A year after the accident, on the footbridge in the park where we used to ride bikes as kids, Eli got down on one knee and proposed. I said yes before he even finished the sentence.
We were both twenty-nine.
Chapter 5 – The Proposal and the Poison
Our families did not celebrate the way I’d hoped.
Eli’s parents were cautious — they loved me, but they were terrified I’d confused loyalty with romance. My mother was worse. Much worse.
At our engagement dinner, she pulled me into the kitchen and shut the door behind us.
“You cannot be serious about this,” she said.
“I am.”
“You’re sacrificing your youth for a childhood joke.”
“This has nothing to do with some pact we made at six.”
“You almost married Derek.”
“I’m aware.”
“And then the accident happened, Eli took care of you, and now you’ve convinced yourself you owe him your entire life.”
“I don’t owe him anything,” I said. “I chose him.”
Her eyes went shiny and furious. “What kind of future can he give you?”
Something in me went cold. “The kind built on respect. Which is more than Derek gave me.”
“You’ll spend the rest of your life explaining him to people.”
“He’s not a difficult concept, Mom.”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“No. Say it. Say it clearly.”
Her voice dropped, but she didn’t back down. “He looks like a child, Maren. People are going to think you’re throwing your life away out of pity, and you know it.”
Behind the door, a chair scraped hard against the deck floor.
Eli had heard every word.
I threw the kitchen door open and he was already halfway across the yard, moving fast. I followed him out, but he said he just needed air and kept walking. I let him go, my stomach in knots, my mother’s voice still ringing in my ears.
After that night, the comments didn’t stop. A cousin asked, with a completely straight face, whether we’d “considered all the practical issues.” An old friend joked our wedding photos were going to be “confusing.” Someone actually told Eli he was lucky to find a woman “willing to look past everything.”
