Is that really the way he sees me? My goodness!
The fourth day, a florist delivered a houseplant, with no card attached. It was an Anthurium, better known as “little boy plant.” Her father walked by just as the delivery boy left, and he remarked, with a shiver of distaste, “Who sent you the plant? God, I’ve always hated those things — looks like a bunch of hard red tongues.”
Indeed!
The fifth day, she thought Rafe had given up. No such luck. It was just that the package was so small and had been buried under a pile of mail. When she peeled back the expensive foil paper, she saw Tiffany imprinted on the box.
Tiffany? What could Rafe possibly afford at Tiffany’s?
She soon found out. Inside was a silverplated corkscrew, and a notecard. “You still owe me.” The only signature was a smiley face.
The rascal!
The following day, a mailer came with a cassette tape. Helen didn’t want to play it. In fact, she set it aside while she prepared dinner and wrapped Christmas presents and went out to a movie with Elliott. But she thought about it. Too much. And, in the end, she played it while she sat in bed that night. When she pressed the button on the small cassette player, Rafe’s voice came out, deep and masculine. She trembled as she listened.
“Helen, I love you,” he said. “Please don’t turn this off. Just listen to me. We love each other, you can’t deny that. Your being pregnant isn’t a problem for me… anymore. Really. I’ll love your baby like it’s my own. But I don’t want to tell you all this stuff on a tape. I want to tell you in person. In the meantime — don’t laugh — I have a song to sing for you. Your favorite.” Then he launched into an off-key version of “Wind Beneath My Wings.”
Helen cried over that gift. A lot.
She stayed in her room the next day when the mailman came, but her father handed her a stack of correspondence when she came down stairs, including one envelope with no return address. She opened it tentatively, and began to weep openly.
“Honey, what is it?” her father asked, but Helen couldn’t tell him. How could she explain what a wonderful, hopeless dolt Rafe was? And why he was so wrong for her.
The letter contained a medical form. A reverse vasectomy had been performed on Rafe yesterday. His Post-It this time said, “Well, I did it. I went under the knife today. Again! The doctor doesn’t guarantee the procedure will work. No promises. I love you. Rafe.” Then there was a P.S. “Ouch!”
“Helen,” her father said, puzzled by her anguish over Rafe. He’d been trying to talk to her for weeks. “Are you sure this marriage to Elliott is the right thing?”
She gaped at him in astonishment.
“Maybe… well, maybe, if you love Rafe,” he practically choked on his name, “… well, maybe that’s who you should be with. I know I’ve pushed you sometimes in the past, sweetie, but, really, just follow your heart.”
She couldn’t believe her ears. Her father actually encouraging her to consider Rafe?
“Thank you, Daddy, for caring. But, really, for many reasons, marrying Elliott is the best thing.”
Helen’s wedding was going to take place in three days, and Rafe was frantic. None of his plans had worked out. Even when he’d located Helen and called on the phone, her father had informed him in a surprisingly gentle voice that Helen wouldn’t talk to him. “Perhaps,” General Prescott advised, “it’s time for you to give up.”
“Would you?” Rafe asked.
“Hell, no!”
“Same here, then. Hell, no!”
He thought he heard General Prescott laugh and mutter, “Good luck” before he hung up, but he was probably mistaken.
Okay, three more days. Time to call in some markers with his family. And make some big plans.
It was a gamble, but he was betting that he would win.
He had to.
Helen was standing at the altar of a small chapel outside Sacramento three days later, wearing her mother’s ivory satin wedding gown and a simple veil on her head. Elliott was at her side, handsome in his dress blues, along with her father, a few witnesses, and friends.