Epilogue #2
Later, after everyone moves toward the house and I am still turning my hand under the light like an idiot, Beckett admits he already has a place in mind for the wedding.
An old estate outside Savannah. I know it immediately.
I showed it to him two years ago and said if I ever lost my mind and married again, I wanted somewhere that looked like the earth had dressed for dinner.
My throat closes. “You remember that?”
Beckett takes my hand and turns the ring until the hidden sapphires rest against my skin. “I remember most things you tell me.”
I look at the man I spent years believing I understood from a distance, standing in the garden of the home we built after finally learning each other up close, and kiss him before the tears can start again.
∞∞∞
One year later, summer arrives early for us at Aster House Gardens. Forty acres unfold around an old European-style conservatory, wisteria spilling from ironwork, white roses climbing pale stone and live oaks holding curtains of Spanish moss over the far end of the grounds.
By late afternoon, candles wait inside the glasshouse, gardenias sweeten the warm Georgia air and the reflecting pool carries a perfect blue sky down its center.
I see almost none of it at first. I’m upstairs in an ivory silk dress with tiny magnolias embroidered along the edge of the train, my hair pinned low with jasmine, watching Mama fasten Daddy’s bracelet around my wrist.
Her fingers shake at the clasp. Mine close over hers. Neither of us says his name for a moment.
“I wish he were here,” I whisper eventually.
Mama swallows, presses her thumb over the bracelet and nods. “Me too, baby.”
She looks at me for a long time after that, taking in the dress, the flowers, whatever she can still see of the little girl she raised inside the woman sitting in front of her. “You look like yourself.” Of everything anyone has said to me today, that is what nearly takes me apart.
Daddy’s absence finds me again at the conservatory doors. Music waits on the other side, guests beyond the glass, Beckett at the end of a path I chose freely, and suddenly I can see another arm missing from mine so clearly I can’t move.
Mama doesn’t ask what is wrong. She already knows. I turn to her. “Get Dean.” My brother arrives less than a minute later, already crying and irritated about it, and whatever smart remark he planned dies when he sees my face.
I hold out my hand. “Walk with us.”
His mouth folds inward. He nods once, Mama takes my left arm, Dean takes my right, and the doors open.
The quartet begins an arrangement nobody else is supposed to recognize, three simple chords threaded quietly through the music.
Daddy taught them to me before my fingers were large enough to reach them properly.
Mama hears them immediately. Dean makes it halfway down the aisle before his hand tightens around mine.
I keep walking between them with Daddy’s bracelet warm at my wrist and those three chords following me through the garden, and I understand something I could never have understood when grief was new: missing someone doesn’t always mean leaving an empty place for them.
Sometimes you carry them so completely the room is already full.
Then I see Beckett. He is standing under the wisteria in a black tuxedo, and for one glorious second the man has no idea what to do with his own face. His mouth opens; tears come before he can stop them. I laugh through mine, and whatever nerves were left inside me disappear.
When Mama and Dean reach him, there is no question about giving me away.
We removed it months ago. The officiant asks who stands with us as we make this choice.
Mama answers, “All of us,” and the words move through the garden so softly I almost miss the sound Beckett makes when he looks past me at our families.
Monica has one hand over her mouth. Owen is trying very hard to be eleven and unaffected. Lily has already lost that battle. Lila is crying beside Matt; Theo and Evie stand unusually still. Beckett’s mother presses a handkerchief to her face. Nora is sobbing and will deny it under oath later.
For one second I see the whole ridiculous, beautiful collection of people who carried us here, and I’m grateful the officiant gives me time before asking us to speak.
Beckett takes both my hands. “I can’t promise I’ll never disappoint you,” he says, and his voice shakes just enough to make mine start doing the same.
“I can’t promise life will always be kind to us, or that I’ll always know what you need before you say it.
I don’t want to promise you anything built on pretending we’ll never change.
” His thumbs move across my fingers. “I can promise you won’t have to go searching for the truth in your own home.
I can promise I’ll come to you before fear turns into distance, before pride gets louder than love.
I will never ask you to become smaller so I can feel secure beside you.
” He pauses, looks at me like the rest of the garden has disappeared.
“And however many versions of you I get to meet in this life, I will love knowing every one of them.”
By the time it is my turn, I can barely see him.
I tell him I can’t promise forever the way I once understood it either.
I can promise honesty. I can promise if I’m lonely, I will say it before silence learns my name.
If I am afraid, he gets the fear instead of the wall I might build around it.
I promise to keep a life that belongs to me, because I never want loving him to become the place where I disappear.
“And I promise,” I add, wiping one cheek, “to choose you for as many days as choosing each other remains good and true and ours.”
Beckett’s face crumples. “I’ll take every one I can get.”
Our rings carry a private conversation of their own. Inside his, engraved where only he will see it: Now we’re even. Inside mine: Not even close.
When the officiant calls us husband and wife, the word doesn’t swallow my name. Beckett seems to know what I’m thinking.
He leans close, tears still caught in his lashes, and whispers, “Laurel Bellamy.”
I smile. “Your wife.”
The joy on his face is almost unbearable. “My wife.”
He kisses me as our families rise around us and those three old chords find their way back into the music.
I taste tears when I laugh into his mouth, and for one beautiful second I picture Daddy somewhere beyond everything I understand, insufferably pleased with himself because his little girl finally learned there are a thousand ways to come home.
∞∞∞
Night turns the conservatory into a lantern. Tiny lights wind through the iron overhead and multiply across the glass until the ceiling seems open to the stars; candles burn between roses and magnolia leaves, the band plays near the fountain and every person I love appears somewhere in the glow.
I dance with Beckett until my shoes hurt, with Dean until he makes me cry, with Owen after he insists he knows what he is doing and immediately proves otherwise.
Lily drags Monica onto the floor. Theo pretends dancing is humiliating until Evie grabs both his hands.
Lila dances barefoot with Matt. Beckett’s mother rests her head on her son’s shoulder for half a song, and I have to look away because the sight feels too private to keep watching.
Mama gets her turn with me last. She puts one hand at my waist, takes the other and sways without caring if either of us is remotely on beat.
“Your daddy would’ve cried all day,” she murmurs.
“He would’ve denied it.”
“Of course.” Her cheek touches mine. “He would’ve been so proud of you.”
I close my eyes and hold her tighter. The band keeps playing.
Around us, our family laughs, eats, dances, grows tired, then finds another song and starts all over again.
The night keeps unfolding around me, and even as I’m living it, I know I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to remember every piece.