Darren chuckled. He then startled Sherry by stepped in front of her then turning to face her. They stood only a few feet away from an illuminating lamp light. A breeze whipped by; the canopy of trees spreading over the park’s trails raddled. The sound was easily comparable to a light applause. In the distance, beyond the dark shadowed areas of the park, rollerbladers and runners made their way around.
Darren pressed the side of his finger into the side of Sherry’s face. “You are so beautiful,” he said. “I really do mean that.” He looked into her eyes as if he were looking into her soul.
Sherry smiled. “Thank you,” she said. The way this man looked at her nearly paralyzed her. If she even wanted to run off, her legs wouldn’t allow it to happen. Her feet would drag like heavy anchors caught in rocks and scraping against the bottom of the sea.
“I love you, Sherry,” Darren said, grabbing her left hand. “I really do.”
Sherry let out a deep breath then responded. “I love you too, Darren.” She giggled. “This really has been a crazy thing to happen.”
Darren chuckled. “Yeah, I think about that sometimes. But you know what they say…. Everything happens for a reason.”
“Yeah,” Sherry said. She knew with time and love, some of the feelings she’d been dealing with would become easier to manage and morph into motivation. “I guess everything does happen for a reason.”
“So, you asked me what is the one question I need answered before I could ever decided if it was going to stay in Fort Wayne permanently?” Darren smiled then his eyebrows raised.
“Yeah?” Sherry said, squinting a bit.
Sherry lifted her hands to cover her mouth as she watched someth
ing she certainly hadn’t been expecting anytime soon in her life. She nearly fell back as Darren got down on one knee and pulled a velvet-looking black ring box out of his pocket. Sherry’s eyes swelled with tears of joy. Never in a million years did she think her life would take the kinds of turns it’d been taking lately. This was a like a long dream – an entrancing fairy tale – that kept getting better.
“What are you doing, Darren?” Sherry asked, not believing her eyes. “Darren? Darren?” She didn’t know what else to say; she felt like she had to say something. “Darren, really?”
Darren got comfortable on his knee then tilted his head up and looked into Sherry’s eyes, all while holding her left hand firmly. She wiped tears from her eyes and sniffled. “Well, this is the question I need an answer to before I decide if I’m gonna stay here or not, Sherry.”
“Okay,” Sherry said, struggling to breathe. “Okay...okay. Yes, what is the question?”
Darren took a deep breathe. The wind rustled his hair a bit; the lamp light caused his eyes to glisten. “Sherry, I know we didn’t exactly meet in the most conventional way. Honestly, this has been one hell of a ride for me too. And if I had to do it all over again, I would because of where we got to.” He looked at Sherry nodding. “Ever since meeting you at the bar, I saw something in you that I hadn’t seen in any woman in a long time. I love you Sherry, I really do. And, yes, I had to deal with other kinds of anxieties. I admit I did, but I didn’t get this far in life without taking any risks. So, I wanted to know… Would you do the honor of being my wife?”
Sherry’s heart thumped. Her disbelief had gone to another level. She sobbed with tears watching Darren open the ring box. When he held the ring up and out, toward Sherry, the diamond sparkled in the light. Sherry held her hand out even further as Darren lifted the ring out of the box. She spread her fingers, expectantly.
“Oh my God,” Sherry said, nodding her head. “Oh my God, oh my God.”
Darren still looked into Sherry’s eyes. He chuckled. “So, are you gonna answer my question or not?”
Sherry’s giggled, realizing that she’d been frozen not only in time, but also in thought. “Yes, Darren,” she said, jumping up and down. “Yes, I’ll be your wife. I’ll marry you. Yes.”
Darren chuckled then slid the 22-carat ringer onto her ring finger. He leaned forward and kissed Sherry’s hand as he lifted up off of his knee. Before he could stand completely upright, Sherry fell forward. Her arms wrapped around his neck and she kissed him like a waiting woman kissed her husband upon returning from being deployed. There they stood, in a passionate embrace, in the park and next to a glowing light. A strong wind whipped through the park. The tree branches and leaves applauded emphatically while the river cheered on their love, rushing downstream with noisy waves crashing the rocky banks.
Chapter 14
That night, Sherry and Darren picked Gabriel up after their iconic moment in park then headed home. Luckily, for the both of them, their beautiful baby boy went right to sleep the moment he lay in the crib. His mother and father waited in the doorway for several minutes, looking at their greatest creation, before slipping into Darren’s bedroom. They made love into the night, lost in emotion and lust they’d never seen.
Their lives ramped up in the following months more than they ever expected. A week after proposing to Sherry, Darren finally bit the bullet. He called his mother and filled her in on everything that happened. Needless to say, Joan wasn’t the happiest camper. Yes, she admitted to liking Sherry; however, her liking Sherry was in fact based on her capacity as Gabriel’s nanny. Joan was shocked beyond belief that the young lady would wind up being Gabriel’s real mother. And what were the chances that her son Darren would just so happen to have adopted a baby boy who was a product of a one-night stand he had with Sherry?
Joan was adamant about her dislike for the two getting married. During the conversation, she named off several of her own associates, both in the business world as well as in Chicago’s elite political system who had daughters she saw more suitable for marriage. “What about Donald Decker's daughter? You remember her, don’t you Darren? You two met at that gala we went to with your father up in Milwaukee. Or what about Sarah White’s niece? You know? She worked on Huckabee’s campaign down in Arkansas before he went to Washington D.C. You know she inherited quite a nice amount of assets from her aunt on her father’s side. She’s not bad.”
Darren loved Sherry so much and was so ready to take the marriage risk that his family’s warnings about marrying a woman like Sherry went into one ear then out of the other. When his father finally got around to calling, he admitted he had to call from his office as calling at home with his mother walking around in the background griping was out of the question. His father expressed his feelings about the situation, bringing up that his son was trying to marry a woman neither his mother or father had yet to get to know. Once this sentiment was out on the table, Darren’s father congratulated him and wished him the best of luck. “Marriage is going to be harder than you think.”
Sherry, on the other hand, had a different battle when it came to her family. She kept her engagement a secret for nearly two months, or until she and Darren decided that the wedding would be around Christmas. Unlike Darren, she’d been estranged from her family for years. Nobody knew she had a child and had given it up for adoption, nor did anybody in her family know she had won a battle with cancer. Now, with so much to catch up on, her drive out to her hometown, Goshen, was a thought-consumed couple of hours. Darren had arranged for the daycare to keep Gabriel all day rather than just a half-day. He was leaving the house at the same time as Sherry. They kissed in the foyer and he looked into her eyes, stroking her hair, telling her to be strong and keep calm. “Everything is going to be alright.”
Nearly back at her post-baby weight, Sherry looked over her makeup as US33 turned a bend then descended into Goshen. Sherry look out from the slope. From this view, she could look out over her hometown in its entirety. As she crossed over the Elkhart River, she vividly remembered growing up here. She and her friends found an old trail winding along the river for miles when they were just eight or nine years-old. She looked upstream as she slowed down on the bridge. I wonder if it’s still there. The world seemed so simple then.
Sherry rolled through town, down Main Street. The town literally had retained its character – the epitome of staying the same. However, this stillness of the town was also symbolic of something else: her family. How will they react to seeing me after all this time? Should I have brought Gabriel with me? No, Sherry. You don’t even know how they’ll react to you, much less you pulling up with a baby that they didn’t even know existed...and by a man you’re not even married to...yet
Sherry zigzagged through town until coming to Chester Street, where she turned right. The ride through the next few stop signs was trippy in many ways for her. So many houses looked the same; a few had been repainted. She looked at Mr. Johnson’s house and wondered if Mrs. Johnson was still living. Billy Carson’s house was overgrown with weeds, but looked as if someone lived in it still. Karen Carpenter – this girl Sherry would get into occasional fights with while growing up – and her family lived in a big house on the corner that had a wrap around porch. Sherry was a bit surprised to see the house had burned down. And it didn’t look as if it had happened all that long ago.
When Sherry pulled up in front of her parents’ house – in front of the house where she’d grown up – her stomach sunk a bit. Her heart thumped. It’d been such a long time since she was this nervous. So many questions swirled around in her mind. There were even moments where her nerves had gotten so shot that she contemplated turning around and heading back to Main Street so she could get the hell out of town before anyone saw her who would recognize her face.