“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I really am.”
“Holy Scheisse,” she says under her breath, staring at me dumbfounded. She’s taken to swearing in German lately.
Finn just looks at me with his mouth open. “You’re pregnant?” he says finally.
“I feel like this calls for a joke,” Liz says, “involving Chief Stephens and police shotguns and weddings but I’m actually speechless.”
I smile and push her arm. “It’s not a shotgun wedding. Alexander and I want to be married and by some twist of fate I also got pregnant.”
I glance over at Finn, who’s still staring at me. “You’re experiencing a lot of life’s typical milestones in a compressed timeframe,” he comments, obviously recovered from his initial shock.
I can’t help thinking he’s right. It’s as if everything accelerated since I met Alexander—like we’re racing ahead of something, but I’m not sure what. “I was surprised at first,” I say, “like you guys are, but I’m thrilled now, and so is Alexander and I hope you guys are thrilled, too.” I pat my stomach. “You’re going to be this baby’s auntie and uncle you know.”
Liz’s eyes well up. “Of course we’re thrilled for you … oh my God. You just threw me there for a minute. And it takes a lot to throw me … I can’t believe I’m going to be an auntie! And Finn, you’re going to be an uncle.” She gets choked up as she continues. “And this is our only chance, you know … you’re the closest thing to a real sister either of us will ever have.”
I meet her eyes and get a little choked up myself as we all hug in a big, mushy group. “As far as I’m concerned,” I say, “you are my real sister and brother—we just happen to have different parents.”
“That makes no sense,” Finn says, shaking his head.
Liz and I laugh and we all hug some more as she studies the ring again and asks for more details.
In this happy moment, thoughts of dark guardians and danger are pushed so far back in my mind I feel as if nothing could ever go wrong.
My mom got teary when I told her about Alexander’s proposal. She was thrilled, of course, and has been pushing me to let her help plan the wedding ever since. I’m at twelve weeks now, officially into my second trimester and it’s starting to feel more real by the day. The only problem with my mom helping to plan the wedding is that there isn’t much to plan. I want our wedding to be simple and private with only me, Alexander, Edwin, my mom (I told her to also invite Mark, and I hope she does), plus Liz and Finn and their families. Edwin wants to perform the ceremony, and we’ll have some champagne, sparkling water, and maybe some hors d’oeuvres and that’s pretty much it. Easy peasy, right? Alexander is handling the decorations and he joked that I won’t need “something old” (that’s him and his many lives) or “something blue” (because I have my aura). That just leaves something new (which I guess we could count as the baby—you don’t get much newer than that) and something borrowed, which I’ll have to figure out. Oh, and the bouquet, which I already decided I want to be a simple mixture of blue and white forget-me-nots, like the bouquet of flowers Alexander had waiting for me in the cabin the night we made love for the first time. And of course my dress, which I also want to be fairly simple and unadorned. My mom and I have been going to bridal stores all morning with no luck so far. Now we’re at the third one and I’m hoping the third time’s the charm.
“You don’t like any of these?” my mom asks, as we flip through the racks.
“They’re pretty, but I don’t want anything so elaborate. I just want it to be simple. And these prices are nutballs,” I say in a hushed tone, showing her the tag on the heavily-beaded dress in front of me. “I paid less for Archie than this one costs.” Out of the corner of my eye I notice the bridal consultant, who’s been oddly snobbish since we came in, flash a look of disapproval. My mom and I must not look like big spenders and I guess I just proved it.
“Things have changed since I got married,” my mom whispers back. “I think people spend more now on weddings than your father and I did on our first house.” She looks around at all the beaded, buttoned, intricately lacey, embellished dresses throughout the store. “Maybe these bridal stores aren’t the right place for us if you’re looking for something simple.”
“Maybe we should go to some regular stores,” I suggest. “I was picturing something that looks more like a white sundress. Kind of flowy but casual.”
“You mean like my wedding dress?”
I realize the minute my mom says it that, yes, I have been imagining a dress like hers. I shake off dusty, forgotten memories of flipping through her wedding album as a little girl and the remembered photographs flow to the forefront of my brain. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it,” I say, “but yes, exactly like yours. Maybe that’s where I got the idea, subconsciously.”
She smiles. “Well I know a place that has one exactly like mine.”
“Where?”
“It’s called the Jane’s attic.”
“You still have it?”
“Of course. It didn’t occur to me to suggest you wear it. I assumed you’d want a classic dress. Your dad and I had a simple wedding, too.”
“Do you think it would fit?” I ask.
“I know it will. You’re a little shorter than me but we could have it hemmed. And it could count as your ‘something borrowed.’ Do you really think you might like to wear it?”
“I think I’d love to wear it.”
She smiles and pulls me in for a tight hug and plants a kiss on my cheek. “Then let’s go have a nice mother-daughter lunch. Then we can finish our shopping in The Jane’s Attic, San Mar’s newest vintage bridal shop.”
“Can you tell me again how you and Dad met?”
I ask the question as I eat another bite of my surprisingly delicious quinoa, barley, and farro salad at Sweet Pea’s Café downtown. “I know you always say it was love at first sight. But was that really it? You just knew?”
“It was love at first sight—for both of us—that part is true,” my mom answers, “and I honestly didn’t even believe in love at first sight until it happened to me. But the other part, which your dad used to prefer I skip over, was that for some reason, probably related to being born male, he took a heckuva long time coming around.”
I laugh. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I first saw him my senior year of college. He was a transfer student and I saw him on campus one day and our eyes met and, I don’t know, Declan, something in me just leapt at the sight of him. It was like he literally sparkled, above the rest.”
I smile. I love the look in my mom’s eyes when she talks about my dad. I imagine her aura right now as bright, cheery, yellow and white sunbeams shining out from her in all directions.
“I knew he felt something too,” she continues, “because he smiled at me. And the way he smiled at me—with this look in his eyes …” Her voice drifts off and she stares for a moment and takes a deep breath with a faraway smile at the memory. “I just knew,” she says, “there’s no other way to explain it.”
“So you started dating and that was that?”
“Well, that’s how your father preferred I tell it,” she says, “but the truth is, he kept me guessing—and frustrated—for such a long time I almost gave up on him.”
“Really? Why?”
“The day I first saw him I ended up running into him again later at the Student Union, and he walked up and introduced himself and he said—” my mom pauses and smiles again and practically giggles with that faraway look in her eyes before continuing, “I’ll never forget it, Declan, he was so handsome and he had these deep, brilliant blue eyes and he walked up and said, ‘I think I need to know you.’” She stops talking for a moment and smiles again, remembering, and she instantly looks twenty years younger.
“What did you say?” I ask, transfixed by her story. She’s never given me these details before.
“Well, we started talking, and we ended up talking for hours—he was
so witty and smart—and we just clicked. And then we started dating, or what I assumed was dating, but he frustrated me because he wouldn’t make a move. He insisted we were friends. And we were friends—we became such good friends. Best friends, really. We had such a connection.” She peers off into the distance for a moment with a faint smile of remembrance before continuing. “But Declan, you probably don’t want to hear this about your parents, but I knew we weren’t just friends … the way he looked at me … let’s just say there was definitely more than just friendly feelings between us.”
I chuckle. I love it when my mom talks to me like I’m one of her girlfriends. “So what did you do?”
“My friend Kim convinced me I needed to make the first move—to show him I was interested in being more than just friends, in case he wasn’t sure. So I mustered up the courage to finally do it the next time we saw each other.”
“And? What happened?” I ask, on the edge of my seat.
“He turned away! I was so embarrassed. And mad, to be honest. I told myself that was it—he was either leading me on or I’d read it wrong and he wasn’t interested. I honestly didn’t know what to make of it, but I decided I couldn’t go on seeing him if all he wanted was friendship because I wanted so much more. I refused to see him anymore after that and I started dating this other guy, Malcolm, who’d been pursuing me. I thought maybe it would help me get over your dad.”
“What? Who’s Malcolm? How come I never heard any of this before?” I had no idea my mom dated someone else after dating my dad. The story I had in my mind was that my mom and dad saw each other, fell in love, and that was it—boom—happily ever after. It’s fascinating to hear that it was far more complicated than that.
“Your dad never liked me to mention him … because of what happened.”
“What happened?” I ask, thoroughly intrigued.
“Your father saw me with Malcom one day. We were holding hands and I think we may have been getting ready to go away for the weekend, if I remember right. Anyway, the next thing I knew—I think it was a few days later, I can never remember the timing—your father was at my apartment door, looking like hell, and he professed his love for me and took me in his arms and kissed me. He asked me to marry him, right then and there, and I knew it was crazy but I said yes.”
I smile. How romantic. And a little crazy and spontaneous, too—like straight out of a rom-com. I never knew how precarious my mom’s and dad’s romance was—it’s funny to think that if they hadn’t both been slightly nutso to the same degree, I might not be here.
“And the rest is history,” she says with a choked-up flourish of her hands as her eyes get misty. She remains silent for a long moment, looking down. “God, I miss him, Declan,” she says in a whisper as she wipes away a tear, “so much.”
“I know, mom,” I say, my eyes welling up along with hers. “Me, too.” I reach over to touch her arm and she squeezes my hand.
“I felt like he spoke to me the other day, though,” she says through a tear-stained smile.
“Really?” My spine tingles a little at her words. I never shared with my mom that I imagined I heard my dad speaking to me, too.
She nods. “Mark came over for dinner and after he left I was sitting in bed reading and I was starting to doze off and suddenly, I swear to you, I felt like your dad was right there next to me, where he always used to be, and he said, clear as day, ‘it’s okay.’” Fresh tears start to fall and she wipes them away and looks around the outside patio to see if anyone is watching us. “Then he said it again,” she says. “He whispered: ‘I’ll always love you, my beautiful ray of sunlight. And it’s okay.’” She wipes away more tears. “That’s what he used to call me, his beautiful ray of sunlight. I’d almost forgotten.”
I wipe away fresh tears of my own. “What do you think it meant?”
“I think he’s trying to tell me it’s okay to move on.”
I nod, teary-eyed. “I think so, too, mom.”
“Mark’s a good man,” she says, regaining her composure and smoothing her napkin in her lap.
“He is,” I say. “I like him.”
She looks up. “You do?”
“Of course, mom, I’m the one that encouraged you to go out with him in the first place. He’s a nice guy. A good guy.”
She nods. “He told me he’s falling in love with me.”
“He did?”
“Yes,” she smiles, her eyes bright, “and we haven’t even kissed yet.”
“You haven’t even kissed him yet?” My eyes are wide as saucers. “In all this time?”
“No,” she laughs, her eyes still wet, “he said he’s willing to wait for me, until I’m ready.”
“Wow.” I shake my head slowly. “That is one seriously patient man … a man who is clearly already hopelessly in love with you.”
She smiles and wipes her eyes again.
“How do you feel?” I ask. “About him?”
She pauses and takes a deep breath and looks down, smoothing the napkin in her lap again several times before answering. “I feel like my heart is open again,” she says as she looks up and meets my eyes. “And I think I’m ready.”
I smile and can’t help thinking that that’s exactly what my dad wanted. There’s no question in my mind anymore that he’s watching over us.
And maybe now my dad can be at peace, and he can move on, too.
Chapter Eight
My mom pulls the opaque plastic bin from a high shelf in the attic. “Here it is,” she says with a measure of satisfaction. “Let’s take it to my room before we open it.”
When we get to her room, she sets the bin on the bed and my heart beats a little faster as she snaps open the lid. “I had it cleaned before I stored it away,” she says as she lifts out her wedding dress and holds it lovingly draped over her arms for me.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, reaching out to touch the soft, flowy fabric.
“I think it will fit you perfectly,” she says as she lays it down on the bed and lifts another item out of the bin. It’s a white, woven flower crown and as soon as I see it my heart stops mid-beat with amazement.
The fabric flowers are delicate white forget-me-nots.
I lift it and turn it over in my hand. The woven ring is so simple and beautiful, it looks like something a wood nymph would wear—utterly perfect for a wedding held in a fairy ring of stately trees. “Oh, mom, this is beautiful, too. It’s perfect. Can we look at your wedding album?” I’ve been struggling to recall the long-ago photos that I haven’t looked at since I was a little girl.
She smiles as I lay down the flower crown next to her dress. “Of course,” she says as she disappears into her closet and emerges with the album in her hand.
We both sit down on the edge of her bed and open the album between us on our laps. The first photo is of my mom and dad sharing a kiss on the beach.
“We had such a simple wedding,” she says as we flip through the pages, “I didn’t want anything fancy and your dad and I were broke college students.” She laughs. “Your dad had no family alive and my father had passed a few years earlier and my mom didn’t approve of me getting married—not at first anyway—so it was just us and a bunch of our friends from school. It was more like a casual party than a typical wedding.”
“Why didn’t grandma approve?” I ask. I never really knew my grandmother. She died when I was very little.
“We married so spontaneously she thought I’d lost my mind and that Frank and I were both fools. But when you came along, very soon after,” she says with a smile, “my mom quickly came around, too. You were irresistible.”
I smile and stare at the picture of my mom walking down the aisle barefoot—if you can call the stretch of sand between where her and my dad’s friends stood on the beach an aisle. She looks like a beautiful waif, with her hair down and the woven ring of flowers worn like a crown over her golden, flowing waves. In the photo, the backless white cotton sundress has a softly rounded halter neckline
that scoops just enough in front to show the graceful slope of her shoulder bones, and it ties at the back of her neck. The dress gathers gently at the waist with a built-in sash and then flows to the ground. It’s all soft and airy and my mom looks like a cross between a ‘60s love child and a sandy mirage. She’s radiant and naturally beautiful and it’s exactly what I pictured for myself. I’m getting married in a Redwood fairy ring after all, so why not wear a white, flowing fairy dress and a crown of flowers?
“Mom, you were so beautiful,” I say softly. I turn the page to see my dad holding her hands as they take their vows. He’s barefoot also, dressed in jeans and a white button-down shirt.
“I told you we were poor,” my mom says with a laugh. “Your dad didn’t even own a suit. I told him I didn’t care what he wore as long as he was there.”
We flip slowly through the rest of the pages and my mom takes a deep breath when we’re finished and closes the album and remains quiet for a moment. Then she takes another deep breath, perks herself up, and looks at me with a smile in her eyes. “Are you ready to try the dress on?” she asks.
I nod eagerly.
I strip to my underwear and she helps me slip the dress over my head and tie it at the neck. Then my mom stands behind me, beaming, as I look at my reflection in the full-length mirror on the door of her closet. “The good news is, it’s adjustable,” my mom says as she tugs gently on the two ends of the built-in sash at my waist and ties it behind me. “So when you start showing more, you can simply tie it looser. And we can hem it a little, too.”
I smile, barely hearing her because I’m transfixed at the image in the mirror. I adore this dress. It’s exactly what I envisioned. Maybe better, if that’s even possible.
“Take out your ponytail,” my mom says and I pull out the elastic band and shake my hair out over my shoulders. My mom arranges the hair around my face with her fingers and continues primping here and there along its lengths until I have golden waves that look natural and effortless, just the way I envisioned. Then she reaches over and places the woven crown of sparse, delicate forget-me-nots on my head, set slightly back like a headband, and it completes the look so perfectly that my eyes well up.
Revelation (The Guardian Series Book 3) Page 4
