God Bless the Broken Road
God Bless the Broken Road
by DebC
Summary: The cluster of trees surrounding the little clearing gave the impression of intimacy, despite the people who were gathered in the garden, all dressed in their finest clothes.
June 2006
The cluster of trees surrounding the little clearing gave the impression of intimacy, despite the people who were gathered in the garden, all dressed in their finest clothes.
None shone so brightly as the bride, who wore a dress of white lace with an empress waist to minimize the growing bulge in her belly. Not that there was a reason to hide it; that incessant swell was a thing great joy for the extended family Noah Birch suddenly found himself marrying into.
As he stood there with Shelly’s hands clasped between his own, looking deeply into her eyes, he but couldn’t help think of the first time he proposed to her, here in this garden. She’d been crying when he found her, eyes red and swollen, cheeks stained, body shaking with an emotion too great to bear. He’d been upset too, and he blurted it out– “Shelly, I want you to marry me,” just like that, with little finesse or forethought. She’d cried all that much harder and told him that she couldn’t marry him, even if she’d wanted to. She was already married and her husband — who had just come for her — would never just let her go.
That had been the beginning of a long road for them.
The hardest was getting the divorce and getting Shelly through it. Although Noah was almost one hundred percent certain that Shelly had been coerced into marrying Mark Garrison, she had also convinced herself that she loved him. Convincing her that it was okay to let go, to leave him, had been difficult. A lesser man might have walked away the night she sat at the kitchen table crying over the divorce papers she held in her hands. A lesser man might have seen the tear stains on the paper and the slight smudges over her ‘husband’s’ name and been jealous.
But there are depths in a woman’s heart … ones which held many emotions and secrets.
Birch knew that Shelly loved him and nothing, not even the tears she’d shed over finally ridding herself of that pathetic excuse for a human being of a husband, could ever change how he felt about her.
After the divorce became final, Birch set about to woo her properly. Dating… dinner, dancing… picnics, horse riding… but also simply spending time with her whenever he could. Whenever he wasn’t working, he was with her. So much so that Seth joked about Birch moving into the country house and saving himself the commute.
But it wasn’t until after Shelly became the surrogate to her twin nephews that they made the decision to cohabitate, and it was Shelly moving into his apartment in Gotham rather than him moving to the country. Logically, she’d be closer to the hospital, which was good for the babies. But it was also good for them. It brought them closer to this moment on this glorious day.
His little sister, Ruthie, had helped Shelly move into the apartment.
Since the moment the two of them met, Shelly and Ruth had been close friends, and even before Birch proposed for the second (and final time), Ruth called Shelly a sister.
“You take care of my sister, you hear?” she’d said when she left after spending the weekend unpacking clothes and Shelly’s favorite cookbooks. She made it sound like a warning — take care of her or I’ll come back and kick your ass all the way to Philly — but he needed no such warning. He’d take care of her for as long as she’d let him.
“Loud and clear, Baby Ruthie,” he answered, calling his sister by the only nickname she’d ever accepted and kissed her cheek like a dutiful big brother.
Living together had been … a challenge at first.
It wasn’t so much that he was unused to living with a woman — not after being reared the only boy among four girls — rather that Shelly had been so programmed (first by her father and then by her husband) to do all the housework that she had a hard time understanding that she didn’t need to. That he would help her, gladly.
He couldn’t forget the first time he came home to find her all but passed out on the couch.
“Shelly!” he’d cried out, rushing to her side. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Are the babies –?” This last was choked off because even though the twins she carried were not hers, nor his, he couldn’t help but love them and love her all the more for helping to bring them into the world.
“Noah?” she said, weariness sounding in her soft voice. “Nothing’s wrong. I was just…” she yawned. “… resting. Get so tired these days.”
Of course she did, and he knew it, but once he was assured that she wasn’t in harm’s way, he looked around and saw everything that she had done in his absence that day. The house was… immaculate …and the smell of stew emanated from the kitchen. No doubt if he went in there, he’d find a crock pot full of Mrs. Meyer’s finest ‘potluck stew’ and probably a pan of cornbread as well.
“Sweet heaven, Shelly, you don’t have to do everything, you know? ” he whispered, moving onto the couch next to her and wrapping his arms around her tightly. “That’s what I’m here for — to help you.”
She snuggled into his arms and he could feel her body shudder involuntarily. He didn’t ask why; she always reacted whenever her mind compared her life now to what it had been like with Mark. He knew that Mark would never have offered to help with the house work, even if she had been pregnant. His arms tightened around her, reassuring them both. “I’m here for you, always,” he whispered.
After that, she seemed to accept it more readily, letting some of the clean up go until after he returned home from work and not complaining when he didn’t put the broom or dustpan back where she thought it ought to go. But dinner was always waiting for him when he got there and she always did the dishes herself, usually by hand even with a dishwasher on hand.
Not that he minded this one thing.
Secretly, he loved seeing her standing in front of the sink with her arms buried up to the elbows in white soap bubbles. She wore an apron over her shirt, like a throw back to another era, and sometimes he’d walk up behind her and hug her, holding her while she worked. He would sometimes feel the babies as they pressed against her small frame, safe and warm.
“I love you,” he’d whisper in moments like those and kiss her cheek before reaching for the dish towel.
Before she was too far along to travel, he took her to meet the rest of his family. His sisters had always been his life, before her that is. He wanted them all to know the woman that he loved. Ruthie already did, already loved her as much as he did. They talked on the phone all the time, and emailed often. Ruthie bought gifts for the babies. “I know they’re not yours,” she said when Shelly told her that it wasn’t necessary, “but I can’t seem to help it,” she’d explained.
But not even Ruthie’s presence could ease Shelly’s nerves about meeting the rest of his family, though.
“What if they don’t like me?” she asked as they were pulling into the driveway at Rachel’s house (by far the biggest and therefore better equipped for holding family get-togethers than anyone else’s in the family).
“Like you? Darlin’, they’re gonna love you?” he assured her.
“You can’t know that, Noah. I’m afraid I… well, what if I don’t fit in? What if they hate me?”
He unbuckled his seat belt and twisted around so he could take both her hands in his own. “They won’t hate you. If there was ever any doubt of that, look at Ruthie. She’s all but adopted you already!” he said with a grin and a twinkle in his eyes.
“Yes, but she’s a goof!” Shelly answered, laughing slightly.
“And that goof is already inside, telling her other sisters what a great gal I’ve gone and snagged for myself,” he told her.
“In other words, don’t worry about it?”
“Not a bit,” he answered and kissed her gently on the nose.
Oh, he’d been right, of course, they had loved her almost immediately. Although there had been a bit of awkwardness when Pastor Dave (Sarah’s husband, a Methodist minister) had been introduced and assumed that she was pregnant with Noah’s babies. It passed once Ruthie — in gushingly proud tones — explained that Shelly was helping her brother and sister-in-law have children.
“Shelly’s sister-in-law almost died of cancer a couple of years ago,” Ruthie told them, explaining that the cancer left Courtney unable to bear her own children. “Our dear Shelly offered to be a surrogate mother, so her sweet little nephews could be born.”
Shelly blushed and Noah had laughed.
“How do you know they’re going to be sweet, Ruthie?” he asked. “They could be hell-raisers, the both of them.”
Ruthie stuck her tongue out at him while everyone else proclaimed Shelly ‘the sweetest dear ever’ and what she was doing ‘the nicest thing they’d ever heard.’
From that moment forward, they’d all been as family. Shelly swapped recipes with Rachel and Mary, talked to Sarah (the pastor’s wife) about faith and love, and did everything else with Ruthie.
It was Sarah who clued him in to the fact that Shelly had truly begun to accept that he wasn’t going to hurt her the way Mark had.
“She’d marry you if you asked, Noah,” Sarah told him while sitting in her living room, pouring them both steaming cups of coffee. When she’d called him ‘to chat,’ he hadn’t dreamed it would be this type of chat. “And when you do, you should give her Mom’s ring.”
Their mother’s engagement ring. Rachel had it, had kept it safe after their mother died. He’d long wanted to give it to Shelly, but had wondered how his sisters would react to giving away this symbol of their parents’ love.
“Are you sure? What do the sisters say?” he asked, incredulous.
“Oh, we all agree, brother,” Sarah said, patting his hand. “That girl has your heart, but she deserves all of you. More importantly, she wants it, Noah. You can see it in her eyes when she talks about the future.”
Blind he wasn’t; he’d seen it too, but had been hesitant to push her into too much change. So much had happened to her already, so much bad and so much good. They were making a life now, living together, and he loved her with all his heart. He hadn’t wanted to push too far, too soon.
All of a sudden, it hadn’t been ‘too soon’ anymore.
So he took his mother ring and paid a fortune he didn’t really have to have it cleaned and resized to fit Shelly’s finger.
He gave it to her after a carriage ride in the park, under the moonlight and starlight, asking her in whispering tones to be his wife.
“You asked me that once before,” she reminded him pointedly.
“You weren’t ready to hear it then,” he admitted.
“No,” she agreed, “but I still needed to hear it. You said it and it upset me all the worse, but it was there in the back of my mind the whole time. When Grace told me I could be strong and I could leave Mark… I knew that I could, because I had you and our life to look forward to and going back to Mark would ruin that.”
She paused, kissed him thoroughly and then said. “I’m ready to hear it now, Noah. Say it again, just like you did that day.”
“Shelly,” he said dutifully. “I want you to be my wife.”
“Okay,” she answered. “I will.”
And now here they stood, surrounded by their family and friends in this simple country garden. It wasn’t a big, fancy wedding, but his mother’s rings were on her fingers and Pastor Dave had just proclaimed them man and wife.
“You may kiss the bride,” he heard Dave say over the loud beating of his heart.
So he did, gently tilting her face to his, smiling down at her as their lips met in the first kiss of the rest of their lives.
