Jodi Thomas - To Wed In Texas

The bell tolled again.

“Come here, girls.” Karlee tried not to panic, but the children were like rabbits rushing just out of her reach. “Don't be afraid to go to church.” She reasoned.

Laughing, they used the long table as an escape tunnel. They weren't afraid. They were playing a game with her. A game she had no idea how to win.

Ten minutes later, she struggled out of the house with a firm grip on two little hands. Forget combing their hair or washing off jelly. She had to find the church before the bell stopped ringing.

The twin on her left was crying, begging to be turned loose with the earnestness of a condemned man being led to the gallows. The girl on her right pulled at Karlee's fingers one at a time, hoping to work free.

“We don't want to go!” the child shouted. “You can't make us. You're not our dad. You're just a cousin. We don't have to go with you!”

Karlee kept moving.

Since the day she settled in with her old maid aunts, she'd seen very little of children. The aunts made a point of never inviting anyone to tea who brought a child too young to hold a cup properly and sit quietly. All her knowledge of children lay deep in memory when she had been too young to do a full day's work and was assigned to watch younger cousins as she traveled from place to place.

She thought about the alternatives available. She could stop and have a talk with the girls, only what would she say? Or she could turn back and allow them to win, only what would the preacher say if his own daughters weren't in church? If she spanked them, Daniel might not believe in hitting his children. If she didn't, they most likely would out-yell the church bell at any moment.

Karlee stopped in the middle of the walk. She twisted the girls in front of her and knelt to their level. The mirrored angel had been replaced by tiny creatures with red runny noses and open hatred in their eyes.

“Stop crying and yelling!” she ordered.

The twins didn't seem to be listening.

“Stop this right now, or I'll tell your father.”

In one gulp of breath, both girls quieted.

“You'll really tell?”

“Tell him what?” the other added.

“I'll tell your father how you've acted from the time I mentioned going to church. I'll not leave out a detail of how you ran and cried and screamed.”

One twin wiped her face with her sleeve while the other stared at Karlee and whispered, “Do you promise to tell?”

Karlee studied them closely, not understanding the game, but guessing the rules. “I promise only if you'll be quiet from here on.”

Both tiny blonde heads nodded. Karlee stood slowly and took their hands lightly in hers. Neither made a sound until they reached the church door. She must have done something right. They'd stopped screaming, but somehow it didn't feel like she'd won the battle.

“Promise to tell,” one whispered.

Karlee nodded and stepped into church with a silent angel on either side.

The Jefferson Congregational Church was polished and shining. The windows had been washed, the pews dusted and the floors swept. The church was perfect as any Karlee had ever seen… and completely empty.

For a moment, she thought she'd made a mistake. Maybe it wasn't Sunday. Maybe she'd stepped into the wrong place. Maybe she was too late.

But the bell's welcome still lingered in the air, and the doors were wide open.

The twins started down the aisle.

“Wait,” Karlee whispered. “No one's here.”

One little angel glanced up at Karlee with her head tilted slightly in confusion. “No one is ever here,” she answered and hurried to join her sister on the front pew.

Karlee followed slowly. Just as she sat down between the twins, Reverend Daniel McLain stepped from a side door to the pulpit. He looked very stern in his black coat and string tie. He stood tall, unsmiling as he faced the empty building. All hint of the shy, tongue-tied man she'd known last night had vanished. Here was a man in control, in full command. Even if his troops were missing.

He read from his notes in a clear, deep voice. Karlee thought, no welcome, no songs, no passed plate, no handshaking… no wonder the twins didn't want to come.

The only thing normal about the service was that within ten minutes Karlee caught herself nodding off to sleep. She jerked awake and twisted, fighting to keep her eyes open.

Daniel's rich voice continued to drift through the warm air. Karlee's wool jacket felt like a blanket wrapped around her. She jerked again as her chin touched her chest.

Stay awake! she screamed inside her head. But the hours of little sleep were catching up to her. She lost the battle.

• • •

Daniel tried not to look at Karlee as he read his carefully prepared speech. She'd combed her wild hair and tied it back into a respectable bun. Her dress, though faded, was quite proper for church, but something about her bothered him. Maybe it was the fact that, even properly dressed, he saw her as a woman.

Last night, all he'd wanted to do was comfort her when he'd found her crying, but the feel of her pressed against him had kept him awake most of the night. He was unprepared for how naturally she'd leaned against him to say “thank you” when they'd talked upstairs. He was unprepared for the effect her nearness had on him.

He pushed the thought from his mind as he jumped a few pages ahead in his sermon. Not that it mattered, no one would notice. A few minutes later when he closed his Bible, she jerked awake. His gaze met hers. She looked newborn, innocent, accepting, almost welcoming.

Frustrated, he turned away. He had no business noticing a woman, any woman so directly. He hurried down the center aisle to the open doors as though there were a hundred people he planned to greet as they left the church.

He watched her collect the twins and walk slowly toward him with a natural grace in her movements. She was too big, he thought. His May had been tiny, almost childlike and that's how he liked women. Karlee was taller than most men and rounded in places a woman should be rounded. She was no girl, but a woman fully matured.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered as he shook her hand with a stranger's formality.

“We'll talk about it later,” he answered as though there were crowds who might overhear now. “I promised the Buchanans I'd bring the twins to Sunday dinner if Willow didn't make it to the service.”

He crossed behind her and closed the doors, locking them carefully as though someone might try to break in the moment he was gone. “I'm sure you will be welcomed. They're good people who enjoy company. The twins and I lived with them when we first came to Jefferson.”

Daniel didn't wait for an answer. He lifted the twins and carried them to the only wagon tied in front of the building. He sat the girls behind the bench seat in what looked to be an old iron cradle that had been attached to the bench. The topless cage was padded with a quilt offering the girls a comfortable, safe ride.

They'd also grown sleepy during the sermon and curled into the cradle as though it were a feather mattress.

“Interesting,” Karlee studied the homemade compartment for the girls. “Very inventive and safe.”

The preacher frowned at her praise. “After Willow married, I drove her home every night and I didn't want to leave the twins alone in the house. We could make it fine while the twins sit between Willow and me, but on the way back there was no place to make sure the girls were safe while I handled the horses.”

He took a step toward her to assist her. She moved out of his reach.

“How far out is the Buchanan place?” Karlee moved to the front of the wagon.

He sensed an intelligence about her as well as a naivete´ of life and men. He could almost hear her thinking, reasoning out what she should do. Maybe she was afraid of new places, new people, or maybe she didn't want to go where she wasn't wanted. “It's not far, a few miles.”