Page 64 of The Country Nurse
When Tilly threw her bouquet, it was Fliss who caught it.
‘Your turn next,’ Tilly said.
‘I should think so.’ Fliss grinned, looking up at her captain. ‘Unless this rock on my finger is just a pacifier to stop me nagging. I’ve ordered my dress already.’
When Sarah threw her bouquet, Annie and Rose grabbed it simultaneously.
Kate laughed. ‘Well, perhaps there might be another double wedding on the cards soon.’
‘If two women catch the bouquet at the same time, it’s a sign of good luck and fertility,’ Amelia said. Annie and Rose glanced at each other and blushed.
When the newly married couples and their guests all started to walk up the lane towards the village hall, there was a loud burst of clapping and cheering from the assembled crowd. Kate and Dot took the opportunity then to slip away and place some nigella flowers on their mother’s grave.
‘Love-in-a-mist,’ Kate said, as she placed them next to Ada’s cross. ‘Her favourite flowers. She would’ve so loved to be here today,’ she continued, through her own mist of tears.
‘Yes, she would, but she lives on in all of us,’ Dot said. ‘We have inherited her strength and determination in life, and so have her grandchildren. We are our mother’s daughters.’
‘We are indeed,’ Kate agreed, taking her sister’s hand. ‘Do you suppose our Tilly will settle here, in England, Dot? Or willher American take her away from us, across the Atlantic? I do hope they choose to stay.’
‘No matter where they are and what they do, Tilly will always be a Truscott and our love will always keep us together,’ Dot said. ‘No ocean is wide and deep enough to keep us apart.’
The two sisters held each other’s hands and walked up the road together to join the next generation of Truscotts in celebration of all there was to come. All the ups and downs of family life in the Hampshire countryside. All the laughter and the tears.
THE END
