“Your father loves you.” Tyler pointed out into the audience.
The camera zoomed in on John. He looked so different without the beard and all his long hair! I wouldn’t have recognized him. I frowned, something clenching in my belly as I looked at his face filling the screen. I had a moment of déjà vu or more like a sudden flash of memory or recognition.
“That’s your father, Dale.” Tyler he said. “I know you love your mother and you want to protect her too. But everything I’ve said here today is the truth". And your father knows it.”
I saw John nodding, his eyes locked on his son, sitting on stage.
Dale frowned, looking from John to Tyler and back again.
“We need to take a break,” Sidney Clare announced. “Stay tuned for more on this fascinating family celebrity drama.”
Is that what it was? Fascinating celebrity drama?
As soon as the cameras cut off I ran onto the stage. As I predicted, the crew didn’t even notice me until I did.
Dale put his arms around me, pulling be down to the sofa beside him.
“It’s okay!” Sidney Clare informed the crew, waving them back. “She’s his girlfriend.”
“Dale, are you okay?” I ignored her and Tyler and everyone else.
He gave me a slow nod but I knew better. Inside, it was turmoil. I could see it in his eyes.
“I think…” He hesitated, looking up and seeing John and Chrissy both coming onto the stage, Debra following tentatively behind.
Dale stood as his father approached and I’ll never forget the look of confusion on his face. And it was that moment I saw it, really saw it. Dale wasn’t Tyler’s. John and Dale had the same blue eyes, the same high cheek bones, the same dimpled chin. John’s features had been so covered in hair, his eyes hidden behind a pair of glasses, I’d never noticed it before.
“I’m sorry.” John put his arms around Dale and brought him in for a huge hug. I cried just seeing them together like that. Chrissy leaned against her father’s side and he included her too, the three of them standing on stage, one little family that had been the victim of more than enough drama in their lives.
“I was just trying to protect you,” John said. I saw he was crying too. “Your mother… when she’s not on her medication, she has these mood swings. She’s very volatile. I wanted to protect you from that. From her obsessions and her lies. I had no idea… I didn’t know, until Chrissy told me, that she’d convinced you both you weren’t even my children.”
“She told me Dad didn’t want me,” Chrissy said, her lower lip trembling. “She told me he only wanted you, because you were a boy. So I stayed… I stayed with her. Dale, she got so bad. Finally, Dad convinced her she needed to get help, go back on her medication.”
“She really is out of control when she’s not on her medications,” John said sadly. “She will go to great lengths to convince you to believe in her delusions. But I can assure you both, we never had a problem conceiving. You’re both very much my children.”
“Psst.” Sidney Clare tried to interrupt their little threesome. “Um, can you save some of this for when we come back live? This is great stuff!”
I stared at her, disbelieving.
“Fuck you, lady.” Dale shook his head. “Come on, let’s go home.”
“Wait!” Sidney Clare called after us as we started off stage. “Don’t you want to hear the DNA results? Tyler has a blood test that proves—”
“I don’t need proof,” Dale replied, looking straight at John. “This is my father. And I believe him.”
Backstage, the crew was going crazy, trying to get us all back onto the stage. We all refused, so Sidney Clare continued to talk to Tyler. I saw some of it as John and Dale and Chrissy stood there talking and hugging and telling each other things they’d never shared aloud to one another before.
Tyler did have DNA evidence. He’d done it, he said, to prove to Dale’s mother once and for all that he wasn’t the father of her children. She accused him of faking the test, switching samples. She simply wouldn’t believe.
Then Ben came backstage, giving me a giant hug before he said anything at all.
“You sure you want me as a daughter?” I asked. “We’re a pretty crazy family.”
“You know what?” Ben asked, smiling down at me. “I’ve found sometimes the best things in life are crazy.”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “You’re going to fit in just find around here.”
“Aimee!” I cried, waving her and Matt over. They’d found their way backstage. “Oh my god, you look gorgeous!”
“I look fat.” She made a face, rolling her eyes and smoothing her hands over her growing belly. “But she’s growing just fine, so I can live with it for nine months I guess. Looks like we’ll have a Christmas baby.”
“She?” I raised my eyebrows. “For sure, a girl?”
She nodded. “I think Matt wanted a boy but…”
“Nope.” Matt shook his head. “I just have to make sure I get myself a shotgun to sit on the porch with.”
I laughed.
“Well since the gang’s all here, how about we go to dinner before my son has to go play his music in front of thirty thousand fans?” John suggested, his arm around Dale’s shoulder.
“Proud Papa.” I kissed John on his now very smooth cheek.
“I have to make a phone call first,” Dale said.
I looked at him, questioning.
“I have to fire my manager,” he said, glancing up at Tyler still talking to Sidney Clare. “I don’t appreciate being ambushed.”
“I won’t argue. He’s never liked me. But I think he was just trying to protect you,” I offered.
“No.” Dale shook his head. “My father was trying to protect me. My manager was trying to protect his investment.”
“Can you blame him?” I smiled, putting my arms around his neck. “You’re worth it.”
“I’m done keeping secrets.” Dale touched his forehead to mine. “I’m done with lies.”
“Me too.”
“You pick the date. I don’t care if it’s on camera in front of a zillion people or at the highest mountain at the edge of the world. You name the time and the place and I’ll be there. I’m going to marry you.”
“You promise?” I could see the shine of my ring under the lights.
“I promise.” His words flooded me with warmth.
“You know what that will make me?”
He smirked. “Mrs. Sara Diamond.”
“The luckiest girl in the world.”
EPILOGUE
“Sara?” Aimee snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Earth to Sara!”
“What?” I startled. “I’m right here.”
“He’ll be here,” she insisted, coming up behind me and adjusting the veil that had been adjusted a hundred times today.
“I know.” I looked at myself in the free-standing full-length mirror that had been set up. Dale hadn’t seen the dress—I had to hold onto some traditions. But we were definitely not throwing bouquets or garters.
“He’s here!” Wendy burst into the room, followed by Carrie. “They flew him in on a helicopter!”
I smiled, looking at all three of them. “Remember when we did this at your wedding, Aimee?”
“It was the perfect wedding.” She sighed. “Until a bunch of screaming teenagers crashed in to see your boyfriend.”
“I’m still sorry about that.” I winced.
“It will make a great story to tell the grandkids,” she said.
“I think Dharma has a little while to wait before she’s ready to give you grandkids,” I said with a laugh. As if on cue, Mrs. Wells came in, bouncing a baby on her hip.
“She’s hungry, little Mama and I don’t have the equipment.”
Aimee laughed. “Hand her over. I have a minute to nurse her.”
I’d been so touched when Aimee said they wanted to name her Dharma. It meant some little part of her lived on. I didn’t believe in fate or superstition, but Aimee’s Dharma reminded me of my own in ways I couldn’t even explain.
“I’m loving this one wedding a year thing,” Wendy said, smoothing down the deep velvet purple of her dress. “I get these dresses hemmed and they’re perfect for a night on the town!”
“Yes, because we have so many of those,” Carrie said with a smirk.
“We would, if you weren’t such a homebody.” Wendy poked her.
“We were just talking about the girls who crashed my wedding, Mom,” Aimee said, changing the subject.
“Oh what a disaster that was.” Mrs. Wells shook her head. “Well that won’t happen here!”
“No way.” Carrie shook her head. “Not even possible.”
“It’s time.” Debra stuck her head in, smiling at me. “You are just the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen.”
“Thanks.” I smiled. “I hope he thinks so.”
“He already does.” Aimee said, standing up. Dharma had clearly decided she just wanted a little snack. “Ready?”
I took a deep breath, picking up my bouquet of freesia and lavender and daisies, and stepped outside of the tent. The wind up here was strong and I reached for my veil.
“I got it.” Debra secured a few more pins. “If you’re going to have a wedding at the top of a mountain in Greece, you have to be ready with extra bobby pins.”
“Thanks.” I leaned over and kissed her cheek. She was the closest thing I had to a mother and I couldn’t have asked for better.
“I’m here, I’m here!” Chrissy ran out of one of the tents set up for guests wearing her bridesmaids dress and matching heels. “Am I late?”
“You just made it.” Deb laughed.
“Okay girls, let’s line up,” Mrs. Wells directed. “Sara, you start over there.”
I turned and saw John, clean-shaven, his hair still short—he’d decided he liked it—standing next to Ben. They both looked incredibly handsome in their tuxes and they both smiled back at me as I approached.
Dale Diamond was waiting for me at the top of the world, in a gazebo we had actually paid someone to build. They had to bring up the pieces, they told me, by donkey. I didn’t ask how that worked, exactly, but the gazebo was there and Dale was in it.
Today was our day. Dale was waiting for me. And I had two men who loved me, two men I proudly called, “Dad,” to walk me down the aisle.
I really was the luckiest girl in the world.
