The Marriage Conspiracy. Christine Rimmer

shoulders shook. Joleen swallowed and pressed her lips together as she heard splattering sounds behind the bush.

      She waited until that attack of sickness had passed. Then she dared to move a few steps closer. “Uncle Hubert…”

      Her uncle groaned. “Joly?”

      “That’s right.”

      “Go ’way.” He spoke into the crape myrtle bush.

      Joleen edged a little closer. “Uncle Hubert, I want you to come in the house with me now.”

      “I’m fine.” He groaned again. “Go ’way.”

      “No. No, you listen. It’s too hot out here. You can lie down inside.”

      “No.” He made a strangled sound. His shoulders shook again, but this time nothing seemed to be coming up.

      Joleen waited, to make sure he was finished. Then, with slow care, she moved right up next to him. “Come on, now…” She laid a hand on his arm. “You just come on.”

      “No!’ He jerked away, half stumbling, almost falling, bouncing with a muffled gonging sound against the metal wall of the garden shed. “Leave,” he growled. “Go…”

      Joleen stepped back again, unwilling to give up but unsure how to convince him that he should come with her.

      A hand clasped her shoulder.

      Dekker. She knew it before she even turned to see him standing right behind her. She felt easier instantly. Between them they would manage. They always did.

      “Need help?”

      She nodded.

      He raised a dark brow. “You want him in the house?”

      She nodded again.

      He stepped around her. “Hubert…”

      “Ugh. Wha? Oh. Dek.”

      “Right. Come on, man. Let’s go…”

      “Ugh…”

      “Yeah. You need to stretch out.”

      “Uh-uh…”

      Dekker took Uncle Hubert’s arm and wrapped it across his broad shoulder. Uncle Hubert moaned. He kept saying no and shaking his head. But he didn’t pull away. Slowly Dekker turned him around and got him moving.

      Joleen went on ahead, warning the other guests out of the way, opening the back door, leading the way through the kitchen and into the hall. Uncle Hubert would probably be most comfortable upstairs in one of the bedrooms, but she didn’t know how far he’d be willing to let Dekker drag him. So she settled for the living room.

      “Here,” she said, “on the couch.” She tossed away her mother’s favorite decorative pillows as she spoke, then spread an old afghan across the cushions. It would provide some protection if Uncle Hubert’s poor stomach decided to rebel again.

      Dekker eased the other man down. Uncle Hubert fell onto his back with a long, low groan.

      “Let’s get his shoes off,” said Dekker, already kneeling at Uncle Hubert’s feet. Before he had the second shoe off, Uncle Hubert was snoring. Dekker set the shoes, side by side, beneath the coffee table. “They’ll be right here whenever he needs them.”

      Joleen stood over her uncle, shaking her head. “It seems like we ought to do something, doesn’t it? We shouldn’t let him go on hurting himself this way.”

      Uncle Hubert had lost his wife, Thelma, six months ago. The heavy beer drinking had started not long after that.

      “Give him time,” Dekker said. “He’ll work it out.”

      “I hope he works it out soon. A man’s liver can only take so much.”

      “He will,” Dekker said. “He’ll get through it.”

      They were good words to hear, especially from Dekker, who had never been the most optimistic guy on the block. “You sound so certain.”

      He winked at her. “I oughtta know, don’t you think?”

      They shared a long look, one full of words they didn’t really need to say out loud.

      Three years ago, Dekker’s wife, Stacey, had died. His mama, Lorraine, had passed away not long after. Dekker had done quite a bit of drinking himself in the months following those two sad events.

      Dekker said, “Maybe you ought to start whipping up a few casseroles.”

      It was a joke between them now, how Joleen had kept after him, dropping in at his place several times a week, pouring his booze down the drain and urging him to “talk out his pain.”

      He wouldn’t talk. But she wouldn’t give up on him, either. She brought him casseroles to make sure he ate right and kept dragging him out to go bowling and to the movies. Good, nourishing food and a few social activities had made a difference.

      It had also brought them closer. She was, after all, five years younger than Dekker. Five years, while they were growing up, had seemed like a lifetime. Almost as if they were of different generations.

      But it didn’t seem that way anymore. Now they were equals.

      They were best friends.

      She said, “You still have not bothered to tell me why you thought you had to fly off to Los Angeles out of nowhere like that.”

      “Later,” he said. “There’s a lot to tell and now is not the time.”

      “Were you…in danger?”

      “No.”

      “Was it something for a client?”

      “Jo. Please. Not now.”

      On the couch, Hubert stiffened, snorted and then went on snoring even louder than before.

      Dekker said, “I think we’ve done all we can for him at the moment.”

      “Guess so. Might as well get back to the party. We’re probably out of frilly toothpicks again.”

      Dekker grinned. “DeDe grabbed me a few minutes ago. Something about cutting the cake?”

      “No. It’s too early. They’re still attacking the buffet table. But it is a little cooler now. Safe to get everything set up.”

      “Safe?”

      “That’s right. We can chance taking the cake back outside.”

      “This sounds ominous.”

      “A wedding can be a scary time.”

      “Tell me about it.”

      She took his big, blunt-fingered hand. “Come on.”

      They left Uncle Hubert snoring on the couch and went out to the kitchen, where they enlisted Burly to help Dekker carry the cake back out to the patio.

      Once the cake was in position for cutting, Joleen went looking for Niki and Sam. She found them on the front porch, building a castle out of Duplo blocks.

      “Mama. Look.” Sam beamed her his biggest, proudest smile.

      “Wonderful job, baby.” She asked Niki, “Did he eat anything yet?”

      Niki nodded. “He had some corn. And that fruit dish—the one with the coconut? Oh, and he ate about five of those little meatballs.”

      “Milk?”

      “Yeah—and what’s with those Atwood people?”

      What do you mean? Joleen wanted to demand. What did they do?

      She held the questions back. Sam might be only eighteen months old, but you could never be sure of how much he understood. And she didn’t want Niki stirred up, either. She gestured with a toss of her head.