Chapter 7

Still Tara’s turn:

At the pavilion, I waved my arms. Okay, okay ... everybody seems to know now. Let me shove this guy out front. I gave Aaron a push. “Tell ‘em.”

“Everybody, it seems that Tara and I are married. The formal ceremony will be on the nineteenth of Adar, which is Tuesday, the sixth of March, at noon, right here. I will kidnap a rabbi. I trust that somebody will be able to chase down some music. Then it will be done.”

Cheers. People cheered.

“Good enough?” he asked me.

“Perfect. Best month. Best day. You pay attention.”

“Somebody sort of showed me,” he said.

“You were taking too long to arrive at the proper conclusion, Aaron. Had to.”

“I’m glad. But I gotta do my report this morning. Conference call.”

“You’re not gonna change your mind, are you?”

He smiled at me. “Not a chance.”

I watched him walk away. He’s right. Not a chance.

Cindy came up to me. “Gee, girl. I didn’t mean to go home and toss ‘im over your shoulder.”

“Somebody had to attack somebody in that equation,” I said, then softly, “That’s only the second time I’ve ever been with a male, and heaven knows, that first one didn’t count.”

“Good for you, Tara...”

“Your little excursion was just what I needed. I need a Matron of Honor. You up for the challenge?”

“You betcha.”

“And I saw the video of Bert ‘n’ Kara’s wedding. Ours will be just about that formal.”

“Got it. As your matron of honor, I will attend to that,” she said. “But you gotta know, everybody’s gonna want a piece of this.”

“I hope so,” I said. “My biggest fear was that I’d walk in this morning and everybody’d think I was a slut or something...”

“For marrying Aaron? You got a catch there. And most of us are NOT gonna say anything about you doing what we did. Like I said last night, Kara and Susan, and may God strike me dead, MOM waited until the wedding was over ... The rest of us? Just the way YOU did it.”

“Cindy, am I stinkin’ NUTS? I’m supposed to be ‘level-headed, sane Tara’...”

“Sister, go be level-headed and sane all you want. I was, still am, except when it comes to HIM. With HIM I get to be flighty and crazy and obsessed and over the edge, and I love it.”

“Good point. I guess it’s better than being fanatic over football, anyway.” Football? This is Auburn University and football passes up religion, no, it IS religion for a lot of people.

“Yeah,” she answered. “At least until football season.” She sighed dramatically. “Well, I have Munchkins to manage.”

“See you later.”

Her eyebrow arched with a giggle. “If you can get Derek out of the way, I may not see you for weeks...”

“You have a terrible beastly streak, girl,” I laughed.

I have my day laid out pretty well, too. I start off in the 3Sigma Engineering office where Mizz Donna and I put together a set of field drawings for a project. Yes, we’re out of the Stone Age here, it’s easy to just burn the package onto a DVD, and of course we’ve DONE that. However, there’s actual construction, where people are going to dig holes and pour concrete (I know – I’ve visited a couple of sites – 3Sigma makes SURE I’m educated) and erect steel and put in all manner of interesting devices to become part of the electrical power infrastructure, and that means that they want a real paper drawing lying on a table to reference.

So, paper...

And very pregnant Mizz Donna is carrying her Bill’s son, so you can bet I’m the one who wrestles the big rolls of paper for our printer.

“Where’s Elise today?” I ask.

“Mimi’s starting ‘em off at Susan’s house,” Donna said. “That’s a surprise, you know...”

“Surprise?”

“Yeah, I kinda figured that Susan’s gonna turn up preggo any day now. And Mimi.”

“You think?”

She smiled. “Mimi’s my redemption story...”

“Not Cindy?”

Donna’s eyes sparkle when she’s happy, a trait that gets amplified with Little Miss ‘Get It In Gear‘. “Cindy? Cindy didn’t need redeeming. I taught her the wrong way to be about everything and she extrapolated the right way all on her own. No, Mimi got pushed off the tracks. Now she and Tommy are on track and they have ‘solid family’ written all over them.”

She eyed me. “So, Miss I’m Marrying the Major. What’s YOUR plan?”

I giggled. “You’re supposed to have a PLAN?”

“And you’ve got one. You’re smiling. I met you when you DIDN’T have a plan. Different Tara, entirely.”

“Am I that transparent?” I questioned.

“Baby, you weren’t trying to hide it. It showed. So now you’re happy. You’ve got some plan in mind...”

“Mizz Donna...”

“Just ‘Donna’, okay?”

“Donna, I know you had your ‘little girl’ daydreams.”

“I did. Fairy tale stuff, I guess...”

“I did, too. Since I was forced into adulthood, I’ve kind of changed those dreams, but I definitely saw a husband and a house and a couple of kids...”

“Yeah ... I don’t think I brought that part into my first run at adulthood. The other version, though, I hit bottom pretty hard. Now, though, hubby. One point nine kids. All I need is a white picket fence...”

“Which Mister Bill would have up by the weekend if you told ‘im.”

“I know he would, baby. I have sense enough now not to ask for stupid stuff, though.”

“I really think that Aaron’s like that,” I said. “He really jumped in with Derek. Didn’t have to, not at all. I didn’t know for a long time if he was hanging around with me to get to Derek or hanging around with Derek to get to me.”

“Your conclusion?”

“Little bit of both. He lost a little brother when he was a kid. Sort of made Derek fill an empty spot. Me? I think he LIKES me...”

“Dude’s gonna marry you. Liking you’s a big plus.” She patted the curve of her belly. “What about kids between you and him?”

“Game-stopper, he says.”

Her face fell. “No kids?”

“Nope. Told me that if a prospective wife didn’t want kids, then she lost her ‘prospective’ status.”

“So that’s part of the plan, then?”

“Yep. Pretty far down the road, but definitely part of the plan.”

Just then the thought occurred to me – just like talking with Cindy caused me to coalesce a bunch of thoughts, talking with Donna was doing the same thing.

“What’s Derek say?”

“Derek and I have talked about Aaron more than once. Derek says he’s big brother and dad, together, and this morning he said it was about time that I came to a realization of where Aaron should be in our lives.”

“Now here’s a big one, baby,” Donna said. “What about his military career? He gets orders to go somewhere else...”

“Book of Ruth,” I said. “But Ruth said, Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

Donna gazed at me. “You got it BAD, baby...”

“I wanna stay here, Donna. This place is the place of my rebirth. This is where I got wings. But if I’m to be a proper wife, Aaron is where I’m supposed to be.”

She smiled. “I’ll pray for you two. That goes without saying. Might stop by the Desai place and get Grandma Desai to have a talk with Shiva, too.”

“Covering all the bases, ain’t we?” I laughed.

“I enjoy seeing that sweet lady smile when she thinks of us,” she said. “She really does consider us her family.”

“The whole huge bunch is a family,” I observed.

Mid-morning, my phone clicked, announcing an incoming text. I looked. Cindy.

“If you consent, we’re taking the Munchkins to a movie tonight. Derek’s included.”

I replied, “Sure.”

Return. “Use your time to good purpose.”

Catty little thing. However, she does have a reputation for accuracy. Me and a certain major have some further exploration to do.

Donna read my face. “Something good?”

I flushed. “Yeah. Good-good. Your daughter’s taking the Munchkins to a movie this evening.”

“Oh, you poor, poor thing ... All that time...”

“If I don’t come in tomorrow morning, send out a search party.”

“If you’re not in here tomorrow morning, you may not want to be found,” Donna smiled.

“You got that right.”

Alan’s turn:

Tuesday afternoon was the aviation meeting. That’s me, Wally, Don Matzke from Mid-South Charters. Others sometime show up. This time it’s Cindy.

When we built the big hangar for the Pilatus (and other planes) we stuck a bit of office complexes in one corner of the big building. There’s a conference room, quite nicely appointed. Neat thing is that it’s at the airfield, so you get a bit of that ‘aviation’ bleed-over.

“Okay, let’s look at numbers,” I said. Don and Wally sighed outwardly. I kept mine to myself. Numbers are a necessity, though.

Wally’s are all about expenditures – the costs of maintaining the airfield and the hangars, the fixed and running costs of THREE airplanes now – the Cessna 402, the Cessna 150, still the community trainer, and the Pilatus.

There’s another on the books, but not yet delivered – the Sling 4 that is going to actually be the airplane for Terri and Jerry. Yes, it’s on order, and yes, when they get married (Terri says ‘when’, not ‘if’) then it’s theirs.

The air charter business, well, it’s holding its own. Actually, when we invoice for Cindy’s excursion yesterday, things will take a positive turn. I said so.

“Good week all around,” Don said. “Reason I had to call on Cindy was that we booked ourselves solid. NBA and NCAA basketball kinda spreads things out for that excursion bunch, too.”