“Jon is over the moon. It was so sweet, Katie. I was so nervous when I told him, just because, you never know, right? Obviously we’d talked about marriage and babies and all of that, but it’s totally different when one is on the way. So I tell him at the kitchen table and he, like, jumps up and runs upstairs. I’m thinking: What the hell? He looks excited but I’m also freaking out, and I mean, he ran out of the room. So he sprints back downstairs and basically throws himself at my feet. Suddenly, he’s on one knee with a ring box, and I can’t even tell you what happened after that, I kind of blacked out for a minute. I said yes, obviously.”

“Wow, the whole package,” I said. I loved Luke, but I couldn’t imagine doing either of these things yet.

“The great thing is,” Penny continued, “he already had the ring, so I’m not worried that it was a case of, like, Oh, she’s pregnant, I have to propose. It’s the prettiest ring, Katie! A diamond solitaire with a white gold band.”

“I’m so happy for you, Penny. I know Mom and Dad will be too.”

“Will they?”

“Yes.”

I knew they worried about Penny’s tendency to rush ahead with things. But she seemed more stable now; she’d worked in the family medicine clinic at Kootenai for almost four years. I often came to visit her at her office when I was home, and I loved seeing her in her element. She was clearly beloved in the office; she moved with such confidence there and was so competent and warm with the patients.

And my parents would make the most adoring grandparents. Their philosophy had always been that, as long as we were happy and safe, they wanted for us only what we wanted for ourselves. I knew they had some misgivings about Jon. He’d been out of work for a while and he and Penny had always seemed like a bit of a mismatch. But when they’d tried to address any of their concerns about Jon with Penny, she collapsed into floods of tears. Whatever issues we had about Jon, it appeared we were stuck with him now.