You sit there with your life suspended over a sentence.
Maybe yes.
Maybe no.
Maybe still dying.
Maybe not yet.
Maybe worse.
Maybe different.
That night, I did not sleep.
Neither did my parents.
My father made tea nobody drank.
My mother sat at the kitchen island folding napkins for a wedding that technically no longer had a groom.
At midnight, she looked at me.
“Are you still going through with it?”
I knew what she meant.
The wedding.
The humiliating, ridiculous, desperate wedding with a hired stranger.
I looked toward the dining room where my dress hung in its garment bag.
“Yes.”
My father’s hand tightened around his mug.
“Emily.”
“Dad, don’t.”
“You don’t have to prove anything.”
“I’m not proving anything.”
“Then what are you doing?”
I swallowed.
“Taking back one day.”
My mother started crying again.
I hated that too.
Not because she cried.
Because every tear reminded me how many people my dying was killing slowly.
“I had a groom,” I said. “He left.”
My father’s jaw clenched.
“I know.”
“I had a wedding. It’s still there.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“No, it doesn’t. But I want it.”
My mother whispered, “With a stranger?”
I thought of Owen in the waiting room.
Asking me what I wanted him to be.
“No,” I said. “With someone who didn’t run.”
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