I turned to Brianna. “You can sleep in the cottage. I’ll sleep in here on the couch.”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“If you two were married, you could both sleep in the same room,” Eddie teased.
“What do you think?” I asked Brianna.
She looked a little worried. “About what?”
“About us getting married?”
“This better not be your idea of a proposal,” my mom warned.
I was worried that this family-orchestrated proposal might end up scaring poor Brianna off.
“It’s late,” I said. “Brianna, come with me and help me change the sheets.”
She nodded. “Good night, everyone. I love you all!”
“We love you too!”
In the cottage, Brianna and I pulled the bedding off my bed and made it up again with clean sheets. We tried to be efficient and robotic about what we were doing.
While she was putting on pillow slips, I started for the door. “I’ll see you in the morning. If you get flooded out, or anything, come into the house.”
“Thanks. Good night, Adam.”
“Good night.” I paused. “Brianna, I’ve never stopped loving you.”
“Me, either. Good night, Adam.”
What with the wind gusting to seventy miles an hour and the rain periodically coming in sheets, it was nearly impossible to sleep. And, of course, knowing that Brianna was sleeping in my bed, even though I wasn’t there with her, didn’t help, either.
By seven-thirty the next morning, the worst of the storm had passed. It was still raining, but with nowhere near the intensity it had during the night.
The phone started ringing. I wanted to sleep, so I didn’t get up to answer it, but I could hear Julia in the kitchen pick it up, take a message, and then hang up. No sooner did she hang up than it rang again.
Finally, at eight o’clock she came into the living room where I was sleeping.
“Wake up, Adam. You’ve got pretty much the whole town wanting you to come and do some repair work on their places.”
I got dressed, then went into the kitchen to look at the list of people who had called. Alongside each name, Julia had written down the damage they needed to get fixed.
I sat down and began to work out where I needed to go first. Water lapping at the foundation of a house took preference over a screen door ripped off its hinges.
My dad came downstairs, found out what I was doing, and then went to wake up my three grandfathers.
Brianna wandered in, saw what was going on, and offered to help.
Half an hour later, the men in our family, Brianna, Lara, Grandmother Whyte, and Claire left to go battle the elements. Julia and Catherine volunteered to cook for us, and Grandmother Roberts agreed to work the phones.
I went to each house, introduced either my grandfather or my dad, and then moved on to the next place.
Finally, Brianna and I were dropped off by Grandmother Whyte at the home of Mary Livingston Cartwright. Her house, being next to the beach, had been severely pummeled by the storm.
There were two inches of water on the first floor and water damage on the second floor where the branch of a tree had broken a bedroom window, allowing rain to pour into the room.
The electricity was still out, so there was no possibility of using a wet-dry vac, which I didn’t have anyway. We called Grandmother Whyte and asked her to go to the rental place and rent one. We’d use it once the electricity came on.
The only thing we could do was start mopping up. Brianna and I started in the living room. We worked as hard as we could because we wanted to save the hardwood floors and expensive antique furnishings.
Mrs. Cartwright, in her trademark feathered evening dress, watched us work. “Oh, thank you, thank you. I’m so glad you could come right away.”
It took us three hours before we were done. We called Grandmother Whyte. She came and got us.
“How are we doing?” I asked.
“We’re keeping up. People keep asking how much they owe you. We haven’t known what to say.”
“Twenty dollars, plus materials.”
“You’ll never get rich that way.”
“No, but I’ll have a lot of friends.”
We worked most of the day.
The last place we visited was the apartment of Derek and Elizabeth, the dynamic school-teaching duo.
“Oh, my gosh! It’s Plumbing Guy, Derek, and he brought his wife with him. Let’s fix ’em shish kebabs,” Elizabeth said.
“We don’t have any electricity!” he called out.
“He rains on my every parade,” Elizabeth joked. “Please, come in. And you must be Mrs. Plumber Guy.”
“I’m Brianna. We’re not married,” she explained.
“Well, you’d better get it done soon, kiddo. The last time your boyfriend was here I flirted with him shamelessly, and I even gave him my best shish kebab.”
“That was your best one?” I teased her.
“Derek, you’ve got to come in here. Plumber Guy just said something funny. And he brought his . . .” She looked at us. “ . . . plumber’s assistant.”
“Friend,” I said.
“His friend. And she’s a girl.”
Derek came in. He’d been trying to roll up the carpet that had been soaked by the rain, but it had proven too hard for just one person.
“Can we help?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’d be great.”
We rolled up the carpet, lugged it out to the garage, and draped it to dry over the bed of an old pickup Derek was in the process of restoring.
A short while later Brianna and I met all the others at Julia’s place.
Everyone had a story to tell about their day. It was exciting for us to have all worked together as a family to help people get through an ordeal.
By this time the electricity had come back on, which was good, since Julia and Catherine had been making pizzas all day, and so now, with the oven working, we sat around and ate and talked and waited for the next pizza to be done.
Our meal took two hours, and by that time the rain had stopped and the storm had passed completely over. It was early evening.
“You want to walk along the beach and see what the storm did?” I asked Brianna.
“That’d be great.”
The storm had created a new beach, and it was awesome to see what the winds and rain had done.
It was Brianna’s idea to reach for my hand as we walked.
“I have decided to stay in Spring Lake and be a fix-up guy.”
“You’re already that.”
“I’ll start charging more now.”
“Good idea.”
“That’s what I’m going to do. What are you going to do?”
She cleared her throat. “My plans are a little up in the air right now.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“What about Thomas?”
“It’s over between us—for good.”
“How come?”
She thought about it. “We were too much alike. It would be like marrying myself. I don’t want someone who thinks exactly like me.”
“I’m not much like you.”
“That’s true.” She got a wicked smile on her face. “But, you know what, to tell you the truth, I’m not sure I even need you. I’m already a part of your family. So what would I gain by marrying you?”
“I’ll make you laugh.”
“You make me laugh already.”
“I’ll keep your feet warm at night.”
“I have naturally warm feet.”
“I’ll give you children.”
“Oh, you will, will you? You’re just going to walk up and give me children? Really? Where will you get ’em from?”
“The Kid Store.”
She laughed. “So that’s how it works! I’ve always wanted to know.”
We continued walking. “So, really, Adam, wh
at have you got to offer me?”
“I love you more than anyone could ever love you.”
She nodded. “I love you the same way.”
“So have we reached an agreement, Counselor?”
“I’ll expect a proposal.”
“In writing?”
“No. Just get down on your knees and propose.”
“The ground’s wet.”
“Poor baby.”
I knelt down on the sand, held her hand, and said, “Brianna, I love you. Will you marry me?”
“Of course I will, you silly boy.”
She pulled me to my feet and we embraced and kissed.
• • •
Brianna and I were married in the Washington D.C. Temple on Tuesday, March 18. It was as close as we could get to the one-year anniversary of Eddie and Claire’s baptisms. We were there with them when they went through the temple for their own endowments, then joined our family in the sealing room where first they were sealed together as a couple and then Brianna and I were married.
Brianna and I and my mom spent a few minutes together in the celestial room of the temple following the sealing, after everyone else had gone to change into street clothes.
“Do you have something you’d like to tell me?” I asked my mom.
She nodded. “It’s just a thought I had in the session. Let’s see. How can I put this into words?” She pursed her lips. “When you were a little boy, you tried so hard to be a good boy and to please me. I taught you to put away your toys, and you did that every night, just because you knew it would make me happy. That’s the kind of a boy you were.”
“Hard to believe that now, isn’t it?”
She smiled. “What I want to tell you today is not about keeping things in their proper place.”
“Okay.”
“Last summer you learned a great deal about your first mom. From that I think you wanted to please her, to be the kind of person she’d want you to be. Is that accurate?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Yes, it is.”
“And then with Brianna in the picture, there was one more woman to try to please. Did it get tough, trying to please three women?”
I glanced at Brianna and smiled. “It did, actually.”
“This is what I learned from being in the temple today. Adam, choose any career in life you want, as long as it’s honorable work. Be the best home repairman in New Jersey, if that’s what you want. Or the best teacher if that’s the path you choose. You don’t have to please me. You don’t have to please your first mom. Just please Heavenly Father, and you’ll do all right.”
She gave me a hug and kissed me on the cheek. “You’re not my little boy anymore, Adam. You’re a man, and you’re in charge.” She hugged me again, then hugged Brianna. “I’ll leave you two alone.”
She turned to leave the celestial room. “Mom?” I called out after her.
She turned to face me. “Yes?”
I took both her hands in mine. “Thank you for always being there for me. I’m very grateful to you for being my mom. I love you more than I can say.”
“Thank you, Adam. You can’t know how happy that makes me feel.” She then left the room.
Brianna and I stayed a few more minutes, sitting on a couch together, holding hands and just enjoying the beauty of the room and our own private thoughts.
Finally, we got up to leave. One of the temple workers, a sweet, frail little lady with white hair, who had been assigned to be in the celestial room, stopped us. She took my hand. “Excuse me, was that your mother who left a few minutes ago?”
“Yes.”
“Who were the other two women who came and sat down with you on the sofa?”
“There was nobody sitting with us,” Brianna said.
“No, there were. I saw them.”
I stopped to think about it. “Was one of them young?”
“Yes. Just a few years older than you, I would guess.”
“Was she beautiful?” I asked.
“Yes, very. She seemed very happy to be there with you both.”
“Is she here now?” I asked.
“No, both of them left a few minutes ago.”
“The other woman, what was she like?” Brianna asked.
“She was maybe in her early forties and had long, dark hair. She paid particular attention to you.”
Brianna and I turned to each other. Tears were streaming down her face. “Our moms were here, weren’t they?” she asked.
“They were,” I said.
She wiped at the tears with a tissue. “I’m so happy.”
“Me too.”
We held hands and walked out of the room, happy at the special gift given to us on our wedding day.
• • •
Magazines sometimes run articles with the title, “What Women Really Want from a Man.”
I know the answer to that question. A woman wants a man who listens to the Spirit and who strives to do what Heavenly Father wants him to do. I know it won’t be easy, but that’s the task that lies ahead of me.
A woman also wants a man who knows who he is.
Finally, I know who I am.
I am Adam, the son of my father, Sam, and my birth mother, Charly, raised by a loving mother, Lara, married to righteous, wonderful Brianna.
I am Adam and now, finally, I am on my way.
Jack Weyland, Adam's Story
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