to be adventurous and impulsive, and she’d been in trouble for shoplifting at one point, too, so if Walker and Casey kept a closer watch on her than they might have otherwise, Brylee couldn’t blame them.

“Nineteen,” Clare replied in a small voice.

Oh, Lordy, Brylee thought, but she wouldn’t allow herself to overreact. After all, she didn’t want her niece to stop running things like this by her older and, presumably, wiser aunt.

“You like this Luke person a lot?” Brylee ventured.

“He’s awesome,” Clare said, softening visibly.

“And you met him at youth group?” Tread carefully here, Aunt Brylee. This is treacherous ground.

“I met him at a basketball game last fall,” Clare replied. “He was a senior then, and now he’s got a full-time job at the pulp mill. He joined the youth group just last week.”

“Isn’t nineteen a little old for youth group?”

“They let him in, didn’t they?” Clare reasoned, developing an edge. “It’s not as though he’s a pervert or something.”

Silently, Brylee counted to ten before asking, “What’s he like? Who are his parents?”

Clare looked fitful now, squirming in her chair, her glass of cola forgotten on the table in front of her. “Now you sound like them,” she complained. “It’s not like we’re going to a drive-in movie in his car, or anything like that.”

“Luke’s out of school, and he’s too old for you,” Brylee stated reasonably. Then she arched one eyebrow and added, “He has a car?”

“He has a driver’s license,” Clare said, defensive now.

Brylee sighed wearily. Nineteen, a job at the pulp mill and a driver’s license but, five will get you ten, no car. And what was this Luke yahoo doing in youth group? If he wanted to be part of the church community, there were certainly other options....

She paused, remembering how it felt to be very young, like Clare. Brylee’s own mother hadn’t been around much when she was growing up, but her dad had paid close attention to her activities, along with Walker’s. He’d been a real drag at times, wanting all the whys and wherefores, insisting on knowing all her friends, and she’d been rebellious, resentful—and very, very safe.

Now, she was getting a glimmer of what she must have put the poor man through, all because he wanted to protect her. She’d gone on to college, built a business and a good life for herself, while some of her friends, notably those whose parents were less vigilant, had fallen into all sorts of traps—unwanted pregnancies resulting in early and ill-fated marriages, lost scholarships, dead-end jobs.

In that moment, Brylee missed Barclay Parrish with a keen sharpness radiating from behind her breastbone, wished she’d thought to thank him for caring so much about her and Walker both before he’d died, over a decade before, of a heart attack, instead of now.

“What’s the hurry, Clare?” she asked softly. “You’re only sixteen, remember?”