“Ha. Ha.” I splash water in his face. “No. A surprise.” I swallow. It’s not a lie: A kid is a surprise. “And I want us to go to dinner so I can give it to you.” And so there are witnesses in casehe tries to murder me. “If you’d like to pick somewhere for us to go. That you’ll have to pay for because I’m broke.”
“A surprise?” His brows raise, intrigued as we drift. “What could Rue Conway have for me?”
I force a smile. “You’ll have to wait and see.”
“Well, okay.” He squeezes my hips underwater. “I’ll make a reservation.”
We laugh our way through sunrise with splashes and dunks until our soft kisses turn fevered, and one thing leads to another. We’re out of the pool, my back on the patio and him above me, both of us wearing nothing but the smell of chlorine and a blanket of morning sun.
“Come back to Fontain with me.” I realize how terrible my timing is when he stills over me. “If you want, I mean. And if we’re staying married.” How haven’t we had any of these conversations? It’s like we want to repeat history and ruin this a second time. I’m more sure of us yet just as scared. “Not that we have to. We can just start over. Or?—”
In my ear, he says, “Took you long enough to ask.”
“No matter what?” I ask. Because I need him to say that too. I need to know the reason I ended us won’t be what ruins us.
“Long as you’re married to me.” He kisses me gently. “I don’t ever want to be where you aren’t again.”
He doesn’t wait for me to say anything else before he fills me up, rocking me gently as the concrete scrapes my back. The cries of his name leave my mouth and fly to the sky.
Thirty-Six
We’d barely finished breakfast when Nash got a call to go into the office because a guide called out sick.
He left and I spent the day practicing my Bennie speech, reviewing information Reese sent about surgery expectations for Mom, and repracticing my Bennie speech. With a little luck, we’ll find something that resembles a useful clue, I’ll tell Nash about Bennie, and this day will end as perfectly as it started.
Cap and I arrive at the historic church fifteen minutes early and find Nash already leaning against a column like a sight for sore eyes. Even now in the harsh afternoon heat and blindingly bright daylight, my body physically reacts like I’ve been shocked by an old violet ray machine.
“Nash,” I say cordially and like he didn’t spend the majority of the last twelve hours inside me. I eye today’s shirt of choice, which is sea green and covered in canoes. “People listen to a word you say dressed like that?”
“Rue Conway,” he says with the tone of someone who’s licked every square inch of my body, fun written on every feature of his face as he slides his sunglasses to the top of his head. “Youshould see the things I make people believe when I’m wearing less.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Cap snaps, thwacking me and then Nash with his cane. “Will you two stop salivating over each other so we can get on with it?”
The bells from the tower chime loudly from above us, making me jump at the same time Cap coughs mid-drag of Penny.
“Weed at church?” I shoot him a disapproving look. “Really?”
He blows a weed cloud my way and smiles defiantly.
Nash opens the large red door of the church, and we file in.
The door closes behind us, and the noise and traffic of the outside world disappear as the church’s serene quiet envelops us.
“The first church of the city, St. Philip’s, was built where we are now in the 1680s,” Nash explains in a quiet voice. “When they needed a bigger space for parishioners in the early 1700s, they moved to what is now Church Street. By the mid-1700s, St. Michael’s was built and has remained here ever since. Mostly unchanged.”
While we walk slowly down the center aisle, tourists move solemnly along the perimeter to read plaques, admire artwork, and sit in pews.
We stop in the aisle.
“Pew forty-three,” Nash says with an impressed drawl. He points to the scuffed brass plaque with the same number at the end of the pew box. “Where George Washington and, later, Robert E. Lee sat. Dubbed the ‘President’s Pew.’”
Cap grunts, says, “Good enough for them, good enough for us,” and drops heavily onto the old wooden bench. He removes the captain’s hat from his head then hooks it on his knee.
Nash and I exchange an amused look but follow suit. Shoulder to shoulder, our collective attention falls silently on the altar where the crown jewel is a large stained-glass windowportraying St. Michael slaying a dragon. My mother, the half-hearted Catholic she is, always said when we had to say his prayer in church that we were putting too much pressure on him.“One man being asked to defend everyone in battle?”She’d bat her hand.“Give him a break, already.”
I always thought she was being ridiculous, but now, seeing the image glowing in the sun’s light, it flips a switch in my heart and dampens my anger toward her.
She infuriates me, but I love her.
