Love Among the Walnuts (20 page)

Sandy came into the library, looked around, and asked, "Has anybody seen Sunnie? It's time to cut the cake and we can't do it without everyone there."

"She went upstairs," Dr. Waldemar said. "Shall I go get her?"

"Please. And then you and Sid and the Blandingses must come into the dining room."

They were all gathered around the cake, Mr. Moreland and Opal holding the silver knife poised, when Dr. Waldemar returned with Sunnie, red eyed and moist looking.

"Cut it, cut it!" Boom-Boom cried. And so they did, as Sunnie burst into a fresh torrent of tears.

During the long months of the spring and summer when all the residents of Walnut Manor and Eclipse had worked so hard to bring the Walnut Foundation into being, Sandy and Sunnie had labored side by side as colleagues and friends. But never again had their eyes met the way they had in the sickroom the day the sleepers wakened.

Sandy had tried, but Sunnie wouldn't cooperate, and he thought that once again, as he had during the Christmas kiss, he had read more into her response than was actually there. She had been surprised by his kiss, that's all. She had been thinking about something else as she gazed into his eyes; distracted, not dazzled as he was. The fact that she never wore his signet ring convinced him he had been foolish and forward to give it to her.

He had tried to resign himself to the ache in his heart every time he looked at her, but he wasn't doing well at it. The ache got achier. So now when he saw her sobbing over the wedding cake, he couldn't help himself: He went to her and put his arms around her.

"Please don't cry," he whispered into her small, seashell-shaped ear. "It breaks my heart to see you so unhappy. What can I do to cheer you up?"

"There's only one thing," she sobbed, soaking the front of his tuxedo shirt with her tears, "and I could never ask you."

"What? I'll do anything." He held her tighter. He didn't care how soggy his shirt got. And they were both oblivious to the enthralled attention being paid them by everybody in the room.

"Then tell me exactly what's in your heart. I can't guess any longer."

"Oh, Sunnie, how can I do that? I don't want to offend you."

"What makes you think you would offend me?"

"I offended you on Christmas when I kissed you. I offended you when I gave you my signet ring. I offended you when I locked eyes with you the day Horatio and Mousey and Flossie and Attila woke up."

"Are you sure I was offended?" She drew back in his arms and looked up into his face. "Maybe I was just surprised and shy. Maybe I didn't know what you meant that ring to signify. I haven't had much experience with men, you know."

"Of course you have. You're young and beautiful and fascinating, and you've been out in the world while I've been shut up in a make-believe paradise turning into a world-class simpleton."

"But out in the world I never found anybody I felt about the way I feel about you. And I swore to myself I'd never kiss anybody until I could feel that way."

"What way?" Sandy asked, the ache in his heart changing to something else, something warm and expectant. "What way do you feel about me?"

"I can't tell you until I know how you feel about me."

"Can't you tell? Don't you know that I can sense when you've entered a room without even turning around and seeing you? Don't you know that you're in my dreams every night? Don't you know that you've brought a light into my life that I didn't even know existed? Why, Sunnie, I've loved you from the first day you came to Eclipse. How can you not know that?"

Sunnie's tears began to flow again, but this time the colors of the rainbow reflected from them, and her smile was so radiant, there seemed to be another light source in the room.

"And how can you not know," she said to Sandy, "that I've been afraid you were just being polite and friendly? That I've known I couldn't stay on at Walnut Manor if I found out polite and friendly is all you felt toward me. How can you not know that being wise and pure and gentle doesn't mean you're a simpleton? How can you not know that I've loved you from the first day I came to Eclipse?"

"Really?" he said, his face alight. "Would you wear my ring now if it was an engagement ring?"

She took his face in her hands and kissed him. And both of them were so lost in their new knowledge of each other that neither of them heard their friends, in a circle around them, clapping their hands and sniffling.

"Well, my goodness," Dr. Waldemar said. "Where was I when all this got started?"

"Isn't that sweet?" Flossie said, taking Bentley's arm and squeezing it.

"My baby," Mousey said, dabbing at her eyes with a white lace handkerchief as Horatio put an arm around her.

"I must say," he told her, "we men of Eclipse have excellent taste in women."

"'The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.' Anaïs Nin," Everett said, and he rubbed the back of one hand surreptitiously across his eyes.

"Oooh, icky," Boom-Boom said in his little kid voice. "Why, not at all," he said in his grown-up voice. "It's rather touching."

Opal and Mr. Moreland didn't say anything because they were kissing each other, too.

Graham didn't even look at the wedding cake, unattended for the moment and perfectly situated for stealing. Instead, he was thinking about a red-haired girl he'd met at summer school.

"Perfectly natural biological response," Dr. Malcolm commented.

"It's somewhat more complicated than that," Dr. Trinidad said, a sentimental quiver in her melodic accent.

"You said it," Captain Lester added, giving Dr. Trinidad a closer appraisal. She looked like a million bucks' worth of double tax-free municipal bonds, he decided.

"Awwww," Virgil and Lyle said. "Just like on
The Love Boat.
"

Sandy and Sunnie stopped kissing and gazed at each other. "Can we go to Hawaii on our honeymoon?" she asked. "I've been reading about volcanic islands lately."

"Why not?" Sandy said, gloriously happy. "We're going to sound like a Hawaiian weather report for the rest of our lives: sunny and sandy."

"You know, I'm suddenly feeling much better," Eddy said, struggling to sit up in his armchair.

And they all lived as happily ever after as real life will allow.

Coming soon...

Twice Upon a Marigold
By Jean Ferris

Part comedy. Part tragedy. Part two.

Since Queen Olympia's fateful fall into the river, newlyweds Christian and Marigold have been living happily ever after. And they had every intention of keeping it that way—until they find out that Olympia may not be as gone as they thought.

Turns out Olympia is alive and well in a faraway village, having lost her memory after her ill-timed tumble. But one day she awakes and remembers her previous glory as queen. Accompanied by Lazy Susan (Sleeping Beauty's slacker sister) and Stan Lucasa (a gentleman with a surprising destiny), Olympia returns, determined to take back the kingdom. Yet, thanks to a cast of familiar characters, grabbing the throne may not be as easy as Olympia thinks!

Full of zany humors this highly anticipated sequel to
Once Upon a Marigold
will be welcomed by fans everywhere.

Turn the page to read the first chapter of
Twice Upon a Marigold.

The trouble began with the dogs: big, shaggy Bub and little, dramatic Cate, and the floor mops: Flopsy, Mopsy, and Topsy. They had lots of toys scattered all through the castle at Beaurivage, as well as at the crystal cave-castle, Zandelphia's royal residence across the river. There were chew toys, balls, flying toys, stuffed toys, toys on wheels, but there was just one blue squeaky toy. And that was the one they all wanted to play with.

When they were at the castle where the blue squeaky toy wasn't, they made do with what was available. But even when they were wildly chasing the bouncy red balls down seven flights of stairs, they were each thinking, I
wish I had that blue squeaky toy.
When they
did
have the blue squeaky toy, there were nothing but fights over who got to play with it, and for how long, and whose turn was next.

Nobody could figure out why these dogs, who had been such good friends for over a year, were suddenly so contentious. They should have been the happiest dogs in all the known kingdoms. They had the most luxurious silk pillows to sleep on (as well as every bed—even if there was somebody in it—in any of the 247 bedrooms in both castles combined), the finest and most exotic cuisine (muskrat mixture, chipmunk chews, kangaroo kibble) prepared daily by the royal chefs, so many toys the courtiers were constantly tripping over them and finding them under the many sofa cushions (and still occasionally discovering that their court shoes had been chewed on), and more freedom than was probably good for them. Limits are important and necessary, after all.

The dogs weren't sure why they were so cranky with each other, either: It just seemed there was something in the air that made them feel all prickly and cross.

And then there
was
something in the air. Rain—lots of it.

The rain started the day a rumor reached the castle at Beaurivage of a woman who had washed ashore about a year before in a village far, far, far downstream, who hadn't been able to remember anything about how she had gotten into the river—or anything at all, really. She apparently had recently regained her memory.

There were no further details, but of course everyone thought of their queen, Olympia, who had fallen into the river the year before.

It kept raining. For days and days and days. Then everybody in Beaurivage—not just the dogs—was in a bad mood.

The suspicions that the woman was Olympia persisted. But rio more rumors arrived, and neither did Olympia. Since everyone believed that the first thing Olympia would have done upon recovering her memory that she was a
queen
would have been to get back to Beaurivage as fast as possible, and since that hadn't come about, they began to comfort themselves with the belief that the woman downstream was not Olympia. It was an odd coincidence, they agreed, that another woman had fallen into the river about the same time, but coincidences happened, especially in villages alongside rivers.

After a week or so of steady rain, the downpours tapered off and finally stopped. But the persistent feelings in Beaurivage were those of gloom, discontent, and unease. It was hard to believe that such a short time before, around the time of the dedication of the Zandelphia-Beaurivage Bridge linking the two kingdoms, many residents, including the royals, believed themselves to be the happiest they had ever been.