But the image in front of me stayed the same. “Mom?”

My mother sat at a long table wearing an expression that I couldn’t decipher. She was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes.

I would’ve asked her what was wrong except I couldn’t figure out why she was in New Orleans a day early. And how had she known that I was going to be at this restaurant? And then...what were my sisters, Jada and Lauren doing here? Along with Jeremy’s brother, Ralph and his wife, Jean, and Dru, who sat at the far end of the table along with three of my line sisters and their significant others.

It was a table full of people that I didn’t expect to see, but the one I expected wasn’t even here. At least if Jeremy was here, I could get some answers.

Where was he?

Just as I had that thought, music came through the speakers.

“Lost without you...”

But it wasn’t Alan Thicke’s voice.

“Can’t help myself.”

Jeremy walked through curtains from the opposite side of the room. I wanted to ask him what was going on, but I didn’t want to stop his serenade. Plus, I was stuck on the way he looked; he’d changed into a suit, the only one he owned. It was a little wrinkled, but he still looked gorgeous to me. That wasn’t a word I would normally use for a man, definitely not for Jeremy, but that was all I had to describe my man who stood before me, tall, dark and super fine.

“Jeremy?” I said his name as if I wasn’t sure he was really the man before me.

He nodded as if to assure me, and kept singing as he strolled closer. He was still a couple of feet away when the music stopped and after a moment, he began speaking, “We’ve been friends for a while now. Two years. And during that time, every day you put not only a smile on my face, but a smile in my heart.”

I pressed my hand against my chest.

“You’ve touched me in a special way and my only regret is that it took me so long,” he paused as he stopped just inches from me, his gaze glued to mine, “to see what was right in front of my face. We met as this song was playing and I had no idea that night that these words would quickly belong to me when it came to you. Ginger, I’d be so lost without you. So now....”

I gasped as he slowly lowered himself, not stopping until he had eased down onto one knee. Then, he lifted the top of a velvet box that I didn’t notice until this moment. And when he slipped the ring from the box, I held my breath. It wasn’t because of the diamond; I didn’t need a lot of light to know that it wasn’t very big. Jeremy just wasn’t into that kind of thing and really, neither was I.