036:

Tom looked debonair and excited; Matthew looked nervous and stern as they sat on the front pew of the local chapel in Lakeside where Richard was going to baptize them. Polly was there; her entire large Mormon family was also there. Tom's children were there, too young to understand, but Tracy was taking pictures of them so they would remember the choices their father had made someday when they'd have to make similar choices.

Melia sat next to Megan and Maille. Megan held Hannah rocking her gently as she slept. Melia wondered about the directions their lives were taking. She was in the middle of production, or finishing production of her film with Tom, then she could do the pre-production on her film with Stevie and Kell Stevak that would be filmed a few months hence.

The band was falling apart. Megan wanted to go to Los Angeles, to get away, she had confided. She needed some space. And Maille was hanging out with Kell Stevak.

Kell Stevak.

Wasn't he like--- old? Too old for Maille.

Her thoughts dragged randomly on to a memory. She recalled the night after they'd finished production on one of the films--- and then gone to that fateful meeting. The stupid meeting. The one where Kell had been a jerk to her. Had he been seeing Maille then? Was she the one who had filled his head with nonsense about her baby?

How could that be? No. It couldn't have been Maille.

That same night Melia and Matthew had had a fight in Park City. She'd gone there after the meeting and Ryan had gone to his home in Los Angeles. He had business, and she'd had an overload. People had been there--- members of the cast and crew of the wrapped film. They'd come at her mother's request, for a small party to celebrate. They'd called Ryan and he'd flown to Park City to diffuse her, but when he was unable to do it, they'd had to call Matthew, and he'd come, but oh, was he mad! And to top it off, she felt out of control. As if she was on a fast train to nowhere, blindly running away from everything in her life.

This was not where she'd pictured herself. She looked around. Her mother was standing serenely, had made a scrapbook for each of the men being baptized, and was dutifully taking pictures when she could, of them with several of their guests. Her mother had also arranged for a meal to be served in the cultural hall directly afterward, she was good at that, making arrangements.

Melia watched Ryan, he seemed confident, assured. Her mother said he was cute, "in missionary mode". He certainly seemed prepared to officiate at this ceremony and ordinance. But Melia wondered how he could after having left his mission so recently. Didn't it bother him? She cocked her face and bit her lip. He had taken off the signs of his temple covenants and replaced them for the most part with less modest clothing, but right now he looked fine. Ryan was a chameleon in that respect, wasn't he?

Was he completely over Jared's death and her betrayal? He seemed to be. He seemed to have adapted to non-missionary life quite easily. He seemed able to give her the right cues for a happy life together.

"Mommy asked me to help her with a project this afternoon." Megan leaned over and whispered to Melia, her long auburn ponytail brushing her sister's shoulder.

Melia kept her eyes straight ahead. "I'm marrying Ryan today." She whispered back.

"In the temple?" Megan gasped.

Melia shook her head sadly. "Not yet, someday. But we are doing it so soon so that this baby will have a daddy." She molded her hand to her slightly protruding stomach.

"Oh, I see." Megan whispered back. "Am I invited?"

Melia gave her sister a look. "You're my twin. You're my maid of honor. Of course, you're invited."

Megan nodded, keeping her eyes forward as the Bishop, her father, announced the order of events. "I'm leaving tonight after the wedding then." She said out of the side of her mouth.

"What for?"

"I'm sick and tired of all the drama. I need a break."

"From me?" Melia felt a stab of fear in her heart. Had her own chaos filtered into her sister's lives as well? Was Megan so close to a nervous breakdown that she'd said things to cousin Steve?

Maille had just quit the band and was seeing Kell Stevak. Maybe she...

No! No, that just wasn't possible! She'd thought it before, and she was thinking it again! No! No! No!

"I just need to get away from all of this..." Megan's eyes clouded wistfully. "Yes, if you must know, from you, but not in a bad way, just... you are so intense. I want to pursue some of my own projects. I need to get a life. Maille has the right of it. She's getting on with life, and she's stopped living ours."

"Stopped living ours?" Melia repeated numbly, feeling very insecure at that moment.

"Well, Mia, everything has been about you for over a year now. My every waking moment has focused on what you need. I just want to figure out what I need." Megan said. "That sounds selfish, but I'm so burnt out, you know?"

Melia felt the weight of her own burnout. She felt the threatening tears that wouldn't come and closed her eyes. Well, go then, she thought viciously, don't let me stop you.

Megan nudged her presumably for comfort, Melia knew she didn't like to leave things hanging, but she had no reassurance to give her. She calmly opened her eyes and stared straight ahead, as one of the seps, it looked like Dillon gave a short talk about baptism. Then they all stood and trooped back into the cultural hall to watch the baptism, which took place in the baptismal font at the far end of the hall. Children crowded on their hands and knees near the front, and the adults, talking quietly, stood around them.

A hand, strong and sure, suddenly pressed against the small of her back and Melia started, as Ryan was one of the witnesses and stood close to the front. There were only two other people who would rest their hands against her like that, and Matt wouldn't do it even now. Her eyes turned, expecting one of her brothers, maybe Danny, and found instead the dark eyes of Robert DeMarco.

"Did I miss anything?" He whispered enigmatically in her ear, a crooked smile playing about the corners of his full lips. She took in the thick dark wavy hair, unruly and unkempt. She realized he wore a suit, but with the tie somewhat askew and tennis shoes on his feet.

"What are you doing here?" she hissed, in shock.

His palm rubbed her back thoughtfully. "You invited me." He reminded her. "You did ask me to come to their baptism, didn't you?"

She swallowed, her eyes turned  to the little scene in the font below them, Richard had raised his arm to the square. This was a prayer time, it demanded silence.

"Is this the baptism?" Robert whispered in her ear, his breath tingling against her straggling hair.

"Shhhhh!" She managed as Richard said the words and immersed Matthew in the water. Robert's eyes were serious as he studied the little tableau before him, and then glanced around at the assembly. There were a few people he knew, not many, mostly just normal parishioners, he assumed, belonging to this church or area. He did recognize the very large Mann family and their associates. He nodded at several producer/ director friends.

Then cousin Steve went down the steps and took hold of Tom's arm, he whispered something to him and then bowed his head.

The baptisms had been performed, the folding curtains closed and the quietly murmuring crowd began to filter back the way they had come. Tracy found her way to Melia's side.

"You must be Robert DeMarco!" She said casually extending her hand as she introduced herself to the man at Melia's left.

"Tracy McCaffrey Mann!" He took her one hand in both of his warmly and after holding it just a second too long, brought it to his lips for a warm kiss. Melia rolled her eyes.

"Ryan  mentioned you were interested in the church," Tracy said softly, their eyes meeting, and hers were gracious and kind, and interested, as they always were. She heard Robert's deep voice answering.

How did Mommy do it? Melia wondered, taking her squirming baby from Megan, and excusing herself to the mother's lounge to change and feed her.

So, he was already interested in the church? Why hadn't he said so the other night instead of calling himself an atheist? Miffed she turned the handle on the door and jumped in surprise when another hand joined hers and pushed the heavy door open for her. The reflected light from the hall revealed dark hairs on the back of this hand. Not a lot, but ones she was still familiar with. He must have excused himself from Tracy quickly.

The light was off, that same hand reached around her and flipped the wall switch and Melia had no choice but to precede him inside. She'd already put her diaper bag in here. "Why didn't you tell me Ryan was teaching you about the church?"

Robert leaned against the comfortable wall counter where she would lay the baby to change her, and crossed his arms. "I didn't want to get too into it there. I really needed exactly what you offered that night. I needed to talk about Karen. I needed to feel a connection. I want to say thank you for that. It's been a busy week, I'm sorry I didn't get back with you."

Melia shrugged. "You didn't need to get back with me." She felt a little mollified by his apology and tried to smile as she laid Hannah's squirming body on the little mat she'd placed on the counter and started to unsnap her onesie.

"Actually Ryan has been sharing quite a bit with me, and he invited me to come here today as well. He also called me at the last minute and asked me to be his best man this evening."

Melia felt her heart constrict. That quick? He had called someone in the last two or three hours and he'd jumped in a plane and got here.... Or had her dad gone and got him just like he did Ryan three years ago?

"Best man..." She repeated, having trouble holding Hannah's wiggling body down as she tried to flip over and get away.

Robert turned around and held Hannah's legs straight, tickling her, making faces at her till her mother could get the diaper replaced. "Yeah, at your wedding." He looked up at her forthrightly.

Robert DeMarco was nothing if not forthright. "Well, I'm a little taken back." She pointed out, feeling that same honesty with him that there had been from the first. She didn't feel like hiding her inner thoughts like she did with just about everybody else she knew. Including Ryan. But she and Robert had something in common, something intense and personal, and they'd shared it.

"The wedding thing just came up." She announced.

He chuckled and picked Hannah up as Melia turned to toss the dirty diaper and refold the little mat.   "The wedding thing..." He repeated screwing up his eyes in a doubtful fashion. "I guess the wedding thing is an apt description of what you two are trying to accomplish."

Melia ignored him. "I need to feed her." She said and reached for the baby as Robert jostled her expertly. He held her a little out of Melia's reach and gave her a very charismatic look.

"Why are you getting married so soon?" He asked point blank. Melia reached for Hannah, annoyed, realizing that he had just asked her another very intimate question, perhaps counting on the connection they'd felt the other night. He couldn't feel he had the right to ask her that question, though, did he?

She took the baby and sat in the comfortable arm chair. Robert leaned provocatively against the counter top on one hip and folded his arms across his well-muscled chest. "Why, Melia?"

She heard in her mind all the answers she had been giving others who asked her. Ryan was the right choice, Ryan and she had been engaged before, Ryan was Jared's choice for her...and she couldn't open her mouth. 

Not now, she saw in her mind's eye Jared's face at their wedding.... Once... a long time ago, a lifetime ago, in a little courtroom, in Seward, Alaska. She could see his bald head, his earring, his scruffy beard growing in, a little reddish. She could see his jeans, wrinkled permanently in creases marking the indentations around powerful muscles that she suddenly had come to know very well, his boots, his brown belt, his t-shirt, his biker jacket, his gloves. She could smell the soap smell of him, over the sweat smell, the smell that was simply Jared to her, or she and Jared together. She could taste him....

She shook her head, and closed her eyes. "Crap." She whispered.

Robert DeMarco knelt in front of her, cupping her chin, not even seeing the baby nursing below him. He squatted there, close... too close-- and tried to get her to look at him, but she wouldn't. He sensed her tears. "Go ahead and cry."

Melia shook her head. "No. I can't.".

He kept her chin till she jerked away, staring at her eyes which shifted and rolled angrily.

"Leave me alone!"

"You're not ready to get married." He said and dropped her chin, backing away to the counter again. "Tell him."

She shook her head. Everything in her rebelled at the thought that this man, facing his own immense grief, could tell her how to deal with hers. He couldn't. He didn't know what Jared had meant to her. He couldn't know how she longed to get away from the guilt, the fear, the reality of her life.

"You're running away from it, Melia." He said. "You've got to face it."

"I have faced it!" she cried. "You--- you need to face it!"

He rubbed his chin, his eyes filled with tears and they rolled down his cheeks. "I should be with her now, she's in a coma, she could go any minute, but I had to see you for myself. I had to see that you weren't just marrying him to get away from your own grief. You owe yourself more than that. The other night, I-- I held a girl who was willing to sacrifice her own personal grief moments, to share in mine. It meant something to me. It actually meant a lot to me. I had to see for myself why those moments were being betrayed."

Melia shook with her inability to express herself and latched onto the only thing he'd said that she could attack. "You're right, Robert, how can you be here? I am not important to you. I am nothing. She wouldn't want you to have come here!" Oh, how she wanted to cry, her throat was clogged with it, but nothing came, and it hurt, it hurt so bad.

"You're wrong Melia. You are important to me. You're the girl who last week, in the middle of the night, walked down the pier with me and gave me her heart, open and free, and giving. You walked with me when I was grieving the hardest, when I couldn't accept it, when it hurt like the worst form of hell there was." He ran stiff fingers through his hair and made it stand on end. "But I realized somewhere during the week that you had never really told me how you got over Jared. And now I see that you haven't."

She stared up at him, dry-eyed and in shock. No one, no one in the last almost eight months had even tried to understand her, and she had simply pushed herself so far away from it.... She had to keep moving, it was what was expected, it was what Jared wanted.... It was what Jared wanted....

"I have." She said softly, without conviction, not even knowing that she said it, and neither of them believed it.

He shook his head. "No, I have." He said. "I've accepted that Karen is going to die. I have accepted that we are not going to finish our lives together like we planned. I feel a lot of peace in that knowledge now, Mia. Because of you. I was angry and bewildered, but you gave me a lot of comfort and realization. Because of you, I feel hope that I can survive."

It's a lie, she thought in disbelief. Why is he making me think about this? I don't want to think about it. I can't think about it. It's not because of me, because I can't grieve, I can't cry, I don't accept it, I can't accept it. I can only go on.... Because I have these little girls to think of.... That's it.... His daughters... they are all I have now. I have to do what he wanted so that his future, the one he planned for us is intact....

"Don't get married yet." Robert said.

"I am." She answered, choked, a tightness in her shoulders that actually hurt.

"Don't do it, you're not ready."

"It's—it's what..." She couldn't go on.

His dark eyes read her intent instantly. His neck corded up with effort."You're making a mistake." He said and sat back gruffly; disappointed that she couldn't face her own feelings. Had he thought to come here and make her? How could he make her, of all people? She didn't even know him.

The door opened with a jerk and Tracy, who didn't know Melia had company or was in the middle of an intense conversation poked her head in with a rather shrill message about getting back in the chapel as the confirmation was about to start.

"Excuse me." She said quietly and backed out. Melia's eyes never left Robert's. But the room was charged with tension.

"We should not be having this conversation," Melia said, disappointment and hostility at war in her features. "I don't think we will ever be friends." It was mean--- she wished the cruel words back instantly and hoped he wouldn't hold her to them.

Robert cocked his head suddenly, staring her down. "I think---." He began, and then shook his head with a very quirky smile. "I think I'll leave that thought for another time." He turned and walked out, leaving Melia angry and ready to cry, but unable to.

******