Chapter 34
Jill
May 1993
SUMMER IN TEXAS was literally hot enough to bake cookies on the dashboard and fry eggs on the sidewalk, but a Texas spring is what made life worth living. And our wedding day didn’t disappoint.
The chapel on campus was small, but it was all we needed. On the groom’s side were Rosie and Doc, Bennett’s foster parents and partners in the ranch they now owned together. And on my side were Lillie and Chance Lowe. Our friends from the library and the guests from the cafe were spread equally between the two sides. I hated they had to pick a side at all. We were all one big family.
I checked the clock. Twenty minutes. A knock on the open door made me jump. “Ms. Walker?”
“Yes?” I knew this woman, but I couldn’t place her for the life of me.
“You may not remember me. We met about a year ago. You were a guest in my courtroom.” The older woman smiled and so did I, as I walked to her and took her hand.
“Judge Kirby, I can’t believe you’re here.” She laughed.
“Well, to be perfectly honest, Lillie Lowe called me. We’re old friends and I’ve been keeping tabs on you. When Lil casually mentioned you were getting married and needed an officiant, I stepped up.”
“I guess that explains why she all of the sudden said she had it covered.” I chuckled, fiddling with the satin edge of the beautiful vintage veil Bennett and I had found at an antique festival in one of the neighboring towns. That was something we loved doing together: turning other people’s trash into our treasures.
“I don’t feel like you’re the same girl who stood before me a year ago.” Hand on her hip, she was looking me over with a skeptical eye.
I nodded. “That’s probably the best compliment you could give me.” Looking back, I hated the person I’d been before. That petty, egocentric girl didn’t deserve Bennett Hanson and, more than anything in the world, I wanted to be worthy of his love.
“And I hear wonderful things about this man you’re marrying. You really are a completely different person, aren’t you?” Her soft smile said she approved of the woman standing before her. I nodded again.
“Thank you, not only for being here today, but for your tough words the last time we spoke. It may have taken a while to sink in, but you were right. About me, about my attitude. Everything.”
“Well,” the judge said, smoothing her grey pantsuit, picking off a piece of imaginary lint from her leg. I think my praise made her uncomfortable. “I guess I better get into place. But Jillian, I want you to know, I don’t regret letting you off with a pathetic slap on the wrist.” She grinned.
“That pathetic slap brought me to the love of my life.” She tipped her head with a quick nod and walked out the door. My heart was so full.
I checked the clock again. Ten minutes until the ceremony and Bennett promised to come in beforehand. I’d made the request knowing I’d lose it the first time I saw the man I loved in uniform.
“Jillybean?” I spun around as Jerome and Nanny B entered the bride’s room.
“Oh my gosh, I didn’t think you were coming!” I could hardly breathe at the sight of the two of them. They exchanged a look I’d need to investigate, but for now, I was just so damn happy to see them. My parents had marked the invitation Return to Sender. Not that I was really surprised. They were appalled that I’d ejected their dreams from my head and had chosen to follow my heart.
“We wouldn’t have missed it for the world, especially since I’m close personal friends with both the bride and the groom.”
Wait. What?
Then I heard footsteps unique to Bennett. “Biscuit! Mrs. Botts! So glad you made it!” Bennett rounded the corner, clapping Jerome on the back. “It sure is good to see you!” I wanted to razz my future husband for keeping such a big secret and ask him how he’d connected the dots, but I had no words.
It was hard to believe the man standing in front of me, with his magnificently tailored suit and his shiny brass buttons, was the same man who’d come to the cafe for a free meal six months before. It was even harder to believe that in just a few minutes, he would be my husband.
“Wait, you’re Biscuit? Now I feel like a complete idiot.” I heard his momma call him Biscuit from time to time, but I thought it was because he ate biscuits and sausage gravy with the same frequency most people drank water. “From everything Bennett’s told me about his buddy, Biscuit, from the hospital, I can’t believe I never connected the dots.” I shook my head, choking back happy tears as Bennett caught my eye over Jerome’s shoulder.
“I love you,” I mouthed, words spoken from my heart to his and meant for no one else to hear. He stepped further into the room and collected me in his arms.
“And I love you.” He whispered into my ear, sending sparks throughout my body. He was perfect. Absolutely perfect.
“Miss Jillian?” The woman came toward us and I grabbed her tiny, curled hands in mine.
“No, it’s Jill. Just Jill from now on, okay?”
The woman nodded, a soft smile gracing her lips. She was getting old, it was hard to deny, but she had the same spark she had back when the three of us were running around the estate together. I looked to Jerome and knew he felt what I did; the gaping hole where CJ should have been.
“I’ve got you, girl.” Jerome said, patting my back a few times. I nodded, trying and failing to stop my tears as Jerome pulled out a framed 8x10 picture of CJ, looking so smart in his uniform. I would have given almost anything to have him by my side. “Now, I know it’s not the same thing, but how about I set this up right beside me in the church. He would be thrilled to see how happy Bennett makes you.” He turned to face my groom, but something was terribly wrong. Jerome’s face fell. “Hanson, man… you okay?”
Bennett looked like he’d seen a ghost. “Who is that man?” His wide eyes filled with tears and, with no shame whatsoever, slid down his cheeks.
“This is CJ Lacey. He was our best friend growing up. He came to his grandma’s house every summer and the three of us did everything together.” He knew the stories, because we’d spent hours talking about our childhoods, mine more than his. He knew more about CJ than he did his own parents. Bennett took the picture from my hands, pressed his head against the glass, and completely lost it.
“Ben?” I was running every possible scenario through my head to explain what was happening, but I came up empty. I’d tried to learn all I could in the months since we’d been together about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and for a moment, I thought the soldier in the picture had triggered some memory.
“Chance James.”
I looked at Jerome, but he just shrugged, as baffled as I was about Bennett’s odd mood change.
“That night when you were telling Raf about your two best friends, you said that CJ never told you what the letters stood for. It’s Chance James. We usually went by our last name out there. I was always Hanson, but he hated his—said it sounded too feminine—so we just called him Chance. We met in basic. Went all the way through together. We were two halves of one whole.”
No one knew what to say or where to look. lt was like someone pushed pause in the room and we all just stood there, waiting for someone to unpause us. But there wasn’t a dry eye to be found.
“He saved your life.” I knew the story, almost as if I’d been there too. With the help of Paul, his pseudo counselor, Ben finally told me what he saw in his nightmares. I’d never tell him, but I sometimes had the same nightmares after hearing about the horrors he witnessed. The human mind wasn’t made to handle such tragedy.
“He threw his body over mine and took the brunt of it.” His tone was so somber and as he spoke, he looked at nothing and everything all at once. “If he hadn’t been there that day… if he hadn’t done what he did… I’d be dead.” This was a lot to digest five minutes before walking down the aisle.
“Nobody better ever try to tell me there isn’t a Jesus. This is a miracle, right here.” Nanny B wiped her eyes with a hanky and pulled Jerome out of the room to take their seats, leaving us alone.
Bennett’s face was drying, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. He was scaring me. It was like he had something else on his mind, but didn’t know how to say it. “What is it?” I’d come up behind him and laid my head between his shoulder blades. Sometimes, just getting close to him was enough to pull him out of the darkness.
“There’s something I—” He turned to face me. “This is you, isn’t it?” He handed me a scrap of paper he’d pulled from his wallet. Taking it, I smiled, bigger and wider than I had in my life.
“Yes, that’s me. We took that with my new Polaroid camera right before he left one summer.” The photo was worn, torn, charred in places. I could see why the person smiling at the camera was hard to recognize. I handed it back.
“He carried this picture with him wherever he went, always in his shirt pocket, right over his heart. He’d always tell us when he got back he was going to marry that girl one day, even if he had to take her kicking and screaming.”
That made me laugh. It was something I’d heard a time or two as well. “It was never like that with CJ. We were friends, only ever friends.” I thought back to all the times he’d asked me out and all the times I told him no. It wasn’t just because of Gareth, either. I just didn’t feel for him what he felt for me and I hated that for him.
“You were his Golden Girl.” That broke my heart.
“No, Bennett. I was never anybody’s anything until now. From almost the very moment we met, I’ve been yours and yours alone. No one else has ever had a piece of me.” I wrapped my arms around his midsection. “I promise marrying me isn’t breaking some best army buddy code.” He continued to look at the picture, but at least that put a smile on his face.
“Speaking of getting married, are you about ready to become Mrs. Jill Hanson?”
That was easy. “More than anything else in the world.”