James proposed on a beach that was really a public walkway with good light. Claire called Riley before she called her mother. Riley screamed into the phone. That scream would sit in Claire later like a piece of glass.
The wedding planning was Pinterest and arguments about napkins. Riley was useful. Riley was present. Riley was in the spare room at the Bennetts’ the week the programs were printed. Grant drove her to the station when her car was in the shop. Patricia said that was generous. Generous is a word that hides a route.
Claire loved James in the steady way. He remembered her coffee. He did not need a room to clap for him. He was not Grant. That had been the point.
Grant loved being the father of the bride in public. He had already drafted a toast about walking Claire as a baby and now walking her to a good man. The draft lived on his phone. He would not read it under the string lights. Claire had told him to save it.
Save it for the toast.
She meant: do not speak to me with sweetheart and nothing while your hand is still warm from another woman’s dress.
Riley meant: do not end me in front of a club.
Patricia meant: do not give the cousins a story.
Claire walked anyway.
Grass on satin. Wine glasses turning like small moons. A cousin already lifting a phone and then lowering it because Patricia’s face could still stop a camera from twenty yards.
Grant stepped away from the hedge as if distance could be invented after the fact. Riley’s pale-green dress showed a wrinkle at the waist where a hand had been. Claire saw the wrinkle. She would see it when she tried to sleep.
James started across the lawn, late to the picture, smiling the confused smile of a groom who thinks someone has forgotten the order of speeches.
Claire did not look at him yet.
She looked at her father.
She looked at her friend.