Page 122 of Devil in Disguise
“Yeah. All that. It’s just … Owen’s great. He’sgreat.But that wasn’t my plan, to get all hung up on a guy. Like, at all. I’m not like that! I’veneverbeen like that. I’mfocused.I’msure.It’s my thing. Am I just …” She took a breath, then said the thing that had been bothering her ever since that night in Miami. “Just scared about … about life, so I’m sort of grabbing onto a guy to make my decisions easier, so the future isn’t so big and scary? Except that it’s Owen, not just some guy, and it’s making my decisionsharder,so …”
“Hmm,” her mom said. “Maybe you need to do some more thinking about that.”
“Excuse me? Maternal advice? Thinking about it is all I’vedone.Well, besides school. And you didn’t ask, but I’m pretty sure I got close to a 4.0 this quarter, and everything about my classes keeps getting more interesting. I’m starting Compressible Aerodynamics next week, which is all about the performance of flight vehicles in the atmosphere, and I’m so excited about it. I’m finally getting to learn the things I want to know! So, see? Direction. Focus. So … why?”
Her mom was silent for so long, Dyma thought she wasn’t going to answer. “You know,” she finally said, “Harlan pointed out to me once that women tend to be better at lateral thinking than men. That we take more mental leaps, because our emotions sort of interconnect with our rationality better, which makes us more innovative problem-solvers. You can think—nature and nurture, but there’s research. Gray matter and white matter. Communication between the hemispheres, and women having more of that. Which areas of your brain get activated in response to emotional experiences. Et cetera. There are actual biological differences, which is pretty surprising, though why should it be, really?”
“Seriously? That’s what you guys sit around and discuss? Also, what kind of answer isthat? You’re supposed to be my mom! Come on.I’mthe one who studied the Tao. These are total Tao answers, and I needJenniferanswers.”
Jennifer laughed. “Sorry. Just a person here. I don’t have the answers, but I’ll bet you do, if you keep looking. Priorities are tough, especially knowing if somethingisa priority. I’d say, don’t focus your life around a man, except …”
“Except that I already knew that,” Dyma said. “Plus, I don’t think I’m that good at lateral thinking. I’m kind of a logic girl. Straight ahead. How do you do straight ahead if the roads go in different directions, though?”
“Well,” Jennifer said, “lots of people seem to do things like vision boards. That might help. It’s in just about every magazine you pick up at the hair salon. I’ll bet it’s inGood Housekeepingby now. Like I said, I never really had goals, so I’ve got no wise truths here. I was always just trying to survive. I have to admit, my changes didn’t come from rational decisions. It was all chance, and pregnancy, and terror, and Harlan pulling me kicking and screaming into my new life. Good thing he’s so sure, because I definitely wasn’t. There’s ‘dare to dream,’ and then there was me. Youdodare to dream, though, so, see? You can do it. You can … visualize, or whatever.”
“Yeah, like I’m going to do a vision board,” Dyma said. “Whatever that is. Hello? This is me. I don’t read magazines. I’ve never even done acraft.”
“We can talk it over some more,” her mom said. “If it’ll help.”
A knock at the door, and the wedding coordinator, the kind of seriously pulled-together blonde who’d create a timeline and diagrams to organize an Easter-egg hunt for her kids, poked her head in and said, “Ready to go, ladies? It’s magic hour.”
“One second,” Jennifer said, and looked at Dyma. Like she was about to get married, but right this second, she was being a mom.
A woman with zero interest in flight mechanics, or evenspace.A woman who could look at pictures of a Mars landing and actually think, “Who cares?” But still—possibly—life goals?
Dyma said, “Well, first, right now, you have to go get married. And second, I don’t think I’m ready to talk it over. Still at the ‘total confusion’ stage.”
“Well,” Jennifer said, standing up, grabbing their bouquets, and handing Dyma hers, “there’s something to be said for hurtling into the unknown, too. There’s only so much your brain hemispheres can figure out. Sometimes, you just have to go with your heart.”
* * *
Only Harlan and Jennifer,Owen thought, would get married on a farm and look so happy about it. The rain had stopped, but everything was still dripping, including the flowers and the chairs, and Harlan looked like it didn’t matter a bit. He’d just said, “Let’s wipe ’em down,” and set in to do it with the help of Blake Orbison and every other football player there, before the wedding coordinator could even get organized.
All of it, including the not-even-a-hundred guests, was a pretty far cry from Owen’s wedding, which had been in a huge, chandelier-hung hotel ballroom in the LA suburb where Ashley’s parents lived, had featured more than three hundred guests, of whom he’d known maybe forty, and had stressed Ashley to the point of tears for a good six months.
None of that was a great memory now, so why, when he stood up there with Harlan at last, once the chairs were dried off and the music had started, once Dyma was walking down a slightly sodden red carpet runner, holding a bouquet and smiling with all her dimples and all her light, was he thinking about it? And why was his throat closing up?
Because, when the music changed and the guests stood up, and Jennifer came walking down that carpet on her grandpa’s arm, looking spectacular in lace and curves and yet still looking exactly like herself, her whole face shining with happiness, Owen glanced at Harlan and saw … joy.
That was all. Joy.
Nick, in Annabelle’s arms in the front row, saw his mom and started to make noise, and Harlan’s grandmother took the baby from her. Annabelle, both her sisters, and all three kids, including the baby, were staying in the house together for ten days while Harlan and Jennifer went to Australia for the honeymoon, and they all seemed nothing but excited to do it. As for Harlan’s grandparents? They were staying at Owen’s. It was a family reunion, and that was nothing but a good thing.
Jennifer got to Harlan, and her grandpa kissed her cheek and went to sit beside Blake and Dakota. Jennifer handed her bouquet to Dyma, and Owen thought about the rings in his breast pocket. One platinum band studded with diamonds, and one platinum band embellished not at all. Just a simple silver circle that could mean nothing.
Or everything.
All of it a wedding, as per usual, and not a particularly glamorous one. A wedding like a million others, but no wedding was like any other, not really. Just like no baby was like any other. Everybody’s story was their own.
The minister started to talk, and Nick started to cry, right on cue. Harlan’s grandmother stood up with him, ready to carry him out, and Harlan said, “Hang on.” He went and took him from his grandmother, snuggled him up in his arm the way he’d held a thousand footballs, and the baby smiled, wide, gummy, and glorious. Harlan came back to Jennifer, laughed a little, took her hand, raised it to his lips, kissed it, and told her, “We’re doing this family style, I guess. OK?”
“Yes,” she said, and smiled at him the same way Nick had. With all her heart.
Harlan turned to the minister, Jennifer’s hand still in his, and said, “We’re all good. Ready to start.”
Standing so solid. Sounding so sure. A man who’d floated up for his catches like a butterfly, and floated through his life the same way. Never settling down, never getting too close.
Finding his home.
