The Last Hour (Thompson Sisters), Sheehan-Miles, Charles [reading an ebook .txt] 📗

ones on Carrie’s father’s side of the family. Her grandmother was flying in from Spain with Andrea and several other relatives who I’m pretty sure neither Carrie nor Alex had ever heard of. Crank and Julia chartered a flight for that bunch, because it worked out to be both less expensive and more convenient to do it that way than to fly a dozen people over individually.

Blissfully, after my fourth trip to JFK, I made the last one: bringing two doddering and extremely rich aunts to the hotel. One of them insisted on giving me a tip, even after I explained I wasn’t a hired driver. When I got upstairs, Carrie immediately grabbed hold of me.

“Come on,” she said, grabbing my hand. “Time to go.”

“Where are we going?”

“It’s a secret. But we’re late.”

So I followed her out of the hotel, down the street, and down into the bowels of the subway system. As soon as we boarded, I asked again, “Come on. What’s going on?”

“You’ll find out.”

I rolled my eyes, and we snuggled together until we got to our stop, which was all the way at the other end of Manhattan at the Brooklyn Bridge Station. She tugged me along as we got up to the street, and I saw the building we were approaching. Carrie checked her watch about five times during the walk. Whatever we were doing, she was nervous about making it there on time.

So I followed her through the front doors, and through security, which took a while, and then down the halls until she stopped in front of the City Clerk’s office. She turned back to me, and took a deep breath, and suddenly I realized what was about to happen.

“Ray…” she said, just as I opened my mouth and said, “Carrie…”

She smiled, then said, “Ray ... do you want to know why we’re here?”

Well, that was the proof there. Carrie didn’t normally beat around the bush. She was nervous as hell.

I nodded. My own heart was thumping.

“This is when you ask me to marry you.” As she said the words, her eyes were wide, and I could see her hands shaking. Mine were too.

I had to say what I had to say, but I needed to do it in a way that wasn’t going to hurt her. Very slowly, I said, “Carrie ... I want to ... more than anything in the world. But what about the trial?”

“I don’t care about that.”

I swallowed. “If I go to prison, you will.”

She leaned forward and grabbed the sides of my face. And looking me in the eye from maybe two inches away, she said, “Listen to me, Ray Sherman. If you go away to jail for a day or a year or a decade, I’ll still love you. So you better just get used to it.”

“I thought you ... you wanted the perfect wedding?”

She blinked, and her eyes went watery, and she said, “If you’re there, and I’m there, then it will be perfect.”

Okay, she got me with that … it made my eyes water. So, I did the only thing I could do. I got down one knee, took her hand, and said, “Carrie Thompson, will you marry me?”

She nodded her head rapidly and whispered, “Yes. Yes.”

And then I was standing and she was in my arms and everything was ... perfect.

Except, of course, that the State of New York has a twenty-four hour wait before you can actually do the deed. So we went on into the City Clerk’s office, filled out our paperwork, paid our money, and we were officially engaged. I didn’t have a ring to give her, so on the way back to the hotel from the City Clerk’s office, we stopped at a pawn shop two blocks down, and I bought her a silver band with a quarter carat stone which I’m pretty sure was not a diamond, but she loved it anyway.

And really, wasn’t that all that mattered?

Why can’t I just wear shorts and a t-shirt? (Carrie)

I looked up at the clock. It was 1:30 in the afternoon, and I was shaking like a newborn rabbit.

“Are you absolutely sure you don’t mind? I feel like we’re jumping in front of your day.” I asked Alexandra for probably the fiftieth time.

“Be quiet, Carrie. Of course I don’t mind. You have no idea how happy I am.”

“Mother and Dad are going to kill me when they find out,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow. “When has that ever stopped you?”

I shrugged, as much as I could anyway, because she was behind me, tightening my dress to the point where I couldn’t even breathe.

Yes. Ray and Dylan were meeting us at the City Clerk’s office, which had undergone major renovations in the last few years. Alexandra had somehow cleared two hours of her schedule that morning, and the two of us had rushed to the nearest wedding dress boutique, and I’d spent an obscene amount of money to have a dress altered on the spot.

“Turn around,” she said.

“I can’t look,” I replied. “Eloping is supposed to be easier. Why can’t I just wear shorts and a t-shirt?”

She took me by the shoulders and turned me toward the mirror. I caught my breath, and she said, “Because ten years from now you’re going to look back at this day and it’s going to mean everything.”

It was a strapless dress with a sweetheart neckline; the satin bodice fitted down to just past my hips and a gorgeous organza skirt filled out the bottom. Alexandra had attached a tiny bouquet of white flowers above my right breast, and matching, smaller ones on my wrist. My hair was tied up in a complicated French braid that Ray was going to get very frustrated with later on when he tried to take it out.

I sniffed. It already meant everything.

I took a breath and said, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

She bounced on her feet in excitement and said, “I wish we could have just done a double