“I’ll always be here for you to talk to,” Marie said to Addie one evening. “Especially about your dreams. Please promise me you’ll heed their warnings.”
“I will,” Addie promised.
There was another reason for the hasty marriage, and everyone in town knew what it was. Phil Stewart, Jess’s father, was not in good health. In fact, he was dying. Cancer was taking his life, but nobody knew that, then. The townsfolk simply knew that he was seriously ill and becoming more so with every passing day. Jess was grateful that he had indeed listened to his mother and come home on the train.
Between the time Jess proposed to Addie that night at the social hall and their wedding day, six weeks hence, Jess left for the city to put his affairs in order. He needed to find a suitable place to live—a bride and, someday, a family required more space than did a single man. He also needed to spread the news of his engagement to his closest friends in town and especially to his employer, a traditional sort who was eager for all young men in his employ to find a wife and set up housekeeping.
It also meant the unpleasant business of breaking the news to Sally Reade, whose wrath proved to be surprisingly vehement. He had taken her to a restaurant, thinking the public setting would make things easier. He was wrong about this. It hadn’t helped matters that she was giddy and keyed up when he arrived at her door. But later, when he squeaked out the fact that he had proposed to another woman, Sally reacted with a stunned silence—Oh, thank God, Jess had thought—but then, to his utter embarrassment, it mutated into a fierce rage. Before he was able to usher her out of the room, she threw every one of the plates on their table at him, shrieking obscenities, much to the horror of their fellow diners. She cried all the way home in the cab.
After he saw Sally to her front door—and had it slammed in his face—Jess took a deep breath and looked toward the future.
His company was based in the city, but upon news of his engagement, the owner presented Jess with an opportunity to accompany him in setting up an office in the small bayside town of Wharton. Jess suspected that it was an effort by the company’s well-heeled boss to distance this new star employee from the unfortunate Sally Reade business, which, by now, was all over town. Jess was relieved. Beyond escaping Sally’s immediate social circles, which would no doubt be closed to him and his new wife, the job itself provided an opportunity for advancement, one that Jess would not turn down.
While he loved the city, Jess found that he was enchanted by Wharton, with its warm winter winds and charming houses with large front porches and backyard gardens. He walked through the streets and thought of how much Addie would love this town. It was an easy sort of life, not a large, thriving city, which might have intimidated and even frightened her, but it was much more cosmopolitan than the tiny community of their birth. A perfect balance. Best of all, it was located on her beloved lake. He had fretted about how she would adjust to life without that massive body of water in her view, and now it was a moot point. What a wonderful place in which to start anew.
Jess bought a white wooden house with an enormous front porch that overlooked the harbor. It wasn’t the grandest home in town, but it was a highly suitable residence for a young businessman and his new bride. He furnished it modestly, knowing that Addie would want to tend to the details later, herself.
Addie and Jess were married in Great Bay on a snowy December afternoon as the sun was setting on the tiny church on the main street. Heavy, wet snow had fallen the night before, draping the streets and the houses and the enormous pine trees that lined the street like sentries in a blanket of white. The wedding-eve snowstorm had Addie and her mother fretting late into the night, peering out of the icy windowpanes of their home, wondering if the snow would let up in time for guests to arrive at the church the next day.
Marie, Addie, and several of the local women had worked tirelessly creating the perfect wedding dress—just six weeks between engagement and wedding hadn’t left them much time. Marie ordered the fabric from Minneapolis the very day Addie announced her engagement, and when it finally arrived, wrapped in brown paper, the ladies of the town began meeting, usually at Marie’s large kitchen table, and sewed all day, every day until the dimming light forced them to stop their careful work each evening.
As the sun was setting on their wedding day, townsfolk bundled up in their scarves, boots, and woolen overcoats for the walk to the church. Those who lived farther outside of town arrived on snowshoes and by sleigh; the Carlsons even hitched up the dogsled for the trip from their farm.
When the candles were lit in the church, Addie walked down the aisle on her father’s arm in a long off-white dress decorated with pure-white embroidery on both the skirt and bodice. A wide satin ribbon at the waist and bustle in the back accentuated her tiny waistline. Dressed in white, with her deep-auburn hair cascading around her face and her violet eyes shining, Addie Cassatt looked like an angel.
Her happiness was evident to all who witnessed it, no more so than to Jess Stewart himself, who was struck by the sight of the woman who was walking, no, floating, toward him. He was used to seeing Addie in the simple, practical cotton dresses worn by the hard-working wives of the fishermen in this town. Even dressed in those usual rags, Addie was stunning. But now, in this finery . . . Jess caught his breath and thanked God for his good fortune. He might have lost her in the pursuit of a more “suitable” wife. Instead, he would be the husband of a woman he truly adored and the envy of every man in town.
As the townsfolk watched this young, beautiful couple exchange wedding vows, many of the older ones were struck by the memory of the day Addie was born. The blinding fog, the way Marie had been drawn to the lake and had given birth in the water, how young Jess was the one who found the baby floating peacefully near his home. And now here these two were, pledging to spend the rest of their lives together. A thought drifted from one to another in the pews—was destiny possible? Could it be true that some people were literally made for each other? Proof of that romantic notion seemed to be standing before them. Some wives gave their husbands sidelong glances and lamented the fact that their own destinies had run so far off the track. Did I choose the right man? Is this all there is? Did I ever have the chance to be in love? A few people wondered about roads not taken, sweethearts who had been deemed unsuitable by parents or other circumstances, loves lost to the lake or the woods, men who left their homes one morning and, without warning, never returned.
As her son was standing at the front of the church reciting the words his parents had said to each other more than thirty years before, Jennie Stewart slipped her hand into her husband’s palm and held it tight. He looked at her with watery eyes. She kissed his cheek and whispered, “I’m so glad I married you.”
Throughout the years, Phil Stewart had been, and remained, a man of few words, and those that he uttered were practical ones. But on this day he surprised his wife by smiling down at her and whispering, “We’ve had a wonderful life together, haven’t we?”
To this, Jennie couldn’t respond. It had indeed been a wonderful life, every day of it, and as Jennie squeezed her husband’s palm, she knew better than anyone that it was ending, and rapidly. His health was beyond prayer for a miracle, it was beyond all hope. She had seen his pain intensify, had witnessed him lying in bed for days. That he was here, dressed and smiling at his son’s wedding, was miracle enough. Jennie knew that, even as their son was embarking on a new life, so too would she. That of a widow. As she sat, leaning against her husband in the candlelit church, with the sun hanging low over the lake and all that love and happiness around her, Jennie Stewart repeated the prayer that she had whispered, over and over, to God or anyone else who would listen: Thank you for all that I have. Please make his last days comfortable.