The Life I Chose novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Cliff Walk

Sunday came in bright and freezing, with a hard blue sky and the wind straight off the Atlantic.

The Cliff Walk runs three miles along the back lawns of the Bellevue Avenue mansions.

It's a narrow path between the rich people's hedges and a long drop to the rocks.

In summer it's shoulder to shoulder with tourists.

In March it was us, two joggers and a woman with a wet golden retriever.

Daniel was quiet.

He was never quiet.

He walked with his hands in his coat pockets and kept touching something in the left one.

"You're doing math again," I said.

"I'm not doing math."

"You've got a calculator face."

"This is my walking face."

"Your walking face looks like a man about to sit the pilot exam."

He laughed, but only half.

We came around the bend below the big Tudor place with the copper roof.

There's a spot there where the path widens, and a low stone wall, and the rocks drop straight down to where the waves break white.

He stopped.

I stopped.

Eight years ago, in August, I'd stood right here in a sundress with sunburned shoulders and shaken his hand.

I'd been twenty-two and very sure of everything.

"This is it," I said.

"This is it."

The waves went off below us like a door slamming, again and again.

He took his left hand out of his pocket.

He had a folded piece of paper in it.

Lined paper, torn from a notebook, soft from being handled.

"I wrote it down," he said. "That night. After I drove you home. The terms."

He unfolded it and held it out.

His handwriting, eight years younger.

"If M.K. is not married by her 30th birthday, D.K. gets one chance. Witnessed: the Atlantic Ocean."

I laughed so hard the woman with the golden retriever looked over.

"You kept this?"

"I'm a stickler for terms."

He folded it back up and put it in my hand.

Then he took a breath, the way I'd seen him do on the dock before he went down to the orange boat.

"I've had my one chance," he said. "I'd like to make a new deal. Same place. Same witness. If you..."

"No," I said.

His face went completely still.

The wind blew his hair flat.

"No bets," I said. "No terms. No deals. I've spent three years in a life someone else wrote down in a notebook, and I'm not doing it again, not even with you, not even on lined paper."

"Margo..."

"So I'm not giving you a chance, Daniel Keough."

I put both hands on the lapels of his navy coat, the way I had on my porch steps.

"I'm choosing you. Will you marry me?"

He stared at me.

Behind him, the waves went off again.

"You can't do that," he said. "I had a speech. I had a whole speech. I practiced it on the tanker."

"You can do the speech after."

"You stole my proposal."

"I'm a woman who stands up in restaurants. You knew that."

He started to laugh.

He laughed so hard he had to put one hand on the stone wall.

Then he dug in his other pocket and came out with a small, worn velvet box, old enough that the corners had gone bald.

He opened it.

A thin gold band with one small dark-blue sapphire, the gold rubbed soft from forty years on somebody's hand.

"My mother's," he said. "My dad bought it in '84 with a whole season of lobster money. She gave it to me at Christmas in an envelope. It said 'For the girl with the bangs.'"

I couldn't say anything.

My eyes had gone hot.

"Yes," he said. "Obviously yes. Yes, I'll marry you. Give me your hand before I drop it off a cliff."

I gave him my hand.

He put the ring on it.

It fit.

From somewhere behind a hedge up the path, somebody let out a shriek.

Ruthie came crashing out between two rhododendrons in her puffer coat with her phone held up in front of her.

"I got it!" she yelled. "I got the whole thing! She asked HIM! I'm sending it to your mothers!"

"Ruthie!"

"Both of them! Right now! Too late!"

The woman with the golden retriever started clapping.

So did the two joggers, who'd stopped to watch.

Daniel kissed me in front of all of them, with the ocean going off behind us, and it was even better than the porch.

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