Chapter 18: Who Walks Her

The ceremony was in the ballroom, in the same room where I had sat in the wrong chair twelve days before.

Now it held two hundred white chairs in two blocks, with an aisle down the middle and an arch of white roses at the end.

I had paid for the roses.

I sat in the front row, left side, in the seat my name card said was mine.

Annette was on my right with a tissue already in her fist.

Four of Cedric's students played a string quartet by the windows, and one of the violins was slightly flat.

I loved it.

Cedric stood under the arch with his hands clasped in front of him and his glasses slipping down his nose.

He pushed them up three times in a minute.

Behind me, the second row filled.

I did not turn around, but I heard Cynthia's heels, and then the small rustle of a woman sitting down alone.

The chair beside mine, on my left, was empty.

It had a card on it that read, in the florist's careful script, Father of the Bride.

At two o'clock the quartet stopped, and the doors at the back opened.

Everyone stood.

Hannah appeared in the doorway in her ivory dress, with her hair finished and her bouquet held low in both hands.

Tied to the stems with a bit of ribbon was the small gold brooch Cynthia had given her.

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