Joe pulled a small box out of his pocket. He knelt down on one knee in front of Val.
"I know I've asked before, but I'd like to make it official. Valerie, will you marry me?"
Val looked at him and beamed.
"Yes, I will!" she said. Mary Alice cheered and Angie looked happy.
"Does this mean that Bob will be our brother?" Mary Alice asked, with her arms around Bob. Joe laughed.
"Bob is still a dog," he told her.
"When will you get married?" my mother asked.
"As soon as we can," Val said. "Probably in March."
"You won't get the VFW hall that soon. It books out quickly. Maybe we could get the Knights of Columbus hall. Or the rec room at the Seniors Centre," Grandma said.
"We're not going to have anything big," Joe said. "Just our families there. Maybe in the backyard."
We moved into the dining room to sit down for lunch, with my mother and grandmother still chattering away about wedding plans and how much room they would need, and Val and Joe getting quieter and quieter.
"I hate weddings," Joe said. "Someone in my family always gets drunk and starts a fight. Usually Anthony. Sometimes Mooch."
"I've already had a big wedding. I don't think it would be appropriate to do it again," Val said.
"I want to be a flower girl," said Angie.
"Not me! I'm a horse! I eat flowers!" said Mary Alice.
After we had eaten, Val asked if we could take a break before dessert. "I'd like to go and share our official news with Joe's family," she said. My mother pursed her lips. She looked like she wanted to say no, but in the interests of staying on the good side of Angie Morelli, she didn't want to.
"You don't have to hold up dessert for us, we can eat with my family," said Joe.
"Leave the girls here so they don't need to go out in the snow," my mother said. I think that was a win overall for her – she was sharing Val with the Morellis, but not Mary Alice or Angie just yet.
I scooped out ice cream for the girls, and then cut the rest of us some apple pie. I was excited for Val and Joe, although part of me still thought that Morelli was a jerk and I hoped that he wouldn't hurt Val. After Steve's betrayal, I didn't want to see her hurt again by another cheating male. I put a slice of apple pie down in front of Dickie, who was checking something on his phone.
"No work today," I reminded him, and he quickly slid his phone back into his pocket. We finished our desserts, then said goodbye to the girls and got ready to leave. I was exhausted from spending the day with my family.
We'd just gotten home when my phone rang. It was Mary Lou.
"You didn't tell me that Morelli had proposed!" she said.
"I didn't want to tell people before Val did," I told her.
"I had to find out from Joe's second cousin Brenda! Brenda!"
"Don't you have children you should be spending the day with?"
"You are the worst best friend ever," she teased me.
"So sorry, I can't hear you, I'm off to have a nap," I teased back.
"Enjoy it while you can!" Mary Lou said, and hung up.
"Who was that?" Dickie asked.
"Mary Lou, news of Joe and Val's engagement is spreading," I told Dickie. Dickie nodded, then poured himself a drink and moved upstairs to his office. I guess Christmas was over, so I decided to start working too. You can't beat a workaholic, so you might as well join them.
The next three months passed quickly and before we knew it, Val's divorce to Steve became final. Steve didn't respond in any way or reach out to Val and the girls. Joe and Val had been trying to plan a quiet wedding but faced with the forces of the Plum and Morelli families, they disappeared the first weekend after Val's divorce went through and sent us all a photo from Las Vegas. Val and Morelli looked happy, and Angie and Mary Alice were looking estactic with Angie in a traditional white flower girl dress, and Mary Alice wearing the same but with a unicorn headband. Val told me later that she'd wanted to go to Disneyworld, but Morelli refused to set foot there.
They came back to Jersey a week later, and Val and the girls moved into Morelli's house with him. Angie and Mary Alice were sharing a bedroom, which I couldn't see ending well. Morelli started work on converting the basement into extra living space, although it seemed to involve a lot of drinking beer with Mooch. Val seemed content though, and was happy to slip back into her housewife life.
"Steph, I need to tell you something."
"Hmmm?" I said. I was looking at the final samples for my Space Princess range. I just needed a catchier name for it.
"I need to quit my job," Val said. I looked up and over at her. We hadn't been fighting, and Plum Lingerie was going so well that there was enough work for Val to do. If she quit, I might actually have to replace her, or go back to working long hours.
"Why?" I asked. Val did a gesture to her belly. She was five months pregnant, with the baby due in late July. She still had months to go.
"Well it's not like I'm going to be working after the baby comes. And Joe wants me to finish up now. I can be at home with the girls, and get to know other parents at their school, and spend more time with Joe. We only have a few months together before Junior arrives."
"Junior? Did you find out that you're having a boy?" I asked Val.
"No! We will soon. But we know it's a boy. All the Morellis have boys," Val said. "And Grandma Bella said that she saw us having a boy."
"She said that she saw you having six of them," I reminded Val.
"Anyway, you'll understand one day when you have a baby of your own, Steph. It makes you focus on what's important in life," Val told me, a smidge patronisingly. Okay, a lot patronisingly. Especially for someone whose only source of income the last couple of months had been from my business that was apparently not what was important in life. It seemed that Val was embracing the Burg housewife life, especially the part of it that was judging others. I sighed. Val was happy enough to use me for emotional support, but it didn't seem to go the other way. It may have been that Dickie and I had been trying for a baby for three months already, and I could feel the signs of yet another period starting, but I was tempted to tell Val to shut her pie hole.
Hmmm, pie. That was what I needed. I announced to Val that I was doing a bakery run to buy something to celebrate her last day at Plum Lingerie (she looked a bit surprised at that, but I was so irritated that I decided she might as well finish up straight away). The benefit of living in a trendy neighbourhood was the amount of gourmet food places nearby. It might not be the Tasty Pastry, but I knew they'd have a nice treat. The weather was warming up so I decided to walk to the nearest bakery. I might as well work off some of the pie that I planned to it, and maybe that by the time I got back, I'd be less annoyed at Saint Valerie.
I reached the bakery in record, annoyance fuelled time, and was soon leaving again with a lemon meringue pie safely in a box. If Val was lucky, I wouldn't stop to eat it halfway home. I heard someone call my name as I started for home, and turned to see Ranger behind me. He'd either appeared out of no where, or come out of the office building above the bakery.
"Mr Manoso, how nice to see you again," I said. He was dressed in business black, and there was another man with him – taller than Ranger, darker skinned, wearing an amazing suit.
"Ms Plum, nice to see you again," he said, the corners of his mouth quirking up in a smile. "I'd like to introduce Bobby Brown, one of my business partners. Bobby, this is Stephanie Plum, she's one of our residential clients, and helped me with the takedown of Eddie DeChooch last year."
"Nice to meet you, Ms Plum," Bobby said, reaching his hand out. I shook hands with him.
"Please, call me Steph."
"Did you have a bakery emergency, Babe?" Ranger asked, looking down at the box.
"Ugh don't ask," I said, rolling my eyes. "I just needed to get out of the house for a bit."
"Do you need a lift home? We've just finished up a meeting and we're heading back to Haywood." He gestured to a black SUV nearby. Since I didn't have to squish into the back seat of the Porsche, I accepted his offer. All the better to get my pie home safely.
"Any issues with your alarm system?" Ranger asked.
"No it's been fine, just that little hiccup the first day," I told him. The corners of his mouth quirked up again like he was thinking of smiling, so I'm sure that Tank told him all the details. We arrived outside my house.
"Do you want to come in for some pie?" I asked them.
"I don't eat that sort of pie," Ranger said, meeting my eyes in the rear view mirror.
"What sort do you eat?" I asked innocently, then heard Bobby snort and start coughing. Ranger smiled his feral smile at me and I suddenly understood the comment, remembered his mercenary side, flushed bright red and slid out of the car quickly. "Thanks for the ride!" I yelled.
That was a lot of excitement over a lemon meringue pie.
I managed to do without Val for a couple of weeks, but I was working really long hours. It wasn't a big deal because Dickie was also putting in long hours to impress his partners at his new firm and to build up their client base, but I was thinking I needed to work something out. It was getting closer to summer and I was looking forward to some beach time. Plum Stars was about to launch, and I needed help. I sighed, and called my mother. "Mom, I need some help."
A few days later and I was feeling more under control. My mother was a born organiser.
"You could have a business helping people get organised," I told her.
"It's what you learn when you have small children, there's so much to remember and get organised," she told me. I remembered Val's comments to me.
"Right. So that's another thing I can't know until I have one of my own, just like Val said."
"What did Val say?" my mother asked, confused.
"That I wouldn't know what was important in life until I had a baby. And it's not like I haven't been trying! It's not as easy as Hollywood led me to believe! And everyone keeps asking when we're having a baby. If it was that easy, I'd be pregnant already!" I burst out. My mother reached across and squeezed my hand.
"Val doesn't have ambition like you do, Steph," my mother. My head snapped up and I looked at her in confusion. Was my mother complimenting me at the expense of Valerie? Or was lack of ambition a good thing in her books? "Some of us are happiest at home, providing for our husbands and looking after our children. And some of us, well..."
"Jump off the garage roof because they want to fly?" I asked.
"Exactly. Val would play with her dolls and look after them. You'd make capes for yours and pretend they were superheroes. You still looked after them as much as Val did, but you and your dolls went on adventures."
I laughed. I'd forgotten that my dolls were my superhero sidekicks before I had Mary Lou. We flew around the neighbourhood together, fought off masked super-villains and spied on the neighbours.
My mother reached out and patted my head. "You'll be a good mother, Stephanie. It will happen when the time is right."
My mother left and I sat down on the couch with a slice of pineapple upside down cake. I thought over what she'd said. It was true that I wasn't the most organised person. I tried to be, but I didn't come by it naturally. Would I really get those skills as a mother? I doubted it. I thought over everyone I knew with children. They did seem organised, far more than I was.
Suddenly I had a brain wave. I picked up my phone and swiped for a number.
"Hi Mary Lou! How's work going?"
"Do not get me started, that's how it's going."
"So I have an idea..."