The yard was full of the people I had now, and the people Astrid had. Her parents in the front row, Caldwell in the back, and the Bishops in the third with a lab in a bowtie. Shane, Brian, and Garrett at the bar with my best friend, Duke. Maya, Ava, and Sloane with Audrey on the patio.
And her.
It turned out the hard part didn't come on a night like this one because the night was too full of people for the missing to fit anywhere.
I'd find that out the next morning over coffee at the counter. I'd miss my grandmother on a Tuesday in August when I made the pot roast on the Sunday, and there'd be no one across the table from me but my own wife, and the missing would have its small clean place, and the rest of me would keep going.
I didn't know that yet.
I knew the yard was full.
"Easton."
"Yeah."
"Look."
She was looking past my shoulder.
I turned.
Audrey was at the side gate.
She had her heels in one hand. Her hair was all the way down. Duke was at her shoulder. He had his tie off and bunched in her other hand. His jacket was over his arm. They were laughing at something one of them had just said, and neither of them was going to remember the joke in the morning, but both of them were going to remember the laughing.
They cleared the gate.
The gate clicked shut behind them.
Astrid let out a long, slow breath.
"Oh," she said.
A beat.
"Oh no."
I looked down at her.
She was looking up at me with an expression I'd seen on Audrey on a sidewalk on Maple Avenue in October, the expression of a best friend who had been clocking a thing and had just been handed the proof.
"Did you see them all night?" I said.
"I saw them all night."
"How long?"
"Three months, Easton."
"At least three months."
"At least."
"They've been planning a wedding."
"Yeah. They have."
"They were fighting about the buttercream yesterday."
