Caleb's Bride. Wendy Warren

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СКАЧАТЬ woman’s every word and followed her instructions without a peep.

      For years he had wondered whether such a family existed outside of television reruns. After he’d found them, and even though they hadn’t belonged to him, he had known instantly that he wanted to be asked back again and again. And he had been. To this day, he counted what he had learned in the Coombses’ old farmhouse to be one of his greatest blessings.

      Maybe you wanted Gabby so you could become a permanent part of the family. Maybe that’s all it ever was.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ