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“She’s going to thank us for this when the baby is born with only one head, right?” I said.
Sara came to the window and stood beside me. “I wouldn’t count on it.”
“What do you suggest we do?”
“I’m going to tell her it was all your idea and I was against it,” she said. She looked over at me. “What’s your plan?”
I knew better than to argue. “What do you suggest?”
Sara placed her pointer finger on her bottom lip, looking off into the distance as she pretended to think it over seriously. “Hmm,” she said. “What if you told her that you gave her mother gas money for the ride home? I think she’d really like that.”
“You think that, do you?”
“I do,” she said, holding out one open palm.
I pulled my wallet from my back pocket. “The Zapatatude wins again,” I said as I dutifully pulled out a fifty-dollar bill and handed it to her. She promptly rolled it up and inserted it into her cleavage, which is where she kept most of her trophies, including the keys to the brand-new Lexus some guy gave her last week.
“Who’d you get a new car out of, anyway?” I asked.
“I think the better question is, whohaven’tI gotten a new car out of?” she said. “You don’t think I spend my own hard-earned money on transportation, do you?”
In terms of badassness, Clara’s mother made my father look like a puppy dog. But she was also the world’s best hugger, which made up for her multitude of pain-in-the-assities.
Her arms open and waiting for me, I accepted her thirty-second-long bear hug, along with a kiss on the cheek. When she at last let go, she slipped into her high heels and waited patiently as I pushed the two-hundred-pound dresser away from the door.
“Are you really going to tell her it was all my idea?” I said as I opened the door.
“Yes,” she said as she stepped onto the porch. “Don’t forget to call your father.”
“I called him last week.”
“Call him again.”
Without another word, she closed the door behind her. A moment later, I heard her drive away.
I’d go through the motions of calling my father another day. Not that there was any point. He hadn’t returned any of my calls since my lawyer first contacted him about the will. But while he hadn’t spoken to me in three months, I was sure he was keeping tabs. Which meant he no doubt knew that Clara and I had run off to Maine and eloped last month. We hadn’t told anyone but Sara about the pregnancy yet, but now that Clara was officially in her second trimester, it was only a matter of time before our secret was out. Dad’s ego might be bruised over having his money rejected and being denied the opportunity to turn our wedding into his own personal advertising event, but when he found out he was going to be a grandfather, he’d come around. I was sure of it.
But until then, I had other matters to attend to.
Clara was still sitting on the beach watching the sandpipers. Hopefully she would forgive me when I told her we had reservations at her favorite restaurant. I had everything planned out. Alcohol-free dinner, a moonlight walk on the boardwalk, then an overnight at a cozy hotel. Tonight was the anniversary of the night she’d passed out in my car, and I really wanted it to be more memorable than the night she passed out in my car.
Now that our lives had become so peaceful and simple, it was incredible to think back on the series of bizarre events that led to those first twenty-four hours. Clara liked to say it was fate or destiny, but personally I didn’t think destiny had that twisted a sense of humor. Besides, our story was much more interesting than anything the gods of love could have come up with. If it had been up to the heavens, we would have met reaching for the same slice of watermelon at a church picnic or something boring like that. Instead, the tale of how we met and fell in love was second in entertainment value only to the story of why we had a framed sanitary napkin on our dining room wall. Yes, my wife had a sense of humor. And it was a good thing, too. At the moment, I was choosing to believe that ten years from now, she’d be telling our kids about that time she was three months pregnant and Daddy locked her out of the house because he was afraid that if she breathed in paint fumes, little Bobby or Suzie would be born with a dorsal fin.God, that crazy dad of yours. What a character. Such great memories.
But she’d been out there for three hours now, and it was time to come to her rescue. I grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch, stepped outside, and headed toward the surf.
The sand silencing my footsteps, I snuck up behind her. I grabbed her shoulders, and she jumped.
“God, you scared me,” she said, then looked at the blanket draped over my shoulder. “What’s that for?” she said, giving me a fake dirty look. “Are you planning on making me sleep out here tonight?”
“It’s to keep you warm,” I said, sitting down beside her and wrapping the blanket around her shoulders. “The paint fumes are still a little strong.”
“How much longer do you plan to keep me locked out of my own house?”
“Another twelve hours or so,” I said. “But we can go straight to the restaurant from here.”
“The restaurant?” she said.
“I made reservations at Gillian’s. Then we’re booked for the night at The Surfside.” I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and gave her a kiss. “Happy anniversary.”
