Chapter 6: Second Vows

Three weeks later I stood in the vestry of St. Brendan's in a plain ivory dress.

I was about to marry the same man for the second time.

The dress had cost me nothing. Dot had sewn the hem herself and refused to say what she'd paid for the fabric.

Gail came in without knocking and closed the door behind her.

She wore the blue silk she had worn to our first wedding, with the same brooch.

"Sweetheart, turn around."

I turned. She fixed one button at the back, and her fingers were not quite steady.

"You don't have to do this for me," she said.

"I'm doing it for the contract, Gail."

"I know what the contract says."

She took my hands in hers. Hers were dry and cold.

"Promise me one thing. Whatever happens in these next months, whatever he does or doesn't do, promise me you'll still be here on his birthday."

I laughed a little.

"That's March. The contract runs a year. I'll be here."

"Promise."

"I promise," I said, because she looked as if she needed it.

She kissed my forehead and went out to take her seat.

I should have asked why a birthday mattered to her more than an anniversary.

Instead the organ began.

My mother's wheelchair rolled up the side aisle with a nurse behind it, and I forgot everything else.

She had not left Maple Court in two years.

Dot had talked the director into a day pass.

She sat in the second pew in a lavender cardigan, with her good hand open on her lap.

When I walked past she turned her whole face toward me and said the only word she had, the one that still worked.

"Lena."

I kept walking, because if I stopped I would not have finished the aisle.

The church was fuller than I had expected.

Dot sat on the bride's side in a purple hat. Hartwell sat in the third row on the groom's side with his cane between his knees.

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