Look to the Rainbow (5 page)

Chapter Four

     It was Sunday evening and a fire blazed in the fireplace as Kel sat in his living room with John and Kimberly and Alan and Janet. He and John would be going back out on the campaign the next day and he had promised Alan they would talk before he left.

     “I thought maybe having this conversation with everybody present wasn’t the best scenario,” Kel said. “I hope neither of you is uncomfortable having John and Kimberly here.”

     “Not at all,” Alan said. “I’ve talked to John about this myself, so he knows where I am and what I’m thinking.”

     “I don’t know exactly where to start. I go away for a few weeks and I come back and my daughter announces that she wants to get married. I’ll admit I didn’t handle that news very well the other night.”

     Janet said, “I’m sorry I did that the way I did. It would have been better if I had talked to you in private first.”

     “It would have been better,” Kel said, “if you’d put me in the loop from the beginning. I guess I am not accustomed to you keeping things from me.” That was very true, Janet couldn’t argue his point. She and Jim had always had a close and open relationship with their father. He had come to expect that anything important would have been shared and discussed with him before a major, life-changing decision was made. Who they dated, where they went to school, their grades, career plans, dreams, it had always been out in the open.

     “We weren’t really keeping it a secret. It just happened so quickly and I didn’t know how to bring the subject up on the phone and you haven’t exactly been here lately.”

      Kel was silent and Janet gripped Alan’s hand and waited for him to reply. John broke the silence.

      “I don’t think it really matters anymore
how
you happened to get together. And I’m sure you could have found a way to tell your dad what was going on, or certainly talked to Mother and Dad. But I do understand why it seemed a little awkward. Just saying to myself that my niece wants to marry my brother is strange.”

     Suddenly they were all laughing, even Kel. John continued, “We can sit here for years rehashing the details and they whys and why nots, but the one thing that really matters is the fact that you both want to get married. You’re both adults, you don’t need anyone to say it’s okay. But I think the situation would be better all-around if everyone was on the same page. So I’m going to be the first to step up and say I think you should get married.”

     Kimberly added her agreement. “So do I.” Everyone looked expectantly at Kel.

     Kel sighed. “All I have ever wanted is for you to be happy Janet. If Alan makes you happy then set a date.”

     Janet’s eyes lit up. “Really?”

     “Go buy a dress, plan an extravagant wedding. Wear your engagement ring.” Kel said. “I assume you have one you haven’t been wearing.”

     “I do, a beautiful one.” Janet stood and hugged her father. “Thank you.”

     Alan said, “Kel, I promise you I’ll love her forever.”

     “You’d better.”

      “We have to go tell George and Lily,” Janet said. “I’m going upstairs and get my ring first.” She ran from the room, overjoyed to have Kel’s blessing.

     The happy couple went to share their news and the rest of the evening was spent planning the next two weeks of the campaign and outlining what they hoped to accomplish the two weeks following that. Finally the conversation turned back to Alan and Janet.

     “Mother will have that wedding planned by tomorrow morning,” John said.

     “That’s a good thing,” Kel said, “because that is something I have no time for right now or any idea how one goes about doing such a thing. Just send me the bills and let Janet and Lily have whatever they want.”

     “Are you really okay with this, Kel?” Kimberly brought in coffee for the three of them and sat on the sofa by Kel.

     “The age difference still bothers me some, but as Alan pointed out, they have the advantage of knowing each other very well. I hadn’t thought about it until he mentioned it either, that it might be a daunting prospect for our kids to date someone and know whether or not they were sincere.”

     Kimberly said, “Casey has said pretty much the same thing. Most of the people she goes out with she drops as soon as they ask to meet you or George.”

     “It will take some time to get used the idea,” Kel admitted, “but I’m sure I will.”

     “Everyone says dads have the harder time watching their daughters get married.” John said. “And the age thing, I wouldn’t worry too much about that. James was eight years older than Fiona, wasn’t he? Just looking at the two of them the last few days, Kel, I think this is for real.”

     Kel nodded. “I know.”

     After John and Kimberly had left, Kel sat watching the fire and reflecting over the last few days.  He felt certain he’d done the right thing telling Janet to go ahead with her wedding plans. And setting that issue aside as settled, he thought about the time he had spent with Tara. It wasn’t often he met someone he wanted to spend more time with, but that was a prospect he was actually looking forward to. It struck him as suddenly ironic that there was a big age gap between the two of them when he had objected to that very thing with Janet and Alan. But they had been so connected, so attracted to each other that it didn’t seem to matter. He was still considering that when Janet came back home.

     “It’s late,” he said, rising to go upstairs.

     She knew he was teasing. “It just so happens I’m twenty-three and engaged.”

     “So everyone knows its official?” They started up the stairs.

     “Yes and they’re all excited. Did you know Lily has been reading
Brides
on the sly for a couple of years?”

     Kel laughed, “No, but with four beautiful O’Brien daughters to marry off, it doesn’t surprise me at all.” He kissed her cheek and left her at her bedroom door and went into his own room and out onto the balcony which overlooked Narragansett Bay. Tomorrow he would be leaving this view behind for nearly a month. Tara had arranged to meet him at a few of his campaign stops. He found himself looking forward to seeing her again.

Chapter Five

      Mary Katherine sat crossed legged on the bed, contact sheets spread out in front of her. She marked a few shots to print to send to Tara to use with her first two articles as Evan came in the room and joined her on the bed.  She stacked the contacts and carefully put them on the bedside table and turned off the light. The lamp on Evan’s side of the bed cast a soft glow on the room. She slipped under the covers and Evan pulled her close and started kissing the back of her neck.

     She said, “You’re in an amorous mood.”

     “I guess I am,” he said. When she didn’t say anything, he added, “But I guess you aren’t.”

     She wasn’t, she seldom was and it was the only conflict between them. It wasn’t that he wasn’t handsome. As an artist she had an extreme appreciation for his rugged good looks and long lean athlete’s body, with muscles sculpted from years of running. It was rather who he
wasn’t
, not who he was. She had often hurt him in her responses to his desire for physical intimacy and she had no wish to do that on this particular evening so she said, half joking, “Go ahead, anyway, have your way with me and get it over with.”

     Evan rolled away from her and looked up at the ceiling. “Ouch. When you put it like that you certainly killed any romance.”

     She moved closer to him. “Evan,”

     He said softly, “Why can’t you love me, Mary Katherine?”

     “But I do Evan. How can you doubt how much I love you?”

     He looked at her with an extreme sadness in his ice blue eyes that she hated to admit she recognized all too well and smiled slightly. “I know you do. You just don’t love me in all the ways I want you to. You love me as a best friend or the way you would love children if you’d ever agreed to let us have any.”          

     “You know why.”

    “I know what you told me. But the reason-the person- you keep hanging onto died a long time ago Mary Katherine. I’ve spent a lot of years waiting for you to let go.”

     She lay down next to him and was relieved when he put his arms around her. “ I’m not sure I will ever be able to do that.”

     He sighed. “So what do I do, darlin’?  Spend the rest of my life wishing for more?”

     She said, “I guess you can pray about it.”

     “Sometimes Mary Katherine, that’s the only way I
can
handle this part of our relationship. And I really wish you wouldn’t joke about prayer and things related to faith.”

     “You knew I didn’t believe the same things you do when we got married.”

     “I’ve never asked you to. I wish you did, but I’ve never forced that on you.”

     “You haven’t. You’ve always been very quiet about that. I don’t know what to say about the rest, Evan. If I thought things could be different, they would have been. Something inside me just died when Harry did. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

     Evan reached over and turned off the light. They were both silent. They had learned over the years to be quiet when this topic came up because if not a huge argument could erupt and neither of them ever wanted to fight with the other. Mary Katherine reached up to touch Evan’s face and found it wet with tears.  “I’m sorry Evan.”

     “I know.” He kissed her. “Goodnight.” He kept holding her and they were both silent again. After a while she could tell by his breathing that he had fallen asleep. She lay awake, thinking back to her first meeting with Evan, in the ER after she had sprained her wrist. He’d flirted with her as he wrapped it up and then, in what she later learned an uncharacteristic move, asked her out to dinner. She had surprised herself by saying yes. The dinner was good, the conversation even better. He entertained her with stories of strange ER patients and shared about his days training to run in the Olympics. She talked about her artwork. That dinner led to more dates and a marriage proposal and Mary Katherine had been so hopeful that Evan could erase the memory of the love she had lost her sophomore year in college.

     Harry Thurston had been the love of her life from the time she was fifteen years old. By the time she’d become engaged to him it had turned from a sweet high school romance into a deeply passionate and physical relationship that ended abruptly when he was killed in a car crash. By the time she met Evan he had been gone three years and the pain was still raw and real. She would never forget the first time she took Evan to meet her parents. Her mother still had pictures of Mary Katherine and Harry everywhere, scattered about the house. Mary Katherine avoided her parents’ home for that very reason because she hated being reminded around every corner. All of her photographs had been carefully put away in chronological order in an album which she pulled out whenever she needed to see his face and put away when she didn’t need to think about him. Her parents had questioned Evan almost nonstop during the two hours they were there for dinner and had made their disapproval known from the very beginning. Mary Katherine was furious when they left, and called her mother the next day to ask why she had been so rude to Evan. What was wrong with him, she had wanted know. He was handsome, a doctor, had high moral standards, cared deeply for Mary Katherine. The answer? He wasn’t Harry, whom they had expected and wanted their daughter to marry. She knew their open disapproval made her care more for Evan and she went into the marriage with every intention of being a wife in every sense of the word. It hadn’t been an issue before because Evan’s strong spiritual beliefs didn’t include that kind of intimacy before marriage. On the first night of their honeymoon in Bermuda, she had realized how little she felt in a physical sense for a man she loved so much otherwise. Afterwards she burst into tears and told him the whole story and admitted that she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to give him that part of herself , at least not in the way he deserved. That was the first time he had held her in his arms and told her it was all right and he would be there when she felt like she could. It hadn’t been the last time.