She dropped the bouquet.
It just fell out of her hands onto the floor. And she turned, and she walked — fast, then faster — out of the ballroom, past the tables, out the big doors into the garden, and she didn’t come back.
I found out later she’d left the wedding entirely. Called a cab and went home. Didn’t say goodbye to anyone.
Claire crossed the dance floor before Donna was even out the door. She scooped up her own bouquet off the ground, and she knelt down next to Mia’s chair, and she put those flowers back in my daughter’s lap where they’d been in the first place, and she wrapped her arms around her and held her while the whole room kept cheering.
“They’re yours,” I heard Claire say into Mia’s hair. “They were always yours. Nobody’s ever taking them from you again.”
