“Where’d you go?” she asked.
“Your mighty hunter has brought meat. And bread. And cheese,” I grunted in my best caveman voice.
“And Miracle Whip?” she interrupted.
“Gross.”
“You know I like Miracle Whip.”
“And Miracle Whip,” I said, handing her a sandwich on a plate, complete with Miracle Whip, just the way she liked it.
I scarfed down three sandwiches in the time it took her to eat one and cracked the top on a can of soda, listening to the bubbles for just a second in quiet appreciation of Millie’s favorite sounds.
When we were done, I padded back to the kitchen and set our plates in the sink, put the sandwich fixings back in the fridge, and closed the tie on the bread bag. That’s when I spied the keys to my truck on the counter and paused, considering. I swept them up and was out the front door, inside my truck, and then back in the house in less than a minute, grateful that the house was still quiet and Millie hadn’t chased me down.
Millie was brushing her teeth and her hair at the same time, wearing my discarded T-shirt and looking like salvation, even in the dark. I sat on the bed and watched her, enjoying her, but she’d heard me come in, even over the running water. She knew I was there.
She climbed back into bed, snuggling down, and I thought about tugging my T-shirt over her head and kicking off my jeans, but some things required pants and I kind of felt like this was one of them. I crawled up behind her and wrapped myself around her, pulling her back against my chest. Then I whispered into her hair.
“Will you marry me, Millie?”
“What?” she gasped.
“Will you marry me and let me be Henry’s brother? I want you to be part of Tag Team.” I was parroting Henry’s proposal, trying to be cute, but my heart was in my throat and my hands felt slick against my T-shirt. I was glad I hadn’t pulled it off her. I pressed on. “Statistically, athletes with families have more purpose, better mental health, more stamina and overall improved performance than athletes who aren’t married.” If it wasn’t word for word what Henry had spouted off to me, it was close. But she was silent, and I couldn’t see her face.
“I was gonna ask you a month ago. I bought a ring. It was still in the glove box in my truck,” I explained, rushing over the words. And now it was in my pocket, in my jeans, waiting for her to give me an answer.
“I know. You told me,” she whispered.
“The tapes?” I asked, realizing I had indeed told her.
“Yes.”
“If none of this had happened, if I’d asked you two weeks ago, before all this went down, what would you have said?” I asked, my heart fat in my chest.
“No. I would have said no,” Millie said quietly.
My stomach lurched a little, and I pulled her closer even though I wanted to let go. My heart was pounding.
“Why, Millie?”
“Because I thought you needed more time,” she said.
“You thought I needed more time?” I asked, incredulous.
She nodded, one quick jerk of her head, and her hair tickled my lips. I waited for several seconds, processing.
“And now?” I asked.
“Now, I want to marry you so badly that I don’t care if you need more time,” she confessed.
I laughed, suddenly glad I was lying down. I felt lightheaded with relief. And then something else occurred to me.
“Have you changed your mind because I don’t have any more time?” I probed, and my voice cracked.
I felt a tremor run down her body.
“No. I’ve changed my mind because I don’t want anyone keeping us apart. I don’t want someone telling me I can’t be by your side. I want to be a Taggert. Or a Taggerson.” I felt her effort to smile, but I don’t think she succeeded. “I want to be yours. I want you to be mine. Hospital beds, my bed, your bed. I don’t care. I just want to be with you.”
“You want to take care of me,” I said flatly.
She ignored my statement and made one of her own. “If I wasn’t blind, I would have said yes. A month ago, I would have said yes.”
I waited.
“But because I’m blind, I would have wanted to give you lots of time to know what you were getting into.”
“I wouldn’t have changed my mind, sweetheart.”
“I’m always going to be blind, David.”
“Most likely . . . yeah,” I agreed.
“And a month ago, you wanted to marry me anyway?” she asked, clearly knowing the answer.
“Yeah. I did.”
“You wanted to marry me in spite of my blindness, and I want to marry you in spite of your cancer. Is that so hard to understand?”
“No,” I whispered. Because it wasn’t. Not when she put it that way.
We lay in silence, listening to each other breathing, thinking, considering. But I’d made my decision the moment I submitted. Moses had warned me that’s what it would take, hadn’t he?
“All or nothing, Millie?” I asked, my mouth pressed against her temple.
“All,” she answered back.
“Me too,” I whispered. All or nothing. That’s who I was. And if I was going to fight, if I was going to stay, I was going to have it all for as long as I could have it. I reached in my pocket and took out the ring.
Moses
I GOT UP before the sun rose. I was restless and moody, even more than usual, and I decided to paint for a while. But painting hadn’t eased the prickle under my skin or the knots in my belly, and when the sun rose I made a pot of coffee and decided to spend a little time outside seeing the day break before the rest of the house woke up and made contemplation impossible.