TRUE LOVER'S KNOT
Carina began to thrive.
Her grades climbed slowly but steadily, her teacher praising her progress and, more importantly, the effort she continuously exhibited both in and outside of the classroom. Porter, for as long as his attention span would allow, would help her with her homework, Emma and Neal stepping in to take over whenever the inevitable squabbling started, Porter having not yet developed enough patience to tolerate having to explain something more than once.
(Emma and Neal both loved that he tried though.)
And after Carina had reached a certain level of routineness at school, she asked if she could, maybe, take horseback riding lessons with Porter (which Emma could only guess came in the epic wake of a Porter Swan speech about the awesomeness of horses). But what had started as eager anticipation ended with her adamantly shaking her head no, helmet wobbling, when the instructor helped her into the saddle.
(Porter was extremely disappointed.)
"Dance," said Carina promptly, wasting no time when Emma asked if there was anything else she might like to try.
This started as a ballet class once a week and then, when her new friend Susan told her about gymnastics they wound up adding that too, and she would treat them to impromptu shows in the living room, showing off the newest spin or tumble she had picked up, Emma moving the productions outside as they grew more complicated.
(Neal installed a barre in her room and they bought portable mats for the yard that their dog Phang immediately mistook as his own.)
And bit bit by bit, they discovered that Carina was quite the little chatterbox. She would babble endlessly during dinner about what she had learned in Miss Kelly's class that day and then gleefully cackle her way through story after story about some silly thing her now best friend Susan had done. The most important thing, Emma and Neal agreed, was that she had started asking questions too. About Emma and Neal and Porter, growing infinitely curious about the people she had come to live with.
(And leading to a number of awkward conversations.)
"How did you and Neal meet?" At Carina's insistence they had just watched The Little Mermaid for the hundredth time, Porter joining the girls from behind the safety of a book.
"They met in the bug." Port told her, eyes peeking over the spine. He had heard this part of the story a good dozen times, but had yet to successfully weasel the full version of the tale out of either his parents.
Carina frowned as she looked up at him from her cocoon of pillows on the floor. "The car?"
"Yup." He popped the p and Emma noted a glint of something in his eyes. Finally, he clearly thought, Porter had found an ally in his quest to discover the truth. And, sure enough, a moment later Carina took the bait.
"How do you meet in a car?"
"Exactly." Porter shot her a triumphant look that turned expectant. "Mom?"
She was trapped with only one obvious solution. So she plastered on her best, most brightest smile and clapped her hands together. "Who wants chocolate chip cookies?"
She made a beeline for the kitchen, Carina following excitedly behind her, drowning out Porter's noise of frustration.
(Not that he didn't follow, of course, because cookies.)
Then one day, after Susan called to cancel their plans because her grandparents had dropped by for a visit, Carina asked, "Am I ever going to meet your parents?" as Neal and Emma drove the kids to the park for an afternoon of fun.
They shared a glance while, once more, Porter immediately chimed in, "We don't have any grandparents."
He said it very matter-of-factly. Like it wasn't a big deal at all.
"None?"
"Well, there's Liz, I guess. Mom never met her real parents," Porter explained (Emma tried not to wince at his casual use of the word real), "and Dad's dad didn't sound very nice before he lost him."
Silence followed the statement and Emma looked over her shoulder, noting that Neal's eyes had flickered to the rear-view mirror. Carina wore a thoughtful look on her face as she watched the cars zipping past them on the highway, but she didn't say anything beyond that.
Then, of course, after witnessing Effie's attempt to make a decision about whether or not she should take Leo's name after the wedding ("Or maybe a hyphen," she wondered aloud, before sighing "Euphemia Singh-Rosenberg is so long though."), Carina asked, "How come you didn't take Neal's last name?"
Emma decided to neglect the more complicated answer that involved fake names and police records. "Well, I suppose because Neal and I never got married."
"Oh." Like before she accepted this with a moment of very serious contemplation as she watched Emma chop the celery. Then, "How come?"
Emma gave an unconcerned shrug. "We just never got around to it."
Porter would have pressed it and wondered, what exactly, that meant and then would have put into play an elaborate scheme because good as married definitely wasn't the same as married. But Carina wasn't Porter. She just shrugged and ran off and so Emma didn't even have to tell her that if they ever did get married Emma would be keeping Swan.
What she didn't expect, of course, was for Neal to enter the kitchen a mere five minutes later, looking amused enough that Emma found herself distracted as she tried to chop the green peppers.
"You'll never guess what Care asked me just now."
Emma gave his hand a playful slap when he tried to snatch a pepper and then took a guess. "When you were gonna get around to marrying me?"
He nodded, the amusement beginning to soften into something else. "Just like that too."
Emma focused back on her task, wavering under the growing intensity of Neal's gaze. "Yeah, well, she wanted to know why we weren't."
Neal managed to sneak a pepper, popping it into his mouth. "Wanna know what I told her?"
He was entirely too smug in that moment and Emma didn't like it. "I'm trying to cook dinner, Neal."
"I told her I'd marry you whenever you're ready." He paused for a beat, the feel of the room shifting from light and airy to something more intense. "You just had to ask me."
Well, that got her attention and, amused, she set her knife down to look at him more directly. "I have to ask you?"
"It's only fair."
"How?"
"Well, I asked you first and you shot me down?"
He didn't sound bitter about it or anything. It was just a fact. Still, Emma blinked, gave the statement some thought, but couldn't even begin to guess what the hell he was talking about.
"You did not."
"I did," he insisted, "you said, and I quote, 'that's not the point.'"
She vaguely remembered a conversation along those lines, she supposed, but if that offhand comment, made during one of her pregnancy rants, was what he was really referring to then the dry, flabbergasted look she decided to respond with now was most definitely earned.
"You call that a proposal?"
Talk about pathetic. Not that Emma expected or even liked the idea of some big, fancy to-do when she thought of Neal popping the question (mostly because she had never really thought about him asking that particular question before), but she had sort of assumed that a proposal automatically came with the words will you marry me attached to it.
"Well, a pre-proposal, I suppose," he shrugged, "but I gave up on it when you claimed it was irrelevant."
Emma rolled her eyes, laughed, and went back to preparing dinner because honestly.
But Carina, in what was apparently a less direct approach, took what she had learned from her and Neal straight to Porter who approached her next, looking incredibly distraught and proceeded exactly as she would have expected him too.
"You and dad aren't married?" he asked at such a volume that Emma nearly over-seasoned the chicken as she looked up in alarm.
"You knew that."
(Right?) (He had too.) (Why on Earth would he think otherwise?)
"No," he insisted and he looked frantic enough that Emma set the seasoning down and crouched to look at him dead on.
"Port, honey, it doesn't change anything. We've always not been married. A title and a piece of paper doesn't make us any more or any less committed to each other."
Porter's lower lip jutted out slightly. "But I told all my friends."
Emma tried but she couldn't fathom why that would ever be a topic that a nine-year-old would brag about. So instead she returned to her chicken. But Porter, unfortunately, hadn't finished.
"Well?" he asked pointedly, and when she failed to show any signs of knowing what he was talking about, he prompted her again, "When are you gonna do it?"
She frowned in confusion. "Do what?"
"Ask Dad to marry you?" He might as well have added the very obvious duh.
Emma looked at Porter who stared back at her, serious and expecting.
Clearly, she was outnumbered.
"Is that something you want?" she asked finally, still kinda baffled that this, of all things, would mean so much to him, "For me to ask your dad to get married?"
Porter nodded enthusiastically and so she sighed in a sort of resignation.
It didn't matter to her, if they were married or not, quite honestly. Maybe that was the wrong stance to take, but she had always felt that she and Neal were good as.
She supposed that was good a reason as any to get married then.
"How do you think I should do it then?"
Porter promptly grinned, big and bright (and how could she regret anything when it made her kid so happy) and then began gesturing quite wildly as he told her about a proposal he had seen on TV during a baseball game.
But while Neal had certainly come to appreciate the art of baseball thanks to Leo, Emma definitely didn't like the idea of people watching them during something so personal.
Obviously, the best solution then was to involve Carina whose idea of romantic gestures heavily involved The Little Mermaid. This inevitably led to ideas of Emma singing to Neal in a boat (which wold never, ever happen because Emma didn't sing and she definitely do boats), followed by an idea involving a room full of roses and sky writing. And while Emma appreciated the fact that it didn't come straight out of a movie (though it was very likely inspired by several), she came to the unfortunate conclusion that her kids didn't understand the concept of low-key or simple. At all.
So she invited Neal out for dinner in March, under the guise of a somewhat belated birthday celebration, and it didn't involve formal wear, flowers, or any sort of grand gesture with sky writing. She had thought, maybe, that she would go ahead and ask before dessert, but halfway through the meal and well-aware of the people at the surrounding tables (people who probably didn't know how to mind their own business), she decided that wasn't very them either.
"Wait," said Emma when they arrived home and well after she had already decided that they should never place these sorts of romantic gestures in her hands.
(But the bug was them.)
(Very them.)
Neal, stopped, settling back into the driver's seat of the car, letting the door fall shut and raising a questioning brow in her direction, "Yeah?"
For some reason Emma felt nervous. Which was ridiculous when, technically, she already knew the answer to the question.
"I'm really happy."
Neal smiled lightly, "Me too."
"No." Happy wasn't the right word. At least not all on its own because it was so much more than that. And then, suddenly, the right ones just started to pour out of her. All these things that she hadn't really planned to say finding their way out of her mouth before she could even think to stop them. "I'm happy, Neal. And I have been for a long time. We have this life, you know, that we've built. And we mostly did it all on our own, right? Pulling ourselves up from nothing. I didn't think we could do it. A part of me really wanted to go back to doing things the easy way. But you had faith. You always have faith, believing in all these impossible things. And at some point, I don't know how, you got me to believe in things too. You made me dream, Neal, and because of that we have this life. This wonderful, amazing life with these beautiful children that I wouldn't change for anything."
Except, maybe, the moment everyone had decided she should propose because clearly, considering that pile of word vomit she had just spit out, she and words didn't mix too well. She had even forgotten to include all the points she had meant to hit. Like: "I love you. And I'm so glad that I met you. Sometimes I'll think what if I hadn't, you know, and I get this terrible sinking feeling. But basically, I'm in this. I have been in this and I don't know why this should make a difference but -"
She paused, needing to catch her breath, and felt something slip onto her finger. A ring. Two silver bands, one smooth and another textured, entwined together, meeting in a complex knot instead of the usual diamond. It was perfectly simple and perfectly them.
"Yes," he whispered.
She couldn't bring herself to tear her eyes away from the ring, but her lower lip jutted out anyway. "I didn't even get to ask."
"I figured I'd save you the ten minute rant," said Neal wryly, "especially when you were saying things I already know. It was beautiful though, what you said."
Emma huffed, a sound only softened by the fact that she really couldn't stop staring at her hand. "How long have you been carrying this around with you then?"
"It's called a lover's knot." The fact that he had neglected to answer her question directly told Emma he had probably gotten it years ago. "Sailors used it." Emma raised a brow. "I can sail. Anyway, like I said, sailors used it. See? Two parallel wires," he traced the bands, brushing her finger before coming to a stop at the elaborate joint, "and you interlock them with two overhand knots. Each one is flexible to move about and orbit the other, but they're forever inseparable."
Emma swallowed thickly, suddenly overcome with emotion. He definitely should have been the one to propose.
"Back in Victorian times," he continued, "couples would take two branches and tie them together with the lover's knot. And if they held and continued growing after a year then it was said that their love would remain true." He slipped the ring off her finger (and just like that it felt naked) and showed her the inside where there was a short inscription. Numbers. No. A date.
"November twenty-eighth, two thousand and three." Quickly, Emma realized, "Porter's birthday?"
"His first birthday. That's when I knew." She furrowed her brow quizzically. "That we'd make it, I mean, because I always knew that you were the one. But no matter what life threw at us, Porter was our knot. This little miracle that would have us forever orbiting each other. It wasn't perfect or what we had planned, but we grew around him and we made it through that first year and we've kept growing, us and our family, ever since. Together."
"Neal." A lump had formed in her throat, weighing his name down with emotion. And love. She looked up at him, finally tearing her eyes away from the ring, and said with all the sincerity she could muster the only thing she could think of. "Thank you," and, "I love you."
"I love you," he echoed, and, "Thank you."
He kissed her then, finally, this gentle, sweet thing that slowly deepened until a sharp knock sounded at the window and they broke apart to see the kids, Porter looking expectant as Carina bounced excitedly. Effie and Leo rushed up behind them, mouthing an apology when they caught their gaze, but Emma only smiled and opened the passenger door, holding out her hand so that their children could inspect the product of their hard work. They did so eagerly, though Carina's face fell almost immediately.
"It's not a diamond or gold." She shot Neal a skeptical look and he shifted, somewhat chagrined, but Emma shook her head.
"No, it's so much better," she insisted, taking Carina by the hand and then Porter and, aided by Neal, they earned their daughter's approval with the story of the lover's knot.
X-x-x-x-X
Emma and Neal (and okay, just Emma) would have preferred to just go down to the courthouse where they could exchange vows in front of a judge and their children. Very shotgun and very them. But Porter and Carina had other ideas and they dragged Effie and Leo in on their schemes until, suddenly, there was going to be a ceremony at the youth center that Emma had to buy a dress for and choose between several different cakes.
(Cake was good. Emma didn't mind the cake.)
Neal enlisted Porter as his best man, who took his duties very seriously, while Emma pulled Carina aside to ask her a very important question.
"How would you like to be my maid of honor?"
Carina's eyes widened, alight with something that warmed Emma's heart. "Really?"
Emma smiled and nodded. "Really."
"Do I get to wear a pretty dress?" Obviously, she considered this a very important question of her own.
"You can wear one regardless."
Carina smiled brightly and threw her tiny arms around her in a big hug, announcing, "Okay," before promptly running off, bragging to Porter along the way that he wasn't the only one who would get to be in the wedding.
Carina enjoyed dress-shopping far more than Emma herself did and had a tendency to pick out the dressiest of all the dresses. She liked pink and flowers and lace and skirts that gave a healthy twirl. Emma, meanwhile, preferred something a bit more ... subdued. She just wanted something simple, really, and despite Carina's attempts to steer her in the direction of lace, lace, and more lace (just looking at some of those dresses made her skin itch), Emma found herself drawn to something a bit more on the non-traditional side.
Carina frowned, fingering the pale yellow that lined the bottom of the dress. "But it's not white." She set her mouth in a thin line. "Wedding dresses should be white."
"Most of it is." She fiddled with shoulder-wide straps, fixing the v-shaped neck-line. It didn't dip too low, which she liked. "It gives it a bit of character don't you think?"
"And it's short," Carina added, "Wedding dresses should be long."
"It's Spring though," Emma reminded her and really, it only stopped at her knees. She didn't wear dresses that often, not anymore, but if she was going to be forced into one for an event that already ran the risk of making her feeling emotionally exposed, then she would much rather opt for comfort and the thing that didn't pose as a potential tripping hazard.
(Besides, Neal liked her legs.)
But, and this was important, she wanted Carina to know that her opinion mattered. That her thoughts would always be listened to and taken into consideration. So Emma looked back at her with a frown and asked, "Do you really think it looks awful?"
Carina seemed to give it careful thought, directing her to spin twice before she finally gave her opinion. "I think you look pretty." The answer seemed sincere enough and then she scrunched her nose. "It's just kinda weird for a wedding dress is all."
Emma smiled, satisfied, "Yes, well, Neal and I have always been kinda weird."
"I know," Carina spoke with a dramatic flourish, "You don't even celebrate Christmas."
Emma snorted, unable to stop the bubble of laughter that burst out of her.
X-x-x-x-X
On the day of the wedding, Carina requested curls for the evening.
"Just like yours," she had said and Emma could hardly refuse that. She even weaved a crown made from yellow sunflowers onto the finished product before they did the same for her. It matched both of their dresses perfectly.
When they got married, it was under that hand-carved Tallahassee sign Neal had first made for the center all those years ago. The center itself was decorated simply, they had lots of food and cake, and a ridiculous number of people attended. Their children, of course, and then Leo and Effie, Eliza and her kinda, sorta almost brother Hugo, and unlike their goodbye party the center threw for them in Florida, Emma wasn't surprised to see a whole list of Tallahasee's more frequent faces there, celebrating with them. It was nice. Really, nice.
(Still. Emma and Neal had both agreed that they wouldn't recite their own vows. Which was good. Because Emma had had a hard enough time repeating back the officiant's prompts in any sort of manner that resembled relaxed. Though whether that was from the emotion of the event or actual stage fright Emma wouldn't say.)
"You look beautiful," Neal murmured in her ear, holding her close, the pair not so much dancing as they were swaying, Charley's Girl playing in the background and Emma, far too content, couldn't do more than hum in reply.
(And then Emma followed the song with a request for George Michael, laughing gleefully at Neal's resounding groan when the first beats rang out before beckoning at Porter and Carina to join them.)
Later, when they had settled together in their bed, leftover cake between them, and the children snug in their beds downstairs, Emma told him, "I got you a present."
(Leo and Effie had offered to watch the kids if they wanted to go on a honeymoon, but Emma and Neal didn't feel right leaving. Things with Carina had certainly improved, but they still felt new and therefore horribly fragile.)
Neal's eyes twinkled mischievously, "does it involve some kind of slinky lingerie?"
"Well, that's just implied." She climbed off the bed, voice fading a bit as she disappeared into the hall. "It took me forever to find something that would work, but I'm pretty sure I finally did."
"You shouldn't have ... I mean, I didn't get you anything." Despite his words though, his eyes sparked with curiosity when she returned, box in hand, promptly shoving it at him.
"Well, it's for both of us really."
He unwrapped it carefully, Emma bouncing on the bed impatiently, watching as he finally pulled out two vine-like tree branches.
"I thought we could make our own." She fingered her ring, but she didn't think Neal even noticed because he cut her off almost immediately, leaning forward, drawing her into a searing kiss that made her whole body flush.
(He really was easy to please.)
"Think it'll work?" she asked when she finally caught her breath.
Neal gave the branches a sturdy tug and when they held up, he said, "Should do."
Emma gathered the paper and stuffed it into the box as Neal further inspected the branches quite intensely. She waited a moment, and then asked the thing she really wanted to ask, "How'd you know about it? The Lover's Knot."
She must have asked a dozen people before she found someone that had even heard of it.
Neal paused for a long moment, and then quietly, "A family I stayed with had one." A beat. "It was a long, long time ago."
"Oh." That raised even more questions, to be honest, but she settled for, "Did theirs grow?"
Neal shrugged. "I wasn't really around long enough to see. But it looked healthy enough and I think if anyone's would have then theirs would of." He grinned. "And ours, of course."
It took them, well, Neal really, a few tries to get the branches, which were not nearly as malleable as rope, to bend and loop the way he wanted them to. Emma tried to help, looking up guides on her phone, but Neal was quite adamant that he knew what he was doing ("I know how to tie an overhand knot, Emma," he said as if it was this everyday thing.), and right around the point when Emma was all but ready to admit to her bad idea, Neal triumphantly announced that he had threaded the first and then the second knot.
"How's this look then?" Emma asked, voice somewhat strained as she stood on their bed, replacing one of Neal's antique decorations with the now-entwined branches.
"Perfect," Neal murmured, clearly not paying attention at all, his hands trailing up her calves, pressing wet, hot kisses against the inside of her thigh and causing her knees to shake with the promise of more as she sunk back onto the bed with him. "Just perfect."
X-x-x-x-X
Quick Note: I'm not gonna lie, I'm kinda exited that I get to finally post this! I mentioned that Argo Navis was my favorite conversation between Emma and Neal and it is, but as a whole this is definitely my favorite chapter/one-off so far (Hopefully that's not a weird thing to say about your own writing). Anyway, this also means I get to finally post the link to my pinterest board. You'll notice that I pinned too many of the 'same' room type things, but the pictures are really just meant to give you general idea of the aesthetic that I was going for - not an exact representation. But the inspiration for Neal's painting back in chapter 15 of Argo Navis is there too. Here ya go: ofpaintedwings/argo-navis/
Thanks for reading!