Chapter 36
Smiles Glover kept his eyes on his best friend. Wilder shone like the brightest rainbow in a sky that still harbored gray clouds but promised a glorious day of sunshine to follow, and he knew his mother had been right.
He often joked with her that she was right only eight times out of ten, and he really wanted to prove this was one of the two times he was correct.
He looked over to her and found tears trickling down her cheeks, both hands pressed against her heart. He knew she wanted him to get married too, and she was excited about his new girlfriend.
One look to Wilder and Savannah—Aunt Willa and Uncle Judge both joining them at the altar—told Smiles had he brought Canessa, he would have outshone Wilder, and that would have been catastrophic.
Smiles didn’t mean to outshine anyone, and his momma had warned him that his charisma and big, bright personality would have to be contained at some times in his life.
At other times, she’d told him. You’ll be able to let it loose.
He’d first heard her tell him that when he was only ten years old—and again last week when he’d called to ask if he could bring his girlfriend to Wilder’s wedding.
His momma hadn’t said no instantly, to her credit.
But after only a single moment’s hesitation, she’d said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Stetson. ”
His heart had settled somewhere in his stomach and stayed there, because he didn’t know how to explain to Canessa the many, varied, and complicated family dynamics of the Glovers. He wasn’t even sure such a thing could be explained.
Secondly, his momma had used his real name, and that told him all he needed to know.
What he saw now was that today belonged to Wilder and Wilder alone, and yes, him bringing a girlfriend would have shifted all the focus to him.
Number one, it would be a road trip—and that indicated something very serious for the Glover family, even if Smiles himself didn’t think it was that big of a deal.
Smiles hadn’t handled the situation that well, and Canessa’s feelings had gotten hurt. But she’d stayed in Amarillo while he’d made the trip home for the weekend and the wedding.
The truth was, Smiles would have his pomp and ceremony soon enough, as he would be graduating with a DVM in only another six weeks.
He wasn’t sure what would happen with him and Canessa at that time anyway, as he planned to move back to Shiloh Ridge and finally step into the role that had been reserved for him for the past eight years.
Canessa was a first-year veterinary student and had three more to go after this. Smiles knew by experience that she couldn’t finish her degree here in Three Rivers. And there was no way someone could commute that far for that long, so they’d probably break up anyway.
While Momma hadn’t said that, she had told Smiles their relationship was fairly new and not super established, and therefore he probably shouldn’t bring her to the wedding.
Smiles did like her, and he felt time ticking away toward some unknown zero where a bomb might go off and everything in his life would shatter. He wasn’t sure why he felt like that, only that he did.
Part of him, he supposed, had assumed he would be married before he graduated from veterinary school and subsequently returned to his homey, rural ranch
After all, who was he going to meet here?
Everyone in Three Rivers knew him and he knew them, despite being gone, and he’d never had much luck finding someone he wanted to spend more than a few months with here in Three Rivers.
So while he was graduating with a medical degree, with certifications in ranch animal care and small-farm animal expertise, the fact was, Smiles dealt with feelings of massive failure on a daily basis.
“They are so cute together,” Clover said at his side, and Smiles threw a smile in Rock’s wife’s direction.
For a while there, Smiles had entertained daily phone calls from Rock as he worried over whether Momma and Daddy would ever accept Clover into their family, or if she’d ever fit in on the ranch. He’d once told Smiles, She’s not exactly ranch-wife material, but blast it, I love her.
Smiles had told him to follow his heart and that if he loved Clover, they would make things work, whether that meant he didn’t live on the ranch and just came up to work every day, or something else.
They’d moved into Uncle Cactus’s house out on the Edge, and that suited them perfectly, because Clover loved the outdoors and hiking, and she was able to do those things a little farther from the epicenter of the ranch without too many scrutinizing eyes.
Of course, she did it while wearing pink, her hair in full curls, and plenty of makeup—something Smiles and Rock definitely weren’t used to with their own momma and aunts—but that didn’t make Clover a bad person, or a bad wife.
She loved fiercely and deeply and loyally, but her presence only reminded Smiles how isolated he’d become from his own family, and how Rock had achieved so many things that Smiles had not.
So again, while he had a degree, his brother had a wife and a baby on the way, and Smiles honestly wasn’t sure which was the greater accomplishment.
“Smiles,” Rock said under his breath.
He looked over to his dark brother, who wore a fierce look that said, get going.
In that moment, Smiles looked around and realized all the other cousins were moving to the end of the aisles the way they’d rehearsed—but only with Savannah.
Wilder’s eyes met Smiles’s, plenty of surprise in the dark depths.
“What’s going on here?” he asked, and Smiles noted that he looked to him for the answer. Not Rock, not Gun, not his own sister or his parents, but Smiles. His daddy had told him he was a natural-born leader, and he’d better figure out how to lead people to the right and good things.
A hint of bitterness cut through Smiles, because he’d never asked to be a leader in the Glover family, and he’d never asked to shine the brightest. Truth be told, his time away from the ranch for the past eight years had been very freeing, because he didn’t have anyone looking at him to see what he would say or do.
He didn’t have to lead, and he got to be himself without considering what his last name meant and who might be watching.
“Just a little musical number, brother,” Smiles said, his trademark grin sitting widely on his face.
He stepped next to Wilder and turned to face the crowd, while all the other male cousins—up to Ollie at age forty and down to Mister and Libby’s youngest, Brantley, at age twelve—joined Wilder and Savannah at the altar.
Jewel—Rory and Oliver’s oldest daughter—stood down at the end of the wide aisle Savannah had walked down with her daughters and three llamas.
In moments like these, Smiles loved being from a small town, and he loved his family, and he loved watching a wedding with llamas in it. He wondered if anyone anywhere else in the world did things like this, and he sure hoped so, because they were good, and they fed a man’s soul.
“A musical number?” Wilder asked right out loud. “Savvy, what is going on?”
“Just relax and enjoy it,” she said.
Jewel raised both hands like a classical conductor about to lead the world’s greatest choir. Music piped through the space. Smiles, a natural tenor, took a deep breath to sing his part.
Wilder loved Garth Brooks, and the man had plenty of love songs.
This one Savannah had chosen wasn’t exactly a love song, because it spoke of a couple that didn’t end up together, but he hung on to the memory of her through a single dance they’d shared.
Wilder loved it, and Savannah knew that, and she’d arranged for all of his male cousins to sing it.
Our lives
Are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I’d have had to miss
The dance.
Halfway through the song, Gal and Sequoia played their part perfectly, with Gal grabbing onto Wilder’s hand and Sequoia towing Savannah out in front of them.
“Dance, Momma,” Gal said, and since she’d choreographed this and knew what was coming, she took Wilder by both hands.
“Will you dance with me, cowboy?”
No man in his right mind would say no to a woman wearing a dress like that at his own wedding. And Wilder wasn’t going to be the first. He easily opened his arms and took Savannah into them.
Everyone, including Smiles, could see how blissfully in love the two of them were. His heart ached, because he wanted something like that with someone as special as Savannah, and he had yet to find it.
On the last stanza, the Glover women came out of the crowd to dance with their husbands, or brothers, or cousins.
Smiles had asked Hailey to dance with him.
When he had been praying about it, God had let him know that it would mean a great deal to her.
When he’d texted her, she had called crying and said absolutely she would, and thanked him profusely for thinking of her and not forgetting that she was part of the family too.
Smiles hated that she felt like that at all, and she’d been going through a very rough time in the last year.
So he received her into his arms easily and held her close for just a few bars. When the song ended, he said, “Thank you for dancing with me, so I didn’t have to be alone.”
She nodded and swiped at her eyes quickly, and when Smiles looked up, he found more than one person watching them. He’d gotten used to all the eyes, but he knew others didn’t carry it as well as he did.
The audience started to clap, and Smiles joined in with them, hurrying back to his seat beside his parents. Among other tall, broad-shouldered men, Smiles didn’t stand out so much, and relief coursed through him when everyone sat down once more.
He had other single cowboys here at the wedding who he could hang out with after the ceremony, including Trap and Colt and Tyson, and he let his heartstrings sing as Judge pronounced Wilder and Savannah man and wife.
He whooped and threw his cowboy hat in the air with everyone else as Wilder bent her back and kissed her.
He could be happy for his cousin, even though Wilder had everything Smiles wanted, because he’d kept the spotlight where it belonged—and that was on Wilder.
As Wilder and Savannah lifted their hands in wedded bliss, and the Glovers shattered the sky with applause, Smiles stood still and thanked God for personal revelation and a very, very good mother.