Chapter 19: Thirty-Five Years

For five weeks Lacey stayed out of sight, and that was worse than anything loud she could have done.

She cancelled Simone's booking by email and hired a photographer from Elyria.

She sent my mother a cake order by text and a photo of a dress.

She did not call me once.

On the afternoon of December thirteenth, I stood on a stepladder in the parish hall on Reid Avenue.

I was taping a paper 35 to the wall above the head table.

Simone sat on the floor at the back with her laptop open on a folding chair.

Three tripods lay folded around her.

My father stood beside her in his good suit with his hands in his pockets.

"This is the slideshow," he said. "Lacey made it for your mother."

He held up a small drive.

"She handed me this on Wednesday and said to play it when the cake comes out."

Simone plugged the drive in.

The screen at the front of the hall lit up with a white title card: THIRTY-FIVE YEARS OF MERCERS.

Photographs began to fade across it.

There was my parents at a wedding, and my mother holding me in a hospital blanket.

There was my father with Dustin on his shoulders at the lake.

"She picked good ones," my father said.

I came down off the ladder and watched.

The last slide was a still from the conservatory.

Lacey was under the white arch in the ivory dress, and Dustin stood beside her with his eyes closed.

Under it, in gold script, it said: One more reason to celebrate.

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