“I know.”
“I’m afraid of hoping too much.”
That one broke me.
Because I was too.
I put my head on her shoulder.
She held me the way she did when I was little and had nightmares.
Only this time, she could not turn on the hall light and show me there were no monsters.
There were monsters.
Illness.
Fear.
Cowardice.
Waiting rooms.
People who left.
People who stayed so unexpectedly that you did not know what to do with them.
“I’m still here today,” I whispered.
My mother kissed my hair.
“Then today is enough.”
At the venue, everything looked exactly the way we had planned it before my life split open.
White chairs lined the garden.
Soft flowers climbed the arch.
A string quartet played near the fountain.
One hundred and twenty guests arrived dressed in pastels and uncertainty.
People did not know where to put their faces.
That was the strange thing about surviving your own tragedy before it finished.
Everyone had prepared to mourn me.
Now they had to watch me walk.
My father waited outside the bridal suite in his black suit.
When he saw me in the dress, his face changed.
He pressed one hand over his mouth.
“Dad,” I whispered.
He shook his head.
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