Chapter 25 #2
Astrid's parents were in the front row. Her mother was already crying.
Her father had his arm around her shoulders, his hand cupped against the side of her arm, steady, the hold of a man who had been married forty years and understood why she was crying and was not going to make her explain.
He was a tall man, gone gray, with Astrid's green eyes.
He'd shaken my hand at the front door the day before and not let go for a count of three, and he'd said, in a voice he'd practiced, "You take good care of her, Easton."
I'd said I would.
Audrey came around the side of the bungalow at eleven-forty-five.
She was in the sage dress, her hair pinned at the nape. She had a bouquet of pink and cream tied with a length of cream ribbon. She crossed the back patio to the porch and lifted her chin at me through the back door.
"Ford."
"Callahan."
"Are you ready?"
"I'm ready."
"You're not crying."
"Not yet."
"Mhm."
She looked at me one beat longer than she needed to. The look was the one she'd been giving me since November, when she hadn't said his name and I hadn't said hers, and we'd both been on Astrid's side of the same thing without admitting we were on the same side.
She went around to the side gate to start the bridal party.
Moose came out of the kitchen.
He had on a navy collar that Audrey had decorated with cream ribbon and a small spray of pink rose, and the rings tied to the collar with a length of the same ribbon, the bows Audrey had practiced for a week.
He looked at me at the back door. He looked at the chairs in the grass. He looked back at me.
"Are you ready, buddy?"
He thumped his tail once.
"Don't eat the rings."
He thumped it again.
The band started.
I came down the back porch steps in my jacket and the cuffs Audrey had buttoned for me at the last second because my hands had stopped working.
I walked the length of the grass aisle with Moose at my left hip, because Moose had been at my left hip for eight months and wasn't going to be at my right hip on the day of.
I went up to the arch at the rose end, and I turned around.
Audrey came down the aisle first.
She walked at a pace she'd decided on and wasn't going to be moved off of, with her chin lifted and her bouquet at her waist and a half-smile. She came up beside me at the arch. She turned and caught my eye for a count of one.
"Hold steady, Ford."
"I will."
The band shifted.
Astrid came around the side of the bungalow with her father at her elbow.
She had on the dress Audrey had picked. It was cream, and it had a neckline I hadn't let myself imagine that morning, because I'd known I'd have to make it through a ceremony after seeing her in it, and I'd needed to budget myself.
Her hair was loose at the back, with the small section pinned at one side that her mother had pinned for her.
She had her hand in the crook of her father's arm.
Her bouquet was the same pink and cream as Audrey's.
She looked up.
She saw me at the end of the aisle.
She took one breath in and let it out, and her shoulders dropped a quarter inch. She came the rest of the way to me.
Her father walked her to the arch, kissed her on the side of her head, put her hand in mine, and turned around and went to the front row to sit beside his wife. Her mother was sobbing quietly into a handkerchief Audrey had pressed into her hand at the side of the bungalow.
I had Astrid's hand in mine.
The officiant was Pastor Holm, who had baptized Astrid at three months old and had been waiting for this morning since the September she'd come back.
He kept it short. He read the part of the service he'd been reading for forty years, and at the part where he asked if we'd written our own vows, I lifted Astrid's hand a quarter inch in mine, and drew a breath.
I had the vows in my back pocket on an index card.
I had read the card four times for her at the kitchen table.
I didn't take the card out.
"Astrid."
"Easton."
I looked at her face.
I'd been planning to start with the line I'd written three weeks ago and read to her four times. The line was good. I was going to get to it.
My throat closed.
I closed my eyes for a count of one. I opened them. She was still looking at me. She had the small wet shine along the bottom of her lashes that I had been watching on her since November.
I drew a breath.
"I'd been running my whole life."
Her hand tightened on mine.
"You were the first thing that made me want to stop."
The yard went very quiet.
I had more of the vows. I had a paragraph about my grandmother, a paragraph about Penny, and a paragraph about a Tuesday morning in October when I'd watched a woman in a bath towel chase a yellow lab across my backyard with a hair towel sinking to one side.
I had read all of it four times at the kitchen table.
I didn't get to the rest of it.
I looked at her face, and I didn't get to the rest of it, and she squeezed my hand a quarter inch.
"That's enough," she said. Low.
"Astrid."
"That's enough, Easton. I heard the rest of it four times."
A laugh went through the chairs.
She lifted her chin.
She drew a breath. The breath went in jagged.
She'd told me the night before, with her hand on my chest in the dark, that hers had a paragraph about the bank of the lake and a paragraph about a kitchen counter with my grandmother's dog at the back door, and that she'd been practicing the start of it in the bathroom mirror that morning at six.
She didn't get hers out either.
She got the first three words.
"You came back."
Her mother sobbed in the front row.
Astrid closed her eyes.
She opened them.
She lifted her hand to the side of my face.
"You came back," she said again, "and I'm going to spend the rest of my life being grateful for it."
I didn't have a sentence for that.
I bent down. I put my forehead against hers. Pastor Holm waited with his hands folded in front of him and the patience of a man who had decided the bride and the groom were going to take the time they needed.
We took the time we needed.
Moose stood with the rings on his collar at the foot of the arch and waited, too.
The reception ran past midnight.
Duke got up at the first toast and went through the pinball machine in his basement, the morning he'd found me eating eggs at the firehouse counter the day I'd told him there was somebody, and the night of the cat in the engine compartment.
He landed on a line he'd been holding for the end: "I have never seen a man pretend not to be in love harder than Easton Ford, and I have never seen a man fail at pretending faster. "
He raised his glass. He looked at me across the table with a look he didn't give me in mixed company, the look of a man who was telling me, in front of all of these people, that he was glad I was where I was. I lifted mine back.
Audrey got up second and roasted Astrid with surgical precision and the love that made it land softer than it should have.
She told the story of the bath towel, the version she'd been telling since October, with the timing she'd honed against an audience over months.
She got to the part about the bra in Moose's mouth, and the backyard came apart.
She landed on a line that wasn't a joke: "I have known Astrid Matthews for twenty-two years, and I have never seen her this happy. Easton, you keep her there."
She lifted her glass. Astrid was crying. I was holding her hand under the table.
Astrid's mother danced with me in the third song. Halfway through, she looked up at me and said, in a voice only I could hear, "I'm glad it's you." She patted my shoulder once at the end of the song, and I walked her back to her husband in the front row.
Shane, Brian, and Garrett cornered me at the bar around eleven.
They'd been waiting for their turn.
Shane had a beer in his hand. Brian had a glass of water because he was on baby duty. Garrett had a bourbon. They'd brought their wives, and the wives had cornered Astrid an hour earlier and were on the back patio with Audrey. Audrey had been laughing harder than I'd seen Audrey laugh in a year.
"Ford."
"Briggs."
"You did good."
"Yeah."
"She's somethin'."
"I know."
"I told you on the phone in September that I had a name. You said, put my name in. I'm gonna tell you somethin' now I've been waiting to tell you."
"Yeah."
"That was the worst yes I've ever taken from you."
I laughed.
Brian laughed, too. Garrett did the half-smile he did instead of a laugh.
"I'm glad I came down," Shane said. "I'm glad you came back. I'm glad the slot went to Petrov. I'm glad my line is short one of the best men I ever ran with. Do you hear me?"
"I hear you, Shane."
"Don't make me say it twice."
"I won't."
Brian punched my shoulder. Garrett shook my hand. Shane finished his beer.
They went back to the patio to find their wives.
I found Astrid at the side of the yard near the rose bed at ten minutes to midnight.
She had her shoes off in one hand, and she was standing in her dress with her bouquet on the grass beside her, looking at the rose where Penny was.
The string lights in the trees over her head were the small warm yellow they'd been all night, and her hair had come a little loose at the side where her mother had pinned it.
I came up beside her.
"Hey."
"Hey, yourself."
"You're crying."
"A little."
I put my arm around her shoulders. She tucked herself in against my side. She smelled like the gardenia in her bouquet and the powder she'd put on that morning and the small clean of her own skin underneath both.
"She would have liked this," I said.
"I know."
"All of it."
"I know."
"The roses came in pink."
"I noticed."
We stood there a beat.
I'd thought, at the beginning of the night, that this part would be hard—the part where I noticed who wasn't here. I'd budgeted for it, same as I budgeted for a hard call I knew was coming on a long shift.
The hard part hadn't come.
The yard was full of the people I had now, and the people Astrid had. Her parents in the front row, Caldwell in the back, and the Bishops in the third with a lab in a bowtie. Shane, Brian, and Garrett at the bar with my best friend, Duke. Maya, Ava, and Sloane with Audrey on the patio.
And her.
It turned out the hard part didn't come on a night like this one because the night was too full of people for the missing to fit anywhere.
I'd find that out the next morning over coffee at the counter.
I'd miss my grandmother on a Tuesday in August when I made the pot roast on the Sunday, and there'd be no one across the table from me but my own wife, and the missing would have its small clean place, and the rest of me would keep going.
I didn't know that yet.
I knew the yard was full.
"Easton."
"Yeah."
"Look."
She was looking past my shoulder.
I turned.
Audrey was at the side gate.
She had her heels in one hand. Her hair was all the way down.
Duke was at her shoulder. He had his tie off and bunched in her other hand.
His jacket was over his arm. They were laughing at something one of them had just said, and neither of them was going to remember the joke in the morning, but both of them were going to remember the laughing.
They cleared the gate.
The gate clicked shut behind them.
Astrid let out a long, slow breath.
"Oh," she said.
A beat.
"Oh no."
I looked down at her.
She was looking up at me with an expression I'd seen on Audrey on a sidewalk on Maple Avenue in October, the expression of a best friend who had been clocking a thing and had just been handed the proof.
"Did you see them all night?" I said.
"I saw them all night."
"How long?"
"Three months, Easton."
"At least three months."
"At least."
"They've been planning a wedding."
"Yeah. They have."
"They were fighting about the buttercream yesterday."
"They were fighting about the buttercream because they didn't know what else to do with it."
I laughed. She tucked her face into my shoulder.
She'd been right about a lot of things since September.
She was right about this.
I'd gotten my happy ending. I'd gotten the rose at the fence and the woman in the dress and the yard full of people who'd come because they'd decided some weeks back that this was a wedding the whole town was coming to.
I'd gotten the breath in my chest in the place it was supposed to be, and the kitchen with the recipe cards in the top drawer, and the brass lamp on the side table by the leather chair.
From the look of those two walking out of the gate with their shoes in their hands, somebody else's was just getting started.