The wedding guests had one more surprise in store when, after the exchange of vows, the bride took a microphone and sang to her husband. They shouldn't have been surprised by the time Casey took another microphone and sang backup harmony. After all, what about this wedding ceremony matched preconceived notions? Furthermore, the word had spread that the song was co-written by the new "mother-daughter" duo, and that it would be released in the fall as the title song from Tess's new album.
There was, at the Kronek—McPhail wedding, one element of glamour. Among the guests were a bunch of Tess's friends who had flown in from Nashville. Their names were household words, and their faces were recognized in airports and restaurants wherever they went. They were the crème de la crème of the Nashville country music scene, the stars whom Tess numbered among her friends.
When the bride and groom swept jubilantly out of the church to form the receiving line, those stars took their turns just like all the other guests, being dismissed by the ushers and congratulating the newlyweds while the townsfolk from Wintergreen grew rattled, being elbow to elbow with them.
While their presence at the wedding was notable, the presence of another was even more notable. Faith had come. There had been a question about whether or not to invite her, but in the end Kenny and Tess had decided that, given how important she'd been in Kenny's life, she certainly should be asked.
She was every inch a lady, doing the proper thing as she came through the receiving line, taking Tess's hand and smiling. "Congratulations, Tess, you look lovely. Thank you for inviting me." She took Kenny's hand, too, and kept her smile intact, giving away nothing but pleasure in being here, no matter what heartbreak might be lingering. "Kenny, I hope you and Tess will be very, very happy together."
The bride and groom rode in a white limo out to Current River Cove where their reception was little different than hundreds of others that had been held there. The fried chicken dinner was geared for down-home tastes. The dance, however, turned out to be the talk of the year. Tess's own band played, and a slough of Nashville stars got up, one after another, and sang their hits for the dancers. In the middle of this spontaneous show, Judy got huffy and stalked off to the ladies' room to fluff her hair and fume.
"Showing off all her
famous friends
!" she hissed to two women who were in there freshening their lipstick. "It's sickening."
Judy would never accept the facts of Tess's life: many of her friends
were
famous, just as she was. Many of them
were
idolized on albums and magazine covers just as she was. Many were millionaires. But for Tess not to invite them today would have been a snub. And for them to adjust their schedules to be here was a measure of their affection for her.
Vince Gill and Reba McEntire were singing together on his old classic "Oklahoma Swing" when Judy came out of the washroom. From the dance floor, Tess saw her and said to her new husband, "There's Judy… in one of her jealous snits."
He smoothly turned her so her back was to Judy and said, "You know what, darlin'? You're never going to change Judy."
"I know that by now."
"And you're not going to let her ruin your wedding day, are you?"
She flashed him an honest smile without undertones. "Absolutely not." She had come to accept Judy's insecurities as the root of her jealousy, and to pity her instead of getting angry. For there, on the other side of the dance floor, was her sister Renee dancing with Jim, and Renee counterbalanced all of Judy's jealousy with a sure and constant love that looked beyond superficiality. And there, too, was Momma…
Flirting with Alan Jackson!
She was sitting at a table surrounded by her friends, who were all making a big fuss over him and gathering enough fodder for a year's worth of card-party table talk.
"Look at Momma," Tess said.
Kenny looked. And chuckled. "I think she's half-shnockered up on champagne again."
"Six months ago I'd probably have gone over and apologized to Alan, but now I don't see any need to apologize for anything on Momma's behalf. She is what she is, and I love her."
She told Mary as much soon after that when they went to wish her good-bye and sneak away without farewells to the crowd in general. Mary said, "Now, you kids come home soon as you can."
"We will."
"And I'll keep an eye on Casey while she's here." Casey was staying in Wintergreen for a week before driving Kenny's new Mercedes back home to Nashville.
"Thanks, Momma," Tess said as they exchanged a kiss.
"Thanks, Momma," Kenny said, and made Mary all emotional, calling her that for the first time.
She grabbed his face in two hands and planted a kiss on his cheek. "You dear thing," she said. "I'll bet your own Momma is smiling down from heaven at this very moment. Now go on, take your wife and go."
They found Casey and told her they were slipping away. Kenny handed her the car keys, and said, "Be careful with my new Mercedes."
She gave him a smooch on the cheek, and said, "Be careful with my new mother." Then she added, " 'Bye, Mother Mac, have a nice honeymoon."
On their way to the airport—lo and behold—the limo got caught behind Conn Hendrickson's lumbering fuel oil truck.
Tess threw her head back against the leather seat and laughed.
"What's so funny?"
"Just like the day I came back home last April. I followed Conn's truck all the way around the town square. That was the day I met you."
"Mmm… not exactly," he added.
"Again," she amended.
"There ya got it."
Her private plane was waiting at Three Rivers Airport and flew them to Nashville, where her Z was waiting at another airport.
She gave her hubby a smirk, and asked, "How'd you like to drive?"
"Wow," he said drolly, accepting the keys, "this is really true love after all, then, isn't it?"
Some would have thought that a millionaire like Tess McPhail Kronek would choose to spend her wedding night in the fanciest bridal suite of the most exotic city in the world, but she'd spent enough time in hotels that home was her idea of luxury.
Besides, though Kenny's things had been moved in,
he
had never moved in. They'd decided for several reasons that he would not sleep there until their wedding night. One reason was Casey, whose respect he still valued, who lived down the hall and
should not
witness a bad example, no matter
what
he'd been wearing that morning in L.A. Another reason was the "rags" and their trade gossip, ever watchful of people of Tess's fame, just waiting to print a dirty headline. But most importantly there were Tess and Kenny themselves, who
chose
to have a wedding night complete with anticipation.
When they reached her house, Kenny said, "May I do the honors, Mrs. Kronek?"
And she answered, "I wouldn't have it any other way, Mr. Kronek."
When he carried her inside, the built-in sound system was playing softly—not country or rock, but Debussy's "Reverie." They paused to kiss just inside the entry before he set her down and they went exploring. Maria had left walnut chicken breasts in brandy sauce ready to warm in the oven along with a crisp French
boule
, and an artichoke-heart salad in the refrigerator. A table for two was set with candles and a single white rose floating in a glass compote. In the living room they found some wedding gifts piled up on the piano bench, and upstairs, the double doors to the master bedroom suite stood open, while inside, on a dresser, a bouquet of red roses filled the room with scent.
Kenny stopped in the doorway, holding Tess's hand.
He was filled with a sense of excess that seemed, momentarily, beyond accepting,
"I can't believe I'm going to live here with you."
"Sometimes I can't believe it either."
"That we're this lucky… that we have all this."
"And love, too. It does seem a bit much, doesn't it?"
But it was theirs to accept, and they stepped inside to begin their life together.
Later, when they'd consummated their unity in bed, and eaten Maria's delicious walnut chicken, and taken a swim in the pool, and opened the pile of wedding gifts, they were sitting on the floor among the wrappings with one small gift unopened.
"Momma said to open it last," Tess said.
"Well, go ahead," he said.
She began pulling at the Scotch tape. "What do you suppose it is?"
"I don't know." It was no bigger than a billfold. When the wrapping was off, she opened the end flap of a small cardboard box and tipped it till something slid out into her hand: a picture frame, and in it a photograph of Tess and Kenny at about ages two and three, eating watermelon on the back steps of Mary's house, their knees together, feet bare, toes hooked over the edge of the step, faces sunburned and dirty, as if they'd been hard at play just before the picture was taken.
Tess's reaction to it was as emotional as Mary's had been to the announcement of their wedding plans.
"Oh," she said, a hand going to her lips and tears stinging her eyes as she turned the picture his way. "Oh, look…"
He looked. And got a lump in his throat, too.
"Have you ever seen it before?" she asked.
"I don't think so."
She dusted the glass lovingly. "I wonder where it's been all these years."
"In your mother's bureau, I suppose, tucked away with the precious things that mothers keep."
"Do you suppose they planned this day back then, when they used to watch us play together?"
"Maybe they knew something we didn't."
They kissed, feeling special, and loved by more than each other, and magically fated to end up together.
"What time is it?" she said.
"Nearly eleven."
"Oh, I don't care. Let's go call Momma."
He beamed, and leapt to his feet and pulled her up after him. "Yeah, let's!"
They took the picture along, and went together to wake Mary and thank her, and to tell her how happy they were. And then they simply had to call Casey, too, just to say good night and that they loved her.
When they finally went upstairs, they took the picture along and set it on their bedside stand where it would be when they woke up in the morning.
And the morning after that, and the morning after that.
And often, when they would look at it, in the years ahead, one of them would say what Casey said that morning in the hotel, "It's like it was meant to be, isn't it?"
And the other one would smile.
For no other answer was necessary.
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Thursday, Sept. 7, 1950
Cyril Case was making the daily run from St. Cloud to Cass Lake, sitting up high on his box seat in engine number two-eighty-two. Beside him, his fireman, Merle Ficker, rode with one arm out the window, his striped denim cap pushed clean back so the bill pointed skyward. It was a beautiful morning, sunny, the heavens deep blue, farmers out in their fields taking in the last of their crops, most harvesting with tractors, though down around Sauk Center they'd seen one working with a team. They'd passed a country school a couple miles back where the kids, out for recess, waved from the playground, and their teacher—a slim young thing in a yellow dress—had stopped gathering wildflowers, shaded her eyes with an arm and fanned her handful of black-eyed Susans over her head as she watched them pass. It was days like this that made driving a train the best job in the world: green woods, gold fields and the smell of fresh cut alfalfa blowing straight through the cab. And beneath the men the
shuug-a-shuug-a
of the steam engine hauling smoothly down the tracks.
Cy and Merle were having another one of their friendly disagreements about politics.
"Well, sure," Merle was saying, "I voted for Truman, but I didn't think he'd send our boys to Korea."
"What else you gonna do?" Cy replied. "Those Communists go in and start bombing Seoul. Can't let 'em get by with that, can we?"
"Well, maybe not, but you ain't got a nineteen-year-old son and I do. Now Truman goes and extends the draft till next year. Hell, I don't want Rodney to get called up. I just don't like how things are going." Merle pointed. "Whis-tlepost up ahead."
"I see it. And don't worry, MacArthur'll probably clean 'em up before Rodney gets any draft notice."
Up ahead, on the right, the arm of the white marker shone clear against the pure blue sky. Cy reached up and pulled the rope above his left shoulder. The steam whistle battered their ears in a long wail: two longs, a short, and a long—the warning for a public crossing.
The whistlepost flashed past and the long wail ended, leaving them in comparative quiet.
"So," Cy continued, "I suppose your boy's gonna go to work for the railroad if he doesn't get…" He stiffened and stared up the track. "Seet Jesus, he ain't gonna make it."
A car had turned off of Highway 71 and came shooting from the left, trailing a dust cloud, trying to beat the train to the crossing.
For one heartbeat the men stared, then Cy shouted, "Car on the crossing! Plug it!"