Happily Letter After by Vi Keeland
CHAPTER 31
SEBASTIAN
“Marmaduke, look at me.”
The dog raced around the room, his paws scratching against the hardwood floor.
“Stop, you horse!”
He continued to scurry. I then remembered the German command for “stay.”
“Bleib!”
That worked. He stopped in front of me.
“Show me what you did with it.”
Ruff!
I held out the mangled, empty box and pointed inside. “What did you do with the ring?”
Ruff!
If the past few days were a movie, they would have been dubbed: The Year the Dog Ruined Christmas.
The morning of Christmas Eve, I’d been standing in front of the mirror in my room, practicing all the poignant words I would recite when I got down on one knee and asked Sadie to be my wife. I hadn’t been sure when exactly I was going to pop the question—either it was going to be Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I only knew it was going to be at some point during those two days, when the moment felt right.
Birdie knew everything and had planned her own little speech to recite to Sadie when we proposed. With Sadie’s father in town to witness it all, it was supposed to be epic. That is, until I decided to leave the ring on my end table while I took a shower. When I emerged from the bathroom, the box was gone.
There was no one else to blame but the Duke. He was the only one home at the time and he’d been in and out of my room moments before my shower.
I ended up having to tell Birdie. She and I’d spent the entire day scouring the house for the ring box. We finally found it—empty. Our dog had lost a $20,000 Tiffany diamond.
I supposed I could’ve still proposed without it. But I’d wanted everything to be perfect, and without a ring, well, that would have pretty much sucked. Thank God I’d also had the idea to have that pendant designed, because at least I had something to give Sadie. What a nightmare.
So here I was, the day after Christmas, with no ring, just a crushed empty box, and I was talking to the dog expecting an answer like a lunatic—as if I could somehow negotiate with him to tell me what he’d done with it.
The fact that we’d turned the entire house upside down and still couldn’t find the ring was very discouraging to say the least.
If it didn’t turn up in the next few weeks, I’d have to cut my losses and purchase a new ring. But I still hadn’t given up 100 percent hope yet.
It was strange, too. I sensed something in Sadie when she left this morning, like a disappointment. I wondered if she’d been secretly hoping I’d pop the question. That made all this so much worse—because I desperately wanted to put that ring on her finger.
Birdie walked into my bedroom as I continued to negotiate with the dog.
“Any luck, Daddy?”
“No. You?”
She shook her head. “No. I even went through all my stuffed animals, thinking maybe Marmaduke was playing with them and might have had the ring there. But I didn’t find anything. Is there anywhere else we could look?”
Looking around and scratching my head, I said, “I feel like we’ve searched every corner of the house.”
Birdie knelt in front of the dog. “Marmaduke, please tell us where you put Sadie’s ring.” He just proceeded to lick her face. Even my daughter couldn’t work her magic with him when it came to this situation.
The doorbell rang. My heart sped up a bit because I knew it was Sadie arriving back at the house for our afternoon plans. She’d only run home for a change of clothes. We’d be taking Marmaduke to the park, then heading to Bianco’s for an early dinner. Then later, we’d watch a movie back here.
I opened the door to let her in. “Hey, sweetheart,” I said as I leaned in to kiss her.
Sadie’s cheeks were rosy from the cold. “Hey.”
“Your dad make it home okay?”
“Yeah. He just called. He’s safely back in Suffern.”
“Good. It was nice getting to spend quality time with him.”
“Yeah. He really enjoyed you guys, too.” She smiled.
Birdie entered the living room with her coat already on. “We’re ready whenever you are, Sadie!”
“Hey, Miss Birdie.” She hugged my daughter. “Did you miss me in the three hours I was gone?”
“Tons!” She giggled.
The three of us embarked on our outing with the dog walking us as usual instead of the other way around.
When we arrived at the park, we let Marmaduke run around for a bit while we sat on a bench and listened to Birdie go on and on about the kids at school. Meanwhile, the entire time I kept thinking about the damn ring. I hoped my lack of attention wasn’t too obvious. I’d hate to have to lie to Sadie when she called me out on being preoccupied.
After twenty minutes, Marmaduke finally got tuckered out. We got up from the bench and began the trek home to drop him off so we could head out for dinner at my restaurant.
A few blocks down the street, the dog stopped under a tree. We knew what that meant. So we waited while he squatted down. Sadie had been holding the cleanup bag, so she bent down to pick up his droppings.
She suddenly froze.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Sadie’s mouth hung open.
She could hardly speak. “Um . . . there’s a . . . diamond . . . ring . . . in his poop!”
Birdie squealed and began jumping up and down. “Yay!”
Me? I literally just stood there on the sidewalk with my eyes bugging out in total disbelief.
No fucking way.
Instead of explaining, something unexpected happened. I just started laughing uncontrollably. It must have been the few days of stress catching up with me. It was apparently contagious because Birdie fell into a laughing fit as well. Sadie was the last to give in. Eventually, she lost control and began cracking up too. Marmaduke then started barking at us.
Once I got over my hysteria, I realized Sadie was still standing there looking down at the large, oval diamond—and everything that came along with it.
I held up my index finger. “Stay right there. Don’t move.”
“Yeah . . . not going anywhere at the moment.” She laughed.
Thankfully there was a store on the corner. I ran inside, asked the man at the register for a couple of plastic bags, and thanked him profusely.
I rushed back, then used one of the bags to cover my hand in order to carefully pick the ring out before placing it in the other bag.
Sadie then discarded everything else and tied the other bag she’d been holding.
Now collectively over our laughing fits, the three of us just stood there. I needed to acknowledge the ring but didn’t know quite how to do it. So I did what felt right in that moment.
Kneeling, I said, “Sadie, this is probably going to go down in history as the shittiest proposal in the history of proposals. But now that you saw what you did, I can’t erase it. The surprise is already ruined, so I’m going to run with this.” I took a deep breath in. “I wanted so badly to propose to you over Christmas. Birdie and I had been planning it for some time. Then, as you’ve probably been able to figure out, the ring went missing. We scoured the earth for it. And now it’s clear why it never surfaced.” I looked up at the sky to gather my thoughts before I met her gaze again. “I was devastated, because I thought the ring was an important part of the process and chose to delay something that in my heart I really didn’t want to put off. This was apparently the universe’s way of showing me that the ring wasn’t the most important part. The most important part of a proposal is the expression of love.” I put my hand on my chest. “I love you. Birdie loves you. Please say you’ll be a part of our family forever?”
Tears covered Sadie’s face, her words barely coherent as she nodded. “Yes! Of course, it would be my honor. Yes!”
Then I stood to kiss my lady hard—my lady, who was still carrying a poop bag. But somehow none of that seemed to matter right now. My daughter jumped and clapped while Marmaduke continued to bark at us. Birdie came between us and we hugged her.
We’d gone from laughing to crying in unison. If anyone had been watching this episode on the sidewalk from start to finish, I could only imagine they were either thoroughly confused or thoroughly entertained.
“I promise to get the ring properly disinfected,” I said.
She wiped her eyes. “It is so beautiful from what I could see of it.”
I turned to the dog. “You could’ve choked on that, you crazy animal.”
Sadie laughed. “I guess it was fitting that he somehow be a part of this, seeing as how he had a big part in us becoming a family.”
Birdie excitedly proclaimed, “And now I can tell everyone my dog poops diamonds!”
