Chapter 4: Friday

I got married on Friday at four in the afternoon in a hospital suite that smelled like lilies and floor cleaner.

I wore the green dress from the gala.

Imogen had sent it out to be pressed.

Then she had stood in the bathroom doorway and refused to let me wear anything else.

"It's the dress that made the video," she said. "You are not going to hide in beige."

The pastor was a small man with a Bible and a cough.

Imogen stood on my left, holding a bouquet of white calla lilies she had bought at the gas station downstairs.

His grandmother sat propped on four pillows in the bed, wearing a silk scarf and a great deal of lipstick.

"I want it to be loud," she told the pastor. "I'm not a quiet woman."

"I'll do my best," he said.

Elias stood at the foot of the bed in a black suit.

He hadn't said much since Thursday, when I'd asked him why he'd had the surgery and he had said, "Not today," and gone to take a call.

I had let it go.

I wasn't sure yet that I had the right to ask.

The pastor opened his book and began.

I looked at Elias's hands.

They were clasped in front of him, and the knuckles were pale.

"Do you, Elias, take Leona to be your wife?"

"I do."

He said it to the pastor.

Then he turned his head and said it again, to me, quieter.

"I do."

"And do you, Leona, take Elias to be your husband, for as long as you both shall live?"

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