佚名/Anonymous
Early morning and mist is wrapped around the tops of the mountains. Down here it is lifting slowly like a reluctant child leaving her warm sleep. I walk through fields of shiny wet grass and pick out diamonds in the dew. I have come early and parked the car further away than I needed to so that I have time to think and to find the right words.
Now that I’m here I am not so sure and think about turning back and leaving. I could put it off for another time. Another day, another week—what difference would it make?
I am out of the fields now and on the very edge of the village. And then just as I think about bolting like some scared rabbit he is there. He has seen me from the window and he’s calling my name. I run to him. I like being in his arms. I love his love. He is the father I never had, the father I longed for as a child.
When Vincent first took me to meet him he opened his arms then. There was no formal handshake, none of the usual politeness or caution of strangers. Later I asked Vincent if his dad was like that with all his girlfriends.
“I’ve never taken any of them home before.”he said. And although he laughed his dark eyes locked with mine and in that moment he told me that he loved me and that I was special. I looked right back at him to let him know that I felt the same.
We went together just months later to tell his dad that we had plans to marry, that we wanted to be married in the village where Vincent and his brother had grown up. His dad brought them up on his own above a coffee shop. His sons left to live and work in the town but his dad stayed. He still has the shop and it is busy all year round. In the summer, tourists come and in the winter the locals come as much for his conversation as his good coffee.
Vincent pulled him away from his customers that day and told him we were getting married. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, just kept his head down, then he looked up and nodded, but his dark eyes were shiny and I knew how happy we had made him.