Chapter 1 #4
Jesse followed her into the bridal room and closed the door. For several seconds he stood with his back against it while Sophie tried to set the bouquet down without crushing the flowers.
“You didn’t have to do that in front of everybody,” he said. He reached past her to move a glass away from the edge of the table.
Sophie let go of the flowers. “I asked you in here first,” she said. “You wouldn’t go.”
He took his hand off the glass. Outside, Kelly asked someone to give them a minute, and the voices in the corridor receded.
“I want to marry you,” Jesse said. He came closer, slower this time. “That’s what I’ve been thinking about all morning. I don’t know how we got here.”
Sophie looked at his empty hands. She had wanted those hands on her when he first came into the room; she’d wanted him to ruin the lipstick and make her late because he couldn’t leave her alone.
“I do.” She turned toward the mirror, where the veil had slipped crookedly over her hair. “You’d better find your best man.”
Sophie searched his face. He’d sat beside Marianne through a long evening in an emergency room, taken unpaid days to strip wallpaper in their new house, driven through snow to bring Sophie medicine she could have managed without. She knew how to live with him on every day that wasn’t this one.
“Afterward,” she said. She faced him again because she couldn’t let him leave believing she’d agreed it no longer mattered. “You promised you’d speak to her afterward.”
“I will,” Jesse said. He kissed her cheek, then hesitated until she caught the front of his jacket and kissed his mouth. She wanted him to stay and wanted him out of the room. When she let go, his boutonniere was bent against the lapel.
When he left, Kelly came in with a tissue. Sophie pressed it beneath each eye and told her sister to stop looking at her like that.
“Do you still want to do this?” Kelly asked quietly. She kept her gaze on Sophie’s face.
“Yes,” Sophie said. The answer came immediately, and she was relieved by that. “I want to marry him.”
Kelly searched her face, then went to find the bouquet.
Sophie sat while Marianne straightened the veil and held still when her mother cleaned a smudge of lipstick from beside her mouth.
They could stop it, even now. She could tell the woman outside to send the guests home, and Jesse would be standing in the garden with his mother while she climbed into Kelly’s car.
She reached for her bouquet. Six years, the house, the way he called her from the grocery store to read labels because he wanted to bring her something she could eat; she couldn’t put them down in this room and leave. She stood when Marianne finished, and asked whether the flowers looked crushed.
Twenty-five minutes later, Marianne squeezed her arm at the entrance to the garden.
The guests rose, leaves moved above the white chairs, and Jesse stood at the end of the aisle with his mouth slightly open.
Sophie saw him take a breath that caught halfway in, and she started smiling before she reached the first row.
Lorraine sat beside Hank, white chiffon spread over her knees. Sophie saw her lift the matching shawl to her eyes and turned her attention back to Jesse.
His hand shook when he took hers. During his vows he lost his place, laughed under his breath, and unfolded the paper Kelly had told him he would need. His finger moved down the paper, then stopped, and he looked up at her.
“You make every place feel like somewhere I want to come home to,” he said. His thumb pressed against her wedding ring as he slid it into place. “I promise I’ll take care of the life we build together.”
Sophie cried then, without caring about her makeup. She said her own vows with his fingers holding hers, and when the officiant told him he could kiss her, Jesse didn’t wait for the sentence to finish.
The applause followed them up the aisle. Sophie laughed against his shoulder when he pulled her into the narrow passage beside the garden, out of sight for the first time since the ceremony began.
“Wife,” he said, grinning down at her. He lifted her hand and kissed the new ring.
“Husband,” she answered. She kissed him with less care for her lipstick and felt his hand settle against the bare skin of her back.
Nina found them there a minute later. She took one photograph before speaking, then lowered the camera with a smile.
“Family pictures while everyone is close,” Nina said. “Then I’ll steal you both for ten minutes.”
Lorraine was waiting at the fountain. She reached Jesse before Sophie could adjust her train, brushing a speck from his lapel that Sophie couldn’t see.
“My handsome man,” Lorraine said. She kept her hand on his chest. “I suppose I have to learn to share you now.”
Jesse gave a short laugh. Sophie bent to free a piece of tulle caught beneath her shoe, and when she straightened, Lorraine had tucked herself against his side.
“One of just us first,” Lorraine told Nina. She looked at Sophie over Jesse’s shoulder. “Before you carry him off for good.”
Sophie stood beside the fountain holding her bouquet. Nina raised the camera, and Lorraine leaned her head toward her son’s shoulder, smiling into the lens.