“They are,” Maddie agreed. “What’s in them, Do? Crack?”
“I think it’s the almond. I used marzipan in between the layers and then apricot preserves.”
“I think it’s also not having had access to this level of indulgence in ages,” Coco added.
“So, what now?” I asked her.
“Back to our lives here,” Coco said.
“You think everything will be different?”
“Of course,” she replied, smiling. “We’re going to be parents.”
“Wait, is there news?”
“Nothing concrete yet. Just moving through the stages we could while we were away. Next up is home visits and, hopefully soon enough, a referral.”
“What does that mean, a referral?” Maddie asked.
“When they connect us to a particular child. And send his or her picture.”
The three of us sat there in silence thinking about that for a moment. What it would be like to see the child—their child—for the first time. An image flashed in my mind: Sullivan, looking at Terabithia’s picture for the first time. My mind could conjure up that picture easily, but what I couldn’t imagine was what she had felt, the swelling of love and recognition. Yes, that’s my baby, she might have thought. I can’t wait to go get him. My stomach felt like lead. I pasted on a smile, though. I was excited for my sister—and for their future child.
Coco didn’t seem to notice anything was amiss. “What about you and Shep?” she asked. “Have you guys talked about a timeline?”
“Not really. He definitely wants kids, but I don’t think he’s in a rush to have them.” I remembered what he’d said about Quinn. Definitely not in a rush to have them.
“I meant marriage, but okay. Have you told him about what you want?”
“No. I don’t want to put unnecessary pressure on things right now.”
“But you see a future there, right?”
“I do.”
“And do you think he does?”
“I really hope so.”
“Well, don’t wait too long to find out if he’s serious,” Maddie advised.
I flushed with annoyance. Who was Maddie—queen of the permanent present—to give me relationship advice? I forced a smile. “Don’t worry, I won’t.”
On the drive home, I thought about Coco’s adoption plans. It wouldn’t be easy for them, but there was no question that they were ready for it. They had each other. And more important, in this case: they had Mark’s aunt’s money. That’s a horrible thing to think, I reminded myself. But it was also a fact. They had spent very little on their humanitarian trip. Mark’s inheritance meant they would have the means for the adoption costs as well as to raise a child. Mackie had only hinted at it, but talking to Coco made it clear: I couldn’t do this without a lot of money. And I didn’t have much to spare.
Elmira and I were chatting at the circulation desk when she noticed Mackie and Terabithia coming through the door. Elmira clapped her hands. “I finally get to meet the baby!”
I grinned at her; she sounded much older than she actually was sometimes. I couldn’t believe they hadn’t met before, but Mackie usually brought Terabithia on Saturday mornings, when he was in good form before he needed his nap. Elmira typically came after school and had to do chores on the weekend before she could sneak away.
“Hey, Boo.” He held out his arms to me and toddled over. “I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine. This is Elmira.”
“Hiiii,” he crooned, reaching out to touch her hair.
She shook his hand. “Hi. Nice to meet you.”
He blinked a slow, decisive blink. I kissed him on the nose and brought him to his favorite corner, where the tubs of board books sat on the low shelves underneath the bulletin board.
“Want to find your book?” I asked. A big, gooey smile spread on his face. I squealed inside as his four little white bottom chiclet teeth appeared.
“Hand me that tub,” I said to Elmira. She put it on the floor in front of Boo. As usual, he rifled through for a minute, then grabbed the tub by its sides and turned it over so the books crashed to the floor. Nothing doing. “More!” he ordered. Elmira passed me the next tub. Again, he dumped them out on the floor.
“Fog! Fog!” he chanted, waving his arms like he was about to take flight. There, peeking out from the bottom of the pile, was his all-time favorite: The Piping-Hot Frog Book. Each time after he left, I buried it at the bottom of the tub to make the hide-and-seek more fun for his next visit.
Then we would read the book. Today, Elmira did the honors.
“It’s our luck that you moved here and that you’re taking such good care of us,” Mackie told me. “And I don’t simply mean with books.”
I plastered a smile on my face. “Thank you. That’s very kind of you.” Somehow, the words seemed hollow, like some kind of consolation prize, even though it was the kind of thing I would have longed to hear before Terabithia came along.
—THIRTEEN—
August 2008
Shep had planned a surprise trip for our six-month anniversary. (Well, the six-month anniversary of our first meeting. He said he couldn’t quite wait for the anniversary of our first date . . . and who was I to argue?) I wasn’t even allowed to pack for myself because he had been so determined to keep the details a secret. I wondered if I would end up wearing lingerie around on the street somewhere. My only request had been that he not take me camping, although he was already well aware of my feelings on the subject. It wasn’t that I didn’t like being physically active in the outdoors. I really did. It was more that I liked to be physically active in the outdoors and then take a shower. And go to the bathroom in a real bathroom. As often as I wanted.
I switched my cotton pajamas with pink whales on them for a pink sundress. When I got downstairs, he looked as excited as when he was about to go sailing on a brand-new boat. The car was already packed, and two bowls of oatmeal—the good kind that took a half hour to prepare—were steaming on the table, topped with trickles of brown sugar and a handful of blueberries. “Happy anniversary, honey,” Shep said, kissing me on the cheek.
“Happy halfiversary, Shep,” I said, feeling like Hanukkah had come early. We ate our breakfast in silence, holding hands. There had been a shift lately. Ever since going home with me, he seemed lighter, more present again.
There was no picnic basket in the back of the car, which meant that we were going somewhere with delicious food. Even though I had just eaten, I was excited to find out what would be next.
“Shoot, Shep, I’m sorry,” I said when I woke up more than an hour later. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“That’s okay. I like my surprises to be really successful.”
“Well, this one will be, because I have no idea where we are.”
At that moment, we were turning into the driveway of an inn. My eyes scanned for a sign. “There isn’t one,” Shep told me, reading my mind. “But in about two minutes, you’ll know where we are.”
The reception area was dressed in nautical blue with honey-colored rafters and crisp white moldings around the windows. We were near the water!
“Welcome to the Inn at Mystic,” the frosted-haired woman behind the counter greeted us, smiling warmly. Her face was naturally tan, her cornflower-blue eyes (the color of a Constable sky) gleaming as if our visit was her delight.
“Mystic!” I cried, throwing my arms around Shep. He loved Mystic. I had been dying to visit ever since he started telling me stories of all his wonderful childhood memories going there with his brothers and his mom and dad. He hugged me back, one of his special Shep hugs that made me forget about the reception lady. She had the discretion to be rifling through some papers in a file on her desk, unable to stifle a grin.
“Hello,” Shep said to her. “Jameson. Shep Jameson.” He stuck out his hand. The woman looked vaguely surprised at his friendliness but recovered and shook hands with him.
“Here you go.” She proffered our keys on
a blue-and-white grosgrain ribbon. “Have a nice day. Please let me know if you need anything.”
“Thank you,” Shep and I said in unison.
I pushed open the door to our room and gasped as I caught a view of the harbor through the windows directly in front of me. “Shep!” I cried, racing to press my nose against the glass.
“Look, Do,” Shep said as he discovered the rest of the room. “A fireplace!” I clapped my hands and knelt in front of the hearth, imagining its warmth radiating over us later that night. Shep had disappeared through two doors to explore the bathroom.
“Honey, get in here,” he called, his voice sounding far away.
“Not till you’re done,” I joked, rounding the corner and stopping dead in my tracks. “Oh! My! Goodness!”
Shep was nodding with a wicked smile on his face. A deluxe whirlpool sat on one side of the bathroom, beckoning for bubbles to cover the gleaming white marble and for us to slip inside. “We could just . . . ,” Shep suggested.
I gave him a huge smooch and found the superhuman restraint to say, “Mmmm . . . we’ll have plenty of time after it gets dark.”
“What if I don’t want to wait?”
I caved. “Hmm, maybe you’re right.”
Then Shep was the one who looked reluctant. “No, you’re right—we should go,” he agreed. “I can’t wait to show you the town.”
He unzipped the bag he’d packed for me—which was sitting on a gorgeous antique canopy bed with jacquard pillows and a cotton bedspread with swirly patterns and million-thread-count sheets—and threw me a light sweater. “Let’s go!”
The weather couldn’t have been more picture perfect; it was cool and crisp and salty. Shep shared stories from family vacations in Mystic as we stopped into the places he loved, like the toy store and nautical souvenirs store and fudge store. (Okay, we more than just stopped in there. The owner let us sample every flavor, and we still ended up buying a pound for ourselves and half a pound each for about sixteen of our closest friends back in Chatsworth.)
We managed to find room to eat lobster rolls at a restaurant overlooking the water. The thing is, you’ve never had a lobster roll until you’ve been to New England. They used these hot dog buns that were flat on the sides, buttered and grilled them, then filled them with succulent meat tossed in just a little mayonnaise with some spices and sometimes a bit of chopped-up celery. Real lobster rolls celebrated the beautiful simplicity of the crustacean—it was so good you didn’t need to dress it up. I ate every single scrap of mine plus my shoestring fries and most of Shep’s.
The next surprise he’d planned was a half-day trip on a tall ship. We turned our faces up to the sun, full of salt and lobster and the sea air we were sucking in as if we couldn’t get enough.
What was weird was that as we were coming back into the harbor, the sun still high above us, Shep looked a little green around the gills. Shep never looked green around the gills. Definitely not on a boat. (As opposed to me, who did feel a little woozy if we were ever anchored and rocking on the swells for more than a few minutes. In fact, I’d been concerned about going out on the choppy water the day after a storm, but Shep had assured me I’d be fine.) “You okay, honey?” I asked him. “You look a little funny.”
He shook himself. “I’m fine. Maybe that lobster roll was too much, especially with all those fries.”
Now I was genuinely worried. First of all, Shep had a stomach of steel. Second, I had eaten most of Shep’s fries. He knew I had. Something was fishy besides our location.
I twisted around looking for a crew member to flag down for a bottle of water, figuring Shep might be getting dehydrated. Everyone else had deboated, and the nearest crew member was tying a rope around the thing that you tie a rope around to keep the boat from floating away from the dock. “Stay here for a second. I’ll get you some water,” I said, but when I looked over at Shep, he had already moved. He was still right next to me except he was now on one knee.
I sat back down. I started breathing very, very slowly. Shep took my left hand in both of his and said, “Dodie.” Just like that, like a sentence, with all the certainty in the world.
“I’m obviously not one for big speeches, but I think we understand each other without me having to say what I feel. You know more about me than anyone else in the world now—my good parts and my bad parts—and I hope you’ll get to learn everything else over the rest of our lives. And I know you, all of your good parts and—lucky son of a bitch that I am—the fact that you’re pretty much the best person on the earth and hardly have any bad parts, only enough to make you human in everyone else’s eyes except mine.
“Along with each day since I met you, the times I’ve spent at Mystic with my family have been some of the best ever. I couldn’t think of a more perfect place to ask you to make this the new best day of my life and to ask you to spend the rest of your life with me.”
He reached into the pocket of his peacoat and pulled out an antique-looking purple velvet box. By this point, I had stopped breathing through my nose and was trying hard not to faint dead away.
“Do,” he said, opening the box toward me, “will you marry me?”
“Holy crap!” I gasped, and then I said it again! I hugged him so hard that he had to pat me on the back to release him.
“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” I cried over and over as he slipped the ring onto my finger.
For the rest of the afternoon, we soared around in a daze like giddy kids. We got big cones of coffee whirly-twirly with chocolate jimmies and considered calling our parents, deciding to wait until after dinner so that we could savor a few hours of the little bliss bubble around us before our families very good-naturedly inserted questions of when and where and how into it. I reveled in the unfamiliar pressure of the ring around my finger as Shep—my fiancé!—held my hand.
He’d chosen an old-fashioned seafood restaurant for dinner. “I’ll have two dozen oysters, the baked stuffed shrimp . . . and could you leave us the dessert menu so we can mull it over?” Shep requested.
“The salt air will do that to you,” our waiter said, but I suspected it didn’t have anything to do with the salt air.
“You don’t look so green around the gills anymore,” I teased him after I’d ordered the clam chowder and the broiled scrod.
“Nope,” Shep—my fiancé!—concurred. “And besides, I have to make up for my fries you ate before.”
All that food and a summer fruit crisp later, we headed back to the inn. I couldn’t wait any longer to call my parents. “I wish there was a way to conference in my sisters,” I said.
It took my dad several rings to pick up. They were probably driving home from dinner and a movie with their friends, a Saturday-night ritual. “Hi, honey,” he said. “How was your day?”
“Dad, I’m engaged!” I yelled through the phone, loudly enough that my mother could hear from the seat beside him. My mom said, “Yay, Dodie and Shep!” as if we’d just won a contest. Which, of course, we felt like we had.
My dad’s voice was deep and warm. “I’m so happy for you two. Give Shep a handshake for me.” I was going to do a hell of a lot more than that when we got back to the inn, but not on my dad’s behalf.
“Give him a hug from me!” my mom trilled. “Pass me the phone, pass me the phone.”
Dad resisted. “I want to hear the story too.” I could hear the rustling as they debated it.
“Guys,” I interrupted, smiling, “why don’t you call me when you get home, and then you can each get on one of the phones and hear the story at the same time like usual?”
Maddie was out, so I reached her on her cell phone. She freaked. Coco and Mark practically hooted with joy. I thought I heard them giving each other high fives. Super cheesy and adorable.
Then Shep called his parents. His father said, decorously but earnestly, “That’s great, son,” and his mom cried and asked to speak with me to tell me how happy I made Shep. Then he called all his brothers. My parents called back, and I t
old them the story. Well, except for the “holy crap” part. Shep and I had already agreed we could omit that from the official history but that he was welcome to use it as leverage when we were married if I ever insisted he accompany me to a chick flick instead of watching the big game.
Then I gave him his halfiversary present: the copy of The Lady of the Camellias I had bought with Maddie before Shep and I even got together. “This is my favorite book.”
“Oh, wow, really? The librarian’s favorite book? I’ve seen this in your reading pile but wasn’t sure if you had actually gotten to it yet.”
“I reread it every so often.”
“I can’t wait to read it too.”
“It’s beautiful, but it’s really sad. So maybe not right now when we’re celebrating our engagement!” I laughed.
“You were beautiful and sad when I met you,” Shep mused, stroking my hand.
“I was.”
“Are you happier now?” he asked.
“Much.” I paused. “I miss her, though.”
“I know you do.”
“Sullivan would be so pissed at me if she knew I was talking about her right now, of all times, instead of enjoying this moment.” I couldn’t help but smile.
“Yeah, and she’d be right.”
“So let’s stop talking and get in the Jacuzzi!”
I insisted on driving home on Sunday—partly because Shep deserved a rest after all his great planning . . . partly because I’d deprived him almost entirely of sleep for two nights.
Propping my hands right up on that steering wheel also gave me a great view of my sparkly ring. Shep had chosen a Victorian princess ring. A beautiful little diamond nestled in a bed of ornate leaves, the whole setting dainty enough not to look silly or showy on my finger. He could have proposed with a pipe cleaner ring for all I cared. But it did mean something that he had chosen what I would have desired most out of a thousand different styles and settings.
“I can’t believe you kept the secret. I had literally no idea,” I said. “Where was the ring all that time?”
The Lending Library Page 16