Untraceable by Lindsay Delagair Page A

out, but he would be able
to hear the song as he was drying and re-dressing. And, although I
hadn’t told him what the final song would be, he’d heard it
before—on Remake. This time I cried as I sang, “Born Again.”
    Pastor Anderson joined me on stage and
thanked everyone for staying and then said we had one more ceremony
to complete, but it would be private. As the auditorium cleared
out, I saw someone sitting in the very back row that I hadn’t
noticed earlier; Gwen. She was dabbing her eyes with a tissue as
she smiled back at me. Micah had invited her, but she told us she
most likely wouldn’t be able to make it. I felt a touch on my arm
and Micah was standing there beside me.
    “ Look who made it,” I
pointed out as she rose from the back and began working her way
forward through the last of the people leaving the
sanctuary.
    Micah met her halfway and hugged her,
“I was hoping you’d be here. We’ve got a surprise for you.” He had
his arm over her shoulder as he walked her to where we were all
standing. “You’re going to be an Aunt in six months.”
    “ I’m going to be an Aunt
in three months, unless your wife is actually fat instead of six
months pregnant.” She winked at me.
    “ You are going to be an
Aunt in three months, but you’re going to be an Aunt again in
December.”
    “ Unless I totally wasn’t
paying attention in science class, that’s impossible.”
    “ You must not have been
paying attention then,” David spoke up. “Because that’s what’s
going to happen when I get married in December. You’ll be Kimmy’s
aunt.”
    “ Well, I’ll be a
son-of-a…” She suddenly remembered what establishment she was
standing in. “You and Nadia? How long has this been going
on?”
    “ From the moment I met her
last June, but she didn’t agree to marry me until
yesterday.”
    “ I knew it!” she said, but
still clearly surprised. “Not that you two were…” She let her
statement fade. “I knew there was something going on with you. I
told Mom you were acting weird like you were on happy pills or
something.” She sighed then reached out to hug my mother, “I don’t
know what you did to him, but thank God somebody finally got
through that rock in his chest that he called his
heart.”
    “ So you’re okay with
this?” Mom asked. Not that she needed Gwen’s approval, but she
obviously wanted all his family members to be in
agreement.
    “ Sure, I am—it might be a
little funky for these two,” she said, pointing to Micah and me.
“But after everything they’ve been through, they ought to be used
to weird by now.”
    Although we all laughed, Mom had no
idea exactly how weird Gwen was honestly insinuating.
    “ Are we ready?” Pastor
Anderson asked as he approached us.
    It was all quite simple and
unrehearsed. But there was a beauty in the gentle rejoining of our
hearts to each other after so much pain had passed between us.
Neither of us wanted to be the source of that pain. I never wanted
to hurt him when D’Angelo forced me into leaving, but it did hurt
him in the worst possible way. He never wanted to hurt me when the
same horrid man filled Micah’s body with enough amphetamines and
steroids to drive him to nearly kill me. None of this was spoken of
course, but it was clearly on both our minds as we re-committed our
lives to each other.
    “ Once again, I present to
you, Mr. and Mrs. Micah Gavarreen. May God bless you both and
protect the love you have for one another. You may kiss your
spouse.”
    All I could pray, as our lips met to
seal our vows, was that we would finally have a chance to be happy
together.
    “ I love you, baby,” I
whispered as I wrapped my arms tightly around his neck.
    He couldn’t speak, his eyes were red
and he was trying to mouth the words ‘I love you,’ when he buried
his face against my neck as a small choked sound struggled free
from his chest. We didn’t move from the spot that felt like we had
been rooted to as he worked on