Her Wedding Dress novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: The Sound of Clapping

We were married on a Saturday in October, in the backyard of my yellow house.

There were forty folding chairs on the grass.

My father had built a plain arch himself, with my mother holding the ladder.

I wore the backup gown.

It was the plain ivory one I had pulled on in a hotel powder room on the worst day of my life.

Nobody had ever looked at it twice.

The seamstress had altered it at the waist and the bust.

She had also stitched a single panel of the saved silk along the hem.

"For luck," she said. "It was always yours."

My friend with the couch zipped me into it and cried on my shoulder.

"I'm not crying," she said.

"I know."

"I'm just allergic to happiness."

Through the window I could see the chairs filling.

Tyler stood at the end of the aisle in a borrowed jacket.

He was passing out programs, because he had asked for a job.

My mother sat in the front row.

She had a handkerchief in her fist, and this time she did not dab her eyes with it.

She just let her face do whatever it wanted.

Beside her sat my father, thin and upright, with a small bundle in the crook of his arm.

My daughter wore the christening gown.

It was cut from the same silk as my hem.

It was far too long for her, and it trailed over his knee.

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