THE I-DO-OVER

"Amanda, this is ridiculous. Stopping for breakfast now? There's a whole crew of people descending on the house and you two want to sit down and have a plate of eggs."

"That's exactly why, Mother. We should stay out of the way for another hour or so. And we all need to eat." Amanda brushed her bangs out of her eyes with the back of her hand, taking a menu from the waitress as she spoke. She and Dotty had just had their hair and nails done, and the boys and Lee had gone to pick up their suits and run a couple of last-minute errands at the same time, then they'd all piled into the station wagon with their new garment bags and driven to the Pie Plate.

"Well neither one of you seems the least bit nervous, which I don't understand," Dotty said, frowning at her menu. "You'd think you'd done this before."

"I'm not nervous, Mother. I have done it before." Amanda flipped over her coffee cup.

"You?" Dotty asked, giving Lee a pointed look.

He held up his hands, almost in supplication. "I promise this is my only marriage."

Amanda ducked her head, trying to hide a smile at his ability to talk around the question. She felt a twinge of guilt about the way they continually dodged the truth, but that day it was mixed with relief. In a few more hours they could put that last secret to rest and start to live the way they wanted to.

It was crazy to think about, stopping for breakfast when there was a full-scale offensive happening at the house. Caterers and florists and a rental company putting up chairs and tables and decorations in the backyard. Amanda squinted out the window at the bright October sky. The forecast said sunny, clear skies, temperatures in the low 70s. The leaves had turned but not fallen, reflecting their golden light on everything in the yard. Perfect for a backyard wedding.

Brenda, the waitress who served them most often, stopped at their table with the coffee pot. "Well, you've got the whole crew in here this morning," she said. "Big day planned?"

Dotty pointed to Lee and Amanda with a perfectly manicured index finger. "They're getting married later."

Brenda paused, surprised. "You are?" She poured out a cup of coffee for Dotty. "Huh. I thought you already were."

"You did?" Amanda felt her cheeks flush with heat. She cast a quick glance at Lee and saw he was trying to suppress a grin. He failed.

"Yeah. We all assumed you were." She reached to fill Lee's cup, matching his expression. "Well congratulations. You have a beautiful day for it."

"Looks like it," Lee agreed. He stirred cream into his coffee, looking out the window the way Amanda had just done. She thought he looked incredibly content right then, the lines of his face soft and relaxed. He and the boys had kept up a steady banter all morning, joking about his "status upgrade" that afternoon and how they'd have to start calling him "sir."

Amanda wasn't sure whether it was Lee's increased presence in their house — he practically lived there, Jamie liked to say — or how much they'd matured that year, but Phillip and Jamie had settled into a new groove, more affectionate than antagonistic. The timing was perfect. Dotty, for one, had been about to reach her limit with the two of them, and Amanda had felt deeply guilty for her inability to parent them to her own standards during her recovery. They were both relieved to hear fewer jabs and more shared jokes, to see them skateboarding together and heading out on their bikes. Amanda knew the two years between them probably felt like a million right then, but she felt some hope that the gap would continue to close and they'd be close the way they had been when they were little.

She watched as they leaned over the menu together, arguing the merits of the huge stack of pancakes or the hash that came with so many sides it was served on three separate plates. Dotty suggested they get one of each and split it, and instead of their old default rejection of sharing anything, they admitted it was a good idea.

"That thing is big enough for four," Lee said.

"You want in?" Phillip asked. "We can get another side of bacon to be safe."

"We don't need another side of bacon," Lee said, "I'm not that hungry."

Jamie peered at Lee over his glasses. "Why not? Nervous?"

"Nope." Lee leaned back in his chair, but under the table his hand squeezed Amanda's and his fingertips were like ice.

She wondered what he was nervous about. This wasn't a real wedding, after all. They'd explained to the officiant that they'd already done the legal paperwork, and this was just a ceremony for their families. (And then they'd also hastily explained their families had no idea the legal paperwork was already done, and could she please act as if the ceremony was, as Lee put it, "the real deal.") Most of his belongings and some of his furniture were stashed in the garage and Amanda's bedroom — their bedroom, she reminded herself — and he'd been staying on Maplewood Drive since then. He was, for all intents and purposes, moved in.

So she didn't know what he had to be nervous about, except that this was it, the part of married life they'd neglected to go through with last time. The part where he had to jump in with both feet — they all did — and make a new family, something he'd never had. He'd been practising since February but he'd always had the apartment to run to, a place to get away to after a tough case or when he needed peace and quiet. And even though he'd spent less and less time there as the months passed, she wondered if it was like getting rid of a security blanket or training wheels on a bike.

It occurred to her suddenly that he'd be shedding the very last of his old persona that afternoon — the old face he'd put on for so many years for everyone at work and even for some outside of the Agency, too. His uncle had even made a joke about it the night before, his metamorphosis into a family man, and while there had been a definite note of pride in Robert's voice, Amanda wondered if Lee was feeling a little anxious about it, too. She couldn't blame him if he did — the whole thing would have been much easier had it been just the two of them, with more straightforward family dynamics and maybe a mother-in-law who lived across town. Though she had to admit, Dotty had been understanding about their jobs and had asked far fewer questions than they'd expected.

Occasionally they'd be making dinner or reading in the den, and Dotty would suddenly say, "Do you remember when such-and-such happened? Was that because of your job?" And sometimes Amanda would say yes, but just as often Dotty was remembering some completely unrelated thing that had happened in the neighborhood, and Amanda would say, "It wasn't. I swear on a stack of Bibles that was just regular people being weird."

Dotty did worry about Lee being in the field. So she was relieved when, the Saturday before, after the boys had gone up to bed, they told her about the new team. She was on her second glass of wine by then, her cheeks pink and her eyes bright, and she had sighed with pleasure at the news. "I'm so glad," she'd said. "Maybe this Mr Melrose is as nice as you say he is after all."

"This Mr Melrose" had privately told Amanda he was a bit nervous about meeting her mother. "Oh, she'll be fine," Amanda told him. "Especially now that she knows Lee is going to be a little safer. I think you'll like each other if you meet under better circumstances." She had her fingers crossed as she said this, because you just never knew, but she had faith Dotty would see Billy for the person he was, even as she was also terrified they'd find more in common than she suspected.

Francine was coming, and she was not bringing a date. Amanda had overheard her telling Lee that there was no way she'd miss it — in fact, she'd have paid to see Scarecrow tie the knot, except she was cleaning up in a pool they'd had going in the bullpen for six years. "It's paying for three spa treatments and a cut and color," she'd said. Lee had been annoyed but Amanda had been thrilled to find a gift certificate on her desk the week before. She had used it that morning for her and Dotty's manicures, and she was fully expecting to see Francine perfectly coiffed and highlighted when she arrived that afternoon.

Strangest of all, she was looking forward to it.

She knew Lee was nervous about his uncle coming. He'd been tied in knots the afternoon before, as they'd waited for Robert's plane to land. Things had warmed between them considerably in the past two years and Robert had visited briefly that spring, though he'd been very clear it was mostly to see Amanda and make sure Lee was taking appropriate care of her. And that, perhaps, was what set Lee on edge — she knew deep down he wanted Robert's approval, and she wasn't sure how to make him see he already had it.

"You should have invited your uncle for breakfast," Dotty said as they ate. Amanda wondered for a moment if she'd said something out loud, she'd been so deep in thought.

"Oh, I did. But he ate at six-thirty, like he does every day," Lee said. "And he's probably already had enough of me. If Amanda wasn't going to be there I bet he wouldn't even come."

Amanda elbowed him gently in the ribs.

"What? It's true. He loves you far more than he loves me."

"I could believe that," Jamie said. Phillip guffawed and Lee shot the two his sternest look.

"Watch it," he said, though his tone was full of affection. "Three thirty."

Philip grinned at him. "Hey, it's not even eleven yet."

"You boys had better watch yourselves around Lee's uncle," Dotty said. "I suspect colonels aren't as easy-going about your jokes as Lee is."

"Oh, he might surprise you," Lee said. "He has a pretty good sense of humor if the jokes aren't coming from me."

"He does," Amanda agreed, "though I don't know how he feels about lippy teens."

"I can hazard a guess," Lee said, breaking the yolks of his eggs. Amanda looked away, back across the table at Dotty. She loved him so much but his preference for runny eggs was almost more than she could deal with sometimes.

"I'm sure they'll be on their best behavior," Dotty said. "Won't you, boys?"

"I guess," Phillip said, though Amanda knew he was teasing his grandmother.

"At least this thing is at our house," Jamie said, "so if it turns into a snore we can disappear upstairs for a while."

"Where did you get that idea?" Amanda asked, laughing.

"That we could go upstairs?"

""That it'll be a snore." She shook her head, sipping her coffee. "The ceremony will be over in a flash and after that it's all about food, the same as every party your grandmother throws."

"That's what you said about Dad's wedding," Phillip said, "and it was not even remotely about food. There was so much talking I thought I was going to starve to death. In a restaurant."

Amanda laughed into her coffee cup.

"Better eat up, then," Lee said, gesturing to the plates in front of them. "I've had speech notes burning a hole in my pocket for a week and it gets five minutes longer with every wise-ass remark."

Jamie looked queasy. "I bet it's sappy, too."

"It's an ode to your mother and her unmatched beauty," Lee told him, spearing a piece of hash brown. He glanced over at Amanda, that tell-tale crinkle at the corners of his eyes. She knew he hated speaking in front of people, almost as much as he hated sitting through speeches. They'd agreed to let the Colonel make a toast and they were going to thank their guests for coming when they announced dinner, and that was it.

"Oh my gosh," Amanda said. "I wrote one about you, too. I've got a good half-hour of material so far."

"Only half an hour?"

"Well, I haven't gotten to your personality yet," she said, leaning in to kiss him. "I spent a good ten minutes on your eyes alone."

"Gross," Jamie said. "I am definitely hiding upstairs when that starts."

"Oh, you say that now," Dotty said, "but give yourself ten years and you'll be writing a speech of your own."

"Never," Jamie insisted, scrunching up his face in disgust.

Phillip smirked.

"Oh don't look like that," Dotty said to him. "You'll be doing it, too."

Jamie polished off a piece of toast and drained his orange juice. Amanda wondered where all the food had gone — both boys sat with empty plates in front of them. "Mom, can I go across to the store over there and pick up some more film?"

"Sure," Amanda said, reaching for her purse.

"Don't worry about it," Dotty said, waving her off. "I need to get some lotion. I'll go, too." She gestured to Phillip. "I bet they have those pens you need for school. Might as well before we forget." She nodded at Amanda. "This'll be the only ten minutes you two get alone all day so you might as well enjoy it."

Lee and Amanda watched out the window as the boys raced across the lot, Dotty following behind. Amanda gave a little involuntary sigh, and when he turned to look at her she leaned against him, her chin in her hand.

"Think you're gonna be able to handle it?" Amanda asked, "This normal life you're about to start?"

"I'll take a crack at it," he said. "I think we've done okay so far."

"I hate to break it to you, Scarecrow, but there's been absolutely nothing normal about us the entire time we've known each other."

"I hate to break it to you, Mrs King, but today isn't going to fix that."

She leaned in to kiss him, laughing, but drew back at the last second. "Mrs… who?"

"Sorry," he said, but he looked unrepentant. "Been playing the cover too long."

"Well, you can stop now. That particular case is closed."

"Oh really?"

Amanda nodded. "She got her man."

He grinned. "She did, huh?"

"It took a lot of work, but yes. And now she's leaving the field."

"For good?" He leaned forward in his chair, his mouth almost touching hers.

Amanda smiled and kissed him. "For good."