Chapter 9 - THE SECOND QUESTION
I proposed to Maya three years after the day I came home.
No restaurant.
No crowd.
No giant diamond.
Mom's garden.
The tomatoes were still terrible.
Maya was thirty.
A registered nurse now.
She had built a life entirely separate from mine before deciding to combine it with me.
That mattered.
I knelt.
She stared.
“Carter.”
“I have a speech.”
“No.”
“I waited three years.”
“Still no speech.”
“Can I ask the question?”
“Please.”
“Will you marry me?”
She looked toward the sunroom.
Mom was very obviously watching through the blinds.
Maya laughed.
Then cried.
“Yes.”
Mom opened the door.
“I knew it!”
Maya shouted:
“You were spying!”
“I am elderly. It's called supervision.”
I laughed so hard I nearly dropped the ring.
---
We married the following spring.
Small ceremony.
Mom sat in the front row.
When Maya walked toward me, I did not see the bleeding young woman crouched over my mother.
I saw the nurse.
The student.
The friend who told me no.
May you like
The woman who made me wait until both of us understood what we were choosing.
That was why I knew it was real.
