Sweet Misfortune: A Novel (9 page)

“If you’re asking if I just proposed, then yes.
Will you marry me,
Sophia Maria Jones?”

“Oh… my… gosh,” Sophie repeated, more stunned than before. Then she started to ramble. “What? That’s huge! How can we? I mean… we’ve only been dating for six months. Six months! That’s a blink of an eye! Do you know me well enough? Do I know you well enough? How could we possibly…?”

Garrett just chuckled, taking it all in stride. “I wondered if you might say that. And I know this may seem a little sudden, but I know I’m in love, and I know you are, too. And since I know my feelings for you aren’t going to do anything but grow, I figured, why wait?”

“Well, because… things could change. What if something happens to you? Or to me?”

“I thought you might say that, too. When I was in New Orleans I did a lot of thinking about what that psychologist told you as a kid about enjoying relationships while they last, and I think maybe he was on to something. I mean—the way he explained it to a kid who’d lost both parents was harsh, but I think perhaps what he was getting at was that we shouldn’t measure the worth of a relationship by its duration.”

She took a long look at him. “So, say we get married, and two months later I get sick and die. Will that have been worth it to you?”

“Yes!” he said emphatically. “Because those would have been the best two months of my life. Oh, I’d hate the fact that you were gone. But I’d much rather have two months of marriage with you than none at all.” He hesitated. “I know you’re scared. I’m nervous about it too—marriage is a
big
step. But I’ve never been happier since I met you, and I want you to be more than just the beautiful woman I’m dating. I really want you to be my wife.”

Garrett’s words helped put Sophie at ease, but she wasn’t yet ready to give him an answer to the big question. Instead, she redirected the conversation. “So how’d you get the ring in there?”

He winked at her. “A little glue on the plane ride home. I went through five packets of sugar before I was able to make it look like it hadn’t been tampered with. I think the lady in the seat next to me thought I was smuggling stolen jewelry.”

She held the ring up and examined it more closely. “I can’t believe you left this on the window for forty-five minutes. It could have been stolen.”

“It was in my pocket the whole time,” he explained. “I swapped it with the other one while you were reading yours.” Garrett reached out and grabbed one of Sophie’s hands. “So, what do you say?”

“I’m thinking,” she assured him.

“Well don’t,” he replied, grinning. “Don’t think about it. Just go with your gut.”

She snickered. “My gut is churning. I think it’s saying it wants to vomit. Are you sure I should trust it?”

“No, better not. Let’s pick something a little higher in your torso. What does your heart say?”

Now Sophie sat back in her chair and looked out at the lights of the Seattle skyline. When she spoke, her voice was steady, but cautious. “It says… that guys like you come along once in a blue moon.” Her gaze remained fixed outside.

“Okay, now at least we’ve picked a trustworthy organ. Is it saying anything else?”

“That I’ve never been happier in my entire life.”

“I like the sound of that. Anything else?”

Sophie turned and faced Garrett again. “Yes. My heart still wants to make sure that you’re not going to break it.”

Sitting up in his chair, Garrett took a moment to watch Sophie. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known, inside and out. Funny, intelligent, patient, caring, witty—everything he’d ever wanted in a companion. Looking at her, he was sure that nothing could ever change his feelings and that he would do anything to keep from hurting her. “Soph,” he said softly, “I honestly love you more that I thought I could love anyone. I didn’t even know this type of love existed until I met you. I can’t promise you that we won’t experience difficult things in our life. And as much as I’d like to, I can’t even promise you that I—
or you
—won’t be taken from this life before either of us would like. Life’s just not that predictable. But without a doubt, I can promise you that I will
never
break your heart.” He paused to smile. “Tell that to your heart, and see what it says.”

Sophie tilted her head to the side, as though she were weighing something in her mind. “It says yes,” she said finally.

“Yes what?”

She held up the empty sugar packet with Garrett’s handwritten proposal. “Just ‘yes.’ ”

Garrett wanted to jump out of his seat, but he contained himself. “We’re getting married?”

Sophie slid the ring onto its intended finger.
Just like Garrett
, she thought.
A perfect fit.
“We’re getting married.”

Chapter 12

Yesterday was the high point of your life. Sorry.

O
CTOBER
25
WAS THE DATE THAT SOPHIE AND GARRETT
set for their wedding. It gave them a full seven months to prepare, which Garrett thought was more than enough time to plan and make all the necessary arrangements. For Sophie, however, it felt like a tight schedule, especially with the demands on her time running Chocolat’ de Soph.

By the end of the first week of their engagement, she’d already made a comprehensive list of things that needed to be done. When she went over it with Garrett, he was surprised to find out that there was much more to planning a wedding than simply inviting family and friends to the ceremony. He read through her list several times, shaking his head at the level of minutiae.
Wedding colors, wedding dress, bridesmaids and groomsmen, attire for bridesmaids and groomsmen, flowers, guest list, gift registry, wedding venue, reception venue, minister, decorations, rehearsal dinner, photographer, invitations, hors d’oeuvres, entrees, centerpieces, wedding favors, guest book, music, DJ, seating chart, cake, cake topper, cake knife…

“
We have to pick out a knife to cut the cake?” he asked. “I’ve got plenty of knives we can use.”

“Do they match the pen set that people will use to sign the guest book?”

“Probably not.”

She poked him in the side. “Then they aren’t the right ones.”

Garrett chortled. “For a woman who doubted whether she’d ever get married, you sure seem to know a lot about weddings.”

“Even when we have doubts, every girl dreams,” she said.

As much as possible, Garrett and Sophie tackled the massive to-do list together, setting aside time each week to scratch off a few more items. The magnitude of the effort made time fly, and before either of them knew it, it was September, just four weeks from the big date.

Sophie’s birthday fell on the third Sunday of that month. She was glad it was a Sunday, because it meant that she didn’t have to go to work. Although there were several open items on their wedding-prep list, Sophie decided that those things could be put off a few more days so she could relax and enjoy her birthday with Garrett.

“I have a surprise for you today,” she told him over brunch.

“But it’s your birthday. I’m supposed to be doing the surprising.”

“Well, it’s not so much a surprise as something I want to share with you. Sort of a birthday tradition. Can we go for a little drive this afternoon?”

He agreed, so a few hours later they got in the car and Sophie directed him to the Evergreen Cemetery, making a point not to tell him where they were going until they actually got there.

“This is your big surprise?”

“Tradition,” she said, smiling.

They parked the car and got out at the base of a small hill, and then walked hand in hand the rest of the way to a large hedge near the base of an old cedar tree.

“Here it is,” Sophie said, pointing, once they’d reached the gravestone of Thomas and Cecelia Jones.

Garrett carefully read every word engraved on the marker. Sophie noticed that his jaw muscles tightened dramatically. “They died on your birthday,” he said solemnly. “I never knew that.”

Sophie shrugged. “It’s not something I like to talk about.”

His eyes locked once more on the tombstone, and he read it aloud, mostly to himself. “September 21, 1989
…
wow. Soph, that’s
…
Did any of the newspapers back then ever mention that you lost your parents on your birthday?”

She put her arm around his waist. “Not that I know of. But who knows?”

“Well if they didn’t, they should have. That makes the whole thing all the more tragic.”

“It’s definitely made my birthdays more
… significant
, that’s for sure.” She paused and looked at his face. “You know, not counting the first few times when I was a little girl and someone had to drive me here, this is the first time I’ve ever come to visit them with someone else. I didn’t think I’d like sharing this with anyone, but facing the past doesn’t seem quite so daunting when I’m with you. Thank you for that.”

He gave her a gentle squeeze, but kept his eyes on the grave marker. “Yeah
…
sure.”

Sophie brushed off his sudden introspectiveness. Everyone she’d ever told about her parents’ deaths had reacted oddly when they learned that her birthday was their death day, so why should he be any different? Allowing him a chance to ponder, she dug into her purse and found a small box of chocolates. She picked one of the bunch and bent down to set it on the grave, then she picked up the beautiful round rock that was resting on the lower left corner of the gravestone and dropped it in her bag.

“What’s the chocolate for?”

“Just a little reminder,” she said softly.

“Of what?”

Sophie stood back up and wrapped her arm around him again, grabbing hold of a belt loop on his waist with one finger. “If you’re nice to me, maybe someday I’ll tell you.”

He looked down at her. “I’m not nice to you?”

“Oh, you are.” She laughed. “And if you keep it up, eventually I’ll share all of my little secrets with you.”

“I see. How about the stone? Are you going to tell me about that?”

She stretched up on her tiptoes and gave him a quick peck on the lips. “Yep. You’ve earned at least that much.” Then she kissed him a little longer.

With her eyes closed, Sophie didn’t see that Garrett was still looking at the gravestone.

Chapter 13

He who throws dirt is losing ground.

A
FTER LEAVING THE CEMETERY, GARRETT’S MOOD PERKED
back up, for which Sophie was very grateful. They spent the remainder of the afternoon walking around the Pike Street marketplace in Seattle, eventually choosing to get an early dinner from a street vendor whose shish kabobs had both of them salivating from the smell as they passed by.

Once they were full, they leisurely made their way back to the place where they’d parked and began driving back south toward Gig Harbor. But after crossing the Narrows Bridge, Sophie reminded Garrett that she still needed to explain what she did with the rock that she’d taken from her parents’ graves. They took the first exit past the bridge, then doubled back along a little road that meandered eastward through a thickly treed residential area. She told him to stop along the side of the road near a pathway that split the property line between two homes.

“What are we doing here?”

“From here, we walk,” she said. Sophie grabbed the rounded stone from her purse and exited the car, then started walking.

Two hundred yards farther down the path, they came to the shore of the Narrows, the well-named stretch of water that separated the Washington mainland from the Olympic Peninsula. The highway loomed overhead in the form of the Narrows Bridge.

Sophie had to speak loudly to be heard above the noise of passing cars. “Do you know what’s out there?” she asked, pointing to a spot in the water beneath the bridge.

Garrett looked at her funny. “Is this a trick question?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. Then you must mean either the bridge or the water.”

“Nope,” she said again. “
In
the water. Below the surface.”

“No clue,” he said after scanning the surface once more for a hint.

“When I was in second grade my dad brought me out here a couple of times. He had a fascination with suspension bridges. Anyway, he told me all about the
old
Narrows Bridge, though I don’t think much of the history stuck until I studied it on my own a few years later. When it opened to the public in 1940, the old bridge was considered state of the art, an engineering marvel.”

“What happened to it?”

“Four months after it opened, it collapsed. The wind blowing across the Narrows caused it to start pitching and rolling. They say cars on it at the time felt like they were on a roller coaster. After too much twisting and bending, the whole thing broke apart and fell into the water.”

Garrett scratched his chin. “Amazing. But why is that important to you now?”

Sophie pursed her lips. “It was a tragedy of epic proportions, Garrett. An entire bridge—
the best of its kind
—gone, just like that. But the reason I come here now is because of what happened after it fell. First, the engineering community learned a ton about how not to build suspension bridges. The lessons they learned have had a lasting impact on every new suspension bridge in the world since 1940. Plus, believe it or not, the old bridge, which is now resting a hundred and eighty feet below the surface, has become the world’s largest man-made reef, providing a home for countless numbers of sea animals.”

Wrapping a thick arm around her shoulders, Garrett said, “I think I understand. Something good came out of something bad. Is that it?”

She nodded.

“Then why do you come here with the rock you took from the grave?”

“For this.” Sophie ducked out from beneath Garrett’s arm and flung the stone as far as she could across the water. It skipped seven or eight times, sending ripples in every direction, before sinking beneath the surface. “It’s probably lame, but when I turned ten and found a rock on my parents’ graves—on the first anniversary of the accident—I thought it looked like a good skipping stone. I asked Ellen to bring me here, because this place reminds me of my dad. Anyway, I made a wish back then that like the old bridge, something good could come out of my family’s tragedy.” She paused, staring out at the tiny ripples that were still moving along the surface where her rock had struck the water. “I come back here every year and make the same wish.”

He nodded knowingly. “Still waiting for it to come true, aren’t you?”

Sophie grimaced. “Yep.” She took Garrett’s hand in hers, and together they made their way back to the car, both of them quietly lost in their own thoughts.