The First Wedding After Mine
Chapter 17 - The First Wedding After Mine
Our first wedding booking after the scandal came in spring. The bride, a nurse named Maribel, had seen the news coverage. She told me she wanted the conservatory because her grandmother had sung in the youth choir there.
I hesitated before agreeing. The thought of another ceremony beneath the chandelier brought back the taste of panic.
On the morning of Maribel's wedding, I arrived early and checked every door, every aisle runner, and every table. Jonah watched me rearrange the same arrangement of roses three times.
"You can breathe," he said.
"I'm breathing."
"That's more like suspiciously efficient gasping."
I laughed despite myself.
When Maribel stepped into the room, she looked radiant. Her fiancé saw her and began crying before the music started. She laughed through tears, and her grandmother squeezed my hand as the vows began.
Nobody spilled chocolate. Nobody shouted. Nothing dramatic happened at all.
That ordinary happiness undid me.
I stood in the service corridor afterward and cried quietly. Jonah found me there with a box of tissues.
"Bad memory?" he asked.
"A good one," I said. "I forgot weddings could just be happy."
He stood beside me until I was ready to return.
That night I sent Maribel a photograph of the greenhouse glowing beneath the stars. She replied with a note: *Thank you for giving us the most beautiful day.*
May you like
I saved it.
The room had held my heartbreak. Now it held somebody else's beginning. That seemed, at last, like the right kind of justice.
