In the vesting room the air was cooler and smelled of cedar and the iron of old vestment hangers. A narrow window looked onto the parking lot, where sunlight sat on car roofs without warmth. Lauren stood by that window with her arms bare and her back very straight. She had taken the pins from her hair. Blonde hair, unpinned, made her look less like a bride and more like herself, which did not help.
Naomi shut the door. Helen remained outside it, a sentinel who did not trust herself to be kind yet. Emma sat on a folding chair that had hosted centuries of altar guild complaints. She put the phone on her knee. The crack in the corner caught the window light.
David loosened his tie as if it were the thing choking the afternoon. "All right," he said. "We're here. No one else is here."
Lauren turned. Mascara had not run because she had not cried. "I shouldn't have said what I said out there. I know how it sounded."
"It sounded like you were afraid of a sentence," David said.