“I don’t need a mansion. I just need to feel a connection to the man I love.”
“I thought we were connected. I thought that’s what a ring meant. We belong together. Everyone says so,” he said coldly. “But obviously you don’t feel the same way you did once. If you had told me about being pregnant, then if you lost it at least I would have been included. But this . . .” his voice trailed off and his cell phone buzzed again. He took it out and looked at it. “My car is here. I have to leave for the airport.”
“As usual,” Alanna said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You know what it means. You’re always either on the way to the airport or on the phone or at the office. If we got married I’d never see you.”
“You see me a lot more than most wives see their husbands. You think there’s some mystical connection waiting for you out there somewhere but you’re wrong. This is as connected as two people get. Everything else is nothing but a fantasy and you’d better accept that.”
“If that’s true I’d rather dive into the ocean and never come up for air.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
They sat side by side in the shade of a small roof overhang. Ben, his head swathed in a bandage like a white helmet, was in a wheelchair, his bare calves showing below the thin, cotton hospital gown, a pair of disposable slippers on his feet. He looked as vulnerable as a child. The hospital had a number of these small outdoor gardens, little shaded oases, still pleasant enough in April before the summer heat reminded everyone that Las Vegas was built on the sands of a scorching desert.
They didn’t speak right away. Maybe it was some sort of post traumatic shock. It had been a rocky couple of days.
“Everything’s changed,” Ben said tentatively.
Shelly squeezed his hand. “Not everything.”
“Yes it has. Who knows how long it will take me to recover, or what recovery will even look like? I may not be able to go back to work or to travel like I used to.”
“We’ll work it out.”
“I don’t expect you to go through with it, Shell. I know this isn’t the deal I offered you originally. You expected to be married to a strong, healthy man who could take care of you, not an invalid who doesn’t know what tomorrow might bring. Nobody would blame you if you opted out.”
“You’re not an invalid, Benji. I have no intention of opting out,” she said, turning in her seat to face him. “We’ll face whatever the future holds together and here’s the thing I’ve learned. We never did know what tomorrow might bring. No human does. You just have to hold on to the people you love and figure it out as it comes.”
“When did you get so smart?”
She laughed softly. “I don’t know.”
He was still looking straight ahead. “No man,” he said, “wants to depend on the woman he loves to help him. We had a pattern, Shell, where I took care of you and it might not be that easy for either one of us to let it go.”
“We’ve already let it go. Everything changed the minute you hit that casino floor. Everything except the fact I love you. And that I want to be your wife, come what may.”
He looked at her, his eyes welling with tears. “I love you too, Michelle.”
They sat there for a few minutes more in silence. Taking in the view, holding hands, listening to each other breathe.
So this, Shelly thought. This is what the big win feels like.
Chapter Forty-One
“Where are we?” Alanna asked.
“You know, my dear,” Joe said with a laugh. “In our brief time together, that’s the one question I most associate with you.”
“Well it’s a good question,” Alanna said, laughing too.
“Well for once, I can answer you,” Joe said. “This is the famed Little White Wedding Chapel on the Vegas strip and apparently we have come to stand witness to the wedding of Shelly and Ben.”
“Ah yes,” said Alanna. “There they are now.”
The door opened and Shelly walked through, pushing Ben in a wheelchair. The newspaper had run a story about the big jackpot winner and her fiancé snatched back from the jaws of death. It resulted in such a wave of good publicity for the hospital that they had not only given Ben a few hours away from rehab, but had provided an ambulance to transport the bride and groom to the ceremony. Ben still looked pale and shaken in his blue bathrobe, head bandaged, and, when he stood, he leaned on Shelly’s arm as they made their slow but steady way down the aisle. Despite the fact she’d be spending her wedding night in a recliner on the eighth floor of Las Vegas General, Shelly was a radiant bride and Alanna found herself blinking back tears.
Joe leaned in to whisper. “Check out the minister. Look familiar?”
“It’s Elvis. Isn’t it?”
“Look closer.”
“Oh my God, is that . . . is that Morgan?”
“Yeah, it took me a minute to recognize him in his wig and sequin jumpsuit, too. He really gets around, doesn’t he?”
The organ had bellowed its final note and Ben and Shelly had at last arrived at the altar. Shelly looked at Alanna and gave her a broad wink.
“Do you think you were ever married?” Joe asked her, his voice a soft whisper in her ear.
Alanna shook her head, speechless, witnessing the joy on the faces of both Shelly and Ben. Seeing this, she was even more convinced that her engagement never had the deep connection she craved.
Joe asked, “Would you ever want to be?”
The vows were beginning. Morgan motioned for Shelly and Ben to step forward. Alanna wondered if Morgan came in some form to every wedding, every birth, every happy or sad occasion.
She felt Joe beside her, strong and stalwart and smiling, and she thought about the question he’d asked. Would she ever want to marry? Did her future lie back on earth or in the realms beyond—or somewhere in this strange in-between world where she and Joe could be, not quite but almost, together? She wondered if she had the courage and strength to find her own true destiny.
“I do,” Shelly said and tilted her head back to receive Ben’s kiss.
Being there at that moment with Ben and Shelly so radiantly happy, Alanna felt the importance of what she and Joe had done. They’d worked as a team and wasn’t that part of the connection she’d been searching for in Delray Beach? Nothing was better than this sense of purpose, nothing more gratifying than helping move someone’s life forward in a positive way. Maybe this in between state, this transition, was her new home. And maybe as long as Joe was there with her, it would be all right.
Joe’s hand reached for hers and his fingers closed around her palm. Alanna smiled, happy in the moment.
Happy in the moment . . . and so, of course that was precisely when she felt it. The pressure, that tingling, that strong, familiar sense that they would soon be leaving. When she glanced at Joe she knew he felt it, too.
“It’s time,” he whispered. “Are you ready?”
It didn’t matter if she was ready. The chapel and everyone in it were beginning to slip away. Alanna nodded and in the last split second Joe bent towards her and his lips grazed gently against hers. She felt his lips dissolving, and then hers, too, and, as softly as a sigh, they were gone. Propelled into a faraway city, a different story, a whole new place where a woman was just beginning to wish.
Look for other titles in The Wish Granters series:
Carla’s Secret Regret (The Wish Granters Book Two)
Scheduled release April, 2013
Other books by LB Gschwandtner
The Naked Gardener (a woman’s journey with friends)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Naked-Gardener-ebook/dp/B003WQBD82
Page Truly and The Journey To Nearandfar (a fantasy for middle graders who love adventure and imagining what might be)
http://www.amazon.com/Page-Truly-Journey-Nearandfar-ebook/dp/B004JU1MSQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1330789252&sr=1-1
Maybelle’s Revenge (short stories with a twist)
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