Page 97 of No Kind of Hero
He’d started to smile, and he was sliding that ring onto her finger, closing his hand around hers. “By the way,” he told her. “Maybe this sapphire is about Gracie’s eyes, and yours. Because you’re right. She needs a mom, and she needs that to be official. I told you, Gracie’s kind of conservative. She wants a mom and a dad, and she wants roses and a dog and a white picket fence.”
Now, Beth was downright crying, and he couldn’t have that, so he got to his feet and wrapped her in his arms. She cried all over his flannel shirt. It soaked in, and he didn’t care.
“One more thing,” he said. “She needs a baby sister. Or even a brother. What do you think? Think we could do that if we tried hard enough?”
Beth stood back, and she had his face in her hands in that way she did. She was crying, and she was laughing. She wasn’t one bit perfect. She was a mess.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. We don’t have the biggest diamonds. We don’t have the biggest house. We’ve got the most important thing, though. We’ve got love.”
On the fifth of June, Beth Schaefer married Evan O’Donnell, and everybody’s mother cried.
The peonies were blooming at the edges of the lawn that sloped down to the lake, and the snowball bushes and bleeding hearts added more white and pink to the mix. The rows of white folding chairs were trimmed with pink ribbons and bows, and Evan stood under a white arbor beside Russell Matthews and waited for his bride.
It was girly. That was OK. He liked his girls.
Dakota came first. Not wearing pink, because she’d said, “I draw the line at pink.” Instead, she was in crimson, and she looked damn good. She’d even worn her contacts.
He loved Dakota. He did. But he couldn’t look at her too long, because Gracie was right there behind her. Her blonde hair, grown out into flaxen curls now, sported two pink flowered barrettes. They’d tried for a wreath, but she’d kept pulling it off, and Beth had said, “Never mind, baby girl. You do what you want.” Her dress was pink, and it fluffed out at the bottom like a tutu. Michelle and Beth had shopped for it, and they’d done a good job.
Gracie wasn’t doing such a great job, though. She got a few yards down the aisle with her basket, and then she turned around.
She was saying something, but Evan couldn’t hear what it was over the music. There was a long pause, and then Beth’s mom got up from her seat and made some sort of signal. Taking charge.
The music changed. Strings and piano. “Arioso,” it was called, by Bach. Beth had chosen it with her mother, had come home, played it for him, and asked, “Is it all right with you?”
“If it means you’re walking down the aisle to me,” he’d said, “it’s going to be fine by me.” He’d meant it then, and he meant it now.
He was good at calm. He was good at steady. But everybody was standing up, Gracie had run back up the red carpet, and Beth was bending down, picking her up, and putting her on her hip. Talking to her, smiling at her, and then taking her father’s arm. And walking to him.
A slim white satin dress that was nothing but elegant, nothing but beautiful. Her blonde hair in a knot, a few tendrils floating free. Pearls around her neck that had been a wedding present from her parents, and a serenity in her face that was love.
He was going to lose it.
She came to him, and she must have seen it, because she kissed Gracie, handed her to Evan’s mom, kissed her dad, and then turned to Evan and took his hand. His was shaking. Hers wasn’t.
Gentle, and so strong. Sweet, and so fierce. She smiled at him and mouthed the words.
It’s OK. I love you.
So he married her.
You could say it was a good day. Or you could say that Beth was floating on air. The best part—well, seeing Evan’s face when she’d walked down the aisle to him was the best part, and having him put the ring on her finger and smile at her with nothing held back had been good, too. And then there’d been their first dance, when she’d had to hide her face in his shoulder to keep from crying, and he’d felt that and held her tighter, like he’d never let her go.
All right,allthose had been good. And then, when the champagne had been poured and the toasts and speeches had been made—Dakota’s had been particularly awesome—Dakota said, “Ready, Evan?”
“You bet,” he said. “The groom’s present to the bride,” he explained to Beth.
“Igota present,” she said. “I got you and Gracie.”
He smiled. “Yeah, well, something else. Something to hang in the front window for when you’re mad at me because I won’t talk.”
Dakota had hurried out of the white marquee, one hand hitching up her dress, and grabbed Blake on her way. They came back a minute later, and Blake was carrying something wrapped in silvery paper. Something flat, and enormous. Blake set it on the head table and said, “You got a little bit of everything with this one. A little bit of Evan, a little bit of Russell, and a whole lot of Dakota. Open it up.”
Beth knew. Shethoughtshe knew. She hoped it was. Dakota had been doing a butterfly-on-flower series in her stained glass that was hanging in a Portland gallery, and in the Wild Horse Resort, too. And it was stunning. But this . . .
She ripped away the silvery paper, the bow, and it was. Evan picked it up, propped it on the edge of the table, and said, “There you go.”
Two dragonflies in extreme close-up, Dakota Savage style, a blur of iridescent wings and electric-blue bodies, caught in a mating dance over the water.
