“We will, Daddy. I’m sure of it.”
Elmer could only hope she was right as she took his hand and towed him into the living room to present her plan to her fiancé.
“Daddy is going to marry us! Tonight.”
Sarah looked at Elmer, her brow raised and a thousand questions in her expression.
“What?” Linc said. “We have a wedding planned… January…”
“We’ll still have that day, but I don’t want to wait any longer for us to be married. Earlier today, you were given an impossible choice, and you chose me. Well, I want you to know that I choose you, too. I choose you for the rest of my life.” She got down on her knees in front of him. “Will you marry me tonight, Linc?”
He raised his hands to her face, his eyes shining with unshed tears.
Elmer found himself holding his breath, waiting for him to say something.
“I’d love to marry you tonight, sweetheart.”
She let out a happy squeal and kissed him long enough that Elmer was forced to clear his throat to remind the lovebirds that they weren’t alone.
They broke apart, laughing and teary-eyed and smiling so big he wondered whether a face could actually crack under all that happiness. He was so damned grateful to see them smiling again that he was almost able to forget Linc’s impertinence.
“So how does a last-minute wedding without a license work around here?” Linc asked.
“Dad is a justice of the peace. He’ll marry us tonight, and we’ll take care of getting the actual license tomorrow. It’s a little backwards, but it’ll be okay.”
“As long as I have you, everything is okay,” Linc said, kissing the top of her head.
Now that the two of them were about to tie the knot, Elmer was realizing he’d be in for a whole lot more PDA than he’d had to tolerate up until now. Ugh, he thought. I’m so not ready for that.
“Where do you want us, Dad?”
“How about in front of the fireplace?” Sarah suggested.
“That’d be perfect,” Molly said.
He thought she’d want to get changed or put on makeup or do her hair, but all she wanted, it seemed, was to marry Lincoln Abbott.
Elmer stood before them, gazing down at one of the faces that had ruled his world since she and her siblings were born, and told himself he could do this. He could give her away to another man and entrust her health, safety and happiness to him. Taking a deep breath, he let it out slowly and walked them through the exchange of vows, which were said with tears and laughter and love.
He couldn’t deny the presence of love as much as he might’ve wanted to when she first brought Linc home. They didn’t have rings yet, so he skipped that part. “By the power vested in me by the state of Vermont, I now declare you husband and wife. Linc, you may kiss your bride. Chastely.”
They laughed as they came together for a kiss that was the furthest thing from chaste.
Elmer looked away, catching the gaze of his own beloved, who wiped away tears. Their darling Molly was a married woman. He stepped away from the newlyweds and went to his own bride, putting his arms around her.
“You did good up there, pal,” Sarah said.
“I was trying not to lose it the whole time.”
“I know.”
“It was the right thing to do this for them, wasn’t it?”
“Absolutely. They’re going to make a go of it. I’m sure of it.”
“Our little girls have ended up with good guys.”
“One of them has. The jury’s still out on the other one.”
Elmer drew back from the hug to look down at her. “What do you mean?”
“I feel pretty confident that Linc will stick. I’m not so sure about Mike.”
“Huh. Well, you’ve never said that before. Did he do something?”
“Not at all. Just a feeling I have, but we don’t need to dwell on that tonight when there’re happy things to celebrate. Let’s find some champagne to toast the newlyweds.”
As always, his Sarah had been right about Mike Coleman, who left Hannah with eight children, the oldest of whom had been sixteen at the time, and never looked back. Recalling that dark time in their lives never failed to make Elmer as angry as he’d ever been. Luckily, the Colemans had had him and Linc, and they’d tried to fill the void Mike had left as best they could, but nothing had ever been the same for them after their father left. Or for his daughter Hannah, who’d only recently found new love with Ray Mulvaney after many years alone.
Elmer had found that life was a strange and often wonderful journey that also included its share of heartaches. Losing his Sarah had been the biggest heartache of Elmer’s life, followed by the crushing disappointment of his son-in-law leaving his wife and eight children.
But there’d been far more magic than pain in his blessed life, and with the benefit of age, wisdom, perspective and forty years, he counted Lincoln Abbott among the greatest of his many blessings. There was nowhere else he’d rather be than with his son-in-law in Philadelphia to make sure Linc’s father knew that Elmer had stepped up to fill the void left by his father’s unimaginable actions—and that Elmer loved Linc like a son.
Chapter Thirteen
“Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given
never forgotten, never let it disappear.”
—John Lennon
Linc hadn’t expected to laugh after the day he’d had, but as always, Molly came through for him, teasing and joking with him until he’d almost forgotten the pending mission to Philly.
Almost.
“Remember that night we came home from Philadelphia and what happened next?” she asked.
“How could I ever forget our first wedding?”
They’d never told anyone else that they’d gotten married that night. Even Molly’s sister, Hannah, hadn’t known about it. Only Molly’s parents had known, and they’d kept the secret in the months between that night and their January wedding.
Linc turned on his side in bed to face her, noting she’d freed her long hair from the braid she wore it in most of the time. Her hair was silvery gray now, but still as pretty as it’d been when they first met. “You had no idea what it meant to me that night to have you ask me to marry you right then and there, or how much I needed it after what’d happened earlier that day.”
“I knew what you needed, and that’s why I did it. You’d been set adrift, and I wanted to bring you home.”
He placed his hand on her face and caressed her soft skin. “You are my home. You have been since the day we met, and you always will be.”
“Same for me with you. Remember what happened after my dad married us?”
“Is that a trick question? Of course I remember. I remember every minute of that day like it was yesterday.”
“Tell me about it. It’s my favorite bedtime story.”
He drew her in closer to him, his arms around her, her head on his chest, and let his mind wander back in time to the first night they spent together.
Lincoln couldn’t believe what Molly had done for him—and for them—by asking her dad to marry them, even if it wasn’t yet entirely legal without the license they’d get the next day. It was enough for him, and apparently her parents, who stood at their front door and waved them off as they left in Molly’s car to go home to their barn.