Our Christmas Wedding:
A Romantic Christmas Story
By Rusty Fischer, author of A Town Called Snowflake
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Our Christmas Wedding
Rusty Fischer
Copyright 2012 by Rusty Fischer
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This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Cover credit: © detailblick – Fotolia
*This story was previously released under the title “Something Borrowed, Something Snowflake.”
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Author’s Note:
The following is a FREE short story edited by the author himself. If you see any glaring mistakes, I apologize and hope you don’t take it out on my poor characters, who had nothing to do with their author’s bad grammar! Happy reading… and happy holidays!
Enjoy!
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Our Christmas Wedding:
A Romantic Christmas Story
“Are you sure about this?” he asks as we stand from the front porch swing the minute we see my mother’s emerald green sedan careen into the Snowflake Senior Center parking lot.
Mom’s face is almost as red as her flaming ginger hair, making me whimper, “At the moment, not so much.”
He chuckles and squeezes my hand tighter.
“Are you two out of your mind?” Mom bellows, stomping up the sidewalk in her chunky heels. “We’ve been planning this for six months and, all of a sudden, you decided to throw a shotgun wedding, at the senior center, on… Christmas Eve?”
“Mrs. Madigan,” Chuck says softly, evenly, in that quiet voice of his. “If you’ll just let us explain, you know, like we tried to do on the phone before you hung up on us—”
Mom rolls her big brown eyes and says, dramatically, “Would you expect anything less from a distraught future mother-in-law?”
“Distraught?” I sigh, easing Mom down into the porch swing as she seems to be having some kind of cardiac incident right here in front of the Snowflake Senior Center.
“Well, what would you call it, Haley, when your daughter calls you at noon on her wedding day?!?!”
“Okay, okay, I get it Mom, sure, but… why didn’t you tell us Chuck’s grandfather was so ill?”
Mom avoids our eyes, bites her ruby-painted lips and says, “I didn’t want to upset you guys. Besides, his nurse was hoping he’d be able to travel by spring…”
Her voice trails off, giving proof to her little white lie.
Chuck sits down next to her and, amazingly, grabs her hand.
“It’s okay, Mrs. Madigan. I understand.”
“You do?” she asks, looking up into Chuck’s soulful green eyes guiltily.
“It’s not easy to deal with, when a family member gets so sick; so fast. And you’re here every day, dealing with him, it’s hard to see something as it progresses like that. But I haven’t seen him since Valentine’s Day, and his decline is… pretty obvious.”
“Mom,” I cut in, pacing nervously in front of her as the old guy in the motorized wheelchair on the sun porch eyes me suspiciously. “We just don’t think Chuck’s grandpa is going to be able to fly down to Miami and be in the wedding this June.”
“But I just kept hoping he’d get better, you guys,” Mom says, still avoiding my eyes. “I guess I just wanted the perfect wedding for you two, not some rushed affair like… like… your father and I had, Haley.”
“I know, Mom,” I sigh, sliding down next to her on the porch swing. “But, we just feel it wouldn’t be right for Chuck to get married without Grandpa Logan in attendance.”
Mom nods, resolutely, clutching a tissue that’s seen better days.
“But… wouldn’t you two rather wait until, say, New Year’s Eve? That would give us a whole other week to prepare something nice, something… special?”
I give a secret wink to Chuck and say, “Mom, really, it just feels… right… to do it today, you know?”
She shakes her head.
“It’s taking every ounce of willpower I have in my body to not have Sheriff Buster lock you up for temporary insanity, but I have to trust you two and, after all, it is your wedding…”
She sounds rather disappointed about that fact; not that I can blame her.
Ever since Chuck proposed on Valentine’s Day, it’s been nonstop wedding planning.
With Chuck busy trying to get his graphics design company off the ground in the crowded Miami market, it’s been mostly Mom and I; texting, emailing, phone calls late into the night, Facebook recommendations, Twitter links, the works.
I often joke that Mom and I should go into the wedding planning business.
For the record, she always takes that joke way too seriously!
And now, in an instant, 10 months of planning have gone straight down the tubes.
“But all those deposits,” she says, shaking her head.
Chuck stands, smiles his crooked smile and says, “Sure, we’ll lose some money, Mrs. Madigan, but it’s already gone and paid for. Just think of the money we’ll be saving by not having to pay the balance.”
“But the flowers,” Mom groans, literally putting her open palm to her forehead as if she’s a future mother-in-law straight out of central casting. “The DJ, that oceanfront hotel, the cruise to the Bahamas, you’ll lose thousands on the deposits alone.”
“Better to lose thousands now than pay tens of thousands later, right Mrs. M?”
She looks at me as if to imply that my future husband is crazy (and, sometimes, I have to wonder myself). “If you say so, Chuck.”
She offers him her hand so that he can hoist Mom’s considerable, if firm, girth out of the claustrophobic porch swing.
She stands dramatically, a sight to behold in her navy Capri pants and matching sailor’s top with white flats, sighs and says, “Well, if we’re doing this, and it’s clear we are, I’m going to have to make peace with it.”
With that pronouncement, she closes her eyes and moves her lips, reciting some New Age mantra she no doubt read about in one of her women’s magazines.
Chuck and I exchange amused, maybe bemused is the better word for it, glances until her eyes pop open, she smiles, inserts a breath mint from a little tin in her pocket and says, “Let’s begin, shall we?”
“Where should we start?” Chuck asks uncertainly, running a long, pale finger through his curly blond hair.
“With the guest of honor, of course!” she announces.
When we look back at her uncertainly, she sighs, rolls her eyes, takes each of us by one arm and leads us into the entrance of the Snowflake Senior Center. “Grandpa Logan, of course!”
Grandpa Logan’s room is down a quiet hall.
Well, come to think of it, the halls are all pretty quiet at the Snowflake Senior Center.
The walls are lined with plaid wallpaper and pictures of ducks, and horses, and hunters.
It looks more like a golf course clubhouse than a nursing home but then, I guess, that’s the point.
Mom knows the way to his room; and why not?
Other than the nursing staff at the Senior Center, she’s been his primary caregiver ever since he moved in.
Sure, Chuck and I flew back from Miami when he had his stroke two years ago, but… what could we do in one week that Mom hasn’t done since?
She knocks on the door with a familiar “1, 2, 3” rap before letting herself in.
Grandpa Logan looks up from his crossword and beams the same crooked smile I see on Chuck’s face when I wake up every morning.
> “Gloria,” he says, speech only slightly slurred after years of speech therapy. “How nice to see you again.”
He starts to rise, clutching large, thin, veiny hands to the sides of his walker but Mom moves surprisingly quickly to his side and says, “Nonsense, Cliff; you sit right there. I want you to be sitting when you hear the news these kids are about to spring on you.”
Grandpa Logan looks from me to Chuck and says, “Kids? What’s Gloria going on about? You know I’m an old man and can’t take much more mystery in my life.”
Here he gives Mom a spry wink that belies his frail frame and gray, almost yellowish skin.
“Well, Grandpa,” Chuck says, getting that little tickle in his throat like he does when he’s nervous. “Haley and I, that is, well… we’re getting married.”
Grandpa Logan smiles, chuckles and says, “I’m not that old, kids. I do remember something about you two being engaged some while back, and of course I have your invitation around here somewhere…”
“No, Grandpa,” Chuck says, more quietly, leaning down until he’s face to face with the man who raised him after his parents were lost in that terrible car crash when he was just five years old. “Today; we’re getting married… today.”