"Forty-five," Kate corrected.
Her mother held her at arm's length, studying her with an expression that was half wonder and half something else. Something searching. Charlotte watched her mother take in the curls, the dress, the room. She knew what her mother saw: her daughter, transformed into a version of herself that neither of them fully recognized.
"You're happy?" her mother asked. "You're really happy?"
"I'm really happy, Mom."
"Because you don't have to — I mean, I know everything has moved so quickly, and your father and I just want to make sure?—"
"Mom." Charlotte took her hands. Squeezed. "I love him. He's a good man."
Her mother nodded and opened the velvet box. Inside was a pair of emerald earrings, small and luminous. "These were your grandmother's. Something old."
Charlotte put them on. They were warm against her neck, familiar in a way nothing else in this room was. In the mirror, they looked plain next to the crystal beading, next to the diamond studs Dominic had sent up that morning in a black box with no card.
"Have you heard from his family?" her mother asked, working to keep her voice casual.
"Ginnifer sent flowers." Charlotte gestured toward the arrangement on the side table. White roses, white lilies, a card that readWelcome to the family — G.The handwriting was a florist's, not his mother's. Charlotte had noticed. She'd chosen not to mind.
"And his father?"
"Roland doesn't really do warmth. But he shook Dad's hand at the rehearsal dinner, so that's basically a bear hug in Weston language."
Her mother laughed, but her eyes were still doing the searching thing.
Kate broke in, saving her. "Okay, final check. Dress, check. Hair, check. Makeup, gorgeous, check. Shoes?"
"By the door."
"Veil?"
"On the bed."
"Vows?"
Charlotte patted the pocket sewn into the lining of the skirt. Her one contribution to the dress design, a hidden pocket for the folded paper where she'd written her vows in blue pen during a free period at school. She'd written them at her desk while her fourth graders were at recess, the sounds of shouting and laughter floating through the window. She'd cried a little, wiped her eyes and gone back to grading fractions.
"I wrote them myself," she'd told Dominic, shy about it. "Personal ones. Is that okay?"
"Whatever you want," he'd said, scrolling something on his phone. And then, looking up: "That's sweet, Charlotte. Really."
Charlotte.He always called her Charlotte. Everyone else in her life called her Charlie — Kate, her parents, her students, the barista at the coffee shop on Ninth Street who spelled it "Charlee" on her cup every morning.
Dominic called her Charlotte because that was her name on the seating chart, on the invitation, on the engraved napkins his mother had ordered. Charlotte Elizabeth Hoffman. It sounded like someone elegant, someone who belonged in this hotel, in this dress, in this family.
In reality, Charlie Hoffman was a fourth-grade teacher who ate cereal for dinner and whose apartment had a leak above the bathtub she'd fixed with duct tape. Charlotte was the woman Dominic proposed to. She was still trying to figure out if they were the same person.
"Earth to Charlie." Kate was snapping her fingers. "You in there?"
"Yeah. Sorry. Just taking it in."
Kate studied her. Kate was good at studying people: it was what made her a good teacher and an occasionally unbearable best friend. She saw things Charlotte preferred to leave unexamined, and she usually had the grace to let them stay thatway. Today, though, there was a tightness around her mouth that meant she was holding something back.
"What?" Charlotte asked.
"Nothing." Kate handed her the bouquet — white peonies, lush and heavy, another Ginnifer selection. "You ready?"
Charlotte took the flowers. Looked at the mirror one more time. The woman looking back was stunning in a borrowed kind of way. Like the room, like the orchids, like the diamonds she'd left on the vanity. All of it beautiful. None of it hers.
