Chapter Sixteen #2
“Oh, Rose,” Poppy said, her voice so small from the other side of the room. In three heartbeats she was out of the tub and pulling her into a sopping wet hug, holding her tight. She whispered in her ear, “I am so proud of you.”
Rose dropped her head on Poppy’s chest and breathed in and out to see if she might summon the sobs that had threatened.
Poppy rocked her, held her, pulled her closer, and no matter how tight she squeezed her, they wouldn’t come.
This grief was calcified, like bone where soft tissue used to be.
And the same prescient, all-knowing part of Rose that had known her mother wouldn’t be what she needed today, or any other day, knew exactly why.
This was an ending she had already grieved, every day her mother could not be the parent that she needed.
Her absence had left a scar, but it had also magnified the presence of those people she now cared most about in the world, one of whom was holding her like she might float away if she let go.
Rose did not have everything she wanted.
But she did have everything she needed.
Landon had always had an affinity for the cello.
He’d only played for a year or two in high school, but that had been enough that it factored into his one request for Rose on his wedding day: a cello and violin for the processional.
He didn’t care what song, he said; he just wanted the warmth and longing of that cello paired with the vibrato of the violin.
Rose hadn’t had any ideas of her own, so it was an easy request to say yes to.
In fact, after that conversation, she hadn’t given it a second thought.
Until she stood behind two thick barn doors in a white slip dress she’d been partly sewn into, seconds away from walking down the aisle.
She’d imagined this moment one hundred times; dreamed of it for months while they’d counted down days.
Why were her hands shaking? Why were her palms sweating?
Then Poppy grabbed her arm and laced it through her elbow. “Please don’t faint on me. You know I love to be the understudy who shows up the lead, but hauling your body across this barn was not in the contract.”
It had been Poppy’s idea. Phone still hanging in her hand, Poppy’s arms tight around her, Rose gave voice to the reality that she would be walking the aisle alone, testing it out on her tongue and trying hard not to feel sorry for herself.
Poppy stared at her sideways and asked if that was what she wanted or if an unorthodox substitution might do. That was when Rose had finally sobbed.
Music swelled and then stopped behind the barn doors. Poppy turned to Rose and placed one hand on her perfectly blushed cheek. “You ready?” Poppy asked.
Rose nodded. “I don’t know how this happened,” she said. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you. Really. You are the best friend in the cosmos.”
“I’m only going to say this once,” Poppy said, eyes welling, “but I’m the lucky one.”
The doors opened. The room held its breath.
Rose took a step forward. Then, they stood.
Her past, present, and future stood. Rose felt them move through her like a localized earthquake.
Tall white candles in crystal holders sparkled down the long aisle.
When string touched cello, the first notes were unmistakable.
Rose stopped walking; placed a hand on her chest. Landon had hummed it in her ear countless times just before sleep, when he was too overcome with contentment for words.
Of course he hadn’t told her. It was his final gift before two become one: “La Vie en Rose.”
When you press me to your heart…
She was walking down the aisle to the man who had taught her love’s transformative, all-consuming joy.
Landon. The room blurred around her and she raised her eyes, the candles like lights on a runway guiding her to him.
She knew this was a memory she would return to again and again, when life inevitably wore her down.
She would never forget the half-haunted look on his face, like he was watching his entire life walking toward him and wasn’t sure whether to wait or run and grab her with both hands; the way tears flowed so freely she didn’t notice he was crying until she was nearly at the altar.
At the end of the aisle, under an arch woven from twigs and brush, Poppy leaned forward, placed a hand on Landon’s shoulder, and whispered something in his ear—the three of them connected ever so briefly. When Poppy released her, Landon’s hands found hers smooth as a sigh.
Everyone but Landon disappeared.
They exchanged vows.
“I promise to build a home with you filled with laughter, warmth, and music loud enough the neighbors can hear us dancing in the kitchen.”
“I promise to honor your dreams and keep them safe with me, always.”
“I promise to combat any darkness in the world around us with a lifetime’s worth of mischief, adventure, and lightness.”
“I promise to cherish the family that we are, and the family that we are becoming.”
“I promise to shout your accomplishments from the rooftops, and quietly comfort you through your losses, holding everything you’ll let me.”
“I promise you every second of every minute of this life I’ve been blessed with.” For all they had shared, those were the words that finally stuck in Rose’s throat. “And if I should leave this world before you, I promise to always be waiting for you here. In this moment.”
The barn was musty and a little too warm, but no one seemed to care.
The dancing had started early, and the DJ they’d hired had the unenviable job of getting everyone to their seats before salads wilted.
Rose was the last to sit. She worried that, in stillness, the night would pass too quickly.
Her body could go without food for one night, she reasoned, if it meant she could flit through the evening like a sprite, collecting memories.
Landon pulled her onto his lap just before she sat, soft silk sliding over his smooth linen suit.
“I have never seen anything like you in this dress,” he said.
It was a variation on a compliment he’d given upward of fifty times since they’d exchanged vows, and Rose knew she would not tire of it. Not tonight.
“And you never will again. You are going to have to rip me out of this dress come midnight. I don’t know what Poppy did, exactly, but the zipper broke at the last second and she worked a minor miracle with a sewing kit.”
“I am fully prepared to rip you out of this dress,” Landon whispered. Rose would have turned around in his arms and kissed him, long and slow, if the DJ hadn’t abruptly stopped the music with the unbearably phony sound of a record scratching. It was just enough to cool them both off.
“Ladies and gents,” he crooned, “if I could have your attention, I’d like to call up the best man, who’s got some words to share with the happy couple.”
“I should get off your lap,” Rose whispered. “People are staring.”
“Stay,” Landon said, holding her closer. “They’re going to stare regardless. I don’t know how a single person in this room has been able to take their eyes off you all night.”
Rose rolled her eyes, and the photographer’s camera flashed.
“Thank you,” Conor said, taking the microphone.
He looked handsome as ever in dark blue, his large frame a touch diminished in the confines of the suit.
Speaking of minor miracles, Conor had pulled one of his own to be there in the first place.
Residents were very rarely able to decide when and how their time off, if any, occurred, and Conor’s standing there, holding that microphone, was another data point in an endless set that spoke to his deep and abiding affection for Landon.
“If we’ve not yet had the pleasure, I’m Conor—a friend of the couple, though I have to confess a specialty in all things Landon.
” The room chuckled, and Rose smiled. She’d known it wouldn’t take Conor very long to have everyone eating out of the palm of his hand.
“I met Landon when we were just kids,” Conor continued.
“Eager, arrogant kids. First semester, freshman year, we’d both independently decided that a photography class would be just the way to keep our GPAs afloat while pursuing economics and chemistry, respectively.
Turns out that arts are a little less subjective than we’d banked on, and we both got passing grades by the skin of our teeth.
I’m not going to stand up here and tell you that I learned a lot about photography that semester.
But I am going to stand up here and tell you that I learned a lot about Landon.
We had critiques every class where one or two students were the focus, and the others would take turns beating them like punching bags.
And let me tell you, Landon never pulled punches.
The guy was honest to a fault. So when it was time for his critique, I quite literally rolled up my sleeves, ready to hit him with everything I had.
I believe I’d even scribbled the word derivative in my notebook to make sure that featured somewhere in my comments.
But then he projected a black-and-white photograph of a woman that just about stopped my heart. ”
Rose sat up a little straighter. In all their years of friendship, she’d never heard this story.
“I couldn’t see her face. He’d taken it in motion, and it looked like she was throwing her head back, maybe laughing, leaning back on her hands on a dock, eyes probably searching the water.
But even though I couldn’t see her face, I felt like I knew this woman.
Landon had done something I’d never seen up close before: He’d frozen time at just the right moment to capture this woman’s essence.