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“What else did she tell you?” I ask. “About Ilarion, I mean.”
“Lots of things,” Marianne admits. “But mostly, she was worried that you might not understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Why she wanted to marry him. Why she was rushing into marriage.”
I do a surprised double-take. “She told you that?”
Marianne nods. “I think that’s when I realized that she really was in love with him. She knew that you wouldn’t like it, that your father would hate it, and she did it anyway. It was the first time she made a decision for herself, regardless of how it made anyone else feel. I think that realization is what brought Fiona around, too.”
I’m listening closely, but what I’m hearing is the words between the words.Celine told me…Told everyone but me, it seems. That’s a hurt I wasn’t ready for.
“I…” I trail off when my eyes land on Ilarion. He’s talking to Dima now, but his eyes flicker to me every so often, almost like he knows that we’re talking about him. “What if…?”
“What if what?” Marianne asks.
I tear my eyes away from Ilarion and look at her. Her features are similar to Mom’s, but where Mom was slight of frame, Marianne is bigger, rounder, built for hugs. She’s graying at the temples and her hair is thinning out, and it reminds me that nothing in life is constant. Nothing is guaranteed.
I have a freeze frame of her in my mind from about ten years ago. Marianne and Mom, both sprawled out across the lawn on a picnic blanket, laughing about their terrible childhood dog while Celine and I kicked a ball around next to them.
They both seemed so young. I’d had the feeling that they would go on forever. Ineededthem to go on forever. Because a world without my beautiful mother, a world without my fearless aunt—it just wasn’t a safe one. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a part of it if they weren’t.
Now that the choice is being forced upon me, I’m still not sure what I want.
“Honey?”
“Sorry,” I mumble, realizing that I’ve dazed off yet again.
“Something’s bothering you about him?”
There’s so much I could tell her that would make her understand where I’m coming from. But there’s no reason to drag her into something that she won’t be able to fix. And this is well beyond the power of even an Aunt Marianne hug to remedy.
“I just… I’m worried for Celine. I don’t want her to make a mistake. I don’t want her to get hurt.”
Aunt Marianne pats my hand again. “There’s two ways to look at it, if you want this silly old lady’s input,” she remarks. “The first is that you could be wrong and Celine might actually know what’s best for herself in this situation.”
I sigh. “And the second?”
“That you might be right, and Celine is making a mistake. In which case, it’s a mistake she’s going to have to make and learn from. There’s no forcing anyone to see the light, darling. Especially not when it comes to love.”
“But—”
“Do you remember Ronny?”
I raise my eyebrows. I haven’t heard that name in years. “Your ex-husband?”
She nods. “That’s the devil. I was thirty-seven when I met him, and I guess I was worried that if I didn’t get married at that point, I never would. So I married him.”
“I remember. Celine and I were the flower girls.”
She smiles fondly at the memory. “What you probably don’t know is that both Monica and Fiona told me not to do it. They practically demanded it. Your mother was this close to locking me in a closet until the wedding date passed.”
“Really?” This is news to me.
“Monica thought he was flaky, and your mother thought he wasn’t good enough for me. They both tried to talk me out of it. But I told them that I’d prove them wrong. Turned out, they were both right. I ended up a forty-year-old divorcee with nothing to show for my marriage but an empty bank account and three years’ worth of faked orgasms.” She laughs heartily, that big, fill-the-whole-room, from-the-toes-up laugh she does as well as everyone on Earth aside from my own mother. “But, I also have no regrets, because I recognized that I wouldn’t have listened to anyone at that point. The only way I’d have known it was a mistake was by making the damn mistake. It was my life, and it was my right.”
I exhale tiredly, my eyes veering towards Ilarion once again. I desperately want to tell my aunt about the baby, but I know I won’t be able to take it back once I do.
