My husband’s mother walked eight women from her side of the family onto our wedding lawn, each of them in a white dress, and she leaned in at the arbor and said, “Go on, honey, cry. They all came to watch.” She was sure I’d fall apart. I took the officiant’s microphone instead, and the fiddler set down her bow.
Brett and I had waited six years to get to that lawn, and most of the wait was his mother.
She made her ruling at the very first Sunday dinner, with me sitting right there passing the rolls.
“She’s sweet,” Opal said to him. “You’ll outgrow sweet.”
I laughed, because I figured it had to be a joke.
Every visit after that, she found one thing.
How I loaded her dishwasher.
“Forks up,” she said. “That’s how people raised in a trailer load a dishwasher.”
I wasn’t raised in a trailer. I didn’t correct her.
How I said pecan. How I laughed with my mouth open. The green bean casserole I brought to Easter, which she scraped into the dog’s bowl while I was still holding the dish towel.
“Somebody might as well eat it,” she said.
I kept smiling. I smiled so hard my cheeks ached the whole drive home.
Brett would put his hand on my knee at red lights.
“That’s just Mom,” he said. Every single time.
I didn’t want to be the woman who cracked a family in half over a casserole. So I swallowed it.
Then he proposed, and she got worse.
She hated the orchard.
“Apples,” she said. “What’s next, a hayride? Should I bring a CORN DOG?”
She hated the lemon cake. She hated the wooden chairs, the fiddler, the rust color I picked for my sister’s dress, and the cream paper for the programs.
“Who chose this font,” she said. “A first grader?”
I changed the font.
She hated that one too.
She came to my last fitting without being asked and sat on the little velvet bench with her purse in her lap.
“Ivory,” she said. “That’s a brave choice.”
I asked her what she meant.
“Nothing, honey. White’s for girls who’ve earned it.”
I told Brett that night. He rubbed his eyes.
“She’ll behave on the day,” he said. “She PROMISED me.”
I kept telling myself she was a woman losing her only son, and grief makes people ugly.
Then her sisters joined in.
Opal has two, Aileen and Melinda, and between them they have five grown daughters, Melinda’s twins included.
The twins are twenty-two and still dress alike on purpose.
Aileen spent the whole summer calling me “the girl.” NEVER my name.
At my bridal shower, Melinda handed me a gift bag with the receipt still taped inside.
“In case you change your mind,” she said. “Or he does.”
The twins laughed at the exact same second.
After that I started counting them at every family thing. Opal, two sisters, five nieces.
EIGHT.
Eight women and one face between them, and every time I walked in, that face turned to me.
I told Brett it felt like walking into a courtroom.
“You’re being dramatic, Nat,” he said.
Maybe I was. Nothing in six years got me ready for that Saturday.
It was the third week of October, cold enough that my niece Violet wore a brown cardigan over her flower girl dress.
Eighty wooden chairs on the grass at an apple orchard outside Frankfort. Brett under the arbor. The fiddler tuning by the cider table.
My dad, Curtis, had fixed his tie four times.
I was waiting inside the barn door for the music to change when Violet pulled on my sleeve.
“Aunt Natalia,” she said. “How come those ladies are dressed like you?”
I looked out.
Opal was coming down the gravel path from the parking field.
Aileen was a step behind her. Then Melinda. Then the twins, arm in arm. Then the other three nieces in a line.
ALL OF THEM IN WHITE.
White to the ankle and white to the knee. A white pantsuit with a white silk bow at the throat. The twins in matching white minidresses, their heels sinking into the grass.
Opal in a fitted ivory sheath and a string of pearls I had never once seen on her.
One of the twins found me through the barn door and waved with just her fingers.
They came down the center aisle together, between my eighty chairs, almost in step.
Heads turned row by row.
Somebody’s grandfather said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”
My cousin had her phone up. A woman in the third row had both hands over her mouth.
From the barn it looked like some other bride’s whole wedding party had taken a wrong exit and walked into mine.
Opal stopped at the front row, turned, and smoothed her skirt with both hands.
There was a paper tag still tucked inside the back of her collar.
She was taking that dress back Monday.
Brett’s face went red from the collar up.
He curled his fingers into his palms until the knuckles paled.
His best man grabbed his elbow. Brett shook him off.
He looked at his mother, then up the lawn at me, and stepped down off the platform.
My dad put his hand on the barn door.
“Nat,” he said. “Say the word and I’ll walk the whole bunch back to their cars.”
I didn’t answer him.
Because Opal had seen me.
She came up the side of the chairs, slow, smiling, and leaned into the barn doorway so close I could smell her hairspray.
“Go on, honey, cry,” she said. “They all came to watch.”
Violet had both fists in my skirt.
My stomach stopped churning. Cold and still, like a pond in November.
The words were READY before I moved.
I’d known for six years. I’d just never had a microphone.
I walked past Opal and down the aisle by myself, ahead of my music, with Violet trotting behind me dropping petals because no one had told her to stop.
The fiddler quit mid-note.
Brett met me at the bottom step of the arbor.
“I’m ending this,” he said. “Right now. I’m putting them out.”
I laid my hand on his chest.
“No, baby,” I said. “This one’s MINE.”
He stared at me. Then he stepped back.
Pastor Lowery was holding the microphone on its stand like he’d forgotten what it was for.
“Can I borrow that?” I said.
He let go of it fast.
The women hadn’t sat down. Eight white dresses stood across the aisle’s opening, facing me.
Opal was dead center with her chin up and all her teeth showing.
I lifted THE MICROPHONE off the stand.
Down by the cider table, the fiddler set her bow across her knees.
The front-row chair
“Before we start,” I said into it, “Opal needs to repeat what she just said to me.”
My cousin lowered her phone. Brett turned toward his mother.
Opal put her hand against her pearls.
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“The part about crying.”
“Oh, Natalia. Don’t do this.”
I held the microphone toward her. She didn’t take it.
Those were the words I’d carried down the aisle. I wanted her to say them where Brett could hear. For once, I wanted the ride home to contain the actual sentence.
Dad came up beside the chairs. Opal stepped around him and sat in the place I’d saved for him, beside my sister.
His folded program was on the seat. She put it on her lap.
“Curtis, would you give us a minute? This is family.”
My sister stood so quickly her chair scraped the grass.
“He is her father.”
“I meant Brett’s family.”
“Yes,” my sister said. “We heard you.”
Dad held out his hand for his program. Opal passed it over without getting up.
I wanted to pull that chair out from under her. Thirty-four years old, dressed to get married, and suddenly I understood every woman who’d ever appeared on local television beside the words wedding disturbance.
Instead, I lowered the microphone.
“Violet, go stand with your mother.”
She went, carrying her basket against her cardigan. My sister took her hand and moved behind Dad. Nobody was going to make my niece stand between us.
Brett bent toward me.
“Let me get them out.”
Opal could hear him. She stood again.
“There. You see? She’s barely through the door.”
Aileen reached for her purse. The other women drew closer.
Opal kept her eyes on Brett.
“Tell us to leave, then. Say it where everyone can hear.”
She held out her hand to him.
The cream program
On that same Saturday, Dad opened his program and flattened the crease against his palm.
His name was inside it. So was Opal’s.
At Friday’s rehearsal, she’d tapped the line where both parents were meant to stand with us. “One person can speak for a family,” she’d said. “Curtis gives her away. I’ll do our blessing.” Dad had asked me, “Is that what you want?” I’d said it was fine. Brett had kissed my forehead as if I’d done something generous. Pastor Lowery had crossed out the shared response in his copy. Opal had checked the page before handing it back.
Now she stood in front of Dad’s empty chair, her hand still extended toward her son.
He didn’t take it.
But he didn’t answer her either.
Dad folded the program again. I’d wanted him to keep that thing. He’d put every school concert program in the same drawer, including one where my sole responsibility was striking a triangle.
This one cost more. Apparently that hadn’t improved the entertainment.
“Do you want us to wait in the barn?” he said to me.
“No.”
“All right.”
That was how my father helped. A question, an answer, and he stayed where I put him. He didn’t need a committee to decide whether I’d meant it.
Opal lowered her hand.
“We’ve all made an effort to be here,” she said. “Some of us would like to enjoy the day.”
Aileen nodded. Melinda adjusted the bow on her pantsuit.
One twin bent to free a heel from the grass. Her sister reached toward an empty seat, but Melinda touched her elbow. Both stayed standing.
I knew that touch. At those dinners, Melinda could stop a daughter from answering me with two fingers.
Brett put his hand over mine on the microphone.
“Let’s talk over here.”
He meant beside the arbor, a few feet from the guests. Another small place where something could be said and later improved upon.
I kept my hand around the handle.
“Your mother can answer here.”
“Nat. Please.”
Opal lifted her chin toward the microphone.
“Is this really what you want people to remember?”
I wanted Dad walking me down the aisle. I wanted Brett to look happy when he saw me. I’d spent six years asking for things that appeared to come free with other people’s weddings.
My father stepped closer.
“You don’t have to hurry for anybody,” he said.
Opal picked up her purse.
“Well, Brett?”
Eight across
“We’re not leaving yet,” I said.
Aileen’s purse stopped halfway onto her shoulder.
I put the microphone back on its stand, pointed toward us. Pastor Lowery stepped aside. I hadn’t decided what came after my first sentence, and I wouldn’t pretend I had.
“Did you all plan this together?”
Opal gave a little laugh.
“Look at us. Obviously.”
“What did you call it when you invited them?”
“A bit of fun.”
“For whom?”
Melinda looked toward the guests.
“Natalia, people wear white to weddings now. It’s not the nineteen-fifties.”
“Then you won’t mind saying why you chose it.”
“We chose to match.”
“Why?”
Opal put her purse down on Dad’s chair again.
“Because we’re a family. We do things together. You might try appreciating that.”
Aileen moved beside her. The nieces stayed in a row behind them.
Eight grown women. I’d dealt with more sensible groups outside a department-store changing room.
Brett stepped forward.
“Mom, you knew she wouldn’t like this.”
“I knew she’d be surprised.”
“You promised me.”
“And did I object to the marriage? Did I say one word when she walked out?”
“You told me to cry,” I said.
Opal turned toward the guests with a smile.
“I told her not to cry.”
My sister made a sound through her nose. Violet was beside Dad now, examining a petal in her basket. My sister could give this her full attention.
“I heard you,” she said.
“You were nowhere near us.”
“I was inside the barn.”
Opal looked back toward the open door.
For a second, she had nothing.
Then she spread her hands.
“Well, if everybody’s determined to find something ugly in everything I say.”
Brett rubbed his forehead. There it was again, the gesture from the night of my fitting.
I reached for him.
“All I asked was that she repeat it.”
“I know.”
“That’s all.”
“I know, Nat.”
But he was looking at the guests. At the fiddler waiting with her bow down. At his best man standing with his hands clasped in front of him.
Opal followed his eyes.
“Exactly. There are people here who drove a long way. Let’s stop punishing them.”
Dad took a step into the aisle.
“Nobody’s being punished by waiting ten minutes.”
“Curtis, I wasn’t speaking to you.”
“You’re standing in front of my daughter.”
My father rarely raised his voice. When he did, he sounded like he was asking someone at the hardware store to bring out the manager.
It worked about as well on Opal.
She turned away from him and touched Brett’s sleeve.
“Get her settled. Then we can get on with it.”
I took my hand off Brett’s arm.
He caught it again.
“That’s enough, Mom.”
“Then tell her that.”
One of the twins pressed her lips together. The other stared at the microphone.
I pointed to the empty chairs.
“You can sit down while we talk.”
Melinda shook her head before either daughter moved.
“We’ll stay together.”
Opal smiled at me.
“See?”
Brett pulled his mother a step aside, but the microphone carried his next words down the lawn.
“I told you she’d let one dress go. Not eight.”
One dress
“One?” I said.
Brett released his mother’s arm.
His face changed before he answered. I’d seen that face when he’d dented my car and hoped I wouldn’t look at the passenger door.
“She called me last week.”
“About her dress?”
“She said it was cream. She said you were making a thing out of it.”
“I hadn’t seen her dress.”
“I know that now.”
I held my bouquet against my stomach. A stem had worked loose from the ribbon. I pressed it back in with my thumb because something needed to stay where I’d put it.
“What did you tell her?”
“That you weren’t going to fight with her at the wedding.”
Opal took a breath through her nose.
“Thank you. That’s all I’ve been trying to say.”
Brett swung toward her.
“No. Don’t do that.”
“You told me it was fine.”
“Your dress. You didn’t say anything about this.”
“Am I responsible for what everyone wears?”
“You just said you planned it.”
Opal turned toward Aileen.
“Honestly.”
Aileen put an arm around her sister. Melinda’s daughters stood close enough that their shoulders touched.
Brett came back to me.
“I should have told you.”
I almost said it didn’t matter.
The sentence came right up, ready for use. I’d said it beside enough red lights. His mother did something, he looked tired, and I became the easy person again.
My tongue actually moved.
Then Dad shifted beside me, and the program in his hand brushed my dress.
“You told her what I’d put up with,” I said.
“I was trying to stop a fight.”
“You didn’t ask me.”
“No.”
“And then you let me get dressed this morning.”
He looked down at the bouquet.
“I thought she’d behave.”
“Because she promised?”
He nodded.
Behind him, Opal sat on Dad’s chair.
That hurt more than another remark would have. She crossed her ankles, arranged her skirt, and settled in to wait for her son to finish managing me.
Brett glanced toward the barn.
“We can have a minute alone.”
I shook my head.
“Please, Nat. I can’t fix six years in front of all these people.”
“You can stop asking me to hide them.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
I wanted him to say he’d been wrong. I wanted him to make it so complete that I could marry him without carrying this conversation into the vows.
He looked at his mother instead.
“Would you apologize?”
Opal rose.
“If Natalia’s feelings were hurt, of course I’m sorry. This has gotten completely out of hand.”
Brett turned back toward me.
“Can we start from there?”
I stared at him.
There was my answer, and I hated it.
He’d brought me the same apology I’d taken home after Easter, only this time it wore pearls.
Dad held out his arm. He didn’t ask where I wanted to go.
I put my hand on his sleeve.
Brett stepped toward us.
“Wait.”
Opal stood behind him, her purse tucked under her elbow.
“For heaven’s sake. Over a dress.”
I took one step toward the barn.
Brett moved into the aisle.
“Nat, if you walk away now, I don’t know how we come back from this.”
I took my hand off Dad’s arm and faced him.
“You should have thought about that before I got here.”
The fiddler laid her bow inside its case.
The barn door
We hadn’t left the lawn.
Dad stood between the first row and the aisle. My sister had taken Violet toward the barn, close enough that I could still see them.
Brett stayed in front of me. Behind him, his mother gathered her sisters with a tilt of her head.
Nobody seemed to know whether to sit or stand. I understood that. My knees were voting for the ground.
“I don’t want to walk away,” I said.
“Then don’t.”
“I don’t want this to be my wedding either.”
Brett reached for my hand. I let him hold it, but I didn’t step closer.
Opal came around his shoulder.
“Listen to yourselves. You’ve got a beautiful day, a lovely place, everybody here. You’re throwing it away because eight women bought dresses.”
She’d spent months making fun of the orchard. Now she was practically its brochure.
Brett turned his head.
“Mom, stop talking.”
“I’m trying to help you.”
“You’re making it worse.”
“Well, somebody has to say it. She cannot start your marriage by deciding which of us you’re allowed to see.”
“I haven’t said that,” I said.
“You had him ready to put us out.”
“He offered.”
“And you took the microphone instead. Much nicer.”
Aileen pressed a tissue into Opal’s hand. Opal held it without using it.
I could hear somebody near the back folding a program. A chair shifted. That was all.
Our guests were trying not to make any sound that might become part of this.
Brett’s hand moved around mine.
“Tell me what you need me to do.”
I nearly gave him instructions.
Tell your mother to leave. Tell your aunts to follow her. Say exactly this, stand exactly there, and don’t look at me as though I’m the reason your afternoon needs repairing.
I’d arranged the chairs. I’d picked the cake. Apparently I was meant to supply the groom’s answer too.
“You know what happened,” I said.
He swallowed.
Opal held the tissue up to her face at last.
“Brett, enough. Your aunts aren’t standing here to be insulted. We can go.”
The twins looked at each other.
Melinda caught one by the wrist, gently, but the girl pulled her hand free.
Aileen took a step toward the aisle.
“Come on, then.”
Brett didn’t move.
Opal held her hand out again, the way she had when I’d first spoken.
This time she explained.
“You come with us. Let her settle down. We’ll talk when she can be reasonable.”
I looked at his hand around mine.
He looked at it too.
“Mom.”
“Just for a few minutes. Don’t make this worse. Come to the cars.”
She was offering him the old ride home. No vows, no wife, no need to answer me where anybody could hear.
Dad bent toward my ear.
“We can leave by the other side.”
My throat hurt. I nodded once, although I hadn’t decided.
Brett let go of my hand.
I hated him for that second.
He needed both hands to rub his face, but I didn’t know it until he’d done it. My fingers stayed curled where his had been.
Opal stepped closer to him.
“There. Come on.”
Brett lowered his hands.
I could have reached for him. I could have said please in front of everybody.
Instead, I stepped away from the aisle.
There was room for him to pass.
The crossed-out line
Brett stayed where he was.
Opal’s hand remained in the space between them.
“You said you wouldn’t let her put us out,” she said.
“I said she wouldn’t make a fuss about your dress.”
“Well, look around.”
One of Melinda’s twins sat down.
The chair made a little sound under her. Her sister stayed standing for a moment, then sat beside her.
Melinda turned.
“Girls. We’re going.”
“I’m sitting down,” the first twin said.
Opal’s eyes moved from them to Brett.
“Don’t let her split everybody up. I told them you wouldn’t.”
“What did you tell them?” I said.
She ignored me.
I stepped back toward the microphone.
“Opal. What did you tell them?”
“That my son knows his family.”
Aileen touched her elbow, but Opal shook her off.
“That he wouldn’t stand by while we were sent away. That if we went, he’d come with us. That’s what any decent son would do.”
Brett stared at her.
“You brought them here to find that out?”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. We came to your wedding. We wanted to have a little fun, and now look what she’s done with it.”
I went to Pastor Lowery.
“Do you still have your copy from yesterday?”
He held it out. The page was folded at the ceremony.
There was the line he’d crossed out: the question for our families and friends, asking whether they would support our marriage.
I’d liked that part. You couldn’t fit everyone who’d loved you into a wedding party. Standing together for a sentence had seemed enough.
Opal had wanted to speak for Brett’s family.
I put my finger on the crossed-out line.
“Could we use this after all?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Before anything else.”
Brett came beside me, but I kept my eyes on the page.
“Nat.”
I looked up.
“I’m staying here.”
I didn’t thank him.
He stood beside me anyway.
I lifted the microphone from its stand.
“Nobody has been asked to leave,” I said. “Nobody has to leave together.”
Melinda looked down at her daughters.
“We’re going to ask the question we cut yesterday. Each person can answer for themselves.”
Opal reached toward the microphone.
“Brett, your family blessing comes from me.”
He moved his hand between hers and the microphone.
“Then you’ll have to answer it too.”
The people on their feet
Pastor Lowery waited until I nodded.
He asked whether the people gathered there would support Brett and me in our marriage.
Dad stood straight beside his chair.
“I will,” he said.
My sister answered from the barn doorway. Other voices followed hers. People rose along the rows, some with programs in their hands.
Melinda’s twins stood again.
This time their mother hadn’t touched them.
“We will,” one said.
Opal turned toward her.
“Sit down.”
The girl stayed standing.
“You were laughing a minute ago,” Opal said. “Don’t pretend you weren’t part of it.”
“I was.”
“Then don’t stand there acting better than me.”
“I’m not.”
Her sister took her hand.
The other three nieces stood where they’d been crowded behind Aileen. One said, “We want to stay for the wedding.”
Aileen stared at her daughters.
Opal’s face went red above the pearls.
“So I’m going to take all of this on my own? Melinda, you helped choose the dresses.”
“I know,” Melinda said.
“You thought it was funny.”
“I did.”
“And now?”
Melinda looked at me.
“I’m sorry, Natalia.”
Opal made a sound that was almost a laugh.
“Oh, lovely. We’re doing this now. After you stood in that parking field and laughed with the rest of us.”
Melinda didn’t look away from me.
“Yes.”
I nodded once.
She walked to the row behind her daughters. No hug. No sudden friendship. She could sit through the ceremony with what she’d done, the same as everybody else.
Aileen remained beside Opal.
“You’ve made your point,” she said to Brett. “Now get this wedding started before your mother has to leave in tears.”
Brett looked at her.
“Answer the question.”
“Don’t speak to me like I’m a child.”
“Do you want us married?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then stop helping her stop it.”
Aileen took her arm from around Opal.
For a moment, she held both hands in front of her, as though someone had passed her something she didn’t want.
Then she moved beside Melinda.
Seven women in white stood among the guests.
Opal stood alone in front of Dad’s chair.
She stared at Brett.
“After everything.”
He didn’t answer.
“I raised you. I did everything for you. And you’re going to humiliate me in front of strangers over some silly clothes?”
“You told Natalia to cry.”
“She said I did.”
“Her sister heard you.”
“Then believe her. Believe anybody you like.”
“I do.”
Opal pressed the tissue against her mouth.
He waited.
“You let her stand there and accuse me,” she said. “You let her drag every little family disagreement into this.”
“I helped you.”
That stopped her.
Brett turned toward the guests, but he spoke to me.
“I kept telling her to take it. I told my mother what she’d tolerate without asking her. Natalia didn’t know about the dress.”
I couldn’t look at him for long. My eyes had started watering, and I was furious about the timing.
He faced his mother again.
“She doesn’t owe you an apology.”
Opal took a step toward him.
“Walk me to my car.”
“You can sit down and stay.”
“I’m asking my son to walk me to my car.”
“I’m staying with Natalia.”
“Then don’t expect me at the reception.”
He nodded.
“No mother dance. No photographs. Is that what she wants?”
Brett put his hand beside mine, palm up. He didn’t take hold.
“If you leave, you miss them.”
Opal looked past him toward her sisters.
Neither moved.
She picked up her purse from Dad’s chair and walked into the aisle. Halfway down, she turned.
“I hope you’re satisfied, Natalia. You got what you wanted.”
I put my hand in Brett’s.
“I wanted a wedding.”
Opal waited for someone to follow.
Then she walked to the gravel path alone.
My father’s elbow
The guests were still standing when Opal reached the parking field.
I asked them to sit. My knees were shaking now, and I assumed at least a few of theirs were tired of our family.
Dad came toward me.
I put my arms around him before he could speak.
He held me without patting my back or telling me I was all right. I wasn’t all right yet. My makeup was going onto his shirt, which struck me as an excellent use of it.
“I missed my walk,” I said.
“We can do that again.”
I looked over his shoulder at Brett.
He stood at the arbor, waiting.
Dad loosened his arms.
“Only if you want to.”
I went back to Brett. We stood close enough to talk without the microphone.
“I’m not doing another Easter like that.”
“No.”
“And I won’t spend tomorrow apologizing for today.”
“I won’t ask you to.”
“You’ve said that sort of thing before.”
“I know.”
He didn’t reach for me. He let me look at him.
I needed that more than another promise. For once, he wasn’t trying to finish the conversation before I’d finished having it.
“I want to marry you,” I said. “I won’t marry you and keep doing this.”
“I understand.”
“Then don’t call her tonight and tell her I got upset.”
His eyes filled.
“I won’t.”
I stood there another moment. He waited through that too.
Then I handed my bouquet to my sister and went back to the barn with Dad.
The fiddler lifted her bow.
Violet came beside us and tipped her basket toward me.
“I used most of them.”
“That’s all right.”
“Should I pick some up?”
“No, sweetheart. We’re going forward.”
Dad offered his elbow. I slipped my hand through it.
We stood inside the same doorway where Opal had told me to cry. My sister straightened the back of my dress, then pressed the bouquet into my hands.
“Ready?” Dad said.
I looked down the aisle.
Brett stood alone under the arbor. His mother’s chair was empty. Dad’s chair waited beside my sister’s.
“Now I am.”
The brown cardigan
We walked slowly.
Dad wasn’t much of a ceremonial person. He usually got places by the shortest available route, with a complaint about parking.
That afternoon, he gave me every inch of the aisle.
Violet went ahead of us. She dropped her last petals one at a time, then shook the basket upside down just to be certain.
People smiled at her. Someone laughed.
A good laugh. I could tell the difference without looking.
At the arbor, Dad put my hand into Brett’s, then held on to both of us.
“Take care of each other,” he said.
Brett nodded.
Dad looked directly at him.
“That includes when it’s inconvenient.”
“I know,” Brett said.
Dad let go and took his own seat.
We said our vows. My voice broke halfway through mine, and Brett cried so hard he had to start one sentence again.
Nobody told either of us to settle down.
Afterward, the seven women waited while our other guests came up to hug us. They didn’t approach as a group.
One twin came first.
“I shouldn’t have laughed at your shower,” she said. “Or today.”
“No,” I said. “You shouldn’t.”
She nodded and moved aside for her sister.
Melinda apologized for the gift-bag remark. Aileen stood in front of me with her program rolled between her hands.
“I’m sorry, Natalia.”
She used my name.
I accepted the apology. I didn’t tell her it was fine.
When the photographs started, Aileen moved toward the empty space beside Brett.
He held out his hand to Dad instead.
“Curtis. Here.”
Dad looked at me before taking the place. I pulled him in by his sleeve.
Opal missed the family photographs. She missed the vows, the first kiss, and the reception she threatened not to attend. Seven women from her family stayed through all of it.
Nobody carried her blessing in for her.
Later, when the fiddler began the music meant for Brett and his mother, Brett went over and spoke to her. She stopped, nodded, and started the tune Dad and I had chosen.
Dad looked down at his shoes.
“Already did my walking,” he said.
“You’ve got another three minutes in you.”
He held out his arms.
I danced with him twice that evening.
Brett stood nearby, smiling with his eyes still red. He didn’t leave to make a call. His mother’s empty place stayed empty.
When the light went, I stepped into the barn doorway to straighten my skirt before we left. Violet came up beside me in her brown cardigan.
She had the petal basket over her arm.
“Aunt Natalia?”
I bent toward her.
“Did you get your wedding?”
Brett was coming up the path. Dad stood behind him with my coat.
I held out my hand.
“Yes, sweetheart. Come get in the picture.”
If this one got to you, send it to someone who’s spent too long smiling through “that’s just how she is.”
Family drama has a way of showing up where you least expect it – at a wedding, in your own home, or even in an emergency room. Read about more family betrayals in “My Son Let Himself Into My House That Sunday”, “My Daughter Gave Away The Key To My House”, and “My Daughter Heard The Clerk Call That Grandmother Uncooperative”.
