He raised his glass.
“To Emma and Daniel,” he said. “The two best things to happen to this family in a long, long time.”
Everyone raised their glasses. Everyone drank.
I didn’t. I couldn’t. I just sat there with my hand over my mouth, and Daniel put his arm around my shoulders, and I cried into his good blue suit.
My mother came to the restaurant at nine o’clock that night.
I saw her through the big front window. She was standing outside on the sidewalk, under a streetlight, alone. She didn’t have her purse. She’d left it at the church. She was still in her mother-of-the-bride dress, the pale gold one she’d spent three months picking out.
She didn’t come in. She just stood there looking through the window.
Daniel saw her too. “Do you want me to go?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll go.”
