Worth a Thousand Words (2 page)

“No men on the stage!” Shelby teased.

Brian winked at her.

“Hey, everybody,” he said in his husky, laid-back drawl, skipping the self-introduction. “I just want to say that I’m very proud of Indigo. We met at Tuskegee when she was a sophomore and I was a senior.”

Brian looked in Shelby’s direction. “Our friend over there introduced us, and within half an hour of talking to Miss Indigo, I knew she was special,” Brian said. “She hasn’t proved me wrong. She has big plans for the future, and I’m praying that I’ll be part of them.”

Indigo felt tears surfacing again. Brian had never been much of a romantic; this overt show of affection surprised her.

Then he knelt on one knee. She stopped breathing.

“Indigo, if you’ll take this ring, and agree to become Mrs. Harper, you’ll make me the happiest man in the world. Will you marry me?”

Indigo stared at Brian and tried to process what she’d heard.

Did he just propose? In front of everyone she knew? Had this man forgotten that he’d be leaving in a few weeks for the Navy’s Officer Candidate School, with plans to become a pilot?

Countless emotions engulfed Indigo, from love and gratitude to a tidal wave of fear. Suddenly she felt her stomach churning.

Please, God, no. Not now. Not here.

As much as she loved Brian, becoming his wife wasn’t in her immediate plans. Neither was giving up her first choice grad school.

“I love you too, Brian,” she said weakly, hoping her grin effectively masked her mental wrestling match. How could she say no to this fine, smart brother, who had a bright future ahead of him and happened to be crazy about her?

She couldn’t. Not in front of all these people.

God forgive me.

“Yes—I’ll marry you!” she told Brian.

She flung her arms around his neck and let the tears fall. She did love him, and she did want to be his wife. Just not now—before she, and her dreams, had a chance to blossom.

2

G
etting her to say yes had been the easy part. Now Brian had to convince Indigo to pick a date.

If he had his way, they would have a small, simple ceremony in late August, and Indigo would accompany him to the Navy’s flight training school in Florida instead of heading to New York. He had to graduate from Officer Candidate School in Rhode Island first and would be leaving in two weeks. That would give her all summer to plan.

With her dream of shooting fine art images for magazines and private corporate customers, it wasn’t going to be a quick sell. He had seen what he thought was a flicker of doubt in her eyes when he slid the two-carat platinum marquise on her finger earlier today.

Had he imagined it because he had been nervous?

“You’ve got to help me out, Shelby,” Brian said softly as he drove eastward, back to Austin, about two hours east of Jubilant.

His parents had fallen asleep in the backseat, and Shelby, his front seat passenger, didn’t seem far behind. She gazed out of the window as they whizzed past desolate small towns that appeared to be abandoned under the dark Texas sky. Her eyes fluttered every few minutes and he knew she was fading fast.

“What did you say?” Shelby asked and turned toward him.

“Did Indigo mention before we left her house when she wants to get married?”

Shelby looked at Brian, but he couldn’t read her expression.

“What?” he asked.

“You didn’t tell me you were going to propose to her,” Shelby said. “We drove all the way from Austin and you didn’t say a word. Did your parents know?”

Brian nodded but realized she probably couldn’t see him. The veil of nightfall had finally blanketed the car.

“Of course,” he said. “I got their blessing, and Indigo’s parents’, before I decided to surprise her. You haven’t answered my question. What’s Indigo thinking?”

Shelby still didn’t respond, and he gripped the steering wheel tighter. If anyone knew Indigo better than he did, it was her best friend. Fortunately for him, Shelby was his buddy too.

“Shel, we go too far back for you not to be honest with me,” Brian said. “We’re going to Officer Candidate School together. See how I take care of you?”

Shelby laughed and lightly shoved his shoulder. “We might have grown up in the same church, attended the same high school, and even chosen the same career, but how is it that I now owe you something?”

Brian chuckled. “When you told me you wanted to be a pilot and an astronaut, I taught you everything I knew, remember? Your parents wouldn’t have brought you for a tour of Tuskegee if I hadn’t already been studying there. They felt safe sending you to Alabama because they knew I’d look out for you.”

Shelby sighed. “I wish you could see me rolling my eyes. Yeah, you might have been a few years older and you might have made your career decisions first, but I wasn’t following blindly in your footsteps. That full academic scholarship Tuskegee offered me made my choice pretty easy.”

Brian twisted the radio dial to raise the volume and let his thoughts wander to Shelby’s early days on campus. He dated her briefly during her first semester at Tuskegee, but after a few months, they mutually agreed to end the romance. Two strongwilled pilots, both gunning for military flight school and professional pilot status, wouldn’t make it as couple—at least they decided they couldn’t.

They managed to remain friends, and that relationship had served both of them better. Brian helped Shelby weed out the players she sometimes wound up dating, and Shelby introduced him to Indigo. She was firm, however, about not crossing boundaries with either friend. When Indigo shared a confidence, she didn’t betray it, and vice versa.

Tonight, though, that rule was infuriating Brian. He wanted to know where he stood with his fiancée. Keyshia Cole’s “Heaven Sent” wafted through the speakers:
I wanna be the one who you
believe, in your heart, is sent from heaven.

“Give me something, Shelby,” he said. “Anything.”

Shelby sighed and reached to turn off the music. “Brian, you’re getting ready to go to Officer Candidate School. We both are. We’ll be on lockdown for twelve weeks, and you want Indigo to spend her summer planning a wedding, all by herself? And what about her grad school plans? It’s a prestigious program and it’s only for two years. What’s the rush?”

Brian loosened his grip on the steering wheel and spoke softly, in case his parents were listening. He answered as if he were addressing a child. “I want to marry the girl I’ve been dating for the past three years and that’s a problem? Maybe I just want to do the right thing, Shelby.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

Brian paused. “Nothing,” he said. “Just know that I want what’s best for Indigo too. Let’s change the subject. Who are you dating these days?”

Shelby replied by turning toward the window and laying her head against the seat. She drifted to sleep and left Brian fretting over what she knew but didn’t care to share.

Indigo loved him; he wasn’t worried about that. Now it was time for her to prove how much.

3

G
etting a shampoo from Aunt Melba was almost as good as a visit to the spa.

Carmen, the salon assistant, usually washed Indigo’s hair when she visited during college breaks, but Carmen had requested the day off and Aunt Melba was multitasking.

Indigo rested her neck in the curve of the shampoo bowl and tried not to doze off. Aunt Melba gently scratched, then deeply massaged Indigo’s scalp and, in the process, sloughed away the tension filling her neck and shoulders.

“You just graduated from college. What’s got you so uptight?”

Indigo laughed nervously. “I’m starting my newspaper internship in a few days. Gotta get ready for grad school soon. And now I’ve got to think about a fiancé.”

Aunt Melba paused and looked at her. “Everything okay?”

Indigo shrugged. No need to raise concern about things she was still sorting out. “Life’s just busy, that’s all.”

Aunt Melba helped Indigo sit upright and quickly toweled most of the moisture out of her hair.

When Indigo was seated under a dryer, Aunt Melba turned and surveyed the rest of the crew. Rachelle had brought them all—herself and her daughter, Taryn; Indigo; and Indigo’s younger sister, Yasmin.

“Who’s next?”

The two teens, Yasmin and Taryn, looked at each other, but didn’t reply.

“Come on, Rachelle,” Aunt Melba said and waved her over. “Those divas-in-training are still trying to get it together.” She looked at Rachelle’s head and chuckled. “It won’t take me long to wash what’s left anyway.”

Rachelle laughed too. “
You
did it. And I still love it.”

“Me too!” Indigo piped up from under her dryer. The subtle hum of the low setting allowed her to hear their conversation with ease.

The super-short, layered ’do was a first for Rachelle, and Indigo was still getting used to the fact that Rachelle’s soft black hair no longer flowed past her shoulders. The dangling copper earrings that grazed her shoulders complemented her fresh style.

Rachelle had always looked youthful, but this blunt cut made her look a decade younger than her forty-three years. People often did double takes when they saw her with Tate and Taryn, now seventeen and fifteen, and learned that she was their mother rather than an older sister or an aunt.

“You’ve been a walking advertisement,” Melba told Rachelle as she washed her hair. “I’m getting calls every week from ladies who want ‘that style you gave Rachelle Covington.’ Kelly, my receptionist, has decided to stay home with her new baby. I need to find her replacement soon, just to handle calls from all of these Rachelle wannabes!”

Rachelle chuckled. “It’s a great conversation starter with my new clients. I’m trying to do their eye exams and they’re trying to figure out how I came to town and within a month found someone to keep my hair looking fabulous. I tell them that before I moved to Jubilant I drove down from Houston on more than one occasion when I needed your special touch.”

Melba put Rachelle under the dryer next to Indigo and pulled up a chair to talk with them.

“You aren’t going to do the girls’ hair?” Rachelle asked her.

“In a minute.” Aunt Melba sighed. “All this extra work has me tired. I know I still look good, but I’m getting old! I’ve interviewed two young ladies who want to rent space and see their own clients here. They’ll start next week, and if they’re good, I may let them take on some of my new clients.”

Aunt Melba looked at Indigo. “While I take a breather, let’s get back to you.”

Indigo frowned. “What’s up?”

Melba and Rachelle exchanged glances.

“What?” Indigo said. She lifted her head from beneath the dryer and leaned toward Aunt Melba.

“We saw you calculating what to say when Brian proposed to you last week.” Rachelle had lowered her voice so Taryn and Yasmin couldn’t hear. They sat nearby, in Melba’s cozy waiting area, flipping through magazines.

Indigo’s eyes widened. These ladies knew her too well.

“Well, yes, but . . .”

Aunt Melba put a hand on her thigh and pursed her lips. “Anytime there’s a ‘but,’ you need to tread carefully, Indigo. Do you want to marry Brian or not?”

“I do!” Indigo said. “I love him. He’s a wonderful guy. It’s just that he’s ready now and I’d like to wait until I finish grad school. He’s joining the military and all and wants his wife to travel the world with him.”

Rachelle sat back under her dryer and folded her arms. “You know my story. Don’t rush into something you’ll regret later, no matter how wonderful he is.”

“I’m trying not to,” Indigo said, “but I don’t want to lose him, either.”

Aunt Melba nodded at Indigo. “You’re right—you don’t want to lose a good man, and Brian is that for sure. Here’s what I think—”

Before she could finish the thought, Aunt Melba gasped and grabbed her head with both hands.

“Aunt Melba?!” Indigo’s breath flew from her body.

Rachelle caught Aunt Melba before she toppled out of the chair. She slumped in Rachelle’s arms and her eyes rolled backward. Indigo reached for her purse to grab her cell phone, but when she couldn’t find it in the floppy leather bag, she yelled for Taryn and Yasmin.

“Call 911! Aunt Melba has collapsed!”

Yasmin, who seemed frozen with fear, snapped back to the present. She ran to the phone located on the wall next to Aunt Melba’s hair station.

Indigo watched her younger sister dial and knelt on the floor next to Rachelle and Aunt Melba. She took Aunt Melba’s hand in hers, and rubbed the back of it. A movie scene seemed to be unfolding in slow motion before her eyes.

“She’s still breathing,” Rachelle said after checking Melba’s pulse and placing her ear near her aunt’s slightly open mouth. She tilted Melba’s head back at what looked like an awkward angle. “This will keep her airway open until help arrives.”

Within seconds, Indigo heard the siren as an ambulance approached.

Thank God. She couldn’t lose her favorite aunt.

4

T
he news was good: Aunt Melba was still alive. But Indigo could tell by the doctor’s pensive eyes that the Burns family shouldn’t be celebrating just yet.

“Ms. Mitchell is stable, but she is a very sick woman.”

The emergency room physician, Ray Patterson, stood in the center of the ICU waiting room, surrounded by the entire family, including Rachelle’s dad, and Melba’s brother, Herbert. He had arrived at the hospital just an hour ago. Soon after Rachelle’s call, he boarded a flight from Philadelphia and had flown in a puddle jumper for the last leg of the trip from Houston’s international airport to Jubilant’s regional one.

A frown creased his otherwise smooth brown face, and he clutched the hand of his other sister, Indigo’s mother, Irene.

Dr. Patterson elevated his voice so everyone could hear, but he specifically addressed Irene, who was Melba’s designated decision maker.

“She suffered a major stroke in the left frontal lobe of the brain, which means she is paralyzed on the right side of her body, and her speech may be impaired.”

Mama and Uncle Herbert looked at each other.