by L. Langdon
Gerri had to smile, but that didn’t stop her from teasing him. “It?”
“Now don’t go all Mindy on me. I admit that, in an ideal world, English should have a word for ‘he or she,’ but ‘it’ isn’t a bad substitute.”
She smilingly nodded her acceptance and changed the subject. “When we do decide to make a little person, I think that you’ll make a good father.” With that, she leaned over for a kiss.
When they finally broke the kiss, Sven stared at her, drinking her in. “I love you,” was all he could say.
“And I love you.”
Sven reluctantly checked his watch. “How soon do you have to leave for Mindy’s wedding shower?”
“I have a few minutes yet. But remember, I’m helping with the setup.”
“You always said that you wanted to do something special for her when she got married.” He paused. He didn’t want to bring up any unpleasant subjects, but… “Did she ever say whether she had any trouble with her family about marrying John?”
“She said that they accepted it more easily than she had expected. They might have been against it initially, but they’ve met him several times, and they like him. Or, as Mindy says, ‘He charmed them, and we always avoided arguing around them—they wouldn’t have understood.’”
“Does her mother know that I’m going to be at the wedding?”
Gerri cast him a glance. “Yes. Mindy sat her down and talked to her about that. She told her mother that you’d be there as the husband of the matron of honor, and she got a promise that there wouldn’t be any scenes. When Mindy gave her that painting, that might have helped.”
“She didn’t tell her that I painted it, did she?”
“No. She left the impression that you had had it commissioned. But that still convinced her mother that you cared about Laura.”
“Good.”
They were silent for a minute. Sven was glad that the toxic residue of that chapter of his life seemed to be dissipating.
Gerri had already moved onto another topic. “There’s only one more loose end that concerns me.”
He grinned. He had a strong suspicion as to what it was. Sure enough, she enlightened him.
“Do you have your parents’ address? I’d like to write them and introduce myself.”
Sven smiled fondly. “Ahhh, Gerri the peacemaker.”
“Well? I think it’s only polite. And if it gets you and them closer together, that would make me happy.”
“I’ll give you the address. But I worry that they might be unkind to you—especially if they find out that you’re not white.”
“I certainly won’t hide that. In fact, I’ll enclose a picture. If they react badly, then I’ll be disappointed, but I won’t be crushed. And at least I will have tried.”
Sven was silent, lost in his thoughts—or perhaps in his memories. Gerri thought back on the last two and a half years of her life. She had gone from a college student with a rather provincial outlook—she had hardly even considered a life beyond South Carolina—to a respected teacher comfortable with travelling thousands of miles to the opposite end of the continent. Even more amazing, she had gone from an insecure girl in a relationship that she had come to suspect was merely manipulative, to a confident woman who had found the love of her life in the most unexpected place.
Add to that, the fact that she had helped to bring two people dear to her, Sven and Mindy, back to a friendship that they had lost years before.
And of course there was the satisfaction of having helped in some small way, through the example of her ‘adventure,’ to turn Marilyn’s life around.
Sometimes, it seemed to her as though anything was possible. She looked at Sven and smiled. “I’m optimistic,” she said.
