Then he grinned.
“Also, if you make her cry, I’ll bury you under the bookstore.”
“That’s a lot of work.”
“I’ll rent a machine.”
I laughed.
And then the music began.
Karen appeared at the end of the garden path wearing an elegant ivory dress. Her hair was pinned loosely at the back, and the afternoon sunlight caught the silver strands near her temples.
She looked radiant.
Not because she was young.
Not because she had somehow escaped the years that had shaped her.
She looked radiant because she was no longer trying to become the person someone else expected her to be.
She was simply Karen.
And she was walking toward me.
When she reached me, she took my hands.
The ceremony was short.
We made our promises beneath a flowering tree while friends and family watched. Daniel stood beside me, smiling with tears in his eyes.
Michael did not attend.
