“Now, how about we go with denim blue and smoky gray? I think both of those colors would stand together well. Plus, the blue would make your eyes pop,” Julie said, holding up a picture of with both colors that had obviously been staged for the magazine.
“Sure,” I answered, finding that I really did like those two colors together. “Just not so much . . .”
“Sparkle?” she laughed, as the picture was bright as the camera flash flashed off crystal around the room. “I agree on that.” She paused, thinking. “Inside or outside ceremony?”
“Outside,” I answered after a moment of thought. It wasn’t too cold out yet, which would make it workable.
“Sounds perfect,” Julia smiled, marking a couple of notes down on a piece of paper that sat on the side table.
Now, I was getting excited about the whole idea. I could see myself walking down the aisle in a long flowing dress as the colorful leaves covered the ground.
“Dress choices shouldn’t be too hard, depending on what your style is,” Julia said. “You can talk it over with Zach. I’m not sure he’d want your mark to be seen or not.”
I had mostly forgotten about the mark as I now glanced down at it. There wasn’t anything I could do about it unless I covered it by long sleeves. But surely if Zachariah didn’t want people to see it, he’d have told me to keep it covered, right? Or did he want everyone to see it to know who I belonged to? He had said he wanted the world to know I was his not all that long ago
“He’ll be good to you, either way,” she mused, seeming content to talk enough for both of us. “I know he’s a bit . . . different for his status, but he has never hurt a woman, nor will he. I try to keep out of his daily doings, but I am his mother, so I know quite a bit.”
“Plus, I married into the family,” she went on with an eye roll. “I grew up knowing what to expect, so Carlos’s and Zack’s habits don’t entirely frighten me. I may not like what they do, but they do keep their business behind closed doors as much as possible.”
“I . . . They don’t frighten me. Zachariah is more than expected already,” I said, fumbling over my words.
She simply smiled as though she understood. Maybe she did as she returned back to more decoration ideas.
“Why do you call him by his name like that?” she asked.
“I just do. He hasn’t told me to call him anything different,” I explained. Well, other thansir, but I didn’t think she needed to know that.
For the next fifteen minutes or so, we both looked through a couple of the wedding books. I had no idea what I wanted as my mind raced with what the possibility of what Zachariah would like. Shouldn’t he be part of all this planning, too?
I marked a few pictures as Julia’s request that appealed to me.
“I’ll make something work,” she stated. I didn’t doubt that, as she seemed like the creative type of person.
Before she left, she made sure to leave a few magazines that contained wedding dress styles and a promise to visit the bridal shop sometime in the coming days. I didn’t want to think of how much that would cost when the time came, knowing that Zachariah would want me to get whatever my heart desired.
~oOo~
Later that day while Zachariah was on the phone about something that seemed to be important, I sat down next to the window in my borrowed bedroom with one of the leather-bound journals. I flipped it over, looking at the back, afraid to open it and find out what it contained.
Did I really want to know? I wanted to know who my real mom was. Would it change how I saw things now? Would her secrets make my life any different than how I was living now? And what about my real father? Did I maybe know him, or of him somehow already?
With a long drawn out sigh, I opened the cover, being careful as though something could jump out and bite me. Laughable, I know. I couldn’t help the fear of what these words would contain.
Reading the first page that started twenty years ago, I found nothing helpful towards who this woman was, let alone to me. The cursive writing was neat and looked as though the writer was in no hurry as she wrote on the once blank pages of the book.
Most of the first book was similar. The woman never said what her name was, where she lived, or anything really personal. The most personal she got was naming a man that she had a crush on – Aaron. No last name. Could it be the same Aaron that was pictured with Lynn and the rest of the nameless people?
She wrote of how this man never seemed to look her way. She wrote her heart and soul out towards the end for the man. She was in love with him and he didn’t even know her name.
On the last page of the book, the lone words on the page towards the middle caught my attention, as most of the journal entries were only dated by the month and year.
I’ll die for him, if it’s the only thing I can do.
