Mia turned her chair to face Donna.
“Dear Aunt Donna,” she said.
Her voice came through the speakers, high and clear and shaking just slightly, filling that whole enormous silent ballroom.
“I’ve wanted to tell you something for a long time. Something really important that I think you forgot.”
Donna stood there with the bouquet still in her hand, and I watched a flicker of uncertainty cross her face. She hadn’t expected this. None of us had.
Mia took a breath.
“You said no man is ever going to marry me because I can’t walk down an aisle,” she said. “But you’re wrong. And I’m going to tell you why.”
The room was so quiet I could hear the chandeliers humming.
“My mom told me that when she married my dad, it wasn’t because he liked how she walked.” A small, broken laugh moved through the crowd. “It was because he thought she was the kindest person he ever met. And the funniest. And the smartest. She said the walking-down-the-aisle part took about twenty seconds. But the being-kind part, that’s the part that made him stay.”
