32. Stephanie
— ? —
Stephanie
Two years later, I married Kevin Coleman for the second time.
The venue was small. A garden overlooking the water, with white chairs arranged in two neat rows and an arch covered in orchids. There were no society photographers this time, no ballroom guest list. The first wedding had been a production. This one was a promise.
Just us. Just the people who’d held us together when we fell apart, and who’d cheered when we found our way back.
I stood at the edge of the garden path, bouquet in hand, and watched our daughter prepare to make her grand entrance. The morning light came thin and salt-scrubbed off the water, the harbor going silver where the sun hit it. I’d stopped shaking an hour ago. Now I just felt full.
Bree was two years old and absolutely convinced she was the star of the show. She wore a white dress with a pink sash, her dark hair pulled into two tiny pigtails, a basket of rose petals clutched in her chubby fists.
“Remember, baby,” Kevin said, crouching beside her. “Walk slowly. Throw the petals on the ground. Can you do that?”
Bree nodded solemnly, the way she nodded at everything she had no intention of doing.
“Good girl.”
He kissed her forehead and took his place at the altar.
I watched him walk away, this man I’d loved for half my life.
He was wearing a simple gray suit, no tie, the collar open at his throat.
When he moved, the ink showed at his open collar, and I knew without seeing it what it said.
Alex, and mine beneath it. He’d carried our lost baby on his skin for years, quietly, without ever making it a performance.
He turned to face the aisle and caught my eye.
He smiled.
God, I loved that smile. I’d loved it since I was twenty, and here it still was, aimed at me.
The music started, a soft guitar melody, nothing like the orchestral production of our first wedding. This was ours.
Bree began her walk.
She made it approximately four steps before she got distracted by the petals in her basket. Instead of throwing them on the ground, she picked one up and examined it closely. Then she put it in her mouth.
“No, baby,” Tris whispered from the front row. “Don’t eat the flowers.”
Bree ignored her and kept chewing, unbothered.
The guests started laughing. Kevin was grinning. I was trying very hard to maintain some semblance of bridal composure and losing.
Bree took another step. Threw a handful of petals. Most of them landed on her own head.
“Oops,” she announced loudly.
More laughter, warmer now.
She continued her journey, alternating between throwing petals and eating petals and stopping to wave at various family members. By the time she reached the altar her basket was empty and her face was covered in pink residue.
“I did it!” she declared, holding up her arms for Kevin to lift her.
“You did perfect, gorgeous.” He scooped her up and settled her on his hip. “The best flower girl in history.”
“I ate some.”
“I noticed.”
“They tasted like flowers.”
“That makes sense.”
I was laughing so hard I almost missed my cue.
My father, Walter, appeared at my side. He was crying already, which made me want to cry, which I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do until at least after the vows. When he offered me his arm his hand was trembling.
“Ready, sweetheart?”
“Since I was twenty.”
We walked down the aisle together, and every step of it felt earned.
My mother was in the front row already, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, Tris beside her doing the same. The two women who’d been my family through everything, now united in their determination to sob through my wedding.
I saw Harry, hugely pregnant, leaning against Hugo with one hand on her belly. They’d announced the pregnancy at Christmas, and Harry had spent the last six months complaining that her brother had stolen her thunder by getting married during her third trimester.
I saw Lando, my father-in-law, in the front row, looking proud enough to burst.
And at the end of the aisle, I saw Kevin.
He was holding our daughter in one arm, his other hand pressed flat to his chest, right over the ink he never showed off. His eyes were red. His smile was radiant.
“Hi,” I said when I reached him.
“You made it down the aisle without setting anything on fire.”
Bree reached for me. “Mommy! I throwed the flowers!”
“You threw the flowers perfectly, baby.” I kissed her cheek, tasting sugar and rose. “Now Daddy’s going to put you down with Grandma Tris, okay?”
“Okay.” She went willingly into Tris’s arms, immediately distracted by the sparkly bracelet on her grandmother’s wrist.
Kevin took my hands. His were warm and steady, though the pulse in his wrist was going fast. We faced each other beneath the arch of orchids, surrounded by everyone we loved.
“Dearly beloved,” the officiant began.
I barely heard the words. I was too busy looking at Kevin’s face, at the tears tracking down his cheeks, at the way he held my hands so carefully, so reverently.
“The couple has chosen to write their own vows,” the officiant said. “Kevin, you may begin.”
Kevin took a breath. His voice was steady, even though his eyes were wet.
“Stephanie. The first time I married you, I made a lot of promises. I promised to love you. To cherish you. To be there for you through everything.”
He paused. Nobody breathed.
“I broke those promises. I failed you in ways I can never fully undo. I let work become more important than us, and ambition consume me. And when you needed me most, I wasn’t there.”
His voice cracked. I knew the night he meant, the night I’d called and called and gotten silence, alone with the phone dark in my hand. He wasn’t hiding from it, even now.
“I’ve spent the last six years trying to become the man I should have been from the start.
My phone rings for exactly one person now, and I answer it on the first ring, every single time.
No more silence, no more dark screen going cold in your hand.
Three years of walking through the door when I said I would, and I’m nowhere near finished. ”
He squeezed my hands.
“I’m not perfect. I’ll never be perfect. But I promise you this: I’ll never stop trying. I’ll never stop showing up. I’ll never stop loving you with everything I have.”
He lifted my hands to his lips and kissed my knuckles, slow and deliberate.
“You’re my wife, my partner, my best friend. The mother of our daughter. The center of my entire universe. And I’m so grateful that you gave me a second chance.”
I was crying now. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t, but here I was, tears streaming down my face in front of everyone I loved.
“Your turn,” the officiant said gently.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.
“Kevin,” I began. “When we first got married, I was twenty-three years old. I thought I knew everything, that love was enough, that we were invincible.”
I laughed softly.
“I was wrong about a lot of things. But I was right about one thing: you’re the love of my life. You’ve been since the first moment I saw you flood my mother’s stove lecturing a pot of water about boiling points.”
Laughter from the guests. Kevin smiled through his tears, and I saw him remember it too.
“We lost each other for a while. We lost our way, and things that can never be replaced.”
I touched the space over my heart.
“But we also found our way back. Forgiveness, and the courage to try again.”
I looked at Bree, who was now playing with Tris’s pearls and babbling happily.
“And we found her. Our miracle. Our second chance.”
I turned back to Kevin.
“I promise to keep choosing you. Every day, even when it’s hard. Even when we argue about whose turn it is to change diapers. Even when you leave your shoes in the middle of the hallway and I trip over them at three in the morning.”
More laughter, and Kevin ducked his head, guilty as charged.
“I promise to laugh with you, to cry with you, to grow old with you. To be your partner in everything. To pick up, every single time, the way you learned to for me.”
I squeezed his hands.
“I love you, Kevin Coleman. I’ve loved you since I was twenty years old. I’ll love you until I take my last breath. And probably even after that.”
Kevin was full-on crying now. I was full-on crying. Half the guests were crying. Even Bree looked vaguely concerned, though that might have been because she’d run out of pearls to play with.
“By the power vested in me,” the officiant said, “I now pronounce you husband and wife. Again.”
Kevin laughed through his tears.
“You may kiss your bride.”
He pulled me close and kissed me, soft and sweet and full of promise. Around us, our family cheered.
“I love you, wife,” he murmured against my lips.
“And I love you, husband. Twice over.”
Bree squirmed out of Tris’s arms and ran toward us.
“Group hug!” she demanded.
Kevin scooped her up and we held her between us. Our family. Our little unit, the three of us, together.
The reception was chaos in the best possible way.
Harry complained loudly about not being able to drink champagne. Hugo followed her around with a plate of food, making sure she ate every five minutes. Tris and Becca compared notes on grandmothering techniques. Lando and Walter argued amiably about golf near the bar.
And Bree ran in circles around the garden, hopped up on sugar and excitement, until she crashed face-first into a bush and had to be rescued by her father.
“She’s a menace,” I said, watching Kevin extract twigs from our daughter’s hair.
“She’s spirited,” he corrected.
“She’s covered in frosting and plant matter.”
“Spirited and artistic.”
I laughed and leaned against his shoulder, and my whole body eased into him the way it had learned to trust again.
The sun was setting, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold. The fairy lights strung through the garden had flickered on. Music was playing softly, and a few couples were swaying on the small dance floor.
“The grandmas have volunteered for babysitting duty tonight,” Kevin said casually. Too casually.
I looked up at him. “They have?”