Page 47 of The Heart Remembers

Tricia gasps.

Leon mutters, “Oh boy.”

“I’ve been thinking about what you asked, about me moving home.”

Her hand slips from the mug and flattens to the tabletop.

“What’s going on?” Her father questions entering the kitchen area.

“Shh,” someone shushes him.

“You’re my home,” I say, holding her eyes. “And I’d like to come home.”

She nods while a single tear slips from her eyes but her lips, those sweet lips, slowly curl.

“I want to give you a sturdy kitchen table.” I press at the hard, wooden top of the one separating us.

“Uhm,” her father stammers.

“Oh my,” Tricia whispers.

“And a hallway, where you can walk naked.”

“I do not want to hear this,” her dad says.

“Shh,” a female shushes again.

“And those hardwood floors? Maybe we can get a rug.”

Katie’s smile grows, and I sense a shift next to me. Some kind of struggle occurs as one man holds another back, but I don’t take my eyes from Katie.

“I’ll give you all those things,” I say.

“You better not be giving her anything inappropriate,” her dad mutters, but I continue as Emily tells Jess to be quiet.

“I’d like to marry you someday. Soon maybe.” I pause as her face turns pink, and another tear slips down her cheek. “Yeah, definitely soon, but I understand if you want to wait, and I get it if—"

“Don’t lose steam, brother,” Leon encourages, slapping me on the back. “You’re doing good.”

“Towels and toilet paper,” I quietly mutter, turning to look at him, and his smile widens.

“That’s right,” Leon whispers. “And everything between.”

Gazing back at Katie, her expression shifts, puzzled but still pleased.

Jess mutters, “Ah, hell.”

“Katie Carter, I want you to be my wife. I’d like to marry you.”

Emily gasps.

Tricia screeches.

Katie rises from the other end of the table holding AJ, but quickly Pam steps forward, reaching out to silently take my son. Katie slowly walks toward me.

“It needs to be a really solid table.”

“I did not hear that,” her dad mutters.