Say You Love Me (Double Love Trilogy Conclusion)

I Guess I'm Not As Strong As I Used To Be

Penn Castle
Dorset. United Kingdom
Sunday, February 12, 2023
(1:00 pm)
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"Jesus Christ, Stevie! When you said your wedding was in a castle I thought you were exaggerating!"

Christopher Nicks stood in the foyer of Penn Castle and slowly turned around in a circle to take it all in. He had landed at Heathrow and taken the two-hour ride to his sister's wedding location, assuming it was just a very nice English home she and Lindsey and the McVies had rented...not an actual castle!

"Why is everyone having the same huge reaction to this place?" Stevie wondered aloud, hugging her brother. "Lindsey's kids stood right here yesterday and said the same thing!"

Christopher laughed and looked around some more until his eyes fixed on Lindsey, who appeared to greet him in the foyer. He held out his arms as he approached Lindsey, calling out, "Brother! You finally figured it out, huh?" The two men laughed as they embraced, both of them very aware in that moment that they were finally going to be brothers-in-law for real, after knowing each other in that way for fifty-five years.

"What can I say, man?" Lindsey said as they pulled apart. "I'm a bit late to the party, but she finally got me."

"Oh, shut up! I've always had you!" Stevie said with a laugh, and she stood on tiptoes to kiss Lindsey before she took her brother by the hand to show him through the castle.

Stevie had called Christopher at home in Phoenix two nights after she and Lindsey had first arrived home from their trip to Penn Castle for the holidays. Lindsey had called his brother Jeff to tell him that he and Stevie were engaged, and Stevie had taken his cue and called her brother too. It was during that phone call when she'd asked him if he would give her away at the wedding.

"It's a double wedding on Valentine's Day so it's pretty much the cheesiest thing you could possibly imagine," Stevie explained to her brother on the phone that night. She was sitting on the sofa with the dog while Lindsey was in the shower, and staring at the Christmas tree all lit up in the dark for one last night; she was taking it down the next day.

"That's pretty damn cheesy, Stevie, but I think it's a great idea," Christopher said. "If anyone deserves to have a corny-as-hell romantic wedding on Valentine's Day, it's you guys!" He laughed to himself and then said, "It's what my Millennial daughter would call 'on brand.'"

Stevie laughed out loud and said, "You're not kidding! Actually, that is PRECISELY the term LeeLee used to us when we told the kids!"

"It's one of the most Stevie Nicks things you've ever done," Christopher said.

"Well listen, since it's a Stevie Nicks thing, I guess...the other reason I'm calling is to ask for a Christopher Nicks thing - I'd like you to give me away."

There was a moment of silence between the two siblings on the phone. Stevie knew what her brother was thinking - that it was an honor to be asked but a shame that Jess wasn't around to do the job himself. Finally, he said, "Of course I will, Teedee," and Stevie felt her eyes fill with tears. Their mother had been gone eleven years, their father for seventeen, and no one had called her Teedee in as long...not counting the fact that Christopher himself had whispered it to her from the chair beside her hospital bed in Philadelphia when she'd nearly died of pneumonia after being inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. Stevie had scared him more than he cared to admit in those few days when she'd been so out of it, alternating between sleeping and crying and struggling to breathe and calling out for four people who could not come to her side - Robin, Barbara, Jess, and Lindsey. He remembered watching his big sister, almost seventy-one years old, crying like a baby and clutching her blanket - very doped up, he knew - and literally saying, "I need Mommy" through her tears. Christopher had had to excuse himself and leave the room to cry in the hallway; he had only seen her that broken three times before - at Robin's funeral, at their mother's funeral, and when she'd come home to Arizona after The Dance to get over losing Lindsey.