Just Around the Corner

He didn’t know why he was being such a damned idiot. He just knew that suddenly he had a lot to lose. Something he’d never had before.

“They’ll only want me to be happy, Matt, and I can vouch for you there. I’d never known what happy was until I met you….”

A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER, Phyllis waited by the front door of her house as Matt started the Blazer and turned on the heat. They’d had cold weather move in—it was a chilly thirty-five degrees—and Phyllis no longer owned a winter coat.

Besides it would’ve seemed wrong to cover the beautiful gown Matt and she had picked out at the maternity store in Phoenix the day before. Rather than concealing her condition, as most of her clothes did, the black silk gown proclaimed it. Phyllis wore it proudly.

Noticing the New Year’s decorations on her front door, she had to smile. Matt had put them there. She’d teased him that she’d created a holiday monster. He was planning to decorate his house—which would be their house as soon as they got her stuff moved—for every holiday, including the Fourth of July. And Thanksgiving. Mother’s Day, of course…and Father’s Day.

“Your carriage awaits, my lady.”

He’d returned, was standing on the other side of the screen door, resplendent in his black evening wear. But it was the little paper hat sitting jauntily on his head, a hat with a pointed top, foil across the bottom and string elastic stapled to each side that split her heart wide open.

“Matt?” The word was barely a whisper.

“Yes, love?” He turned. Frowned. Pulled open the door with far more force than necessary. “Is something wrong?”

“No!” She found her voice long enough to reassure him. “Just…could you tell me again why we got married today, and why we’re telling everyone at the party tonight?”

She knew why. She just wanted to hear him say it again. Wanted to hear that reminder every day for the rest of her life.

“It’s all about new beginnings,” he told her. “Starting tonight, we enter a new month, a new year, a new life.”

“You mean that,” she said, searching those dark eyes for the peace she needed to find there. “The past is gone forever. For you. In your heart.”

“It’s in your keeping, Phyl,” he said softly. “I gave it to you.”

Leaning forward, she kissed him, a deep, familiar kiss. A kiss that promised him she’d keep the past, and anything else he gave her, in a safe place. A faraway place, where it could never touch him again.

“Can I ask you one more thing?” she said huskily.

“Of course.”

“Would you mind terribly if you had to get into that outfit a second time?”

It was another hour before they finally left for the party.

The pointed hat with foil on the bottom dressed the pillow on their bed. It would wait there until they returned home again, to claim everything they’d found there.