1
EMERY
Now . . .
New Year’s Eve
Well, she did not see this coming. A midnight proposal with all the family around. Yet it was the way of James Gelovani. And he wasn’t proposing to her. He was proposing to Ava. Her sister. Two words that she still struggled to reckon with after fifteen years.
Down on one knee, Jamie professed in honeyed tones, “Ava Quinn, beautiful Ava, I never thought I’d find a girl like you. Will you marry me?”
Emery smiled and raised her glass of champagne as the weepy—and beautiful—Ava bent to give her man a kiss and softly answered, “Yes, I’ll marry you.” Then she shouted, “I’m getting married!”
Emery applauded along with the family—Dad, Joanna, Elianna, and Blakely—then congratulated the happy couple. After all, she’d played a part in their romance by inviting Jamie to the Quinn Family Memorial Day weekend.
Friends since their Ohio State days, Emery went on to become a journalist at the renowned sixty-year-oldCleveland Free Voice,while Jamie conquered the world of law. They lost touch, then reconnected at a Buckeye alumni meeting eight months ago.
TheFree Voicehad just closed down, and she was trying to hustle up another job. Jamie, on the other hand, regaled a crowd of curious Buckeyes about his work on a landmark Bitcoin case. At the end of the night, he and Emery walked to the parking lot together, reminiscing about Saturdays in the Shoe when he’d said,“I coulduse a break from this case.”So she’d invited him to Dad’s big M-Day bash.
Somewhere between the Saturday afternoon cookout by the pool, the Sunday Funday at Cedar Point, and the Monday night Cleveland Guardians game, Jamie fell in love with Ava.
He claimed it was when she walked out to the pool deck in front of nearly thirty friends and family—every one a diehard Buckeye alum—wearing head-to-toe Michigan gear and singing their fight song on a dare from a Michigan colleague. Blakely recorded it all on her phone.
Ava had taken her life in her hands wearingthatgetup, singingthatsong, amongthoseBuckeye faithful. Yet Jamie, who bled scarlet and gray, thought the move was hysterically gutsy.
“Em,that’s Ava? The sister you talked about at school?She’s awesome. Why don’t you like her?”
Who said she didn’t like her? She liked her. Loved her, even. But things were complicated in the Quinns’ blended household.
As the clock in the hall chimed midnight, Dad passed out champagne. “Happy New Year,” he said, raising his glass. “To the Quinn family, and to the soon-to-be new family, Jamie and Ava.”
“To the Quinn family. And the future Gelovanis.” Jamie gazed at his fiancée as if she were the only woman on earth, and for a moment, Emery felt that flash of yearning for a man to look at her that way.
“Happy New Year to all of us.” Joanna, Dad’s wife, smiled andglanced about the circle, her joy visible. Her oldest daughter was getting married.
Dad married Joanna, a widow with two young daughters, a year after Mom died. In a single day, Emery’s world went from just the two of them to a stepmother and two pesky little sisters whom Dad adopted right after he said, “I do.” The effervescent Blakely arrived a year later as the “whole” meant to bond the “halves.”
Dad caught Emery’s attention and tipped his head gently toward Ava, who was showing off her ring to Elianna and Blakely.Go on,get in therewith your sisters.
Over the years, she’d come to understand how desperately he wanted her to feel a part of the family he’d created with Joanna. As a busy high school senior when they married, then a college freshman when Blakely arrived, she’d always felt more like the guest who tagged along with the new husband and father.
In the early days of blending two families, Joanna invited Emery to call her Mom, to which she replied,“I have a mom. I’ll stick with Joanna,if you don’t mind.”Or even better,my dad’s wife.But she didn’t go quite that far.
Couldn’t they all see? Emery alone carried the legacy of Rosie Quinn, and she’d not let anyone or anything replace her.
“Happy New Year, Emery.” Elianna was the affectionate sister, a peacemaker, and a brilliant businesswoman. At twenty-two, she’d taken over her mother’s three coffee shops, and in two years, turned red ink into black.
“Guess who will have a list of maid-of-honor duties by tomorrow night?” Emery said, sipping her champagne.
“You?” Elianna said.
Emery laughed. “Guess again. And fifty bucks says she picks pink as her color palette. I don’t do pink.”
“Happy New Year, big sis.” Blakely threw her arms aroundEmery. She was the jovial athlete, fourteen going on forty, who knew nothing about stepmothers and moms who died too young.
“Happy New Year, Blake. I have a feeling pink is in your future.”
Blakely glanced toward her glowing sister. “I don’t mind. It’s for Ava.”
