Wendy Markham - Slightly Engaged

All right, that’s mean. My mother might have a mustache, but she has her good points. She makes a mean minestrone, and she…um…

Well, she has some other good points. But it would be nice if she were as laid back and easy to talk to as Jack’s mother is.

“How was the wedding?” Mrs. Candell asks, and I marvel at how she always remembers exactly what our plans are on any given weekend.

“It was fun.” I tell her the highlights of the ceremony and reception, skipping over the bride and groom’s dance-floor fight as well as her son’s callous torture.

She asks about the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses, the flavor of the cake, the honeymoon destination.

I know! I told you she was great!

Then she says cryptically, “Well, I guess you’ll be next.”

Excuse me?

Did she just tell me she guesses I’ll be next?

What does she mean by that?

I’m silent for a moment, my mind racing. Can Jack’s mother possibly know something I don’t know?

I probably shouldn’t ask, but I can’t help it. My entire future—or non-future—with her son is hanging in the balance.

“Mrs. Candell?”

“It’s Wilma.”

Not.

“Oh. Right. Um, Wilma?” I ask, thinking Mom has a more natural ring to it.

“Mmm-hmm?”

“What do you mean? When you say I’ll be next,” I clarify, in case feigned confusion and sidestepping of issues runs in the family.

“You’ll be next,” she repeats. “You and Jack.”

“Next…?”

“Next. To get married.”

Next…after whom? Hazel and Phinnaeus Moder?

Okay, either the woman is seriously deluded, or she’s privy to some vast Candell conspiracy.

“I don’t think so,” I say cautiously, testing the waters. “I mean, I really doubt Jack wants to marry me.”

“Tracey! Why would you say something like that? Jack loves you.”

If those words coming from his mother don’t warm my heart, I don’t know what will.

Well, yes, I actually do. A proposal on bended knee from Jack himself would definitely be even toastier.

“Well,” I tell his mother, trying not to reveal my burgeoning excitement, “regardless of whether Jack loves me or not, I don’t think he wants to get married.”

“You’re wrong about that.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.” Her tone is oozing confidence.

I think.

Well, it’s definitely oozing something. Hopefully not bullshit.

“Mrs.—Wilma, I’m not sure I get what you’re trying to tell me.”

Is she trying to tell me something?

Or is she trying not to tell me something?

“Tracey, don’t worry about Jack. He wants to get married. He would kill me if he knew I was telling you this—”

I hold my breath.

“—but he’s definitely planning on getting married.”

Sensing there’s more, I’m afraid to exhale; afraid to move; afraid to do anything that might shatter the moment.

“In fact,” she goes on, lowering her voice conspiratorially, “when he was up here for dinner last week, he asked if I could open the safe-deposit box for him.”

I’m turning blue here, trying to figure out what that could possibly mean, certain there’s more. There has to be.

But she doesn’t elaborate, so I’m forced to let my breath out at last and ask bluntly, “What, exactly, does that mean?”

Silence.

Then, “You don’t know?”

Apparently, I don’t. But now I’m dying to.

“Know what?” I ask.

“About the stone?”

Stone? What stone?

I rack my brains.

Stone…stone…grindstone? Rolling stone? Pizza stone? Flintstone?

What the hell is she talking about?

“No,” I say tautly, “I didn’t know about a—er, the—stone.”

Her flat “oh” might as well have been preceded by “uh” because she’s obviously just spilled something she wasn’t supposed to. Which would be tantalizing if I could get a handle on whatever it is she supposedly revealed. But here I am, utterly clueless, my mind racing with possibilities.

“I just assumed the two of you had discussed it.”

“The stone?”

“Yes.”

“See, the thing is, Wilma…I’m just not following you.”

It’s her turn to take a deep breath. “Tracey, when Jack’s father and I separated last year, I had my diamond taken out of my engagement-ring setting, which I never really liked even though I was the one who picked it out—”

Oh…

Oh, wow.

Diamond. As in rock. The only kind of stone that really matters.

Diamond.

Do you believe this? Are you hearing this? Talk about a bombshell…

“—and I told Emily and Rachel that the first one of them to get married could have it.”

Emily is Jack’s younger sister; Rachel is the next one up from Jack. They have two more older sisters, Jeannie and Kathleen, who are both married.

“But both of the girls are positive that they’ll want their own rings when they get engaged,” Mrs. Candell goes on, “so I decided my diamond is there for Jack whenever he wants it. And…he wants it.”

Well, slap my ass and call me Judy!

Better yet, slap my ass and call me “Mrs. Candell the Second!”

Tracey Candell.

It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

Speaking of rings…

“You’re kidding,” I manage to squeak to Mrs. Candell the First.

“No…I gave him the diamond before he left. But you can’t tell him you know about it, Tracey.”

“I won’t. I swear.” My hands are shaking. My heart is pounding.

“Really, I thought the two of you must have discussed this. I guess my son is more romantic than his father ever was,” she adds with a brittle laugh.

I know that the Candells’ marriage was never lovey-dovey, and Jack said it was always only a matter of time before they split up. The month after Emily graduated from college and moved to Manhattan, they separated. The divorce will be final next spring, and everybody seems relieved that it’s almost over.

Still, sometimes I wonder if his parents’ failed marriage has anything to do with Jack’s reluctance to commit.

But right now, all I’m wondering is what cut Wilma’s diamond is, and when Jack is going to give it to me, and how I could have missed the subtle signs that he had this up his sleeve. Because there must have been subtle signs. There always are.

Do you think his comment that Marriage is for the Asinine was a subtle sign?

Me neither.

“Anyway,” Wilma is saying, “if Jack ever knew I’d let this slip to you—”

“I promise I won’t tell him.”

“Won’t tell who what?”

Startled by the voice behind me, I turn to see Jack standing there: boxer shorts, bad breath, bedhead…

Yes. There he is. The man I love. The man who loves me.

The man who apparently has a stone concealed somewhere in this minuscule apartment and is trying to throw me off his trail with all this convincing talk about only the Asinine getting married.

“Who are you talking to?” he asks.

“Your mother,” I admit, gazing adoringly at him, wondering how I ever could have thought I had to let him go. I didn’t have to let him go to find out that he’s mine. He always was. He always will be.

“My mother?” He frowns. “You’re keeping secrets from me with my mother?”

“Secrets?”

“You just said you won’t tell me something.”

“Not you,” I say as Wilma makes a warning noise in my ear. “We were talking about someone else.”

“Who?” he asks dubiously.

“You mean whom,” I amend, just to buy time.

He grits his teeth. “Whom are you talking about with my mother, Tracey?”

“Maybe it actually should have been ‘who’ when you phrase it that—”