Caleb's Bride

The old explanation, the one he’d been running through his head for years, cropped up again, and as always he played with it awhile, half-hoping he could make it ring true.

The thing was, that very first day on the farm he realized Gabby was someone special. His first clue had been when she’d admitted to her father, Frank, that she’d hidden one of their older lambs, Chester, until she could “talk some sense into” Frank and make him see that the little guy should be a pet, not a lamb chop. She spoke with persuasive passion and loyalty, claiming that vegetarianism would be better for the whole family. A few weeks later she saved a spider from the shoe her brother Ben had been about to hammer it with, and more times than Cal could count, Gabby showered the people in her sphere with a similar protectiveness. In school she befriended the new, the awkward and the adrift, pulling them into her circle of friends. She wasn’t one of the most popular girls, but she was well-liked.

Despite the fact that she’d never shown him quite the same level of concern, Cal felt drawn to the sensitive girl. He enjoyed feeling like one of her brothers and reminded himself that he didn’t want anyone treating him like some defenseless lamb or brainless bug, anyway, so who cared if sometimes she kept her distance? By the time he turned fifteen, however, he knew he was nursing a crush on Gabby. She represented something innocent and good. Something he wanted in his own life. Something that could change him.

At seventeen, he’d realized he didn’t stand a chance with her. In a million years he wouldn’t be able to measure up to the golden boy Dean Kingsley, whom Gabby appeared to love with a loyalty Cal would happily die to feel…from someone.

At eighteen, Cal graduated from high school, the first person in his family of drug addicts and wastrels to do so, and he graduated on the honor roll. He had a college scholarship, a student loan, a dorm room waiting for him and more self-esteem than ever in his life. And he still thought about Gabby.

So, when he found her crying in the gazebo in Doc Kingsley park after the July Fourth fireworks display, her spirit crushed because Dean had returned from college for the summer with a girlfriend on his arm, Cal claimed that exquisitely vulnerable moment for himself and became Gabby Coombs’s first lover. He and Gabby had been two young people hungry to be held.

It had been an aching, tender, heartbreaking night… each of them wanting someone who didn’t return the feelings.

Cal’s steps slowed as he realized he was abreast of King’s Pharmacy, the business Dean’s father had owned. Dean had worked here through high school. And Gabby had gone in on one fabricated excuse or another every chance she’d gotten.

Turning toward the window with its large gold lettering, Cal noted the sign that read, Dean Kingsley, Pharmacist on Duty. The golden boy had not disappointed. Cal shook his head. “You could have had her if you’d crooked your finger.”

In the morning sun, Cal studied his reflection in the glass. Well-groomed, well-dressed and, when he wasn’t acting like a petulant imbecile, well-spoken; he was a far cry from the boy he’d been. Back then, he’d been a struggling youth with a messy past, and he doubted that anyone, including Gabby’s parents and brothers, would have preferred him over Dean Kingsley as her boyfriend. Against the bright light of the doctor’s perfect son, Cal hadn’t been able to shine at all.

Turning away from the pharmacy, Cal strode up the street. Some of the best advice he’d ever gotten had come from Gabby’s own grandfather. Max was the only person Cal had ever told about his confusing feelings for Gabrielle. He’d even considered turning down his scholarship so he could remain in Honeyford, near her.

Begged for a clue about how to claim Gabby’s attention, Max had put a hand on Cal’s shoulder. “Son, if you keep one foot in the past and one in the future, you’re going to piss all over today. Just keep moving.”

Sound advice. There had been more, but that was the plainspoken guidance Cal had followed.

He planned to follow it again now.

His heart both hardened and softened as he thought of Minna, his beautiful, smart, talented, anxious daughter, who, so far, had been as unlucky in love as Cal. He had returned to Honeyford to give Minna the family they hadn’t been able to build in Chicago. The Coombs clan was the example he wanted to emulate.

He couldn’t afford another episode like today’s. He’d been rude and insinuating to the Coombses’ only daughter, a woman with whom he’d had no contact in fifteen years. What business was it of his whether she was staying, going or planning a trip to the moon?

Cal would die for his daughter. With a failed marriage to her mother, and no role models among his own relations, he required the Coombses’ guidance on how to create a successful, stable family.

If that meant killing off the last vestiges of his fantasies about Gabby, so be it.

By eight-thirty on Friday evening, only five hardy souls remained at the Honeyford Days Fourth of July Celebration Committee meeting. Unseasonably sultry June weather and Vernon Reynaud’s refusal to contribute to “wasteful government spending” by turning on the air-conditioning in the community center had considerably thinned their ranks. Gabby and Lesley remained, however, Lesley doodling idly on a yellow legal pad, and Gabby eyeballing the Honey Bunz—puffy croissant-style pastry balls with a crunchy honey coating—donated for the committee’s sustenance by Honey Bea’s bakery.

“No, leave it. We’re having dessert later,” Lesley whispered as Gabby’s fingers snaked toward a Honey Bunz.

“Right. Thanks.” She snatched her hand back, but holy sugar rush, Batman, did she long for the distraction of a quality insulin surge. She’d been horribly depressed since this morning.

“How late can you stay out tonight?” she whispered to her sis-in-law.

“Probably until ten,” Les whispered back. “I warned Eric I’d be late. He’s at your parents’ with the girls. What’s the matter with you? You keep kicking the table leg.”

“Are we still discussing the plans for Honeyford Days or have we decided to adjourn?” Flo Bixby raised her rickety voice above the irresponsible extraneous chatter in the room.

“Adjourn, I beg you,” Lesley muttered under her breath, but she rallied for the cause, smiling nicely at Flo and offering a succinct update on her choreography for Honeyford, A Retrospective in Dance, being presented by the Dancing Honeybees Senior Tappers.

As the secretary for tonight’s meeting, Gabby dutifully took notes, but her mind was a million miles away. She had a plan for The Radical Improvement of Gabrielle Coombs, a plan she intended to begin instituting immediately, and, forgive her, but plotting her transformation trumped working on yet another Independence Day lollapalooza. After this morning, she’d like to ignore July Fourth and its loaded memories altogether.

Cal’s reappearance and his pointed comments had whipped up a tumultuous sea of self-recriminations inside her. She’d been pretty successful over the years at burying the memory of the July Fourth when she’d lost her virginity to Cal Wells, but after his visit to Honey Comb’s, images from that long-ago night had been forming in her mind, growing sharper and clearer all day.

She recalled vividly, for example, that he’d found her in the dark shelter of the Doc Kingsley Park gazebo, sitting all alone, yielding to pitiful tears that had poured down her cheeks and trickled like brine into her mouth. The brackish flavor only partially masked the bitterness of Dean’s announcement that he was serious about the lithe beauty he’d brought home from college, someone he had known less than a year.

Gabby had spent five times that long trying to make Dean see her as a romantic possibility.

When the July Fourth fireworks had died down and most everyone filed out of the park, Gabby curled up on the gazebo bench and gave in to silent sobs that stabbed her abdomen. Time seemed irrelevant at that point, but she didn’t think she’d been there too long when a voice reached her, so soft and close that she jumped.

“Don’t cry.”

She’d turned to see Cal climbing the gazebo steps, his angular features tense in the moonlight. His plea, pained and earnest, only made her cry harder, however, and after a moment he’d slid onto the bench beside her. “Damn it, Gabby, don’t…”

She’d felt his strong arm curl around her shoulders, the unexpectedness of the gesture temporarily interrupting the flow of her tears. Other than the times when she cut his hair or he helped her with chores around the farm, they didn’t touch.

Through the shadows in the gazebo, she’d looked at him, her heart breaking, lips wobbling.

“What can I do?” he’d whispered.

A tsunami of hurt and frustration and regret and need had tossed her heart around like a piece of driftwood. Wetly, she’d blinked then pleaded with no forethought whatsoever, “Kiss me…”

“Stop kicking the table.” Lesley shoved an elbow into Gabby’s ribs.

“Sorry.” Heat flooding her cheeks, Gabby looked down at the notes she was supposed to be taking. Some secrets were too big to tell even your very best friend.

It took another half hour for the meeting to wrap up and then Gabby grabbed Lesley’s arm, hustling her to the diner, where they grabbed their favorite booth in the back and gave their order to Opal, who was hard of hearing and generally handed her ticket book to regular customers so they could write their own orders. She soon returned with a pot of decaf, a slab of marionberry pie and two forks.

“Oh, Mama, that’s good,” Lesley purred in appreciation.

Gabby picked up her fork. “You haven’t even tasted it yet.”

“I’m not talking about the pie, innocent child.” Lesley nodded pointedly toward the counter, where a lone man sat, his large hands cupped around a mug of coffee.

Gabby squinted. “Isn’t that the new pastor at Honeyford Presbyterian?”

“Yessiree. Pastor Keith. Single Pastor Keith.”

“Keith doesn’t sound like a pastor’s name,” Gabby commented, apropos of nothing, but grateful to have a moment before she launched into her own topic. Stabbing a few marionberries and a piece of crust, she moaned at the deliciousness.

“He doesn’t look like a pastor, either,” Lesley mused. “He looks like he should be on a TV show called Sex In The Small Town. Or Desperate Worshippers.” She waggled her brows.

Gabby put a hand over her mouth to trap the berries that nearly spilled out. “You’re ogling a man of the cloth? I’m telling Eric.”

“I’m not ogling him for me, you ninny.” Lifting her fork, she jabbed the tines at Gabby.

Gabby leaned forward, whispering fiercely. “You think I should date the minister of Honeyford Pres? Are you kidding? I grew up in that church. If we ever got serious, I’d picture half the choir in our bedroom, singing ‘Amazing Grace.’”

“Or ‘Glory Hallelujah.’”