The Wedding Circle (11 page)

“But you two, you've got that special twinkle. You had that snap in your step when you first come in. You definitely looked like you knew what you were doin'. Now you be sure and let us know where you ended up when you get back from your little trip. Why, just the idea of somebody takin' off on an impulse the way y'all are doin' is so romantic, I can hardly stand it!”

Miss Voncille gave her a quick hug. “I totally agree with you. It's so unlike me to do something like this. I've always been so organized and such a perfectionist about everything over the years—from my school teaching to my genealogy research at the library. If I hadn't cut my hair so short like this, I'd say I was definitely letting it down for the first time in my life.”

The look of envy on Oralee's face was quite obvious, and the sigh that followed was overly dramatic. “Y'all drive safe now.”

“Don't you worry about a thing,” Miss Voncille said, as she headed for the door with Locke leading the way. “We're both very cautious behind the wheel, and when the sign says
yield,
believe me, we yield. And not only that, Locke's even been known to stop and ask for directions when he can't find an address or thinks he might be lost. Can you imagine? You know how stubborn men are about that. If they don't mind asking, they're definitely keepers. If nothing else, it means they'll actually listen to you once in a while!”

Locke turned back with a smirk. “I can't remember when I've dominated a conversation with you, Voncille. I'm wondering if anyone ever has.”

“That's enough of that,” she said, taking his comment in stride with a chuckle. “Let's go see what we can discover out there on the open road.”

10

Concrete Proof of Life

“N
ow that I finally have you one-on-one again, I want you to follow me. I have something I need you to see,” Maura Beth was saying to her mother out on the deck of the McShays' lodge the morning after
The Robber Bridegroom
potluck and review had blown up in her face. The two of them had just endured a tense breakfast of coffee and croissants during which everyone's conversation around the table consisted mainly of small talk with a generous helping of averted glances thrown in for good measure. It was obvious that no one cared to discuss Cara Lynn's hasty exit of the evening before, or the heated exchange that had sent her on her way in such a huff.

But Maura Beth could postpone the inevitable no longer. She had finally brought her napkin up from her lap, excused herself to Jeremy, her hosts, and in-laws, and issued a pointed invitation as she rose from her chair. “Mama, please join me outside for a minute, won't you?”

At first, Cara Lynn had continued to play the role of the outraged mother of the bride. “No, thank you, I've seen the view. I've already said how lovely I think it is. Your father and I need to get upstairs and start packing.”

“This is very important to me. Please, Mama,” Maura Beth added with a gentle urgency in her voice.

William Mayhew had caught his wife's gaze and tilted his head in the general direction of the deck, and she had relented.

“All right, then. But we have a schedule to keep to get down to New Orleans at a reasonable hour.”

Once out on the deck, Cara Lynn maintained her cantankerous demeanor as she kept her gaze trained on the still, brown water. “I've seen everything I need to see here, Maura Beth. Yesterday, the grand tour of that matchbox apartment you live in just broke my heart. I'd go out of my mind being hemmed in the way you are. It certainly doesn't do justice to the beautiful sofa we sent you. Besides, it's starting to heat up out here already. Why on earth do I have to follow you somewhere in all this terrible humidity?”

“Because we haven't resolved anything. You and Daddy are about to run off, and we're practically right back where we started. We've been skirting around the issue of my wedding, and you know it.”

Cara Lynn drew back in exasperation. “I don't see it that way. You've made it clear that you're going to have your wedding right here where we're standing. And what your father and I want is of no importance.”

“That's just not true. I'm wearing your wedding dress because it's important to you.”

“Yes, and I appreciate that. I really do. But why not agree to come down to Louisiana and do things up right? Yes, your friends here in Cherico are very nice and hospitable, but what about the family and friends you grew up with? Don't they mean anything to you at all?”

“You mean like Cudd'n M'Dear?” Maura Beth was staring down at the planks and shaking her head.

“All right. I'll give you that one. Cudd'n M'Dear is a bit hard to stomach at times. I don't even think she means well when she goes off on one of her absurd tangents. But there are so many other people who have always taken a genuine interest in you from the time you were just a baby. Why won't you let your father and I give you a beautiful New Orleans wedding that you'll never forget?”

Maura Beth was determined not to get drawn into her mother's time-honored tactics and pressed on. “If you'll just come with me, Mama, I think everything will make sense to you. Connie and Douglas have already taken Daddy over to the construction site. Will you at least do that much?”

Cara Lynn made a big to-do of checking her watch and sighing. “If you insist. But we really do need to be heading back to Louisiana. I think we've overstayed our welcome as it is.”

Maura Beth gestured in the direction of the steps leading to a winding path flanked by monkey grass. As they slowly proceeded, the trail became less and less defined, and the border of greenery eventually disappeared. Ahead lay only a thick stand of willows and hardwoods that screened the neighboring property from view. But just when a dead end seemed all but certain, Maura Beth pointed to an opening partially obscured by overhanging branches.

“It's right there in the clearing just beyond,” she told her mother. “You go ahead of me, please. I don't want you to leave without seeing it. It's concrete proof of what my life is all about up here.”

Cara Lynn obeyed, but not before giving her daughter a skeptical glance. Then she shaded her eyes as she began surveying the flat land in front of her. “What is it I'm supposed to see, Maura Beth? There's nothing there. It just looks like a graded lot to me.”

“Look more closely right over there by the water,” Maura Beth said, gesticulating emphatically.

“What? At that big, long slab? You mean that remark about the concrete was supposed to be taken literally?”

Maura Beth's pride clearly showed in the way she held herself and drew in a breath of the heavy morning air. “Yes, it might be just a concrete slab right now, but that's the foundation of Cherico's new library—and it wouldn't be going up if I hadn't come here in the first place and then fought long and hard for it. Won't it have a beautiful view of the lake when it's finished?”

“Yes, I can see that it will,” Cara Lynn admitted. “The lake is very nice.” Then she faced her daughter, finally dispensing with the last vestiges of the cold-shoulder treatment she'd adopted since the outburst at the library. “But I still don't get it, Maura Beth. Honestly. I mean, this fascination you have with being a librarian. I've tried to understand, but frankly, it all just eludes me. Of course, Daddy and I thought you'd stay with it for a while just to make a little money until you got married, settled down, and gave us grandchildren. We never dreamed you'd go to this extreme and turn your back on your upbringing the way you have.”

Maura Beth could not suppress a light ripple of laughter. “Mama, you kill me sometimes.”

“Why? What's so funny about what I said?”

“Here, let's get out of this bright sun first,” Maura Beth said, moving into the shade of the trees once again and waiting for her mother to follow. “The part about money. I can pretty much promise you that nobody goes into the library business for the money. If they do, they're going to be sadly disappointed and disillusioned.”

Cara Lynn was arching her brows dramatically and nodding her head furiously now, daring to disrupt her carefully arranged hairdo. “There, you've practically made my argument for me. What on earth is the big attraction? I know you're barely scraping by, and every single time your father and I have offered to help out, you get so upset with us. It seems we can't win with you, no matter what. Do you think there's some virtue in not having money? I know there are politicians out there who make a living running down the entire concept of wealth as if it's the greatest sin in the world, but I'm just not buying it.”

Maura Beth had been waiting for this moment for a long time. Perhaps she could finally explain who she was to her mother in person, since all the phone calls, cards, and e-mails over the years had not put a dent in Cara Lynn's stubborn misconceptions. “Do you remember when you took me by the hand and enrolled me in the New Orleans' Library's summer reading program?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“Why did you do that? Do you remember?”

Cara Lynn looked more surprised than puzzled. “I don't know. I guess I thought it would help you read better and that would help you do better in school. I'm not sure I really give it that much thought at the time. The other mothers in my crowd were doing it, so I went along with it, too.”

Maura Beth managed a gracious smile. “Well, I'm glad you did, regardless of the reason. As you know, I loved reading. I loved all my little picture books and read as many as I could get my hands on.”

“Yes, I loved reading to you just before bedtime. It was sweet when you looked up at me and tried to repeat some of the words. Every time you tried to say, ‘Once upon a time,' it came out, ‘One tie tie.' ”

Maura Beth detected a softening of her mother's attitude and decided to proceed. “And I loved it when you read to me, Mama. Things were so simple back then. I miss that simplicity. Can't we get back to that again?”

Cara Lynn put her hands on her hips, briefly looking up at the trees. “That all sounds nice, but I think you're the one who's made everything complicated. You won't budge on your wedding plans. Well, I guess that's not quite true. As you just said, you did agree to wear my dress down the aisle. There is going to be one, isn't there? An aisle, I mean.”

“Yes, of course, Mama. Just not in a church. But please try to understand. The entire New Orleans experience, The Three-Hundred Club—it was all pleasant enough growing up. And I know it means a lot to you. I'm just not sure it means nearly as much to me. To be honest with you—well, it was almost suffocating at times.”

Cara Lynn looked astonished as she brought her hands down to her side. “Having access to the finer things in life is suffocating? Having friends from nice families is somehow a burden?”

“No, that's not what I meant.” Maura Beth took a few moments to work it all out in her head. She had never put her feelings into words quite this way, and she wanted to be careful not to make things worse. “It was just that you and Daddy seemed to have everything planned for me—from ballroom dancing class to where I should go to college to my debut—you never asked me, you just told me. What I might want never seemed to enter into the equation. And somewhere along the way, I decided that what I wanted was to be a librarian. To be around books and literature and all kinds of information. I liked the idea of having the answers, or at least helping people try to find them. Maybe that doesn't make a lot of sense to you, but it's the best I can do.”

Cara Lynn threw her hands in the air, but it registered more like resignation than annoyance. “Well, I don't know who you take after with this business of doing things your own way and the rest of us be damned. I remember in the first grade when Miss Katie Hyde told you everyone was going to color with blue crayons that day, and she called me up later and said you refused to cooperate and were going to color in red. And you did, too. But she wouldn't even give you a bad deportment grade because she said you were so cute with all that red hair. She was sure that was why you wanted to use the red.” Cara Lynn paused to reflect with a strange smile on her face. “It's that red hair of yours, you know. That recessive gene, wherever it came from. I've come to the conclusion that you redheads answer to no one but yourself. But you weren't content with that. You had to go and be a redheaded librarian to boot!”

Maura Beth was certain she sensed a significant crack in the armor and immediately seized the opportunity. “Aren't I just awful?”

Finally, they both laughed. Gentle laughter, to be sure, but a genuine release of much-needed tension.

It did not stop Cara Lynn from giving it one last try, however. “So there's absolutely nothing I can say or do to convince you to have your wedding in your own church in your own hometown? You're going to insist on having people traipse up here this long way for this little fishing lodge to-do?”

“Mama, it would mean so much to me if you and Daddy would go along with it. And I know for a fact that Connie will cooperate with you in any way you like. She only wants to please us. She's made that clear from the beginning.”

“Oh, this isn't about her,” Cara Lynn insisted. “She's been a wonderful hostess. It's not even about the testy words I had with Susan McShay. This is about you and me. Your father will do what I tell him to do. At least most of the time.” Cara Lynn wiped her brow with the back of her hand. “Look, let's head on back into that air-conditioning before we both burn to a crisp without a drop of sunscreen on. Especially since you can now say I've seen where your new library is going up. And, yes, I think it's nice that you're responsible for it. I get it—concrete evidence of your life here in Cherico. Are they at least going to name it after you?”

They began to retrace their steps, this time with a little more urgency. “No, they're not. It's going to be called The Charles Durden Sparks, Crumpton, and Duddney Public Library.”

“What? Who are all those people?!”

Maura Beth chuckled under her breath. “Rich benefactors.”

As they reached the steps, Cara Lynn had her nose out of joint once again. “Well, you ought to insist that your name be in there somewhere. That is, if this library business means as much to you as you say it does.”

“Of course it does. But never mind that. I'll be given sufficient credit when the time comes.” Just before they reached the deck doors, Maura Beth gave her mother a brief, impulsive hug. “Can we at least say we've reached a truce on my wedding plans? I need to know that.”

Cara Lynn pulled away slightly, and Maura Beth was relieved to see that there was a smile on her face. “Well, it's nice to know you need your one and only mother for something.”

“Yes, yes, I do, Mama, and maybe this wedding is not exactly what you envisioned, but I want you and Daddy there. And I'd like very much for you to feel good about it all.”

“But the truth is, I just don't know if I really can. You're asking me to turn my back on my upbringing. It's what I know. It's what I'm comfortable with. That's asking an awful lot of someone as set in my ways as I am,” Cara Lynn said, a definite note of defiance in her tone. “I might as well be honest with you. I came up here fully expecting to wear you down or talk you out of all this. And even though I haven't succeeded yet, I usually get my way, sooner or later. You're very much mistaken if you think I'm going to let up on you the least little bit. And I mean what I say.”