I texted Jordan: “Thank you for handling this so professionally. You made a complicated situation much easier.”
She wrote back: “Happy to help. See you at the wedding.”
I had almost forgotten that Jordan would see me at the wedding. I found this oddly comforting.
## Six Weeks to Weeks: The Countdown
The period between the transfer paperwork and the wedding was approximately three and a half weeks, and it was not simple or easy or filled with the warmth of a restored relationship. It was the kind of period where people who have hurt each other are trying to find their way back to something that may be permanently altered.
Claire and I talked twice in those weeks. The conversations were careful in a way our conversations had never been before. She asked how I was doing and listened in a way that felt new. I asked about the wedding prep and tried to ask from genuine interest rather than from the habit of competence, and I think I mostly succeeded.
She told me about the florist decision: they had eliminated the custom centerpiece arrangement and replaced it with a simpler option that the barn’s own rental inventory included, at significantly lower cost. The money saved there, combined with a modest contribution from my mother and Owen’s adjustments to the rehearsal dinner scale, had gotten them to the balance.
She did not tell me what she said to Owen’s parents about why the financial arrangements had shifted. I did not ask. That was their story to manage.