by Grace Palmer
“Can I have a hug?” he asked. Susanna threw herself at him, nearly knocking him onto his back in the sand. He oofed, laughed, squeezed her tight.
She was six years old, probably too young to fully grasp all the implications of what he was asking her. But she knew enough that he valued her saying yes. And when he hugged her, he tried to tell her all the things with his hug that she maybe didn’t quite understand in his words. That he would love her. That he would protect her. That he would be a father to her, for as long as she would have him.
That moment meant far more to him than he had realized until the very second it was happening.
Eventually, he let her go and set her down. “Can I ask you one more favor?” he said.
She nodded again. One blonde braid had begun to unravel. He reached up and smoothed it behind her ear with a gentle hand.
“Can you go get your mommy for me? But Suz—” He grabbed her before she could run off. “Make sure you don’t give away our secret just yet, okay?”
She nodded, giggled, then took off running back towards the party, her bare feet kicking up plumes of sand as she went.
Brent sank back onto his heels and dabbed his tear away with the cuff of his shirt. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath. Salty air mixed with the woodsy smoke from the fire. He listened to the crackling logs and the slap of waves on the shore, and as he did, he offered up a quiet thanks to his father, wherever he might be.
He opened his eyes when he heard someone approaching. The light picked up Rose a few yards away. He smiled and took to his feet as she approached. “You look incredible,” he whispered, half to her and half to himself. He wasn’t lying. In a wine-colored dress that swung past her ankles, with her hair piled artfully on top of her head, she was the belle of the ball. She’d taken off her heels, he saw, and had them clasped together in one hand as she walked up to him and offered her lips up for a gentle kiss.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” she hummed back. “Now, what’s all the fuss about? Susanna made it seem like there was a house on fire.”
“Let’s take a walk,” Brent said instead of answering. Threading his fingers through hers, they went strolling down the beach, away from the light of the fire. The moon was bright tonight. It lit up the sand and the water until the whole scene almost glowed. He could sense Rose’s curiosity, but he smiled to himself. Let her be curious for a little longer, he thought. There’ll be time for answers soon.
“Do you think Henrietta is okay?” she asked when they’d gone thirty or forty slow strides down away from the party.
They’d left her with a neighbor to watch over for the night. She was due to give birth to her litter any day now. Brent laughed to himself. Both he and his dog were about to become parents, in a roundabout sort of way. Life had a funny way of moving in lockstep with itself.
“She’s going to be a great mom,” he said.
He felt Rose look at him and chuckle. “That wasn’t really the question,” she teased. “Where’s your head at, space cadet?”
Brent stopped and turned to face her. He put his hands on her hips and pulled her close to him. “It’s right here,” he answered with the utmost seriousness. “Right in this moment, with you.”
Rose’s smile disappeared, replaced with something more somber and searching. Her eyes raked over his face, looking for some explanation as to his unusual mood. “That’s awfully romantic for a handyman,” she said quietly.
“Blame it on the champagne.”
“Ah. Liquid courage.”
“No,” he corrected with a shake of his head. “I’ve wanted to say this to you for a long time.”
She tilted her head to the side to fix him with a curious gaze. “All right,” she said. “Enough crypticness. Say what?”
In response, Brent stepped back and dropped to one knee. Rose froze at once. It felt like the world began to unroll slowly, so slowly, slowly enough that he had time to notice all the details of this moment. He was glad for that, because it meant that he could save them away and look back at them over and over whenever he wanted, like photos of your loved ones stored in your wallet.
Rose’s face was heavy in the shadow, but her eyes were bright, and that was all he needed to see.
“Rose,” he began, “I’ve loved you since before I knew that I did. Since that first day on the beach. Before I knew your name or your story, I loved you. I was a mess back then, and to say you saved me doesn’t even begin to do it justice. You are my rock, my light, my love. And I want to spend the rest of my life loving you.”
He noticed a tear sliding down her face only when it caught the moonlight and refracted it into a million little moonbeams, like a crystal clinging to the edge of her lip.
“I hope you’re not too mad, though, because you’re actually the second person I gave a ring to tonight. Susanna liked hers, so I hope you like yours just as much. Make me two for two, Rose. Tell me you’ll marry me.”
Rose laughed—the most beautiful sound he knew—and she fell to her knees across from him. Placing a hand on either side of her face, she pulled him into a tearstained kiss. “Yes,” she whispered when she broke the kiss off. “Yes, you crazy man. Yes, I’ll marry you.”
They went through the delicate, trembling ritual of sliding the ring onto her finger. She kissed him again.
Then Brent got a crazy gleam in his eye.
Rose noticed and asked, “What else could you possibly have cooked up?”
He grinned wildly. “What about now?”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“Marry me right now.”
“What? How?”
“Will you?”
“I mean, yes—what? I’m lost, babe.”
Brent clambered to his feet. “Stay right there,” he commanded. “Don’t move a muscle. I’ll be right back.”
He ran as fast as he could back up the beach, back down the walkway, back into the party. He heard Marshall calling him over to do shots with him and Dr. Dawson, but that would have to wait until later. He came to a halt and looked around the party.
Then he saw what he was looking for.
“Over here!” Brent called back over his shoulder. He saw the dark figure of Rose, outlined where he’d left her on the beach. The thump of footsteps behind him was a few dozen yards back. He came up to Rose and took her hands, then looked back to where he’d come from to see the person he went to fetch striding up.
Saoirse looked unruffled, which was kind of amazing, given the franticness with which Brent had snatched her away from the party. She’d been quietly drinking a whiskey soda in one corner. If she understood even half of what he’d babbled, that would’ve been a miracle in and of itself. But she must’ve gotten the gist of it, because here she was.
“Marry me now,” he said again.
Rose looked back and forth between Brent and Saoirse until she finally understood. “You’re serious,” she laughed.
“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life. I don’t want to spend another night not married to you.”
Rose laughed a second time, but it faded away quickly into a glistening-eyed smile, barely there but all the more beautiful for its subtlety. “Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s do it.”
Brent nodded to Saoirse, who had an enigmatic smile of her own. And then they exchanged vows, there on the beach of Nantucket, with not a soul in the world but the three of them—plus Susanna, who insisted on saying “I do” after her mom—there to witness.
When it was over, Brent kissed Rose. Like he’d done with Susanna, he tried to tell her with his touch everything that he didn’t know how to say with his words. That she meant everything to him, that she had saved him. She knew all those things already. But Brent knew that it was nice to be reminded sometimes.
Saoirse bowed and left the way she had come. She was a mysterious force, that one. He’d have to ask Mom or Dominic about her later.
For now, though, he just wanted to sit on the beach
and watch the waves with his bride and their little girl.
The night stretched on for a while longer. Brent and Rose decided not to tell anybody what had happened just yet. There was no need to steal Eliza and Oliver’s spotlight. Let them have their special night; they more than deserved it.
The two of them went and found Susanna and swept her up into a family hug and left it at that.
Soon, though, it was time to put the little girl to bed. That meant that Brent and Rose needed to be going. He went and found Mom, who was seated with Dominic at their table, watching the dancers in front of the DJ booth. She had a pleasant smile on. Brent suspected she’d had one or two more glasses of wine than she normally allowed herself to drink.
“We gotta get the rascal to bed,” Brent told her, jutting his head towards Susanna, who was fast asleep in her mother’s arms, braids akimbo.
“Oh, of course, of course!” Mom cried, getting up from her seat. She gave Susanna a kiss on the head and Rose on the cheek.
Watching his mother kiss his wife and daughter filled Brent with a sudden and powerful desire to tell her. He wanted his mom to know that everything was going to be okay. She would worry about him forever, of course—that was a parent’s obligation. But maybe, if he let her in on this special secret on this magical night, she’d worry just a little bit less.
“I’ll meet you at the car, babe,” he told her. “Just wanna talk to my mom real quick about something first.” He winked at Rose and she smiled back.
“Okay, hon,” she said. “See you in a sec.”
Mom had her head tilted quizzically to one side as he turned back to her. “What’s all the fuss for?”
“C’mere,” he told her, leading her off to a quiet corner of the party. He stopped when he was satisfied that they had a reasonable cone of silence around them. Then he told her what had just happened on the beach.
Mom beamed at once and threw her arms around him. “Oh, honey, I’m so happy for you,” she murmured in his ear. “Stay right there.”
“Huh?”
“Right there,” she repeated, pointing at the spot on the ground where he was standing. “Don’t move.”
Brent laughed. Oh, how the tables had turned. First, he was the one surprising Rose. Now, his mom had something of her own up her sleeve. There was never any one-upping Momma, he supposed. She was sly like that.
He watched as she went back over to Dominic, who retrieved her purse from the chair he was sitting in. She got something out of it and came back over to him. It was his turn to wait for this big mystery to be revealed.
But when she pressed a key into his hand, he still didn’t understand. He held it up to the light. It looked like an ordinary house key.
“What’s this?” he asked with a wrinkled brow.
“A wedding present for you,” she commented with a foxy smile. “Something you wanted, I think. You can tell your realtor we’ll handle the transaction ourselves.”
It clicked all of a sudden in his head. When it did, his jaw dropped and he nearly keeled over.
It was the key to the house on Howard Street.
“What did you … where did you … I mean, how?!”
Mom smiled wider and squeezed his forearm once. “A mother’s intuition,” was all she said. Then she turned and went back to Dominic, leaving Brent standing there with a key in his hand and an utterly bewildered expression on his face.
30
Eliza
An hour earlier.
The crowd had ebbed backwards towards the outer edge of the cottage garden, leaving a wide swathe of lawn open in the middle. The fairy lights strung overhead caught the dew on the grass, making the whole floor seem shimmery and alive. Eliza heard the DJ croon through his speaker, “Make way, ladies and gentlemen, for the bride and the groom to enjoy their first dance.”
She felt hands usher her towards the open expanse. On the opposite side of the circle, she saw Oliver being pushed forward in the same way. They met in the middle as the opening notes of the song they’d chosen filtered out into the night.
It was a soft country duet: “Magnolia Wind,” by Emmylou Harris and John Prine. Prine was one of her dad’s favorites. He was wry, funny, raspy, soulful. Something about the song made her laugh and cry at the same time. It was so sweetly honest, so innocently vulnerable. And the image of the opening line made her laugh. I’d rather sleep in a box like a bum on the street / Than a fine feather bed with your little ol’ cold feet. Her mind flashed back to the morning that they’d learned about Clay’s crimes. It felt like both forever ago and yesterday all at once. Winter giggling, Oliver teasing, and his cold feet sneaking up her calf. Sweetness. Perfection. All hers, forever, starting right now.
The twin voices of the singers rose, accompanied by the gentle strumming of the guitar. Oliver held Eliza close as they swayed together, rooted in place. Her eyes were closed and her head rested against Oliver’s shoulder.
So much had happened to bring her here. A lot of it had hurt. False turns and switchbacks on this road to happiness. But that was the way of the world, she was learning. Just because she’d spent most of her life on a straight climb to the top didn’t mean it was always going to be that way. She was learning to be okay with that fact. Call it aging or wisdom or just having the same life lesson beaten into your head enough times until you finally learned it. Whatever it was, it was worth it for the sweetness of this moment right here, right now, in the arms of her husband.
She heard a whimper from the edge of the crowd and a frantic “Wait!” She looked up and saw that Winter had wriggled out of the arms of the babysitter they’d hired to keep an eye on her this evening and come waddling across the empty lawn, crying for her mother.
Oliver looked down smiling as Eliza bent to scoop her daughter up. “Hi, honey,” she whispered as she linked back up with Oliver. He held both of them in his embrace and they resumed their swaying as the song began to fall from its final chorus towards the final note like a feather dropping back and forth, back and forth through the warm, humid air. Winter didn’t say anything, just buried her face in Eliza’s neck and clung to her hair with tight fists.
“My girls,” Oliver said quietly. He hadn’t stopped smiling all night, not even when Eliza insisted that she had won the bet and smeared a piece of cake right in his face. He’d gotten her back immediately, of course, but that was okay. Everything was okay.
When the song had almost ended, something tugged in Eliza’s chest, or rather, plucked at her heartstrings like a chord. This was the moment to tell Oliver the secret she’d held close for a couple of days now. She’d been waiting for the right time to tell him, to make sure everything was perfect. But what could be more perfect than now?
So she leaned up and said, “I have to tell you a secret.”
“Uh-oh,” he whispered back. “Did someone crash the wedding?”
She grinned. “All the better if they did. We have way too much alcohol, and your cousin is still prowling for a hot date.”
“My cousin will be just fine; don’t you worry about her,” he shot back. “So spill the beans, my beautiful wife. What’s your story?”
Eliza laughed, and then she had to bite her lip to stop from crying. What’s your story? That’s what he’d asked her on the night they met. She’d told him the truth then. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Who she was and where she’d come from and what she wanted and what made her heart hurt. And he’d listened. He’d never stopped listening, not even for a second. Those eyes drank her and her story in and they never gave her back up. That was when she’d started to love him, even if she hadn’t known it at the time. She knew now.
“I’m pregnant,” she whispered. “We’re going to have a baby. You’re going to be a father.”
Oliver’s eyes widened huge and green, as green as the lawn at their feet. Before he could catch himself, another tear started to trickle down his cheek. She laughed, because she was crying, too, and as she reached up and wiped the tear from his
face, she added, “I get to pie you again, you know.”
“Pie away, my love,” he answered without hesitation. “I’m going to be a father.” He hugged her and Winter close and kissed each of them on the head. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Oliver. I always will.”
Winter went home with the babysitter and Oliver was called away to talk to Neal and Marcy’s friends. Eliza found a seat on the edge of the party zone and collapsed gratefully. Her feet were aching something fierce from what had been a very, very long day. A good day, but a long one.
She didn’t have long to rest before her mom came up though, holding something in her hands. “You need to eat, love,” she chided.
“I know, I know,” Eliza said. “In a sec. My legs don’t want to work right now.”
“Well, I remember how that was,” she said with a smile. “Take your time. Here, take this, too.” She handed Eliza what she was holding, which turned out to be an old-fashioned parchment envelope, sealed with a red wax stamp. “I hope you won’t hold it against me too much if I tell you that this is addressed to both you and your siblings,” she added. “I know it’s your special day, believe me. But once I started writing, I just couldn’t stop.”
“Of course not, Mama,” Eliza said softly. She glanced down at the envelope and ran her thumb delicately over the seal. “Am I supposed to read it now?”
Mom nodded. “Go find a quiet place, just the four of you, and read it together.”
“Okay.”
She leaned down and gave Eliza a kiss. “Now, where did I leave my boyfriend?” she mumbled under her breath as she turned and disappeared back into the tide of partygoers.
