"No, don't apologize. Don't say anything, Cary. I'm not upset."
He smiled.
"It would have been a lie if I said I was sorry anyway," he admitted and we laughed.
Then we heard the sound of a dog barking excitedly. "What's that?"
"Sounds like Prometheus. We better get dressed, and fast," he said. We scurried about, pulling on our clothes and heard Holly and Kenneth calling. I brushed back my hair quickly and glanced in the wall mirror, but there wasn't time to do much more. They were shouting now.
"What's going on?" Cary wondered as we climbed up the small stairway to the deck of the boat.
Holly and Kenneth were standing on the dock and in Holly's arms was another chestnut-coated retriever puppy. Prometheus was circling and barking.
"He's going to be company for Prometheus," she declared. "We're calling him Neptune in honor of Kenneth's work."
"Oh, he's so sweet," I said hurrying off the boat. She handed him to me and he covered my face with his licking kisses.
"Everything coming along all right down there?" Kenneth asked Cary, his eyes moving from him to me and then back again. Cary blushed.
"Just fine," he said.
"We're still looking at next Saturday then?"
"No problem I can see," Cary replied firmly.
"Okay, then we should do it on Friday, right Holly?"
"You're not getting away that cheaply Kenneth Childs."
"Getting away with what that cheaply?" I asked.
"If he thinks for one moment we're going to consider that a honeymoon--"
"Honeymoon!" Cary and I exclaimed simultaneously.
They both beamed at us.
"Oh, Holly, congratulations," I cried and we hugged, Neptune squeezed between us. He barked his complaint, which caused Prometheus to join in chorus.
"It's just going to be a small wedding at my father's house," Kenneth said.
"Really?"
"It was Holly's idea to let him marry us. I figured I'd save money so . ."
"That's wonderful, Kenneth," I said, my face flushed with happiness for them both.
"I had a feeling you'd see it that way," he said. "Well, I guess I'd better get back to work. It looks like this piece is going to be interrupted by something called a honeymoon," he declared.
Cary and I watched the two of them walk back to the house.
"I hope that will be us someday," he said. I took his hand.
"It will," I promised.
He put his arm around me.
Maybe it was changing; maybe the storms had really passed over us at last, I thought.