She crossed the room anyway and hugged me the way she used to at six years old, face pressed into my collarbone.
“Your brother would have walked you down that aisle himself if he could have,” I said into her hair.
She didn’t answer that. She never really knew what to say when I brought up Desmond, because she’d been three when he died, and her memories of him were mostly borrowed from my stories rather than her own mind.
I let her go before I ruined her curlers with tears, and she floated off toward the dress.
Down the hall, past the guest room, the wall held its usual gallery — Desmond at sixteen holding a fishing rod nearly as tall as he was, Desmond at seventeen with his arm slung around a scrawny neighbor kid, Desmond at eighteen in a hospital gown, grinning like he’d invented the whole idea of being a big brother, one hand resting on my very pregnant belly.
I touched the corner of that last frame, the way I did most mornings.
“She’s getting married today,” I whispered. “Eighteen years old, and I still catch myself waiting for you to walk in and complain about wearing a tie.”
***
By nine, the bridal party had taken over three rooms of the house — my sister Odalys doing hair, two cousins wrestling with a steamer, and Wren’s childhood best friend Priscilla fussing over the bouquet, a modest arrangement of white ranunculus and eucalyptus that had arrived from the florist an hour earlier than expected.
“This is stunning,” Priscilla said, turning it in the light. “Did you request the ribbon color specifically?”
“I did,” I said. “It matched Desmond’s letterman jacket. Old habit.”
Priscilla smiled the soft, careful smile people gave me whenever his name came up, the one that meant they didn’t quite know whether to keep the subject open or gently close it.
Wren came downstairs in the dress an hour later, and the room did the thing rooms do when a bride appears in it — a collective intake of breath, someone crying, someone laughing at the someone crying.
