“This is where you and Daddy fell in love?” James wants to know, looking all around like he’s in the science museum we took them to this morning.
“That’s right, James,” Rory says. “It was love at first sight, according to Mommy.” He grins at me, wagging his tongue teasingly.
Enough time has gone by that we can joke about our story now, and the whole Prince Alexander invention.
“What’s love at first sight?” Anne Marie wants to know.
Rory looks over at me, like he’s curious to hear my answer to Anne Marie’s question.
“Love at first sight isn’t actually a real thing,” I say. “Just make-believe.”
Both James and Anne Marie look highly disappointed in this answer. “No fun,” James declares.
“You want to know whatisreal, though?” I ask, inspired by the emotion that’s overflowing as I think of how close I came to not being Mrs. Cooper. “Love atlastsight.”
“What’s that?” James and Anne Marie ask in unison.
“Love at last sight is when, at the end of your life, you look at the person next to you and feel how lucky you are to have done life with them.”
It’s not something I’ve articulated before, but once I say it aloud, I realize how the notion has been formulating in my heart for a while now, and I know it’s what I’ve found in Rory.
Anne Marie looks bored, preferring to paw at the window again as the bus lurches down Upper Street. James, on the other hand, is digesting my answer with his typical gravity. “So you can’t know it’s love at last sight unless you’re about to die?” he asks with a frown that’s wise beyond his years.
“You’ll know before then,” I assure him. “You just might not know right when you first meet the person, that’s all.”
Rory slips his hand into mine, wrapping my wedding band. He proposed six months after we left London and moved back to Michigan at the end of his exchange program. He was goingto splurge on the ring, but I made it clear that I didn’t want anything fancy, so we decided together on a wooden band made from a fallen maple tree in my parents’ backyard. Rory had it sawed and sized, and it feels just right—both the fit and the mission behind it. The low carbon footprint and the symbolic stability of a humble, homegrown promise, so far from mined diamonds that ravage the Earth and steal the show.
“Is it time for gelato yet?” James wants to know, moving on to a more exhilarating topic. The kids have taken to European ice cream very quickly, proving they have our DNA, if the striking physical resemblance wasn’t enough.
“Do the beefeaters like gelato?” Anne Marie wants to know. We took the kids on a tour of the Tower of London, where they were enraptured by the ceremonial guards and tried to get them to break their statuesque postures.
“They’d better,” Rory deadpans. “Or they’ll be taken to that execution chamber we saw.”
James looks concerned. He’s quite the sensitive soul.
“Only joking!” Rory clarifies, and James relaxes.
After a long day of walking, it feels so good to sit down and rest. So good to move through this world as a family unit, a place where I’ll always belong. “Can we stay on the bus a little longer?” I ask Rory.
“Sure can,” he says, casting a firm please-behave-yourself look to James, who’s starting to pout as he rattles off all ten gelato flavors he’s going to get. “We can stay on as long as you want.”
“Just a couple more stops,” I say, leaning on my favorite pillow—my husband’s shoulder—as we continue along the route where it all began, and is still beginning.
