This Is the Wonder

by Tracey Ward

  “He was getting some help before. Not enough.”

  “Then he should get more.”

  “But he won’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s a career ender,” Jax explains tiredly. “He’ll lose his spot as a Ranger. He could be removed from the Army entirely and he doesn’t want that. He’s almost thirty. He’s been in since he was eighteen and he watched my dad do it his entire life before that. He doesn’t know any other way to live. He wouldn’t know what to do as a civilian. He doesn’t want to know. In a lot of ways the PTSD isn’t the biggest mind fuck he’s going through right now. It’s the fear that compounds because of it.”

  I swallow hard. “Do you want me to go to New Jersey?”

  “I—I don’t…“ Jax stutters, stunned. “What do you mean?”

  “You can’t be there to help your family right now, but I can. I can go and help your mom and Tana with the kids. With the house. I’m not a great cook but I can order take out like you wouldn’t believe. I can be extra hands to give them time to be at the hospital with Joe. I can do whatever you or they need me to do. Just say the word and I’m on a plane.”

  He doesn’t answer. I can hear him breathing and it’s steady, unchanged, but still he doesn’t answer.

  “Jax, I’m serious. I’ll go tonight.”

  “Your sister needs you,” he answers, his voice sounding impossibly deep. “Stay where you are.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. You can’t be there for everyone and Robin needs you more, but I can’t… You’ll never know how much I love you for what you just said.”

  “Which part?” I ask, laughing slightly. “The take out?”

  “No. That you would go because I can’t. It’s going to be like that a lot and I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t ever apologize for doing your job, Jax,” I tell him seriously.

  “I feel like shit that my job makes it nearly impossible for you to do yours.”

  I nod my head silently even though he can’t see it. It’s a topic we’ve barely touched on but it’s a real concern for me. I haven’t told the ad agency in Boise that I’m getting married in just under a year or that when that happens, I’ll be moving out of state. We don’t know where Jax will be stationed after Germany but wherever it is, that’s where I’ll go. That’s where I’ll try to start up my career, my life. And when he’s moved again – and he will without a doubt be moved again, many times before he retires – I’ll uproot and go with him. I’ll leave behind everything I’ve built and start over.

  How can I build a career like that? How can I get anywhere with stops and starts and pauses and hang ups? It makes it even harder to decide what I want to do with my life because it massively limits my options for even getting started.

  But then there are nights like tonight when I consider dropping everything, jumping on a plane, and rushing to New Jersey, and I wonder if it doesn’t actually make it easier to decide. If maybe I already made my choice.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Jax is back.

  Let me say that again, because it bears repeating.

  Jax is back.

  His time in Germany has finally come to an end and he’s coming in on the next flight. In ten minutes, to be exact.

  Angela and I stand side by side just outside the gates, waiting anxiously for him to show. We’re both smiling like lunatics and grasping each other’s hand tightly, barely speaking but feeling everything together. And what we’re feeling is joy. Pure and untouched.

  She and I met up yesterday afternoon here at the airport in Washington – the state, not D.C. Jax is being stationed here at McChord Air Force Base and we all thought it was best if we met here so Jax and I could see where we’ll be living once we’re married. Angela joined us because she misses and loves her son, and a mother needs no reason beyond that.

  “I see him,” she whispers urgently, gripping my hand harder.

  I do too. He’s in uniform, his green duffle thrown over his shoulder, and he’s striding purposefully toward us. He sees us too and the laughter that falls from my mouth is strange and uncontrollable. I step toward him, pulling from Angela’s grasp, and then she’s pushing me. Propelling me forward until I’m nearly running.

  Jax quickens his step, rushing past other passengers heading for the exit from the terminal, and bursting through the small gate separating us. He’s mine then. He’s in his uniform, but he’s mine. He’s Jax with the crooked smile and all the light of the world in his beautiful blue eyes.

  He stops and drops his bag, and I take the hint. I throw myself into his arms, against his body, and both of us release a burst of breath from the impact that dissolves into laughter.

  I feel lightheaded. I feel like relief. Like downy snowflakes and evening fog. Like ice cream by the river. Like midnight in Paris and sunrise in Prague. Like the stars in the sky and the roots in the earth.

  I feel like love.

  Jax releases me reluctantly, both of us holding on too long, too tight, but then he’s sinking low. He’s falling to the ground, landing on his knee, and his hand is holding mine and a stone and a promise and I’m smiling and I’m dying.

  It’s a gesture, a big one, and I feel eyes on us everywhere. His mom’s and other traveler’s, but I tune them out. I shrug them off, and I look down into the endless ocean of his eyes as he slides the cool metal ring over my finger. He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t ask me because he already knows, but he wants to make sure that I do too. That I understand he’ll never change his mind about me. That I have nothing to fear because Jax is my hero and he always has been. He’s my champion. My white knight. My fairytale brought to life, full of flaws and faults, and we’re so much better because of them.

  We’re better because we’re real.

  And we’ll last because we’re honest.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Seven Months Later

  “Robin, dude, your baby is eating my veil!”

  “Oh shit,” she mutters, quickly pulling the tulle from Isaac’s drool-soaked mouth. “Maybe I shouldn’t be wearing this.”

  Mom reaches out and gently pulls the comb holding the veil to Robin’s head out of her hair. “I’ll put it away. You don’t need it yet, do you, Wren?”

  I wave it away. “Nah, I’m good. We’ve got time. I’ll put it on last.”

  I stand in front of the mirror in the small dressing room and sway from side to side, watching my wedding dress sparkle. My mom, my sister, and baby Isaac are the only ones with me and I like it that way. It’s a small wedding being held at an insanely nice hotel in New Jersey near Jax’s family. Angela did a lot of the legwork for me, her connections with caterers, florists, and photographers saving my life more than once. As the wife of a general she throws and attends parties and large events on the regular. It was like having my own personal wedding planner free of charge.

  My dress I picked out in Idaho, though, and it’s beautiful with long flowing strips of silk and gossamer fabric lightly encrusted with jewels that catch the light and make it look frosted. Every time I look at myself in the nearly three hundred and sixty degrees of mirrors set up in this room, I feel like I’m flying. I’m light as air and so elated, the entire situation still a little surreal. It’s so full of that elated feeling I got the moment I met Jax—the one I thought was gone for good, but here it is again, bright and brilliant. It’s in the shimmer of my wedding dress, the light catching in the glass of my bracelet, and the shine in my eyes whenever I think of him.

  “I saw you talking to Aunt Nance on the way in,” Robin says laughingly. “How’d that go?”

  I groan. “She wanted to tell me that Jax’s accent is lovely.”

  “He doesn’t have an accent,” Mom protests.

  “Yeah, I know. But Aunt Nance thinks he does.”

  “She thinks it’s German,” Robin giggles.

  Mom snorts. “Why would she think that?”

  “Because she thinks Jax is German
.”

  “Oh, she just misunderstood when you said you met him in Germany, Wren.”

  I shake my head vehemently. “No, I’ve explained it three times this weekend. She asked if he would be wearing his German uniform. She was worried whether or not I have any Jewish friends who would be offended by it. I told her it’s not 1942, he’s not in the Third Reich, and that he’s American military. Then she asked me if that’s legal when he’s not a natural-born American citizen.”

  “Wait, would it be?” Robin asks.

  “I don’t know! But I told her he’s a U.S. citizen. Has been his whole life. Then an hour later she asked if part of the sermon would be performed in his native tongue. She said it would be lovely to honor his heritage that way.”

  “I told her you were serving authentic German cuisine. She’s very excited to try it.”

  “We’re serving salmon and chicken with pasta. It’s Italian,” I protest.

  Robin shrugs, still smiling. “She’s into it. She said she can’t wait to try it.”

  “Speaking of food, did you talk to the caterer?” Mom asks, carefully fluffing out my veil.

  “I did.”

  “And the gluten-free items have been clearly marked?”

  “She said she’d take care of it.”

  “But did you check?”

  “I’ve been a little busy.”

  “If you’d gotten a wedding planner like I told you to, this wouldn’t be an issue.”

  I roll my eyes.

  “I saw that,” she warns me.

  “Fucking mirrors,” I grumble under my breath. “Mom, don’t worry about it. It’s taken care of. Jax’s mom is keeping an eye on things. She knows everyone involved and what they’re supposed to be doing. She throws parties all the time. She’ll make sure it gets done.”

  “If we hadn’t had to come all the way to New Jersey, this wouldn’t be an issue.”

  “How is my cousin’s gluten allergy non-existent in Idaho?”

  “He’s from Idaho. He knows what he can eat and what he can’t.”

  “It’s the same food!”

  This is an old argument, one that started the day I told her I was engaged and apparently will rage on right through my wedding day.

  “Mom, let it go,” Robin tells her, shifting baby Isaac in her arms. “We’re already here. It’s happening.”

  “It just seems silly. Jax has been stationed in Washington for months now. It’s closest to us. Why make you guys fly all the way out to New Jersey to get married, then fly all the way back to Washington? You know you can drive to his new base from our house in a day. You’ve done it several times over the last few months.”

  “Or I could fly to it from New Jersey in a day,” I remind her. “And I will. Now no more, please, I’m begging you. Let me have this.”

  “Honey, I’m not trying to take anything away from your day.”

  “Well, trying or not, you’re doing it.”

  She purses her lips into an angry line, but she lets it go.

  For now.

  She’s been angry with me over just about everything lately. The location of the wedding is the topic du jour, but her favorite fight is the one about my work. Obviously I left my job with Bray and the ad agency in Boise because I’ll be living in Washington with Jax after the wedding. It’s not something I’m sad about. Mostly what I did there was get people coffee, including Bray. My lack of experience or training in the ad industry was a major drawback and I was more of a lackey than anything else. I made copies, screened phone calls, bought donuts. It was nothing more than I could really expect starting at the bottom, but I felt like four years of hard work getting my degree should have come to more than Starbucks runs. I’m happier taking some time and doing nothing with it than doing something I don’t enjoy.

  I don’t have a job lined up in Washington yet and I’m nervous about trying to get one right now. I’m scared to get too invested in a job only to have Jax get orders in two years and we’re forced to uproot. I’ll start all over again somewhere else and in another two years we could be moved again. I’m also on kind of a ticking clock at the moment, one no one else can hear yet. Once they can, it will change everything and I’ve realized that Angela was right – life is long and it never looks the way you imagined it would. That doesn’t mean it’s not absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful. Surprising.

  And I love surprises.

  There’s a knock on the door and it cracks open slightly. “Are you decent?” Amber calls inside.

  I smile. “Yep. Come on in.”

  She steps inside and quickly closes the door behind her. She’s gorgeous with her long blond hair in curls down her back and her black dress hugging her thin, narrow frame. Even though I hadn’t met her until this week gearing up for the wedding, I asked her to be one of my bridesmaids. I don’t have a lot of female friends and Jax has all three of his brothers for groomsmen. I only had Mel and my sister, so asking his sister to join us was an easy decision.

  The boys are all wearing their dress uniforms and I told Amber if she wanted to wear hers I’d be absolutely fine with that. I didn’t want to ask her to forgo her uniform just because she’s a girl, but she told me, ‘Fuck, no! I’m gonna look hot.’ Those words exactly.

  “It’s time,” she tells me now, a glowing smile on her face. “The guys are all lined up.”

  My stomach flips happily as I turn to smile at my mom and sister. “This is really happening,” I whisper

  “Are you okay?” Mom asks.

  I nod rapidly, my body feeling tight and full of energy. “I’m great. I’m so good.”

  “Can you girls give us a minute?”

  My smile fades as I watch Mom look pointedly at Amber and Mel. They both nod their heads and hurry from the room, Robin mumbling about getting Isaac to his dad before the ceremony. When the door closes, I feel an odd sense of dread.

  Mom comes toward me and turns me around so I’m facing the mirror again. She’s holding my veil but she doesn’t put it in my hair.

  “I want to tell you something,” she says gently. “Something I think every girl should be told on her wedding day. Every young man, too.” She grips my shoulders firmly, catching my eye. “You don’t have to go through with this. If you have any doubts at all, it’s not too late to stop this. You can leave right now without seeing anyone or saying a word to a soul. Your dad and I will take care of everything.”

  I frown, my temper flaring. “Mom, what are you talking about?”

  “Don’t misunderstand me. We love Jax, we do, but we love you more. Don’t worry about the money spent or the people waiting, none of that matters. What matters is that you’re sure you want to be Jax’s wife, because that’s what a wedding really is. Not the flowers or this dress, but the two of you being joined together for the rest of your life. It’s a big decision, one of the biggest you’ll ever make, and I can’t tell you how crucial it is that you be sure.”

  I haven’t been good at making decisions. Not for a long time. I still fear them with an irrational dread that I don’t yet know how to overcome. Choosing my dress gave me anxiety for a week. I couldn’t sleep for two days when I was picking the flowers for my bouquet. The song for our first dance sparked the first fight Jax and I have ever had because I couldn’t make a decision. I doubt myself and I do it every single day.

  But not about this. Not about Jax. There’s a gentle calm that lives inside my skin when I think about Jax. A soothing wave of warmth that washes over me and promises that no matter how mercurial the world may be, Jax and I are a constant. We’re oxygen. We’re the blue of the sky and the cold of the ocean floor. We’re a science that can’t be taught, an element that can’t be seen, but it’s there and it’s real and it’s tangible in the beat of my heart that follows him wherever he goes.

  And right now it’s fluttering in my chest, beating against its cage, and begging to be with him.

  To meet him at the end of that aisle.

  To walk this path I’ve cho
sen.

  ***

  The day is a blur. When it’s over it’s hard to remember, though I know I was in every moment as it happened. There was just too much to hold onto. It’s one of those days that you want to remember every second of, like the last day of a great vacation, but your brain can only give you so much and it’s fickle about the gifts it doles out. I don’t remember walking down the aisle on my dad’s arm, but I remember his voice quiet in my ear asking if I was ready. I don’t remember anything the minister said, but I remember the blue of Jax’s eyes contrasting against the deep blue of his uniform. I remember his hand holding mine. I don’t remember his vows or mine, but I remember crying. I remember being so overcome by the sobs that I could barely speak. I remember cursing in frustration, there in front of God and both our families. I remember laughter, Jax’s and mine. It dried my tears. It grounded me.

  I remember breathing.

  There was cake, a dance to music I didn’t hear, someone slipped me a beer at some point. There were photographs and so much smiling my face hurt. There were gifts and introductions, hugs and reminiscing. There was Mel and Ben and a feeling in my stomach that that was important, but I couldn’t hold onto the questions I wanted to ask.

  Then there were goodbyes. There were tears that weren’t mine, faces I didn’t know rushing past under a curtain of bubbles being blown and reflecting off the evening glow of the lights along the sidewalk. There was a car. There was a hotel room.

  There was a girl and there was a boy.

  Two heartbeats that fell in sync.

  And there was an echo, silent but growing.

  Epilogue

  Two Months Later

  “I hate today.”

  I laugh, nuzzling my face into Jax’s neck. The scruff on his cheek scrapes against my forehead but I burrow deeper, pushing my cold nose into the warmth he’s hiding between his body and the pillow. “I love today.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do. I love it. Do you know why?”