Chapter 11: The Dress

On Friday I managed the length of the hall with a cane.

I walked past a row of framed school photos, with Dale a yard behind me and his hands out.

At the end I turned around and made it back.

My hip screamed the whole way.

I did not let it make a sound.

"That's twenty-eight," Dale said when I reached the bedroom door.

"Tomorrow it has to be sixty."

"The aisle is sixty-two feet."

"You measured the aisle?"

"I called the venue and asked for the floor plan. I said I was the florist."

I lowered myself onto the bed and breathed.

Mom came in with a garment bag over her arm and set it on the quilt.

She unzipped it.

It was the green dress I wore to my twenty-first birthday, the last night before the diagnosis.

She had taken it in at the waist herself, and it still smelled like her iron.

"I thought black," Mom said. "Then I thought, no. You wear the color you were wearing when it started."

I touched the sleeve.

"It's perfect."

"It better be," she said. "I've been up since four."

Dale cleared his throat.

"I made some calls," he said. "The wedding has a DJ and a sound board in the back of the hall, by the doors."

"The guy who runs it had me replace his clutch in March."

"He owes me one."

"He'll plug in a phone?" I asked.

"He'll plug in any phone I tell him to, at any moment I tell him to."

"He doesn't know why."

"He thinks it's a surprise toast for the groom."

Mom pulled her phone out of her apron.

"The recording is on here, and it's backed up in three places," she said.

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