Even still, I squeezed her shoulder and closed my eyes, remembering my granddaughter a year earlier, as happy as I’d ever seen her.
When she walked through my front door with Ben, only months before her wedding date with Holden, I knew instantly what had happened.
“You said you wanted a Love band when you finally did it,” I had said as Annabelle sat down on the couch beside me.
Ben had sat down beside Annabelle, put his arm around her shoulder, squeezed her and kissed her cheek. “The weird part is that I found that ring ten years ago at an estate sale my mother dragged me to, and knew I wanted to give it to my wife one day.”
I picked up Annabelle’s hand and turned it over, examining each false screw. Not one line was out of place. No cuts. No lack of symmetry. Not even a hint that it had been resized. “Don’t tell me it fit.” Normally the ring would have been ordered to the perfect millimeter.
Annabelle smiled even bigger, if it was possible, so that I could see that her orthodontist had done a perfect job on even her back teeth. “What are the odds?”
“I didn’t even know what Cartier was until I pulled this ring out for Annabelle. I just thought it was pretty.”
Annabelle smiled sheepishly. “I guess I never saw myself getting married in Vegas, but it felt right in the moment, you know? Ben sang as I walked down the aisle, and it was just us. It was amazing.”
I tried to push away the feeling that none of this was Annabelle, that that ring was the only thing that fit. This man and this life she was so swept away by seemed to be the wrong size. But I’d never upset my girl, so I didn’t let on. I put my hands up over my face and shook my head. “So what do you think, Dan? Your favorite grandchild ran off to Vegas and married a musician she’d known three days.”
“Mmmm,” he muttered.
Annabelle and I laughed, the sparkle in our eyes matching, that a vestige of a man that we had both practically revered was showing itself. And I felt so sentimental in that moment that I let go of any anger I had at my granddaughter throwing away her perfectlyorchestrated life of leisure. I knew what it was to be in love—even if it was misguided. And so did Dan.
“We can talk about the Holden of it all later, but what on earth did your mother say?”
Annabelle looked down at her hands and said, “Well...”
“No, no, no,” I said. “If you are grown enough to run off and get married on your own, then you’re grown enough to tell your parents on your own.”
“If I may,” Ben interjected. He moved around to one of the armchairs flanking the sofa, sat down and leaned over, his arms resting on his knees so that his face was only inches from mine. I found myself somewhat entranced by his dark eyes and the cadence of his voice. He reached over for my hand and said, “You are the most important woman in the world to the woman that is my world.” I would have rolled my eyes, but he was so sincere that I believed him. Plus, looking over at Annabelle, I realized:Why shouldn’t he be in love with her already? What’s not to love?
“All we want is to get to revel in the positive energy of this experience, to be young and in love and unutterably happy.” He nodded his head toward Annabelle. “She won’t be happy until her family is happy, and I’ll do anything in my power to keep her smiling.” He gave my hand a squeeze. “So, please. I’m begging you. Help me give her the one thing I can’t.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re good, kid.” Then I squinted my eyes. “How many times have you been married?”
He shook his head. “Never. Never even been in love. That’s how I knew TL was the one. I saw her, and I never wanted to be away from her again.”
“TL?”
“True love,” Annabelle sighed wistfully.
“Oh, mercy.” I rolled my eyes, but, in reality, I thought it was sort of sweet. If I closed my eyes, I could put myself back in those days where love was more butterflies and love songs than grit and commitment.
Then I gasped. “Of course. You’re pregnant.” I shook my head. “Well, I’m just glad you ran off and got this whole thing over with.”
Ben and Annabelle laughed. “I’m not pregnant, Lovey.”
“Well... ,” Ben said.
Annabelle smiled. “Okay. I can’t promise I’m not pregnant, but I can promise that I wasn’t pregnant before my wedding night.”
The thought of her having a baby was what finally put the fear in me. A misguided marriage is bad. But you can get out of it with little fanfare. Once children are a part of the equation, there’s an entirely new level of finality to the thing. As I picked up the phone, I hate to admit that, though I wasn’t sure about him, I was fantasizing about seeing Ben’s gorgeous eyes and Annabelle’s perfect complexion on a little great-grandchild.
When I had called my daughter, she answered on the first ring, as she always did. I think she was panicked that one of us would die and she wouldn’t be there. “Jean,” I remember saying to her one day, “we all know how much we mean to each other. And that’s the best gift in life. Because no matter when the final moment comes, we don’t have to feel regret. We’ve loved as hard as we can.”
I think it eased her mind, but not her predictability. She walked through the glass double front doors, into the entrance hall, and then she saw us. My tall, slender, fair-haired youngest girl stopped dead in her tracks, put her thumbs into the sides of the belt around her thin waist, took a deep breath and said, “Why do I get the feeling I’m being ambushed?”
They were the exact same words that came out of my mouth, notthree hours after remembering that day, when Annabelle and I arrived home from Martha’s Vineyard. After a plane flight and car ride, I arrived at my front door, exhausted, only to be greeted by my five girls, lined up, side by side, on the brick front stoop.
I glared at them, already knowing they were up to something, the way a mother always does. “What is this?” I asked. “Are y’all playing Red Rover?”
