Meet Me at the Chapel Read online

  “It’s going to be okay.” Casey put the carrier down on the ground so she could kneel down and take off her boots. No sense just standing there making a puddle in Brock’s foyer. Casey took inventory of her options and then took Hercules, carrier and all, through the living room until she had reached what appeared to be the middle of the house.

  “You wait here,” she told Hercules; her pocket poodle had shocked her by not making a sound, even during his first jarring ride on a horse.

  Casey went to a small bathroom just off the living room.

  “Jackpot.” Casey found a stack of clean, mismatched towels jammed under the sink.

  She quickly dried her thick, waist-length hair before twisting it into the towel like a turban. With a second towel, she got the excess water off her shirt and jeans before ripping off her socks so she could stand on the damp towel in her bare feet.

  Outside, the wind was howling around the house, sending loose leaves swirling past the window. The trees were starting to bend from the force of the wind and rain, which hadn’t let up since they arrived at the ranch.

  What was keeping Brock?

  As if on cue, Brock burst through the front door and slammed it shut behind him. Not bothering to take off his wet boots, he strode into the living room and turned on the television. The severe-weather bulletin that had trumped regular programing was running images of a funnel cloud that seemed to be too close for comfort.

  “Stay here,” he said as he turned off the television.

  Brock took the narrow stairs up to the second floor two at a time. He went to the master bedroom, tugged one of the plaid shirts down off the bedpost, then grabbed a pair of his soon-to-be ex-wife’s jeans and socks out of a dresser drawer. He needed to get his unexpected guest taken care of before he went to go get his daughter, Hannah, who was at a friend’s house roughly fifteen minutes away. He had to get to Hannah.

  “They’re clean.” He pushed the clothes into her arms.

  Casey was still trying to process the fact that she was caught up in a tornado situation, when Brock swung open a door that led to a cellar. A blast of stale air hit her in the face.

  Brock switched on a battery-powered light. “Change and then you and your dog need to go down to the cellar. There’s a weather radio down there, along with other supplies. Switch it on so you know what’s happening. Wait there until I get back.”

  “You’re leaving?” There was the tiniest crack in her voice. She was accustomed to blizzards, but tornadoes were an entirely different kind of natural menace.

  “I’m going to get my daughter!” he hastened to say. And then he was gone.

  She followed his directions—they were sensible and were meant to keep her safe. She stripped out of her wet clothes, wrung them out and hung them over the tub. The plaid shirt was huge on her—she rolled the sleeves up several times so her hands were free. Likewise, the jeans were loose around the waist and hips, and way too long. Casey folded the waistband down to make the jeans fit more securely, and then cuffed the bottom of the jeans so she could walk without stepping on them.

  Once she was in dry clothes, she pulled the towel off her head and twisted her tangled hair into a topknot.

  “Here goes nothing.” Casey opted to breathe through her mouth to avoid inhaling the musty odor of the cellar. After some time down there, she hoped she wouldn’t even notice it.

  At the bottom of the rickety steps, Casey found a spot on the ground where she could unfold a blanket and hunker down until the coast was clear. The wind was so strong that it felt as if the house was swaying and groaning overhead.

  “Come on out, little one.” Casey opened the carrier and coaxed the rust-colored micro-poodle out onto the blanket.

  She was glad that Hercules was content to curl up in her lap, because she needed his company. He made her feel calmer. With a frustrated, self-pitying sigh, Casey turned on the weather radio and knew that the only thing she could do now was wait and pray.

  * * *

  “I’m so sorry, Brock.” Kay Lynn opened the door to the trailer. “I had to call. I haven’t seen her like this in a while. She was hitting herself and biting her hand again. She’s been in a nosedive for the last hour or so.”

  “Is she in her normal spot?”

  Kay Lynn nodded toward the hallway of the single-wide trailer. Brock walked quickly, but calmly, down the narrow hallway to the spare bedroom. Squeezed between a full-size bed and the wall, his twelve-year-old daughter was curled into a tight ball, rocking back and forth. In front of her, lying on top of Hannah’s feet, was a golden Lab.

  “Good girl, Ladybug.” Brock knelt down, put his hand on the dog’s head for a moment, before he reached out for his daughter’s hand.

  “Hannah,” he said softly. “It’s time to go home.”

  Hannah had been officially diagnosed with Asperger syndrome when she was eight. Her IQ was very high, but there were quirks to her personality that set her apart from other children her age. And, when a storm was coming, Brock always anticipated that she was going to have an off day. If he’d had any idea that she was going to spiral like this, he would have stayed home with her.

  “Come on, baby girl.” He directed the protective dog to move out of the way so he could help Hannah make the transition from the trailer to his truck. “We’re going home.”

  Hannah lifted her head up. Her face, so much like his, was still damp from shed tears. His heart tightened every time his daughter cried. Brock wiped her tears from her cheeks before he lifted her up into his arms and hugged her tightly. The squeezing always calmed her.

  “Why didn’t you come sooner?” Hannah asked when he put her down.

  “I got here as fast as I could.” Brock took her hand in his. “Now, I need you to use your ‘stay calm’ plan on the way home. Okay?”

  Hannah nodded. “Come on, Lady.”

  Now that he had his daughter with him, Brock felt complete. He could handle anything, as long as he had his daughter by his side. He could even handle a messy divorce from Shannon, Hannah’s mother. They were in a custody battle for Hannah and had been for nearly a year. Shannon wanted to move Hannah out to California with her, and it was going to happen over his dead carcass. Hannah was going to stay in Montana, with him, in the only home she’d ever known. Period.

  “You’d better hunker down, Kay Lynn. You’re a sitting duck out here. You could come with us, but you’ve got to come now.”

  Kay Lynn’s silver-streaked hair blew around the sunken cheeks of her face. She waved her hand as if she could bat away the tornado with her rough-skinned fingers. “That tornado don’t want none of me, Brock. You go on and get Hannah home. I’ll be right as rain.”

  There was no sense wasting time trying to convince Kay Lynn to leave her home—she was as much a part of the prairie surrounding the old trailer as was the willowy Junegrass. He’d offered, but knew she wouldn’t take him up on it.

  With a quick wave to Hannah’s sometimes babysitter, Brock bundled Hannah into the truck and headed back to his little Montana spread. They didn’t see much more than a few drops of rain on their short drive back. Brock pulled into the gravelly driveway that led to their farmhouse knowing that they were in a lull. The clouds above were still churning and angry, and it was only a matter of time before the wind would start howling again. They were in the most dangerous time of a tornado, the time when many folks get fooled into thinking that the threat was over, when in actuality it was just about to begin.

  Chapter Two

  “It’s time for our storm plan, Hannah. Tell me what we need to do.” Brock pulled the screen door open to their house. The rain was still misty, but he knew from experience that that could change on a dime.

  Hannah was faithfully rattling off the steps of their storm plan when they reached the foyer safely. They had created the storm
plan years ago, not only to keep safe, but to keep Hannah feeling calm and in charge during an emergency.

  “Good job, baby girl.” Brock shut the door firmly behind them. Now that they were inside the house, he could take his anxiety level down a notch.

  Hannah was on the ground yanking off her wet boots and he was knocking the excess water off his cowboy hat when he heard a noise coming from the kitchen. Brock hung his hat on a hook by the door before he walked around the corner toward the sound of the noise.

  “Oh!” Casey exclaimed, balancing a full glass of water in one hand and Hercules in the other. “Hey! You’re back!”

  “Why aren’t you in the cellar?”

  “The rain and the wind stopped, so I figured we were in the clear,” she explained to him offhandedly on her way to greet his daughter. “You must be Hannah. I’m Casey. I’ve heard so much about you from my sister, Taylor.” Casey smiled at the preteen who was nearly as tall as she was. “And this is the awesome Hercules.”

  Casey knew from her sister that Hannah was on the spectrum, so she understood when Brock’s daughter didn’t look her in the eye. She also knew that Hannah loved animals and it showed by the way Hannah reached over to gently pet Hercules.

  “You can get acquainted in the cellar.” Brock moved behind his daughter and put his hands on her shoulders. “It may look like it now, but we’re not in the clear.”

  “No?” Casey asked him.

  “No,” he reiterated. “We all need to get down in the cellar. Now.”

  * * *

  For two hours, the three of them hunkered down in the cellar while the worst of the storm stalled in their region of the state. The wooden house creaked and groaned as the storm reenergized. She couldn’t see it, but she had been able to hear that the force of the wind was blowing debris against the sides of the house. Casey was grateful that fate had landed her in Brock’s cellar instead of being stranded out on a desolate road in a rented moving van. But her gratitude was beginning to give way to discomfort and claustrophobia. It was cool and damp down in the cellar—her skin felt clammy and she still felt chilled even after Brock gave her a blanket to wrap around her shoulders. Worse yet, the air was stuffy, and even though she had hoped she would be able to eventually ignore it, she hadn’t grown accustomed to the smell at all. It was reminiscent of her middle school locker room—body odor and dirty socks.

  “Do you think it’s safe to go up yet?” Casey asked her host expectantly.

  It had been at least fifteen minutes since the wind had knocked anything into the exterior of the house. The pounding sound that the driving rain had made as it pummeled Brock’s antiquated farmhouse had died down.

  “Give it a few more minutes. The last funnel touched down mighty close to here.”

  With a heavy sigh, Casey shifted her body to take pressure off her aching tailbone. Sitting on the floor had stopped being a fun option when she reached her thirties. She preferred a comfy couch or squishy chair. Sitting on the floor was for the birds.

  “God—my poor sister. She has to be scared to death wondering where I am.” Casey readjusted the blanket on her shoulders. “You know—my horoscope did say that this was a bad time to travel.”

  “You don’t really believe in that, do you?” he asked her.

  “Only when they’re right,” she said with the faintest of laughs. “I’d say a broken-down truck, a tornado and getting stuck in your smelly cellar are three very strong indicators that it was a bad time for me to travel.”

  She heard Brock laugh a little after she spoke, and then she realized what she had said. “That sounded really ungrateful.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I am grateful,” she added. “I could still be out there, stuck.”

  “I knew what you meant,” Brock reassured her.

  “And now I’m babbling. If you want me to zip it, just tell me. I won’t be the least bit offended. My mom has told me that I was a precocious talker and I’ve had the gift of gab ever since I was a toddler. Of course, Mom doesn’t really mean that in the most positive of ways.”

  “Talking makes the time go faster,” Brock reminded her.

  “Well, now you’re probably just being nice, but that’s okay.”

  “I haven’t been accused of that trait too often,” he replied humorously.

  Hannah made a content noise as she snuggled closer to her father. Ladybug, the golden Lab that Brock and Hannah called Lady for short, lifted up her head to check on Hannah before putting her head back down on her front paws. It was endearing to see the closeness between Brock and his daughter. They were so bonded that it was hard to imagine a third person in that dynamic.

  Casey was sure that there were many sides of Brock that she hadn’t seen—wasn’t that the case with all people? But he’d been nothing but nice to her, and he was so gentle with Hannah.

  “I’ve never seen anyone connect with Hannah as quickly as you did,” Brock told her quietly.

  Casey heard the admiration in his voice and it made her feel good. “I work with kids with all sorts of disabilities for a living—I guess it’s just second nature to me now.”

  “What do you do again? I think your sister told me once, but I apologize—I forgot.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to remember something like that, anyway.” Casey uncrossed her legs to relieve the ache that had shifted from her tailbone to her knees. “I’m a special education teacher for Chicago public schools. I provide services for students who have individual education plans and need extra support to access the curriculum.”

  “Is that right?” Brock asked. “Chicago has a reputation for having some pretty rough neighborhoods, doesn’t it?”

  She nodded. Those rough areas were one of the main objections her father, a prominent judge in Chicago, had to her desire to become a teacher. For her mother, it was all about the prestige of the job and the money. Or lack thereof.

  “I do work in a high-poverty school. It’s not easy, and, yes, there are too many problems to count, but my kids make the challenges worthwhile. Most of the kids I work with—they’re good kids. Great kids. They just need someone to care enough about them to help them succeed—to help them supersede their backgrounds.” Casey’s voice became more passionate as she continued. “Do you know that so many of the kids I serve wouldn’t have needed the services of a special education teacher if they hadn’t been born into poverty? They would have had the exposure to print and early literacy development, and different experiences to build background knowledge. And it’s not that the parents don’t want to provide their kids with the best start possible, but living hand-to-mouth...” Casey counted things on her fingers. “Food insecurity, illiteracy, lack of education and job opportunities, so many factors, that parents don’t have the time, or the energy, or the resources to read to their children, or provide them with those vital foundational skills. By the time these kids get to kindergarten, they’re already behind in all of those fundamental skills, like vocabulary and phonemic awareness... It’s really sad. Shameful, really.”

  When Casey spoke about the kids she worked with in Chicago, her face lit up with excitement. It turned a rather ordinary face into one that was really quite extraordinary.

  “You love your job.”

  Casey gave him a little smile that was self-effacingly saying, What tipped you off?

  “I really appreciate your passion for your work.” Brock seemed like he wanted to reassure her. To validate her. “Kids like my Hannah need teachers who are dedicated, who genuinely care about her success. You’re a hero to parents like me. I mean, the way you redirected Hannah and kept her calm... It was impressive.”

  In the low light cast off from the lantern between them, their eyes met and held for the briefest of moments before Brock looked away. His dark hair, threaded with silver near the temple, was slicked back
from his long face. His jawline was square, his brows heavy above deeply set blue eyes. When she was a scrawny teenager, and Brock was eighteen, she had thought he was so handsome—and she still did. But all signs of youthfulness had been worn from his face. The wrinkles on his forehead, around his mouth and eyes, were evidence of frowning and stress. This was a man who was under a major amount of pressure—she recognized the signs. She also recognized the signs of a devoted father. Whatever marital problems he was having—and she had heard from her sister that there were many—he hadn’t let them interfere with his dedication to Hannah.

  “Well, thank you.” Casey felt her cheeks get a little warm. “I’m glad I could help.”

  Hercules picked that moment to sit up, stretch, yawn and then take a large leap off her thigh and onto the blanket.

  “Is that a real dog? Or do you have to wind it every morning?” Brock had turned his attention to her teacup-sized poodle that had just made the large leap off her leg onto the blanket.

  “Hey! Don’t pick on Hercules!” Hannah scooped Hercules up and kissed him several times. “Though he may be but little, he is fierce!”

  “Now it’s getting serious. You brought Shakespeare to the table?” Brock teased her.

  Hercules gave a little yap and ran around in a circle.

  “A little Shakespeare never hurt anyone.”

  “Speak for yourself,” he retorted. “I took a class on Shakespeare in college. Worst semester of my life.”

  “It pains me to shift the subject away from Shakespeare, because I happen to be a fan, but I think—” she nodded her head toward her pocket poodle “—he needs a bathroom break. He does have a microscopic bladder, after all—poor baby.”

  “Okay.” Brock shook Hannah’s shoulder to wake her. “I think it’s safe to go topside.”