Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 140874 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140874 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
I turned, shaking my head and trying to cover my giggles as I headed toward the door. Neil and Valerie were good parents, but wow, did they spoil their daughter.
“Sophie?” Emma called.
I pointed to the door. “Cocktail hour! Open bar. Munchies.”
She did a little half-frown, half-smile of confusion. “Yes, and…pictures. You can’t take off.”
Valerie’s eyebrows went up, and she forced a painful looking expression. For his part, Neil looked pleasantly stunned.
“I didn’t think… I mean…” I didn’t know what to say. She wanted me in her pictures? Her wedding pictures? Just a year ago, she’d hated me.
She rolled her eyes at me. “You’re going to marry my dad. You’re my family. Let me get this one with them, and then one with all of you.”
The photographer snapped a few shots of them, a gorgeous, happy family, and then, as Emma gestured from her elbow to speed me along, I stepped up onto the dais and stood beside Neil.
With my family.
* * * *
The dinner and dancing took place in the Hall of Ocean Life, under the museum’s iconic blue whale. Guests mingled at tables and two open bars on the upper level, and on the lower level, long dinner tables ringed a dance floor. A six-piece band, headed by a male singer with a smooth, silky voice, entertained while the elaborate vegan dinner was served.
The cake—also vegan, naturally—was a tower of white frosting and flakes of coconut decorating the layers of lime- and mango-flavored spongy deliciousness. I wondered if the bride’s family got to have more than one piece. I didn’t really think of Emma as my stepdaughter, but I was willing to pull that card if it meant I got to try both kinds of cake.
Emma and Michael danced their first dance as husband and wife to the band performing Billy Joel’s “Everybody Has a Dream.” I knew Emma had dragged Michael to dance lessons, but it seemed natural and not choreographed, and I watched them with the same rapt romantic fascination with which I’d watched Princess Aurora and Prince Phillip twirl around their Disney ballroom when I was a child.
Neil danced with Emma, as proud as any father could possibly be of his daughter, and I was struck with such a deep, sharp sadness at the realization that there would be no father-daughter dance at my wedding. It hadn’t been important to me, or even a thought, until that moment. I had to blink back a few tears.
Rose drove up in her electric wheelchair and set her brake beside me. “If you’re going to be my daughter,” she began, apropos of nothing, “then I need to know a little more about you without my son interfering.”
“Oh, um.” I crinkled my brow. I wasn’t sure I didn’t need some kind of test prep for this. “I’m an open book, so go ahead.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-five.”
She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, but didn’t address that. “Where are you from?”
“Calumet, Michigan. That’s in the Upper Peninsula. See, Michigan has two parts—”
“I’m aware of the geography of the United States, dear.” She fixed me with her sharp green gaze, and I felt like sinking back in my chair. “How did you meet my son?”
“In an airport.” I was getting good at omitting the details of this story. “He had to get somewhere quick and he couldn’t get a crew for the jet, so he was flying commercial, of all things.”
Rose clucked her tongue. “He simply needs to hire a dedicated crew. He’s a penny pincher, like his father was.”
“Well, I’m glad, because otherwise I wouldn’t have met him.” I shrugged and went for a smile, but Rose was still stern and serious.
“You’re much younger than he is. What do you have in common?”
“Not a lot,” I admitted. “Almost nothing. But that’s what makes us work. We never get tired of each other, because we can show each other new and awesome things all the time.”
“No, no.” Rose waved her hand in dismissal. “You aren’t on a job interview. Get it right out. Why do you love my son?”
For a split second, I thought about cracking a joke about his bank account, but I didn’t see Rose as a big joker. So, I told her the truth, exactly as I had told Dr. Ashley months before. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I love him. Our personalities click, and he’s the only person in the world I want to spend my life with. But if you’re looking for a specific reason as to why, I can’t give you just one thing.”
“You want to spend your life with him.” She considered. “You realize, of course, that his life is quite spent already?”
“I know.” I hated thinking about it, but I knew. In September, I would be twenty-six. When he turned seventy-five, I would be fifty. Though he was healthy and in good shape now, there was no guarantee he would always be. His cancer could return. He could succumb to the heart ailment that had taken his father. I was keenly mindful of these things. “I know his father died very young.”