“Yes,” he said with a smile.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. Please, Emma ...” He cupped her chin in his hand and locked her in his gaze. “Marry me and make me the happiest man in the world.”
She began to laugh through her tears. “Oh, my gosh. Yes!”
Logan’s eyes lit up, and he kissed her quickly on the lips. “This is the best day of my life.”
Emma wiped fresh tears of joy from her cheeks. She laughed jubilantly and hugged him.Thank you, God. Thank you. Thank you!Relief surged vigorously into her heart. Everything was going to be all right now. It wouldn’t matter that she was expecting a baby out of wedlock. There would be no shame in it because she’d be married. She was engaged!
Wanting to savor this moment and the relief she felt, Emma lay down on the sand and invited Logan to lay next to her, where they held hands and gazed up at the sky. There were no clouds. Nothing but blue.
What will come next?she wondered.
Announcing the news to her father, who would, no doubt, be over the moon. His smile would split his face in half. She couldn’t wait to tell him.
A wedding. Sooner rather than later would be best.
Beyond that? The baby’s arrival, obviously ...
Emma’s brain became a waterspout of thoughts and plans. The dress. A nursery. Pink, blue, or yellow?
And what would happen after the next nine months? In the years beyond?
A white cloud sailed in from the west, and Emma watched it float slowly across the sky. Her pulse calmed, and the hot rushing of blood in her veins relaxed. The waves rolled onto shore, in a relaxed and steady rhythm.
It was then that Emma realized she had questions.
“What about me going to university?” she asked, turning her face toward Logan’s.
He looked at her and grimaced, and she wasn’t sure what she saw in his eyes. Was it sympathy?
“I’m sorry, Emma,” he said. “You’ll have to withdraw, because you’ll be a married woman. You can’t possibly look after a baby and get a degree at the same time.”
“But why not?” Emma asked, genuinely confused, because she’d never been held back by obstacles before. At least not in her own mind.
“But you’d be there to help,” she argued, in a last feeble appeal, unsettled by the sound of defeat in her voice, when they’d only just begun to discuss it.
Logan looked at her as if she’d sprouted horns. “But I’d be working. Besides that, we’d need to move to Halifax. I’d have to find a new job and an apartment for us.” He regarded her with a frown. “Emma ... you do understand that it’s not possible right now?”
She stared at him blankly. He was right. Of course he was. She was speaking nonsense.
But another side of her couldn’t bear to accept the permanent annihilation of her dream, the forfeit of her passion.
When Emma said nothing, Logan squeezed her hand. “I’m so sorry. I know you were looking forward to all that, but believe me, college isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And I’m sure that after the baby comes, you won’t even think about sitting in a classroom because you’ll love being a wife and mother.”
She forced herself to have an open mind and listened respectfully to him, but for Emma, it wasn’t simply about sitting in a classroom. She wanted to be a psychologist. Even now, she was analyzing Logan’smental and emotional responses to her disappointment. He was a man, and she was a woman. He had his own set of core values and social expectations. He had no idea what it felt like to have only one path to choose. And he wanted what he wanted, which was her love, forever, and this baby.
But she, too, had her own set of expectations, which stemmed from having been raised on a remote island with a sense of autonomy that was not common elsewhere. Logan, on the other hand, had grown up in the real world. A world she knew nothing about.
It took a moment for this new reality to sink in. Perhaps this was what it meant to be a woman. She reminded herself that most women who became mothers lost interest in a career. It wasn’t something they cared about—or so she’d been told. Was it true?
She supposed she wouldn’t know until she experienced it for herself.
Emma sat up, hugged her knees to her chest, and looked out at the ocean. At the very least, she would need to put off her education for another year. But she was young. She had time. And she’d certainly learned how to adapt to the postponement of a dream, even the death of one. She’d learned that she could recover and survive.
“You’re probably right,” she said to Logan, surrendering. At least for the time being.
