“I know,” he says, smiling. “And I love her, but you don’t throw someone into the Easton household overnight unless you’re trying to break them. I figured you’d want space to breathe.”
“They’re wonderful,” I say honestly.
“Yeah,” he says, looking out over the yard with me. “They are.”
We say our goodbyes in the foyer, Hillary gets another long hug out of me, Arny squeezes my hand and tells me he’s “never seen his boy this settled,” and about six different relatives press food containers into my hands.
We’re walking back to the truck when he stops. “Shit, I almost forgot.” I turn just in time to see him run back and hug his mom, who steps out into the yard to wave goodbye.
Then I see him sneak something out of his back pocket. A piece of folded paper? Or is it a check he folded in half? He sneaks it into her hand as she pulls back from the hug, so that his father can’t see. I see the slight shake of her head, but he nods yes and then pulls her back in, whispering something in her ear, her arms coming back up around his neck, and she nods against his shoulder.
Then he turns and heads back toward me.
“I love you,” he calls out to her.
“I love you too.” I hear the crack in her voice, the way she wipes her nose like he made her cry. But not tears of sadness, hearing of her son telling her something she needed to hear. Knowing him, he probably told her that everything is going to be okay, that they’re in this together. Because that’s who Scottie is.
Then he opens my door for me, and before I know it, we’re back in the truck, heading toward the lake and the small boutique lodge he told me about.
“You okay?” he asks after a few minutes of quiet.
“Yes,” I say. “Why?”
“You’ve gone quiet,” he says. “Quieter than usual.”
“I’m usually quiet?” I ask.
He shrugs, one corner of his mouth lifting. “Yeah. Like you’re trying to solve something in your head, and you don’t like any of the answers.”
He’s not wrong.
Tonight showed me a life I thought only lived in American sitcoms and Hollywood movies. A family that loves loudly. A mother-in-law who calls me “sweetheart” and hands me recipes. A father-in-law who jokes about the grandkids he assumes we’ll give him.
A man who fits in the middle of all of it and still somehow finds space to send money home for his dad’s treatment and hold my hand when I’m scared.
What would it be like… to have this for real?
To be loved like this? By someone like him? And a family like that?
The thought is too big to say out loud, so I go quiet because I know Scottie well enough to know that he carries too much of other people’s burdens, and he’s already carrying enough of mine. The last thing he needs to spend his time thinking about is giving me any more. Our burden of disparagement on this agreement is already heavily weighted on my side.
I’d feel too greedy to ask for more.
“Just tired,” I say finally. “That was a check you gave your mom, wasn’t it?”
His eyes stay on the road, but she already told me that Scottie sends them money. I don’t technically need confirmation, but I want it.
“She didn’t cash the one I sent last week. So I wrote her a new one and doubled it,” he says. “She’s being too proud.”
“They need the money,” I say simply.
He nods. “Matchmaking pays the bills, but barely. They give back to their community. They love on everyone they can and would give the shirt off their back. My pops volunteers to sell tickets at the football games, he’s the auctioneer for the kids 4H programs, my parents are part of the welcome wagon and they make meals every week for Meals on Wheels to help the elderly,” he says, “Half the people there weren’t really aunts, uncles, and cousins. They’re people without families that my parents have brought in over the years and given them a place to belong when they didn’t have one before.”
“People like me… without a family,” I say, realizing that I haven’t felt like I’ve had a place to belong since my mother passed.
“You have a family KitKat,” he says, reaching over and wrapping his fingers around mine. “You have me. Even if someday I’m your ex-husband. That title still has the word husband in it. We’ll always be family from here on out. Don’t forget that,” he says.
The urge to climb into his lap and kiss him with everything I have burns deep in my belly, but then we'd crash, so I just nod.
