Chapter 17

The next morning I discovered that Jennifer was already up. Normally, I had to prod her to get up since she liked to sleep in. When I went out to the main room, I saw Jennifer at the table with the pad of writing paper – a letter to her cousin I guessed.

I came over and gave Jennifer a kiss on the cheek then sat down across from her. “Can I assume you’ve made up your mind?” I asked her.

“Yes, I think I’m going to send Martin a letter directly.” She got a bit of an anxious look on her face. “Do you agree or should I send it through Mr. Dufor?”

“Sweetheart, if you feel comfortable sending the letter directly, then that’s the right thing to do.” I paused and mulled a though over in my mind. “Let me make a suggestion. If you feel comfortable about this, tell Martin you’d like to meet him face to face. Ask him to suggest a time and place giving us at least a couple of weeks’ time to get things arranged.”

Six weeks later, after couple of exchanges of letters, we headed out to meet Martin. We’d arranged for our friend Faye from the main island to come over and ‘house sit’ – or maybe it should be ‘cabin sit’ – for us. Both Maggie and Ralph were familiar with her as she was a frequent visitor to our island and she was happy to help us out.

We’d agreed on meeting in a hotel in Seattle. We’d also agreed that the first one there would leave a note for the other indicating what room they were in. As it turned out, Martin got there before us and once we were settled in our room, we called Martin and agreed to meet in the dining room in 30 minutes.

We arrived at the dining room just as a man was speaking to the hostess and overheard him say that he was expecting two others to join him. I spoke up and asked if he was Martin and soon all three of us were escorted to a quiet table.

I could sense that Jennifer was quite nervous to start with, but after talking to Martin for a few minutes I saw that she was slowly relaxing. Martin appeared to be slightly younger than myself, about my height with a fairly slender build and was quite handsome. As we chatted while waiting for our meal to be served, we discovered that Martin was quite soft spoken and was easy to talk with.

We spent about an hour over our meal talking, allowing Martin and Jennifer to get to know one another. Finally we needed to vacate the table so the staff could use it for other patrons. After agreeing to meet Martin again the next day, Jennifer and I went back to our room.

“Wally, I was pretty scared about meeting Martin,” Jennifer said.

I smiled and hugged her. “I know. I could tell that from watching you. Now that you’ve met him, what do you want to do next?”

Jennifer thought for a bit. “I’m not sure,” she said then smiled as she continued, “I guess this is another one of those ‘sleep on it’ things. Hopefully by the morning I’ll know where we go from here.”

The next morning Jennifer was wide awake and sitting in one of the chairs in the main room of our suite when I woke up. At first I thought she was sleeping but I realized she was deep in thought. “Good morning, my love” I said very quietly.

Jennifer opened her eyes, ran and jumped into my arms, almost knocking me over. “Oh Wally, everything is okay. We can set a wedding date now. I’m so happy.” Before I could say a word my mouth was covered by hers as she started to passionately kiss me.

Finally I managed to get disentangled. “Uh, I’m not sure I understand what’s happened. Can you fill me in?” I asked her.

Jennifer looked at me with the most contented look I’d seen on her face in a long time. “Remember when you’d ask me if I’d decided on a wedding date?” I nodded ‘yes’. “Well, every time you asked me, something seemed to tell me to say ‘no’. Last night I dreamt of our wedding and one of the guests was Martin. I think something was telling me to wait until I met Martin. I think we can set a date now.”

I pulled Jennifer to me again and hugged her for the longest time. Finally we parted and I made a suggestion. “Let’s get dressed then call him and ask him to come up here. We can order a breakfast from room service. How does that sound?” The smile on Jennifer’s face told me everything I needed to know.

While Jennifer was having a shower and getting dressed, I called Martin and asked him if he’d come to our suite in 30 minutes. Once Jennifer was finished I made myself presentable then called room service to order breakfast for three. I’d no sooner hung up the phone than there was a knock on the door. Jennifer opened the door and invited Martin in.

After a couple of minutes of small talk, Jennifer took control. “Martin, we only touched on what happened when Mom and Dad died. Let me – with Wally’s help – tell you the full story.” Over the hour or so, with an interruption to deal with the room service breakfast, Jennifer told Martin what had happened and what we were planning. From time to time she would look at me for confirmation of some fact or name but she’d got everything right. Martin was somewhat taken aback at a few things he’d heard but after some explanations he soon understood the situation and seemed at ease with things. Once she’d finished telling Martin what had transpired, Jennifer looked at me for a moment then turned back to Martin and started talking again.