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been through since her death, she’d feel only joy that he and I
might find happiness in each other.
“You’re wrong, Patrick,” I whispered, heart racing. “If she
knew that we took the mess that was left after she was gone
and turned it into something beautiful, Grace would have been
delighted.”
He pulled away, sinking back onto his heels. I opened my
eyes and found him staring at me in wonder. It was magical and
marvelous and somehow miraculous that we had taken a rela-
tionship so fraught with resentment and pain and turned it into
something even deeper than affection.
“You feel it, too?” he asked me.
“I think I do.”
And we sat like that on the floor, looking at one another like
we might have on any other day, only this time we really were
seeing each other for the first time.
Patrick and I found ourselves in the exceedingly odd position
of being married and sharing the care of four children while
courting one another.
In reality, the months of our courtship looked a lot like the
months that had preceded it. We juggled daily life with the chil-
dren together—arranging for the twins to start school in the
spring, helping Tim with his homework, managing the house.
When the children were in bed, we spent time alone, learn-
ing one another as individuals instead of parents. Life in those
months was like a wonderful gift, and while Patrick openly
talked with me about his guilt at finding love so soon after
Grace’s death, I only felt blissfully freed by this new phase of
our relationship. We talked for hours each night, learning the
depths to one another and exploring the connection between
us. I even told him about that conversation Grace and I had in
the car the very last time I saw her.
“She wanted me to fall in love,” I told him. “I told her that I
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was never going to marry, and she told me that she wanted me
to know how wonderful it felt to fall in love with someone. She
thought that would change my opinion of marriage. To be hon-
est, I think Grace felt a little sorry for me that I saw the world
in a black-and-white way.”
“And now?” he asked me quietly.
“Well, I still think inequality is a problem and I still think
that marriage is an anchor around the neck of my fellow women
sometimes, and I still think society should change…that society
will change.” I shrugged, but then I shot him a cheeky smile.
“But I also think that the way you and I are together only makes
me stronger. So maybe, things aren’t as clear-cut as I always as-
sumed they were.”
“It surprises me that Grace would say such warm things about
marriage,” Patrick mused, frowning. “I wouldn’t have thought
she’d have had a positive opinion of it…after being married to
me.”
“She loved you,” I said simply. He gave me a sad smile.
“Even when I didn’t deserve it.”
“Everyone deserves love, Patrick.”
“I made so many mistakes,” he sighed. “You were in Califor-
nia so you didn’t have to see it. But I was a child with a man’s
responsibilities. I don’t really know what it was about Grace,
but every time she had a baby, she’d change. With Tim, nei-
ther one of us had any clue what we were doing and I really
just thought maybe she didn’t like being a mom. But with the
twins, I could see it was more than that…some kind of mental
problem she couldn’t control. And it was worse than ever with
Beth. And wouldn’t you think her husband would see her strug-
gling and step up to help? But I didn’t. I didn’t know how to,
and after I took her to the doctor one time and he just told her
she had to tough it out, I guess I panicked. It was easier to stay
out with the boys from work than it was to come home and face
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the reality that I kept getting her pregnant and those pregnan-
cies damaged her so much.”
“I didn’t know how bad it was for her, either,” I admitted,
throat tightening. “Not until…”
“Not until?”
I cleared my throat. Patrick and I had shared hundreds of
hours of conversation by then, but rarely about Grace. It wasn’t
that we’d forgotten her; rather, we quickly realized that life
would just keep marching on, and we had to look forward, not
back.
“She told me about how depressed she had been,” I said softly.
“Just before she died.”
“I don’t know the full story and I probably never will, but
there was one morning… I woke up and Grace looked as though
she’d been hit by a bus. She had bruises all over her, and scratches
even on her face, and somehow between me going to bed and
waking up, she’d used all of the gas in my car. I think… I really
think she tried to hurt herself that night. I tried after that to be
around more. The thing is, she always perked up once the ba-
bies were a bit older, even if she was already pregnant again by
then. It was something about that first year after she gave birth
that messed her up.” He glanced at me, his gaze intense. “You’re
sure you don’t want kids, aren’t you?”
I laughed quietly, then motioned toward the bedrooms.
“I’m sure I already have plenty of kids, actually.”
“I mean it, Maryanne. I couldn’t bear to see you suffer the
way that she… .I just mean, if we…when we… I’m not being
presumptuous, but—”
“When we move into the same bedroom,” I finish for him,
laughing softly, “I’ll get a diaphragm. Will that be okay with
you?”
“I’d be fine with that.”
“I truly don’t want children of my own, especially now.”
“But you love those kids. I can see it.”
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“I do. I feel lucky that I get to experience a taste of mother-
hood with your children. I just wouldn’t want to start all over
again with a newborn. Tim and the twins are at school now,
and Beth will start next year—I’ll be able to go back to study-
ing after that. If we were to have another child together, that
would mean still more years when I couldn’t study.”
“Good,” Patrick nodded, satisfied.
“When are we going to…” I trailed off as the flush crept up
Patrick’s cheeks.
“…move into the same bedroom?” He finished the sentence
for me. We flashed one another a slightly awkward grin. “I
know you aren’t one for tradition, but it still matters to me that
we do this right.”
“We’ve been married for over two years now, Patrick,” I said,
then I teased him. “What is your plan, then? Do you divorce
me so we can remarry?”
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” he said, and he ran his
hand through his hair and looked away. “And I do mean a lot.”
I laughed, delighted at his bashfulness, then turned him back
to face me so I could kiss him. But all too soon, he pulled away,
and said quite seriously, “I think I rushed your sister into life
with me. I won’t do that to you. When you’re ready to marry
me—properly this time—just let me know, and I’ll figure out
how we can do that.”
“What does properly entail here, exactly?”
“The church. With Father Willis, not a registrant at the court
house.”
“Christ Almighty, that sounds dull.”
“Maryanne.”
“Okay, okay,” I laughed. “But I’m already committed here,
Patrick. Why do we need to wait?”
“It’s not the arrangement I want you to commit to,” he mur-
mured. “It’s me. This isn’t you promising to help me out with
the kids for the foreseeable future. I want to promise that you’re
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mine, and I’m yours. That really means something to me, and
despite your determination to blow up all traditions, everywhere,
I have a feeling that this kind of promise will mean something
to you, too.”
“So now you’re blowing up traditions.”
“I am?”
“Well, now you’re going to wait for me to propose?”
“I’d propose to you right now if I thought it was what you
wanted.”
I tilted my head at him.
“Patrick, I love you. I’m ready for this to be our life together.”
Everything seemed to fall into place. Patrick and I were
happy—happier than I’d ever expected to be. We were talking
about “our” future, and the truth was, it had been a long while
since I’d been able to imagine my life without him and the chil-
dren in it. But at the end of the day, the man I loved also loved
his traditions. If we were to be together as man and wife in every
sense of the word, he wanted us to be married in the church.
This is what I failed to understand about love before I ex-
perienced it myself. Love doesn’t just need compromise to sur-
vive—love, to its very essence, is compromise. It’s genuinely
wanting what’s best for the other person, even when it trumps
your own preferences. The idea of donning a white dress and
walking down some aisle for a celibate man in robes to formal-
ize our union in the eyes of his religion did not appeal to me
at all. But it meant something to Patrick, and Patrick meant
something to me.
So we set a date, and we planned a second wedding. Father
Willis agreed to perform the service, and he made room for us
in the church timetable just a few weeks later.
“There’s no time to waste,” he said, looking between Patrick
and me with his lips pursed. “You two are already cohabiting,
unmarried in the eyes of God. We’re busy, but I’ll fit you in.”
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I found an ivory lace shift dress in a store near the city, and
we scraped together enough money for a new pair of shoes,
too. Mrs. Hills insisted on baking us a cake. That was about
the extent of what we’d planned for the celebration, but Patrick
was counting down the days with obvious glee. I still thought
his insistence that we marry again before we shared a bed was
nonsense, but this did at least give me time to purchase a dia-
phragm and to pay attention to my cycle so we could avoid in-
timacy midmonth.
And in the meantime, we sat the children down and explained
to them what was happening.
“But you’re already married,” Jeremy said.
“Can I wear a pretty dress?” Ruth asked.
“I want to wear a dress!” Beth protested.
“Why do you need to get married again?” Tim asked, be-
wildered.
“It’s so Maryanne can be your mom now,” Patrick said,
scratching his head and giving me a pleading look.
“She’s already our mom.” Ruth blinked at him.
Patrick sighed.
“But… I mean, she is, it’s just that…”
“Sweeties,” I said quietly. “This wedding means I’m never
leaving. It means I’m here forever. And I always was, but some-
times grown-ups need to do these things just to make an ar-
rangement official. So that’s what it’s about. And we get to have
cake—everyone likes cake, don’t they?”
The kids all nodded, and apparently that was just enough to
satisfy them and they were ready to go back outside and play.
Patrick puffed out a frustrated breath.
“I love how they’ve taken to you,” he said. “But…”
“I hate it, too. I still want to remind them that Grace was
their real mom and I hate that they’ve forgotten her. But if I
do, they have to grieve her all over again,” I sighed and met his
gaze. “They are still so young, my love. It’s too hard for them
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to understand that she was here, and then she was gone, and
now I’m here instead.”
“What do you think Grace would have wanted?”
“I think she’d have hated to miss any of this…any of their
happiness, any of these years. But I also know she’d have wanted
them to be happy,” I admitted.
“That’s what I think, too. We will tell them one day…”
“But just not yet.”
We smiled at one another, as if that settled it, neatly stepping
around the guilt that we both knew could not be avoided forever.
Whether we liked it or not, in the children’s minds, I had
replaced Grace, and we would just have to learn to live with it
until they were old enough to understand.
Patrick worked a half-day on Saturdays, and that weekend
when he finished for the week, we took the children for an
outing to Alki Beach. I had packed a picnic, and Patrick and I
sat on the sand while the older kids frolicked at the edge of the
waves, and Beth built sandcastles nearby. It was a delicious, sun-
drenched day, but when the children’s cheeks were pink, and the
sun was in the sky behind us, we packed up to go back to the car.
“There’s a store we need to have a look at on the way home,”
Patrick said. He wouldn’t tell me where we were going—in-
stead, we drove in silence for a while, and then he parked the
car and winked at me. We each took two children’s hands in
ours, and the six of us crossed the busy road toward the stores.
“Which do you like?” he asked me quietly, finally coming to
a stop by the display window at a jewelry store. I peered through
the glass at so many sparkling rings
and then I laughed.
“The cheapest. Come on—”
“Seriously, Maryanne. We need to get you a set of rings, and
we’re never at the same place at the same time when stores are
open. At least give me a clue what style you prefer.”
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I sighed, but looked through the window to scan the rows
of rings.
“I like simplicity. I don’t want something huge that will bank-
rupt us. Just get me a plain gold band—” But my gaze snagged on
an engagement ring. It was a small oval aquamarine in a simple
silver setting. It was hardly the most elaborate ring in the win-
dow, but I loved it on sight, even as I suspected it would be be-
yond our budget. I forced myself to look back at Patrick. “Just a
plain silver band, okay? Whatever we can afford. Nothing more.”
Patrick looked back into the window, then nodded then of-
fered me a smile and a peck on the cheek.
“Two more weeks, my love,” he murmured softly near my
ear, sending shivers down my spine.
“Two more weeks,” I murmured back, and we shared a know-
ing smile before we turned the children back to the car and
headed home.
Mrs. Hills and Aunt Nina insisted on taking me out for a
bachelorette party the weekend before the wedding. I protested
furiously at this, mostly because I wasn’t exactly excited by the
idea of suffering through two octogenarians offering me sex ad-
vice. But in the end, Patrick convinced me to go.
“You never go anywhere,” he pointed out.
“I go to the park. And the library. And the grocery store.”
“Okay. Correction. You never go anywhere fun.”
“The library is fun.”
“Christ, woman! Take the night off, get dressed up and go
out for a nice dinner somewhere.”
It was actually an uneventful meal in the end. I think my el-
derly friends probably figured out for themselves that I wasn’t ac-
tually as innocent as they might have been just before their own
weddings, and so instead of bombarding me with advice about
marriage and sex, we talked about knitting and the weather
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and later, the way the world had changed over the decades since
they were girls.
I went home, a little tipsy from the wine at dinner, and as
