Chapter 3

3

I never asked you if you liked my wedding dress. I bought it used because I saw it in the window of a vintage store and couldn’t get it out of my mind while I browsed the expensive boutiques with your mother. You never whispered, as some awed grooms do, sweating at the altar and rocking on their feet, You look beautiful. You never mentioned my dress when we hid behind the redbrick wall at the back of the property, waiting to float into the courtyard where our guests drank champagne and talked about the heat and wondered when the next canapé would pass. You could barely look away from my shining pink face. You could barely let go of my eyes.

You were the most handsome you had ever been and I can close my eyes now and see twenty-six-year-old you, the way your skin looked bright and your hair still curled down around your forehead. I swear you had remnants of baby fat in your cheeks.

We squeezed each other’s hands all night.

We knew so little then about each other, about the people we would be.

We could have counted our problems on the petals of the daisy in my bouquet, but it wouldn’t be long before we were lost in a field of them.

“There will be no table for the family of the bride,” I had overheard the wedding planner say in a low voice to the man who set up the folding chairs and place cards. He gave her a subtle nod.

Your parents gave us the wedding bands before the ceremony. They handed us the rings in a silver clamshell that had been given to your great-grandmother by the man she loved, who had gone to war and never come home. Inside was engraved a proclamation from him to her: Violet, You will always find me. You had said, “What a beautiful name she had.”

Your mother, cloaked in a fancy pewter-colored shawl, gave us a toast: “Marriages can float apart. Sometimes we don’t notice how far we’ve gone until all of a sudden, the water meets the horizon and it feels like we’ll never make it back.” She paused and looked only at me. “Listen for each other’s heartbeat in the current. You’ll always find each other. And then you’ll always find the shore.” She took your father’s hand and you stood to raise your glass.

We compliantly made love that night because we were supposed to. We were exhausted. But we felt so real. We had wedding bands and a catering bill and adrenaline headaches.

I forever take you, my best friend and my soul mate, to be my partner in life, through everything that’s good, and everything that’s hard, and the tens of thousands of days that fall somewhere in between. You, Fox Connor, are the person I love. I commit myself to you.

Years later, our daughter watched me stuff the dress into the trunk of our car. I was going to take it back to the same place I’d found it.