“I know you’re marrying me for the right reasons,” I say, placing my palm on his cheek. He flinches, the touch of my skin seeming to wake him from his trance. “Like, for example, for my tight Pilates ass and orgasmic coq au vin.”
He turns to me, unable to keep his lips from cracking into a smile, then a laugh. He covers my hand with his own and squeezes my fingers before standing.
“Don’t work all weekend,” he says, patting down the creases in his ironed pants. “Get outside. Do something fun.”
I roll my eyes and snatch another piece of bacon, folding it in half before sticking it in my mouth whole.
“Or get some wedding planning done,” he continues. “It’s the final countdown.”
“Next month,” I say, grinning. The fact that we booked our wedding in July—twenty years to the month from when the girls first went missing—is not lost on me. The thought flashed into my mind the moment we walked into Cypress Stables, the oak trees dripping over a gorgeous cobblestone aisle, white painted chairs perfectly aligned with four massive farmhouse columns. Acres and acres of untouched land spanning as far as the eye could see. I still remember setting my sights on the restored barn at the edge of the property that could be used for a reception space, giant wooden pillars decorated with string lights and greenery and milky magnolia flowers. A white picket fence corralling horses as they grazed across the pasture, the plane of green broken only by a bayou in the distance, winding gently across the horizon like a thick, blue vein.
“It’s perfect,” Daniel had said, his hand squeezing mine. “Chloe, isn’t it perfect?”
I nodded, smiling. It was perfect, but the vastness of the place reminded me of home. Of my father, covered in mud, emerging from the trees with a shovel slouched over one shoulder. Of the swamp that surrounded our land like a moat, keeping people out but also confining us in. I glanced over to the farmhouse, tried to imagine myself walking across the giant wraparound porch in my wedding gown before descending the stairs toward Daniel. A flutter of movement caught my eye and I did a double take; there was a girl on the porch, a teenager slouched in a rocking chair, her leg outstretched as brown leather riding boots pushed gently against the porch columns, moving the chair in a lazy rhythm. She perked up when she noticed me staring at her, pulled her dress down and crossed her legs.
“That’s my granddaughter,” the woman before us said. I peeled my eyes from the girl and looked in her direction. “This land has been in our family for generations. She likes to come here sometimes after school. Do her homework on the porch.”
“Beats the hell out of a library,” Daniel said, smiling. He lifted his arm and waved at the girl. She dipped her head slightly, embarrassed, before waving back. Daniel directed his attention back to the woman. “We’ll take it. What’s your availability?”
“Let’s see,” she said, glancing down at the iPad in her hands. She rotated it a few times until she could get the screen upright. “So far, for this year, we’re almost completely booked. You guys are behind schedule!”
“We just got engaged,” I said, twirling the fresh diamond around my finger, a new habit. The ring Daniel had given me was a family heirloom: a Victorian-era jewel handed down by his great-great-grandmother. It was visibly worn, but a true antique, old in a way that couldn’t be replicated. Years of familial stories scratched into the oval-cut center stone surrounded by a halo of rose-cut diamonds, the band a buttery yet slightly cloudy 14-karat yellow gold. “We don’t want to be one of those couples that waits around for years and just delays the inevitable.”
“Yeah, we’re old,” Daniel said. “Clock’s a-tickin’。”
He patted my stomach and the woman smirked, swiping her finger across the screen as if flipping pages. I tried not to blush.
“Like I said, for this year, all my weekends are booked. We can do 2020 if you’d like.”
Daniel shook his head.
“Every single weekend? I can’t believe that. What about Fridays?”
“Most of our Fridays are booked as well, for rehearsals,” she said. “But it looks like we do have one. July 26.”
Daniel glanced at me, raised his eyebrows.
“Think you can pencil it in?”
He was joking, I knew, but the mention of July sent my heart into a flurry.
“July in Louisiana,” I said, twisting my expression. “Think the guests can handle the heat? Especially outside.”