For the Right Reasons (29 page)

“Catherine,” I said.

Of course, anytime you give out that last rose, everyone is thinking about the person who
didn’t
get it. Catherine came up and hugged me, but I was looking over her shoulder to see AshLee’s reaction.

Ever heard that saying, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”?

Instead of saying the customary good-byes to the other ladies and to me, she made a beeline for the van.

“AshLee,” I said, following after her. “Can I talk to you?”

“No,” she said. “Stay there!”

“Just let me explain,” I said. When Emily sent me home, she never told me why. She simply said I was “perfect” and that she thought I had been the one. While that was moderately flattering, it didn’t give me closure. Plus, I realized later that it wasn’t true. Her inability to tell me honestly that she loved the other guys made me wonder for months if Emily had made a terribly wrong decision. I wanted to talk to AshLee honestly, to give her a little closure during what I knew would be a hard time.

“If you’re going to tell me something,” she said, swirling around, “tell me.”

“Okay,” I said, taken aback by her severity. “I just didn’t feel like we shared that element of fun. It’s important I have that, and I just couldn’t find it with you.”

She turned around and tried to get in the van. Regrettably, she tried to get in on the same side where the camera guy was sitting.

“No, you’ve got to get in on this side,” I said, reaching for the door. That only infuriated her more.

As she drove off into the sunset, her livid response chilled me to the bone. It also made me realize I’d made the right decision.

It had been three months since I’d last seen my parents.

For the last week, the producers set me up in a gorgeous house on private property. It was owned by an extremely wealthy man who had a hundred staffers. The house staff was there to wait on me hand and foot—they served me food, made my bed, and got me anything I needed. It was the perfect place to host my family.

I was thrilled to see them and loved that they were able to be at least a small part of this adventure. Here I was, facing the most difficult decisions of my life. Even though I hated to admit it, I definitely didn’t want to go through this alone.

“I’m falling in love with two women,” I told them. “I truly don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Well, if you don’t know which way to go,” Mom said, “there’s no way you can propose at the end of this.” Of course, that made sense. I liked Lindsay for a long list of reasons, and I liked Catherine for a long list of different reasons. It sounds odd, but I never compared the two or pitted them against each other in my head. I simply knew I really liked both girls and had no idea what to do next.

“Well, logically,” I said, a little upset at her certainty, “I can see how you’d say that. But I’ve really fallen for two girls at once.”

Mom paused and smiled, ever a polite and encouraging lady. “Okay.” She nodded. “It just makes us all the more excited to meet
both
of them.”

Lindsay was the first to arrive. I met her outside while my family waited inside the house. Lindsay and I walked in together, and she met the family on camera. Someone suggested we sit down at the lunch table, but almost
immediately a producer said, “Lindsay, why don’t you go talk to Sean’s dad? Sean, you go talk to your mom.”

It was filmed to look like a relaxed afternoon, but it was orchestrated to squeeze in as many important conversations as possible. Lindsay felt comfortable around my parents and had a youthful energy about her that everyone loved.

Plus, she said things like, “I feel very blessed to be here.”

Blessed
is one of those evangelical code words. It was obvious that Lindsay shared our Christian faith, which put everyone at ease. My family instantly fell in love with her. And Lindsay was so impressed by my family’s warmth and laughter that she wanted to be a part of it as well.

It seemed like an open-and-shut case.

The next day, when Catherine arrived, they began to see how complicated this was. It was raining, so I met her with an umbrella at the producers’ van.

“Do I call your parents by their first names?” she asked nervously as we walked to the house.

“Listen,” I assured her. “They are going to love you. Just be yourself.”

As we sat down to eat, my prediction came true. Quickly, it was apparent that everyone enjoyed Catherine as we exchanged casual conversation about the show, her past, and Seattle. When Mom took her off to have a personal chat with her, I knew she’d come back with a helpful opinion about Catherine—and she did. Mom told me that she wished we could have more time together before I popped the question. However, she confided, she could totally see Catherine as her daughter-in-law.

“She’s lovely,” she said.

When Catherine talked to my dad, they had a touching, poignant conversation.

“When Shay married Andrew,” my dad told her, “he became my best friend. And I love him. If you and Sean marry, you’ll never have a bigger fan than me. That’s the truth.”

Catherine’s eyes filled with tears. Even though she loved her dad, he hadn’t always been able to be a great support system because he was living halfway around the world.

“I’ll love you like my daughter,” he said. “I just met you, but sometimes you just know.”

When Catherine left that day, there was no doubt she would make a great addition to the Lowe family. I could totally see her fitting in at my parents’ house in Dallas on a lazy Saturday afternoon. She’d be tossing a salad while the big game was on. My niece and nephew would be underfoot, and the dogs would be asleep at the foot of the couch.

As much as I dreamed about that, I knew—if pressed—my family would’ve probably chosen Lindsay. I could tell they latched on to her evangelical key words as they tried—in a very short amount of time—to pick up on any clues that might help them determine which woman would be a good match for me. We talked about everyone’s opinion of the women. Then my dad diplomatically added, “It’s a win/win, because they both will fit in just perfectly.”

“You’ve got forty-eight hours,” said Andrew. “You better start figuring this out.”

I could tell Mom wasn’t happy. She didn’t understand how I could still be thinking of proposing without a clear front-runner.

“You don’t want to propose to anyone if it feels like pressure,” she said.

“Hopefully, you can see the dilemma I’m in,” I said.

“Yes, but you don’t have much time to decide,” she said, pointing out the obvious.

“I don’t need the added pressure,” I responded, maybe too tersely. In fact, I felt the time coming down on me with every passing minute.

“If you don’t know,” she said, “you don’t need to be proposing to either one of them.”

I understood where Mom was coming from. I didn’t know if I was going
to propose, because I really didn’t know which girl was right for me—if either of them were right for me. I tried to justify my indecision, but Mom’s opposition rubbed me the wrong way.

“You’ve only seen a few minutes of this,” I said. Of course, that wasn’t fair. That was all the time she’d been given in this artificially accelerated time frame. “I want your perspective and opinion, but more than anything I want your support.”

When I said that, my mom started to cry.

It killed me.

She’s the most loving mom in the world and only wants the best for me. The gravity of the situation weighed heavily on her. The fact that I needed to make such a big decision in such a short amount of time stressed her out. Plus, I’d been a little short with her.

“I don’t want you to succumb to the pressure of doing something you don’t want to do just because it’s on TV,” she said. “And because the people associated with the show want you to do it.”

“It won’t end badly,” I told her, much more gently.

“Yes, and you don’t have to choose either,” she added helpfully—in case I’d missed it the first hundred times.

Before my family left, I grabbed my mom and whispered in her ear, “I promise I won’t propose if I’m not sure.”

In the end, my family didn’t provide me the clarity I was looking for, but I knew I had their support no matter what happened.

That was just as valuable to me.

fourteen

THE DECISION

“Can I please have my iPad?” I asked Mary Kate. At no time was I allowed to get on the computer, check my e-mail, or—heaven forbid—Google anything. The producers wisely didn’t want me to be swayed by some random blog post about the girls that might or might not be true.

“No way,” she said.

“Come on. I just want to listen to my music.”

“Okay, but no Internet,” she said, handing it to me.

“How can I get on iTunes without an Internet connection?” She looked at me skeptically and then broke into a smile.

“All right,” she said. “But behave.”

As soon as she was out of sight, I got on FaceTime with Laura and Steph.

“What’s going on?” they squealed.

Quickly, I gave them a rundown of the two remaining women. “I don’t know. I’ve got equally great girls left.”

They were excited to hear from me and relieved I wasn’t calling them completely devastated as I did during Emily’s season.

After I hung up, my curiosity got the best of me. I got on ABC’s website and looked at the profiles of the girls. Catherine’s profile had the usual information—name, age, and hometown. But the random questions, like “What’s on your bucket list?”, intrigued me. Believe it or not, one of the
dreams she listed was to ride elephants in Thailand. (And she had filled out that form months before we knew we’d end up there.)

When Mary Kate came back into the room carrying a clipboard with information, I put down my iPad somewhat guiltily.

“Okay, we’ve got a date where you’re going to ride elephants and another date where you’re going to take a little boat down a river,” she said. “You can choose which girl goes on which.”

I was amazed. Elephants! Catherine would be so surprised.

“Catherine has to go on the elephant date,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because it was on her online profile.”

She looked up from her clipboard and opened her mouth before deciding to let it pass.

“Never mind. Okay, so get some sleep, because the elephant date starts bright and early.”

I had forty-eight hours, two dates, and a lot to think about.