From Secret Desire for My Stepbrother to Reality novel · Chapter 20 of 32

Chapter 20: Anniversary

My mother had hung paper lanterns across the backyard in Shoreline.

It was November and forty-six degrees.

She didn't care.

Pete had built a fire in a steel drum by the tomato bed, which was mostly stalks now.

Everybody came.

The old key-cutter, in a tie.

The apprentice and her girlfriend, holding hands, very pointedly, every time Pete walked by.

The bakery woman with two loaves and the dog.

Kath, in a dress, which she said was a one-time event and nobody should get used to it.

I wore the green dress I'd bought for a Hush holiday party two years ago and never worn, because Tom said it was a lot.

Jem saw me in it at the gate and walked into the gatepost.

"It's a lot," I said.

"It's the right amount," he said, rubbing his shoulder.

He was in the blue shirt my mother had ironed for the hearing.

She'd ironed it again.

After dinner, my mother tapped her wine glass with a fork.

She stood up on the back step so she'd be taller than everybody, which for her took two steps.

"I'm going to read something," she said. "Pete said I could."

"I said you could at the party," Pete said. "I didn't say to everybody at the party."

"This is the party."

She took out her phone.

She put her red glasses on her nose.

"In August, my husband and I went on the internet and paid fourteen ninety-nine each to prove a point."

People laughed.

"We each wrote the other one a private note. Only for if it matched. Mine was long."

"Very long," Pete said.

"His was one sentence. And for ten weeks, that app sat on it. Because we were paying."

She looked at me.

"Yesterday morning we canceled. Right away, I got to read it."

She turned the phone around and held it up.

Then she read it out loud.

"I'd marry you again."

The yard went quiet.

Pete took his cap off and turned it around in his hands.

My mother's voice wobbled, and she let it.

"Six years ago today he married a bus dispatcher from Spokane with a grown daughter and a bad attitude," she said. "And he'd do it again. He's a man of few words."

"Except about gaskets," Kath called.

"Except about gaskets."

Pete got up.

He walked to the back step and kissed my mother on the mouth, in front of everybody, for a long time.

The apprentice whistled.

Then Pete picked up his glass.

"I'm going to read hers," he said.

"You are not."

"One line."

He took his own phone out.

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