A Different Kind of Promise
Chapter 18 - A Different Kind of Promise
Daniel proposed to Rebecca on the back porch.
No restaurant.
No cameras.
No elaborate plan.
Just the place where their strange new family had learned how to sit together.
Rebecca cried.
Daniel pretended not to.
Lily burst through the door before Rebecca finished saying yes.
“I knew it!”
Daniel stared at her.
“You were supposed to be upstairs.”
Thomas appeared behind her.
“She threatened me.”
“I did not.”
“You said you’d hide my television remote forever.”
“That was negotiation.”
Rebecca laughed so hard she could barely speak.
The wedding happened six months later at Lake Winona.
Lily chose the place.
Thomas walked Rebecca halfway down the aisle, then stepped aside so Rebecca’s brother could finish.
It was Lily’s idea.
“Grandpa needs something useful to do,” she explained.
During the ceremony, Lily wore Emily’s ring around her neck.
Daniel noticed it when she stood beside him.
For one moment, the lake blurred.
He imagined Emily as she had been at twenty-six, laughing beneath the same sky.
Not as a ghost.
Not as a tragedy.
As part of the road that brought him here.
After the ceremony, Lily whispered, “Mom would be happy.”
Daniel kissed the top of her head.
“I think so too.”
Thomas stood nearby.
Daniel looked at him.
The old man nodded.
May you like
There were some wounds that never vanished.
But they no longer controlled the family.
