Chapter
Twenty-three
Kate
The Wedding Day
I stood in the back room, my heart pounding as I looked in the mirror. In less than an hour, I was going to be married to Jonathan, and while it was the best day of my life, I couldn't help the worry in my mind that I wouldn't be good enough for him. That had been one of the things I'd been scared about my whole life. How could I love someone when I'd never been loved myself?
The sound of the door interrupted my thoughts, and I turned to look as Evan came into the room. He was the last person I’d been expecting to see.
“I thought you were Jessica,” I said, turning back to my reflection and looking at him behind me in the mirror.
“Are you alone?” he asked, closing the door behind him.
I nodded as he came up behind me and placed a hand on my shoulder.
“You look beautiful,” he said gently. “Jonathan’s a lucky man.”
“Thank you, Evan. By the way how is he?” I asked.
“Nervous, silent… you know what he’s like.”
I laughed, feeling the butterflies in my stomach again.
“I’m so scared.”
“I don’t blame you,” he teased. “There’s a hell of a lot of people out there.”
I turned to him and punched his arm playfully as he reached into his inner pocket and pulled something out. My eyes fixed on the wrapped box that he gave me.
“From Jonathan?” I asked.
He nodded.
I tore open the shimmering paper and opened the white case eagerly, and there nestled perfectly were two large diamond earrings and a necklace to match. I’d never seen so many diamonds in my whole life.
“I can’t…” I breathed.
He nodded.
“They’re for you, Kate. Wear them. May I?”
I nodded and he stood behind me, removing the necklace and fixing it around my neck before doing the clasp up.
“What did I do to deserve him?” I asked, as he turned me to face the mirror again and we looked at each other in the reflection.
“You both deserve each other. Besides, there’s more.”
“More?”
He nodded and reached into the same pocket again, only this time pulling out a letter.
“He wanted you to read this before you come out and go down the aisle.”
I felt my heart drop.
“I don’t want to.” I pushed it back towards him, but he held my hand and closed my fingers around the paper.
“Do it for him,” he said. “Just open it.”
“Do you know what it says?” I asked, my hands shaking as I peeled opened the seal.
He nodded.
“I didn’t until this morning, and I think you should read it all before you cast judgment.”
My heart pounded within my chest so loud that I was sure he could hear it, and once I freed the letter from the envelope, I let it drop to the floor as I opened the folded paper, almost sick to my stomach.
The letter was handwritten, and I felt the tears welling up in my eyes as I read it. Every word gave me a renewed fear to read the next.
Evan put a strong arm around my shoulders for comfort.
“I’m supposed to tell you to watch your make-up,” he said, but instead of laughing, his words made me break down, because Jonathan’s letter was everything I wasn’t expecting. In fact, it was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever read in my life:
‘Words, Kate, I’m not good with them and I never have been.
I know how to grow a small company from one person in a back room to a global corporation, but when it comes to you… to love, words escape me.
I know that to many it seems like a quick transition to this stage. I couldn’t have been more surprised myself, but I know marrying you is the one thing I’ve been sure about in a long time. I know you’re the one.
You’re the one that made me realize just how important love is, and without you this chapter in my life would be unbearable, but somehow you manage to make me feel as though I’m on a goddamn high.
I know life hasn’t been easy for you, Kate. I know you’ve gone through life with no one, and I don’t want you to ever be alone again. Walk down the aisle to me today, and you’ll have a family for life.
As I’ve said to you before, you’re loved. You’re so incredibly loved—more than you’ll ever know— and from this day onward, I’m going to spend the rest of my life proving that to you.
It doesn’t matter who you do or don’t have in your world, because you’re part of my world now. My friends, my family… everyone. We’re never going to let you down, that’s a promise. I’ll never let you go.
I’m not the most sentimental or the one with the most emotion, but you can lean on me, Kate, and you can rest knowing that even with my last heartbeat I’ll defend every breath you take, which is why I owe you an explanation.
Ever since our dinner on the beach, I’ve been working behind the scenes to bring you the best gift anyone could ask for. Diamonds, shoes, watches… they’re all material things that can ultimately be replaced. What I’m offering you is an identity, a sense of reason and purpose.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I managed to track down your birth mother, and in doing so I’ve uncovered the rest of your family.
I don’t know how you’re going to feel about this, and I’ve spent the past week agonizing that once you read this letter and once you know the secret I’ve been forced to keep until it was all confirmed, I’ll look up the aisle and I won’t see you there.
The thought is tearing me apart, but I’m confident that you’ll understand just how much you mean to me, and once you know that, you’ll know that I did it with the very best of intentions.
I’ll give you everything I have, Kate; you just have to say ‘I do’.
Love Jonathan.’
My hands were shaking as I read the last words, and I blinked profusely to keep the tears from falling and ruining the makeup that had been so expertly applied.
I turned to Evan, searching his face for an answer.
“He found my family?” I asked. “He found my mom?”
He nodded slowly, the smile on his face soft, and I paced the room quickly, my mind in overdrive. Jonathan had somehow managed to find my family. He’d tracked them down and—I couldn’t bear to think any deeper for fear that it had to be an elaborate joke. I knew he wouldn’t do that, but I’d spent my whole life feeling as though I had no one, being pushed from foster home to foster home with awful ‘moms and dads’ and having ‘brothers and sisters’ that left me out of everything. I didn’t ever think for one moment that my real parents were still out there somewhere and that they wanted to find me. They actually wanted to know who I’d become and what I’d achieved.
Evan picked the envelope up from the floor and put it on the table.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, leaving the room while I hyperventilated, my heart pounding as I thought back to the argument we’d had in the Hamptons and the way I’d screamed at him and driven away without trusting in the man that he was.
I just didn’t understand why he thought that finding my birth parents, my family, and saving me would make me do anything other than marry him.
It did nothing but prove to me just how much he cared, and if anything it made me all the more eager to get out there and see him.
Even the thought of seeing his face ahead of me, looking back into my eyes, made me emotional.
The door opened again as I carefully placed the letter back in the envelope.
“Evan, I want you to—” I turned to where he should have been standing, but stopped when I realized it wasn’t him.
I felt my heart drop and I gasped involuntarily, trying to catch my breath, because there standing in his place was a woman. I recognized her hair from Jonathan’s office a couple of days ago.
I stepped backward in shock, bumping into the table behind me and making the lamp on it wobble slightly.
“Oh, my god!”
The woman, dressed in pale, shimmery pink, had my eyes and my smile, only older.
“Kate?” she said, taking a step toward me, testing my reaction. “Hi, I’m Anna. I’m your birth mom.”
Don’t cry, don’t cry! I told myself over and over again in the hopes of preserving the makeup, but when she opened her arms up, I couldn’t hold all the years of hate, fear, anger, longing, wanting and loneliness back. I burst into tears, the sobs rocking my whole body.
She closed the space between us quickly, almost running, and pulled me into her perfumed embrace, hugging me tightly.
“Don’t cry,” she soothed. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, just please don’t cry.”
The more she spoke, the more I couldn’t stop, and she pushed me away gently to see my face, using her thumbs to wipe at the escaping tears.
“Look at you,” she said, unable to stop smiling despite her tears. “Look at the beautiful woman you’ve become.”
I laughed between sobs.
“You don’t know how much that means to hear you say that.” I dabbed at my own face with the back of my hand. “I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe Jonathan found you.”
I knew it was no thanks to me, because I’d told my foster agency that I didn’t want to be found. Years of anger and feelings of abandonment had made me want to punish anyone that even dared to find me, even though inside I believed no one ever did. But somehow Jonathan had managed to bypass that and find her.
Then I remembered the night on the beach when I’d told him about the foundation I wanted to set up and briefly mentioned the name of my own agency.
He must have actually listened to me and taken that information away with him.
“I love him so much,” I said out loud, more to myself, but she nodded enthusiastically with the broadest smile across her tear-stained face.
“You have a wonderful man there, Kate.” She took my hand and led me to the sofa to sit with her. “He made this all possible, and without him I’d never have been able to find you.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, burying my head in my hands at the thought that if I hadn’t have been such a stubborn, proud teenager, I could have had a family much sooner.
She took my hands and held them firmly.
“Don’t you dare apologize!” she said seriously, her eyebrows furrowed. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m the one who hasn’t been able to sleep every night since I signed those papers. I’m so sorry, Kate. I’m sorry that I let you go, and I’m sorry that I let you down and I let other people influence me and in doing so ruin your life.”
“I’m happy now,” I reassured her, “but I just want to know why? Why wasn’t I good enough for you? Why didn’t you want to keep me?”
My voice broke with the last question, and my tears built up again ready to fall.
Her face crumpled and she shook her head.
“I was young, and my mother—your grandmother—was a strict Christian. I wasn’t married, and she said the only solution for it was to have you adopted. We fought and fought over it for weeks, but in the end she won, and I did the unthinkable. You were my world and I let you go, and I’ve never forgiven myself for it. I’ve thought about you every day. I’ve been at the agency begging them to let me at least say hello to you, but they lost touch with you. I just…”
She stopped to cry and I reached forward to hold her. The idea of finally getting to comfort my mom had always seemed unrealistic, but now she was in front of me and it felt completely natural, as though we already had an unspoken bond.
I’d always imagined our first meeting. I’d imagined a waiflike, unapologetic alcoholic with limp hair and the both of us having a screaming match at each other, but things couldn’t have been any more different.
My mother was lovely. How could I not want to keep her in my life?
She pulled away from me and looked at her wristwatch.
“Let’s get you married,” she said, resting her hands on her lap. “We can’t keep Jonathan waiting. He’s on edge as it is.”
She helped me up and went to the door, motioning people in, and to my surprise the first person I saw was Krista with a large make up box.
“For touchups!” she said, holding it high with a large smile on her face. “Welcome to the family, cousin!”
She came over and squeezed me against her with one arm. Krista was my cousin. The memory of my outburst made me blush.
“I’m so—”
“Don’t mention it!” she said, stopping me. “We’re family now.”
She put the makeup box on the table behind me as more people came in through the door.
“Unfortunately,” my mom said, resting a hand on my arm, “your father passed away a number of years ago from a heart defect. We weren’t together, but we often spoke about you. These here are your half-brothers, Luke and Samuel, and behind them are your uncles and two of your aunties.”
My family each came up to me with their arms outstretched, and the more people I saw the more I cried.
I had a family after all, more than I had ever imagined was possible.
“I can’t believe this…” I said, looking at each of them in turn. “I can’t believe you’re all here for me. I can’t believe you’re all mine.”
One of my uncles stepped forward and took my hand.
“You better believe it, kid, and we aren’t going anywhere,” he said firmly. “We’re going to walk you down that aisle and give you away.”
I felt the excitement in my stomach.
“We’re here to stay,” my mom said, coming up beside me. “You’re never going to be alone again.”
Krista waved her makeup brushes at us both.
“Let’s fix you guys up! We’ve got a wedding to attend, and I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be an extra special one! I just know it is.”