Variation on a Theme, Book 6
Copyright© 2024 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 159: Perfectly Fine Hearts
Monday, June 23, 1986
We said our goodbyes to Cammie, Mel, and Amy over breakfast, promising to be back by early July. All of them wished Angie a happy birthday as well. That prompted us to discover that Amy’s birthday was in mid-August. We would have to have a celebration!
We had to be back by the 14th if we were going to take summer classes, but we expected to be back nearly a week before that. Of course, we were going to turn right around and fly out the 16th or 17th, missing several days of summer classes, but everyone felt we could probably make that work. We would see. Even in summer school, missing two or three days in the first week of classes would probably not be a disaster.
Jas and I told Amy we loved her, and she told us she loved us. We all promised to do our best to not die until our next meeting.
With that, she headed to work, while we headed to Houston.
The four of us had lunch with Mom. After lunch, I left my car at the Nguyens’ house. Angie drove us to the airport, where we picked up Francis’s car. I drove it to their house, while Angie and Paige headed to Tony and Jean’s for the night. Once we had Francis’s car safely at home, Jas and I headed to the Amtrak station. My car was larger, and larger was better.
It was about a three-hour wait for the train, which arrived about two hours late. By Amtrak standards, that wasn’t all that late.
Camille and Francis emerged from one of the sleeper cars, with a porter helping them with their bags. Jas got tears in her eyes when she saw Francis, and rushed over and hugged him fiercely.
“Papa!” she said, sniffling.
“I’m fine, angel,” he said, trying (and mostly failing) to sound gruff. “It’ll take more than this to slow me down!”
“It’ll take me,” Camille said, chuckling. “You do need to slow down, my love. Not too much, but you need to take better care of yourself. I don’t plan on being without you for many a year!”
Francis’s demeanor shifted, and he said, “I will. I promise.”
“I’ve been trying not to worry, but ... I still worried,” Jas said. “And I agree with Mama! Take care of yourself, Papa!”
“The doctor gave me plenty of instructions,” Francis said. “And I can’t travel to France unless I follow them. I’m not about to miss out on introducing my daughter’s fiancé to the family!”
“If that works for you, it works for me,” Jas said. She was smiling, but her eyes said she was still just a bit nervous.
Francis refused assistance, but I doubted he actually needed any. The thing is, neither deep vein thrombosis nor the resulting pulmonary embolism would have much in the way of lingering symptoms on their own. That didn’t mean there might not still be a dangerous blood clot in Francis’s veins, though, or that one might not form the next time he sat for too long.
The blood thinners would help with that, of course, but those had side effects of their own. First-life Mom had been on them for about fifteen years, and she’d been fine for over thirteen of those. The first year, though, had sometimes been rough while they got her medicine adjusted, and the year when she fought off the cancer had been a challenge of its own.
Once we had them in my car, I headed home. Nothing more was said about Francis’s health. I’m sure more would be said, but not now. Instead, we caught up on their trip and on our trip. Not everything, of course, but the highlights of both.
Andrew himself would be back in a few days. Coincidentally, it would be after we left for our trip. I was pretty sure he wasn’t dodging us, though. He had things to do, and so did we. With the change in plans, it looked more likely that Andrew would travel to France with us, which might be fun.
Or not, depending. Jas had somewhat mixed feelings about Andrew, which meant I did, too. But those mixed feelings were almost entirely obviated by our impending marriage. Not entirely, but enough.
In some other universe, Jas might have remained physical with Andrew, marriage or not. But this universe was not that one. If it happened again, I thought I would be fine with it. I suspected Jas might never be fine with it, though.
Francis tired out fairly early in the evening and headed off to bed. Camille said it was probably the medicine hitting him. They had a meeting scheduled with their regular doctor tomorrow. He and a consulting specialist would review everything and tweak the prescription.
We had nothing planned, so we offered to take them to the doctor. Camille accepted our offer immediately, looking very happy about it. We wouldn’t meddle, but we could play driver for another day.
Camille and Francis were sound asleep by the time Jas and I went to bed. Even with our room well away from theirs, we still tried to keep it down. No sense messing up Francis’s recovery by keeping him awake with sounds he didn’t want to hear anyway.
Tuesday, June 24, 1986
The highlight of the day was Francis’s appointment. I wound up driving the four of us there.
Camille was quite happy to have the help. It let her fully concentrate on her husband’s health. I wasn’t sure if Francis was happy or not. Dad would have said it was bad for his blood pressure to be a passenger with me driving, and he might have been right.
It was a drizzly day overall, but not bad. Still, driving in the rain was another thing Camille didn’t have to worry about.
Jas and I waited outside during Francis’s appointment, but we got the full recap during the drive home. Both doctors believed he was on the wrong medicine, and his cardiologist prescribed a replacement. He was to check in with them next week.
I’d watched this before, with Mom, but couldn’t say that. I trusted his doctor to make the right decisions, though, and that was enough.
If we had to, money would be no object even now. Or, at least, nearly no object. But, so far, there was no reason to believe we had to intervene, nor so much as mention the possibility of intervening. Both of his doctors had good reputations, and this was the sort of thing many patients got through successfully.
The four of us wound up at Mom and Dad’s for dinner. That way, Angie would be with them for her birthday morning. Tony and Jean would have been fine, but everyone knew she wanted to be with her parents.
Angie caught us up on the Sharon meeting. She’d talked to Sharon’s parole officer, and all was well. He felt like the meeting was in Sharon’s best interests and was optimistic about it. All he wanted was for Angie to let him know if it didn’t go well, so he could be on the lookout for any signs of trouble. He would be, anyway, but more so if there were fireworks.
After dinner, Angie gave me a questioning look. I had no idea what she was thinking of, but I figured she could — and should — just run with it, so I smiled and nodded.
She huffed a tiny bit, came over to me, hugged me, and whispered, “Wedding costs.”
Ah! That made plenty of sense. I nodded a bit more vigorously.
“Before you go to bed,” she said, “We have another of those conversation topics.”
“All of these surprises aren’t good for my heart!” Dad protested, somewhat over-dramatically.
Mom sighed and said, “Your heart is perfectly fine, Sam! Thank goodness, too!”
He chuckled a bit and nodded.
“So the doctors say, and I believe them,” he said.
The subtext was, of course, that he didn’t completely believe them. I hardly blamed him, given how his father and brother had died. That I fully expected Robert to follow in their footsteps (unless, perhaps, we intervened?) added to that.
But I expected Dad to be fine, too. That is, if things repeated. He’d had issues with pacemakers over the years, after all, and one of those could have killed him.
Things might be different, though. We had all sorts of ways to influence his health, both overtly and covertly. Or, at least, we would if things worked out as we hoped and expected. This conversation was, just slightly, a part of that.
Mind you: neither my first-life Mom and Dad, nor Angie’s, had spent any money on weddings beyond their own travel expenses and modest gifts, or at least we didn’t believe they had. My wife and I had paid for ours, and there had probably not been one in Angie’s world. If there had been, Iceberg Steve would have been at least in his thirties and likely making very good money. He probably would have paid for his own wedding, given that.
Angie got everyone settled in the living room and then said, “This update is really simple. We’ll tell the other parents, but we wanted to talk to you first, even though — traditionally speaking — you’re not the most important parents for this conversation.”
Mom jumped immediately to the correct conclusion. She said, “You must mean the weddings. Or, I suppose, paying for the weddings.”
“Got it in one,” Angie said, chuckling. “Yes, I’ll be a bride, but...”
Paige waved her hand and said, “I’m the bride-ier bride, since I accepted the proposal.”
Everyone laughed at that, nodding. She had a point, and we all knew it.
“Anyway,” Angie said, “This is probably no surprise, given our other updates, but we all agreed, and we think it’s time to just say it. We fully expect to pay for our own weddings. Gifts are welcome, of course...”
That also got a bit of laughter.
“But everyone should keep those reasonable, since we’ll have been ‘keeping house’ for three years before the wedding. The real point is: we have the money to do it. Despite how many people we expect to have, we’re planning relatively modest weddings. The goal is to have a nice party for all ages with a bit of a ceremony at the start of it, honestly.”
Mom nodded along. When Angie had finished, she said, “I like that way of thinking about it. That’s mostly what we did.”
Dad added, “We could have done something more elaborate — I had a good job by that point — but ... it just felt...”
“It wasn’t the point,” Mom said. “The point was celebrating our love with our friends and family. And that’s your point, too. I’m...”
She sniffled suddenly, just once, and then said, “I’m really happy that you got there on your own!”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with ‘destination weddings’ or the like,” Angie said. “It’s what matters to you. If you really, really love Hawaii or something, and can, then sure, get married there. We like Houston plenty well enough, and we love our friends and want them to be able to attend and have a good time. That means keeping it local and making it a nice party.”
“I’m sure the Seilers and Nguyens will be relieved,” Mom said, chuckling. “By which, honestly, I mean relieved about not having to pretend that they’re paying. This one we’ve all mostly seen coming. It didn’t make sense that you would lean all that much on us if you could travel hither and yon without straining your budget.”
“We’re still leaning on them,” Jas said. “Just differently. They’ll be involved with planning, talking to the people we hire, brainstorming — all of that. So will you, because ... well. This wedding has two ‘bride-ier’ brides, one not-as-bride-y a bride, two people in the role that’s usually for the groom’s parents — twice over — and four people as bride’s parents. We need everyone to be on the same page! No ‘the bride must love everything,’ or ‘the bride’s parents get total veto power,’ or anything like that. I think we all will love everything, but that’s because of who we are and because we all see pretty much eye-to-eye. But we can’t break ties by deferring to whoever’s the ‘most important.’ We’re all important.”
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.