Chapter 23: The Register

Betsy's POV

He asked me on the ferry pier at dawn, on one knee on wet planks, with a gull watching.

I had known it was coming for a week.

Bea had been humming.

Carmela had been knitting something small in a color she wouldn't name.

"Betsy Penberthy," Don said, and opened a velvet box.

Inside lay a thin gold band with a small green stone, low and plain.

"I'm not asking you to take my name. I'm asking if you'll take me."

The water slapped the pilings.

I looked at the ring, and I looked at him.

He was in rubber boots and a fisherman's coat that Bea had given him, and he had a fish scale on his cheek.

"Don," I said.

"Yes."

"I love you."

His face went through three expressions at once.

"I've loved you since the study," I said. "Maybe since before. I wanted to say it when you weren't waiting for it."

"Betsy..."

"Now ask me again."

He cleared his throat. It took him two tries.

"Will you marry me?"

"Yes."

He got the ring on my finger with shaking hands and kissed me so hard that the gull left in disgust.

We married on the pier on the first Saturday in April, at sunset, with the tide coming in.

The ferry stood tied up behind us with a string of white lights on its rail.

Every fisherman in Harbor Point had put on a clean jacket.

The big one who had called me about Bea gave a nod to the others, and they stood in two rows.

Bea walked me down the planks on her cane.

She'd refused a wheelchair, an arm, and the idea of a veil.

"Your mother would have cried the whole way," she said under her breath. "I'm saving it for the toast."

"You're crying now."

"It's the wind."

Carmela stood at the end with Don, in navy silk and her pearl earrings, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief.

Don saw me and forgot to blink.

The town clerk stood between us in her reading glasses, holding a leather book against her chest.

She was also, it turned out, a notary and a Justice of the Peace, and she took all three jobs seriously.

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