Chapter Twenty-four

Luke sat in the huge dining room of Gù Brath, more than a little overwhelmed and utterly awed by the sheer magnitude of the festivities. The boisterous younger children—whom Luke had heard more than one person refer to as little heathens—had temporarily been relegated to the playroom downstairs, apparently to give the adults a few minutes of peace. But there still had to be forty people—sitting and standing around the table, which was thirty feet long if it was a foot, and crammed in among the balloons and streamers—and every damn one of them was wearing a birthday hat.

Except him.

And Tigger.

At Camry’s somewhat threatening insistence, Luke was wearing AuClair’s hat, and Tigger was wearing her own miniature version.

Kate’s snickering wasn’t at all helping his mood, nor were her repeated requests that he look at her; each time he complied she would then take his picture on her cell phone.

Luke figured several of them were already posted on the Internet.

While they waited for Winter, who seemed to be late for her own birthday party, Luke tried to concentrate on putting each sister’s face to her name. He wasn’t having much luck, though, considering he’d been introduced to all of them almost at once. As for their husbands and children . . . well, the only one he could place was Jack Stone.

But then, one usually does remember one’s rescuer.

“Luke, let Max get up on your lap,” Camry said, leaning close to be heard over the sounds of lively conversation. “His feelings are hurt because I’m holding Tigger.”

Well, why the hell not? He already looked ridiculous in his hat, why not try to hold an overly excited fifty-pound dog on his lap, too?

He turned his chair slightly, bumped into someone and apologized, then patted his chest. “Come on, Max. You sit quietly, and I’ll share my piece of cake with you after they blow out the candles.” Max jumped up, then immediately tried to crawl onto the table, apparently more interested in the gift sitting next to Camry’s cake than he was in the cake. “No, boy. Sit,” Luke commanded.

Max sat still for exactly six seconds, then made another lunge for the gift.

In his scramble to catch him, Luke’s chair again bumped into the person behind him, and with a muttered curse, both Luke and Max fell to the floor—the gift clamped in Max’s mouth.

Camry looked down, obviously trying not to laugh. “Are you having a bad day, Luke?” she asked, a snicker escaping.

“You don’t know the half of it, since you slept through most of it,” he said, standing up. He then tried to wrestle the gift out of Max’s mouth, painfully aware that there was sudden silence, and that every eye in the room was on him. “Come on,” he hissed under his breath, “give it up, Max.”

The dog opened his jaws without any warning, releasing his treasure. Luke was so surprised that he bumped into his chair—which finally sent the long-suffering person behind him scrambling away—then fumbled to catch the gift that went soaring through the air toward the table.

It landed directly on top of Camry’s birthday cake with a splat, sending tiny missiles of icing over anyone unlucky enough to be sitting nearby. Leaving the gift in the cake and Max on the floor, Luke straightened his pointy hat and sat down.

The gift suddenly gave a long, air-piercing, cake-shuddering beep.

Camry gasped so loud it had to have hurt.

Luke merely closed his eyes with a groan. Oh yeah, miracles notwithstanding, he was having a very bad day.

“Did you hear that?” Camry said, nudging him hard enough to leave a bruise.

“Half of Pine Creek heard it,” he muttered, opening his eyes just in time to catch Tigger when she shoved the dog at him and stood up.

“Mama!” she shouted down the table—though he didn’t know why, since the room was filled with absolute silence. “What’s in my gift?”

Grace shrugged. “I have no idea.” She gestured toward all the other gifts sitting beside each of her daughters’ individual birthday cakes. “Your gift was delivered this afternoon by special messenger. There was a card, addressed to me, that said I could tuck my gift to you away for next year, because you would probably prefer this one instead.”

“But who is it from?”

Grace shrugged again. “The card didn’t say.”

“And ye just brought it into the house without knowing what was inside?” Grey asked, standing up—as did Jack Stone, Robbie MacBain, and several other men, including Luke. Greylen walked down and snatched the gift out of the cake. “My God, woman, ye should know better than that.”

“It’s okay, Grey,” Grace said, also standing up. “Because I have a pretty good idea what it is. The card also said that twenty years was a long time for a woman to wait for her dream to come true, but that he guessed patience was a motherhood thing.” She gestured toward the gift. “And after what Camry told us earlier, I now also have a good idea who it’s from. That’s why I went and got it from the shed just five minutes ago, and set it on the table.”

Camry gasped so hard again that she bumped into Luke—just before she snatched the gift out of her father’s hand. “It’s the data bank!” she cried, ripping open the dark green paper that was covered with what Luke just now realized were long strings of equations written in gold ink.

She tossed the paper on the table, popped open the box, and pulled out a black metal box the size of a six-pack of soda. She held it up for Luke to see, then turned and held it up to her mother. “It’s Podly’s data bank, isn’t it, Mama?”

Grace collapsed down in her chair, her face as pale as a ghost, huge tears sliding down her cheeks as her smile outshone the three blazing chandeliers over the table. “Y-yes,” she whispered.

Camry ran up to her, set the data bank in Grace’s hands, and hugged her mother fiercely. “We have it, Mama. We have your key to ion propulsion.”

“N-no,” Grace said shakily, handing it back to her. “You have your key.” She touched Camry’s cheek. “You unlocked the secret to ion propulsion when you were twelve, one day when you were in the lab working on a school project. You came up and looked over my shoulder and suggested I transpose two integers in the equation I was working on. So that makes it your discovery, baby, not mine.”

Camry reared back in surprise. “But why didn’t you shout it to the world? Mom! We could be traveling to Mars by now!”

Grace looked at Luke, then at her husband, then down at the data bank in her daughter’s hand. “I didn’t want what came with shouting it to the world,” she whispered. She looked up at Camry, her face flushing red. “I know it looks as if I’ve been unselfish to let you be the one to present our discovery, but it’s actually the opposite. I didn’t tell anyone because it would have meant leaving Gù Brath for days or maybe weeks at a time, to oversee its implementation.” She looked over at Greylen, her eyes filling with fresh tears. “So I very selfishly kept silent, refusing to let the world intrude on my true dream, which was spending every day at home with a husband and family I love more than anything else in the universe.”

She swiped the tears running down her cheeks with the backs of her hands, then cupped Camry’s face. “But you, daughter . . . you have a husband who not only will travel with you, but who will also keep you grounded—as mine did,” she finished strongly, looking at Greylen again, her smile tender.

Greylen strode back up the length of the table, edged Camry out of the way, and pulled Grace into his arms, lifting her off her feet to bury his face in her neck.