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“And I also called here. Twice. Got a busy signal both times.”
She wasn’t surprised. The house had been full of people all day and the phone had been in constant use.
“Dek!” Sam shouted. He let go of Joleen’s neck and reached for the man in the doorway.
“Whoa, big guy.” Dekker stepped up and took him.
About then, DeDe stopped sobbing long enough to glance across the room. “Dekker! You made it!”
The three Tilly women broke from their huddle and rushed for the door. Joleen got out of their way again. They surrounded Dekker and Sam, all of them talking at once.
“Where were you?”
“We’ve been waiting for hours.…”
“We were so afraid you wouldn’t make it.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Is everything—”
He chuckled. “Everything’s fine. There was just a little matter of a long delay between flights. But I am here now.” He had Sam on one arm. He wrapped the other around DeDe, who looked up at him through shining eyes. “And I am ready to give away this gorgeous bride.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, down in the backyard beneath the pecan trees, the wedding march began. A blessed breeze had actually come up, so it wasn’t quite as stifling as it had been for most of the day. The ceremony went off without a hitch. And when Wayne Thornton kissed his bride, everyone could see that this was a true, love match.
Joleen had had her reservations, when DeDe and Wayne first announced that they would marry. After all, DeDe was only twenty. It seemed young to Joleen.
But looking at the two of them as they repeated their vows, Joleen let go of her doubts. Wayne was a good, steady man. And DeDe adored him almost as much as he worshipped her. In the end, Joleen supposed, the two had as good a chance as any couple at lasting a lifetime side by side.
She was pouring more ginger ale into the punch bowl, feeling kind of misty-eyed and contented for the first time that day, when Dekker appeared at her side.
“What the hell are the Atwoods doing here?” He spoke low, for her ears alone.
She gave him her most determined smile and whispered back, “I invited them.”
“Damn it, Jo. I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Me, too—and would you go in and get me some more of this ginger ale?”
Midnight-blue eyes regarded her steadily. “I wish you had listened to me.”
“I did listen—then I did what I thought was right.” She waved the empty bottle at him. “Ginger ale? Please?”
Shaking his head, he turned for the back door.
The afternoon wore on.
Camilla, on something of an emotional roller coaster this special day when her middle baby was getting married, had a little too much sparkling wine and flirted blatantly with anyone willing to flirt back.
“You probably ought to say something to her, hon,” advised Aunt LeeAnne as Joleen was putting the finishing touches on the buffet.
Joleen shook her head and took the lid off a chafing dish. “My mother is a flirt. Always has been, always will be. I have enough to worry about without trying to fight a person’s nature.”
“When your father was still with us—”
“I know. All her flirting was for him then. She never looked at another man. But he’s been gone for so long now. And she is still very much alive. She will never stop lookin’ for the kind of love she had once.”
“So sad…” Aunt LeeAnne looked mournful.
Camilla’s musical laughter rang out as she pulled one of the groom’s uncles from a chair and made him dance with her.
“I don’t know,” said Joleen. “Seems to me that she’s having a pretty good time.”
Aunt LeeAnne picked up a toothpick and speared a meatball from the chafing dish. “Mmm. Delicious. What is that spice?”
“Cumin?”
“Could be—or maybe curry?”
“No. I don’t think there’s any curry in those meatballs.”
Aunt LeeAnne helped herself to a second meatball, then shrugged. “Well, I suppose you’re right about Camilla.…”
Uncle Hubert Tilly staggered by, yet another beer clutched in his fist.
Aunt LeeAnne clucked her tongue. “Now, there is someone to worry about. He has been drinkin’ all afternoon, and in this heat…” Aunt LeeAnne frowned. “He looks peaked, don’t you think?”
“True,” said Joleen. “He does not look well.”
“Someone really should talk to him.…” Aunt LeeAnne gazed at Joleen hopefully. Joleen refused to take the hint, so her aunt added with clear reluctance, “Someone of his own generation, I suppose.”
“Be my guest.”
So Aunt LeeAnne DuFrayne trotted off to try to convince Uncle Hubert Tilly that he’d had enough beer.
Uncle Hubert didn’t take the news well. “What?” he shouted, leaning against the trunk of the sweet gum in the southwest corner of the yard. “I’ve had enough? What’re you talkin’ about, LeeAnne? There ain’ no such thing as enough.”
Aunt LeeAnne tried to whisper something into his ear. He shrugged her off and stumbled away. Aunt LeeAnne pinched up her mouth for a minute, then shook her head and returned to the buffet table.
“Well, I guess you are right, Joly. There is no savin’ that man from himself.”
“You tried your best.” Joleen handed her aunt a plate. “Taste those buffalo wings. And the pasta primavera is pretty good, too.”
Aunt LeeAnne took the plate and began to load it with food.
Out of the corner of her eye, Joleen could see Robert Atwood, standing at the edge of the patio, Antonia, as always, close at his side. Robert wore a look of aloof disdain on his distinguished face as he watched Uncle Hubert’s unsteady progress toward the coolers lined up by the garden shed.
“Joly, is that pickled okra I see?”
Joleen turned her widest smile on another of her father’s brothers. “You bet it is, Uncle Stan. Help yourself.”
“I surely will.”
With the buffet all ready to go, Joleen went to check on the punch table again. The bowl needed filling. She took care of that. Then she went back inside to look for those little frilly toothpicks that everyone kept using up the minute she set them out.
She got stalled in the kitchen for several minutes. Burly had a traveling-salesman joke she just had to hear. Once he’d told it and she had finished laughing, she found the toothpicks and headed for the back door once more.
Outside again, she discovered that her mother was dancing with yet another of the guests from Wayne’s family. And Aunt LeeAnne whispered in her ear that Uncle Hubert had gone behind the garden shed to be sick.
Joleen suppressed a sigh. “I’ll go see to him.”
“I think that would be best. I’d do it, of course, but you saw what happened the last time I tried to give the poor man a hand.”
When Joleen got to the other side of the shed, she spotted two little DuFraynes and a small niece of Wayne’s peeking around the far end. Uncle Hubert sagged pitifully against the shed wall, his head stuck in among the dark pink blooms of a tall crape myrtle bush.
She dealt with the children first. “You kids go on now.”
The three stared for a moment, then began giggling.
“I mean it. Do not make me get your mamas.”
The giggling stopped. Three sets of wide eyes regarded her. Joleen put on a no-nonsense glare and made a sharp shooing gesture with the back of her hand.
The three vanished around the end of the shed, giggles erupting again as soon as they were out of sight. The giggles faded away.
Uncle Hubert groaned. And then his thick shoulders shook. Joleen swallowed and pressed her lips together as she heard splattering sounds behind the bush.
She waited until that attack of sickness had passed. Then she dared to move a few steps closer. “Uncle Hubert…”
Her uncle groaned. “Joly?”
“That’s right.”
“Go ’way.” He spoke into the crape myrtle bush.
Joleen edged a little closer. “Uncle Hubert, I want you to come in the house with me now.”
“I’m fine.” He groaned again. “Go ’way.”
“No. No, you listen. It’s too hot out here. You can lie down inside.”
“No.” He made a strangled sound. His shoulders shook again, but this time nothing seemed to be coming up.
Joleen waited, to make sure he was finished. Then, with slow care, she moved right up next to him. “Come on, now…” She laid a hand on his arm. “You just come on.”
“No!” He jerked away, half stumbling, almost falling, bouncing with a muffled gonging sound against the metal wall of the garden shed. “Leave,” he growled. “Go…”
Joleen stepped back again, unwilling to give up but unsure how to convince him that he should come with her.
A hand clasped her shoulder.
Dekker. She knew it before she even turned to see him standing right behind her. She felt easier instantly. Between them they would manage. They always did.
“Need help?”
She nodded.
He raised a dark brow. “You want him in the house?”
She nodded again.
He stepped around her. “Hubert…”
“Ugh. Wha? Oh. Dek.”
“Right. Come on, man. Let’s go…”
“Ugh…”
“Yeah. You need to stretch out.”
“Uh-uh…”
Dekker took Uncle Hubert’s arm and wrapped it across his broad shoulder. Uncle Hubert moaned. He kept saying no and shaking his head. But he didn’t pull away. Slowly Dekker turned him around and got him moving.
Joleen went on ahead, warning the other guests out of the way, opening the back door, leading the way through the kitchen and into the hall. Uncle Hubert would probably be most comfortable upstairs in one of the bedrooms, but she didn’t know how far he’d be willing to let Dekker drag him. So she settled for the living room.
“Here,” she said, “on the couch.” She tossed away her mother’s favorite decorative pillows as she spoke, then spread an old afghan across the cushions. It would provide some protection if Uncle Hubert’s poor stomach decided to rebel again.
Dekker eased the other man down. Uncle Hubert fell onto his back with a long, low groan.
“Let’s get his shoes off,” said Dekker, already kneeling at Uncle Hubert’s feet. Before he had the second shoe off, Uncle Hubert was snoring. Dekker set the shoes, side by side, beneath the coffee table. “They’ll be right here whenever he needs them.”
Joleen stood over her uncle, shaking her head. “It seems like we ought to do something, doesn’t it? We shouldn’t let him go on hurting himself this way.”
Uncle Hubert had lost his wife, Thelma, six months ago. The heavy beer drinking had started not long after that.
“Give him time,” Dekker said. “He’ll work it out.”
“I hope he works it out soon. A man’s liver can only take so much.”
“He will,” Dekker said. “He’ll get through it.”
They were good words to hear, especially from Dekker, who had never been the most optimistic guy on the block. “You sound so certain.”
He winked at her. “I oughtta know, don’t you think?”
