Chương 8
“Wind advisory shifted earlier,” she said.
Sterling put down his sandwich.
“How bad?”
“Not dangerous yet.”
“That is not a comforting sentence.”
“It means we’re still within transport limits.”
I stood.
“What’s the window?”
“If the current model holds, boats need to depart no later than four thirty.”
Our ceremony was scheduled for five fifteen.
Sterling looked at me.
“Can guests stay overnight?”
“Some,” Leah said.
“Not one hundred and nine.”
“How many?”
“Forty-two with existing bunks and approved temporary accommodation.”
“That doesn’t help.”
“No.”
I walked toward the edge of the dock.
The water inside the harbor was flat, almost insulting in its calmness.
“What if we move everything earlier?”
Sterling followed me.
Leah answered before he could.
“Possible.”
“How early?”
“Guests board at eleven, ceremony at one thirty, meal immediately after, departures begin by three forty-five.”
I pictured the invitations.
Sunset ceremony.
Lantern dinner.
The entire image disappeared in seconds.
Sterling asked, “What do you think?”
I looked at him.
I wanted to say it ruined everything.
I wanted to say we had already surrendered the estate, the schedule, the flowers we could not use at the sanctuary, the musician who had canceled when the venue changed, and the fifty thousand dollars Patricia had held over us.
I wanted one thing not to move.
Instead I said, “Will it be safe?”
Leah answered quietly.
“Yes.”
“Then move it.”
Sterling touched my elbow.
“You sure?”
“No.”
That made him smile.
“Good enough.”
The next three hours became phone calls, messages, revised boarding instructions, and one hundred and nine individual opportunities for someone to misunderstand the new time.
Marcus Vance replied within six minutes.
Understood.
Sterling’s aunt wanted to know whether brunch clothes were appropriate.
The retired professor complained that he had already arranged a car.
One cousin asked if the weather was “actually serious” or whether the reserve was being “overcautious.”
Leah took that call personally.
I did not ask what she said.
At three twenty, Patricia texted.
Savannah’s wedding is still happening.
I stared at the message.
I had not asked.
A second arrived.
She changed it.
Then a third.
It’s simple now.
I placed the phone facedown.
Sterling was across the room arguing with a florist about loading access.
I watched him rub the back of his neck.
Something in me loosened.
Our wedding would not happen at sunset.
There would be no lantern terrace.
The ceremony photographs would probably contain gray sky and windblown hair.
We might eat dinner at two in the afternoon.
It was still ours.
That evening, my father’s sister, Aunt Rosa, arrived at our house carrying a garment bag and a grocery bag filled with food we had not requested.
“You look terrible,” she said when I opened the door.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She walked past me.
Rosa had inherited my father’s habit of treating affection as logistics.
She stocked our refrigerator, complained about our knives, and then hung my dress from the top of the bedroom door.
My father had died six years earlier from a heart attack in a grocery store parking lot.
The call had come while I was presenting a habitat impact report.
For months afterward, I could not enter a supermarket without checking where the exits were.
Rosa had never tried to talk me out of it.
She had simply gone grocery shopping with me until I stopped needing her to.
Now she stood behind me while I checked the dress.
“Your mother called me.”
I kept adjusting the hanger.
“I assumed she would.”
“She asked whether I knew about Sterling’s family.”
“Did you?”
“Of course.”
I turned.
“What?”
Rosa shrugged.
“Your father knew his grandfather.”
“You never said anything.”
“You never asked.”
I stared at her.
She smiled.
“You’re making the same face Patricia probably made.”
“That is cruel.”
“Accurate, though.”
I sat on the edge of the bed.
“Did Dad know?”
“Not when you started dating.”
“When did he find out?”
“About a year before he died.”
My throat tightened.
“How?”
“He saw Sterling at a land trust fundraiser.”
“And he never told me?”
Rosa’s expression softened.
“He thought it was funny.”
“That sounds like Dad.”
“He also said he liked that Sterling didn’t talk about it.”
I looked at the dress.
The fabric moved slightly in the air from the vent.
“Did he say anything else?”
Rosa took her time answering.
“He said you finally picked somebody who wouldn’t let your mother define the room.”
I swallowed.
“That also sounds like Dad.”
“Yes.”
We sat quietly.
Somewhere downstairs, the refrigerator started its low mechanical hum.
Rosa reached into the grocery bag and handed me a wrapped sandwich.
“I already ate.”
“You look like someone who says that.”
I took it.
She stayed until nearly midnight.
Before leaving, she kissed Sterling on the cheek and warned him that if the boat killed her, she would haunt his family specifically.
“I’ll note it in the risk plan,” he said.
Saturday arrived before I felt prepared for Friday to end.
At seven in the morning, Sterling was already dressed in dark trousers and a white shirt with his sleeves rolled to the elbows.
I found him in the kitchen making coffee.
“You’re not supposed to see me.”
“You’re wearing sweatpants.”
“I mean later.”
“Then later I won’t.”
He handed me a mug.
I took one sip and made a face.
“You forgot sugar.”
“You take coffee black.”
“Not today.”
He added sugar without comment.
My phone lay on the counter beside me.
There were messages from guests, staff, Nina, Rosa, and Savannah.
Savannah’s had arrived at 6:12.
Good luck today.
I typed the same back.
Then I erased it.
Have a good wedding felt wrong.
I hope you’re happy felt too large.
Finally I wrote, I hope it feels like yours.
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
Then disappeared.
A minute later she replied.
May you like
I think it might.
At nine thirty, the terminal filled with people carrying garment bags, small overnight cases, and the mild anxiety produced by being told to present government identification before attending a wedding.
