Page 89 of Look for Me

The good, the bad, the ugly had all been filtered out by the God of mercy and grace, the Holy God who picked up the shattered pieces of their lives and made all things new.

Of course, right in the middle of their reunion, Corinne’s phone buzzed.

Corinne checked her text. “Liam’s awake.”

“Let’s go,” Martin said. “I want to meet my new son.”

And he meant it.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Even though Corinne felt that their May wedding date was a long way off when she and Martin scheduled it, seven months raced by with major events happening one after another.

On the same day that Martin proposed to her back in October, he took Corinne to his stepmother’s favorite jeweler in town, where they both picked her engagement ring and their wedding bands.

Engraved inside their wedding bands were the words “behold, all things are become new” from II Corinthians 5:17.

When Corinne went home to Key Largo, Angelina went with her. She had quit her job at Delilah Jacobs’s office. Pete stayed behind in Savannah to work at MacMuscles for another two months until the Christmas break.

With Angelina now working as a full-time nanny to Dahlia and Liam, Corinne was able to start applying to graduate school, which she began to do after Christmas. While she was on campus tour at the university, she discovered that the education department had jobs available. Since graduate school didn’t start until August, Corinne decided to apply for one of the desk jobs at the office of admissions.

And she got the job.

Martin was surprised she applied for the job at all. It was true that she didn’t need the money, considering the FBI had rewarded her three times for helping them to catch Flavian, Nikos, and Oscar—although she wasn’t sure what kind of acatchdead people could be. Oscar wasn’t dead yet, but if he stopped cooperating with the FBI and INTERPOL, they would turn him over to the FSB. That was the last thing he wanted.

By the time May came around, Corinne had spent the least amount of time preparing for her wedding. Not only was Angelina her nanny, she had decided to be her wedding planner as well, doing almost all the hard work of organizing and pretty much getting everything done.

“As long as we don’t have a spaghetti rehearsal dinner,” Martin warned.

It was truly one of the first few times when Corinne disagreed with Martin, while trying to take Angelina’s side. At the end, she conceded that they better eat something else at the rehearsal dinner.

Speaking of Martin, Corinne was proud of him. Ready to get out from under his dad’s shadow, he had worked hard to buy a fledgling auto shop in Miami and turn it into MacMuscles Miami, a small subsidiary of MacMuscles Classic Car Restoration of Savannah, Georgia.

By February, Pete was back working for Martin again, but this time they were both in Miami. Pete regretted selling his 1959 Volkswagen bus along with his house a while back before he married Angelina, but Corinne and Martin reminded him that it would too stressful for his heart to look back and regret his decisions.

“Just turn the past, present, and future over to God,” Martin said.

“We should put that in our wedding vows,” Corinne added.

With Martin’s help, Pete found another Volkswagen bus to restore. The kind man that he was, Martin let Pete keep his bus in their auto shop at no cost. The only condition was that Pete couldn’t work on his own personal pet projects during work hours.

One month before their wedding day, Corinne and Martin found a house they liked. It had four bedrooms plus a home office and a fenced-in yard. The house was well maintained. The only thing they had to do was repaint the walls and replace the refrigerator and stove.

While Corinne especially liked how big each bedroom was, Martin was all over the large backyard, looking for a place to put his new charcoal grill that his dad bought for him. How hard could it be to find a spot for his grill?

“It’s a lot of yard for you to mow,” Corinne pointed to the trees in the distance. “All the way over there.”

“I’ll get a riding mower.” Martin smiled. “When Liam gets older, he can mow the lawn.”

“He’s only fifteen months old.”

“Kids grow up fast.”

“Yeah, they do. He’s weaned already.”

Martin wrapped his arm around her shoulders as they looked out at their future new yard. “Maybe we could have our wedding here.”

“Hmm. Now that’s an idea.” Corinne held his hand. “We aren’t inviting too many guests. They can all fit in the backyard.”

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