“Thanks. I want to do this for him, but for me too. Maybe it’s selfish, but I want to keep a piece of him close to me.”
“And see, that right there is the very reason I accept your proposal,” Tanner said, “because I want to keep you close to me.”
“But it won’t be…”
Tanner raised a hand to stop me. “You don’t have to keep saying it. I totally get it. But I have terms.”
“What terms?” I asked.
Tanner crossed his ankle over his knee. “I will accept your proposal and agree to marry you on the condition that you have to try. Not at first, I know you’re still grieving, but eventually I want you to try and make what we have a real marriage. We’ll make an effort together. For us. For Sammy.” He reached out and grabbed my hand. “I promise, if you try and if after a year you still feel nothing for me, then I will back away as far as you want me to go.” “I…,” I started to argue. But then Sammy turned around and smiled up at me. I had been willing to whore myself out to a biker in exchange for protection, why was I so unwilling to give a little part of myself for the only family I had left?
“Okay,” I agreed. “But I need time, Tanner. I mean it. I don’t know when I’ll be ready,” I said.
Tanner kissed the back of my hand and went back over to the kitchen where he retrieved the ring box he’d showed me the day he took me and Sammy to the alligator park. “I guess this is yours again, then.” He didn’t try and get down on one knee. He didn’t try to put it on my finger for me. He just tossed me the box.
And it was the best thing he could have done, because just then, I had real hope that he really did understand why I was doing this. And because he understood how important getting Max was to me, I could try and understand how giving our marriage a real shot in the future was important to him.
I opened the box and stared down at the little diamond, “I guess it is.”
Chapter Seventeen
Doe
The morning of the party I went to the courthouse with Tanner and picked up the application to start the process to become Max’s adopted mother.
It was also the morning I became Mrs. Tanner Redmond.
And while I was dying inside, it was the thought of being there for Sammy and Max that kept me breathing. They were the ones propelling me forward, moving my feet, one in front of the other.
King was willing to do whatever it took to get his daughter back. He proved that when he was willing to let me go. Now it was my turn to do this for him.
Choosing something to wear to a wedding where I’d be the reluctant bride was a daunting task. I didn’t want to pretend the marriage was something it wasn’t. I skipped over the rows of knee-length sundresses, pausing for a moment at a white one with a halter top, but it was too ‘wedding,’ and this wasn’t a wedding.
It was just paperwork.
Business.
Family business.
I finally decided to pass on the dresses altogether and instead chose a pair of dark jeans and a fitted black V-neck.
I was doing this for King. I wasn’t ready to be a show pony led around by her halter. King would have liked my choice of outfit. And the senator may have succeeded in containing me, but I was never going to be tamed.
I wasn’t about to wear white and pretend to be an angel when I’d lived and fallen in love with the devil.
There was a wild part of me that flourished when I was with King. I liked who I was with him. I knew who I was with him. That part, the part that couldn’t be controlled, belonged to King, and no matter where I was or where he was or what either of us were doing, no one could ever take that from me.
At the courthouse I fully expected to sign some papers. Signature and stampings. That was it. But when Tanner and I had finished signing the license and the woman behind the desk handed us our IDs, she stood and slid her chair back against the linoleum floor. To my great surprise, and horror, she started to speak. “Do you Tanner Redmond take—”
“Wait,” I said. “I thought we could just do the paperwork.”
The woman looked down at me through her thick glasses in a manner that made me feel like I was nine years old. “Miss, the ceremony is less than a minute long, and in the state of Florida, a ceremony needs to be preformed to make the marriage legal, and since you checked the box that you’d like to file the license today…shall I continue?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Tanner grabbed my hand and squeezed it. I was tired of him needing to feel like he had to reassure me. I didn’t want reassurance; I wanted to stop having to go through things that required it. I nodded and the woman started back up. She was right, the ceremony was short. Just under a minute.
“Do you take Tanner to be your lawfully wedded husband…” They weren’t romantic words, but nonetheless they were promises. Promises spoken out loud in front of the clerk and whatever God might be up there listening. I robotically recited my vows, lying to Tanner with each false promise I spoke. In order to push down the need to flee, and make it through without running screaming down the courthouse steps, I imagined playing with King’s daughter. Pushing her on a swing set. Building her a treehouse. Running through the sprinklers with her. Then the picture shifted, and I was exactly where I was standing, in the courthouse reciting vows, but only it wasn’t Tanner I was making promises to. It was King. And they weren’t lies at all, they were real. My heart soared and I smiled, happily imagining that I was promising to love King in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, until the end of our days.
When the officiant said “You may kiss the bride,” I’d gone as far as leaning in, before I came back down from my day dream, turning my head at the very last second so that Tanner only caught the edge of my mouth. When he pulled back, despite my obvious aversion to his kiss, he was smiling as if I really was his wife.
Then it hit me.
I really was.
I must have looked like I was about to have the stroke I was almost positive was about to happen, because the officiant kept asking me if I was okay. “Mrs. Redmond, are you alright?” I nodded and smiled the best I could manage. Tanner paid the forty-two dollar fee for the license and filing. I didn’t speak again. I couldn’t. Because if I’d answered her question, if I’d opened my mouth to speak at all, I was afraid the truth would have come tumbling out of my mouth. So, I kept quiet and Tanner and I walked in silence from the courthouse and remained silent during the entire drive home. I didn’t even say good-bye when he’d dropped me off at my house.
I didn’t speak again until I was alone on my bed in a room I didn’t remember, in a life I didn’t want, in a family that was built on a foundation of lies. I rolled over and pressed my face into the pillow.
And just like millions of other brides before me, I cried on my wedding day.
Chapter Eighteen
Doe
I’d thrown up three times since that morning and was still queasy, threatening to expel whatever contents remained in my stomach, if any. I had no doubt that what I was experiencing was a full body rejection of my current circumstances.
The party, or fundraiser, was being held in the Tanner family’s backyard, and it was the last place I wanted to be.
The senator was in his element, shaking hands and recalling the names and occupations of each and every guest at the party as if he were a best friends to every person in attendance. The Olympic-sized pool had been covered with plexiglass to create the illusion of walking on water.
How appropriate, I thought as I saw my father cross over the pool.
My mother held court by the bar with several women wearing varying shades of the same style sundress and the same chunky jewelry and French twist hairstyle. They weren’t doing half as good of a job pretending to be sober as she was. And as my father was, acting every bit the practiced and perfected politician. I was learning that my mother was every bit as equally practiced in the art of public intoxication.
My ninth birthday. My mother stumbling into the backyard wearing a low-cut tight blue dress and gold heels. She has a glass of wine in one hand and knocks over a table full of my birthday gifts in front of my friends from school. Nadine cuts my cake and my mother tells everyone that we shouldn’t eat cake at all because it is high in calories and will make our asses fat and men don’t like fat asses. Her wine sloshes over her glass and the magician Nadine hired has to grab her by the elbow to save her from crashing into the pool when her heel catches on the pavement.
Miraculously, she manages to catch her falling wine glass. “I saved it!” she shouts, holding it up to our little group like it’s a trophy. “Totally saved it,” she says again, before walking back into the house without another word.
I guess she wasn’t always that good.
It was too hot for the white cardigan I was wearing, but I was playing by my fathers rules tonight which meant covering up any signs that I wasn’t the picture perfect daughter of the picture perfect senator. Several people came up to me to welcome me home and shake my hand. I smiled politely and asked them how their summer was and what their plans were for the fall. The senator had told me a secret of his, which was when you don’t remember the person, name or face, ask them about themselves.