Cora
Ten years later…
“Oh my God, is it broken?” Savannah cried.
“Relax, it’s not broken. It’s just stuck.” And maybe broken. But, since we were approximately twenty minutes before her wedding was supposed to start and we couldn’t get the zipper on her dress up, I spared my eardrums the pain of her shriek and kept that information to myself.
“Move. Let me try,” River said, squeezing in front of me. She was wearing a long, purple maid-of-honor gown she hated with a passion. That, I suspected, was the reason Savannah had picked it out in the first place.
After we’d moved to Seattle, Penn had followed through on slipping a ring on my finger. First, a freaking rock of an engagement ring. And then, three months later, at a quiet ceremony in our giant, picturesque backyard, he slipped another ring on and made me Cora Pennington.
A few days later, when I’d gone to the DMV to get a new driver’s license, I’d burst into tears at seeing something other than Guerrero as my name. I’d loved Nic, but Penn was right. He’d left his diamond in a junkyard. And I had been stuck there every day, waiting for someone to find me. I’d fought and struggled to stay at the top of the heap. But, if it hadn’t been for Penn, I’m not sure I would have lived long enough to get out.
One day, they would have caught me stealing the money.
One day, Marcos’s backhand would have landed wrong.
One day, Dante wouldn’t have stopped.
And, one day, I’d have died, leaving my diamonds—River and Savannah—in that junkyard too.
Instead, I’d found a gorgeous man who loved me and my girls unconditionally and gave me a last name I could feel proud of. And then, two years later, he gave our daughter, Hope, his last name too.
I’d once said nothing had disappointed me, broken me, or destroyed me quite like hope. But that was before I married Penn. Hope no longer felt like the impossible. It felt like the future, and that’s exactly what that little girl gave us all. She was eight now, and she had my blue eyes, her father’s brown hair, and all of River’s attitude. She also had a pretty pink bedroom, a warm bed, and not a single lock on her bedroom door.
“Mom,” River called, fighting with the zipper. “Can you get me some tweezers? Maybe I can use those to tug it up.”
I hurried to my mother-of-the-bride emergency kit and found three different pairs—you know, just in case. Then I carried them all back to her.
For the first few years before Hope was born, River seamlessly alternated between calling me Cora and Mom. There was no rhyme or reason for what she called me or when. It wasn’t like she had to hide it anymore. But as soon as Hope was old enough to talk, I was never Cora again. And it wasn’t until then that I realized how much I’d missed by letting her call me Cora for all those years. But no more. I was mom. Just mom.
There was a pop before Savannah’s dress sagged.
“Oh my God, what was that?” she yelled
“Oh, shit,” River breathed, lifting the metal zipper tab hanging off the end of the tweezers.
“What did you do!” Savannah yelled.
While my girls still fought like cats and dogs and loved like sisters, they were all grown up now.
River was twenty-three, taking the slow path through college, living in an apartment across town, and majoring in graphic design. She’d yet to bring a boyfriend home, but she made no secret of leaving her birth control on the bathroom counter so I knew they existed. This could be because she’d learned from Savannah’s mistakes and gained a healthy respect for Penn’s twitching forehead vein.
Savannah had met a guy her first year at the University of Washington. He seemed nice enough to me, but Penn wanted to string him up by his grungy jeans and long, unwashed hair. Luckily, that guy ended up screwing her over. Obviously, that was not the lucky part. Through heartbreak, she buckled down and focused on her schoolwork, and she ended up falling in love with her professor’s dashing teaching assistant, Matthew Lintz. I mean, I couldn’t blame her. He was a handsome kid. The problem was that he wasn’t really a kid—he was a twenty-two-year-old pre-med student heading off to dental school in the fall. Which, hey, good for him. They were both in college, so I was fine with it. Penn, however, wanted to string him up by his khaki slacks and preppy crew cut.
In the semi-end, the professor found out. Matthew almost got kicked out and ended up switching schools the last semester before he graduated.
In the real end, we were standing in a church, the zipper on Savannah’s dress halfway up, stuck, and now officially broken. All of this happening twenty minutes before her wedding to aforementioned Dr. Matthew Lintz, DMD.
Seriously, the kid could not do anything without drama.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God,” Savannah cried.
“I told you you should have gotten the one with the corset back,” River taunted.
Oh! And Savannah was pregnant. This news came a year after the engagement and only three weeks before the wedding, hence the only reason Dr. Matthew Lintz, DMD, was still alive and not buried in my backyard while Penn’s muddy boots sat on my back deck.
“Okay, simmer down. I’ve got this. It’s no big deal.” I did not have it and it was a huge big deal, but I was good in the face of turmoil.
I took the tweezers, shook off the metal tab, and pinched them right onto the head of the zipper. “Okay, suck in for a second.”
“I am sucking in!”
River laughed. “Okay, then tell your demon spawn to suck in too.”
“Can someone please just go get Dad? He’ll know how to fix this.”
Savannah had never called Penn anything but dad again. In the beginning, she had done it to tease him. Then, as the months turned into years, she did it to annoy him. But then she started doing it because I think she wanted it to be true. With the way she’d grown up, it was easy to understand why she’d latched onto Penn. And, not surprisingly, Penn had latched right back.
River walked to the door and pulled it open. “Penn, your majesty needs your help.”
“She dressed?” he asked cautiously.
“That’s uh…kinda what she needs help with. But yeah, she’s not naked. Come in.”
It had been over a decade since he first walked through the door to my apartment, but I still got chills when he entered a room—the smoking-hot gray suit he was wearing didn’t hurt, either.
We were different people now. And Penn wasn’t wrong. Different was not bad.
Penn had gone back to investing in real estate, dabbling with a few new builds along the way. And I’d graduated from college and started working as his bookkeeper. I went on maternity leave when I had Hope, and then four years later, I quit altogether when Shane was born. That aptly named little boy looked just like his father. Not even kidding, the child came out scowling. Where Hope had always been a chatter box even before she’d had words, Shane was quiet and stoic, always observing the world around him.
“Hey, baby, what’s going—oh, wow.” His eyes got wide as he slid his gaze down her strapless, white wedding dress. It was so tasteful and classic that not even over-protective Penn could find something to complain about.
I had never seen Penn cry. Overwhelmed with emotion, absolutely. He’d done the laughing-and-smiling-so-big-your-eyes-start-to-water thing the days Hope and Shane were born. But Savannah was different for him. She had never been a baby, but she was his first daughter to wear a wedding dress.
“Jesus,” he breathed, scrubbing a hand over his cheek. “You look beautiful.”
She crumbled as he pulled her into a hug. “My dress is broken.”
“No crying. Your makeup will run!” I told her as I took off to get a tissue.
When I got back, Penn was already at the back of her dress. “Oh, it’s fine. It’s not broken. I got this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out some kind multipurpose tool. “I need a hair pin, a mint, and a hockey ticket.”
“I’m sorry. What?”
“It was a joke, Cor.” He waved me off as he bent to pick up the broken piece of the zipper off the floor. He pinched it back onto the dress, gave it a hard jerk, and zipped it the rest of the way up like it was the easiest thing in the world. Dads were good like that.
“Oh, thank God,” Savannah breathed, patting over her heart. She turned, placed a peck on Penn’s cheek, and then took off to the bathroom, calling out to River, “I have to pee! It’s your duty to hold my dress.”
River groaned. “You’ve been in the dress ten seconds. Why didn’t you pee first? I’m not holding your freaking dress.” But she said it while walking after her and would no doubt hold her freaking dress.
My husband stole my attention with his lips at my neck. “I’m not sure the mother of the bride is supposed to be this hot.”
I laughed. “I’m not sure the mother of the bride is supposed to be thirty-nine and a soon-to-be grandmother, either.”
His hands found my hips and he pulled me against his front. “Don’t remind me she’s having a baby if you want me to get through this ceremony without castrating Matthew.”
I grinned, Penn’s warmth encompassing me. “Truth or lie.”
“Truth,” he whispered, leaning down to rest his forehead to mine.
“Truth: You did this. Her being here. Happy. Healthy. Getting married to a good man, who I really believe will be almost as good of a dad as she is a mom. You did this, Penn. I love you for a lot of reasons. But today, seeing her—I love you especially for that.”
His eyes gentled. “Baby, you did this. Me, you, Savannah, River, Hope, Shane. We all have a good life because you never gave up fighting for yours.”
My nose started to sting, so I reached up and caught the moon necklace he’d wrapped around my neck the day we arrived in Seattle. River wore my star now—not because Penn had asked me to take it off, but because that was the moment I realized I’d lied to Nic when I’d told him that I only wanted him and the stars.
All I’d ever wanted was the moon.
Penn was still as gorgeous as the day I’d met him.
His powerful presence still cast his shadow far and wide.
His skin was still tan, and his short, brown hair was still rich with natural flecks of mahogany and chestnut as though he worked in the sun.
He still had the nose of a Roman gladiator, distinguished and slightly crooked from battle.
His jaw was still composed of sharp, regal angles masked by a thick layer of scruff.
And intricate, black tattoos still traveled down his arms to the backs of his hands.
But there was one thing that had changed about him.
Penn’s eyes were no longer a heavy blue—deep and hollow.
Now, Penn’s eyes were actually the color of freedom.
For both of us.
I pushed up onto my toes and pressed a kiss to his lips. “Truth: I love you, Penn.”
“Truth: I’ll always love you, Cora.”
THE END
Coming in 2019
The Ways We Lied
Drew and Catalina’s story.