But not before I noted the envelope jutting out from his back pocket.
And just like that, I was engaged.
Westley’s father leaned over, the paper bag crunching, kissed my cheek, his horn-rimmed glasses pressing into my flesh, and said, “Welcome to the family. I hope you can do something to tame that son of mine,” before calling out, “Mom, we’re going to have a new addition to our family.”
Westley’s mother entered the room, her hair the same wispy curls she’d passed on to her son, her eyes just as bright. Just as kind. She’d been a slender woman once. I’d seen the photos the night I had my first meal with the family. That night when I saw the linen and crystal and silver and Noritake china and determined I wanted to become a part of this family. That night when, after dinner, his mother entertained me with stories of Westley’s youth while showing me photo after photo of her firstborn son.
“He was the daredevil,” she told me as she pointed to another black-and-white photo. “See him on that bicycle? I don’t care what it was, he’d jump it. Never feared a thing.”
“Not Paul,” Dr. Houser said of Westley’s younger brother, only fourteen months his junior. “Paul was more sensitive. A reader. A thinker. Westley never met an obstacle.”
A “baby sister” named Heather, now away at college, born years after Westley (she and I were only a few weeks apart in birth and, so far, got along famously), rounded out the family and, in the process according to the photos, his mother’s frame. Not fat or flabby by any means, but when she hugged me, I felt as though I’d wrapped my arms around a bowl of warm pudding. Smooth and sweet, like vanilla. She also smelled of powdery perfume; it lingered on my clothes long after her embrace and drifted through her home like a friendly ghost.
Now, she stood in the doorway, her purse in her hand as though she’d been about to deposit it somewhere, staring at her husband—bespectacled and amused—and asking, “Who on earth are you talking about?”
Dr. Houser nodded toward me. “Allison. Westley asked her to marry him.”
Mrs. Houser threw her hands up in the air, the purse hitting her bosom, and expelled a shrill I suspect was as much shock as joy. “Well, if anyone can tame him, it’s you, my darling,” she said, reaching for me.
I realized then I hadn’t moved from the sofa since the kiss but had instead practically grown roots in the tweedy fibers. I hugged my future mother-in-law, being careful of the purse she continued to dangle. I breathed in the scent of her, thinking I could die in this woman’s arms right then and there, completely unmarried, still as much a virgin as the day I was born, and I’d be all right.
Perhaps it was then I realized I would soon marry not a man, but a family. Well if I didn’t realize it then, I certainly did later.
More than that, I was also about to marry a challenge.
Tame him, my foot.
Chapter Two
My father traveled most weekdays with his work—leaving Monday morning and arriving home sometime Friday afternoon—so Daddy was gone the day Westley proposed. I didn’t want him finding out about my upcoming nuptials over a late-night phone call with my mother, and I thought it best not to tell him without a lot of preparation first. I had always been Daddy’s baby girl. The notion of marrying versus going to college next year would need to be approached gently. With care and tact. Perhaps with prayer and fasting.
So, after a lot of talking it over and a little begging on my part, Westley agreed not to say anything about the engagement until after Daddy returned from wherever he happened to be that week. “But I’ll be there Friday night. Seven thirty on the dot. Ready to ask for your hand in marriage.” He waggled his brows as if he would actually consider doing such a thing.
I returned home after dinner, stepped through the back door of the ranch-style house we called home, and said goodnight to my mother who sat knitting another of her remarkably complex afghans while watching one of her programs. “Well, wait,” she said. “How was dinner?”
“It was good,” I said. I raised the Tupperware container I carried and added, “Mrs. Houser made a delicious autumn squash soup. She sent you some for your lunch tomorrow.”
Mama beamed as though she’d been invited to the meal. “Well, that was nice of her.”
“She’s a nice lady.” I raised the container higher. “I’ll put this in the fridge.”
Which I did, then went on to bed as though nothing new or exciting had occurred in my life that day beyond a dinner date with Westley and his parents. But once I slid beneath the thick bedcovers, I held up my left hand, staring at it in the faint light from a streetlamp that cloaked the room in a washed-out gray, and wondered what type of ring Westley would one day slip on my finger.
I turned to my left side and reached with my right hand for the portable radio on my bedside table, permanently tuned to WBBQ out of Augusta. I flipped the power to “on,” then turned the volume knob until the song playing came in loud enough for me to hear but low enough not to keep me awake. Within minutes the unmistakable voice of Harry Nilsson lulled me to sleep, holding me there until morning.
I had planned to wait until Westley arrived to say something definitive. To talk casually
