Page 51 of Summer Weddings

I t shouldn’t upset her. If anything, Bethany thought, she should be pleased that Randy Kincade was getting married. The invitation for the March wedding arrived the second week of January, when winter howled outside her window and the promise of spring was buried beneath the frozen ground.

Bethany wasn’t generally prone to bouts of the blues. But the darkness and the constant cold nibbled away at her optimism. Cabin fever—she’d never experienced it before, but she recognized the symptoms.

Her hair needed a trim, and she longed to see a movie in a real theater that sold hot, buttered popcorn. It was the middle of January, and she’d have killed for a thick-crust pizza smothered in melted cheese and spicy Italian sausage.

The craving for a pizza brought on a deluge of other sudden, unanticipated wants.

She yearned for the opportunity to shop in a mall, in stores with fitting rooms, and to stroll past kiosks that sold delights like dangling earrings and glittery T-shirts.

Not that she’d buy a lot of those things. She just wanted to see them.

To make everything even worse, her relationship with Mitch had apparently come to a standstill. As each week passed, it became more and more obvious that her feelings for him were far stronger than his were for her.

Whimsically she wondered if this was because God wanted her to know how Randy must’ve felt all those years ago when she didn’t return the fervor of his love.

So now she knew, and it hurt.

Not that Mitch had said anything. Not directly at least. It was his manner, his new reserve, the way he kissed her—as if even then he felt the need to protect himself.

That reserve of his frustrated Bethany. It angered her, but mostly it hurt.

In some ways, she felt their relationship had become more honest and open, yet in others—the important ones—he still seemed to be holding back.

He seemed to fear that loving her would mean surrendering a piece of his soul, and she’d begun to wonder if he’d always keep his past hidden from her.

On another front, she increasingly felt the urge to let Ben know she was his biological daughter.

Perhaps this was because she missed her family so much.

Or maybe it was because she’d come to terms with Ben’s place in her life.

Then again, maybe it was because she felt frustrated in her relationship with Mitch. She didn’t know.

This wasn’t to say the soulful kisses they shared weren’t wonderful. They were. Yet they often left her hungering, not for a deeper physical relationship, but for a more profound emotional one. She longed for Mitch to trust her with his past, and clearly he wasn’t willing to do that.

Their times alone, she noted, seemed to dwindle instead of increase. It almost seemed as though Mitch encouraged Chris sie’s presence to avoid being alone with Bethany. It almost seemed as though dating Bethany satisfied his daughter’s needs, but not his own.

On this January Saturday evening, when Bethany joined Mitch and Chrissie for their weekly video night, she couldn’t disguise her melancholy. She tried, she honestly tried, to be upbeat, but it had been a long, drawn-out week. And now Randy was engaged, while her own love life had stalled.

Mitch must have noticed she hadn’t touched the popcorn he’d supplied. “Is something wrong?” he asked, shifting beside her on the couch.

“No,” she whispered, fighting to hold back the emotion that bubbled up inside her, seeking escape. Tears burned for release. She was about to weep and could think of no explanation that would appease him. No explanation, in fact, that would even make sense.

Mitch and Chrissie glanced at each other, then at her. Mitch stopped the movie. “You look like you’re going to cry. I understand this movie’s a tearjerker, but I didn’t expect you to start crying during the previews.”

She smiled shakily at his joke. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her throat closed up, and when she tried to speak again, her voice came out in a high-pitched squeak. “I—”

“Bethany, what’s wrong?”

She got to her feet, then didn’t know why she had. She certainly didn’t have anything to say.

“I—I need a haircut,” she croaked.

Mitch looked at Chrissie, as if his daughter should be able to translate that. Chrissie regarded Bethany seriously, then shrugged.

“And a pizza—not the frozen kind, but one that’s delivered, and the delivery boy should stand around until he gets a tip and act insulted by how little it is.” She attempted a laugh that failed miserably.

“Pizza? Insulted?” Her explanation, such as it was, seemed to confuse Mitch even more.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, gesturing forlornly with her hands. “I really am.” She tucked her fingers against her palms and studied her hands. “Look at my nails. Just look. They used to be long and pretty—now they’re broken and chipped.”

“Bethany—”

“I’m not finished,” she said, brushing the tears from her face.

Now that they’d started, she couldn’t seem to stop them.

“I feel claustrophobic. I need more than a couple of hours’ light a day.

I’m sick and tired of watching the sun set two hours after dawn.

I need more light than this.” Even though she knew she wasn’t being logical, Bethany couldn’t stop the words any more than she could the tears.

“I want to buy a new bra without ordering it out of a catalog.”

“What you’re feeling is cabin fever,” Mitch explained calmly.

“I know that, but…”

“We all experience it in one way or another. It’s not uncommon in winter. Even those of us who’ve lived here for years go through this,” he said. “What you need is a weekend jaunt to Fairbanks. Two days away will make you feel like a new woman.”

Men always seemed to have a simple solution to everything. For no reason she could explain—after all, she wanted to visit a big city—Mitch’s answer only irritated her.

“Is a weekend trip going to change the fact that Randy’s getting married?” she muttered. Her hands were clenched and her arms hung stiffly at her sides.

It took Mitch a moment or so to ask, “Who’s Randy?”

“Bethany was engaged to him a long time ago,” Chrissie said in a whisper.

“Do you love him?” Mitch asked in a gentle tone.

His tenderness, his complete lack of jealousy, infuriated her beyond reason. “No,” she cried, “I love you, you idiot! Not that you care or notice or anything.” Bethany went to retrieve her coat and hat.

“Bethany—”

“You don’t understand any of what I’m feeling, do you? Please, just leave me alone.”

To add insult to injury, Mitch stepped back and did precisely as she asked.

By the time Bethany had walked home—having refused Mitch’s offer of a ride—she was sobbing openly. Tears had frozen to her face. The worst part was that she knew how ridiculous she was being. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to matter.

She was weeping uncontrollably—because she couldn’t have a pizza delivered. Mitch seemed to think all she needed was a weekend in Fairbanks. Except that he didn’t suggest the two of them fly in together.

“Fairbanks,” she said under her breath. “How’s that going to help?”

Restless and discontented, Bethany found she couldn’t bear to sit around the house and do nothing. She was lonely and heartbroken. This type of misery preyed on itself; what she needed was some kind of distraction. And some sympathy…

On impulse, she phoned Mariah Douglas, who was living in Catherine Fletcher’s house now. She hoped she could talk Mariah into inviting her over. Mariah sounded pleased to hear from her and even said she had a bottle of wine in the fridge.

Before long, the two of them sat in the living room, clutching large glasses of zinfandel and bemoaning their sorry fate.

It seemed that Mariah shared Bethany’s melancholy mood.

Not long afterward, Sally McDonald and Angie Hughes, Mariah’s housemates, showed up and willingly raided their own stashes of wine and potato chips.

Bethany acknowledged that it felt good to talk with female friends, to divulge her woes to others who appreciated their seriousness. Soon it wasn’t the lack of a decent pizza they were complaining about, but a bigger problem: the men in their lives.

“He wants me gone, you know,” Mariah said, staring into her wineglass with a woebegone look. “He takes every opportunity to urge me to leave Hard Luck. I don’t think August will come soon enough for him. I’ve…tried to be a good secretary, but he always flusters me.”

Bethany knew Mariah was referring to Christian O’Halloran and wondered what prompted the secretary to stay when her employer had made his views so plain.

Then Bethany understood. Mariah was staying for the same reasons she was.

Bethany swirled the wine in her goblet. Her head swam, and she realized she was already half-drunk. A single glass of wine and she was tipsy. That said a lot about her social life.

“Let’s go to Fairbanks!” she said excitedly. Although she’d rejected Mitch’s suggestion out of hand, it held some appeal now. Escape by any means available was tempting, especially after a sufficient amount of wine.

“You want to leave for Fairbanks now?” Mariah asked incredulously.

“Why not?” Sally McDonald asked. Of them all, Sally was the one with the least to complain about—at least when it came to men. She and John Henderson had become engaged over the Christmas holidays.

“I don’t fly. Do you?” Mariah asked. They looked at each other, then broke into giggles.

“I don’t fly, either,” Bethany admitted. “But we aren’t going to let a little thing like the lack of a pilot stop us, are we? Not when we live in a town chock-full of them.”

“You’re absolutely right.” Mariah’s eyes lit up and she wagged her index finger. “Duke’ll do it. He’s scheduled for the mail run first thing in the morning and we’ll tag along. Now, which of you girls is coming? No, are coming. No…”

There weren’t any other volunteers. “Then it’s just Beth and me. No, Beth and I …”