And then Claire did something. She stood back up, and she took the microphone that Mia was still holding, and she said to the whole room, her voice thick:
“Everybody. I want you to meet my cousin Mia. She is the bravest person I have ever known in my entire life, and I am honored — honored — that she came to my wedding. Mia, honey—” and here Claire’s voice broke completely, “—when you get married someday, and you will, I am going to be in the front row bawling my eyes out. And I already know it’s going to be the most beautiful wedding any of us has ever seen.”
The room went up again.
And Mia laughed — that laugh, that real one, the mailbox-race laugh I hadn’t heard in two years — and it came through the speakers and out into the room, and I stood there and sobbed like a child, because my daughter was back. My daughter was back, and she was more than she’d ever been, more than the accident, more than the chair, more than any of the small broken words a small broken woman had tried to bury her under.
