Chapter 23: The Ring Bearer

We got married in June, in my mother's backyard, under the apple tree.

There were forty folding chairs, a borrowed arch and a cake shaped like nothing in particular.

Archie was the ring bearer.

He had practiced for a week, and he came down the grass with the pillow held out in both hands.

Halfway down the aisle he stopped.

"Uncle Cal," he whispered, loud enough for the second row. "I can't find the rings."

"They're on the pillow, buddy."

"No, they're not."

He turned the pillow over.

Both rings dropped into the grass and rolled in opposite directions.

My aunt gasped, my cousin howled, and the pastor, to his credit, did not lose his place.

Willa laughed so hard that her veil shook.

I got down on my hands and knees in my good suit and found the first ring under a folding chair.

Archie found the second one, in his mouth, and looked quite surprised.

We began again.

She had chosen a plain ivory dress with short sleeves, and she wore her auburn braid pinned up with a ribbon.

She had a scatter of freckles across her shoulders, and I knew every one of them by heart.

"Do you, Caleb," said the pastor, and I didn't hear the rest.

"I do," I said, a little early.

"I was going to ask the whole thing first."

"I do anyway."

Forty people laughed, and Willa wiped her face with the back of her wrist.

When it was her turn she looked at me, and not at the pastor, and spoke without a note.

"I'm going to look at your face every day," she said. "I won't smooth you. I'll ask you what's wrong, and I'll wait until you tell me."

"And I'll tell you."

"I do," she said, with no hesitation at all, and she kissed me before he said she could.

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