I Joined My Dead Sister's Curling Team, and Her Widower Joined Me novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Wedding Photograph

The wedding photograph hung in Gunnar's hall, three feet from the yellow door, and on Wednesday night I took it off the wall.

I had walked past it a hundred times.

I had come down for dinner with my mother's voice still in my head, telling me where I would sit.

I stopped dead in front of the photograph.

Annika in white lace, laughing.

Gunnar in a gray suit, six years younger, with his beard trimmed short.

My mother at Annika's side with her hand on her arm, and the pastor behind them, and two cousins from Superior.

Six people in front of the church steps, and the space at the end of the row where nobody stood.

"Britt," Gunnar said, from the kitchen door.

He had a wooden spoon in his hand and flour on his shirt.

"Dinner's almost."

"Do you know who isn't in this picture?" I said.

He came down the hall slowly.

He looked at the photograph in my hands, and the spoon dropped to his side.

"I was twenty-one," I said.

"The photographer lined up the family on the steps."

"My mother told me to run and get the cake knife from the church kitchen, because the caterer had forgotten it."

"I ran," I said.

"I came back out with it wrapped in a dish towel, and the picture had been taken."

"I stood on the sidewalk with a knife in a towel, and you looked right at me."

I held the frame tighter.

"You were the groom, Gunnar. You saw the space where I should have stood, and you said nothing."

"I've held that against you for six years."

My voice shook, and I hated it.

"I never told you, because I was the sister who didn't make scenes," I said.

"I'm making one now."

Gunnar did not defend himself.

He set the spoon on the hall table, very carefully, and stood in front of me with his big hands open.

"I saw," he said.

"I saw you on the sidewalk."

"I wanted to call out, but the photographer was already waving us in, and Annika was laughing."

He swallowed.

"Your mother had her hand on my arm," he said.

"I told myself I would fix it at the reception. I didn't. I've been sorry every day since."

"That's not enough," I said.

"No," he said.

"It isn't. But there's something else you need to hear, because I think you've believed the opposite for a long time."

He stepped closer.

"I never once looked at you and saw her," he said.

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