Chapter 24: The Cake

A year after I cut my wedding cake alone, I stood in the same ballroom with the same knife.

This time Ansel's hand was over mine.

Three hundred guests watched from their tables.

The cake was a lemon tart the size of a wagon wheel, with a single sugar rose in the middle.

Melody had made the rose.

She had made the plate too, and it was perfect, and slightly crooked.

"Ready?" said the photographer.

It was the same photographer.

He looked very nervous and held his camera a little higher than before.

"On three," he said.

"One."

Ansel's thumb pressed mine on the handle.

"Two."

His phone rang.

It was the tiger.

The whole ballroom heard it, and every guest went quiet.

I felt Ansel's hand tighten on mine and I did not look at him.

I did not need to.

"It might be real," I said, very quietly.

"It might be."

"You could look."

"I could," Ansel said. "I'm choosing the knife."

At table one my grandmother lifted her cane an inch off the floor and put it down.

"Three," I said, since the photographer had stopped.

We pushed the knife through the tart together.

The first slice fell over on its side, and the photographer took the picture anyway.

Everyone cheered.

Ansel kissed my cheek, and then he kissed my mouth, and the tiger finished and fell silent.

He put the phone face down on the cake table, beside the sugar rose.

"Twenty minutes," I said.

"I'm staying twenty minutes."

"You could stay twenty-one."

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