Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
One Year Later
“Congratulations,” Ida says, handing the papers to me. My realtor, normally as excitable as a paper bag, grins as Linda and I shake hands.
I think this is the biggest deal of her career to date. A whole island.
“Are you really going to turn this into a retreat center?” Linda asks down at the dock, her voice hopeful. She knows the answer. But I can tell she’s having a hard time letting go of her baby.
I look to Clint, who beams. He looks so handsome in his suit. He signs, “Tell her again.”
“Yes, we are,” I say. “We’ll rent it out privately 50 percent of the time to cover expenses.
But the rest of the time, we’ll make it available to nonprofits for meetings and getaways.
We’ve already got the Gardener’s Association of BC and a camp for deaf children coming in July, along with several school groups from my elementary school planned for the fall. ”
“Barbara would be so proud,” Linda says.
Clint makes a coughing sound, and I know he’s thinking of Barbara the cat, just like me. Barbara the cat practically rules the island, and now she gets to stay. She would be proud.
We wave Linda and Ida off.
Next week, it’ll all begin. Julia’s coming to start her role as operations manager. We hired her as project manager the moment Mom forwarded me my inheritance—only a month after my wedding imploded.
“We’re not married,” I’d told Mom.
“You will be,” she said with teary eyes that were never once like that for Jeff.
There was a lot of money. Like a lot, a lot. Turns out Dad had made a mint in his business and Grandma was a surprisingly savvy investor. The amount was enough to make me unable to form words for days.
And able to purchase a whole island.
But I still wanted to stay at my job at the elementary school up in Redbeard Cove, which, ironically, takes less time to get to with Clint’s little motorboat than it did driving up from Swan River.
Clint also wanted to keep gardening, of course.
So it only made sense to get a newly jobless Julia on board. She hired a whole staff and will be fully running the center at a very generous salary so Clint and I only have to be with people if and when we want to.
For now, we both inhale deeply. “You know we’re the only people on this island right now, don’t you?” I sign as the boat motors away from the dock.
Clint grins and signs back: “Does that mean I can do that move you love anywhere we want?”
He’s been taking his sexual education as seriously as I have my sign language studies. These are both highly mutually beneficial things.
Turns out we’re both very good at school.
“Absolutely.”
After heading back home for provisions, we hike up to the highest point on the island, one of the few places here I’ve never been.
When we step out from between the trees, I gasp. There’s a pretty little glade here, with a view out to the ocean.
But more than that, the whole place is covered in soft grass, and at the edges of the clearing, rosebushes. They’re peach, their blooms huge and prolific.
“A Rare Beauty!” I exclaim, my heart swelling. I look to Clint. He did this for me. I know he did. I reach for him, and he takes my hands in his, kissing them both before letting them go to sign.
“Not these ones,” he signs.
I tilt my head in question.
“They’re a new variety. I bred A Rare Beauty with The Boy at Sea last summer.”
My chest clenches. The Boy at Sea is a variety of yellow rose he told me his father bred for him.
I go up to a rosebush, my hands shaking as I reach for a bloom. Up close, I can see the details aren’t exactly what I expected. The edges of the peach petals are red, making the blooms beautifully variegated. A perfect combination of two roses, with all their thorns.
It smells, somehow, like roses and the sea.
“What are you calling it?” I sign to him after I’ve released the bloom.
“I was thinking about You Think About What You Did, You Fuck.”
I nearly choke.
Clint laughs. “I’m sorry. That’s still the best thing anyone’s ever said to put a man in his place.”
I give him a little shove, but it’s half-hearted. I’m laughing too hard.
“Okay, how about Cat-Boss Barbara? No, I know. The Jilted Bride!”
“Stop!” I exclaim, wheezing now.
When I finally catch my breath, I find Clint watching me, a goofy smile on his face.
“Okay, what did you really call it?” I ask, feeling a blush of self-consciousness at his appraisal, even though it’s hardly a rare thing.
He makes a sign I don’t recognize.
“What does that mean?” I sign.
“It means Marry Me,” he says out loud.
My eyebrows lift, and I smile. “That’s a beautiful name.”
But Clint continues watching me as he drops to one knee. “Yes,” he signs. “But it’s a question too.”
He reaches into his pocket.
My stomach does a full roll.
When he opens it, my heart practically explodes in my chest. Because there is my grandmother’s ring. I handed it to him last year, telling him to give it to me whenever he was ready, whether that was to ask me to leave or to ask me to stay. I never wanted him to feel any pressure either way.
But here it is—here he is. Grandma would have swooned, just like I am now. I look at this man, then out to the sea beyond, where I swear I see a fishing boat, Dad on deck, waving proudly.
Then he’s gone, and Clint is too, lost behind my blurred eyes and the emphatic “Yes,” signed with my hands.
After that, all I can feel is the man I love.
I leapt on him and can’t seem to let him go.
So we stay like that, both of us crying as I whisper all the ways I love him, letting my words carry away on the wind to the sea.
Eventually, Clint lays down our blanket, setting the picnic basket he packed down next to it. Beyond a beautiful meal, inside is a bottle of champagne on ice, which we pop to toast the retreat center, but mostly us.
Then Clint declares he’s going to eat his dessert first.
When he does, I call his name louder than I ever have before.
After, we lie in the sun, full and happy, a little tipsy on champagne and life and each other.
“What are you thinking?” I sign to him a few minutes later, as I walk around, half dressed, determined to smell all the blooms of Marry Me.
“You first,” he signs.
“I’m thinking I don’t think I’ve ever had more air in my lungs.”
Clint laughs.
“How about you?” I ask.
His smile falls away, his expression turning to something tender and soft. “I’m thinking you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”
I smile at the sweetest man in the world. “And that the world’s a better place when we all smell flowers, right?”
Clint nods. Then he pulls me to him in an embrace so tight, the air flies from my lungs.
But soon enough, I breathe again. And it’s the deepest, fullest breath of my life.
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