A Walk Down the Aisle

by Holly Jacobs

  Well, she seemed to have softened her attitude, so he tried, “About that next doctor’s appointment?” When she didn’t answer immediately, he lowered his voice and stage-whispered, “It’s my baby, too. And I plan on being involved.”

  “My appointment’s on Friday.” She pulled a card from her pocket. “I’ll meet you there.”

  He took the card and realized that if she’d had it in her pocket, she’d obviously been planning to give it to him. So, why make him work so hard for it? “You’re acting as if you’re the injured party. As if you’re mad at me.”

  “Oh, no. I’m sure you are the injured party. Poor Colton. I mean, I suffered painful experiences, things I couldn’t talk about with anyone. And I tried...you’ll never know how hard I tried to tell you, but how do you explain to a man who has a wonderful family and such great memories of his childhood what it’s like to not have any of that? Plus, I didn’t want your pity.”

  “I don’t pity you. I feel bad that you didn’t trust me enough to share—”

  “No,” she said, her voice escalating with what he thought was frustration. “It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you enough to share, it was that I trusted you enough not to share. I trusted that you’d have my back no matter what. That you’d take my side no matter what. And that was obviously not the case.”

  He was about to protest when Tori appeared at the side of the table. “What are you doing here?”

  It didn’t take a genius to know she was talking to him. “Having a discussion with my fiancée.”

  “Ex-fiancée,” Sophie corrected.

  “Well, I’m hanging out with Sophie until her friends come, so you can go.”

  He was being dismissed by a fourteen-year-old? “Sophie and I—”

  “Are done.” She leaned down and whispered, “It’s not good for my sibling to have some doofus upsetting Sophie.”

  Not knowing what else to do, since Sophie seemed okay with letting a teen kick him out, he stood. “I will be at that appointment on Friday.”

  “Fine,” she spit out.

  “And we will talk about the rest of this again.”

  “No, we won’t. Baby. Mattie and Finn’s wedding. Even the winery. Those are all valid topics, but nothing more.”

  He strode out of the diner. And headed back toward his truck.

  He played Sophie’s words again in his head. She’d trusted him enough not to tell him.

  “Hey,” Tori said, obviously having followed him.

  He turned to the tiny spitfire. She still had light blue undertones in her Sophie-colored blond hair. She stood, hands on hips, ready to take on the world. “What?” he asked.

  “Leave her be. You’ve already made her cry enough. She doesn’t need any more.”

  Tori, too? “She didn’t tell me anything. I’m the injured party.”

  “Yeah? What about her? If Sophie didn’t talk about her past, it must have been something awful. Something that hurt her so much she couldn’t. Did you know she wanted to hold me when I was born, but her creepy parents wouldn’t let her? They took me out of the room and Sophie screamed so hard the doctors gave her some shot that knocked her out and when she woke up I was gone. The first time she ever touched me was the day I came here. I was pissed at her this weekend, but that doesn’t mean I left. It doesn’t mean I kicked her out of my life. It meant I was pissed. I’m a kid and I can figure out that being mad doesn’t mean walking away. Being hurt doesn’t mean leaving. I came here before Sophie met with her friends so I could tell her I’m still angry, but we’ll work it through. That’s what family does...they work things out. That’s what my dad says. Families, they get pissed, they get over it. You walked away.”

  “But...” He wanted to pull out his righteous indignation like some suit of armor, but it failed him. He needed to think. He needed to talk to his friends.

  He needed to find a way back to Sophie. “I screwed up.”

  “Ya think?”

  He had turned to leave when Tori said, “You know what my hippie dad says about mistakes?”

  Colton stopped and faced the girl. He realized he wanted to know what Tori’s dad said. He wanted advice on what to do. “What does he say?”

  “Well, his favorite quote is from Jim Morrison, who supposedly said the worst mistakes in his life had been haircuts, but my dad normally only pulls that one out when mom tells him he’s looking shaggy. When I make a mistake, he likes to quote some old English guy, James Froude. Something about experience teaching slowly and at the cost of mistakes. Basically, you screwed up, learn from it and fix it.”

  Tori wasn’t telling him something he didn’t know. He’d messed up royally and now he had to fix it. “Hey, Confucius, thanks.”

  “Don’t think it means I like you. I don’t get to quote my dad quoting Morrison every day.” Tori walked back into the diner. Colton watched through the plate-glass window as she went back to Sophie’s booth.

  Trust.

  That’s what it all came down to. He thought that Sophie hadn’t trusted him enough to share her past, but maybe he hadn’t trusted her enough.

  He should have trusted that she hadn’t told him about the baby she’d lost in an effort to hide it but rather because it simply hurt too much to talk about it.

  He saw Sophie laugh at something Tori said.

  He wasn’t part of it.

  And he had no one to blame but himself.

  * * *

  SOPHIE WATCHED COLTON LEAVE. He stood at the plate-glass window, looking in. As if he wanted to come back and say something more.

  Tori returned to the booth and sat down in the seat Colton had vacated.

  “What did you say to him?” she asked.

  “Well, he’s still a dork, but maybe not as bad as I thought,” Tori answered without really answering. “Just like when I had the chicken pox. There were only a few spots on my stomach, so they weren’t as bad as they could have been, but they still itched.”

  Sophie laughed. “So he’s still a dork, only he’s not as big a dork as you thought?”

  “Exactly.” She glanced at the door. “Here come your friends. I’ll let you tell them your news. I wanted to stop in and say I’m going to be cranky for a few more days, but I wanted you to know I’m glad I’m going to have a little brother or sister.”

  Hearing Tori refer to the baby as a sibling made tears well up in Sophie’s eyes. She tried to hold them back, but there were too many of them. They streamed down her cheeks and her nose started to run.

  “Sophie, what’s wrong?” Lily asked, shooting a look at Tori that said she blamed the girl.

  Lily being fierce was a sight to see. She was normally the more easygoing of Sophie’s two friends, except when it came to planning the wedding. Mattie had called her a bridesmaid-zilla then.

  Thinking of the wedding-that-wasn’t only made her tearier. “It wasn’t her,” Sophie managed, trying to save Tori from more of Lily’s glares.

  Tori got up and said, “I’ll let Sophie tell you.” She walked over and gave Sophie an awkward hug. “I’m really glad.”

  Lily and Mattie slipped into the bench across from Sophie.

  “Now tell us what’s wrong,” Mattie demanded. She had a look about her that said whoever had upset Sophie was going to get it.

  Sophie had thought she’d lead up to her announcement with care, and sort of ease her way into it, but she found herself blurting out, “I’m pregnant.”

  After that, her tears were joined by Lily’s, and Mattie, who wasn’t a teary sort, grinned so hard it made Sophie laugh.

  “So, you and Colton...” Mattie started, then stopped short as Sophie shook her head.

  “Oh, it is Colton’s baby, but we won’t be getting back together because of it.” Mattie started looking as upset as Tori had, so Sophie added, “And that’s my choice. He asked me to marry him.”

  “Too little, too late?” Mattie half asked, half growled.

  From Mattie’s expression, Sophie was glad that Colton had
left, or else Mattie would have torn into him. “Just be happy for me? After what happened with Tori, I want a pregnancy that’s celebrated and a baby I keep....”

  That’s all it took. Both Lily and Mattie smiled and congratulated her. Both volunteered to be her birthing coach, though Mattie appeared decidedly green at the thought and finally mentioned that since Lily was a nurse, maybe she should do it. Mattie would make sure that Sophie’s freezer was well stocked with healthy food for after the baby was born.

  As they discussed the baby, then Mattie’s wedding, Sophie realized this was the first time she’d ever shared the news of a baby and had it greeted with excitement.

  She listened to Lily talk about dragging Mattie out to look for a wedding dress, and Mattie grouse about Lily being a bridesmaid-zilla, and Sophie started laughing. She laughed until she was crying again.

  Lily and Mattie were more than friends. They were family. Here was what she’d always wanted. A family. A real, accepting, unconditional-love sort of family.

  They accepted her, and so did Tori, who was still upset but had taken the time to let her know that she’d eventually get over it.

  Her life was pretty perfect.

  A picture of Colton, smiling at her as she walked down the aisle, flashed through her mind, but she blotted it out. She’d learned early on that things were what they were. She’d always wanted a family like Colton’s, or Mattie’s, but that wasn’t what she’d gotten. Her parents could never be that, and nothing would change that. She’d wanted to keep Tori, but instead, she’d given her daughter the best family she could find. And nothing could change that.

  She’d thought that Colton was perfect. Turned out, he wasn’t. But neither was she. They weren’t destined for some happily-ever-after perfect life. But that was okay. Her hands rested on her stomach. Her life was pretty perfect.

  Pretty perfect was good enough for her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ON THURSDAY, Colton was supposed to be on his way to a meeting in Ripley with Rich, but at the last minute, the other winery owner canceled. That was fine with Colton. There was always some job on the farm that needed his attention. This year there were more jobs than normal because he’d lost so much time with the wedding, and now with the aftereffects.

  His to-do list was a mile long.

  But rather than crossing something off it, he found himself walking through his grapevines. Row after row of grapes. He could name them all. He had Concord and Niagara grapes, which the region was known for, but he also had Cabernet Sauvignon and Chambourcin. He stopped at one of the Cab vines and pulled a sucker from the base of the vine.

  He’d talked to his pal Geoff about a new vine he’d put in. He was excited about—

  All thoughts of grapes and new vines vanished as he caught sight of something at the top of the hill.

  He’d put Adirondack chairs up there because Sophie so loved watching the sunset over the lake from the ridge. She told him she’d watched sunsets from many spots on Lake Erie, but the most perfect spot to see it was from his ridge.

  He’d bought the chairs as a surprise. If he’d bought them for himself, he’d have simply put some stain on them to protect them from the elements. But they’d been a gift for Sophie, so he’d painted them. One a bright yellow, because the color had reminded him of his fiancée, and the other a more manly blue for himself. She’d of course proclaimed the colors sunshine-yellow and baby blue, which didn’t sound all that manly. But because it seemed to delight her, he let the description stick without complaint.

  He stood now, hidden by the vines, and watched.

  Sure enough, someone was sitting in one of the chairs. In Sophie’s yellow chair.

  There was something in the way she sat that made him sure, even from this distance, it was Sophie. He knew that she wouldn’t want to see him. Every time they saw each other lately, they fought.

  But Tori’s words haunted him.

  He’s messed up. And it wasn’t a bad haircut decision. It was not trusting Sophie. It was not giving her a chance to explain.

  It was up to him to fix things.

  He started up the hill. The crest was a narrow band of somewhat level ground. The path that led to it wound along the edges of his vineyard.

  As he grew closer, he realized she was crying.

  Sophie had always worn her emotions close at hand, whether she was laughing, smiling or crying. But these weren’t tears of joy. These were gut-wrenching sobs.

  He quickened his pace. “Sophie?”

  She turned and wiped at her eyes. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that no amount of wiping could disguise the fact she’d been crying as if her heart was breaking. She clutched a piece of paper in one hand, and the other rested on an antique-looking wooden box.

  “I thought you were going out with Rich?” Her question was punctuated by a small hiccup.

  Well, that explained why she was here. Not to see him, but to visit one of her favorite spots in his absence.

  “The meeting was called off,” he said.

  “Oh.” She glanced over her shoulder, as if looking for an escape route. “I should go then.”

  “Sit,” he said, and took the seat next to her. “What’s wrong? Is it the baby?”

  “The baby’s fine. The appointment’s tomorrow. I gave you the time.” He nodded and she continued, “And other than feeling some weird fluttery sensations, everything’s fine.”

  “Then what?” he asked, and steeled himself for her to tell him to bug off or mind his own business. He held his breath, hoping she’d forget she no longer owed him an explanation.

  “It’s Tori’s birthday,” she admitted, her voice little more than a whisper. “Her parents came to get her this morning. They’re going to Niagara Falls for the weekend to celebrate. They invited me, but I said no. They’ve been so generous, sharing her with me. I’d have been a fourth wheel.”

  “The letter?” he asked, nodding at the paper in her hand.

  “Every year, on Tori’s birthday, Gloria wrote me a letter care of the adoption agency.” She hiccuped again. “She never signed her name, or mentioned Tori’s. She always referred to her as ‘your baby girl.’ When they came to pick Tori up today, Gloria handed me this. She said, ‘There’s no reason to break tradition.’”

  “So you came here to read it?”

  “I didn’t think you’d be home,” she said, as if that explained everything.

  He didn’t say anything, and when the silence started to feel uncomfortable, Sophie continued, “Gloria’s letter normally got to me a day or two early, but I’d save it until it was Tori’s actual birthday. That’s been my personal celebration for the last fourteen years. On that one day, I’d revel in the fact I had a daughter. I’d read through all the other letters, then read through the newest one. I was so hungry for news. Gloria always sent a few pictures, too.”

  “Can I see?”

  She hesitated. For a moment, he wasn’t sure she was going to share, but finally she nodded and passed him a small stack of photographs.

  The first was the pudgiest baby he’d ever seen. “Wow, she was...healthy.”

  Sophie laughed. “Gloria said that Tori was the hungriest baby she’d ever seen. She never slept a night through until she was more than a year old. But Gloria said she didn’t mind. She wrote about those late-night feedings. How the only light was from the streetlight outside Tori’s window, or sometimes a full moon. But she didn’t need the light to know every curve of Tori’s face. She wrote about the songs she sang. Lullabies her mother sang to her. Songs she thought might never be passed down because she couldn’t have children. She closed out that first letter by thanking me for giving her someone to share her lullabies and late nights with.”

  The next photo showed a much thinner toddler, walking around with her hands in the air and slightly extended. “That, Gloria said, was Tori’s Frankenstein walk. She always kept her hands in the air like that when she learned to walk. Most babies cruise around furniture us
ing it for support. Not Tori. She figured out how to walk and didn’t want any help, not even from a coffee table.

  “I knew all these snippets about her. Facts. I knew that her first tooth wasn’t a front tooth, like most babies. It was her canine, and Dom called her Snaggletooth and would growl when he saw it. Gloria said that Tori laughed every time he growled, and that she didn’t have a particular first word, like most babies. She had a first growl.”

  She sobbed a bit and said, “I thought that’s all I’d ever have. Only these tiny pieces of my daughter’s life. Glimpses. The letters got a little longer every year. Gloria said she spent the whole year writing them. Adding things as they occurred. And the pictures grew more endearing. Every year on her birthday, I’d open my grandmother’s memory box, where I had stored them all, and I’d reread each one. I’d look at each picture and try to memorize her. When I ran into children her age, I studied them and tried to imagine they were her.

  “I never thought I’d have more than this—” she waved at the box “—but now, she’s here. She’s spending her summer with me, and I’ve discovered that all these years, all these stories and facts, couldn’t paint the whole picture. They couldn’t really show me what a wonderful, amazing girl she was.”

  She paused and added, “And now she’s part of my life. Even when the summer’s over, she’ll be a part of it. You can’t imagine how amazing that is.”

  “She’s an amazing girl. Fierce,” he added.

  Sophie shot him a questioning look, and he continued, “The other day at the diner, Tori told me that you’d told her about the baby. She said I’d made you cry, and then told me how badly I’d messed things up. I wish I could undo my reaction. I wish—”

  “My grandmother used to say that if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. For the last fourteen years, I’ve wished I could have kept Tori. From the letters, I knew she was in a good home, but still, I wished. But not anymore.”

  “What changed?”

  “I met her. I met Gloria and Dom. I realized she wouldn’t be who she was without them. And Gloria wouldn’t have had anyone to share her lullabies with. How could I wish things were different?” She pointed to the box. “Read them yourself.”