Chapter Forty
Jaimie
Epilogue
“Do you remember how we got engaged?” asked Penny, Darren’s girlfriend, in a quiet voice.
“Do you really think I could forget?” asked Darren. “It was kind of a big event in my life.”
We were tramping through the backyard behind the Savery home. It was late November, but the air was only slightly chilly, like an early spring morning in Boulder. The oaks that lined the back pasture still held onto their foliage as though reluctant to let them go.
I had been dating Braxton for two and a half years, but this was the first Thanksgiving we had spent in Sulphur Springs. All the brothers and their respective partners were coming down for tonight’s meal: Kelli and Zac were cutting up onions in the kitchen while Lori and Marshall were expected within the hour. Despite the intense preparations, Mrs. Savery bustled through the house with indefatigable energy; this was the first time we had all been together in the same place.
“I’ve never actually met Lori,” I told Braxton. “She’s the only one of the girls I’ve never met.”
“I got to hang out with her when I stayed the week in Summerville last summer,” said Darren. “She’s a sweet girl: plain, bookish. Kind of boring. Just right for Marshall.”
“Coming from you,” said Braxton, “that is the highest of compliments.”
Darren glared in annoyance at Braxton. They had been sniping at each other for much of the week, though neither one could compete with Zac when it came to condescending one-liners.
“The other week, we drove down to Austin,” said Penny, “looking for high-quality fall kitsch. No disrespect to the stores here, but if you want real quality kitsch, you have to visit the big cities. We wandered into a Walgreens and found a rack of discount Halloween décor lovingly assembled.”
“Did you buy anything good?” I asked.
“We did, in fact.” She tugged at Darren’s sleeve. “Darren, tell her about the hag costume I found, the one with the velvet tassels.”
“You just told her,” Darren pointed out.
“It was exquisite,” said Penny, eyes large and protuberant. “I think I will be a hag next Halloween.”
“Glad you guys are prepared,” said Braxton. “What are you going as Darren?”
“As if I know!” Darren scoffed. “I don’t think that far ahead!”
“Well, you’d better get a move on because it’s only…” He pulled out his phone. “Eleven months away.”
“You’re one of those guys who starts playing Christmas music the day after Halloween, aren’t you?” He kicked at a pile of mulch, which gave off a powerful odor of fresh-cut wood. “I’ll never understand you people who build your lives around holidays. What do you do during the other three-hundred-and-some-odd days of the year?”
“We enjoy ourselves,” said Braxton. “You should try it sometime.”
By now we had arrived at the barn, where the horses were stirring uneasily in the dim light. Penny told me the story of how Darren had proposed to her there. “He had the whole place decorated for me,” she said. “It’s a shame they couldn’t keep it like that forever.”
“Well, it’s an actual barn that animals have to live in,” said Darren. He reached around and kissed her on the top of her head. “Besides, I like the home we’re building together.”
“Oh, me too,” said Penny, folding into him like an accordion. “No disrespect to that.”
Elaborate engagements seemed to be a theme of our visit. Later that evening as we sat around the dining-room table, plates piled high with turkey and giblet gravy, homemade stuffing and scalloped potatoes, cranberry sauce, and cinnamon pecan rolls, Lori related the story of how Marshall had proposed to her. She wore a chunky brass ring on her left hand that looked like a cursed antique.
“I had sensed that he was getting ready to propose,” she said, “but I didn’t expect him to go all out like that. He somehow turned the entire bakery into a library during the one day I was gone. There were more books than I could read in ten years. It was like something out of Beauty and the Beast.”
“Perfect for you, in other words,” said Mrs. Savery, stirring her mashed potatoes with a pewter spoon.
“Yeah,” said Lori, smiling. “Before you can marry me, you’ve got to pay your respects to the books.”
It was a lovely story, but a nervous feeling crept over me as I listened. Whether intentionally or not, it seemed like each of the boys had been trying to outdo his brothers with the elaborateness of his proposal. I stole a glance at Braxton, wondering what he was thinking. If Mr. Savery had suddenly announced that a plane was flying low over the house writing a message in clouds, I wouldn’t have been terribly surprised.
“I read a story once,” said Lori, “about a wealthy young man who was in love with this woman from Jersey. But the feelings were entirely one-sided. He spent thousands of dollars on these increasingly desperate attempts to get her attention—at one point even gifting her a private plane. But when he asked her to marry him, she flatly rejected him. In fact, he proposed twice, and both times she told him she wasn’t interested.”
“Makes sense,” said Allie, combing her blonde hair back. “I wouldn’t want to feel obligated to marry someone just because he had spent a lot of money trying to win my affection. That’s a recipe for unending misery.”
“Really?” said Curtis, looking amused. “You’re telling me you’d still marry this old cowboy even if you had better options?”
“Well, I like this old cowboy,” said Allie, stroking his arm. “I don’t like any of those other boys.”
“I might marry a duke,” said Penny, reaching for the basket of buttered rolls, “but only because I’ve always wanted to be called a duchess, and to wear one of those fancy hats.”
“You’d really throw me under the bus for some fancy-pants duke?” asked Darren in disbelief.
“I mean, maybe,” Penny said with a shrug. “Depends on whether you can get me a fancy hat.”
“Count me in the minority who thinks the engagement isn’t that big of a deal,” said Kelli. “Take me to the nearest gas station and ask me to marry you in the snacks aisle, in between the tortilla chips and the Hostess Twinkies. I couldn’t care less where you do it, as long as you’re loving and supportive.”
But this statement met with ridicule from several of the brothers, who were quick to remind her that Zac had proposed in Central Park.
Kelli shrugged. “He didn’t have to is all I’m saying.”
“I read a cute story about Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer,” said Lori, “that when he proposed to her, he drew a ring around her finger with black Sharpie. It’s great because you get the sense they could have easily afforded an actual ring, but that’s just who they are.”
“I bet that made Amanda’s whole life,” said Kelli, and Lori nodded in agreement.
“Well, as long as you’re all happy and satisfied,” said Mrs. Savery, rising to her feet and beginning to gather up the plates, “that’s all that matters to me.”
Outside the windows, the sun was just setting over the pasture, painting the landscape in vivid hues of red and orange. We continued to sit around the table and talk while Mrs. Savery brought out cinnamon-sugar pull-apart bread and apples cooked in brandy butter. Braxton reached behind me into the cooler and pulled out a couple of hard apple ciders. He handed one to me and kept the other for himself.
“I have to admit, I didn’t know if you could pull it off,” I said. “I wasn’t sure this would feel like Thanksgiving. But it does.”
“Why wouldn’t it?” asked Braxton.
“Because we’re in Texas, and it doesn’t get as cold here as it gets in other places. But when we got off the plane yesterday in Dallas there was a slight nip in the air, and I knew it would be a good holiday.”
“I’m glad we didn’t disappoint you.”
“Never.” I leaned over and gave him a peck on the cheek.
After the desserts had been eaten, when I was full of turkey and cider and feeling stuffed and a little tipsy, we migrated into the living room. Lori and Marshall wanted to play Scrabble while Kelli was pushing for one of the Harry Potter movies. “I think we should watch Prisoner of Azkaban because it’s the coziest,” she said, “and we used to watch it every fall when it came on TV.”
“Who wants another pale ale?” shouted Mr. Savery with drunken exuberance. “These glasses aren’t going to drink themselves!”
While the family was trying to decide how we wanted to spend the rest of the evening, Braxton tugged at my sleeve. “You wanna go walk around for a bit?”
I nodded eagerly. “I love your family, but having all these people in the same room is really messing with this introvert.”
“I figured.” Standing to his feet, he offered me his hand and pulled me up. “Grab your cider, and we’ll head outside.”
“Do you think I’ll need a coat?”
“Nah, you should be fine.”
Outside the sky was a bruised color and the grackles wheeled slowly overhead in silhouette. We walked hand in hand through the tall grass toward the hay bale at the edge of the property. Jasper, the dog, ran circles around me, barking happily. Braxton shooed him away, and a silence fell over the yard, thick and impenetrable.
“It’s so quiet out here,” I said as we ascended the hay bale. “That’s the one thing that always amazes me when we fly down here: how quiet it is. You can’t find silence like that in Boulder.”
“My oldest brother is just old enough to remember before we had Internet,” said Braxton. “Before she passed away, he and my granny used to sit outside at night on the front porch drinking sweet tea and listening for the whistle of the trains in the distance. He says the world used to seem impossibly rich and mysterious. In the future, no one will know what that was like.”
“Do you think the world will ever be that quiet again?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not until after we’re long gone.”
The purple of the evening sky was becoming a velvety black in which a few stars were visible. Far away, I could hear the hoot of a barn owl and a scurrying of little feet.
“You have the coziest family,” I said, leaning into his chest. “It’s enough to make me want to give up working in the music business and move out to the country, growing fat on your mom’s pies.”
“It’s tempting,” said Braxton. “The week between Christmas and New Year’s is my favorite because she saves her best meals of the year for that week. And there are presents to be opened and candied yams and spiced eggnog and little glass jars filled with minty chocolates.”
“This is making me so hungry, and I just ate. Your brothers’ wives and fiancées are very lucky to be a part of your family.”
“Do you not consider yourself part of the family?” asked Braxton in a tone of surprise.
“I don’t know. Maybe an honorary member.” I supposed we would be married someday, but for now, I was just his girlfriend.
“Well, we can fix that, you know.”
“How?” There was a ghost of a taunt in my voice.
Braxton reached into his pocket and pulled out a small object that glinted in the faint light.
“I’m no good at speeches,” he said. “You could give me a hundred years, and I couldn’t come up with anything as elaborate as what my brothers did. I just know I want you to marry me, and I’m as sure of this as I’ve been of anything in my life.”
I froze in surprise, staring dumbstruck at the ring in his hand. I’d been so busy searching for the obvious signs of a proposal that I had been blindsided by the simplicity of this one.
“Are you really asking me?” I managed to say.
“Yes,” said Braxton, and his eyes gleamed with a strange light. “If you’ll have me.”
“Of course I will.” He placed the ring on my left hand, and I pulled him into a tight embrace. His clothes smelled faintly of mulch and pine needles and cinnamon aftershave, and I wanted to stay there forever, inhaling his scent and listening to the steady beat of his heart.
“Does your family know we just got engaged?” I asked him after a lengthy pause.
“I warned them that was probably going to happen. They’re inside getting ready to celebrate.”
“Figures. Do you think maybe they saved us some of that pull-apart bread?”
“I’m sure there’s some in the kitchen.” He sat up, and together we clambered off the hay bale into the dewy grass. “I’m craving that and an apple cider.”
“Me, too!” I said cheerfully. “One was not enough.” Taking his hand in mine, I walked alongside him into the house while the stars wheeled overhead.
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BEST FRIEND’S DADDY
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 Naomi Niles
Chapter One
Harrison
The steam rose from the cup of coffee as I placed it on the table in the kitchen next to a plate of toast and a bowl of oatmeal. My phone sat on the table as I grabbed the morning paper and flipped it open to the first page. I was sure that I was one of the only people to receive the periodical, but I was an old school kind of guy. Before I could digest the first story, my phone buzzed next to my cup of coffee. I smiled when I saw her name flash across the screen.
“Hey, sweetheart. You’re late.”
“Geez, Dad. Two whole minutes. It just turned 8:02.”
“Well, you know I am used to hearing from you at the same time every morning. Once you put an old man like me on a routine, you can’t break it and expect me to be alright with it.”
“Well, Dad, I am sorry. You big baby.”
I smiled. She was the reason I’d worked so hard to build a successful company. Her mother decided that she wasn’t cut out for motherhood, and one year after she was born, she disappeared out of our lives. I was only 18 at the time, so I barely knew what to do to take care of a young girl, but I wasn’t going to leave her. She was my responsibility, and I refused to walk out of her life like her mother did, so I did what I had to do to make sure she was taken care of.
I had only spoken to her mother a handful of times since she’d left. She would call here and there to check on her, but she didn’t want any part of her daughter. After the fourth year since she’d left, the calls stopped coming in. Sarah would always ask about her mother, and I would just tell her that she was at work. I couldn’t find it in my heart to tell her the truth at such a young age, but when she turned 8, I told her the truth. She was hurt when I told her, and I figured she would try to contact her in her own time, but to my surprise, she wasn’t interested.
She said that if she wanted to be a part of her life, she would have made an effort, and she didn’t want to force her to be a mother if it wasn’t in her to be one. I could tell it caused her some pain though, because she was my daughter and I knew her better than she knew herself. She couldn’t hide it from me if she wanted to. Her mother’s absence in our lives strengthened our bond, though. I didn’t know what the hell I would do when it came to raising a young girl, but I figured it out along the way. We bumped heads from time to time, but one thing that always remained was my love for her. She was my little girl. My sweetheart. I loved her to death, and I wouldn’t change one thing about our lives if I had to do it again.
“Big baby, huh? Yeah, I guess I am a big baby when it comes to you. I am spoiled. I just love hearing from my little girl to start off my mornings.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I love talking to you, too, Dad.”
“What? Did you party too hard last night?”
“Party? No. I mean, I hung out with Caroline for a little while, but we didn’t do much. Just hung out around campus with a few friends. That’s it.”
“Caroline, huh? How is she? I haven’t seen her in a few years. When is she graduating?”
“This year, Dad. We are the same age. I swear, you are getting old. We just had this conversation yesterday. I was telling you how we were going to graduate this year and then move out to California.”
I narrowed my eyes. I hated when she talked about moving further away. She went to ASU in Tempe, Arizona, and it was almost two hours away from me. I felt that was long enough and I almost made her stay home and go to a community college just to keep her near me. There was no way that she would have listened to me, though. The thing I admired most about her was the fact that she was a go-getter with an incredible amount of willpower. If somebody told her she couldn’t achieve something, she would go out of her way to prove them wrong. It showed with her 3.9 cumulative GPA that she touted at ASU.
I told her that I didn’t believe she could do it, but it was just reverse psychology. I knew she could, but I knew that if I told her she couldn’t, she would work harder to do it. By the looks of it, at the end of this semester, I was going to owe her a brand new car. That was a small fee for such an accomplishment. “California? Noooo, no. We talked about this, Sarah. Now, I let you got to ASU, and that is far enough. Can't you find a job in Tempe? I know there are a lot of companies that are looking to hire young, enthusiastic people like you.”
“Daaaad, come on. You are not going to spend this whole morning trying to beg me to stay closer to home, are you? Because if you are, then I can just hang up and replay our conversation from yesterday in my mind.”
I sighed. “No, no. I’m not going to do that. I don’t want you to go, but I know that you will. My little girl is growing up and you know I have a hard time letting go. It’s been that way since you had to go off to kindergarten.”
“Oh, Dad, not the kindergarten story again. Really?”
I laughed. “You were walking to class with your little bookbag on your shoulders, and you were holding my hand as we walked through the hallway. You had tears in your eyes and–”
“Dad!”
“–I was ready to turn around and take you back home because I was starting to tear up, too. Then all of a sudden, Ms. Caven came out into the hallway and looked at you–”
“Dad…”
“–And then she asked me which room you were headed to. My God, she was beautiful…”
“Dad! No! Stop! I do not want to hear about how you met my kindergarten teacher and banged her later! Ugh! I am hanging up the phone.”
I laughed out loud. “Oh, come on, sweetie; we are both adults now. Yeah, I had sex with your kindergarten teacher. It wasn’t illegal, but she was smoking hot, and you knew it.”
“I knew it?! Dad, I was barely 5 years old!”
“No, I meant when I told you the story after you got older! Hell, from what I can see, she is still pretty hot now. Married, but still hot, nonetheless.”
“My goodness.” She snickered. “You know what? I am done with this conversation before you bring up any more old flings. I can’t believe how many of my teachers you had sex with, Dad. You are ridiculous.”
“Hey, a man has needs, sweetheart. A man has needs. You just make sure you aren’t one of their needs!”
“And this is where I end the call. I love you, Dad. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Sarah! Are you any man’s needs right now?!”
“I love you, Dad.”
“Sarah!” I paused. “I love you, too.”
Moments later, she ended the call. I thought about redialing, but I knew she was headed to her first class for the day. I looked forward to our conversations every weekday. Besides my cup of coffee, it was the one constant that I needed to get my day going. Afterward, I finished my breakfast, then got myself ready to get to work.
I was usually the first person to arrive at the office. It was the way I set the example for the rest of my employees. If I was the first one to show up and the last one to leave, it showed that I wasn’t afraid to put in the necessary work to keep the business going. Harrison Construction had been in business for the past 15 years, and we had worked on everything from the main buildings downtown through government contracts to neighborhood centers throughout the city. In Cottonwood, Arizona, we were the go-to construction company, and it took a lot of hard work to get the company to where it was today.
My office was on the fourth floor of a small building, 20 minutes away from my home. It was the place where we took care of our administrative duties, and the parking lot housed all of our construction equipment. I opened the blinds and stood in front of the window that overlooked our construction vehicles, thinking back to how we started off with one dump truck, an excavator, and a cement truck, and now, we owned fleets of everything.
Just as I grabbed one of the building plans for a project we had just taken on last week, we were set to begin construction on another large building downtown in just a few days, so I had to make sure we had the necessary manpower to get the job done. There was a knock on my door as soon as I sat down, and before I could give the go-ahead to enter, Brian walked in.
“What’s up, man?” he said with a smile on his face. “We ready to knock this fucker out today?”
“Ready? I was born ready, man. You know it.”
He sat down in one of the leather chairs just before my desk and tossed a honey bun in front of me. “I picked up one for you. Now, I know you are trying to watch your figure because you are a hop away from 40, but you can spare a honey bun.”
I glared down at the treat as it sat on my desk. The glaze seemed to call my name as it sat inside the package. “No, man, I think I’m going to pass on it.” He twisted his mouth to the side, and as he reached for the treat again, I put my hand on top of it. “On second thought, maybe it won’t hurt to take this one in.”
“Jesus, man, I was about ready to check between your legs and see if you still had a pair down there.” He popped open his wrapper and took a bite of his honey bun. He still found a way to get his words from out of his crowded mouth. “So umm, yeah, about that account I told you about. Um, the Lancaster account… If I can close that one for us, then we will be sitting pretty for the rest of the year. That contract is worth almost 100 thousand, man.”
He shoved another bite into his mouth. “Shit. We can all take vacations if we get that. Hell, you can buy Sarah two or three cars for her graduation later this year. She’s still up for that, isn’t she?”
I finally ripped the packaging from my honey bun. “Yeah, she’s up for it. It looks like she will graduate with that 4.0 GPA, too. Shit. She’s gonna want something nice, though and I’m going to make sure she has it. She deserves it.”
“Hell yeah. A fucking 4.0 GPA? Shit. I was lucky to get a 2.5 in my day. If I got a 4.0, I think my parents would have died from a heart attack as soon as they saw it.”
“Either that or just been thankful for whoever you were cheating off of.”
He laughed as he propped his leg over the other. “Yeah, that, too, shit. But I know you’re proud of Sarah. After all she has been through and still managed to bust her ass in school? That is a special girl, man. A very special girl.”
“Yeah, I know it.”
I took another bite of my honey bun as I glanced at a picture of Sarah on my desk. Her long, curly, sandy blonde hair dropped just beneath her shoulders and her eyes were stained with blue like the sky above. She looked just like her mother, Susan, and that was the only reason I couldn’t hate her for leaving as much as I wanted to.
“Harrison? You alright?”
I looked at Brian as he sat in the chair with one eyebrow raised above the other.
“What?”
“I’ve been talking to you for the past minute, but you’re just staring off into space.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m fine, man, I’m good. Just thinking about my baby girl, that’s all. I’m proud of her.”