Chapter 43
Autumn
The wedding starts a little later than we planned.
For one thing, it takes a while for the cops and the fire investigators to ask all the questions they want to ask.
It takes me a while for Tucker to stop yelling at me about what a bad idea it is to try to disarm someone with a gun and a while longer for me to stop shaking, even with Tucker’s arms tight around me.
Then my father, brother, sister, Jane, and Nessa have to finish fussing over me.
Then it takes an eternity for us to move the whole wedding back to the wide green lawn at Hott Springs Eternal where they hold outdoor weddings.
But all of us agree that it’s the right thing to do.
No way Five Rivers gets to claim any victories today, not even showing up as the architecture in Summer’s wedding photos.
In the end, it’s the most beautiful wedding I’ve ever been to.
Summer and Jane are gorgeous in their white and black gowns.
The wedding party are all wearing cranberry, and because we had a choice of six or seven different dress styles—plus one gray suit with a cranberry tie and one cranberry pantsuit—we all look good and more or less like ourselves.
The ceremony is beautiful, and I cry. A lot.
Especially when the justice of the peace says, “By the authority vested in me by the state of Oregon, you are now wedded forever in the eyes of those you love most,” and Jane looks at Summer like she’s the whole world and then some before leaning in to kiss her tenderly.
The reception is lovely, too. With the possible exception of Haru’s troll dolls, which are everywhere, watching us.
I don’t even know when he hid them in nooks and crannies on the tables, in the surrounding furniture, and in the bathroom facilities—but he was thorough.
Many of them watch from above, suspended in troll-sized hot-air balloons. That’s what the helium tank was for.
Summer loves it.
Under the world’s biggest tent on that lovely lawn, I find Summer, surrounded by Jane, Haru, my dad, and Nessa. My sister is leaning slightly on Jane, her head resting on her new wife’s shoulder.
“Hey,” I say to my sister. “Can I—can I tell you something?”
Summer bites her lip and nods.
“I’m so, so sorry that I didn’t tell you what was going on.
I’m sorry that I underestimated you,” I tell her.
“I think I froze you at age eighteen and didn’t fully give you credit for growing beyond that, and that’s on me.
I was wrong. Because when I stop to think about it, you have more resilience than pretty much anyone I’ve ever known.
You bounced back from some really hard things, and you’ve made this amazing life with this amazing woman—” I open my gesture to include Jane.
“I should have told you what was going on with me. I should have. And I’m so, so sorry. ”
My sister, whose mascara is a little smudged from crying, says, “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Haru says. “Because if I hadn’t made that account, you never would have had a reason to lie to Summer. None of this would have happened.”
“Yeah, kind of,” I say.
Would I have wanted none of this to happen?
My gaze shifts toward the edge of the tent, where Tucker watches me steadily.
After he finished yelling at me and holding me, pressing me tight into the safety of his big, warm body, he went back to keeping me at arm’s length. And maybe that’s for the best.
I just wish it weren’t.
“Those How to Be Miserable posts are pretty funny,” Nessa says quietly.
We all turn to look at her. She shrugs but doesn’t take it back.
“Yeah,” Jane says. “They really are.”
“I kind of like ’em, too,” my dad says sheepishly.
“I mean, not that we don’t love your account, huuno,” Nessa says quickly. “It’s just—”
I take a deep breath, think about everything that’s happened this week. What being with Tucker has taught me about my own fears.
“It’s just that life isn’t all sugar and spice and everything nice,” I say.
My family members all exchange glances that land, finally, softly, on me. No one says anything, but I can tell if they did, it would be Amen.
Nessa gives me a big hug. I hug her back.
Slowly, they drift away—even Jane—leaving Summer and me alone.
“Summer,” I say, “I was engaged.”
Her eyes get huge. “Like, to Tucker?”
That makes me smile…and then it makes me immeasurably sad because that’s so far from the truth. And then it makes me smile again because it’s deliciously farfetched, like everything that happened between us this week.
The world contains multitudes.
“No. To Jim. We got engaged right before you got…sick.”
I can see realization dawning on her. I can watch the hurt and anger bloom in real time, and I realize that I deprived myself of so many things.
Of my own hurt and anger, of her support.
And I deprived her, too. Of having something to focus on besides her own depression and anxiety.
Of being part of my real life. Of being fully, completely, my sister.
“I’m so sorry I never told you,” I say. “I never told Dad, either. I never told…anyone.”
Now would be a really good time for her to yell at me, but she takes a breath and her eyes soften on me. She says, “That must have been really hard.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Was it because of me? That it didn’t work out?”
I can see a different set of emotions. She’s practically holding her breath. And I’m balanced on a sword’s edge, between wanting to tell her my whole truth and wanting to spare her it.
I tell her my whole truth, which until that moment, I’m not sure I even knew: “I could never be with a man who didn’t want me to be with my family when they needed me.”
She nods. “I’m sorry anyway. Even if it wasn’t because because of me. It was still sort of because of me.”
I shake my head. “It was because of him. Because he was small. And I wouldn’t give up any of the time you and I spent together that year, not for anything.”
There are tears streaming down her face. “Thank you,” she says. And then, “This must have been hard for you. The wedding.”
I tell her my whole truth: “It was. But also, it was one of the best days of my life.”
She throws her arms around me, and we hug and hug and hug. She smells like expensive fabric and fruity shampoo and so much hopeful antiperspirant. She smells like my sister, like the year she suffered and I suffered with her, and the year she triumphed and I triumphed with her.
The world contains multitudes, and so do she and I. All the sad, all the happy. Two sides of the same coin.
“I think I’ve been scared,” I say, suddenly knowing it. I let go of her, step back.
“Why?” she asks.
“Dad was such a wreck after Mom died. He completely fell apart. And then that year—”
Her big green eyes watch me, and I see her get it the moment before I say it out loud: “Obviously it runs in the family. Depression. And I was scared that if I—”
She nods. “If you weren’t happy, then you’d be—us.”
I nod. And then I whisper, “I’m still scared.”
“It’s okay,” she whispers back. “That’s what they teach you in therapy. That’s the plus side of falling apart. You learn that it’s not so bad. We’re always falling apart and coming back together.”
I hug her again, hard. Thinking, She is so wise. When did she get so wise?
This time, she lets me go first and asks, “What’s going on with you and Tucker? Are you going to keep seeing him after the wedding?”
I sigh. “He doesn’t think he’s ready for a relationship.”
“Like, he doesn’t do commitment?”
“Like, because he had some hard things happen to him in the past, and he’s still working through them.”
“He looks at you like you invented chocolate,” she says.
I turn to find him again, and he’s watching me steadily, like after the events of this morning he can’t bear the thought of letting me out of his sight.
I can’t help it; it makes me smile. The corners of his mouth turn up to match.
For a moment I get that thrill of hope again, and then it dies down, like a rain-soaked road flare.
I look away, forcing myself to smile at my sister.
Her makeup is a smudged mess. “C’mon,” I say, tugging her hand. “Let’s go fix your face.”
We make our way to the bathroom facility together, and I go to work on setting her to rights.
I used to do this for her all the time in high school.
I hadn’t realized until this second that I’ve missed it.
The familiar scent of her shampoo. The rapid blink of her eyes as she assimilates the new coat of mascara.
The trust on her face as she looks up at me.
It’s good to know that even if I accept that she’s not a child anymore, I’ll still be her big sister.
As if her mind is following the same path, she says, “Love you, sis.”
“Love you even more.”
We survey my work in the mirror.
“Photo-worthy,” I declare.
She smiles at her reflection, then at me. I smile back.
“Hey,” she says as we head back into the wedding fray. “You can deflect all you want, but don’t give up on Tucker completely, okay? You didn’t give up on me when I wasn’t ready for the world, and look at me now.” She gives me a big grin and rushes off to be with all her people.
I stand there for a while, watching her. The way she glows; the way Jane, at her side, watches her with quiet adoration. She’s right. I didn’t give up on her when she wasn’t ready for the world.
And look at her now.