“My time,” Emily said. “And I’m pretty sure that’s why they thought you died in the war. Because you were never seen there again. Because you are here. With me.”
“And there is no place I would rather be.” He grasped her hand.
She leaned over and kissed him, and her heart overflowed with happiness.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Sam
Sam stood in the front of the church in a rented tuxedo, Johnson Brown by his side. If anyone had ever told him his new best friend would be a black man, he would have laughed at them. It’s funny how things worked out. The church was different than what he was used to. Plainer, airier. The altar a free-standing table instead of against the back wall. But the candles, the crucifix, the stations of the cross, those were all identifiers. He was in the right place.
So much was strange to him. The hospital had been odd enough with the variety of blinking machines that all seemed to be operating all the time. The bright lights, the constant sounds. It was unnerving. Then he had gone to Emily’s place to continue his recuperation. She’d bought him modern clothes and showed him how to use a computer and a phone. He realized how odd everything must have seemed to Emily when she’d come to his time. Though, he was getting quite used to these futuristic things and feeling more and more comfortable with it all the time.
His Great-Aunt Elsbeth—imagine finding her here—had worked some magic of her own to get him identity papers so he could function in this society without raising endless questions. He smiled at her now, sitting there on the groom’s side. She had been so excited to be invited saying she’d never gotten to go to a blood relative’s wedding in all these years and was glad she finally had the chance. The reception, later, would be at the Plantation of course. Maybe he’d even get Emily to dance the Zingirella with him again. At the very least she’d promised him several waltzes.
The organist started playing Pachelbel’s Canon in D and the bridesmaids came down the aisle. Emily’s cousins and friends, and then Dayna as matron of honor. Finally, on the arm of her father, stood his Emily. She was so beautiful. Even more beautiful now, a few months pregnant, than she had been before. She simply glowed. Her dress was white and lacy, and she looked like a princess in it, or perhaps the belle of the ball.
She walked slowly down the aisle to where he waited. Her father kissed her on the cheek and placed her hand in Sam’s. Yes, they were already married, but as Emily had explained, in order for them to go forward they would need some modern documentation and besides, her parents had missed their real wedding, she wanted this. And he wanted that for her. So here he stood, marrying his wife, but that was fine with him.
The ceremony started, and Sam marveled at the twists of fate that had brought him to this place. They weren’t beginning a new life in his time, no they were in hers. But it didn’t matter, because as long as he was with Emily he was home.
The time for the vows came.
“Do you, Samuel Allen, take this woman, Emily Anne to be your lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold, for richer and for poorer, as long as you both shall live?”
He looked into her eyes.
“I do,” he said. Their life together was just beginning.
A word about the author…
Christine Marciniak has been writing since she can remember because she loves to tell stories. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two children.
www.christinemarciniak.com
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Emily's Song Page 33