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They would have been married right away. Nick didn’t want to wait and neither did Lissa, but Zach and Jaimie’s wedding was scheduled for May.
They scheduled theirs for June.
Two weddings, back-to-back.
Perfect, everyone said.
Each time, the bride was beautiful. Each time, the groom was handsome.
And El Sueño was, each time, at her brilliant best, the meadows carpeted with delicate lavender winecups when Jaimie and Zach took their vows, with crimson firewheels by the time Lissa and Nick took theirs.
Each wedding was exactly as the bride and groom had wanted it. Small, by Texas standards, with only family and friends in attendance.
Everyone was now looking forward to Fourth of July weekend at El Sueño. All the Wildes, including the general, would be home for the festivities.
He had come home, of course, in May for Jaimie’s wedding and then in June for Lissa’s, but only for a short time. He’d written, however, to say that he would also be home for the Fourth of July celebration, and that this time, he would stay a little longer.
And that he would be bringing a surprise.
“Some surprise,” the Wilde sisters said among themselves.
He’d bring the same gift certificates he always gave his children and now his daughters-in-law and sons-in-law and grandbabies, elegant gift cards from all the best shops in Dallas, and they’d all say “thank you” even though they’d have traded all those certificates for just one thing that had meaning, that would be a part of the general himself.
The Wildes, the Santinis, the Castelianoses, and old friends His Royal Highness Sheikh Khan and his wife, Laurel, arrived two days before the Fourth.
There was lots of laughter, lots of fun. The men played touch football; the women floated in the pool. Babies crawled on the lawn and were taken for rides on the backs of the most docile of the horses.
Emily and Caleb’s wife, Sage, oversaw the decorations inside the house; Jaimie and Jake’s Addison did the same for the fireworks displays; Lissa and Jennie, Travis’s wife, supervised the making and baking of endless goodies for the big party that would take place on the Fourth itself.
The day dawned bright, clear and, wonder of wonders, not too hot.
Jake, Caleb and Travis had arranged for a band. Two bands, really: a mariachi band and the same versatile six-piece group that had played at all the Wilde weddings. Virtually the entire citizenry of Wilde’s Crossing had been invited; umbrella tables dotted the lawn.
A line of grills was fired up; big tables groaned under the weight of four kinds of chili, steaks, ribs, chicken, and something not native to Texas but delicious all the same: lobster tails.
There was only one problem.
The hours sped by and still the general had not shown up.
“He’s not coming,” Lissa told Emily and Jaimie.
“Frankly, who gives a damn?” Emily said, but it wasn’t true.
For years, for decades, the Wilde offspring had waited for their father to turn up for birthdays, for Christmases, for every imaginable holiday.
He rarely had.
The weddings over the past few years had been exceptions to the rule. He’d been present for those, and the truth was, they’d been surprised that he had.
Now, as the hours passed, they began to accept the fact that this holiday would be no different from dozens of others.
Hard as it was to admit, they were disappointed.
Maybe it was because they were all foolish enough to keep hoping that he would change, or maybe it was simply that because all their lives had changed, they’d foolishly believed his would, too.
As the sun dipped behind the rolling hills, Jacob, Caleb, Travis, Emily, Jaimie and Lissa gathered in a small grove of trees behind the big Wilde house.
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