to be planning a wedding for Nonna to attend while she’s still strong enough. Not just for her sake but because I’d like nothing better than to be getting married. I always planned to be a wife and mother, but it just hasn’t happened.”
“The right guy will come along. You have to be patient.” Neil had pushed aside the remains of his lunch. He reached over and clasped her forearms, giving them a reassuring squeeze.
“I’ve been patient! What if I keep waiting for Mr. Right and he doesn’t come along? What if he’s already come and gone, and I didn’t recognize him? Neil, how will I know a certain guy is the one?”
“Your instincts will tell you he’s the one. When you imagine living the rest of your life without him, you won’t be able to stand the thought.”
“Is that the way you felt when you proposed to Lisa?”
“Yes.” Neil quickly shoved the memory back behind a closed door of his past, but not before he’d been flooded with painful remembrance.
“I’m sorry.” Cara took one of his hands between hers, their roles quickly reversed with her offering him support. “That question just slipped out. I know you can’t bear reminiscing because you’re still grieving over Lisa and little Chris.”
“I’m okay,” Neil assured her. He stood up. “Don’t brood over what you overheard this morning, Cara. I’m sure you’re doing a lot to make Sophia’s remaining time on earth happy, just by being yourself.”
She sat there instead of rising to her feet. Neil looked at her questioningly.
“Do you have another minute?” she asked. “There’s more.”
He waited for her to elaborate, suddenly uneasy for reasons he didn’t quite fathom.
“Last night Roy asked me to marry him.”
Neil slowly sat back down. Roy Xavier was the automobile salesman she’d been dating for quite a while, but Neil hadn’t gotten the impression she was serious about the guy. “What was your answer?”
“I sort of turned him down.”
“‘Sort of’?”
“I told him the truth. That I like him and enjoy his company on our dates, but I don’t think I’m in love with him.” She studied Neil’s face closely, an anxious frown cutting tiny lines between her eyebrows. “You seem relieved I didn’t say yes.”
“Your announcement took me by surprise,” he said, not comfortable with admitting that he was relieved. Neil didn’t understand himself why his gut reaction to the idea of her marrying Roy Xavier had been so strongly negative, other than the fact that nobody she’d ever dated had seemed good enough for her.
“I wasn’t prepared for him to propose,” she confided. “I stammered around, like an idiot. Thoughts were whirling around in my head. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, plus a part of my brain was ticking off Roy’s qualifications that would make him a good husband for me.” She used her fingers now to tick off those qualifications as she listed them for Neil. “He’s a good-hearted guy. He’s successful at his job. Most months he’s the top car salesman at the dealership. He’s a church going man. He’s from a large family. I haven’t been around his parents a lot, but I like them just fine, and he seems to like mine.” In her expressive way, Cara threw up her hands. “Why not marry Roy? That’s the question. Especially when I’ll be thirty years old my next birthday.”
“You said yourself you’re not in love with him. Not after dating him for what, six months?”
“Six and a half months actually.” She resumed her argument with Neil and with herself. “Maybe there are some people in the world who don’t ever fall head over heels in love. Maybe with those people, love grows gradually out of respect and affection. Romantic love doesn’t last anyway, right?”
“Cara, you’re trying to talk yourself into marrying Roy Xavier.”
“You think I’d be making a big mistake?”
Yes. Neil clamped his jaw closed to keep from speaking the definite reply that rose to his lips. “What I think doesn’t matter. It’s your life and your decision. But don’t feel pressured into marrying Roy or anybody else just because you’re tired of being single and would like to make your grandmother happy.”
“But you don’t dislike Roy?”
“I don’t know Roy well enough to like or dislike him. He seems like a nice enough guy,” Neil added, aware that he sounded grudging.
Cara held out her left hand and gazed wistfully at her bare ring finger. “He didn’t buy an engagement ring. He said we could go shopping together and pick one out.”
“So Roy hasn’t given up hope that you’ll say yes, I take it.”
“Oh, no. He was disappointed by my reaction to his proposal, naturally, but he’s willing to give me some time.” She placed her palms on the table and levered herself up. “Thanks, Neil, for listening to another segment in the Life of Cara soap opera. I feel better now, more able to cope. Talking to you about a problem always has that effect on me.”
Neil didn’t feel good at all about the outcome of the heart-to-heart talk they’d had. In fact, suddenly his mood was lousy.
“Boss, a sales rep is out here and wants to talk to you.” Peewee stuck his head in the doorway to speak to Neil. He named the muffler company the sales person was representing.
“Tell him I’ll be right out,” Neil said.
“Will do.” Peewee left.
Cara came around the table. “You go and talk to the rep. I’ll tidy up,” she said.
“You’re not the maid around here.”
Neil had made that point clear in an employees’ meeting recently. He’d posted a new sign, restating his father’s old rule that each person using the lounge was to clean up after himself or herself out of consideration for fellow employees. Cara hadn’t complained to Neil, but he’d noticed that she was taking it upon herself to clear the table and tidy up when her co-workers didn’t bother to pick up after themselves.
“Don’t be so doggoned self-sufficient,” she scolded him, slapping his hand lightly away as he reached for his empty beverage can. “I like to do something nice for you when I get the chance. It’s payback time.” Cara stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek, then gave him a shove toward the door.
“Thanks, Cara.”
“You’re welcome.”
With efficient movements, she crumpled up the butcher paper around the uneaten portion of the po’boy. He’d gotten down most of his three-quarters of the sandwich, much to Cara’s satisfaction. Now if he didn’t eat a square meal for supper, at least he’d had some nourishment today, she reflected.
Cara only wished she could do more than help Neil run his business and make sure that he ate right. She worried about him and her heart ached for him when she thought about all that he’d been through, losing his wife and child. They’d been killed in a terrible ten-automobile
