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Katie’s older sister, Amber, was playing grab-ass with her husband, Tony. Their three sons sat around a picnic table with plates of food, the eldest wearing earbuds and ignoring the gathering, the youngest chattering with his grandmother. Ellen and her son, Henry, chased Tony and Amber’s dog around, trying to reclaim the Frisbee clamped in its mouth.
Katie’s dad and Caleb stood over by the grill, which still smelled like lighter fluid from when Katie lit it over an hour ago. Judah stood talking to Jamie and Carly, while a serious Ben guided Carly’s toddler around the yard, her hand clutching on his finger, her footsteps wobbly.
Sean kept looking until he found Katie bent over the flower bed where he had spread his mother’s ashes in the spring. She was calling something to Judah and absentmindedly pulling a weed. She wore a yellow dress that made her look as if she’d been formed from shafts of sunlight.
Sean paused on the top step, reluctant to step out into the middle of this boisterous, affectionate collection of family and friends.
Katie called it “only-child syndrome.” You didn’t get enough unconditional love as a kid, so you don’t feel like you deserve it. But it wasn’t that he didn’t deserve all of this. It was more that he didn’t know yet what he was supposed to give back in order to repay all he’d taken.
He’d left behind a life that now seemed cold and empty, and he’d replaced it with this one—a backyard full of people holding beers and paper plates, talking, laughing. All of them here to celebrate the move, even though the move meant he was taking Katie away.
Katie caught sight of him. “About time you showed up,” she called. “Everybody’s been asking after you.”
He stepped down and crossed the yard to her. “Sorry. Trailer took longer than I expected, and I loaded our bags in the t-truck after I showered.”
“We’re ready to go, then?”
“After the party’s over and cleaned up.”
“Ellen said they’ll clean up. We’re not supposed to worry about anything.”
Sean nodded. Ellen and Caleb were going to keep the keys to the house. They’d make sure everything stayed in good shape until he and Katie moved back into the place a few years down the road.
The idea of keeping the house had unsettled him at first. He’d planned to build her something new, something bigger and flashier and free of memories, but then they’d spent hours removing wallpaper, tearing up carpet, repainting. Sean and Caleb had refinished the wood floors in the spring and replaced the kitchen linoleum with tile.
It was a different place now, harboring memories of his mother but not overflowing with them. It was his and Katie’s house, the present they’d made together and the future they planned.
And he was a different man.
He caught her waist and pulled her closer. When her hands came up to his chest, the sun winked off the diamond on her finger, a satisfying reminder that Katie didn’t get her way on everything. Most of the time, he got what he wanted, too. The wedding would be next summer, here in Camelot, and for the honeymoon they were going to go back to Paris.
Turned out Katie had a thing for chocolate croissants.
“Are you worrying, ssweetheart?” he asked.
“No, I’m excited.” She wound her arms around his neck. “I haven’t had an adventure in a while.”
“No grizzlies this time. Not much of an adventure for a woman with your p-pedigree.”
“I’m sure you’ll keep me on my toes.” She pulled his head down for a kiss, and he let the smell and taste of her wrap around him. Fresh, lemony perfume, sun-warmed skin, cherry lip balm. His Katie.
“I promise to bring you b-back in one piece.”
“I promise to make you. Are you worrying?”
He wasn’t. It had taken him a few weeks to figure out just what he was doing, because the feeling was new and unfamiliar.
He thought he might be anticipating.
Sean kept catching himself looking forward to things. The challenges of starting up the new office and establishing the social media monitoring service he’d dreamed up last winter. The petty arguments he and Katie would probably have as they figured out how to make the condo into a home, the disagreements and compromises and make-up sex.
The moment when she spotted the framed Star Wars poster he’d already hung up in their bedroom.
This was the life he wanted, the life they’d made together. It was better than he’d dared hope.
“No, I’m not wuh-worrying. I’ve got my d-dream girl with me.”
“Lucky girl,” Katie said.
