“I think I have for a while. As fucked up as you are, I think I am in the same ways.” Her soft smile crushes me. It looks like a goodbye. Like she’s trying to show me how she feels as clearly as possible because it’s the only time I’ll ever see this from her.
“I—”
“I can’t keep doing this and loving you like I do. I just can’t. I know you needed time with your father, but nothing’s changed. This farce of an engagement just continues, while that bitch flaunts that ugly ring and talks about yourbabies. I won’t do it anymore, Henry. It hurts too much. I’m not as strong as I thought I was.”
She moves toward me once again, pressing a feather-light kiss on my lips, hesitating for only a moment.
“I won’t be at work on Monday. I think I might travel a bit, stay with family in New York, and then take a trip abroad to—”
She doesn’t have time to release even a breath as I strike, flipping our positions and pressing her into the door. With my forehead against hers, every one of her breaths belongs to me, too, and my blood ruins her makeup and wets us both with the evidence of our passion.
“If you thought for a second you were goinganywhere, Blanche Bedford, you’re not as smart as I was starting to give you credit for.”
Now my chest is heaving, angry with the audacity of this woman to think she’d get to make her own decision to leave me.
“I thought I had made myself perfectly clear what I was going to do with you.You’re mine.I’m going to marry you, fuck my babies into you, and use you as I see fit for the rest of your life. Your opinion on any of the above doesn’t mean shit to me.”
I want her to bleed, for it to mingle with mine until it’s impossible to tell where she ends and I begin. My DNA will be inside her more often than not, and I realize with certainty that I have to find a way to make her a permanent part of me. I have time to think about it. There’s no need to rush.
“You’re done dealing with this? With waiting for me to find us a way out?”
She nods.
“You’ve always been the braver version of me, Blanche. Running toward life while I run away from it. But you’re right. I took too long to find a solution, so you made one yourself. Tonight. Let’s go now. Me and you.”
“Go where?”
“Wherever you feel like getting married, Miss Bedford.”
Chapter twenty-six
“It’s in here somewhere, darling. I had it preserved with anti-yellowing and…here! This must be it!”
Mom drags a giant wooden box, shaped kind of like an upright coffin, from the depths of Henry’s attic.
“I’ve seen it before, Mom, remember? You got it out and wore it for your 25th anniversary! I tried it on, but I was still pre-boobs, so it fell off me.”
“Oh, you’re right, dear. What a fun evening that was. It fit like a glove, just like it did when I married your father.”
The wistfulness in her voice is soft but unmistakable, and I feel a familiar pang thinking of Daddy.
“I miss him. I hate that he isn’t here for this.” I try to choke back the sob I feel building, but it’s impossible. The wedding must be making me extra emotional because I cry at the drop of a hat lately.
“Sweetheart, come here.” Mom wraps me in a big hug and sniffles herself, the two of us making a sorry sight in the attic, dust swirling all around us. “I miss him too, especially lately. Every time one of you has a baby or gets married, I think aboutthe things he’s missing and all the new love we’ve added to the family. The pain has changed over the years but never really gone away. It hurts more to try to ignore his memory, though, so I sometimes imagine how he’d react to everything.”
That makes me laugh, and I’m thankful for the lightened moment. “Can you imagine how he would have reacted to Jack and me?”
With one more squeeze, she lets me go and pulls the dress-sarcophagus toward the attic stairs, but doesn’t answer my question. Once we’ve finagled it into the guest room that I’ve set up as my headquarters for the wedding weekend, she pries it open, and I tell her I’m surprised that it doesn’t smell musty at all.
“Well, that anniversary would’ve been around, what? Fifteen or so years ago? And we repacked it with the best technology at that time, so I’m glad it all worked. Oh, look at it. What a monstrosity she is.”
“You don’t love it?”
“Well, I love it now, dear. But…heavens, have I never told you the entire story of my wedding?”
“No…you always told me there were things I would understand more when I was getting married myself.”
“And I was right, but now the time has come! Let me call for some snacks, and I’ll tell you the whole story…”
