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Ishouldn’t have been so shaky. It was just another day, an important day, but another day nonetheless. It was the day that Amber and I were going to make our intentions known to the world. We were going to tell everyone that we were together and planned to be together for the rest of our lives.
Amber was staying with Alice and the baby at a friend’s house. I had the house to myself and it was a reminder that I didn’t care for. It was a reminder of how empty the house felt those months that I couldn’t find her. At the time, I had felt the absence quite clearly, but now it was even worse. Now, I knew what I was missing so well and it hurt.
I had a few people at my bachelor party, but they were still passed out in different areas of the house. I might as well have been alone, missing my girls. I now had another girl to love, our daughter Samantha. I thought Alice was going to burst when she found out that it was a girl. We hadn’t been sure until it was born. Now, we were a perfect family that was going to become even more perfect.
Feeling nostalgic, it was easy to go back to the past, the last time I had gotten married and all of the emotions that had come with it. This time it was different. This time, I was calm in some instances, where I hadn’t been in the past. Before, I had worried about what happened after the big day, now I knew. Amber and I had lived together for over a year now, so there was no surprise. Now, we were just making official what we had done before.
Thoughts of my ex-wife were hard to manage, but today was different. I knew that I had to live through it all, to experience and appreciate a woman like Amber. I’d been taught so much about loss, and now I was being reminded that it could be good too. We had our family back.
The guilt was still there, that I lived and couldn’t save her. It was waning though, knowing that it had worked out how it was supposed to. I would never know why it all had to happen, but I wanted to believe that it did have to, that it was all some plan. The randomness was unacceptable.
I watched the clock, not dreading the time I would leave and go to the church but dying for it. The men who were passed out throughout the house started to wake up and I was forced to be a host. I knew that there was nothing that could ruin this day. Nothing.
I went to the door when I heard the knocking and braced myself for what came next.
“Tommy, what are you doing here?”
He grinned at me and congratulated me on the wedding.
“You heard about it?”
“Oh yeah. We need to talk.”
* * *
The wedding was aboutto start, and I didn’t know if I should go to Amber first or not. I think she would have wanted me to. Tommy showing up had been a shock. He had done so much to me and my family already. I didn’t trust him, but at the same time, I could see the desire that he had as well. He wanted to get rid of some of his guilt. That made him do something that was probably as foreign to him as it was to hear that he would do it.
He was trying hard to make up for what he’d done. He didn’t have money, but he had something better. He had something that was going to make my soon-to-be-wife happy and that was all that I needed to know. Amber meant everything to me, and I wanted her to know how loved she was, this day, as she had all the rest before.
Tommy had brought some people with him to the wedding, and he wanted me to know about it. Maybe he wanted something in return, something beyond monetary means, but that wasn’t for me to say. He had brought many of Amber’s foster brothers and sisters with him, as well as the foster mom that she had liked the most. It was one hell of a gesture, and it was well thought out. Amber felt so alone sometimes, even when we were around her. She needed to be reminded that she had touched and changed the lives of so many, just like she had with Alice and me.
The music started to play and there wasn’t much time now. It was all starting and Amber was just going to have to deal with the shock of it. I knew that’s what she was going to feel when she saw that they were all there to see her. She had been worried about who was going to be on ‘her side’ at the wedding. I’d told her that there wouldn’t be any sides, just because I knew the idea of it bothered her so much. I couldn’t help it. She would see now that she had several people behind her, not just our immediate family.
I saw the look on Amber’s face when she started to recognize the people as she went down the aisle. I think at first she tried to hold it together, but she wasn’t very good at it. The people there weren’t very good at it either, because several of the younger teenagers were teary-eyed and hugging her. They didn’t care that she was in a wedding dress, everyone looking on. They were greeting her like she was their mother. I realized then that there was so much about Amber, all of it, that I just didn’t know. Our family was probably one of many that had been touched by Amber. She gave and gave without thinking and because of that, people forgot how awesome she was, how much she had to offer the world.
I promised myself that I would never forget it again.
“How did you… How did you know that I would want to see them? How did you know who any of these people were? I hadn’t told you about them, not by name.”
I told her that it wasn’t me, it was Tommy. I didn’t want to give him any credit, not when I saw how moved she was. I didn’t expect her to hug him either, but I could see that they were friends, long before they were anything else. Tommy loved her in his own way, and I wanted Amber to have more than her fill of it, even if all of it wasn’t from me.
By the time she reached me and we were both back in place, Amber’s makeup had smeared, but it didn’t detract from her beauty, I didn’t think anything could.
“I’m a mess.”
She was, but I didn’t think that there was a dry eye in the house. The emotions that came off of them was more than anyone could handle. I was feeling a bit weepy as well, something that never happened. Like always though, Amber brought out a side of me that I hadn’t known existed.
“Are you ready to do this?”
She agreed, though I had to stop her from trying to fix herself.
“You look great.”
She scoffed. “Only you see it.”
I disagreed. “No, Amber, everyone who meets you sees it.”
“Are we going to talk about the fact that Tommy is here?”
