Chapter Three

Collin

I sat straight up in the bed, my eyes bulging as cold sweat poured down the back of my neck. I was breathing heavy, my chest rising and falling in rapid lifts and drops, and my arms were shaking. They felt weak, like I’d been carrying something heavy for a long time. My legs felt locked in place, straight out in front of me, and I had the urge to bang on them to get them to work.

Because I had to move. I had to run. I had to duck for cover.

Except I didn’t. I wasn’t where I thought I was. I was at home. In bed. Only it didn’t look like I’d left it. It was different. Bigger.

It took a few seconds to register that it wasn’t twenty years ago, that the bedroom I was in used to be my parents and I had rearranged it so my bed wasn’t in the same place theirs had been. That I was safe. That it had happened a long time ago, and that I had nothing to fear here.

Still, the heartbeat remained high, the sweat still rolling down my spine.

How many was that this week? Three?

I pulled the notepad I kept by the bed over, blinking to get my eyes working in the darkness. Only it wasn’t totally dark. The first beginnings of daylight were starting to rise over the horizon. The bedroom faced east, so that Dad could wake up with the morning’s first light. Now that was my job. Well, mine and Owen’s. As with most things, it took two men to do what our father had done himself.

I’d forgotten it was a new week. Sunday had come and gone in a haze of hiding from the world, and now it was Monday morning. In an hour or so, the chickens would be awake and need their water changed, their coop cleaned out. The pigs would be asleep still, but I’d have to feed them too, and Owen would be busy with the cows and horses, getting them ready for their day.

Writing down Monday morning in the notepad, I tried to describe the dream as best I could remember it, but it was already fading away like whisps of smoke. It had been the same stock dream at first, more of a memory than a dream, really. But then, as they often did, it took a turn and got darker, weirder. I had been trying to track them, to write them down in an effort to figure out what it was that I was doing to myself. So far, I’d gotten no answers.

Shutting the notebook and putting it back on the nightstand, I stood and stretched. I had an hour before I needed to do anything specific, but that gave me a little time to go over the wedding plans again.

I took my brother Luke’s wedding awfully seriously. Luke had entrusted me with planning and coordination of any logistics Amber didn’t want to handle. The only difference this close to the event being we had chosen Mr. Pratchett to do the vows, which I admitted was a better plan. He seemed very game for doing it seriously, and I thought he would do a fine job.

There really only seemed to be one issue I was concerned with, and that was the catering. I’d dabbled with the idea of trying to take it on myself, since the party would be fairly small and I’d be able to keep control of the alcohol. But at the end of the day, I just didn’t want to be doing all that work while I was trying to enjoy my brother’s big day. So, I hired out.

The only person within a hundred miles was Madie’s granddaughter, Brandy. I’d only ever met her in passing, and that was years before when she was a teenager. She used to help out at the shop and run register, so I knew I’d encountered her before, but apparently, she was a darn good cook in her own right. Starting her grandmother’s shop again, taking over the building that had been sitting unused since Madie’s shut down, she’d started churning out boxed lunches again, just like before.

When I’d gone to grab a sandwich a couple weeks before, a tall, tattooed girl was there running the front, and I asked if they did catering. That night I got a call from Brandy and hired her on the phone call alone. She had tons of experience, at least as far as she said, and I had no reason to doubt her. Plus, her price was extraordinarily reasonable. Besides, how hard could it be to make a few dozen boxed lunches for a wedding?

The idea had gone over well with Amber, who loved the old shop and Luke was good with literally anything that was edible, so I hadn’t thought much of it until this morning. With only two days to go, part of me was getting concerned that she wouldn’t be able to handle it. The fact that I hadn’t met her face to face was bothering me, but since Amber and Luke insisted on a Wednesday wedding for some god awful reason, I didn’t really have the time to do anything about it. I just had to hope.

Not that coordinating an aspect of this wedding from phone calls was unique in any way. I’d done all the legwork from the comfort of the office chair, sitting right there, staring out over the fields. Sometimes I felt guilty about not being out there doing more, but Luke and Logan especially were very understanding of my desire to stay indoors. They might not know what happened, but I got the impression they knew it was bad.

Sitting down in the chair, leaving the door between the bedroom and office open, I turned on the laptop and went over some of the final preparations. This included e-mailing Tamara and making sure she was clear on where and when Amber needed to be, and to give me some indication of what they were doing for her bachelorette party.

The boys were forgoing a traditional bachelor party at Luke’s request, and instead, spending the day at the ranch together. We’d do our chores and knock them out early, then spend the rest of the day watching movies and sports, drinking beer and hanging out in a way that we hadn’t done much of in years.

As for Amber though, who knew? Charlotte and Tamara were cooking up something, but without traveling, I wasn’t sure what they could do. I just wanted to make sure she was in place, being given the run of the ranch to get ready, in plenty of time to make it to the lake and have a wonderful wedding. In a lot of ways, I was acting on behalf of both my parents in this role, and I wanted to make them proud.

Mom would have loved Amber. She would have loved Charlotte too, for that matter, and I wondered when Jesse was going to realize he’d found the right girl to tame his wild streak. Now it left the other three of us, and I often wondered if I’d be the only bachelor standing. As the one who got out the least, it was entirely possible.

I shot off an e-mail to Tamara, then checked through some of the other preparations. Everything looked good. It was going to be great. And I didn’t even have to leave the house to get it all set up.

Yet, I knew, in the back of my mind, that I was only making my own situation worse. The more I depended on doing things at home, using the office, using Zoom, it was only exacerbating a problem that had been festering for a long time. My anxiety in crowds was worse than ever, to the point that even last year’s fair was a bit much. The nightmares were steadily getting more intense and more often. I needed to see actual human beings more often.

The chickens, despite having human names, did not count.

I was fairly certain Josaphine would be very upset to hear me say that.

The longer I kept myself shut in, the harder it was to walk out of that door the next time. I had to break the cycle.

Two days later, I was standing at the newly built venue, which was really just a small stage and a couple dozen chairs with a trellis and a podium set up on the stage and a microphone running to two speakers behind the audience. Another trellis delimitated the aisle, and I checked all the chairs to make sure they were properly faced and labeled.

A hundred yards or so away was the tent, one of the massive party tents that I had to rent out of Dallas that came with a dance floor, tables, a bunch of chairs and some lights to keep things bright in case of rain or darkness. At that tent, I could see Brandy was already there, setting things up herself.

Even from a distance, I could tell she was a beautiful woman. Curly red hair was tied up in a tight bun on top of her head, and she wore a chef’s coat that, despite being intentionally unisex, did nothing to stop the hourglass figure and large chest from being prominent. As I sauntered over to her, I also noticed how short she was, probably only about five-four, and how she seemed to move like a pinball. Pure locomotive of motion, despite the diminutive size.

“Hello,” I said as I neared her. She had been placing silver trays on the table, and looked up in a near panic.

“Hi,” she said. “Oh god, what time is it?”

“It’s only ten,” I said. “You’ve got plenty of time.”

“Oh. Oh thank God.”

“Brandy, right?”

“Yes?” she asked. “Wait, are you Collin?”

“I am,” I said, smiling and offering my hand for a shake.

“Nice to meet you,” she said. “Please don’t take offense. It’s just that I’m handling food.”

She pulled a small bottle of hand sanitizer out of her back pocket and squirted some in her palm. She offered it toward me and I pulled my own bottle out of my pocket. She laughed, and I loved how it sounded like a bouncing ball, tumbling down steps made out of musical notes.

“Came prepared,” I said. “I usually have this on me.”

“Since the pandemic?”

I nodded.

“Some habits die hard.”

“Hey, I still have a bag of masks nearby just in case,” she said. “Anyway, it’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you. I just wanted to check in, make sure you have everything you need.”

“I’m good, actually,” she said. “Just got a couple more things to bring out to the tables. I took the liberty of making a few pies for dessert. You mentioned you might want something sweet other than the cake, but we never settled on what.”

“You’re right,” I said, smacking my forehead with my palm. “I knew there was something I was forgetting. What kind of pies did you make?”

“Apple, blueberry and lemon,” she said. “I know the apple is usually more of a fall thing, but it’s my favorite.”

“Mine too,” I said. “Sounds delicious. Make sure to add that to the invoice. You went above and beyond there, and I want to make sure you get paid for it.”

“Will do,” she said, somewhat sheepishly, as if she was embarrassed at the idea of charging me.

“Well, I should get going. I’ll see you around?”

“I’ll be here,” she said. “Nice to meet you again.”

“Nice to meet you too, Brandy.”

As I walked away, I caught myself looking back at her a few times. Every time I did, she looked back at me.

Something was there. A spark of something I hadn’t felt in a long time. I almost felt like my old self.

I almost felt like me.