Parker nodded. “This is the cab that changed my life. It’s the cab where I picked up a phone and decided to track down a stranger.”
“I love you, Parker,” I said, overwhelmed.
“Do you know what I love most about you?” he asked me.
“Enlighten me.”
“What I love most about you is that you have the most polished, perfect exterior I have ever seen, but, babe, you’re kind of a mess.”
I laughed. It wasn’t the most romantic start to a proposal I had ever heard, but okay.
“You do things like leave your phone in cabs and forget one shoe in a hotel in Paris and lose your car in parking garages.”
I nodded. “I do. I do lose my car in parking garages.”
He smiled. “And that’s good, because if you were as completely perfect as you seem, you wouldn’t need me. There wouldn’t be any room for me in your life. You aren’t perfect, and neither am I. But when we are together, we are just right. We fit, babe. We fill up those empty parts of each other and make each other better.”
I wiped a tear from my eye and whispered, “We really do.”
He reached into his coat pocket and attempted to kneel in the back of that cab, which made us both crack up.
“Greer, I can’t live without you. And I never want to. Will you marry me?”
I laughed and was crying in earnest now. I nodded. It was truly the easiest decision of my life. “Yes, Parker. Of course. Let’s get married!”
He slid a ring on my finger, and we hugged awkwardly—we were in the back of a cab, after all—and kissed and then he said, “Let’s get out of this gross thing.”
I ran my finger across the black faux-leather seat, which was duct-taped in various places, and said, “What? I was hoping we could keep it.”
He nodded. “Oh, we can. I had to buy it, so if you need a side hustle…”
We both laughed, and he helped me out of the cab. My dad and Parker’s parents were waiting to cover us with hugs and kisses when we got into the restaurant. His mom was crying and saying, “I finally have a daughter.”
And I said, “I couldn’t have handpicked a better mother-in-law.”
Even still, my insides burned like fire that my own mother wasn’t there to see this day. All I can do is hope that somewhere, somehow, she is looking down on me. She knows I’m happy. And she knows that, someday, we’ll be together again.
ElizabethSPUR THEM ON
SOUTHERN MOTHERS MUST MEDDLE. ITis in our DNA. We can’t help it, and, for heaven’s sake, who would want us to? Our meddling makes the world a better place.
In the seventh grade, Liv and I made a pact to have babies at the same time and do everything in our power to get them married.
It had worked out perfectly according to our plan. Almost. Liv had Mason, I had Amelia, and then Liv had Parker. We were certain Mason and Amelia would grow up and fall in love—especially the months they dated, until it all fell apart for my best friend and her son.
There were times we had discussed the possibility of Parker and Amelia, but the three-year age difference, during high school and college, seemed like a hurdle. But now, Greer was dead, Thad was gay, and three years was nothing.What Southern mother worth her sherry wouldn’t try to fix that situation—for the good of herchild, of course? Liv and I were only ever thinking of them, which was what our useless husbands didn’t understand when they made us promise to stop meddling. We promised. Just like they promised to quit smoking cigars.
When the kids had left and the men went to smoke and it was just Olivia and me alone at the table, I walked over to her new gold bar cart, grabbed the bourbon, and spilled some into each of our sweet teas. I tried not to be a little jealous of my best friend and all the beautiful updates she’d just done to her home. But I had made a choice. Liv had a newly remodeled home. I had a family estate, a legacy, and while, yes, all of our assets had to be tied up in it, that was the choice I had made.
Lately, I had begun to wonder if it was the right choice. For years, when the kids had been little and my darling husband had been young and strong and energetic, taking care of a massive working farm and a rambling estate hadn’t been too much for us. But now it was.
I had decided to go back to work to help out with Dogwood’s upkeep. It was paid for, of course. But it seemed like every time I turned around, the house needed a new roof or the water heater broke, or squirrels made a mess of the attic insulation, or a storm busted a few windows. But the day I went downtown to sell furniture, the police had come to get me in just four hours to say that Tilley was wandering down the street in a white negligee hollering for Robert. I couldn’thave that. And a caregiver for her would cost the same as I was making. So that was out.
Truth be told, I wanted Charles to sell the farm. We had had large offers from developers pining for that waterfront property, not caring about the generations of men who had babied the soil, making it a hospitable place for crops to grow. But Charles felt the same way about those thousands of acres that I felt about Dogwood. They were his legacy. And, what’s more, they were our living. I argued that selling the farm would be more than a living; it would be wealth. He argued back the very same thing about selling Dogwood. And I knew that, for him, it was so much more than that. He couldn’t bear to see the land he loved become a cookie-cutter subdivision.
And so, there we sat, on opposite sides of the same fence, not angrily, I might add. We understood each other too well to be angry. It simply was what it was, and at some point, things would become dire, and either Charles would agree to sell a small portion of the farm or I would agree to sell Dogwood. But my secret hope was that one of my children would take it off my hands. Without the maintenance, Charles, Tilley, and I could live in a small house on the property, and Tilley’s disability would cover a little help so we could have some freedom. But I knew it was unfair of me to burden either of my children with this behemoth of a house that I loved so dearly it felt like a part of my very soul.
I had hoped that, one day, when Thad inherited all that lovely money from his grandmother, he and Amelia would move back home, take over Dogwood, and fill it with childrenthey’d adopted. Large homes do need to be filled with children, after all. It’s their birthright, their singular point of pride.
