Darius smiled. “Technically documentation.” She narrowed her eyes. “That phrase has history.”
He placed it on the island. Then he dropped to one knee. Vanessa stared.
Darius smiled up at her. “This time I am asking correctly.” Vanessa covered her mouth.
“No dirty boots.” He looked down. “Actually, the boots are still questionable.”
Vanessa laughed and started crying simultaneously. Darius continued. “No emergency paperwork.”
“No bad quarterly projections.” He paused. “And no joke.”
He opened the small box. “Vanessa Hartwell, will you marry me?” She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she held out her hand exactly as she had years earlier. “Okay.” Darius laughed.
“That still sounds suspiciously casual.” Vanessa pulled him upward. “You already received the answer three years ago.”
He kissed her. For the first time, there was nothing accidental about the direction their lives were moving. The future had finally become deliberate.
Nia’s reaction the following morning was much less dramatic. She looked at the ring, looked at Darius, then looked at Vanessa. “Finally.”
Darius stared at her. “You are nine.”
“Almost ten.” Nia ate another pancake. “And you two take forever to make obvious decisions.”
Vanessa laughed. Darius pointed at his daughter. “This is why humility matters.”
“I am extremely humble.” Nia answered. Vanessa nearly spilled her coffee.
The wedding happened the following spring. It was small. Darius insisted.
Vanessa agreed. Her instinct toward large corporate events no longer applied to everything. Only family and close friends attended.
A framed photograph of Camille sat on a table near the entrance. Adrian’s photograph stood beside it. No one treated their presence as sadness.
They were part of how Darius and Vanessa arrived there. Removing them would have made the story less honest. Love had not begun after grief disappeared.
It began while grief was still learning how to sit somewhere other than the center of the room. Nia stood beside Vanessa during the ceremony. Darius’s mother cried loudly enough that several people laughed.
Mrs. Loretta cried too. Evan cried before anybody else and denied it afterward. Nobody believed him.
At the reception, Vanessa’s mother asked Darius how he and Vanessa actually met. Darius told the truth. “Paperwork.”
Vanessa corrected him. “Late paperwork.” Darius nodded. “And a terrible joke.”
Nia inserted herself. “Then my dad proposed accidentally.”