“We’re gonna need to tell everyone the news all over again tomorrow. This is getting dangerous,” Silas complained after he pried Emmett’s and Mama B’s faces off of Maggie when they tried to take a “kissy face selfie” that lasted two minutes too long. Blaire had gone in for a hug and ended up putting the happy couple in headlocks. Morris was asleep at one of the tables. The grinning Michael announced that he was “sho happeeeeee” for the seventh time, and the sober Nirina gleefully recorded the chaos on her phone.

Silas managed to find Elton at the bar. “It’s time,” he said to the man who was juggling four cocktails.

“I’d guess it’s about nine?” Elton said, tilting his hand to look at a watch that wasn’t there and dumping two of the cocktails on his pants. “Ah, man!”

“Focus. It’s time for the fountain,” Silas said, taking the rest of the drinks from him and handing them to Cody’s girlfriend’s parents as they tangoed by to a song that was much slower than the one the band was actually playing.

He got Elton in place—and put him in a chair in case the man’s balance deserted him—and headed over to the band. The band leader gave him the nod and cut off the song as Silas took the stage.

“Excuse me for interrupting the festivities, everyone,” he said into the microphone. “But I just asked a very special lady to marry me, and since she had the good sense to say yes, I have a little surprise for her.”

There was yelling, catcalling, and even a playful “boo” from Wallace’s neighbor Gladys, who kept winking at him.

He found Maggie in the crowd. A wide-awake Keaton on her hip and Dayana’s arm around her waist. She was beaming at him, those brown eyes full of a happiness he’d never seen there before. One he wanted for the rest of his life.

He loved her. Fiercely and forever.

“Hit it, Elton,” he said.

Almost on cue, the first plume of water shot up and out of the fountain, followed by a second and a third.

The crowd cheered wildly. But he kept his gaze on Maggie. She clapped a hand to her mouth and watched as the Campbell Fountain came back to life. He met her in the center of the terrace, plucked her nephew from her arms, and gave the boy a loud kiss on the head before turning him over to his mother.

“It’s amazing,” Maggie told him over the din of the crowd.

Then he picked her up in his arms and marched toward the fountain.

“What are you doing?”

“Tradition, darlin’,” he said, stepping over the stone lip of the fountain into the water.