Page 112 of The Lookback
And I realize that the nicest diamond here tonight. . .isn’t for Emery. It’s for me. I wonder whether Helen knew, whether she was keeping me riled up to keep me in the dark.
I heave myself out of the chair, and I embarrass myself thoroughly when I join Maren for the last few lines of the song. Then I stop, and I reach for Tommy’s hand, and I say, “Yes, King Mongkut. I will happily marry you.”
When he kisses me, the entire room erupts. There are lots of groans and ewws from the kids gathered around, but there are more than a few hoots and hollers and quite a lot of clapping as well.
As Tommy leads me off the stage, insisting like Abby and Helen and David that he hold my arm in the process, I’m smiling like a halfwit. Uncontrollably. Unceasingly.
“I should also tell you that I’ve been offered a full-time job at the high school.” Tommy’s chest is puffed up in his suit. “Since you said yes, I think I might just take it.”
“Oh, no,” I say. “Poor Principal Miller.” I shake my head. “He must be going senile already to offer you a job.”
Tommy pretends to scowl, and I lean my head on his shoulder. He’s learning how to fit in with this family fast.
“I don’t think many people wait as long as we did for their happily ever after,” I say.
“Most people are boring. At least no one can accuse us of that.”
He’s right. They can’t.
“I was thinking,” he says. “Maybe we ought to get married the day after Christmas.”
“You have lost your mind,” I say. “That’s ten days away.”
He pulls me into his arms, and he presses a kiss to my brow. “Amanda Saddler, you and I have wasted enough time, don’t you think? I don’t want to waste another single moment.”
I can’t argue with that.
So I don’t.
27
ABIGAIL
It feels like a million years have passed since the day I sat in my office in Houston, chatting with the lawyer on the phone about Jed’s passing. When he told me that my kids had inherited a massive cattle ranch in the middle of nowhere, I had absolutely no intention of even visiting here, much less moving everything out and building a life in the world’s least populated area, surrounded by cows.
I’ve always been someone who thrives with a plan for her future.
Once, during law school, a renowned psychologist came by to speak to us. He asked all the law students to raise our hands if we set goals, made plans to achieve them, then enacted the plan, modifying it as required until we reached our goal.
More than half the class raised our hands. Mine shot up before anyone else’s because that was a perfect description of how I live my life. Neither luck nor fate was allowed to interfere. With each course correction I would find the most logical path forward and keep on going.
Then that man dropped his bomb: less than one percent of the human population does that. Most peopleintendto do things, but somewhere between setting the goal and getting it done, things break down, never to be recovered.
I remember being absolutely flummoxed at that, until I started thinking about some of the other people I’d met in my life. The dry cleaners who helped me be presentable for moot court regularly took longer to deliver than they promised. Sometimes they even lost things outright. The fast food people screwed up every order in at least one major way. Grocery story baggers fling things around like they’re all indestructible, and packing stuff I’m purchasing is literally their only task. Generally speaking, the entire mill of humanity around me struggles to do even the most basic of things they’ve chosen to do as their life work. For the first time, I started to understand that perhaps those people weren’t just the underachievers I’d always thought of them as.
Maybe they were just wired differently than I was.
I proceeded along my way, though, unperturbed, focused, until the day when luck intervened in a big way. For the first time, in spite of my ability to make plans, enact them, and see them through, I was left without a way to fix my plan.
I was alone, widowed, and miserable.
But with time, I made a new plan. I powered through. I think that’s why luck had to intervene again. Because my way needed a course adjustment. Maybe not for me. Maybe not for all of my kids, but for at least one of them.
Ethan has always been my hardest child. From the second he was conceived, he turned my life upside down. But I’m a firm believer that God knows what each of us need. Some people need a hand in making plans, in enacting plans, or in adapting them. Others need a hand with letting go.
Manila, Utah, its people, its climate, and the life we have built here have been a perpetual lesson for me in letting go. I’ve learned to allow life to surprise me with the possibilities that open up anew for me every single day.
When the day of Mandy’s wedding dawns, I haven’t yet taken all my Christmas decorations down, wrapped them up, and packed them into boxes. Usually I make sure that happens on the afternoon of Christmas day. After an entire season of clutter and extra gifts, something about piles of paper and trash sends me over the edge. My kids hate it, but we pack things up almost as soon as the gifts are opened.
