Marj smiled and held up her hand, showing off a ring. “Bill and I are getting married.”
“Oh my God, Marj! This is so great. Caleb, they’re getting married. Come see the ring.” Jane took Marj’s hand and looked at the ring. “It’s so beautiful, Marj. Wait a minute. You’re not pregnant too, are you?”
Marj laughed. “At my age? Don’t be silly. But I want you to be my maid of honor.”
“Only if you’ll be my matron of honor,” Jane said, placing a hand on her growing belly and adding, “since you’ll probably beat us to the altar.”
Caleb closed the laptop and put it away. After everyone had fixed themselves a plate, they all sat down on the couch to watch Denver kick off to Seattle for Super Bowl XLVIII. Jane had a plate of goodies on her lap, her lover on one side, her friends on the other, and her home team playing the biggest game of the century on the TV in front of her. She was as happy as could be.
Then Caleb put his arm around her and kissed her head, and said, “The only way today could be any better, baby, is if the Seahawks actually win.”
Win or lose, Jane couldn’t imagine the day getting any happier. Until she felt their baby kick, and suddenly, it did.
They were driving to the house when one of Caleb’s songs came on the radio. He pulled the car over to the side of the road and sat looking at the station’s call letters on the radio’s display, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Jane sat in the passenger seat, grinning with pride.
“Did you do this, baby?” Caleb asked.
“Me and Mr. Zigler did it, yes. It’s just the local Austin stations for now, but we hired a radio promotion company and we’re hoping to get more airtime soon.”
Caleb was still smiling when he pulled back into traffic. “Who knew you had such a head for business.”
“It helps a lot when the female station manager sees your picture on the album cover.”
Caleb laughed. “Are you pimping me out to sell albums?”
“Not yet,” she said. “But I might when it comes time to sell tickets for your tour.”
Caleb reached over and took her hand in his as he drove. “You know there’s no one in this world or any other for me except you, don’t you, baby?”
“Even right now? As pregnant as I am?”
“Especially right now.”
Jane smiled and looked out the window as they turned onto their new street. Their agent was already there waiting when they pulled up. Caleb jumped out and went around to help Jane from the car. Then they walked hand in hand across the street and met their agent at the gate. He reached into his pocket and held out the keys to their house. Caleb looked at Jane, but she nodded for him to take them.
“The owner had no problem with the two-year option to buy at the agreed price,” the agent said. “I put a signed copy of the lease-option agreement on the counter.”
Caleb shook his hand. “I appreciate that, Vincent. If things keep going well with the album, maybe we’ll buy it sooner rather than later.”
“We can do a walk-through, if you want,” Vincent offered.
Caleb looked at Jane, but she smiled and shook her head.
“I’m sure everything’s fine,” she said. “Thanks for all your work. You’ve been great.”
After Vincent drove off down the street, Jane and Caleb surveyed their bungalow. It was small but perfect. A white picket fence, a green lawn with a shade tree, a covered porch. But the real reason they had fallen in love with it was a backyard that was almost too big to believe. And not one blackberry shrub anywhere in sight.
Caleb opened the gate and led Jane up the walk by the hand. He had just put the key in the door when Jane put her hand on his and stopped him. Then she opened her bag and took out Mrs. Hawthorne’s horseshoe.
“We have to hang this above the door first,” she said, handing the horseshoe to Caleb. Then she retrieved from her bag the small hammer-and-nails kit she’d picked up for just this occasion.
Caleb put the keys in his jeans pocket, took two nails, and put them in his mouth. Then he took up the hammer with one hand and lifted the horseshoe above the door with the other and centered it.
“Which side up?” he asked, mumbling through the nails.
“I think the open side up,” Jane said, remembering how it had been. “That way the luck won’t spill out.”
When the horseshoe was in position, Caleb was stuck for a moment with the horseshoe upheld in one hand, the hammer in his other hand, and no way to get the nails from his mouth. He looked to Jane, but she laughed, enjoying his predicament. He grinned, obviously appreciating the silent joke between them. Then he put the hammer in his back pocket and took up a nail and held it and the horseshoe in place with one hand, then retrieved the hammer from his pocket with the other and nailed the horseshoe into place. Jane watched this with great wonder, curious how it was that men managed such things but couldn’t seem to get the cap back on the toothpaste.
Caleb handed Jane the hammer and she put it back in her bag. Then she took his hand in hers, gazed up at the horseshoe, and smiled for Mrs. Hawthorne.
“Let’s just sit on the steps for a minute before we go in.”
They sat down on the upper step and looked at their yard. A butterfly fluttered just above the grass. A squirrel ran across the lawn and up the tree, setting birds there to squawking. A breeze rustled the leaves. It was a perfect spring afternoon.
“You know,” Jane said, “before Melody and I moved into our house on the island, we sat on the porch and said a prayer.”
She felt Caleb squeeze her hand. “We can say a prayer.”
“But it’s been a long time.”
“All the better, then,” he said.
Jane closed her eyes and listened to the birds and to the breeze. Her mind wandered back across all those years to her and five-year-old Melody sitting together on the steps of their first home, looking up at snow clouds gathering in the gray Washington skies. She could almost feel the cold on her cheeks. She missed that little girl, and she knew she always would. She whispered a prayer. The same prayer. And then she was back on the porch with Caleb, the Texas sun warm on her face and Caleb’s hand warm in hers, and she knew that the prayer had already been answered.
She rose and Caleb rose with her.
He unlocked the door and pushed it open. Then he turned, took her bag from her and set it down beside the door, and scooped her up into his arms.
“Am I really heavy?” she asked.
“Not at all, babe,” he answered hoarsely as he strained beneath her weight.
And Jane knew it was the only time he would lie to her, and she loved him for it. Then he kissed her before he carried her through the door and into their home.
Caleb paced in the waiting room, mumbling wild prayers and pulling at his hair. Sweat glistened on his brow and when he clawed his fingers through his hair, his hands were shaking.
He leaped at the doctor as soon as he appeared. “Is she okay now? Can I go back in?”
“We need to do a cesarean section, but you can scrub up and come into the operating theater. The anesthesiologist is there with her now.”
The doctor led Caleb down the hall and into a room, where they both washed their hands and arms, then put on gowns and caps. When they walked into the operating room, Caleb saw Jane on the table and his heart skipped a beat. There was a half curtain suspended from the ceiling, blocking the lower half of her body, where two nurses and the anesthesiologist were busy working. Jane’s face was pale and her hair was drenched with sweat. But she smiled when she saw him.
“Hi, honey,” she said. “How are you holding up?”
Caleb returned her smile as best he could, brushing a loose strand of hair away from her face. He looked at her with such concern, it nearly broke her heart.
“I’m holding up okay,” he finally answe
red. “How are you doing, baby?”
“I’m all right. They gave me a spinal and I can’t feel my legs. They say they might remove my appendix if it looks infected.”
“Both of them?” Caleb asked, slightly panicked.
Jane couldn’t help but laugh. She reached up a finger and poked his nose. “You’re silly. Appendix isn’t plural. A person only has one.”
“But if you only have one, don’t you need it?”
“No, I don’t need it,” she assured him. Then she looked at him in his gown and hat and said, “You know, it’s too bad you don’t even know what an appendix is, because you would have made a really cute doctor.”
“I’ll be happy to just be a really cute father,” he told her.
He took her hand in his and Jane could feel that he was shaking with nerves. She looked into his sweet green eyes and she wished she could somehow reassure him that everything would be fine, but she was in need of reassurance herself.
The anesthesiologist’s head appeared above the curtain. “Can you feel that?”
“Feel what?” Jane asked.
“That’s the answer we want to hear,” he replied.
Then the ob-gyn joined the others, and they were all there working and talking beyond the curtain for a while—nothing urgent, just a quiet murmur.
Time seemed to pass in strange intervals to Jane.
She looked up at Caleb and waited and wished and prayed.
“I’m making the uterine incision now,” she heard.
Then there was a lot of tugging and pulling, so much that she thought she might be ripped beneath the curtain, and she squeezed Caleb’s hand to her chest and looked into his eyes. A minute passed, maybe two. Then she heard the most beautiful sound in the world. She heard her baby cry. Her heart filled with joy and her eyes filled with tears.
She felt Caleb’s lips on her forehead.
“Congratulations,” the ob-gyn said from beyond the curtain. “If you look to your right there, you’ll see your beautiful baby girl on her way to the warm room.”
Jane lifted her head slightly and blinked away the tears just in time to catch a glimpse of the nurse carrying their baby from the cold operating room into the attached warm room. Then she leaned her head back onto the pillow and closed her eyes, and thanked God and the universe and modern medicine and the doctors and the nurses and her sweet, sweet Caleb, the father of her healthy child. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that he was crying too.
“I can’t believe it, Jane,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m so happy, I can’t believe it.”
She squeezed his hand. “I couldn’t have done it without you. And what did I tell you about painting that room blue?”
He smiled and wiped away a tear. “Maybe she’ll like blue.”
“Maybe she will,” Jane said. “Maybe she will.”
Several minutes later, while the doctors closed her incision, the nurse came out and called Caleb into the other room. He looked at Jane, hesitating.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Go see our little girl.”
It seemed like forever, lying there being stitched up and watching that door. Then Caleb reappeared with the largest smile she’d ever seen on his handsome face, holding a tight bundle of blankets in his arms. He walked to the bed and gently held their baby up for her to see.
It was the most darling little face Jane had ever set eyes on. She reached her arms out to take her from him, but then hesitated and looked to the nurse who had followed Caleb out and was standing behind him. The nurse nodded that it was okay. Jane’s arms were trembling, and Caleb helped guide the baby until Jane had her cradled to her breast.
They were quiet there together for several minutes. A new family on one side of the curtain, the doctors finishing up their miraculous work on the other.
“I guess now we’ll need to come up with a name,” Caleb finally said. “All the ones I had picked out were for boys.”
Jane looked at Caleb. He seemed both older and younger than he had just minutes before. As if he’d taken on a new responsibility for something very important, but in the process had shed some sense of responsibility for everything else. She decided that fatherhood looked good on him.
Then Jane looked down upon this perfect little life in her arms, this miracle that she and Caleb had created together.
“Her name is Harmony,” she said with a smile. “Harmony Grace Cummings.”
“You don’t want her to have your last name too?”
Jane looked up at the man she loved and smiled. “No. Because as soon as she’s old enough to walk me down the aisle, we’ll be making an honest man out of you.”
Caleb smiled. “Harmony Grace Cummings it is, then,” he said.
And then he bent over the bed and kissed them both.
Epilogue
Three years later, the cars were lined up on the street for three blocks in both directions, and the laughter coming from the backyard was so loud that the courier didn’t even need the address or the white and purple balloons on the gate to find the place.
He straightened his tie and knocked on the door. When no one came, he knocked again. At last it opened.
“You’re just in time,” the woman said. “Come on in.”
“Oh, no,” he replied. “I’ve only come to make a delivery. Is Miss Jane McKinney here?”
“She’s busy right now. I’m Marj, how can I help you?”
He bent and picked the box up from between his feet. “I have a delivery for her.”
Marj reached for the box, but he pulled it away, saying, “Miss McKinney needs to sign.”
“Can’t I sign for her?” Marj asked. “It’s an important day.”
“I know it is,” he said, “but this is an important delivery and it needs to be signed for by her.”
“Wait here, then,” Marj said, pulling the door closed.
When the door opened again, a beautiful woman wearing a lavender lace Renaissance dress and a matching flower in her hair smiled at the courier and said, “May I help you?”
“Are you Jane McKinney?”
“I am for another few minutes,” she said.
“I’m with the law firm of Douglas and Cooper, and we’re making a delivery on behalf of the Seattle attorney handling Mrs. Hawthorne’s estate.”
“Her estate? I knew she had passed, but . . .”
“Yes, she left instructions for this to be delivered today.”
He handed Jane the box. It was heavier than it looked. She set the box just inside the door, then took the pen he offered and signed the delivery receipt. He folded the paper, slipped it into his breast pocket, thanked her, and left.
When the door was closed, Jane knelt and pulled back the tape, then opened the box. It was filled with packing peanuts, and on top was an envelope. She opened it and removed the letter, written in a shaky script.
Dear Jane:
I know I’m showing up unannounced, and with two husbands to boot, but a promise is a promise. I hope you and Caleb won’t find us a burden on your special day. Feel free to pour us out into any old Texas river after you’ve said “I do.” Or keep us on your mantel. Either way, I’ve enclosed a small token of my sincere appreciation for the kindness you and your thoughtful, hardworking man showed to a lonely old woman.
If I’ve learned anything worth passing on in these ninety-three years, it’s that life is filled with questions, and love is the answer to every one of them. So I wish you lots of luck, but above all else, I wish you lots of love. And don’t you dare be at all sad over me—I’m starting my new life as well.
Faithfully yours forever,
Mrs. Nancy Lou Hawthorne
There was a check inside, and when Jane unfolded it and read the amount, she nearly fell over. Then she reached into the box and pulled the brass urn up from the packing peanu
ts. She couldn’t resist looking underneath it, and sure enough there was an old yellow piece of masking tape with faded writing that read: 1949—$9.85. Jane chuckled. Who would have thought that the woman who knew the price of everything she’d ever bought would end up being so generous?
“What do you have there, baby?”
She looked up at Caleb; he was holding their daughter in his arms. He had never been more handsome than he was today, wearing linen pants with a sash and a puffy white silk shirt. And Harmony had never been cuter, either, her hair curled, her big green eyes filled with wonder.
“It’s Mrs. Hawthorne,” Jane said, nodding to the urn in her hands. “She showed up for the wedding after all.”
Caleb smiled. “She sure was a special woman.”
“Yes, she was. And she sent us a wedding gift too. A check.”
“Really? That’s unexpected. How much was it for?”
Jane grinned. “Let’s just say we’ll be paying off the house sooner than we thought.”
Caleb raised his eyebrows. “Wow. Does this mean we can go on a honeymoon after all?”
“I think it means we can run off to Venice and kiss beneath the Bridge of Sighs.”
Caleb adjusted Harmony in his arms, then leaned in and kissed Jane, saying, “I can’t wait.”
“Daddy’s kissing Mommy.”
Caleb pulled away and looked at Harmony and smiled. Then he looked back to Jane and said, “We came to find you because Harmony here is ready to walk you down the aisle. Aren’t you, sweetie?”
Harmony nodded. “Yes, Daddy.”
He held Harmony out for Jane. “Why don’t you trade me, baby, and I’ll go and find Mrs. Hawthorne a seat in the front row.”
Jane swapped the urn for her daughter, kissing Caleb in the process. “Don’t put the urn next to my mother,” she warned. “She has strong opinions against cremation.”
“I wouldn’t do that to Mrs. Hawthorne anyway,” he said, grinning and carrying the urn away.
Jane and Harmony watched him go. Both were smiling. Then Jane turned with Harmony in her arms and looked at their reflection in the foyer mirror. They wore matching dresses and had matching lavender begonias in their hair.
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