Page 45 of Accidentally Marrying the Prisoner
Michael
I turn and tuck my face into Mom’s neck, both of us sobbing as we squeeze each other tight, and she rocks me side to side as she did when I was a kid. It’s exactly what I need. I’m not sure I’ve ever cried harder than when Dad passed.
“He loved you so much,” I say with a hiccup.
“He always will, even if he’s not here to show it,” Mom says, cradling my face and kissing my forehead. “That’s the kind of whirlwind love we both want for you.” She looks past me to nod at Conrad, who’s scooted closer and is rubbing my back. “And I think you’ve found it. So have I again,” she says, looking over her shoulder and lifting her chin to kiss Garth.
“But how did you know? Why Conrad?” I stroke Merlin’s fur when he jumps on my lap and purrs, rolling onto his back so I can scratch his belly.
Mom smiles. “It’s a sixth sense. I felt that same spark inside Conrad when we first met that I did in your dad and Garth, and I just knew, he’s the one for you.” She laughs softly. “Though I wasn’t going to take any chances and make you wait out the rest of his sentence until you could be together, hence the reason I worked with Bridget to get the marriage program up and running.”
Garth whispers with kind eyes pinned on Mom, “The wait is hard on a man, but so worth it.”
I melt at the look she and Garth share. It’s the same one, I now recognize, that I’ve seen on Conrad’s face, even when we were both hurting, and it was all my fault for being too stubborn to talk to him. I won’t make the same mistake again.
“Thank you,” Conrad says, reaching past me to hold Mom’s hand.
“You’re welcome. I wish you could have met Michael. He would have loved you too.” Mom sniffles, then uses my large jersey sleeve to wipe the tears from her cheeks and blow her nose. Gross. “Now that we have that settled, I have somethingelse for you.” She digs through her purse and produces a business card. “That’s the number to the realtor your Aunt Faye recommended. She has all the documents ready to sign, so give her a call in the morning, and she’ll walk you through it.”
After Mom and Garth leave, having helped clean up the mess I created and instructed us to take a look around the house, Conrad and I slip past the nursery into the primary bedroom at the end of the hallway.
“So that’s where it went,” I say, finding my old, solid oak bed frame positioned beneath the wide window that faces the side yard. From the tall posters at the four corners of the bed hangs new, gauzy white fabric like the kind you’d find in a royal princess’s castle chambers. On the new mattress, still wrapped in protective plastic, sits a large bag containing a fluffy, frilly white comforter and sheet set, four new pillows, and two paperback versions ofWhat to Expect When You’re Expecting a Felon’s Baby.
I laugh when I pick up the dog-eared book on top, the pages curling along the edges, and flip to the copyright page, seeing that it was printed the year before I was born. Inside are notes scribbled in the margins by both Mom and Dad, along with little love notes they had written to each other, so excited to meet their baby girl. The second copy is a newly revised and updated version, the pages pristine, ready for Conrad and me to read and study and leave little love notes of our own.
Conrad squeezes my arms from behind. “I’ll get the luggage…and your toothbrush.”
I let out a soft snort and finish poking around the rest of the house, which has been mostly emptied, ready for us to move in and turn our happy little “accident” into our lifetime of happiness.
EPILOGUE
MIRABETH - 3 YEARS LATER
“I’m getting motion sickness,” I tell Conrad, holding a hand over my mouth in the passenger seat of the souped-up minivan we bought last Christmas. It’sgorgeous, with heated leather seats, room for up to five car seats in the back, a moonroof, and SEVENTEEN whole cup holders! Best royal princess carriage ever. “I’m going to throw up.”
“You’re not going to throw up,” Conrad says, squeezing my thigh…before plopping the planter pot we keep in the vehicle for such occasions on my lap.
“How much longer?”
“Almost there,” he says with a smile in his voice.
He always sounds like that these days, even when I get mad and raise my voice instead of going quiet and stuffing my feelings down when he accidentally hurts them. I don’t always get it right, but I try, as I promised all those years ago. My days of jumping to conclusions are long behind us.
Leading me by the elbow once we’ve parked, careful that I don’t trip over the curb or run into a pole, since a fall thislate in my pregnancy with our second child would be seriously dangerous, Conrad finally comes to a stop.
Huh. That sure was a short drive and walk. Too short.
“You can take your bandana off now,” Conrad says, brushing a kiss along my lips before he steps back.
I slide the green bandana up my forehead, smiling first at our red-headed, chubby-cheeked Andrea—Dreafor short—holding her daddy’s hand and beaming up at me. As much as I looked forward to and loved my first pregnancy, nothing could have prepared me for how difficult and uncomfortable,to say the least, it would be after I developed preeclampsia. That and the bizarre out-of-body feeling of being numb from the waist down from my epidural when I had my C-section. But it was all worth it, and the day I gave birth to Drea was one of the happiest days of my life. Thankfully, it’s beenso far, so goodon the preeclampsia front with this pregnancy, since I’ve been one of the lucky ones—fingers crossed it continues this way—to not develop it a second time.
“Supwise,” Drea says, throwing a hand out like Vanna White in a rerun of Wheel of Fortune that Mom and Sondra like to watch when they babysit her, Drew, and Tally for the weekend.
Kidnapped, more like. A coordinated heist, with Sondra sneaking into our homes with the house keys she stole and copied while Mom distracts us with one of her tricks, all so they can steal our kids like jewelry thieves. It’s terrifying, but so sweet. But mostly terrifying.
My good mood starts to sink, and my smile slowly fades as I look up the wide concrete stairs to the double doors of our small county courthouse. I’d been dropping hints for the past three months that I wanted to return to the cabin in the mountains where we honeymooned after Conrad and I renewed our for-real vows soon after we found out we were pregnant with Drea.
This is so not the shuttle to the airport.
