I thought about the ladder, and the gutters, and the scar.
And I thought, I’m going to have to smile through my daughter’s wedding tomorrow while my marriage is ending.
At five-thirty, I heard David’s footsteps in the hall. He stopped at the kitchen doorway. He saw me sitting there in the dark.
He didn’t come in.
After a while, he went back to bed.
The wedding was at a restored barn venue about forty minutes outside the city. White string lights in the rafters. An old stone fireplace. A field out back where they’d set up rows of white chairs facing a wooden arch covered in greenery.
Emma had dreamed about it for a year.
I got there at nine a.m. with the hair and makeup people. I carried the cake in myself with two of the venue staff and watched them set it on its table in the reception hall. It was perfect. Not a petal out of place.
