The Year of Chasing Dreams (41 page)

“Yes,” she said. And the two of them strolled down the long driveway, hand in hand, between the newly planted oak trees painstakingly mixed with the old growth to fetch whatever the postman brought. One letter came that totally took Ciana by surprise. It was postmarked Chicago and bore the address of Hastings Incorporated. She opened it on the spot while Jon waited. She skimmed it, smiled with satisfaction. “Gerald Hastings wants to build us a house. Imagine that.”

Jon tipped his head to salute her. “Good. You’ll need a house either way.”

Either way. She wanted to live in the house with Jon. She slipped the letter back into the envelope, and at the road’s edge put her arms around the man she loved, where they stood for a long, long time.

Garret liked sleeping under the stars at Bellmeade. Eden preferred a bed, even the camper, but the camper was closed in and hot in these early summer months, so sleeping bags under the stars did make sense. “We’ll be sleeping outside a lot once we get on the road,” he told her.

“What about crawly things? And wild animals?”

“I’ll fight them off for you,” he joked, adding, “plus we have Soldier with us.” He ruffled the dog’s fur.

The shepherd slept out with them, and that did make Eden feel better.

They each held their electronic tablets, Garret reading over the article he’d written and was getting ready to send off, and Eden with an ebook, when he said, “Want to head to Yosemite Park soon as we can get Jon and Ciana married off?”

“Okay,” she said absently. The wait for the DNA results was taking forever, and like Garret, she was anxious to be on their journey too. The weather was good now, so travel and camping would be good also.

“Amazing what science can do with a dab of spit these days.” He rolled up on his elbow, gazed down on Eden. “My family comes from a line of convicts. You aware of that?”

“You trying to frighten me off?”

He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Well, if we marry and have children, you might want to know who you’re related to. Could be some wild-eyed pirate.”

She put the tablet down, unable to concentrate when he kept interrupting. “Is that a proposal?”

He grinned. “I’ll plan a better proposal for later.”

She blew him a kiss, raised the tablet. “And don’t worry about children. I’ll never have any.” Garret went silent. Too silent. Eden glanced over at him staring down at her. “What?”

“No children? No wee people who look like us?”

“No.” She studied his face, which looked as if she’d slapped him. Suddenly the conversation took on a whole new dimension. “Garret, I’m not being difficult here. It’s a fact that bipolar passes genetically. It hit Mom when she was a teen. Ruined her life. So far it’s passed me by, but it can happen to me too. I’ve told you that. I won’t bring a baby into the world knowing this is hanging over its head.”

“I—I just never thought I wouldn’t have kids. I’m the last of my family.”

She grasped the dynamic for him. With Phillip gone, Garret was the only Locklin son. “I thought you had an uncle.”

“Three daughters.”

“Maybe they’ll take up the Beauchamp tradition of keeping their family name.”

“They’re on my mother’s side. Not my dad’s.”

She could see that she’d rocked him with her announcement. She felt bad about it, but she knew she’d feel worse if any kid of theirs was saddled with bipolar disorder. She
reached up, touched his cheek. “I had a horrible childhood, Garret. I know what bipolarism is like. I know the unhappiness it can bring.” His expression was still troubled. She raised up, gave him a kiss. “Let’s not talk about this now. Let’s talk about something fun and happy.” She snuggled closer to him. “Show me on your tablet the trip we’ll be taking.”

He moved slowly, but finally lay back down, his head touching hers, and raised his tablet, aglow with a map. “Thought we’d start here.” He touched Yosemite, traced a meandering path through the upper plains and into the northwest.

She made appropriate sounds of enthusiasm, but felt his subtle disappointment and withdrawal. Later Eden lay awake watching the stars travel across the sky, and wondered if something had broken between them.

The results of the DNA tests took three and a half weeks getting to Bellmeade, and although she’d been waiting for it to arrive, when Ciana removed the oversized envelope from the mailbox, her heartbeat jumped into overdrive. In her hand she held her future, determined by sins from the past. Jon asked, “What is it?”

“The answers.”

As they walked back to the trailer, she held it gingerly, like a bomb that might explode any second. The others were setting up for dinner on a folding table close to the trailer, which was just too hot and small to be crammed into for the meal. “You got it.” Eden was the first to realize what Ciana held. All other movement stopped.

“I haven’t opened it.”

Alice Faye squared her shoulders. “Come. Sit. We’ll read it together.”

Ciana wasn’t sure they should, but her mother was.

Garret and Jon quickly set folding chairs in a circle and they all took a seat, attention glued on Ciana. She stared down at the envelope, decided she shouldn’t be the one to open it. She handed it to her mother. “You open it. Jon and I have made up our minds what we’ll do no matter what it says.”

Jon nodded, leaving no doubt as to their choice—they would marry.

Alice Faye recoiled from the envelope, but she took it, fanned the air with it, then thrust it at Eden. “I think my other daughter should open it.”

“Me? I—I—”

“Do it,” Ciana said.

Eden tore open the envelope and extracted several sheets of paper. “Top paper is a cover letter with results spelled out.”

“Tell us!” Ciana growled.

Eden’s eyes went wide as she read silently. She looked up, her face absolutely blank. “It does appear that the three of you do have something in common.”

Ciana’s heart fell with a sickening thud.

Impishly Eden said, “Belly buttons. You all have belly buttons.”

Garret was the first to catch on. He roared out a laugh. “Good one, love!”

Seconds later Ciana and Jon caught on too. Only Alice Faye sat with her brow puckered. Eden leaned over. “No shared genes between Ciana and Jon. Although there is proof positive that you and Ciana are related.”

Alice Faye snatched the letter, began to weep. “She got it wrong. Olivia was wrong. Charles is my father.”

Jon pulled Ciana to her feet, buried his hands in her thick cinnamon-colored hair. “You get a preacher. And if he has to
marry us out here in an open field, let’s get it done before some other disaster comes along.”

“I’m on it,” Ciana said, raising on her toes and kissing him to Eden and Garret’s applause.

Much later, after glasses of wine and beer, and water for Alice Faye, Ciana found her mother sitting alone outside and gazing up at the moon. She dragged a chair over and joined her. “You all right?”

“First time I’ve been at peace since this whole thing started. Amazing world we live in. Just the swish of a swab and we know who we came from. I feel a little sorry for my mother.”

“She and Roy were on a collision course, Mom. Eden and I saw it all through the diaries. They had this fatal attraction for each other, and when opportunity came along, they took it. The pregnancy was a coincidence.”

“But she never knew that,” Alice Faye said. “In her mind, I was punishment for sleeping with Roy while she was married. ‘A punishment’ … isn’t that what she called me?”

The hurt in her mother’s eyes made Ciana wince. She slogged ahead with her explanation. “Great Grandpa Jacob hated Roy, so he and Olivia could have never married. She was a Beauchamp. Her path was predestined. And in those days girls like her didn’t go against her family’s wishes.”

“I’d like to forgive her, but oh, the pain she caused me.” Her mother sighed heavily, covered Ciana’s hand with hers. “You are the best of the Beauchamps. You and Jon will make this place great again. I’m only sorry your daddy couldn’t be here to give you away at your wedding.”

“That’s for
you
to do, Mom.”

“Me?”

“And Eden my maid of honor. My family. Forever.”

Ciana located a small chapel in Nashville and a minister willing to do the ceremony on short notice. The chapel was booked solid on weekends, but in the middle of the week, if they were willing to come in the late afternoon, Ciana and Jon could marry there. They invited no one except Angela, who flew up immediately. “We’ll have a big reception at the Baptist church downtown later,” Alice Faye announced. “Don’t want Mama’s only grandchild not having a reception befitting a Beauchamp.” She and Ciana laughed over the inside joke.

Since the DNA results, Alice Faye had been a new person. Gone was her unhappiness, along with much of her anger. The change made Ciana happy. She was sorry Olivia had suffered all the years she did, but all was in the past now. She and Alice Faye and Eden held a diary-burning ceremony in the yard’s fire pit late one evening. The flames blazed and danced and sent ashes of the distant past into the night sky. Eden called it a final sacrifice to the gods of unhappiness.

Ciana never did find a dress to her liking, not that she shopped much for one. On her wedding day she wore white denim jeans, a white cowgirl shirt with pearl buttons, and white leather western boots, no veil. For her bouquet she picked purple and yellow wild flowers and Alice Faye wound the stems with white ribbon and tulle. Garret pronounced her “gorgeous!”

Eden chose a flattering red dress for herself because she liked the way she looked in red. Jon wore jeans and a black, western-style dinner jacket. Alice Faye, wearing a pale blue dress, gave her daughter away while Angela wore lavender.

When Ciana stood at her mother’s side in the chapel’s narthex, she saw that the late afternoon sun streamed through high prism-cut windows, sending fractured slices of pure light downward. When she came down the chapel aisle, the look on Jon’s face reflected what was in her heart. Joy. The ceremony was brief, and when Jon slipped Isabella’s hand-forged and resized golden band on her finger, she told him with her eyes it was a perfect fit in every way.

They held a small dinner in a private dining room within the hotel where Jon had booked a honeymoon suite. The room glowed with candlelight and resonated with soft music. The next day, all would go their separate ways—Garret and Eden would hit the road in their camper and Alice Faye and Angela would return to Bellmeade to “keep the place running” until Jon and Ciana returned from a six-day honeymoon in Montana. Two weeks afterward, Ciana and Jon had booked a meeting with Hastings about the rebuild of their house.

The dinner broke up when Jon announced that he and his bride were going upstairs
without
the guests. Everyone laughed, and gathered their things. At the door Ciana hugged
everyone, with her goodbye to Garret and Eden especially bittersweet. “You take care of her, you big Aussie.”

“Always been my plan,” Garret said with a flash of his infectious smile.

She wrapped her arms around Eden. Tears swam in her eyes. “You have a ball, little sister. And you stay in touch.”