“Terrible, as always,” Shelly said, but even her jab felt good natured.
“Addison, how is business?” Victor asked as we served ourselves from the heaping plates in the center of the table.
“Just getting rolling really,” I said. I was finishing the interior design degree I’d started, but Michael had agreed to let me set up a little office in the front living room of the house, using it as a showroom and a client meeting space. I was going to be designing interiors for other people. “Helen Manchester dropped by, asking if I could give her a better gaming space.”
“Oh my God,” Mom laughed. “She is addicted to that game she plays!”
“Seems to be keeping her young,” Victor laughed.
So my first client was a video-game-playing grandmother, and I was thrilled about it.
Dinner went smoothly after that, everyone eating and drinking and laughing. I found myself sitting quietly, enjoying the feeling of family all around me. And at one point, I looked down the table to find Michael smiling at me as our families laughed around us.
“I love you,” he mouthed, and I felt my heart expand inside me.
“I love you too,” I mouthed back.
“I have something I need to say,” Victor announced suddenly, standing up and upending his water glass on the table.
“Oh!” Lottie cried, mopping up the spill. But Victor stilled her hand, taking it in his own.
“Lottie Tanner,” he said, and then he dropped to one knee. “You’ve made me a very happy man these last few months,” he said. “Happier than I thought I’d ever be again. And while I never could have imagined this, I believe now that I cannot live without you. Will you marry me, Lottie?”
My mother fell to her knees in front of Victor and kissed him with a passion that had most of us averting our eyes. When she disengaged, she breathed, “Yes. I will!”
And then Victor presented her with the ring, the same one we’d found hidden in the walls of the house where we now sat. Michael had asked me about it when he’d learned of his uncle’s intentions, and I couldn’t think of anything more fitting. A family ring to unite the family. It was perfect.
Mom cried as everyone admired the ring and clustered around her.
And there, surrounded by the impossible togetherness of the Tucker and Tanner families, with Whitewoods and Blanchards and exterminators and ex-wives sprinkled in among us, I found the thing I’d been looking for my whole life. I found my own version of family.
THE END