The Unexpected Bride-Book One in Taming of the Shrew

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Eight

"I just cannot understand."

A woman up in age muttered, her hands busy fastening the ribbon of her dress around her waist. Her lips pursed, she gazed at her groomed appearance in the living room mirror for the hundredth time. She was preparing for a special occasion, something the family expected.

And she was not the only one.

In a rocking chair, her husband sat reading the daily paper. He had taken the liberty of becoming comfortable because he knew his grandson wasting time upstairs was far from ready.

Watching his wife fretting underneath the rim of his glasses, he expressed.

"What else can't you understand, Irene?"

Shaking the paper, an odd habit he developed to enhance the reading, he murmured as he turned to the next page.

"Our third eldest granddaughter is getting married. It is neither surprising nor hard to understand."

In others words, he meant, 'what is the big idea?'

A vein popped in the old woman—Irene's forehead, and he hastily added when he sensed her disagreement.

"I mean, she is of marriageable age. That is something we expected, right?"

Her sigh was the loudest yet. She was already frustrated with the drastic news, and their grandson's absence was making it worse.

Swiftly, she turned away from the mirror and glared in his direction. Peter flinched. Knowing his wife, she was an inch away from bursting. He hoped his grandson had a good reason for his delay. If not, he had no way to save him.

"How can you be so nonchalant of the matter, Peter?"

"Me? Nonchalant? I am the same as you."
Offended, he voiced his denial, but she only scoffed.

"As if. Marriage is a serious business, Peter. As a young woman who did not even bother to catch one of the single flies buzzing around her, how could Sharlene suddenly be getting married? Something smells fishy, and Helena is refusing to tell me."

"What could Helena be possibly hiding from us?"
Peter curiously voiced. Her pointed stare made him cough, and he returned to his paper.

"I don't know. Maybe Sharlene is suddenly getting married because of unexpected reasons?"

"Unexpected reasons?"
He murmured but quickly shook his head when a distant thought came to mind.

"What if Sharlene is pregnant, and that is the reason for marriage?"

Peter's reaction was priceless. With widened eyes, he looked at Irene as if she had lost some screws. 'She just had to voice my thoughts!' He cried in his heart. Hastily, he dismissed her words.

"Preposterous! Irene, listen to yourself. We raised our girls to be responsible adults. They most likely taught their girls the same rule. Why don't you cool down and patiently wait for Helena's reason before jumping to a conclusion? Your pressure is already unstable."

Irene could only huff, but he was right. She needed to cool off. And that she did by taking in another deep breath.

From the moment Helena had called her on one of her happy days and informed her of the news a month ago, Irene had become immensely curious.

Every waking moment after, she would call, but her efforts were in vain.

"What an unfilial daughter! I tell you she is hiding something, Peter."

She muttered but eventually dropped the topic when Peter only hummed.

He had turned his attention to solving the puzzle in the newspaper. It was one of his reasons for picking up the layers of paper in the first place.