We made love like tangling moonbeams, in the soft darkness of the bedroom—our bedroom—and when I came, it was staring at Cal’s smile.
Epilogue: Maggie
My feet were annoyingly swollen, and it was a struggle to fit them into the white satin shoes I’d gotten for today. I had done my best to plan for the whole pregnancy thing but it was hard to predict what my measurements would be months down the road, unlike most women who were getting wedding dresses fitted.
Luckily, I had gone with a very simple dress and ensemble for this very reason. Something that draped and was loose, so that it didn’t look like I’d been vacuum-sealed into a dress while a beach ball was tied to my stomach.
I stood up, wincing as my back protested. It was a tie between the back aches and the swollen feet on which I hated the most about being pregnant. Even though I was overall excited to have another baby. Cal and I didn’t want more than two, but I knew that he was over the moon to be able to be there for the entire process this time. He loved Fern terribly, just as I did, but it saddened him that he hadn’t seen her as a baby, as a toddler. Hadn’t seen her say her first word or take her first steps. He would, though, for this baby. And he obviously couldn’t wait. I was pretty sure that he was more excited in some ways for the baby than he was for the wedding.
Not that I blamed him. Unlike most couples, for us the wedding was more of an excuse to gather together the people that we loved than it was anything else. We were living together, we had a kid together already and then another one on the way. All the things that most people did after a wedding we had already done.
This was still a special day, though. A day to gather our friends and family, and to make everything official.
Cal was making the entire process wonderfully easy, too. Being pregnant was bad enough on its own. So was planning a wedding. Putting the two together was absolutely nuts. But Cal was there for me the entire way, offering to talk to people, securing the venue, massaging my feet and back when they ached. He’d been an absolute godsend.
I knew he was going to keep being one—being the perfect husband, just as he’d been the perfect boyfriend. And father. God, how Fern loved him. It had been so much easier to tell her than I’d feared. For all that Fern liked Cal, I had never spoken to her about her father. I had just said that some families were different. Some had two moms and two dads, some had a mom and a dad and then there was a divorce and the mom got a new husband, and some families were just a mom and her little girl. Fern had always accepted that. Why wouldn’t she? She was a toddler, she accepted whatever her mom told her.
What if she had wanted her family to just be the two of us? What if she didn’t want a father, or didn’t accept Cal as her father no matter how well they got along?
I shouldn’t have worried, though. Fern was ecstatic to hear about it. We hadn’t told her the full story of course. She’d hear about it when she was older and could actually understand it. We’d explained that Cal didn’t know Fern was his daughter. Didn’t know he was a father. And now that he knew, he was ready and happy to be her father, because he loved her and he loved me.
Fern had been ecstatic. She’d wanted us to get married sooner than anyone, and she’d felt extra special that she got to see the wedding and be a part of it because most kids came after the wedding.
“You all ready?” Jenn asked.
“I think so.” I glanced at myself in the mirror, suddenly unsure about all the choices I had made in my appearance. Should my hair be different? My makeup? Did I look…
“You look beautiful,” Jenn said, laughing a little. “I can see the fear in your eyes, you look like a deer in the headlights. C’mon, this is going to be perfect. And the sooner you get out there the sooner you can have that pumpkin pie you’ve been talking about nonstop.”
“It’s called a food craving, Jenn, have some sympathy,” I replied, pretending to be cranky about it. It was true, one of my latest weird pregnancy cravings was for pumpkin pie. Dad promised he’d made an entire pie just for me to have.
I was probably one of the only brides to have a wedding on Thanksgiving, but it had just seemed appropriate. Thanksgiving was when Cal and I had first gotten together and created Fern. It was when we’d found each other again. And it was a day of thanks and family—what better day to celebrate our family that we’d created, and talk about how grateful we were for each other in front of everyone?