Chapter 24: Kijin

We held the wedding in the tow yard on the first Saturday in November.

Meredith picked the date, and she picked the place, and nobody at Hallworth Freight dared to ask her why.

By noon the two bays had been swept and strung with lights.

A white tent stood in the lot where the wrecks usually sat.

Twelve flatbeds were parked around the fence in a row, washed, with ribbons on the mirrors.

The drivers had done it themselves at six that morning.

The old driver from bay six, who now ran dispatch, had inspected each one with a clipboard.

My family came in at ten, in nine pickups and a bus, from Pennsylvania.

There were forty-one Brannigans, and I knew thirty-six of them.

They stood in the lot in their church clothes, big men with my chin and women with Fern's braid.

They looked at the yard and the tent and the people in suits.

"This is the place?" one of the older cousins asked.

"This is the place."

"You came back to a tow yard," he said. "After all that."

"I got it back," I said. "It's different."

Fern walked up in a black dress and a leather vest and fixed my tie without asking.

"Eight years," she said. "You look like a man who has a place to stand."

"Aunt Fern."

"Don't cry on my work."

The ceremony took ten minutes.

Meredith came down the aisle between the folding chairs on the arm of nobody, with the ring on her finger.

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