“When I met you for the first time over the Christmas holidays, you were so wide-eyed with fear, and now … now you’re invincible.” She strokes my cheek lovingly with her fingers.
“You all—your love and Josh’s love—helped make me that,” I remind them. “You gave me the roots to stand strong.”
She smiles and it’s so beautiful and sincere and overflowing with a mother’s love. “That’s because we’re a family.”
Suzanne barely gets the words out before she pulls up the corner of my crying towel and carefully blots her eyes and cheeks.
“Now, this is your something old.” She attempts to smile through the tears but only more fall.
Suzanne turns a small white satin bag upside down over her other hand. Out tumbles a large silver pin. On it hang two small silver framed charms.
I look closer. In the tiny frames are postage stamps—one has wavy lines of ink, as if it had actually been mailed.
“Colt and I were high school sweethearts and fell in love young, but when his parents passed away so tragically, he struggled hard to find himself—his meaning, what he believed. He was lost. And when the state didn’t let him near his brother Cade, it tore what little was left of him to shreds. He removed himself from the place the pain was the worst, and that was Minnesota.” She looks into my eyes. “I didn’t think we were going to make it. I cried for six weeks. Then the first letter came.” Her fingers hold one of the stamps above the other prominently. “This stamp is from the first letter I got from him. He’d written to explain how he felt, how sorry he was, and that he wondered if I could ever forgive him. And for the next year we wrote back and forth every day—this was before computers and email—and on weekends we’d talk on the phone all night; it was the only time we could afford the calling rates.”
“Letters,” I say with a sigh.
“It’s how we kept our love alive,” she continues. “I know your wedding color is gold, but I thought I’d make this silver as a contrast—you’re always going to have adversity in addition to the good times. Just remember that there’s always a silver lining, especially when you least expect it. That’s how I felt about these letters.”
“And the second stamp?” I ask, sniffing. “I have to know.”
“It was the last letter he sent me. He actually delivered it himself.” She smiles and bites her lip with the recollection. “In it, he told me he was coming to get me and we wouldn’t be apart any longer.”
We all just sit quietly, caught up in the memory with her.
“Now I know where Josh gets it from.” I can’t help but put my arms around her, and I don’t care at all about the dress. “Thank you for raising such a wonderful man.”
She squeezes me, then says, “Here, stand up and turn around so I can pin it to the inside of your dress.”
“I don’t want it on the inside, I want it on the outside,” I tell her.
Suzanne nods. I turn and feel her gentle fingers work the pin against the top of my heart shaped breasted gown, which wraps around to my mid-back.
I gather my hair and pull it to the side, over my shoulder. “Can you see it?”
“Perfectly,” my new mother replies.
“Then spray my hair please, so it stays here.”
“Oh … I brought a lovely clip!” Jules goes to her makeup bag and comes back with simple gold hair comb.
“Perfect touch,” I tell her.
She smiles sweetly then says seriously, “Now, everyone out of the room! I have to fix her makeup and no one but Josh can mess it up again!”
“HI, JOSHY-DADDY!” Charlie yells as she waves out the window, and then she scolds me. “Hurry, Mommy!”
Chapter Twelve
Josh
“She’s here, Josh, stop worrying,” Talon argues.
“Just because she’s physically in that building”—I point to the window I saw Charlie in before we came out back into the vineyard—“doesn’t mean she’s coming out.” I try to soften my expression for all of the people watching my brothers and me.
We’re a crew: Liam stands next to me as my best man, then it’s a crapshoot what kind of order the guys have themselves in, and I don’t care. Not to mention the fact that I have twice as many attendants as Sophie has bridesmaids.
And what does it even matter, if she doesn’t want to marry me??
“If you don’t calm down they’ll hear you in the front row of seats,” Liam says through his teeth while smiling as if everything is fine.
“I shouldn’t have given her the last letter.”
Jake says, “You’re making yourself crazy.”
“Yeah, and Connor should be here by now.”
“Hey, Josh?” Will starts. “Man, I was a real dick last night and—”
“Yeah, yeah you’re sorry,” Sam interrupts what could’ve been the apology of the fucking year! “Great timing.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK! “Everything was perfect on the phone last night, but I just had to take it one step too far.” I’m such an asshole.
“Maybe you did fuck it up,” Reese leans in closer to whisper. “But you can rest assured you’ve looked great doing it.”