Marriage with Melinda

Travis agreed. He was still a bit nervous, however. Like Melinda, his parents were dead now, but he still had family in New York. Would they want to attend? Would they accept the fact that he wanted to marry a white woman, and a foreign one at that? And what about Melinda’s family in Perth? Would they fly over here to attend? What if they didn’t want her to marry a black American man?

Over the course of several weeks, Travis and Melinda made plans to visit Travis’s relatives in New York, as well as Melinda’s relatives in Perth. The meetings were awkward, to say the least–Travis’s cousin Harold, an NYPD cop like Travis’s late dad, asked Melinda if she was marrying Travis just to get a green card, while Melinda’s sister Miriam kept on asking probing questions about their sex life–but thankfully, no one specifically stated that they disapproved of the idea of the couple getting married. Not one person in their respective families indicated interest in attending the wedding, however.

Travis and Melinda weren’t really bothered. Very few people, relatives or not, could understand the magic they had together.