“You don’t have to, you know.”
I smiled weakly. “If you want to set the alarm—”
“I love you, Annabelle.”
I peered at him. “What?”
“I know what you said,” he replied. “But I know that you’re in love with me too. I’ve known it since that first day I met you by the lemonade bowl. You make me feel like I can do and be anything. You make me feel challenged and alive and free and happy, and I know I make you feel the same way. We should be together.” Then he put up his finger and, much to my surprise, began rustling around in his pants pocket, producing a diamond so bright it flickered in the dim light of the near-empty kitchen. He got down on his knee.
“Please marry me.”
I pulled him up. “You can’t be serious.Marryyou? Rob, we hardly know each other.”
He scoffed. “Hardly know each other? Hardlyknoweach other?”
It was the first time I had ever heard him raise his voice. He turned to leave the room, and, against all rational, reasonable thought, I found the panic rising inside me. I grabbed his hand. “Well, don’t just walk away,” I whispered.
He turned, our hands still locked together, his nose mere inches from mine.
“Don’t know you,” he repeated again, the choke in his voice rising to the surface, the passion with which he regarded everything in his life flowing out and flooding me all the way into my socks. “I know all of you. I know the way you get quiet whenever anyone talks about having a baby because you’re so afraid that you never will. I knowthat the tears gather in your eyes when you thank the Lord aloud in morning prayer. I know that you pretend to love your dad the best, but that, in reality, it is your mother’s tenacity that you revere. And I know,” he said, taking my other hand in his, drawing even closer to me, “that you act like you always have to have a man in your life, when, in reality, you are always the one calling the shots.”
I could feel the slightest tremor in my body, the minor shake that the patient fears most when the words “Parkinson’s disease” are mentioned. But I had lost too much this year. Everything that I thought I knew had been taken from me in one way or another. My husband, my baby, my image of Lovey, my D-daddy. For one year, it was enough.
I looked into his eyes quickly, seeing the fervor in them, the conviction.
“You’re a priest, Rob. Get serious. You can’t marry a divorced woman. Check it out. Says so right there in the Bible.”
I turned to walk away and he grabbed my arm. “Why would you do this, Annabelle? You know we should be together.”
“What would make you think that this was an appropriate time to ask me to marry you? My D-daddy died, and I’m in the middle of a divorce.”
He pointed to the sky. “It was my thing today.” He shrugged. “I thought asking you on a date seemed a little more reasonable, but I don’t make the rules.”
I sighed, wanting not to love that about him. I wanted to tell him about how I had chosen with my heart and it didn’t work out. I wanted to tell him that I was choosing with my head this time. Because I was afraid of loving someone truly again, of discovering that another man that took my breath away was nothing like he seemed. But all I could manage was, “Rob, I can’t. I have to go.”
I turned to walk out the door, and I could feel the tears, so different from those of gratitude in church, spilling over onto my hot cheeks. I had promised Holden. He had been so sweet and so patient. I had told him that leaving Ben had been harder than I expected and that I needed time to heal before I came to live with him. I needed some space. If I was being honest with myself, it was less about needing space and more about realizing what a terrible person I was. I had used Holden. I knew that he would save me from the mess I had gotten myself into. And now that the baby was gone, I didn’t need him anymore. And, in all the times we had talked over the past three months, I hadn’t had the heart to tell Holden about the baby. He was just so excited.
In the car, a trip toward Holden’s house began to feel like a march to the executioner’s block. But I had decided. He loved me. Our life would be easy and comfortable and predictable and that was what I needed, I reminded myself.
I didn’t even know what I would say when I got there. Holden was so far down the road, sending me crime statistics and shots of houses. It wasn’t what I had planned, but, when he whisked me through the door and said, “Hey, pretty girl,” I replied, “I lost the baby.”
“Oh, Ann,” he said. “I’m so sorry.” He hugged me. Then he paused.
There was a long silence, with both of us just standing there in the sunroom. It lingered between us like the last appetizer on a plate between polite diners. Finally, he broke it, saying, “So now what?”
I sighed. I wasn’t going to call it off again. I wouldn’t break his heart a second time. No doubt about it, that would be cruel. So I just said, “Well, I guess you don’t have to find a new house now.”
I started to say something else, but, before I could, he said, “Annabelle, listen. I love you. And I am always there for you no matterwhat. You have been my best friend for years, and, if this is what you want, I’ll make good on it. I’ll do it.” Then he paused. “But I met someone.”
I could feel the tension melting away, like an ice cream sandwich in the sun. He met someone. I looked up to heaven and said, inwardly,Thank you.
“Oh,” I said, trying to hide my surprise.
“It was before the baby thing, and, obviously, under those circumstances, you needed me. What we had was more important to me than a couple of weeks with someone else. And I love you, Annabelle. I swear, I really do. But it’s...”
“It’s different,” I filled in for him. “It’s a different kind of love, the kind of love that people wait for, the kind of love that you dream about all your life.”
I knew all about that love. I sat down on the sofa.
