Page 29

One Year Later

Danielle

“Y ou look breathtaking, sweetie.”

My mom smooths a few flyaway hairs into place for me while Alice finishes fastening the back of my trumpet-cut gown. I can’t believe it’s finally here. In less than an hour, it will be official. Mike and I are creating our own family.

He had a great season, and last month he signed with the Foxhounds. There is finally a Major League Baseball team coming to Virginia, and Mike has been recruited to join them. We used his signing bonus to buy Honey’s house. It was Mike’s idea. He knew how much I wanted to stay connected to my life here. Honey will continue to live in the house with us so we can care for her as she gets older, and she no longer has to worry about the burden of the increasing property taxes or bills. She can relax and enjoy her retirement. Not that she wasn’t doing that before. Of course, Mike will still need to travel with the team. I’ll go with him whenever I can, but our home will always be in North Bay.

There’s a soft knock on the door, and we hear Jake ask, “Is everybody decent in there?”

“We’re all dressed, if that’s what you mean, but you’ll never hear me promise to be decent,” Honey answers from our side.

Jake laughs as he opens the door. He stops in his tracks the moment he sees me.

“Danielle,” he says my name in an awed whisper.

“It’s just a dress. Still me in here under all of this fabric. Call me Dan-Dan. It will make this all feel more normal.”

“I can do that.” He nods as he starts walking toward me again. “Mike asked me to give you these?” Jake takes a package of peanut M&M’s from his pocket. Honey cackles from her chair in the corner.

“Always with the candy, that one.”

I feel a blush rising to my cheeks. If they only knew. My mind drifts to the night last week when Mike brought strawberries with melted chocolate into the bedroom.

“I’ll just set them down here.” Jake puts the candy next to my purse on an empty chair. “Are you ready?”

“As much as I’ll ever be.”

We walk outside as a group, and Alice holds up the train of my dress while we cross the driveway and round the Gibsons’ house to get to their backyard. A hundred white folding chairs are set up in rows on either side of a wide grass aisle, and everyone stands and turns to face me when Rodriguez starts to strum Ed Sheeran’s Perfect .

Emily goes first, tossing white rose petals from her wicker flower girl basket before she joins Regina in the front row next to Bob. Then Jake escorts Alice down the center aisle. Those two are actually managing to get along, for once. They walk down to the pier, where Mike is already waiting with Jordan standing next to him as his best man. Edna Plum is positioned in the center, under a floral arch at the end of the pier, ready to act as our officiant. I hold my bouquet of flowering dogwood in front of me and stick out my elbows so that Mom and Honey can each take an arm.

“Let’s get my granddaughter married.”

And that’s exactly what we do.

This day is better than I could have ever imagined. I especially love the end, when I get to drive away with my new husband in my freshly decorated book van, with the words “Just Married” written in chalk paint on the back window.

Want to know what happened when Alice and Jake went go-karting? Who was in Jake’s bed? Turn the page for a sneak peek of Right as Rain , Book 2 in the North Bay Series.