Jack stopped pacing. “I thought you loved Mark. I thought he was your dream husband for Emerson.”
“Well, he is,” I said, setting my glass on the marble-top coffee table. “But my concern is that he’smydream for Emerson, not Emerson’s dream for Emerson.”
I started crying, realizing that my child might be sick, that all her dreams might be put on hold. “Whether she decides to marry Mark might be the least of our worries,” I said, wiping my eyes and clearing my throat.
“Why?” Jack asked, jerking his head in my direction, a look of terror on his face.
“Jack, what is going on with you?” The Emerson situation was worrisome, sure. But I couldn’t help but think Jack’s nerves were coming from another place.
He shook his head and sat down beside me on the couch, squeezing my knee. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just anxious.”
“I can see that. But why?”
He didn’t say anything, and it hit me. I laughed out loud. “Oh, Jack, I know,” I said.
“Know what?” he asked, a little too quickly.
The poor man. “You’re afraid that Emerson getting married means it will be a terribly long time before we can.”
He leaned back against the couch and exhaled, long and slow. “Oh, um, right,” he fumbled. “You know me too well. Does that make me selfish?”
I squeezed his hand. We had talked about getting married, eventually. I could see now that Jack’s eventually was sooner than mine. “It makes both of us selfish, because I’m thinking the same thing.”
This would be Emerson’s first and—I hoped—only marriage. I didn’t want anything to steal her thunder.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” I said.
He shrugged again. “It’s OK. I just want her to be happy.”
I leaned over and kissed him. He was the best man in the entire world. He was the one who got away, the one who came back, the one who had given me so many of the things I had wanted for my life. He had never asked me for anything in return. And now I got to have this man who had sacrificed so much for me, forever and for always.
Jack took my hand in his. “Let’s pretend, just for a minute, that we were the engaged ones. What would we want for our wedding?”
I looked into his handsome face, the lines around his eyes that made him seem kinder yet also more distinguished, the gray around his temples where time had replaced the brown hair that the sun used to bleach lighter in the summer. “I want what you want,” I said, smiling.
“I have an idea,” Jack said, “but it might be crazy. In fact, I’m positive it’s crazy. But I want to do it anyway.”
I laughed at his enthusiasm. It was like we had switched roles: he was the effusive bride; I was the apathetic groom. “Then please, by all means, let me in on the idea.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about this a lot, of course.” He cleared his throat. “In fact, I’ve been thinking about it for thirty years or so.”
I wanted to say,Spit it out, Jack. For heaven’s sake.But I didn’t, of course. What I said was, “Right. So have I.”
“So I’m thinking we should do it on the sandbar.”
I almost spit out my champagne. The sandbar was a special spot for us. It was where Jack and I first met, where we shared our first kiss, where we danced as teenagers until the tide rose to our knees, and maybe most important of all, the place where we were forced to realize that all these years later, maybe nothing had changed, not really.
“So is that a no?” he asked.
I laughed. The sandbar came and went with the tide. It wasn’t a permanent fixture. “Jack, it’s preposterous. How would that even work?”
He put his arm around me and pulled me in close. “It will be exactly like the sandbar parties we had as kids. We’ll time it with the tide and go from there.”
I laughed. “But Jack, that was a few cases of beer and some chips. This is our wedding.”
He put his hand up, painting the picture for me. “Moon tide, stars glowing, breeze blowing, bare feet in the sand, all our friends gathered around as the priest pronounces us husband and wife. Then we can move over to a real venue for the reception.”
Now I was getting into the spirit. “Forget a real venue,” I said. “Let’s do the reception on Starlite Island.”
