I had two conversations with Claire in the weeks before the wedding. They were careful, as I said. She told me she’d had a call with Jordan to confirm the payment schedule and that the first installment had been paid. I didn’t ask how they’d managed it; that was their business now. She told me the florist had been surprisingly gracious about switching to the barn’s rental option — apparently the florist had had strong feelings about the custom arrangement but was relieved to have a decision made, because the ongoing back-and-forth had been stressful.
I told her about something at work. She told me about something at hers. We were two people finding our way back toward the frequency of actual siblings.
My mother called once, briefly, to say she was looking forward to seeing me at the wedding. The lightness in her voice suggested she was more relieved than she was letting on.
I got a haircut. I bought shoes I’d been putting off buying. I prepared the toast.
The toast was the part that took the most work. Not because I didn’t know what to say, but because I knew so many things and the skill was in choosing only the ones that were right for a room full of people who were there to celebrate, not to process. I wanted something that was true and warm and that gave Claire and Owen something they could carry forward, without any undertow of the previous weeks in it.
What I landed on was this: I talked about what I had observed in Owen, which was his instinct to find out what had actually happened before deciding what he thought. I said this was a quality I admired and that I thought it would serve him well in a marriage. I talked about Claire’s precision — her ability to know what she wanted and to communicate it clearly, even when that clarity was difficult, and how I thought that quality would make their relationship honest. I said I was glad to be there. I said I wished them well.