Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
But I know as much about Collin’s business as I do Ike’s at this point.
I blow out a breath and turn the page again. Now it’s the current generation. Baby pictures of Lasher and Ike. And their sisters and mama. A few more page turns and they are teenagers, then practically men.
The next time I turn the page there’s a picture of me. I nearly gasp out loud. I even pick up the album and put it right up to my face, trying to see every detail.
It was… my wedding day. I’m wearing a borrowed white dress and my hair is piled on top of my head and sprinkled with flowers.
Ike’s sisters did that. I don’t know how old they were back then—fourteen? Fifteen? They were so excited. They danced around me that day like little fairies, trying to make me pretty and happy.
I was pretty, but I wasn’t happy. I don’t know what I was thinking, actually. This man appears and rescues me. He takes up into the hills on a horse and feeds me, and makes a fire, and we talk. Well, he talked mostly. It was some kind of shock, or something. I did hit my head, and Ike wouldn’t let me sleep. He said I had to stay up for twenty-four hours to make sure there was no concussion. So we talked all night. Twenty-four hours of… spilling guts, I guess. I didn’t talk at first, but he was so chatty and nice. He rescued me, made me feel safe, took away all the worries I had been carrying around for the past year after Mama died, and I think that’s why I said I wanted to stay.
I was done. I wanted a husband to just take over. The accident was the last straw for me. Leaving Blackberry Hill and going home meant that all my problems would be there waiting for me.
Or maybe I’m just making excuses.
Regardless, I am the one who brought it up. I am the one who put the idea of marriage in his head. It was me. It was all me, really.
And I just don’t know what I was thinking.
What I do know is that after I saw that secret room, I came to my senses. And that’s when the phone calls started, and deals had to be made, and Jim Bob came up the hill and walked me back out. Furious as a raging fire.
I turn the page again and then there’s a picture of all of us. Me and Ike—he’s even smiling. His sisters, his mama, his granny. I don’t know what happened to his daddy or grandad. I only knew the man for one weekend total, so it never came up. But there are no other men in that picture, just him. Lasher was already gone by then, I guess.
This is when it occurs to me, while I’m looking at these pictures, that while the wedding might’ve felt fake to me—maybe I was concussed, maybe I was just depressed—it doesn’t matter because the point is, it wasn’t fake to them.
My wedding to Ike was real. It was their festival day. There was food, and dancing, and laughing, and photographs being taken. It was a big party. And in the middle of that, there was a wedding.
Looking back, it feels really strange to me. I mean, that’s just not how weddings happen in Disciple. They are a big deal and they are planned far in advance. They happen during a Revival with tons of singing, and dancing, and fanfare. It’s part of the show. They are also legal. There is a license and a preacher.
But people living up here—maybe not so much these days, but back in the old days—they wouldn’t care if there was a preacher, or a church, or a license. If they wanted to get married, I imagine it happened for them the same way it happened for me. On a festival day with friends and family as their witness. They said words, made promises, and then they kissed and they were married.
For the first time in nine years I begin to see my wedding through a different set of eyes. I see it though Ike’s eyes, and his sister’s eyes, and his mama’s eyes.
And then I imagine what they thought of me when I walked away.
The front door opens and I stand up quickly, almost knocking the chair over as I do this.
Ike comes in, his boots thudding across the floors. He looks for me and his squinting eyes find me in the kitchen. “What are you doing?”
I point to the table where the photo album is still open. “I… I was looking.”
His eyes dart down to the table, then immediately back up at me. I get the feeling that maybe he was lookin’ at that photo album earlier and he forgot he left it out. He sighs, but doesn’t say anything.