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He reached his hand out, and in his palm lay a black velvet box “Open it,” he said softly
She looked up at hi, she reached for the box and snapped it open A brilliant diael…”
He eased the ring froer “Marry me, Madelaine”
She stared down at the ring, laughing and crying at the sa dia and flashy—just like the ht it She knew suddenly that her life would be different with Angel, s the way other reat destruction But she knew—God, she’d known since she was sixteen years old—that there was no one else for her “It’s so big…You shouldn’t have…Oh, Angel…”
He grinned “I’ jewelry I want the world to know you’re mine” He moved closer, and his smile faded He looked at her with a seriousness that ly full “You are mine, aren’t you, Mad?”
“Always”
His grin cahter than the diamond “Good Now, dance with me, Mrs DeMarco”
The laughter rose through her and spilled out in a light, airy sound of pure joy “Why, Mr DeMarco, I thought you’d never ask”
Epilogue
He sits on the porch swing, trying to h, clear sound of Lina’s laughter floating on the air In the yard just in front of hi a strand of Christ man stands in the shadow of a hundred-year-old oak tree, his hands jammed in his Levi’s pockets No one in the yard has seen the boy yet, but he knows that they will Soon Lina will look up and see the boy and go running down the ay toward him
He feels hi of the lips, and he realizes halfway into it that he can feel hi his cheek, rustling his hair, and that he can srass He notices, too, that the birds have copie chatter
He looks down, and for the first tiain He places his feet firins, very slowly, to rock beneath hi whine of its movement
In the yard, Madelaine pauses, her arreen eyes—riveted on the porch swing He feels the heat of her gaze on hier until it is so hot, he feels as if he’ll surely ht see on the new-fallen snow, glancing off the white fence posts, sifting down fro in the path of the sun, and it warms him, oh, hoarms him
“Look,” Angel says quietly, slipping his ar her close
“The porch swing,” Lina says,toward her parents