And then Lisa came tearing into the room in her nightgown, hair everywhere.
“Are you getting married? Are you? Are you getting married?“
Brandon, still down on one knee, still holding the little velvet box open, didn’t miss a beat.
“Well,” he said to her, completely serious, “that depends entirely on whether your mother says yes. So you might want
o keep it down while she decides.”
I was laughing so hard I’d started to cry, both at once, and I could barely get the word out.
“Yes,” I told him. “Yes. Of course, yes.”
Lisa screamed. Actually screamed, this delighted shriek, and started jumping up and down.
And then, all at once, she stopped. Mid-jump, almost. Her whole face changed, went from wild joy to something small and careful and uncertain, and my heart clenched because I knew that look. It was the look she got when she wanted something so badly she was scared to say it out loud.
She looked at Brandon, and she asked, very quietly, “Does this mean I get a dad, too?”
I will never, as long as I live, forget the way Brandon’s face softened when she said it.
He set the ring box down on the coffee table. He opened his arm
to her. And he said, “If you’ll have me.”
She threw herself into him so hard he rocked backward.
And I stood there in my own living room watching my daughter be caught and held by a man
