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“A toast to the newlyweds, Aisling and Devon,” Charlie said, raising his glass. “May they know nothing but happiness all the days of their lives.”
“Hear, hear,” the guests called out, taking a drink.
The band began to play and Devon offered his hand to Aisling. “We’ve never danced before,” she said, thinking he probably wouldn’t be asking her to dance if he didn’t know how.
“I’m rusty, but those ballroom dance classes Marie made me take are finally going to pay off. She paid for Mike to take them, too. Ask Big Mike about it,” he explained, leading her out to the dance floor. “He had a fit until Roberta calmed him down when she explained that it would help him be a better man. Go figure.”
“I danced with him at our wedding. It was too crowded in Aunt Booty’s backyard for him to show me his moves.”
Devon looked into her eyes. “He was saving the moves for later.”
Aisling smiled up at him, placing her head on his chest. She could hear his heart beating. This was her wedding reception of sorts to a man she truly loved. In just over a year, she was getting married a second time. A wedding, a death, a birth and now another wedding. How was it possible? She never thought she would have the strength to live through what she’d experienced. And now, here she was, with a beautiful baby and a great husband. Devon was wonderful. He was perfect for her in so many ways.
“How long do we have to stay?” she whispered.
“Why? Are you okay?”
“It’s been six weeks,” she said, looking into his eyes. “I don’t want to wait any longer.”
“Let’s go! Say goodbye to your parents. I’ll say you need to go home to nurse.”
So that was how they escaped the party. They held hands on the drive home. Her sister was babysitting for them and was rocking Mika when they got home.
“She was such a good baby. About an hour ago she drank the bottle of breast milk and hasn’t made a peep since.”
She asked how the party went, and they made small talk for a while until Devon stifled a yawn.
“I’ll get on my way,” she said, kissing Aisling goodbye.
Standing in the window, holding hands, they watched the taillights disappear down the driveway. The tension between them increased with each second. Devon swooped her up in his arms to carry her to the bedroom. At about that moment, baby Mika woke up.
“Oops,” she said, laughing.
“First things first,” Devon said.
He took her to the bedroom and they got the little nugget out of her crib. “Hold her while I change out of these clothes, please.”
They talked while she sat cross-legged on the bed, her breast out with a small baby attached to it. He leaned against the headboard, watching her while they solved the problems of the world. The baby wasn’t satisfied with milk, however; she was up, wanting to party. They took turns holding her, and when she wanted to nurse again a final time, Devon fell asleep.
The next morning, he woke up at seven. The baby was in a little bassinet at the side of the bed, sound asleep. Aisling had her back to him, with a T-shirt pulled on over the sexy nighty she wore especially for their first time together that wasn’t. There was evidence that she’d been up throughout the night, and he felt guilty for having slept. He’d make it up to her later by caring for the baby so she could rest. Later, if the baby would sleep when both adults were awake, they couldtake care of business.
Hoping Aisling would sleep a while longer, he had a surprise for her but needed time to set it up. One of his favorite pictures of Mike was a full-length shot of him in his turnout gear, helmet on, but enough black curls showing he had a head of hair. His face was dirty, and he held a shovel in one hand and a pickax in the other. With dark gray smoke as the backdrop, he had been hiking up the side of a canyon when the shot was taken by a photographer from the US Forest Service doing a piece on wildland fires in southern California. At just the moment the shutter opened, Mike had a smile on his face for some reason. It was so him.
Someone from Cal Fire had found the name of the photographer for Devon, and they got the negative enlarged to twenty by thirty inches on canvas. While they’d been out the night before, Aisling’s sister had pounded a picture-frame hook into the wall where Devon had marked the spot. When he was sure Aisling was still sleeping, he took the framed canvas out of its wrapper and hung it above a shallow table. On the table, he arranged an assortment of meaningful items that he was sure would evolve over time, including Mike’s dog tags from the Army Reserves, and the flag Aisling had been given at Mike’s funeral.
In a small lacquered box Big Mike had brought home from Vietnam, Devon placed Mike’s scapular, a religious artifact from his childhood; his rosary; and the medal of the saint of lovers, St. Dwynwen, that Mike and Aisling had found on the beach the first time they were together.
Surrounding the canvas, Devon would hang Mike’s certificate from fire school, his diplomas, and Mike and Aisling’s marriage license.
“Why are you doing that?” Aisling’s sister had asked, deeply moved.
“It’s for Mika,” he’d said. “It’s for Aisling, too. But it’s mostly for Mika.”
As he stood back and examined the montage, hoping Aisling would like it, she came out of their bedroom, in the milk-stained T-shirt with evidence of a lacy nighty peeking out from the bottom.
“What are you doing?”
He looked from her to the wall and back to her again. She walked around and stood next to him, the three-foot-tall photo of a strikingly handsome Mike Saint staring her in the face.
