The band played a song Suzanne didn’t recognize and Katie dropped her baton.
Katie recovered nicely, kept marching in stride.
Suzanne squeezed John’s hand and was going to remark on their niece’s resilience and agility, but John was staring off.
He had just a sprinkle of a smile on his face, and his blue eyes were just as gorgeous as they were the week they met, the same week as the Dundee County Spring Festival Parade.
They bought a house on the parade route as soon as John got back from the service, and hadn’t missed one in decades.
Suzanne had been festival queen, John had marched with the junior ROTC.
They were crazy in love.
They didn’t seem so crazy in love anymore.
We have a wonderful life, Suzanne thought. I really have no complaints, do I? Yes, yes goddamnit, I have one complaint. One.
Suzanne squeezed again.
“Whatcha thinking about?” She asked John, and she had a correct answer in mind.
She had risked everything: Her parent’s respect, her college scholarship, the patty melt she had for lunch at Simmek’s Diner, to climb up the water tower and have sex with John, only weeks after the parade.
She hadn’t gotten pregnant and she repeatedly thanked god. She wished a thousand times she could take back the thanks after she found out she couldn’t get pregnant at all.
The answer she wanted to hear was her.
She wanted to hear that he was daydreaming about her in her taffeta queen’s gown with the Irish lace slip her mom had spent way too much money on.
She wanted to hear that she was still beautiful.
She wanted…
“Was thinkin’ bout the good old days,” John said, and Suzanne felt her chest warm up. ‘When the Festival queen was a beautiful girl…” Suzanne warmed further, faster, her smile so strong she felt like it might stick. She leaned into her husband, did that thing with her pinkie finger that meant she… “and not a boy in makeup and a wig.”
Suzanne let go of John’s hand.
“I think she’s beautiful, Jonathan,” adding the syllables of his name that he loathed.”It’s not just makeup, it’s–”
“Ok, enough lecture, Suzipants. That’s not all I was thinking of.”
Suzanne looked at her husband hopefully.
“What else?”
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