finally looked up, her eyes were immediately drawn to Maddie's and John's intertwined hands. When the idea that Maddie was holding this strange man's hand finally registered on Helen's face, the temperature in the room dropped an additional few degrees. The color drained from her face.
"Madeline, what is this?" Helen asked, slowly standing from her chair, motioning with her eyes at their at connected hands.
"I have some news," she said, turning toward John, smiling at him.
"I suppose you do," she said, a stunned look still stuck on her face. She tried to drop her book on the seat of the chair beneath her, but it hit the cushion and dropped to the floor. She didn't seem to notice. "Let me get your father."
She moved by John in the doorway and out of the room, but not before giving him a look that he would never forget. There was a level of disgust in that look that he's not sure he ever saw in her again, but it was a look that informed his opinion of her ever since. It's difficult to forget the level of disdain he saw in her eyes that day.
After she had left the room, Maddie relaxed slightly, moved into the sitting room, and left him standing in the doorway.
"That was the easy part," she said.
"You think?"
"Oh, yes. You didn't think this was going to be easy did you?"
"Well, no, but I guess I didn't expect things to seem so… I don't know."
"Distant?"
"That's one way of putting it."
"Just wait. As soon as father comes in, things will quickly descend into threats and anger. He and mother will exchange looks of confusion, then bewilderment. There will be endless hand-wringing. But none of their words or actions will be what you would've expected after a daughter has announced that she's engaged. They won't be happy for us. They'll only worry about how it affects their lives," she said, picking up her mom's book from the floor, placing it back on the seat as she sits on the arm of the chair. She sits still and rigid, her eyes stuck on the doorway, a waiting look weighing on her face.
John moves from the doorway into the room and approaches the bookcase. He could hear the developing commotion moving toward the sitting room from down the hall. It was obviously the oncoming storm of Maddie's parents. Once he could distinguish their voices, he could hear from Helen's tone that she was preparing Bob for the worst, trying to calm him. Bob didn't sound as if he wanted calmed.
"Okay, Madeline. What's this about?" Bob said a little too loudly as he entered the sitting room.
"Mom, Dad," Maddie said, moving toward John and clutching his arm. "This is John, my fiancé."
As Bob watched Maddie cross the room, and speak the words she spoke, his eyes got ever wider, and his lips parted slightly in a look of truly dumb amazement.
"No, Maddie. You're engaged to Henry Hawthorne. I was there last week when he proposed."
"No, I'm engaged to—"
"Helen," Bob said, interrupting Maddie, looking at her mom with a comically furrowed brow. "Did I not see Maddie get engaged last week?"
"I don't see how you could've seen that, father. It didn't happen. You saw Henry Hawthorne declare that we were to be married. But, since I was never asked, I couldn't accept or decline a proposal that was never offered."
"Maddie, you must see how this would be shocking news. Surely, you can understand why we would be surprised by this." Helen said, trying a little too hard to be rational.
"Yes, I understand. But that's why I'm telling you now before things get out of hand."
"Before they get out of hand? Before! No, Maddie! Things are well out of hand already!"
"Daddy, you're being dramatic."
"You walk in here with a stranger in a dirty tee-shirt, inform us that he's your fiancé only days after you were engaged to another man, and I'm the one who's being dramatic?"
"I was working, that's why my shirt is…" John tries to say, but is quickly interrupted by dumb stares. It was as if he had just spoken a different language or said something particularly vulgar.
"Who are you?" Bob asked him, dismissively.
"I'm John and I'm marrying your daughter," John said, clearly unshaken by Bob's antipathy.
"I'll be damned if you will."
"Daddy, you don't have the authority to—"
"Oh, I do. You have no idea how—"
"No, sir, you don't," John says, clearly starting to lose patience with Bob's tone. "We're getting married with or without you're blessing. Of course, we'd much rather have—"
"Who do you think you are coming in here—?"
"I said my name is John, Mr. Winthrop, and I don't like to be interrupted, and I'd appreciate it if you don't do it again."
"Get out of my house!"
"Daddy?"
"Get out!"
"Bob, maybe we should—" Helen tried to say, putting her hand on his arm.
"Get him out of here!" He yelled again to no one in particular.
"It's alright," John said to Maddie. "I'll go."
"If you go, I'm coming with you."
"Oh, no you're not," Bob said. "You're staying right here. We have some talking to do."
"Dad, I'm an adult. I won't have you—"
"I said you're staying here," Bob said and moved toward Maddie. Seeing this, John put his arm around Maddie and faced Bob. When Bob and John were face to face, Bob could see John's resolve, and, in that moment, it must've occurred to him that he had lost his daughter to this strange man. This man that Bob had never heard a word about until five minutes ago had suddenly shaken up everything he thought he'd arranged for his daughter's future.
"Lets go, Maddie," John said, guiding her by her father toward the hall.
Maddie turned once to her mom as they passed the doorway, "I'll be back later this evening. We'll talk then. Maybe he'll have calmed down by then."
Ever since their awkward first encounter, Bob had been trying to convince Maddie to let him meet with John alone. After days of ignoring his requests, Maddie finally relented and set up a meeting between them. It had been nearly a week since John and Bob first met, and that obviously did not go well. Maddie decided that they would have to mend fences eventually, and now was as good a time as any.
Maddie set up a meeting for breakfast at a diner two towns over. To hear Maddie tell it, her dad was so shaken by the situation with the Hawthornes, that he didn't want to invite gossip by being seen with John anywhere in town. The idea of meeting outside town didn't make John particularly optimistic about the meeting, but he decided he would do it for Maddie's sake.
John wasn't personally nervous about the meeting, but he was nervous for Maddie. He wasn't frightened of Bob, but he knew that any opportunity to soften the impression he got from their first meeting was critical if they were to have a non-combative relationship in the future.
John's hope was that this breakfast would be the first step in a more positive direction.
But when John arrived at the diner, he could tell right away that making amends wasn't Bob's intention. He was tucked in a booth in the corner, leaning over a half-eaten plate of bacon and eggs. He hardly even acknowledged John, other than briefly looking up from his newspaper as John approached. John sat across from him in the booth, but Bob kept reading his paper.
This was the moment when John realized that Bob was not the sort of guy who made nice. And, if they were ever to get beyond their bad blood, it would be by agreeing to just move beyond it. There would be no apologies.
"I see you ordered without me," John said.
"I'm in a hurry. Besides, we won't be long," Bob said, as he neatly folded his newspaper and sat it down by his plate.
A waitress moved toward their booth, but Bob waved her off. John quickly motioned for her to come back.
"Don't pay any attention to him," John said to her, gesturing toward Bob, who by now was just staring at him. "I'll have what he's having, but I'll take my eggs over easy and my toast nearly black."
The waitress wrote his order down and walked away without as much as a peep. John
got the impression that she wasn't being rude as much as she could sense the tension at the table.
"You trying to get under my skin?" Bob asked.
"No, I'm just not buying this power trip you've got going here."
"And what power trip is that?"
"You invited me to breakfast, but you ordered and started eating before I got here. That all might be fine if I had been running late, but I wasn't. I'm early. But how would you know? You've hardly acknowledged that I arrived at all, deciding instead to stare at your paper. Then you wave the waitress off before she can take my order because you're supposedly in a hurry. This is all pretty rude behavior, the kind of behavior you'd expect from someone who's trying to prove how important he is."
"You think you're pretty clever, don't you?"
"No, sir. Not particularly. But I'm not as dumb as you seem to think I am."
"Good, then maybe you'll have the good sense to listen to some advice."
"Depends on the advice."
"Stay away from Maddie," Bob says matter-of-factly, staring straight at John.
"That doesn't sound like a nice way to treat my future wife."
"You think you're funny?"
"I wasn't trying to be."
"This mess that you and Maddie have made can only be cleaned up if you're out of the picture. Once you're gone, I can send Maddie off for a few months until this all blows over."
"Until what blows over?
"This bad blood she's made between our family and the Hawthornes. You may have heard that I have a building project in the works with Hank Hawthorne. We're scheduled to break ground on a big, new development in a matter of weeks, and this whole situation has thrown all kinds of uncertainty