Argosy Junction (37 page)

“Oh boy, I
am
nervous. All right, well see, in this story a man finds a girl he can’t have. They meet again later, and regardless of the impossibility of their situation, they fall in love. He knows he can’t have her. She knows it won’t work. They finally find a way—they think. Then circumstance rips them apart. There are letters that are written, but not delivered. Finally, after months of separation, they are reunited, the letters read.”

She wrung her hands. If he wasn’t there, this was just a nice story and no one would know a thing. If he was, she was making herself vulnerable in a way that gave her new respect for him and the way he’d done the same with her.

“This is where I hope my story is different. You see, I’ve lived this story for the past ten months. I just hope that I don’t have to get shot to get the guy. And if I do have to get shot, I’d like to say now that I am thankful for modern medicine!”

A titter washed over the room before someone called, “What changed for you?”

The voice rang out from the same corner as the request for “Danny Boy.” Lane peered around every person in the area, but saw no sign of Matt. “The thing that kept us apart is gone. I hope that it means a very happy ending for Lane like it did for Lorna.”

The unique tune started as Lane finished speaking. Tad had created a tune that was both plaintive and cheerful, and worked the notes around Matt’s ballad. Just as they sang the first line, Lane noticed movement from the corner of her eye. Tad, unable to touch her and continue to play, moved his foot slightly and covered hers.

She smiled as she sang, sensing that Matt was coming around the back of the theater and would be waiting for her. However, to her surprise, Matt’s arms slid around her waist from behind. She stumbled over her words as she heard Matt murmur, “I love you” in her ear.

As the last line of the song ended, she whirled around and hugged him. Tad shrugged at the audience and quipped, “Do you think she’ll have her happy ending?”

~*~*~*~

They shivered as they walked down the sidewalk toward the RAC. Few words passed between them. Matt worked on how to share his heart, while Lane struggled to keep unruly emotions in check. The relief she felt when she felt Matt behind her had nearly overwhelmed her.

At the fountain, Matt stopped. “The last time we were here, you sang ‘Jingle Bells.’”

“I already sang tonight, it’s your turn.”

Matt sat on the rim of the half-frozen fountain in a thoughtful silence. “Lane, I—”

Her heart sunk. Lane’s confidence shattered at the broken hesitation in Matt’s voice. She struggled to find her voice and reassure him that she understood any doubts he might have.

“Lane—”

“It’s okay, Matt. I understand. I—”

His eyes widened incredulously. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“Wha—”

“Here I am, trying to figure out how to ask you to marry me, and it’s quite plain you think I’m trying to dump you!”

It wasn’t as though she hadn’t dreamed of a proposal. Lane had imagined just about every occasion where Matt might ask her to be his wife, starting four—well, almost three—days later on Valentine’s Day. She’d assumed that’d be too early to hope for, but it was a nice daydream all the same.

“I never—”

Suddenly Matt’s confidence plummeted. The one thing he’d been sure of was her answer. “Well—” Matt took a deep breath. He might as well just ask the question, take the rejection, and pray it was a “not now” instead of a “never.”

“Lane, I love you. You know that. I want to marry you. You know that too. I just thought this was a logical next step—”

“What is a logical—”

“Marriage!” His impatience was comical.

“Stop!”

Matt took a deep breath to settle himself. This wasn’t going as planned. By now, he’d expected to be racing to Barney’s office for congratulations before rushing her over to his parents for more.

“What, Lane? What do you want from me?”

“If this is the proposal that I think it is, I’d like it to be one rather than an assumption. I can’t tell if you assume I’ll say yes or no, but I can’t answer a question unless it’s been asked.”

Something about her spunk gave him courage. If she were angry with him, she’d have been polite. He’d learned to see that in her, thanks to that timely observation he’d learned from Patience.

All words flew from his mind. His attempts at eloquence died in his throat. “Marry me?” He choked out the words, and anyone who didn’t see the earnest pleading in his eyes would have assumed, by the way the proposal sounded, that he’d proposed under duress.

“Can you support me in the manner to which I have become accustomed?”

“Nope.” Matt’s matter of fact voice showed mental faculties returning to their previously scheduled posts.

“Good. I’ve become accustomed to loneliness, sneaking around to see you, and being way too far away from you.”

“Is that a yes?” Matt’s grin was as disarming as ever.

“Did it sound like anything else?”

“I’m not taking chances. I won’t consider myself engaged or worthy of celebrating until I hear it myself.”

She threw her arms around him and said, as she met his gaze, “That is a most
definite
, yes.”

Twenty-Seven

“I think they should get married right here where there is a Pastor to do the job.”

“Well, Lane might want to be nearer her family—”

“No!” The apartment rumbled with excited discussions about when and where Lane and Matt should “knot the ball and chain” as Jake so eloquently put it. The newly engaged couple nodded politely at all the suggestions and laughed appropriately at the ridiculous ones. After a while, Matt noticed that Lane was missing.

He found her sitting on his bed staring at her hands. Misunderstanding, Matt started to apologize. “I’m sorry I didn’t have a ring. I didn’t realize I’d be—”

“Oh don’t be ridiculous. The only ring I want is the one I get after we swap do’s.”

He hunkered down on his heels at her feet and looked up into her anxious face. “What’s wrong, Lane? And by the way, you’ll have some kind of ring even if it isn’t something amazing.”

“You do whatever you want about a ring, but I want you to know, I truly am happy with the promise of a band on my wedding day—assuming I ever actually have one.”

Something in her voice hinted that the problem was too much outside interference. “If you had no one to please, but yourself, what would you do? Quick, without thinking about it, describe our wedding.”

“Fifteen minutes in a cheesy chapel in Las Vegas?”

“You almost mean that!” The look of embarrassment on her face told him that the idea was something she hadn’t completely dismissed.

“Can’t we just go get a marriage license and have Pastor Barney marry us? Why does where and how we do this have to be so complicated?”

Lost in thought, Matt slipped to the floor sitting cross-legged with his head resting against Lane’s knees. They’d shown simple affection for one another—hands held, a hug, a few kisses, Matt’s absent-minded toying with her hair, but generally, they’d shown wise physical restraint in their relationship. Lane now stared at Matt’s hair that tumbled down around his ears.

She stroked his hair for a few seconds until his eyes met hers. “I’ve been a little backward about this, and now I realize that we have a lot to talk about.”

“Like… “Lane didn’t like the change in his voice.

“Like where we’re going to live and how we’re going to live. Life isn’t a book or a movie where everything fits in neat little boxes for the author to determine.”

She sat thoughtfully for a moment. “I think I understand. Well—part of it anyway. I’ve always known that if we ever happened, that ranch life would be over for me. I’m good with that. Actually, to be honest, I like living at Charity’s and being so close to the city.”

“And if living in the city means living in this apartment—at least, anyway, until I can afford to move us out of here and still pay my share of the rent?”

That idea hadn’t been among the various scenarios she’d run through her mind. “I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right. You can’t leave your parents without some support. Do you mind if I ask how much you give them?”

“I give them one thousand a month. They only needed five hundred, but that was for basic survival. I would have to pay almost double that for the apartment next door and so—”

Lane swallowed back the lump in her throat. It hadn’t occurred to her that they could live in Matt’s apartment for many years. She studied the carpet, her fingernails, and Matt’s shoe before she lifted her head and nodded solemnly. “I needed to know that. I’m going to be very honest with you, Matt. I’m not excited about the idea of living in this apartment with your parents for the next twenty to thirty years. I just never imagined—”

A knock interrupted her. Matt stood, answered the door sending his mother off with promises to rejoin them soon, and then waited to hear what Lane had to say. He’d been waiting for something to kill the joy he’d felt all night.

“Anyway, what I didn’t imagine has nothing to do with this. Your parents are more important than my own house or apartment, and I’ll learn to be fine with it, but it’ll be an adjustment. I’m not going to lie to you and pretend that I think it’ll be great fun to play house with your mom, but—” Lane’s hands crept into Matt’s, and she smiled at him. “I’ll make it work. It’ll be hard, but I’ll make it work. We don’t want your parents to have to move after all these years.”

His fingers twirled around a strand of her hair, Matt’s face exuded the pride he felt as he realized that she’d chosen him over an easy life, a beautiful home and family, and accepted everything that came with him, no matter how distasteful she might find it. “It won’t be that long. Three to five years. Max.”

“How do you come up with that?”

He slipped his laptop from the shelf and flipped open the screen. She watched, fascinated to realize that most of their correspondence had occurred on that very machine. He entered a few passwords at a Union Savings and Loan and showed her his bank account.

“I’ve been saving. Well, I mean you knew that, but you didn’t know that I’ve
really
been saving. I realized about the time that I started my vacation fund, that if I ever wanted to get out of this neighborhood, I’d have to save carefully. I set some aside for vacations, but most of my money went to this account. It’s where I’ve been saving for a house. In another five years, if I’m frugal, I’ll have enough to buy a decent place on the southwest side of the city where there are some really nice neighborhoods. Mostly old homes there, but the area has been taken care of, schools are good, and crime is reasonably low. The tiniest houses are over two hundred grand over there though, so to keep payments low enough, I need almost half down on a place. Three to five years should do it.”

“I can handle that! I think—”

Tempted to ignore the other scenario that had mulled through his mind over the past few days, Matt interrupted. “That’s not our only option. Your dad and the exiles of the
Brethren
have a proposition for us to consider.”

“Exiles of the
Brethren
. That’s good!” She giggled. “Okay, okay, what is it?”

“They want me to study and become the pastor of the Community Church there. They want accountability, and they want me to do it under Barney and his leadership.”

Unable to see her face, Matt studied Lane’s hands and listened to the tone of her voice to determine her genuine response. Finally, she turned to him and shook her head. “I’m not ready to commit to that. I’m not saying I won’t ever be ready for that, but if that’s what you are deciding to do today, I need to rethink marriage right now. It’s one thing to marry a welder, and then after a year or ten have him decide to change professions and enter the ministry, but it is another thing to go into it knowing that this is the goal, when I’m not ready for that goal.”

Tears splashed on her hands as the realization that things might, once again, end before they began. “It’s starting to feel like we need the
Ballad of the City Boy Shepherd
to tell our tragic story.”

“How would you feel about a compromise?”

Like a puppy who hears something interesting, Lane cocked her head. “Compromise, how?”

“We live here. We work to save for the house. I study with Barney and through correspondence seminary classes. When the time comes to make that decision, we make it together, and I won’t ask you to take on that burden if you can’t handle it. By that point, I might realize that I don’t even want to do it, but the knowledge and the focused study won’t hurt me or my Christian walk.”

“Deal.” She jumped to her feet and tugged at him to come with her, but he resisted. “We need to get back to the party, Matt—”

“There’s one more thing we haven’t finalized, though. Tell me honestly, what do you want to do about a wedding?”

“Matt, I don’t want a wedding. That’s what I tried to tell you. I don’t want a big white dress, bridesmaids, and flowers everywhere. I just want to go somewhere, say ‘I do’ and if there’s a party later, great. If not, that’s fine too.”

Shaking his head, Matt stood and draped an arm over her shoulder. “I’ve heard of girls who wanted simple weddings, but I’ve never heard of one who didn’t want one at all.”

“Well,
I
don’t.” The finality in Lane’s voice was comical.

“But you wanted to get married in that other building in Argosy Junction. You dreamed of it— planned it. You wanted the pews, the organ— everything.”

“But I don’t anymore. I just want to be married without all the fuss.

“So, when?”

“Well, if we can’t drive to Las Vegas and do it all in one day, how about Sunday after church? Barney will be there already and—”

He pulled her into a fierce hug. “First you are willing to live here, then you want to get married yesterday. You’re a dream come true, Lane. It’s like I’m marrying the personification of the hymn, ‘Just as I Am.’”

“If you’re not leaving father and mother and cleaving to this wife of yours, and I’m not condemning you as a heathen dawg. I’d say my new hymn is ‘Not as I Was.’”