The One I Trust (15 page)

“It’s going to fray,” I worried.

“It’ll be shabby chic,” she said. “Perfect for a beach wedding.”

I looked at her for a moment and then went to work making the other side match.

“What do you think?” I asked when that sleeve had fallen to the floor as well.

She surveyed herself in the mirror.

“I like it,” she said. “It actually looks pretty good.”

She looked at my reflection.

“Are you done?”

I shook my head and she smiled at me.

“It’s going to be breezy on that beach,” she reminded me. “No miniskirt.”

“I was actually thinking about the neckline,” I said. “It’s kind of high for summer.”

She looked in the mirror and nodded in agreement.

“You know that silky blue tank top you have?” I asked.

She nodded again.

“I don’t suppose you brought that with you?”

“Actually, I did.”

“Get it.”

She walked to her closet again, her dress rustling behind her. When she returned, she held the top up in front of her.

I looked at her and said, “I really like that top a lot.”

“I know you do,” she said, smiling. “That’s why I brought it.”

“Put it on over your dress.”

She did as I asked and I carefully followed the scooped neckline of the tank top as I cut the wedding dress underneath. When I was finished, she peeled the tank top off and both of us looked in the mirror again.

“Oh my gosh.” She grinned. “I love it.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “Yeah. It looks fantastic.”

I looked with her into the mirror and had to agree.

“What about the train?” I asked.

“It’s up to you,” she said. “Whatever you want.”

“Well you’ve already nixed the miniskirt idea . . .”

She grinned at me again.

“Do you like the long train?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “It might be kind of a pain on the beach.”

“You know,” I said. “If we cut it off like right above your knees, Anneka might have enough fabric to make a dress for Molly to wear.”

“I like the idea of using it for Molly’s dress,” she said, “but I really don’t want to have to worry about the wind.”

“Lower?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Either that or move the wedding indoors.”

I wound up cutting it off right at her shins—tea length is what Emily called it. When we were finished, I stood behind her with my arms around her and looked at our reflection in the mirror. I really couldn’t imagine her looking any better.

“The only thing,” she said remorsefully, turning around to face me, “is that you’re not supposed to see the bride in her wedding dress before the wedding. It’s bad luck.”

“The only thing bad about this is that I don’t know if I’m going to be able to wait until June to marry you.”

She looked up at me and gave me a big smile. I brought a hand up and gently stroked her cheek.

“You are so beautiful,” I said softly. She closed her eyes and I dipped my head to kiss her and she pulled me closer. Her lips were warm and soft and she kissed me back so fervently that before I knew it I had pushed her back against her dresser. My heart was pounding so hard I didn’t know how it was going to stay in my chest.

“Emily?” Her mother’s voice came from the hallway.

We pulled apart and I took a step away from the dresser, but not quick enough. Both of us turned to the doorway to find Emily’s mother gaping at us in horror.

I rubbed my hand across my lips and dropped my eyes to the floor. Her mother stepped into the room.

“Is that your wedding dress?!” she cried.

“It’s going to be a summer wedding,” Emily said.

“That dress cost almost $4,000!!”

My eyes widened in horror.

“I think it looks good,” Emily said, turning all the way around so that her mother could see exactly what I’d done to it. “Reid did it.”

Don’t tell her that!

Her mother looked at me and I had no choice but to force my eyes to meet hers. She looked like she was going to pass out.

“We’re going to use the material from the train to make a dress for the flower girl,” Emily explained. “Isn’t that a great idea?”

Emily’s mother’s mouth was still open as she turned to look back at her daughter. Emily stood firm, waiting for more.

“I . . . I’m going to bed,” her mother managed.

“Good night,” Emily called after her. When her mother had cleared the door Emily turned to me and burst out laughing.

“Shhh!” I whispered, waving my hand frantically, trying to quiet her down. That only made her laugh more.

“You didn’t tell me it cost
$4,000
!” I cried.

Emily was laughing so hard now that she actually had tears in her eyes. She moved closer to me and collapsed against my chest.

“Emily,” I said seriously. “Your mother’s going to
hate
me now.”

“No, she isn’t.”

“Yes, she is,” I argued.

“You don’t need to worry about my mother,” she said, seriousness now lacing her voice.

“Well, I do.”

“All you really need to worry about is
me
,” she said softly, running her hand along my arm. “You should just worry about whether I hate you or not.”

She looked up at me with her deep brown eyes and gave me that great smile of hers that I loved so much.

“Do you hate me?” I asked. “Or not?”

“Very much not,” she said, and I quit worrying about her mother.

EMILY BEGAN APPLYING for jobs, and before her student teaching was over, she’d found a position teaching first grade at an elementary school near Holly Springs, not too far south of Raleigh, and not too far from where Ray lived. I was still riding to work every day with Ray because—even though I’d been working for several months now and could probably have swung a car payment—I was saving every penny I could so that Emily could have whatever kind of wedding she wanted and so that the two of us could find a decent place to live after we got married.

“You know,” Ray said the morning after Emily was offered her job, “I bet my dad and my aunt would let you rent my grandmother’s house.”

His grandmother had recently died.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “My dad thinks they should turn it into rental property and hang on to it for a while, but my aunt thinks they should sell it—she doesn’t want to deal with being a landlord. I bet if I told her I knew you though, she’d go for it.”

“What’s it like?” I asked.

“It’s an older brick ranch,” he said with a shrug. “It’s right on Holly Springs Road. It’s got a housing development built up all around it.”

I knew exactly the kind of housing development he was talking about—one of those neighborhoods that I didn’t want to live in: cookie-cutter houses packed on slivers of sod so tiny that you had to load up the car and drive to a park if you wanted to stretch your arms.

“The kitchen and stuff is kind of outdated,” he admitted, “but it’s on almost an acre of land. It’s got a real nice fenced-in backyard if you wanted to get a dog or something.”

Or kids
. . .

“I go right by there every morning,” he added. “I could pick you up every day.”

And that’s how I found my new house.

As promised, Charlotte made arrangements for everyone to come to North Carolina for a visit. Hale let them all stay at his beach house, and I met my grandmother and my other two half adopted brothers. When they left it was with the promise that we would all see each other again very soon for the wedding.

“It was really nice to have your whole family here,” Emily remarked as she helped me make up one of the beds with clean sheets.

I nodded in agreement, but inside I was thinking that my “whole family” hadn’t really been there at all, and I wasn’t just thinking about Noah . . .

I was thinking about my biological father.

After Charlotte told me his name the first day I met her, I’d researched my father that evening before I’d gone to sleep. I’d found Jarrett Wellehan online relatively easily and learned that he lived just outside of Portland, Maine, with his wife, Theresa. Apparently he didn’t have any children . . . at least none besides me.

There were a lot of pictures of him online—posing with politicians or celebrities who had come to eat at one of the three restaurants he owned in Portland—and I’d spent no small amount of time that night studying each photo. But the next day, after Charlotte told me that he wasn’t ready to meet me, I tried not to think about him anymore. When my phone vibrated three weeks before the wedding and I saw the area code, however, I knew exactly who it was.

“Hello?” I was surprised by how strong my voice sounded.

“Uh, yes. Could I please speak with Brafford Reid?”

He sounded more nervous than I was and somehow that made me feel a lot better. I smiled.

“You can call me Reid,” I said. “I’m really glad you called.”

There was a moment of silence before he said, “I . . . I’m sorry it took me so long.”

“It’s okay,” I assured him. “The important thing is that you called me now.”

I smiled even more.

“I’m, uh . . . I’m not really sure what to say,” Jarrett admitted.

“No,” I agreed. “There’s not exactly an instruction booklet, is there?”

“No.”

We started out by talking about where I lived. He had never been to North Carolina, and I spent a bit of time explaining to him how we had mountains in the west and the ocean to our east and I lived about in the center of the state where it was fairly flat and already on its way to being hot and humid for the next three months.

“Hopefully it’ll be nice in three weeks,” I told him. “I’m getting married and it’s an outdoor wedding.”

“You’re getting married?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Actually we’d love it if you and your wife could come down for the wedding.”

“Uhh . . .”

“I mean, if you don’t want to, that’s fine,” I said quickly when he hesitated. “I just wanted to make sure you knew you were invited.”

“Maybe it’d be good if we got together before that,” he suggested. “I’d like to come down for the wedding, but I think that maybe meeting each other for the first time the same weekend you’re getting married might be a little too much.”

Good point.

“You can come down here anytime you want,” I said. “I’ve got a place for you to stay.”

“Maybe you could come up here?” he said, hesitation still in his voice.

I hesitated myself, not really wanting to tell him that there was no way I could afford to go to Maine, but before I even had a chance, he added, “I’d be happy to fly you up here.”

He bought me first-class tickets, but despite that, this flight was going to be worse than my last because I was going to have to catch a connecting flight in Boston. This meant
two
landings and
two
takeoffs—double the chances to crash.

“Maybe you’ll get one of those funny flight attendants,” Emily said, hugging me good-bye the night before I left. “You know? One of those guys who raps or makes a bunch of jokes while they tell you how to put your seatbelt on?”

I looked at her doubtfully.

“You’re going to be fine,” she reassured me, patting me on the chest with an amused smile. “Remember: you’re much more likely to die on the way to the airport than you are on the plane itself.”

Honestly I think I was more nervous about meeting Jarrett than I was about flying.

“I wish you were coming with me,” I said.

“I can still go,” she reminded me.

“No,” I replied, shaking my head. Jarrett hadn’t offered to fly Emily up and I hadn’t dared to ask. I also wasn’t about to let her take any money from her parents—not after I’d cut up that $4,000 wedding dress.

“You’re going to be fine,” Emily said again.

I didn’t die on the way to the airport, nor on either of the flights that took me to Portland. Neither of the attendants were funny or rapped any of their instructions, but even if they had, I don’t think it would have helped my nerves. The closer I got to Maine, the more nervous I got about meeting my biological father. By the time the plane touched down, a professional stand-up comedian wouldn’t have been able to calm my nerves.

Having already stalked Jarrett online, I pretty much knew exactly who I was looking for, and as I thought about this, I realized that he had probably already looked me up online as well. I thought about what pictures he’d likely found of me: the police department photos of me in my dress uniform, the shots of me being led away in handcuffs, my mug shot.

The airport in Portland was small and uncrowded and I spotted Jarrett right away, recognizing him by his well-trimmed mustache and goatee and his hair that was pulled back into a small, tight ponytail. He looked my way and seemed to recognize me right away, too—even without the handcuffs.

This was that horrible, awkward moment I’d been dreading—the “What do we say to each other? What do we do?” moment.

What he did was stay where he was and let me approach him, and I wondered if he was so scared that he couldn’t move. I was scared, too, but all those years on the force had given me the ability to act even when I was gripped with fear. I walked up to him bravely and stuck my hand out.

“Jarrett,” I said. “I’m Reid.” Just like it had on the phone, my voice sounded amazingly confident and composed.

Jarrett, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be able to make his vocal cords work at all. He did manage to nod and shake my hand pretty well, but then we wound up trying to sort of hug each other and that’s when things got really clumsy and embarrassing.

We both leaned in the same direction and then backed up, tried again, and both leaned in the other direction. When we finally figured out which way each of us should go so that we didn’t knock foreheads, my bag fell off my shoulder and slammed into him and then we kind of gave up and stepped back from one another. Finally having the chance to really look at him, I studied his face carefully, searching for signs of myself.

My first thought was that he looked Nordic. He had blue eyes and blonde hair—not a golden-blonde like Charlotte’s, but a very pale blonde that did a good job of hiding the gray that was trying to creep in. He was tall like I was, but Charlotte was tall, too, so I had probably gotten that from both of them. Unlike Charlotte, whose skin seemed almost golden like her hair and her eyes, Jarrett had very light skin. I decided that Noah’s and my tendency to burn easily had likely come from him. And my nose . . . I think I had his nose.