Treading Water (23 page)

“
You’re gorgeous,” Jamie
whispered to his bride.

“
And you’re
dashing.”

Listening to them, Jack swallowed a lump in
his throat, and the ceremony hadn’t even started yet.

“
Dearly beloved, we’re
gathered this evening to join this man and this woman in
matrimony…” The judge said a few words about the bonds of marriage
and then cut to the chase. “I think these two have waited long
enough for this, don’t you?” He asked Jamie and Frannie to face
each other.

Frannie handed her bouquet of white roses to
Jill and took hold of Jamie’s hands.

The judge turned to the groom. “Jamie?”

“
I was all set until I saw
you.” Jamie leaned his forehead against Frannie’s for a moment to
collect himself. He released a long deep breath. “My mother waited
forty-four years to get her only child married off, so I can’t blow
it,” he said to laughter. “I met the girl of my dreams twenty-six
years ago, and today I finally get to marry her.

“
I’ve spent my whole life
running, and now I just want to be still. I want to be still with
you, Frannie. I take you to be my wife, to be mine for the rest of
my life, and I’ll spend every day making sure you’re never sorry
you married a confirmed bachelor.”

Frannie laughed through her
tears. “I was seventeen when I met the boy of my dreams, and every
man I’ve met since then has had the unfortunate luck to be measured
against him and found lacking.” She squeezed Jamie’s hands. “It was
always you, and it always will be. I take you as my husband, to be
mine for the rest of my life, and I
know
I’ll never be sorry I
married
this
confirmed bachelor.”

A wave of laughter and tears swept through
their guests.

“
Jack, may we have the
rings, please?” the judge asked.

Watching them exchange rings, Jack
remembered his own wedding day nearly twenty years earlier. He
thought of the vows he’d taken and never once broken—until
recently. A cold sweat descended upon him. The wedding ceremony was
a taunting reminder that he’d been unfaithful to his wife. He
remembered Andi saying that he’d been so faithful to Clare, and
even knowing the circumstances were extraordinary, he still felt
sick. Scanning the audience, he found Andi watching him with
concern etched into her pretty face, and he forced a smile for
her.

After the exchange of rings, Kate handed her
bouquet to Maggie. She walked to where her guitar had been set up
earlier next to a stool and microphone stand.

If she was nervous, Jack couldn’t tell. Her
voice was angelic as she sang John Lennon’s “Grow Old Along with
Me.” By the time she sang the final note, there wasn’t a dry eye in
the room.

After Kate returned to her place between her
sisters, the judge said, “By the power vested in me by the State of
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, I pronounce you husband
and wife. Jamie, you may kiss your bride.”

He proceeded to do just that as the guests
applauded.

“
Ladies and gentlemen, I’m
pleased to introduce for the first time, Mr. and Mrs. Jamie Booth.”
The judge began another round of applause.

Jamie took Frannie’s hand to lead her down
the aisle.

Jack escorted his
daughters. “You guys look
amazing
.”

“
You were cracking us up
with the faces you were making when we came in,” Jill
said.

“
What faces?” he asked,
making them laugh. “And Kate, I’m stunned. When did you get so
good?”

“
I’ve been
practicing.”

“
I guess so!”

When they reached the back of the room, Kate
was bombarded with compliments from her grandparents and other
friends. Jamie and Frannie stood nearby to greet their guests as
the crowd moved across the hall to the reception room.

Jack spotted Andi and went over to her.
“You’re beautiful,” he said with a kiss to her cheek.

“
So are you.” She reached
up to smooth his hair and seemed to be curbing the urge to kiss him
in front of everyone. “Everything all right? You went pale up there
for a minute.”

Amazed by how tuned in to him she always
was, he smiled. “Everything’s fine.” He’d done all he could—and
then some—for his wife. This was his time with Andi, and somehow he
had to make peace with the past.

“
Are you sure?”

“
Positive.” He reached down
to scoop up Eric before the boy became lost in the sea of wedding
guests. As one person after another said hello to Jack, he held
Eric in his arms and introduced them.

“
I guess this is our grand
debut,” he whispered to Andi.

“
Looks that way. Are you
worried what people will think?”

He shifted Eric to his hip and cocked an
eyebrow at her. “Do I look worried?”

Jamie had hired a band that played all the
old standards, and the newlyweds danced to Sinatra’s “For Once in
My Life.”

The bandleader called the best man to the
stage as the waiters circulated with another round of
champagne.

Jack took a glass and made his way to the
front of the large room. He reached the microphone as a hush fell
over the room. “I’ve got to be the luckiest guy in the world
tonight,” he said. “My sister just married my best friend. What
could be better than that?”

The question received a thunderous round of
applause.

Jack cleared the emotion
from his throat, hoping he could get through this without losing
his composure. “I never could’ve imagined how a chance meeting in a
dormitory stairwell in California would change my life and now my
sister’s life, as well. You all know Jamie’s been our friend for
more than twenty-five years. Since their engagement, a lot of you
have asked if I saw this coming, and honestly, I’ve had to say no,
I didn’t. But with hindsight, I should have. Jamie Booth is the
best friend anyone could ever hope to have, and I’ve been so very
lucky to call him
my
best friend for all these years. And Frannie, well…” Jack
looked down for a moment when emotion threatened to derail him.
“Frannie was my first best friend, and she always will be. Two of
the finest people I know have taken the long way home to each
other, and I couldn’t be more delighted that they’ve finally
arrived. So please join me in raising your glasses to Jamie and
Frannie.”

“
To Jamie and Frannie,” the
guests chimed in with applause.

Frannie was still dabbing at her eyes when
Jack returned to their table.

He kissed the bride and groom and then sat
next to Andi, who was also wiping her eyes.

“
Perfect,” she
said.

He squeezed her hand under the table.

After dinner, Jack was dancing with Andi
when the bride and groom bumped into them.

“
Hey, get a room, will ya?”
Jamie teased.

“
Look who’s talking,” Jack
said. “You’re hogging the bride.” He held out a hand to his
sister.

“
Go ahead, you two,” Andi
said. “I’ll take care of the groom.”

Jamie pouted as his wife made off with her
brother.

Jack kissed Frannie’s cheek. “You look
stunning.”

“
You don’t look too bad
yourself. Your toast was wonderful. Thank you.”

“
It’s a wonderful
occasion—a once-in-a-lifetime kind of night.”

She tilted her head back to look up at him.
“I really missed Clare today.”

“
I’ve thought about her a
lot lately, too. She would’ve loved this.” He shook his head. “Hard
to believe our twentieth anniversary is next week.”

“
She’s always with
us.”

“
Yes, she is,” Jack said.
“Kate was amazing, wasn’t she?”

“
I couldn’t believe it! How
did she sneak that by us?”

“
I guess we’ve both been a
bit preoccupied lately.”

They looked over to where Andi laughed as
she danced with Jamie.

“
Just a bit. Andi looks
gorgeous.”

“
She sure does, but no one
can hold a candle to you tonight, Fran.” He hugged her when the
song ended, and Jamie came to reclaim his wife.

The wait staff circulated another round of
champagne while Maggie and Eric passed out noisemakers and hats as
the group counted down to midnight.

At the stroke of midnight, the band launched
into “Auld Lang Syne.”

Jack lifted Andi off her feet as he kissed
her. Noisemakers and confetti filled the air around them, but he
heard none of it as he welcomed in the New Year with a new love and
renewed hope for the future.

Next to them, Jamie kissed his bride. “Let’s
get the hell out of here,” he said. They were leaving the next
morning for two weeks in Fiji.

They left in a vintage car Jack and the
girls had decorated with “Just Married” signs and tin cans.

Back inside, Jack was talking with the
senior Booths when he heard the first notes of what had become his
song with Andi. “Excuse me,” he said to Neil and Mary and went to
find her.

She was seated at a table with the three
girls and Eric. They all had their shoes off, and Maggie had let
her hair down at some point during the evening. Andi heard the song
at the same instant Jack did and turned to look for him.

He held out a hand to her, his heart racing
as their eyes met and held. The guilt he’d experienced earlier was
no match for the overwhelming love he felt for her.

With a smile for the girls, who watched them
intently, Andi reached out and took his hand.

Chapter 17

Knowing he couldn’t put off telling the
girls his news any longer, Jack let them pick the breakfast place.
That’s how he ended up at IHOP, which was, in fact, hopping on New
Year’s Day.

“
I’ll miss you guys,” he
said as they dug into four different kinds of pancakes. Clare’s
mother, sister, brother, and their families were taking the girls
on a weeklong cruise to the Caribbean. They’d invited Jack to go,
but he couldn’t be away while Jamie was on his
honeymoon.

“
We’ll miss you, too, Dad,”
Maggie said, her mouth full of chocolate chip pancakes. “But it’s
only a week.”

“
That’s a long time,” he
said with a pout that made her giggle.

“
You’ve got Andi and Eric
to keep you company for a few more days,” Kate said. She looked far
too grown up sipping a cup of coffee.

“
That’s true.” Anxiety
zipped through him when Kate gave him the perfect opening for what
he needed to tell them. “Listen guys, about Andi and Eric…” He
searched for the words he needed.

“
What about them?” Jill
asked.

“
Well, you know Andi and I
are very close.”

“
She’s your girlfriend,”
Maggie said.

“
Yes, but she’s more than
that.” He noticed Jill had stopped eating and was staring at him
from across the table where she sat with Maggie. “I love her very
much, and I want to be with her more than just every few
weeks.”

“
Don’t even
tell me
we’re moving to
Chicago,” Jill said, looking frantic.

“
No,
no
,” he said when the other two
looked at him with equally panicked expressions. “We’re not moving.
They are.”

Maggie’s face lit up with what appeared to
be delight.

Jill looked down at her unfinished blueberry
pancakes.

“
So would Eric be like our
brother?” Maggie asked.

“
Don’t be such a dork,
Maggie,” Jill snapped. “Dad’s not marrying her. He’s not going to
be our
brother
.”

“
There’s no need to get
mean about it, Jill,” Jack said. Looking at Maggie, he added,
“Jill’s right, honey. I’m not marrying Andi, but she’s wrong about
Eric. It
will
be
like he’s your brother in some ways. I’m sure he’d like you to
treat him that way.”

“
So they’d live with us?”
Kate asked.

“
Yes. I’m hoping you girls
will be okay with that.”

Jill scowled. “Why do they have to live with
us? Why can’t they just move close to us?”

“
Because I don’t want to be
torn between two homes, and I don’t want to spend any more time
than I have to away from you guys.” He paused to give them a moment
to absorb that. “Andi and I talked about whether it would be better
to move everyone to a new home and start fresh together, but we
didn’t want to take you out of your home—the home where you lived
with your mother.”

“
I’m glad we’re not
moving,” Kate said. “I love our house.”

“
I do, too,” Maggie
said.

Jill maintained a stony silence that worked
on his already frazzled nerves.

“
I want you to know
something Andi said to me this morning.” He stopped to make sure he
had their full attention. “She very much wants to be a friend to
all of you if you’d like her to be, but she has no intention of
taking your mother’s place, because no one ever could.”

When Kate seemed to struggle with her
emotions, he put an arm around her.

He held out his other hand to Maggie and
Jill, who put theirs on top of his. “No one ever could,” he said
again softly.

Jill appeared to be fighting her own private
battle.