A Creed in Stone Creek - Linda Lael Miller [116]
Folks along the way cheered, their faces alight with pleasure in this simplest of all small-town-America celebrations. Many of them were people Melissa knew, lifelong residents of Stone Creek and Indian Rock and the surrounding areas, but others were strangers, passing through. The annual rodeo, with its customary trimmings, always drew plenty of fans, along with competitors from all over the country.
Melissa felt as though she’d been swept up in something, and was being carried along, watching that parade pass. She was, in those moments, ridiculously proud of her hometown, and the stalwart people who inhabited it. She was even a little proud of herself, for sticking with it, for seeing the task through to its fruition.
Not that she ever intended to get roped into heading the Parade Committee again, as long as she lived, because she most certainly didn’t. Next year, someone else would have to oversee the project, keep Bea Brady and Adelaide Hillingsley from coming to blows, and make sure no one wound up pinned beneath an enormous cardboard ice cream cone.
She looked over toward the fairgrounds—the rodeo would start at noon the following day and run well into the night, and the festivities would be repeated on Sunday, the Fourth, with a finale of spectacular fireworks. Meanwhile, the Ferris wheel loomed neon-pink against the darkening sky. As the parade noise subsided, the tinny music from the carousel and all the other rides and games would settle over the town like a blanket.
Once the last float had wobbled down Main Street, people would head over to the carnival, kids in tow, to fill up on roasted corn, served on sticks, barbecued meat and chicken, cotton candy and plenty of other nutritional disasters as well.
Some of Melissa’s first memories were of that carnival and the big rodeo, before the family had splintered apart. The old sequence played out in her mind, yet again. Delia had left them, getting onto a bus one day and never coming back. Not long after that, their dad was killed. Then Big John died, too.
A strange mix of sadness and gratitude overtook Melissa, right there on Main Street, with friends and strangers all around her. She’d lost a lot in her life, but she still had Brad and Olivia and Ashley, their spouses, and all her nieces and nephews.
She was part of a close and ever-growing family, and that was more than a lot of people could say. So why wasn’t it enough?
STEVEN KEPT TRACK OF MELISSA as best he could, given how crowded the sidewalks were. He’d lose sight of her, then get onto the balls of his feet and crane his neck to find her again, all the while trying to look like he wasn’t looking.
Kim was beside him; she and Davis had rolled in that afternoon, their new RV almost as fancy as Brad O’Ballivan’s tour bus. Brody was still missing in action, and Conner, apparently, had been temporarily detained up in Lonesome Bend. He’d be there by morning.
For now, it was just the four of them.
“Where’s Melissa?” Kim asked, nudging Steven lightly in the side when there was a lull between the high-school marching band and the sheriff’s posse on horseback. “Point her out to me.”
Steven was a little taken aback—as far as he could recall, he hadn’t mentioned Melissa to his folks—and while he was still trying to come up with a response, Matt leaped into the conversational breach.
“That’s her!” he fairly shouted, shifting excitedly atop Steven’s shoulders to point. “That really pretty lady with the twisty curls in her hair!”
Matt’s voice carried far and wide, and Melissa, looking country-delicious in her well-cut jeans and peach-colored off-the-shoulder blouse with lots of little ruffles, reappeared from the throng and turned her head in their direction.
“Melissa!” Matt called out, overjoyed, it seemed, to see her. By then, he was waving so wildly that Steven had to tighten his grip on the kid to keep him from tumbling to the sidewalk. “Melissa! Over here!”
Steven watched her scrounge up a smile, and then crank up the wattage for Matt’s