She walked at a pace she'd decided on and wasn't going to be moved off of, with her chin lifted and her bouquet at her waist and a half-smile. She came up beside me at the arch. She turned and caught my eye for a count of one.
"Hold steady, Ford."
"I will."
The band shifted.
Astrid came around the side of the bungalow with her father at her elbow.
She had on the dress Audrey had picked. It was cream, and it had a neckline I hadn't let myself imagine that morning, because I'd known I'd have to make it through a ceremony after seeing her in it, and I'd needed to budget myself. Her hair was loose at the back, with the small section pinned at one side that her mother had pinned for her. She had her hand in the crook of her father's arm. Her bouquet was the same pink and cream as Audrey's.
She looked up.
She saw me at the end of the aisle.
She took one breath in and let it out, and her shoulders dropped a quarter inch. She came the rest of the way to me.
Her father walked her to the arch, kissed her on the side of her head, put her hand in mine, and turned around and went to the front row to sit beside his wife. Her mother was sobbing quietly into a handkerchief Audrey had pressed into her hand at the side of the bungalow.
I had Astrid's hand in mine.
The officiant was Pastor Holm, who had baptized Astrid at three months old and had been waiting for this morning since the September she'd come back. He kept it short. He read the part of the service he'd been reading for forty years, and at the part where he asked if we'd written our own vows, I lifted Astrid's hand a quarter inch in mine, and drew a breath.
I had the vows in my back pocket on an index card.
I had read the card four times for her at the kitchen table.
I didn't take the card out.
"Astrid."
"Easton."
I looked at her face.
I'd been planning to start with the line I'd written three weeks ago and read to her four times. The line was good. I was going to get to it.
My throat closed.
I closed my eyes for a count of one. I opened them. She was still looking at me. She had the small wet shine along the bottom of her lashes that I had been watching on her since November.
I drew a breath.
"I'd been running my whole life."
Her hand tightened on mine.
"You were the first thing that made me want to stop."
The yard went very quiet.
I had more of the vows. I had a paragraph about my grandmother, a paragraph about Penny, and a paragraph about a Tuesday morning in October when I'd watched a woman in abath towel chase a yellow lab across my backyard with a hair towel sinking to one side. I had read all of it four times at the kitchen table.
I didn't get to the rest of it.
I looked at her face, and I didn't get to the rest of it, and she squeezed my hand a quarter inch.
"That's enough," she said. Low.
