I just saw me. In a green dress. With my sister standing behind me, crying a little.
“That one,” Kate said.
“That one,” I agreed.
The wedding was on a Saturday in June. At a country club outside the city, the kind with a long tree-lined driveway and a white tent on the lawn and a string quartet playing by the fountain.
Max picked the girls up the night before. He wanted them at the rehearsal dinner. Ava hugged me tight at the door.
“Will you be there tomorrow?” she whispered.
“I’ll be there. The
whole time. I promise.”
“Is Mr. Hale really coming?”
“He’s really coming.”
Ava pulled back and looked at me. Ten years old, with her serious brown eyes.
“Good,” she said. “I like him.”
Then she got into Max’s black SUV with June, who was already wearing her flower girl dress, again, and waving at me through the window with both hands.
Edward picked me up at three o’clock the next afternoon.
I opened the door, and I didn’t recognize him for a second.
I’d only ever seen Edward in flannel shirts and work pants with sawdust on the knees. Today, he was wearing a dark charcoal suit. White shirt. Deep blue tie. He’d gotten a haircut. He’d shaved. He was holding a small bouquet of pink peonies wrapped in brown paper.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I said.
We stood there.
“You look—” we both said at the same time.
We
both stopped.
Edward cleared his throat. “You go first.”
“You look really nice, Edward.”
“Thanks. It’s my only suit. I wore it to my grandmother’s funeral.” He looked down at himself. “I think it still smells a little like a church.”
I laughed.
“Your turn,” I said.
Edward looked at me. At the green dress. At my hair, which Kate had curled that morning. At my face, which I’d put makeup on for the first time in months.
He was quiet for a long time.
“You look like you,” he said finally. “That’s the best thing I can say. You look like yourself.”
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