Brides and Brothers by Anneka R. Walker

Chapter 43

Camille

Camille slid into a chair and inched it closer to the two-person table the greeter at the restaurant had led them to. Amy took the plastic-covered seat across from her. It had been a week since the Thanksgiving fiasco. By the time they’d fixed the van and returned home the Saturday after the holiday, Aiden had returned to Los Angeles. Seeing Amy again brought back feelings of the night Aiden had left Camille at the cabin. She covered her depressing thoughts with a forced smile. “This is nice, having lunch together.”

“Agreed,” Amy said. “Thanks for treating me.”

Camille took the menu from the waiter and nodded her thanks before he left. She opened the trifold and stared at the unappetizing pictures. “I thought the best present I could give you for your birthday was a little time with your favorite person.”

Amy laughed. “You were so right.”

“Anything look good to you?” Camille had let Amy choose the restaurant, but Mexican was not going to make her tummy very happy.

“I’m going for a taco salad. What about you?”

“Uh, I think I’ll follow your lead. That doesn’t sound too spicy.” Camille glanced at the other options in case something different magically appeared. When it didn’t, she put the menu aside. She rested her elbows on the table and propped up her head on her fists. “How’s school been?”

“Busy, but I’m happy with the direction I’m headed.”

“Good,” Camille said. She had never been as driven or passionate about her degree as Amy was. She’d always seen it as a means to an end. “What do you need to do next?”

“I want to get into the bachelor of nursing program. There’s a lot more job variety if I go this route, but it’s intimidating, not to mention competitive.”

Camille watched her sister talk. Amy had everything going for her. She was smart, cute, motivated, secure with herself, and even had a guy lined up to marry her when he returned home from his deployment. An imaginary cloud rolled over Camille’s head, and suddenly, it was raining. Her eyes watered, and she looked sideways to pretend she was looking at a colorful painting of a Mexican folk dancer. She blinked away her tears and forced herself to pay attention to what Amy was saying.

“It’ll be fun to have Mom here. She’ll love campus. She won’t be able to ignore how different the atmosphere here is compared with the typical college campus.”

Camille scrunched her brow. Her mother was coming to Cherish? Sudden thoughts of Aiden had caused her to miss the change of subject. Her mother had never come to Cherish, and the idea was a little hard for Camille to wrap her brain around. “When does this happen?”

“Parent week is the second week of December.”

“That’s soon,” Camille said, feeling a note of dread. “How can she get away this time of year?” She could have planned her wedding in December after all. Everything could have been different. She and Aiden could have dated longer.

“She hired a seasoned caterer so she could expand her business and have more flexibility with her schedule, and she had a gig cancel.”

The waiter approached and took their orders. As soon as he was gone, Amy picked up where she had left off. “I thought Mom should stay with you, but I wanted to check to see if it would be all right.”

Camille would grow another arm before her mom would consent to stay with her. They hadn’t spent very much time under the same roof in the last six years. “We do have an extra room, but don’t make her feel like she has to stay with us. She doesn’t like feeling boxed in.”

Amy agreed. “She can always say no if she doesn’t feel comfortable.”

Camille raised an eyebrow. “I already know she won’t feel comfortable. You’d have to bribe her to stay with me.”

Amy pulled and pushed her straw up and down in her soda. “I have never understood the animosity between you guys. She asks about you all the time, but when I suggest she call you, she changes the subject.”

“That’s nice of her to ask about me.” Camille was more than a little surprised. Sometimes she felt like her mother had disowned her and would prefer to pretend she didn’t exist. But what had come between them was not something she wanted to regurgitate over a nice meal, particularly on her sister’s birthday.

Amy must’ve taken the hint. “Have you heard anything new from Grant?”

Camille shook her head. “I’ve taken to sending him pictures of different things instead of writing to him. It’s hard to strike up a relationship with someone you’re newly related to who lives overseas. We got a letter this week that was addressed to the family. He said his buddy is pretty homesick for his girlfriend, and Grant is doing his best to keep him distracted and focused.”

Amy frowned. “That’s the update I got too. It makes me feel guilty. I told him to stop writing and then had Aiden try to undo the damage. I’m causing more problems than I was when we were writing harmless love letters to each other.”

Camille was taken back. “You asked Aiden to undo the damage?”

Amy crunched on a salty tortilla chip. “Yeah, Aiden tried to be this big peacemaker after he heard I talked all the roomies into going on a boy strike. First, he assuaged my self-inflicted pain by offering to write Grant and explain. Then he concocted his crazy Thanksgiving-or-bust date. It was a shockingly stellar idea. I can’t believe it worked.”

Camille swallowed and replied softly, “Yeah, it did work, didn’t it?”

“I’m sorry!” Amy grimaced. “I shouldn’t have brought Aiden up. I can tell I’m making you sad.”

Camille waved her hand. “I’m fine, really.”

Amy leaned forward. “How is Aiden, anyway?”

Camille shrugged. “He’s working for the same company for a few weeks longer. They’re interested in his advertising ideas and offered him this big salary job.” What Camille didn’t say was that it had been an entire week and Aiden hadn’t so much as called her from California. Everything she knew about him was through information Benson had volunteered at breakfast the day before. She was crushed.

“He’s not going to take it, is he?” Amy shoved another chip into her mouth. “I mean”—she chewed quickly—“you don’t want to live in California, do you?”

Camille bit her tongue. She was not going to cry. How could she tell her sister that if Aiden accepted this job, it would feel like he was giving up on their relationship? She absently put her hand on her belly. She’d had an early ultrasound yesterday. Everything looked great, and she was already eleven weeks and a couple of days into her pregnancy. It was a honeymoon baby. She should feel like she was on top of the world, but instead, her feet were firmly planted on the ground. Her heart was in pieces, and she had no concept of how to puzzle it back together. Thoughts of the future overwhelmed her.

“So I never heard how things resolved between you and Grant,” she said, desperate to change the subject back to Amy’s relationship before her own emotions broke past her tenuous dam.

Amy launched into an explanation about how she’d thought their relationship was keeping Grant from reaching his full potential. “I got my first letter yesterday after a full month of nothing. Things are better now. His letter was factual, though, without any sort of inside jokes or flirty comments. There was no I love you at the end, but I think he’ll thank me when this is all over. That is, if he still wants me.”

Humbled by her sister’s confession, Camille felt a little less alone in the world of trials. Amy’s life wasn’t as perfect as she had imagined moments before. Her sister hadn’t been to a lot of their girls’ nights, had studied diligently instead of socializing, and had nearly broken ties with the man she loved. Her motivation in school and her devotion to Grant’s safety and purpose had come with sacrifices. Camille wasn’t the only one struggling.

“I’m sorry you had to deal with all of this. You’re a tough woman,” she said.

“Grant’s service is more important than both of us. If we’re supposed to be together, then when he gets home, we can try again.”

The last sentence rang in Camille’s head: we can try again. There was always hope, even if she couldn’t feel it. “You’re acting very mature about this. I promise to never throw the freshman insult ever again.”

“Good, because I already endured that year, and I have the freshman fifteen to prove it.”

Camille chuckled. “Thanks for doing this today. I needed it.”

“You’re paying, so I’m the one who should be saying thank you.”

“No matter how good the food is, chatting with you is the best part. Love you, Sis.”

Relationships suddenly felt so precarious. They didn’t stay put like a book on a shelf. They were living stories with words and events constantly affecting them. Camille and Amy had been in a good place before her marriage, but she could’ve nurtured their relationship more. What other relationships had she neglected? Two came to mind, and they were the two that, next to her relationship with God, mattered more than any other.