by Mia Ford
“Exactly,” Sherry said, leaning the side of her head into Darren’s shoulder. “And you get to see the virtually untouched parts of nature. Wow, so you really don’t wanna go to Alaska?”
“Hell yeah, I would go to Alaska,” Darren said. “I have no problem with that part...But I’m just not driving that far. You have to be crazy.”
Darren and Sherry walked arm and arm down the block. Sherry had started to pull away from Darren when they came up on his car. Much to her surprise, Darren continued on walking straight, as if his car wasn’t parked right there. “What are you doing?” Sherry asked. “Darren, the car is right here.”
“I know where the car is,” Darren said, “but who said I was ready to run home so quick. You wanna go on a walk?”
Sherry shrugged her shoulders. “Sure, why not,” she said, looking into Darren’s eyes. “I guess so.”
Sherry continued walking down the block with her arm wrapped around Darren’s. When they came to the corner, Darren led them to the right. They were now heading north, only four or five blocks from the river. Sherry looked up at Darren and giggled. He held his head so high and confident as he guided her down the sidewalk.
“What are you laughing at?” Darren asked. “What? What happened?”
“Oh nothing,” Sherry said. Again, she leaned her head against Darren’s shoulder. “I’m just noticing how mighty good you’re getting at getting your way around. You’ve been here a while, but not that long. You’re walking around here like you’re from here.”
Darren laughed. “Okay… Well, I guess I’ll take that as a compliment. I guess...”
“It is,” Sherry said. She felt safe in Darren’s company...safer than she’d felt in a very long time.
“Yeah, I guess I am learning my way around here kind quickly,” Darren said. “Then again, this place isn’t that big like that.”
“I bet it’s not to you,” Sherry said. “I could only imagine having to learn my way around Chicago and how long that’s gotta take. I couldn’t imagine having to do somewhere like that. Fort Wayne was enough me…. It’s the big city around here, especially compared to my town.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Darren said.
“So,” Sherry said, looking forward as the street dipped under a viaduct. A train chugged along, the track passing between office buildings, “where are we headed?”
“Up this street right here,” Darren said, nodding forward.
Sherry turned and looked ahead. The street dead ended after the next stoplight at a parking lot for a government building. The park was beyond that. If he’s going to the park, why don’t he just say we’re going to the park?
Darren did just what Sherry thought he was doing. Within a few minutes, they walked into Headwaters Park. The trail curved away from the street and deeper into the park. The tranquility of it all, mixed with the perfect night air, was so relaxing. Rushing sounds of the nearby river soothes their minds and mixed well with the few glasses of wine they had at Valentina’s. Crickets and other bugs chirped and buzzed in the background.
“So, do you think you’re going to stay here permanently?” Sherry asked.
Darren bit his bottom lip in thought. “Depends,” he said, glancing back at the high rises sticking out above the trees and shorter buildings.
“On what?” Sherry asked. “What does it depend on? How business goes here or what?”
Darren shrugged. “Well, I don’t know, really. I’ve always been so conscious of how I answer questions like that. There’s a big difference now of course… We have Gabriel to worry about.”
We? Sherry thought. He said we even though, technically, I’m still just the nanny. Sherry recalled signing over her rights at the adoption agency. “Yeah, that’s definitely something to think about,” she admitted. “Once he gets to a certain age, you definitely don’t want to keep uprooting him and having him learn somewhere new. I had a cousin growing up whose parents were in the military. We were kinda close...or at least as close as we could be for someone who always moved around. When she would come to town, we would hang out and talk and all that. And she would talk about how she felt like she never had a home. I couldn’t really relate, but now I can kinda see why.”
“Yeah, absolutely,” Darren said. “I like Fort Wayne, I do. But there are some other questions that would have to be answered before I would actually decide to live here permanently.”
“Yeah, you have property and that kind of thing here,” Sherry said. “I imagine you would have to live close by a place if you’re trying to do the landlord thing.”
“Well...actually,” Darren said. “Not necessarily. My dad has properties he’d probably only seen once, if that. I remember when we would go on road trips growing up and stuff, we would stop in these odd little towns in the middle of nowhere and not necessarily close to the highway or whatever major road we were on. We would always be asking Dad why in the hell we were going out of the way to those places. Next thing you know, we were sitting outside of properties in tiny towns we’d never even thought of while Dad was inside or walking around the outside. So, not really. It’s ideal to be nearby, but you don’t really have to be. Plus, if I were to move, it would probably be in the Midwest. A lot of my family’s business is in Chicago and I really don’t wanna be too far away from that.”
“Okay, I get it, I get it,” Sherry said, nodding. “So, then, what question would have to have answered?” The trail slopped down a bit, lights winding at its sides. When Sherry glanced back, traffic on the street disappeared beyond the trees and bushes. Ahead, the trail came close to the river. Two benches, on either side of the trail, popped into view “So, then what questions would have to be answered for you to decide if you want to stay here or not? Come on, spill. Don’t hold back.”
Darren chuckled, glancing down at Sherry suggestively. Sherry couldn’t help but to wonder what was going through this man’s mind. “Well,” he said, “actually one is one that you would have to answer.”
“Me?” Sherry asked, surprised. “What do I have to do with you and your business and whether or not you’re gonna move and all that? You’re not gonna have to ask me what I think you should move to. I’m just a small-town girl myself… My biggest move is coming here when I was ready to break free or whatever from my family.”
Darren chuckled. He then startled Sherry by stepped in front of her then turning to face her. They stood only a few feet away from an illuminating lamp light. A breeze whipped by; the canopy of trees spreading over the park’s trails raddled. The sound was easily comparable to a light applause. In the distance, beyond the dark shadowed areas of the park, rollerbladers and runners made their way around.
Darren pressed the side of his finger into the side of Sherry’s face. “You are so beautiful,” he said. “I really do mean that.” He looked into her eyes as if he were looking into her soul.
Sherry smiled. “Thank you,” she said. The way this man looked at her nearly paralyzed her. If she even wanted to run off, her legs wouldn’t allow it to happen. Her feet would drag like heavy anchors caught in rocks and scraping against the bottom of the sea.
“I love you, Sherry,” Darren said, grabbing her left hand. “I really do.”
Sherry let out a deep breath then responded. “I love you too, Darren.” She giggled. “This really has been a crazy thing to happen.”
Darren chuckled. “Yeah, I think about that sometimes. But you know what they say…. Everything happens for a reason.”
“Yeah,” Sherry said. She knew with time and love, some of the feelings she’d been dealing with would become easier to manage and morph into motivation. “I guess everything does happen for a reason.”
“So, you asked me what is the one question I need answered before I could ever decided if it was going to stay in Fort Wayne permanently?” Darren smiled then his eyebrows raised.
“Yeah?” Sherry said, squinting a bit.
Sherry lifted her hands to cover her mouth as she watched someth
ing she certainly hadn’t been expecting anytime soon in her life. She nearly fell back as Darren got down on one knee and pulled a velvet-looking black ring box out of his pocket. Sherry’s eyes swelled with tears of joy. Never in a million years did she think her life would take the kinds of turns it’d been taking lately. This was a like a long dream – an entrancing fairy tale – that kept getting better.
“What are you doing, Darren?” Sherry asked, not believing her eyes. “Darren? Darren?” She didn’t know what else to say; she felt like she had to say something. “Darren, really?”
Darren got comfortable on his knee then tilted his head up and looked into Sherry’s eyes, all while holding her left hand firmly. She wiped tears from her eyes and sniffled. “Well, this is the question I need an answer to before I decide if I’m gonna stay here or not, Sherry.”
“Okay,” Sherry said, struggling to breathe. “Okay...okay. Yes, what is the question?”
Darren took a deep breathe. The wind rustled his hair a bit; the lamp light caused his eyes to glisten. “Sherry, I know we didn’t exactly meet in the most conventional way. Honestly, this has been one hell of a ride for me too. And if I had to do it all over again, I would because of where we got to.” He looked at Sherry nodding. “Ever since meeting you at the bar, I saw something in you that I hadn’t seen in any woman in a long time. I love you Sherry, I really do. And, yes, I had to deal with other kinds of anxieties. I admit I did, but I didn’t get this far in life without taking any risks. So, I wanted to know… Would you do the honor of being my wife?”
Sherry’s heart thumped. Her disbelief had gone to another level. She sobbed with tears watching Darren open the ring box. When he held the ring up and out, toward Sherry, the diamond sparkled in the light. Sherry held her hand out even further as Darren lifted the ring out of the box. She spread her fingers, expectantly.
“Oh my God,” Sherry said, nodding her head. “Oh my God, oh my God.”
Darren still looked into Sherry’s eyes. He chuckled. “So, are you gonna answer my question or not?”
Sherry’s giggled, realizing that she’d been frozen not only in time, but also in thought. “Yes, Darren,” she said, jumping up and down. “Yes, I’ll be your wife. I’ll marry you. Yes.”
Darren chuckled then slid the 22-carat ringer onto her ring finger. He leaned forward and kissed Sherry’s hand as he lifted up off of his knee. Before he could stand completely upright, Sherry fell forward. Her arms wrapped around his neck and she kissed him like a waiting woman kissed her husband upon returning from being deployed. There they stood, in a passionate embrace, in the park and next to a glowing light. A strong wind whipped through the park. The tree branches and leaves applauded emphatically while the river cheered on their love, rushing downstream with noisy waves crashing the rocky banks.
Chapter 14
That night, Sherry and Darren picked Gabriel up after their iconic moment in park then headed home. Luckily, for the both of them, their beautiful baby boy went right to sleep the moment he lay in the crib. His mother and father waited in the doorway for several minutes, looking at their greatest creation, before slipping into Darren’s bedroom. They made love into the night, lost in emotion and lust they’d never seen.
Their lives ramped up in the following months more than they ever expected. A week after proposing to Sherry, Darren finally bit the bullet. He called his mother and filled her in on everything that happened. Needless to say, Joan wasn’t the happiest camper. Yes, she admitted to liking Sherry; however, her liking Sherry was in fact based on her capacity as Gabriel’s nanny. Joan was shocked beyond belief that the young lady would wind up being Gabriel’s real mother. And what were the chances that her son Darren would just so happen to have adopted a baby boy who was a product of a one-night stand he had with Sherry?
Joan was adamant about her dislike for the two getting married. During the conversation, she named off several of her own associates, both in the business world as well as in Chicago’s elite political system who had daughters she saw more suitable for marriage. “What about Donald Decker's daughter? You remember her, don’t you Darren? You two met at that gala we went to with your father up in Milwaukee. Or what about Sarah White’s niece? You know? She worked on Huckabee’s campaign down in Arkansas before he went to Washington D.C. You know she inherited quite a nice amount of assets from her aunt on her father’s side. She’s not bad.”
Darren loved Sherry so much and was so ready to take the marriage risk that his family’s warnings about marrying a woman like Sherry went into one ear then out of the other. When his father finally got around to calling, he admitted he had to call from his office as calling at home with his mother walking around in the background griping was out of the question. His father expressed his feelings about the situation, bringing up that his son was trying to marry a woman neither his mother or father had yet to get to know. Once this sentiment was out on the table, Darren’s father congratulated him and wished him the best of luck. “Marriage is going to be harder than you think.”
Sherry, on the other hand, had a different battle when it came to her family. She kept her engagement a secret for nearly two months, or until she and Darren decided that the wedding would be around Christmas. Unlike Darren, she’d been estranged from her family for years. Nobody knew she had a child and had given it up for adoption, nor did anybody in her family know she had won a battle with cancer. Now, with so much to catch up on, her drive out to her hometown, Goshen, was a thought-consumed couple of hours. Darren had arranged for the daycare to keep Gabriel all day rather than just a half-day. He was leaving the house at the same time as Sherry. They kissed in the foyer and he looked into her eyes, stroking her hair, telling her to be strong and keep calm. “Everything is going to be alright.”
Nearly back at her post-baby weight, Sherry looked over her makeup as US33 turned a bend then descended into Goshen. Sherry look out from the slope. From this view, she could look out over her hometown in its entirety. As she crossed over the Elkhart River, she vividly remembered growing up here. She and her friends found an old trail winding along the river for miles when they were just eight or nine years-old. She looked upstream as she slowed down on the bridge. I wonder if it’s still there. The world seemed so simple then.
Sherry rolled through town, down Main Street. The town literally had retained its character – the epitome of staying the same. However, this stillness of the town was also symbolic of something else: her family. How will they react to seeing me after all this time? Should I have brought Gabriel with me? No, Sherry. You don’t even know how they’ll react to you, much less you pulling up with a baby that they didn’t even know existed...and by a man you’re not even married to...yet
Sherry zigzagged through town until coming to Chester Street, where she turned right. The ride through the next few stop signs was trippy in many ways for her. So many houses looked the same; a few had been repainted. She looked at Mr. Johnson’s house and wondered if Mrs. Johnson was still living. Billy Carson’s house was overgrown with weeds, but looked as if someone lived in it still. Karen Carpenter – this girl Sherry would get into occasional fights with while growing up – and her family lived in a big house on the corner that had a wrap around porch. Sherry was a bit surprised to see the house had burned down. And it didn’t look as if it had happened all that long ago.
When Sherry pulled up in front of her parents’ house – in front of the house where she’d grown up – her stomach sunk a bit. Her heart thumped. It’d been such a long time since she was this nervous. So many questions swirled around in her mind. There were even moments where her nerves had gotten so shot that she contemplated turning around and heading back to Main Street so she could get the hell out of town before anyone saw her who would recognize her face.
“No, Sherry,” Sherry said to herself. Her hand gripped the steering wheel as she turned and looked up at the house. “You came all this way. If they’re not happy to see you, then that just tells you
to go on back to Fort Wayne and continue your life with Darren.” Life with Darren….Wow, that sounds strange. Who would’ve ever thought this was coming?
Sherry climbed out of the car and headed up the sidewalk toward her parents’ porch. Just as she was about to step up onto the first step, the screen door two porches down swung up. Sherry spotted Maria, a church girl who probably would never move out of her parents’ house, stepping out. She smiled for the brief moment they made eye contact then stepped up onto the porch. Sherry didn’t realize the effect it would have on her to have to knock at her parents’ door rather than just pulling out a key and letting herself in. She rubbed her palms together in anticipation.
The lock turned then the door swung up. Sherry looked inside, but the glare on the screen glass made it difficult to see into the dim house. Not to Sherry’s surprise, curtains were still closed and the house still shut off from the world. In a matter of seconds, a set of eyes came forward, toward the glass – eyes she knew so well, but hadn’t seen in so long.
“Sherry?”
Sherry forced a smile. “Mom?”
Sherry’s mother, Donna, pushed the screen door open then Sherry walked inside. The 50-year-old woman looked her estranged daughter up and down then hugged her, albeit coldly. The thin, graying woman, whose hair lay down on her shoulders, stepped back, holding Sherry’s left hand. She looked up into Sherry’s eyes, her own eyes demanding questions a mother would never allow her daughter to leave the house without answering.
“Can we talk?” Sherry asked. Even though she’d fallen out of touch with her mother for so many reasons, the look in her eyes made the drive over to Goshen worth it. Sherry followed her mother to the kitchen at the back of the house. As they made their way through the house, Sherry took in the house’s condition. She couldn’t help but to compare it to when she’d gotten into a cursing rage with her mother to run out to her car then drive off to be sight unseen for several years.
