I got a dress. I found a gift that I could afford without distress, a piece of pottery Olivia had mentioned once admiring, which I ordered from the artist’s website for sixty-five dollars. The gift was not a token of having forgiven everything or a symbol of renewed closeness. It was a wedding gift from a sister-in-law who would be at the wedding and who wished the couple well.
Both of those things were true simultaneously.
Nora’s Own Future
The wedding was in September.
It was a Saturday, warm but not hot, at a venue outside the city that had, Olivia had been right, something the first venue didn’t: a view of a field that went all the way to the tree line and turned golden in the late afternoon light. The ceremony was under an oak that had been there for what the venue’s paperwork apparently called “over a century,” though I’m not sure how they knew.
I wore a blue dress. I sat in the second row on the family side. My parents were in the first row. My mother had cried at the rehearsal dinner, I heard, and was clearly preparing to cry again.
She did. She cried beautifully, which is not something you can practice but she seems to have achieved anyway.
Ethan cried a little too, which surprised me and then didn’t. He gets moved by things. He always has. When we were kids he cried at animated movies in a way that was embarrassing and then later seemed like a good quality.