Chapter 8: The Chapel

Gran signed herself out of the cardiac unit at two o'clock against medical advice.

"Three hours," she told the doctor. "If I die at my granddaughter's wedding, put it on my stone. I've earned it."

Teo sent a private ambulance and a nurse who looked like she'd wrestled bears.

The dress was Gran's, from 1974.

Ivory lace, long sleeves, smelling of cedar.

It was tight across my caretaker's shoulders.

Gran had me turn around twice in the chapel vestry.

"You look like me," she said. "Before I knew better."

The cemetery chapel was stone, cold and small, with eight pews and a stained-glass Saint Francis surrounded by birds.

Now it was full of men in black suits and their wives in fur.

The capos sat in the front pew.

The real crows were outside, dozens of them, lined along the chapel roof.

Dilly walked ahead of me in a yellow dress with a daisy clip and the white bird on her shoulder.

She handed a petal to every person on the aisle, solemn as a bishop.

Gran sat at the end of the front row in her wheelchair, oxygen on, a corsage on her wrist the size of a fist.

I walked myself down the aisle. Nobody else was going to do it.

Teo was waiting at the front in a black suit, no overcoat.

He watched me the whole way, and his face didn't close once.

The priest was ninety and fast.

I said I do. Teo said I do.

"You may kiss the bride."

Teo put one hand along my jaw.

I'd decided ahead of time it would be quick. For the cameras. For the capos.

He kissed me, and I forgot I'd decided anything.

It wasn't polite.

It was slow and deep and certain, his mouth opening mine, his fingers sliding into the hair at my nape.

I grabbed his lapels to stay standing and kissed him back like I'd been waiting since the toolshed, because I had.

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