Royal Engagement

by Chance Carter

  Chapter 18

  Alexander

  Today was Casey’s day, and it was all about letting her take the lead. After all, I was surprised—and thankful—that she was letting me into her world. I was sure it had to be painful reliving some of the memories that would undoubtedly surface with this trip.

  “So where are we off to first, boss?” I asked, a mixture of curiosity and sarcasm in my voice.

  “I was thinking we’d start with a tour of some foster homes I visited,” Casey said. “Four or five of them are within a mile of one another. Sound good?”

  I nodded. “Just give me an address so I can get the GPS started.”

  “No, no, no,” Casey grinned. “You’re going to see the town how I saw it when I was young—from the passenger seat.” With that, Casey grabbed the keys from my hand and opened the passenger side door. We switched seats without another word.

  This was the first time Casey had ever driven when we were together, and I had to admit that her braking skills were subpar. She made sharp turns, one after another, and I hoped this was attributed more so to her lack of direction than to her driving skills. She slowed down as we neared a school.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “This is the school I was at when my mom died,” Casey said. She stepped out of the car and I silently followed her lead. “See that classroom over there?” She pointed to a window right next to the mulch-covered playground.

  I nodded. “Mhmm.”

  “That’s where I was sitting when I was called to the principal’s office to be told my mom had been in an accident.” Casey gasped for air as she sobbed, and, despite her objections, I took her in my arms.

  It was starting to hit me that I was seeing a part of Casey that she had bottled up for so long. “I’m sorry, Case. I wish I could take the pain away.”

  “Me too,” she mumbled.

  Casey drove about a half-mile down the road before pulling over at the intersection of two busy roads. “Uh… Casey,” I started. “Why’d you stop?”

  The tears reemerged as Casey buried her head in her hands. Bits of eye makeup made their way down her cheek and onto her shirt. She pounded her fists against the dashboard and yelled, “It isn’t fair!”

  “Is this where your mom died?” I asked as delicately as I could. As soon as Casey nodded, I unbuckled her seatbelt and pulled her onto my lap. I put the flashers on, cradled her in my arms, and let her cry on my shoulder until she had no tears left. I couldn’t begin to know what it felt like to visit the site of a loved one’s death, but, based on the amount of pain I felt even thinking about the prospect of my parents dying someday, I knew it had to cut deep. “Case, we can get back on the highway to Tampa if this is too painful for you.”

  “No,” Casey said, wiping her tears on the back of her hand. “I still have a few more places to show you.” She kissed my cheek and hopped back over to the driver’s side.

  Our next stop was something a bit less dreary: the high school she’d graduated from. After explaining her situation to the school secretary, we were granted a hall pass to—literally—walk through her past. “I went to this school for my junior and senior year,” Casey said, guiding me to the auditorium.

  “What about your first two years?” I asked.

  Casey sighed. “I went to another high school across town. When a foster family from this side of town was interested in taking me, my social worker at the time promised that I’d stay on this side of town until I finished high school.”

  The auditorium had rows of theater seats and banners covered in blue and white. From the look of the décor, I guessed they were having some sort of Christmas or winter performance. “Did you do any activities here?”

  “Not really,” Casey said. “I went to a few meetings of the community service club, but I never really fit in here. Most of my friends were still across town.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I said, shaking my head. Trying to lighten the mood, I added, “If it’s any consolation, you would’ve been the best-looking girl at my high school.”

  That brought a smile to Casey’s face. She walked up the three steps to the stage and showed me with precision where she’d sat on graduation day. “You know, I was valedictorian.”

  “Really?”

  “Don’t act so surprised,” Casey laughed.

  Though I knew she was kidding, I hoped I hadn’t come across as thinking she was anything less than brilliant. “I didn’t… I just didn’t know. That’s all.”

  “I know. So, how’d you do in high school, Mr. CEO?”

  “Good grades,” I said. “Good, but not great. I got into Emory by the skin of my teeth. Lucky for me, I had great SAT scores, and I can be quite charming.” Casey giggled. “Can I ask you something?”

  We slowly paced around the stage in straight lines. “Shoot.”

  “At the risk of sounding like an asshole…”

  “Ok, nothing good ever comes from a sentence that starts that way,” Casey said. “What’s on your mind?”

  I hesitated and searched for the right words. “I was just wondering if you ever regret not finishing school,” I said.

  “Every day.” Casey stopped pacing and looked directly at me. “It was originally only supposed to be a temporary break. You know, just until I could save up enough money for tuition. I kept waiting for the right time, but then I got the job at the clinic, and…” Her voice trailed off.

  “The right time never came,” I said, finishing her sentence.

  “Exactly.” As we walked back to the car, Casey told me that she had been majoring in business before she dropped out of school, hoping to find a job in the business or marketing fields. I wanted greatly to offer her a job there on the spot, to make her dreams come true, to have her near me all day long at my company, but I knew better. Besides the fact that Casey wasn’t the type to take anything she viewed as a handout, we had to see how Christmas went first.

  We drove through a neighborhood a few blocks from the school that contained three foster homes she’d lived in. As we passed each one, she told me something memorable about the families that lived in them. The first house was where the “health nuts” lived, the second house belonged to a serial foster mother, and the third, she said, was one of her more pleasant stays.

  “What time is it?” Casey asked.

  “Almost 4:30,” I said.

  “We should get back on the road soon if we want to get to Tampa before dark,” Casey said. “There’s just one more stop I want to make.”

  This was only my second time at a cemetery in my entire life, and I wished for a moment that I had been to cemeteries more often so I was more familiar with the etiquette. “I come here every year on Christmas to see my mom,” Casey explained. She led me down a gravel road, through rows and rows of graves, until we finally stopped at one that had weeds growing around it.

  “Joanna Donohue,” I whispered, reading the name etched in stone.

  “That’s her,” Casey said. She recited the words from the gravestone as if they were carved into her mind. “Joanna Donohue. Beloved mother and daughter. Strong in love, brave in spirit.”

  I pulled a tissue from my pocket and wiped the tears that fell down Casey’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, Case.”

  “Don’t be. This is the first time since I turned eighteen that I haven’t come alone to see my mom.”

  The words I was searching for never made their way to my tongue. I wanted more than anything to take Casey’s pain away, to tell her that her mother would be proud of her and that she should be proud of herself. Instead, I stood there quietly as Casey knelt over the gravestone.

  Sniffling, Casey got up and walked up and down the pathway, collecting pebbles and stones. She softly places them on her mother’s grave. “Can I ask what that’s for?” I said, wanting desperately to take Casey’s mind off her pain, if even for a minute.

  “It’s a Jewish tradition,” Casey said, her voice barely above a whisper. I gave her my hand
and helped her up. “In the Jewish religion, people put stones instead of flowers on graves, because flowers die and rocks live on forever. I’m not Jewish, but a friend of mine in grade school was, and she told me about the tradition. I thought it was a really beautiful idea, and, since I don’t make it down here much and don’t want a bunch of dead flowers on my mother’s grave, I’ve kept up with it.”

  I said exactly what I was thinking. “That’s beautiful.”

  “Are you ready to go?” Casey asked. “I’m done here.”

  “Actually, I was wondering if I could have a minute alone… with your mom.” The words hung there in the air, and I wondered if Casey knew that I was serious.

  Without a sound, she took a few steps back and left me standing at Joanna’s grave. I crouched down and sat with my legs crossed. I had never actually talked to a person who had died, but my grandmother died when I was young, and my mom always said that she got some of her best thinking done at her mother’s grave.

  “Hi Joanna…uh…Miss Donohue,” I whispered. I cleared my throat and spoke a bit louder, feeling slightly ridiculous for talking to a piece of rock. “You probably already know me, as I bet you’re looking down on Casey right now, but I wanted to introduce myself. I’m Alexander, and I’m in love with your daughter. I’m not sure if she knows it yet, but I promise that she will. She’ll know because I’ll treat her like a queen every day of her life. I just don’t want to scare her off yet, because we’re still pretty new. I can already tell you that she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  I paused to look over at Casey. She was fidgeting with her shirt and watching me from afar, a curious look on her face. I let the words flow from my mouth without thinking twice about them. “You probably already know this, too, but you’re going to be a grandmother. Casey’s pregnant. Being a mother and all, you probably wouldn’t approve of how it all happened, but that’s a conversation for another day. I just wanted to let you know that you can count on me. I’m going to be here for Casey, and I’m going to be here for this baby. Casey tells stories about you all the time, about you and her getting dressed up in pearls to go to a tea party, about your summer trips to the beaches. I know you’ve been gone a long time, but you’ve never left her. She made it through foster care as a warrior because of the courage you instilled in her.”

  The relief I felt from talking to—or at—Casey’s mom’s grave was surprising to me. I had never felt closer to Casey or her past. I knew that I probably looked silly sitting here, but that didn’t matter to me. Casey mattered, and understanding her past was an important part of understanding her. I held up my pointer finger to Casey, as if to say, “One more minute.”

  “Anyway, before I go, I just wanted to ask you for something,” I said. “I’m hoping you can send Casey some confidence and courage. I know she’s going to be an amazing mother. I can tell from how kind and caring she is, and how she lights up when she talks about this baby. I just want her to see that. Miss Donohue, I promise that I’m going to take care of your little girl and your grandchild. I’m going to love them both for as long as they let me. Thank you for raising the woman of my dreams.”

  I placed a pebble on Joanna’s grave and wiped the dirt from my pants as I stood up. Silently, I walked over to Casey. She reached in for a hug and held on like her life depended on it. When she finally let go, I intertwined my fingers with hers, and we started our walk back to the car together.

  Chapter 19

  Casey

  I was in love with the man behind the steering wheel. The realization had hit me slowly, slowly, then all at once. Here I was, sitting next to the most wonderful man I could imagine, and I was carrying his child and falling in love with him. My world had done a complete 180-degree turn over the past five and a half months. A few weeks earlier, I had thought that nothing would come of this whole dating thing, but Alexander had proven me to be wrong. I’d never been so happy to be wrong.

  As if going to see his family wasn’t enough of a step forward, we had also gone to see what little part of my family there was. I think what sealed the deal for me was Alexander’s actions at the cemetery. He took the time to introduce himself to my mother and tell her how much he cared about me. I wasn’t sure what else he said, but that was enough for me. It meant everything. No man had ever made such a grand and powerful gesture on my behalf. No man had ever cared about the woman who had raised me for the first decade of my life.

  I peeked over at Alexander from the corner of my eye as he watched the road intently. I still wondered quite often how I landed a man like him. Every bit of him was perfect, every single part of his body and being. I started with his eyes. Those eyes of his had seen it all in the months since we’d met, and it hadn’t scared him away. He had watched as I broke down telling him about my childhood, holding onto every word I said. He had seen—and adored—the naked body I was often self-conscious about. With those eyes, he had seen my tiny apartment, and it didn’t matter to him. It didn’t matter to him that my entire apartment could fit inside his bedroom, or that I sometimes left dishes in the kitchen sink. He didn’t care that at least half of the furniture in my apartment was secondhand. I was able to see it in his eyes the first time he came to my apartment. It didn’t matter to him. His perfect eyes had a way of making me feel better, of telling me that everything was going to be alright.

  I moved my eyes to Alexander’s hands. The hands that gripped the steering wheel were some of the strongest, most gentle hands I’d ever known. They were the hands that made their way up and down my back the first time we made love. When I’d thrown out my back a few days after Alexander’s grand proclamation, those hands massaged me until I felt better. Those were the hands that held me when I cried and carried grocery bags up the stairs for me.

  Alexander’s fingers were both rough and tender, depending on the situation. I could feel them within me, deep and wild, pleasuring me as only he could. I could see them brushing tears away from my eyes or making their way over my lips to tell me nothing more needed to be said. On his right ring finger laid an old, bronze ring, a gift from his grandfather before he passed away. Those fingers were perfect. I could hear them tapping on my end table when Alexander wanted me to decide where to order takeout from, but I didn’t mind.

  That smile. If all of Alexander’s money disappeared, and he lost his job, and he had to get rid of his fancy house and car, that smile would be enough to get me by. It was calming and exciting and welcoming and sexy, all at the same time. Waking up to those pearly whites brought new meaning to my life. I could see Alexander smiling at Lotus on our first date as I tried not to get chicken stuck in my teeth. I could see that winning grin as I took my clothes off by the lake on our camping trip. His teeth weren’t perfectly white or straight— though they were pretty damn close—but they came together to create a force of their own.

  As Alexander looked in his rearview mirror, I caught a glimpse of his dimples. I never understood why girls said they found dimples attractive on a man until I met Alexander. They gave away what he was feeling, whether it was happiness or nervousness or sadness. This beautiful man’s dimples had their own language, one I had a feeling that I was just beginning to understand.

  Those strong legs of Alexander’s weren’t in my direct line of vision, cramped beneath the steering wheel, but I daydreamed about them anyway. Courtesy of weight machines and bleacher workouts, those legs were toned and strong beyond belief. They were the legs that helped Alexander hog the blanket on the nights he slept over. Those legs had walked up and down the stairs to my apartment countless times so I didn’t have to put extra stress on me or the baby. They were the legs I knew would run miles for me if I needed them to.

  Alexander’s body said all this, but what did mine say? I looked down, my pregnant belly blocking everything beneath it from my line of vision. The belly. I wondered how the baby factored into all of this. I was falling for Alexander, and I was certain that I would feel the same way even if I were
n’t pregnant with his child. I’d been infatuated with him for months before we’d even said a word to one another. But there was no denying that the baby changed things. Alexander had said a few times that he wanted us to be a family, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew exactly what he was committing to. After all, I was still learning about all the things I’d committed to when I decided to start a family. We learned about another facet of parenting every day, most of them not-so-pleasant. Sure, our relationship was great now, but things would change when the baby came. We’d have to sacrifice sleep and sex for diapers and bottles. It would be a big adjustment. The most beautiful eyes couldn’t magically fix that.

  A small part of me wondered if I was kidding myself going on this trip, the same small part that told me this relationship was doomed to fail. I tried with all my might to push that part out of my mind, but it was easier said than done. Casey, we’re past that, I told myself. We’ve established that Alexander cares about you and wants to raise this child with you, so why won’t you just let yourself be happy? This was the part of me I wanted to listen to.

  I had spent far too long second-guessing everything when I knew in my heart that Alexander and I had something special. I supposed it was my nature, growing up with disappointment after disappointment. I so desperately wanted to come to terms with the concept that there was a good chance Alexander would never disappoint me. After all, his track record was stellar so far. The fact of the matter was, I was here, Alexander was here, and our feelings for each other were here.

  I thought back to our earlier conversation during the little questionnaire we’d done. Alexander had talked about Allison, his first love, but I never revealed mine. When we had seen the sign to Tallahassee, we’d changed our focus. I hadn’t thought about the question again until this very moment, and I knew I owed Alexander an answer. I owed myself an answer.