“I love you,” he said. “Sposami.”
Her mouth stayed open.
Eventually, he continued. “That’s your cue.”
Sewanee closed her mouth, swallowed. “I love you. I would love to marry you.”
Nick knew the next word all too well. “But?”
“But. You’re seriously proposing to me now?”
“All good Romance novels end with a proposal.”
“But at Blah’s funeral?”
“Can you think of a better way to honor your gran?”
“I . . . you . . .” Sewanee huffed a laugh, dropped her head to his chest, took a breath. She looked up, tears of laughter turning to so much more. “Yes.”
The relief in his eyes. “Yes?” How could he have doubted her answer?
Sewanee grabbed his face and beamed. “Yes.”
They kissed, and some time later Nick pulled back, looking serious. “How do I break it to Mitzi?”
“I think you’re good, I saw her hitting on Jason.”
They kissed some more and then Nick pulled away again. “Hey. You know where we could go?”
“Where?”
She saw the answer in the sparkle of his eyes. Like neon and snow.
Las Vegas.
She intertwined their fingers. “I know a great bar.”
“Or we could find the nearest chapel as you’re obviously mad for me.”
Her heart switched places with her stomach. “Chapel?”
Nick grinned. “We might need some witnesses.”
At that moment, Adaku’s signature guffaw ricocheted around the building and echoed off the dumpster, making them both laugh. “I think we know where we can find them.”
Nick dragged her even closer to him. Giddy, he brushed her hair back, gazed down at her face, searching for anything that wasn’t real. He wouldn’t find it. “Are we really doing this?”
She’d asked him the same question in a text message once, what felt like a lifetime ago.
She answered the same way he had then. “We’re really doing this.”
They kissed once more, and walked back out into the crowd, to their people, to share the news. To see who wanted to continue the party across state lines.
And by the way, in case you’re wondering? At the end of it all, they lived happily ever after.
Six Years Ago
Seven weeks had passed since Nick came home to Prescott.
It felt strange, especially now that both of them were back in the house, Jason fresh from rehab, looking like an alley cat someone had put a bow on. Having them back made her miss them more than when they’d been away. Because she didn’t know these new versions of them. These men.
She sat down at her desk to write the e-mail and recalled how much she’d fought with those two messy, boisterous, stubborn high schoolers. How she’d endured–not gracefully–hearing the same clunky chord progression over and over from the garage. How she’d done her best to tolerate the hours of basketball in the driveway while she tried to write. She’d never realized how much it had meant to her until it was gone. Until it was quiet.
She wanted their noise again. She wanted both boys to reclaim that spirit they’d once struggled to hush whenever she’d walked into the kitchen. A spirit that now seemed permanently damaged. Like her brother when he’d returned from Vietnam, lethargically dragging himself around with wounded stoicism. Until he left again. Permanently.
Sometimes she’d catch herself gazing at Nick, looking for the greasy-haired adolescent happily drying glasses behind the bar in Tom’s pub. Looking for the little boy whose grin was so much like her little sister’s that at times she had to turn away. But all those Nicks had disappeared.
She’d never been good at motherly concern. Her biggest personal failing–as Nick himself had once astutely and angrily pointed out–was that she saved all her emotional investment for her characters. In truth, she wanted another chance. To start over completely. To have the social worker set him down again on her doorstep, him and his ratty Eeyore.
A foolish thought, but one that took her back to memories of the precocious young boy who, a few years after his arrival, began endlessly asking “why” and to her frustrated attempts to answer him. To make him understand what the hell life was all about. Why she was his mother now. Why her sister had died and why she had made the choices that led to that worst possible outcome for him. Why life happened and why you simply had to live with it. Why there were no do-overs. Why we’d love to go back and change things if we could, but we couldn’t.