“Don’t cry,” he says.
I can’t make myself stop—or start breathing.
“I rehearsed a longer speech,” he continues. “I can recite it another time. But for now, I just want you to please say yes.”
When I’m able to speak, this is the best I can manage:
“No.”
The tears keep rolling down my cheeks. Maybe he thinks it’s the emotion of the moment. And it is. Just not entirely the way he thinks.
“No, you don’t want to marry me?” he says.
He stands now, and gently wipes the tears off my cheeks with his free hand, the ring box still open in the other.
Somehow he is still smiling.
“Yes, Idowant to marry you,” I say, the words barely making it out of my throat. “But no, I can’t … I’m so sorry.”
He reaches over again and brushes more tears away. Even now, he wants to take care of me.
I love him, in a way I’ve never loved anyone. I know he loves me, even though being with me is the reason he’d gotten beaten half to death and then shot. All of that happening to a small-town vet. Yet here we are, and those eyes are just so damn kind, because so is he. As unflappable as he is, therehas to be a part of him, big part, embarrassed that the ring is still in the box and not on my finger.
I’ve always felt he gave me so much more than I gave him. Now it’s happening all over again, in the best and most beautiful moment I have had in my so-called life for a long time.
And maybe ever.
I look down and see that Rip is standing next to Ben. He always knows when something is wrong. Suddenly he barks. It briefly makes me smile. Some emotional-support dog he is.
“I want to—but I just can’t—” I say. I’m stammering and I know it. “Can you understand that. It’s my cancer—the trial—not knowing how long—it’s all too much for me right now.”
“It’s okay,” he says in a gentle voice. “Really, it’s okay.” I can barely hear him over the sound of the waves. “You don’t have to apologize, for anything.”
I want to tell him to stop being so damned nice for once, it’s only making me feel worse.
But I don’t, because I feel dizzy then, suddenly afraid I might fall down right in front of him the way I did yesterday in front of Norma Banks.
He seems to sense this, because when I take a slight step back from him, toward the water, and feel one of my feet begin to slip in the sand, his arms are suddenly around me.
“Sometimes it’s all just—it’s just too damn much—” I say. “I—I can’t even find the right words.”
“Not even you,” he says softly.
“Especially not me,” I say.
Some tough mother I am.
He pulls me closer to him and puts his mouth next to my ear and says, “It’s all going to be all right.”
“I want to believe that so much,” I say, as the tears start to come again.
“I promise,” he says. “Now let’s get you home.”
He knows I have an early morning and knows why. Heknows where I’m going. But he keeps one arm firmly around me as we make our way through the sand and up the hill to where we left our sneakers, and where he parked his car, Rip trailing behind us.
“Don’t let go,” I say.
“I will never let go,” he says.
