Page 73 of Forget Me Not

“I don’t know if I can take these, Mags.” I’m afraid to even touch them, they’re so beautiful.

“Well, you’re going to have to.” She undoes the first one and starts to put it in for me. “The way I see it, they’re old.Really old. Antiques Brighton gave me the Christmas before he died.” I can feel her press the butterfly back into place. “But, they’re new to you because you’ve never even seen them before today. They’re obviously blue,” she points out, holding the second stud up in my line of vision before she continues on with it to my other lobe, “and, I think we both know I’m gonna need them back, so they’re borrowed.”

“Mags.” I don’t even know what else to say.

“White chocolate?” she says, Hershey’s Hugs in her palm.

I laugh. “Seriously?”

“What? Even if it melts, it won’t mess up your dress.”

“That’s not it.” Time starts to slow down as it all becomes real, this moment between us, the moments that will follow. “I’m not going to need chocolate today, Mags.”

“I know.” She shrugs, glancing down at her hand and unwrapping the candy. “It’s for me. Not every day your collected crack-whore baby daughter gets married, you know?” If it weren’t for the fact I can hear the tears about to ambush her announcing themselves in her trembling voice, I might have missed the sentimentality of that statement. Except it’s Mags, so I wouldn’t have.

“You never call me that,” I whisper, fighting back emotions myself.

“I call you a crack-whore baby all the time,” she teases, sniffing.

“You know what I meant.” I wipe my eyes as carefully as I can. Cammie will kill me if I destroy the makeup she spent all morning painting on my face.

Mags rolls her eyes, just in case I’m making too much of her monumental statement. “I call you my daughter all the time, too, doofus. I just don’t do it when you can hear me.”

I don’t know if I can take much more of this before I start bawling. “What are you talking about? Why would you hide that from me?”

Mags sighs, takes my hand and leads me over to the sofa in the corner of my dressing room where we both have a seat. “B and I made a deal, a long time ago, that we would never cross that line. We didn’t like it, but we felt like it would be best in the long run, not to muddle up the family tree.”

“Huh?” I don’t even know what that means, and all I can think is, of all the family trees, Mags and B aren’t exactly dangling from the most traditional, or balanced, looking one.

“Wasn’t long after you came to live with me, that I went to see B. To tell him that I wanted to adopt you, wanted to make it official. You and me were family and I wanted you to know that turning eighteen and eliminating my legal responsibilities wasn’t going to change that.”

I gasp. I had no idea.

“But, it turned out, B had similar plans for Gun and Ed. He and Marie were already filing the paperwork.”

“But neither of them were ever adopted either,” I whisper, my voice hoarse with emotion.

“No.” She shakes her head, sadness reeling in her eyes. “We decided that given your connection, it would complicate things for you if we both pursued adopting you. Legally, you would have been cousins. You both had plenty of burdens to bear where your relationship was concerned, neither B nor I wanted to add any more turmoil to the mix. So, we agreed. We wouldn’t adopt. Not legally. But it never changed what we both felt. That we were your parents. However strange or unconventional, you were stuck with us.”

“I always thought it was the other way around,” I admit, starting to laugh.

“Crazy goes both ways, kid. That’s what makes it fit.” She smooths out the skirt of her dress with her hands. “But, enough about the past.” She stands, taking my hands and pulling me to my feet as well. “You have a future.” Her eyes widen with excitement as she spins me around to face the full-length mirror. “And it looks spectacular on you.”

There’s a knock and the door cracks open. “Are we ready?” Cammie asks in a hushed voice.

“Yes,” I answer, mimicking her tone. “Why are we whispering?”

Cammie lets herself into the room and closes the door behind her. “Daphne is sleeping and we all just got in trouble with Grandma Dini for nearly waking her up.”

“Well, we can’t do this while she’s asleep.” I mean, we could. She’s seven months old. It’s not like she’ll remember being at her parents’ wedding. And frankly, she’ll probably enjoy the ceremony a lot more if she’s napping through it. Still feels wrong though.

“Trust me, by the time we get everyone into place and this show rolling down the sandy aisle, sleeping beauty will be all bright eyed and bushy tailed, all smiles for your wedding pictures,” Mags reasons. She’s good at that. Though it still surprises me.

“Are the guys ready?” I ask Cammie, my one and only bridesmaid. It works though, since Gun only has Ed standing up with him.

“Last time I saw them, Ed was giving your guy a really solid pep talk. Should be good by now.”

“Wait, what? Why did he need a pep talk?” He better not be having second thoughts. Seems sort of anticlimactic given the road we took to get here. If he can’t commit now when life is easy, I can’t help him.

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