eyes. She wanted me to cry, or yell, or go running to Mark. Then she could look sad and wounded and tell everybody how the stepmother ruined the wedding.
I put the little white card back on the chair.
“Of course,” I said.
Something flickered across her face. Surprise, maybe. Then she smiled again, turned around, and walked back up the aisle toward the front row, her champagne dress swishing.
I sat down in the last row and folded my hands in my lap.
I’ve raised Hannah since she was six.
I met her father at a church potluck in the fall of 2006. He was standing by the dessert table holding two paper plates, trying to figure out how to get a slice of chocolate cake onto both of
them with one hand. He was thirty-two, tall, with tired eyes and a stain on his tie that looked like grape juice.
