Forever Hold Your Peace
Vanessa never expected to be flying back there for her father’s wedding, particularly not
with a hanging bag draped across the rental car’s back seat that was delicately cradling a
bridesmaid’s dress. Her luggage was light; this was meant to be a short trip, only to keep some
semblance or façade of peace, and she intended to follow through on that.
The wedding was not a surprise, but the emphasis with which she was invited to come
was not something she would have predicted. In the past, Angela had tried to stay out of
Vanessa’s business and her relationship with Richard; she had respected it. But clearly she had
sent the card – the envelope was in a neat and delicate print Vanessa recognized as her
handwriting. The “Save the Date” card, bearing a photo of both of them from the vacation where
he had proposed, Angela’s ring-laden hand pressed excitedly to his chest in plain sight of the
camera, had arrived with a hand-written note in the envelope. The short note didn’t beat around
the bush: Please come – it would mean so much to us. Vanessa looked again at the photo on the
card, staring at the smiles on their faces. It had been nearly a year since she had seen them in
person; she had begged out of the holiday reunion this year by blaming a schedule conflict with
Greg’s parents.
But a wedding was a wedding, and now there was no more putting off her return home.
“Did you ever call the hotel to let them know when we’d be getting in?” she asked Greg,
her boyfriend, as he dealt with his emails from the passenger seat; he’d had to leave work early
in order to make this weekend fit into his schedule and he needed to finish up the day’s
communications.
“Yes,” he replied. “I told you that this morning.”
“Oh. There’s a lot on my mind,” she said.
1
“I know,” he said, looking over at her. “But it’s going to be just fine. It’s a long weekend.
We just do the whole family thing for a little while, I bet that will be more fun than you expect,
then we’ll go spend a night together, relaxing, and head back home.” He placed his hand on her
thigh tenderly, trying his best to reassure her. He’d never been home with her, had never met her
father, had only heard about their relationship in late nights filled with whiskey and starry skies
where she felt briefly able to express it all. But he believed in the good in people and their ability
to grow and change, and he had convinced her to come. “It’ll be fine. Besides,” he said,
“Weddings are great.”
There was a ring sitting in one of Greg’s drawers. He hadn’t shown her yet, and he didn’t
know that she knew, but she had found it while he was at work one day. He worked long hours
as a young journalist, only two years on the job, and that meant many nights she went to sleep in
their apartment alone. She had grown tired of the piles of magazines and books left on their
coffee tables and end tables, the boots by the door and the random clutter that builds when no
one’s paying attention. So Vanessa had turned on some music, opened a bottle of wine, and
started cleaning up. But as she was returning a money clip she’d found lying around to the top
drawer of his dresser, where it belonged, she noticed a small box towards the back. In a daze, she
reached for it and opened it. The diamond was larger than she would have expected, given his
frugal nature, but she hadn’t expected a diamond at all. He knew how she felt about marriage –
or at least, she had thought he did. But now there was a secret ring, and he had planned an extra
night for their long weekend in a little bed and breakfast on Nantucket, and she didn’t know what
to expect of the weekend.
“Yeah,” Vanessa echoed hollowly. “It’ll be fine.”
*
*
*
2
The trouble had all started when she was young. Now, as she was older, she understood
the statistics of marriage and divorce, but when she was a child, Vanessa only knew that her
father had stopped trying to come home for dinner or to see the children before bedtime, knew
that her mother had started crying in the bathroom because it was the one place her children
wouldn’t see her. She saw the family calendar in the kitchen filling up with more and more travel
days on her father’s schedule, and quickly became used to seeing luggage by the door.
Marriages end all the time; the problem with this one really lay in how long it took.
Richard had always been a hard worker – he was the man to devote late nights and early
mornings to finishing his work – but he grew to use it as an excuse to hide behind. He wasn’t a
man used to failure, and he didn’t want to be a quitter. So no, they weren’t having problems; it
was just a difficult time for him at work. No, they didn’t need to talk about it; he just had a big
deadline for a project coming up soon.
Her mother, Madeleine, had at one point been quite a worker, too, before having children;
she had been a well-regarded editor at a magazine before she went on maternity leave; and
adjusted her hours; and started working from home; and then finally quit. First there was Adam,
and he had been a handful – a rambunctious child with a willful spirit, he had called her away
from work many time by ending up in the principal’s office for talking back to other children or
taking out his frustration about having the attention taken away from him; then there was
Rebecca, a much quieter child, but still, she then had two to care for. Then a miscarriage, some
empty time, and finally: Vanessa. Madeleine never fully returned to the career she had put aside
years before.
Richard and her mother did not officially separate until Vanessa was in her senior year of
high school. She returned home one evening from working at her school’s newspaper and found
3
her mother in the living room, frantically tearing it apart. “I can’t,” she kept muttering. “I can’t
look at him anymore,” she said, her words barely discernable from her heavy and rattling
breathing. Picture frames were turned upside down on every surface, and several had been
removed from the walls.
“Mom?” she had asked. “Mom, what happened?” she asked, afraid to hear the answer she
could already sense.
“He’s gone.”
*
*
*
The house did not look the same as Vanessa remembered it. There was a new, bright
white fence lining the yard, and the porch had been re-done. The paint was fresh all around, and
the windows shined. It looked gorgeous – but it was foreign to her. She remembered this house
solely from a distance – it was the one her father had bought after the divorce. But she hadn’t
cared about the details of his living arrangement back then; he was the one who had left.
Over the first year and a half or so after the divorce, Vanessa would go over to the house
periodically for a “family” dinner. But Richard’s new home had always been distinctly separate
from her; she had never left clothing there, even when she indulged her parents’ wishes by
spending a rare night there; she never listed it as her address on any form; never thought of it as
anything but “Richard’s place.” Now it was “Richard and Angela’s.”
Vanessa and Greg had gone by the nearby hotel first, checking in and dropping off the
luggage in their room. She had carefully hung up the bridesmaid’s dress in the closet. The long
navy blue dress stared back at her, reminding her of why she was there. A wedding is a wedding.
For a few moments after she knocked on Richard’s front door, nobody answered. In all
likelihood, she supposed, they were probably in the backyard dealing with the decorator getting
4
ready for the rehearsal dinner; it was only a couple hours away, and it was crunch time. But then
she heard the lock flip in the door and the latch release, and the dark wooden door was replaced
by her father’s face. He wore a thin smile as he opened the door to let her in. “Hi, V.”
“Hi, Dad,” she replied. He reached out for a hug and she accepted it.
Then her father turned to Greg, who was standing silently behind her, smile on his face,
looking strong and firm as he waited to be acknowledged. Her father’s face cracked into a smile.
“You must be Greg, right?” He had gone back through his calendar to find the name. He
extended his hand to shake Greg’s, and Greg eagerly accepted. “Good to meet you, I’m
Richard.”
“You too, sir.”
They heard scrambling from the kitchen. “Richard?” she heard Angela’s voice from the
other room. “Is it Vanessa?”
“Yes, dear,” he called back to her. He ushered them in to the kitchen where Angela was
finishing up a conversation with the wedding planner. As they walked, he asked about the flight;
the drive; the traffic.
“Vanessa!” Angela exclaimed, hurrying forward for a hug. “How are you? We’re so glad
you’re here.”
Vanessa smiled at her. Angela was nice; she had always been nice, since she had entered
the picture when she started dating Richard not too long after the divorce. It had been clear from
the start that there was something very different about his relationship with Angela than his
marriage to Vanessa’s mother; he seemed almost like a different person. He had more of a
youthful spirit, and less of the depressed and angry burden on his shoulders that he’d borne for so
long.
5
“Hello!” Angela gushed, noticing Greg following a step behind Vanessa. “I’m Angela,
the soon-to-be step mother.” She smiled widely.
“Hi, Angela. I’m Greg,” he responded warmly. “The boyfriend,” he chuckled. She smiled
at him knowingly.
“So, when does everybody else get here?” Vanessa asked.
“Adam and Sharon should come next, then Rebecca and Jennifer a little while after
them,” Richard replied.
They nodded thoughtfully in silence.
“How was your trip?” Angela asked.
“Long,” Vanessa replied. “But I got some work done on the plane, so that was good at
least. And they still serve nuts and drinks on the cross-country flights, so it’s hard to complain
when you receive that luxury.”
“Oh, she’s just kidding,” Greg said playfully. “She spent most of the flight pretending to
be multitasking while she caught up on her TV shows.”
Richard laughed. “Sounds productive, V.”
“It was!” Vanessa rebutted, casting a frustrated glance at Greg. “I read several documents
for clients.”
“Oh, yeah?” Greg asked.
“You know, she used to do that when she was in high school, too. Hide up in her room
for hours, saying that she was doing work, or reading, but when you’d knock and pop into her
room to ask her a question, a TV show would always be up on her screen.” Richard laughed.
“How would you know?” Vanessa asked.
6
Greg shot her a look. Richard pretended not to have heard. There was a strained beat of
silence, and Angela’s cheery smile waivered.
“So, Greg, what do you do?” Richard asked. “Vanessa’s notorious for not telling us
much. We’re always running behind to catch up, always out of the loop.”
“Which is why we’re so glad you both are here with us!” Angela interjected warmly.
“I’m a journalist,” Greg said. “I work at Forbes.” Vanessa knew that this line was
practiced – the way he said it so coolly, so calmly, as though he didn’t know how impressive that
would seem to others, had taken a few attempts in the mirror of their apartment to cultivate. But
Richard and Angela didn’t know that, and she could see them falling for his charm. Greg was
just the type of guy a father hopes his child will bring home: handsome, charismatic, welldressed, well-mannered, well-educated, well off. There wasn’t a “well” adjective Greg didn’t
embody.
“Oh, how wonderful!” Angela crooned. “I do hope that this weekend is relaxing for you.
Marriage is a celebration of love, and we’re certainly here to celebrate!”
*
*
*
Madeleine’s downfall came hand-in-hand with the finalization of the divorce; she had
been worn out and on the brink of a breakdown for months before it happened, but after the day
that Vanessa came home and saw her tearing apart the living room to get rid of reminders of
Richard, she was on a steep spiral. She had lost part of herself during the marriage, but she lost
the rest after the divorce. It became clear that she’d left her passion and her own life behind only
to be in turn left by Richard, and she just couldn’t cope with that.
Adam and Rebecca were away at college, but Vanessa saw it all first hand. They heard
about it (when they would answer their phones) and saw glimpses of it on college breaks, but it
7
was Vanessa who lived with it. She came home to the shell of their mother every day after
school. Her unofficial, unspoken chores list grew. It had once read, “Bring in the mail, take out
the trash, and run the dishwasher and put away the dishes.” Her mother’s breakdown added:
vacuum; cook; hide the alcohol bottles Madeleine hadn’t touched yet; recycle the empty ones
hidden under the couch, in cabinets, and in various closets; and pretend their once-somewhatfunctional family life hadn’t completely fallen apart.
Madeleine had once been vibrant, her personality reflected in her naturally, deeply red
hair. She had flittered around the house, managing all the errands and the pick ups and the drop
offs the same way she had skillfully managed editors and manuscripts and magazine work in
another life. Being a stay at home wife and mother wasn’t necessarily fulfilling to her, but she
was good at it for a while. Vanessa didn’t remember any of that so clearly; that was more of a
false memory, one lodged into her head from Rebecca’s and Adam’s stories, and the photos
she’d seen from the years “before.”
With practice, after a few months of lying in a crying heap on the couch while Vanessa
did everything she could to keep the house together, Madeleine became a functioning alcoholic.
By that point, she put on her real clothes. She put on her pearl earrings and made sure her clothes
were ironed. She looked clean and put together, her voice steady and sweet. So what cashier
would question her as she laid three bottles of scotch on the checkout register between them?
Surely they were for her husband and his friends, they must have thought. Surely they weren’t
for her, or at least not all for her.
But they were. It went on this way for much too long, but somehow not long enough.
*
*
*
8
Adam and Sharon were next to arrive at Richard’s house. Their sleek new sedan drove up
the driveway while Angela was giving Vanessa and Greg the tour. There was a bar set up on the
back porch near the swing, and a large tent with flooring and tables and a dance floor. Richard
had gone all out with the details that Angela had wanted.
Adam had the beginnings of a dark beard along his jaw line, and Sharon’s long blonde
hair had been cut shorter, falling just below her shoulders. Even though Vanessa knew they were
past thirty now, going on three years of marriage next month – it still surprised her how adult and
put together they looked. Adam didn’t keep in touch with her much – he never had, he was
always so focused on his own life he genuinely seemed to forget to keep others up to date – and
the result was that she felt like she was re-encountering them each time they crossed paths.
“Hey, everybody!” It was Adam who spoke first. As the oldest child, he’d grown up
being the extraverted one, and it had carried him far. He’d developed good work habits in college
and had found his skills and talents had a calling: investment banking. He was poised and suave,
and Vanessa resented how easily he glided through the door, how careless his return here seemed
to be. “How are you?” He slid over to Angela and pressed a kiss on her cheek, then quickly
hugged Vanessa, and reached out to shake Greg’s hand. “Hey,” he said to Greg, “Good to meet
you.”
Sharon then greeted everybody. She was comfortable here, too, which was not a surprise
given how easily Adam adjusted to being back with the family. Since she and Adam lived closer,
they had plenty of contact with Richard and Angela; this was just another weekend at the house
for them.
Greg smiled and broke into small talk. He was such a charmer. Vanessa looked away.
A wedding is a wedding.
9
And that’s why he was there, Vanessa remembered, as she watched him speak to her
siblings. So that she wouldn’t be alone with her family – she needed a buffer. And whether or not
she was still happy with him, Greg was a perfect buffer: he was charming, handsome, educated,
and could chat with someone until you drag him away at the end of the night. She just had to
survive this weekend, and then she could walk away from all this; she just had to play pretend
until the weekend was over. How hard could it be to try to uphold the “good daughter” image
that Angela’s eyes were begging her to maintain?
Then Rebecca arrived with Jennifer. They had not changed since she’d last seen them,
thankfully, save for a new tattoo on Rebecca’s forearm. Blue skies, it read, in a loopy cursive not
unlike their mother’s.
Rebecca’s auburn hair was thick with her natural waves, and her skin still bore a
memory of the warm tan she had accumulated over the summer. Jennifer’s family owned a home
on Nantucket, and they had spent multiple weekends there during the summer months. From
what Vanessa had heard – for she heard much more from Rebecca than from Adam – from
Rebecca, there were few places more relaxing and inspiring to work on a manuscript than at the
beach. When Vanessa had asked if this was because of the cocktail service she’d heard was
offered there, Rebecca had laughed.
Jennifer, too, was still slightly tan from the summer, but Vanessa was more struck by her
smile. There was something new behind it, a quiet exuberance that Vanessa didn’t recognize in
her. But the curiosity only lasted a moment.
They were still standing in the kitchen when Rebecca wrapped her arm around Jennifer’s
waist. “Well, now that we’re all together, it’s as good a time as any to make an announcement,”
10
she said giddily. Jennifer turned to her, her smile wide, and kissed her cheek. “We eloped last
week!”
A stunned “What?” rang out from the group.
“We’d been discussing it for a while, and when the news came in from the Supreme
Court recently – we just got so excited, and proud, and you know, I just wanted to call her my
wife,” Jennifer said. Vanessa remarked at her happiness; she had never seen either of them look
so content. She glanced down at their hands, and indeed, it was true. Each of them wore a thin
wedding band. Somehow she hadn’t noticed at first, evidently blinded by the fact that multiple
rings had always adorned Jennifer’s hands and the new tattoo on Rebecca’s arm.
Blue skies.
*
*
*
It happened the Monday morning of midterms her sophomore year of college, only a few
weeks away from her return home for Thanksgiving break. Madeleine had finally had too much
– truly, too much – and too quickly. She passed out on her bed and then aspirated on her vomit in
the middle of the night. Vanessa received the call the next day; the cleaning person had found her
and called 911, and the hospital had called Richard, who was still marked down as the person to
contact IN CASE OF EMERGENCY. Then he had contacted the children.
Vanessa had blocked out most of this year from her memory, but she still distinctly
remembered watching Richard walk out of the wake to take a phone call from Angela, marveling
at how he somehow got a second chance at happiness that her mother never did.
*
*
*
Guests slowly began to trickle in for the rehearsal dinner. Try as she might to dismiss
everything about this weekend, Vanessa could not deny that Angela had done a beautiful job
11
organizing the details of this event. The corners of the porch and patio were covered with flowers
and decorative greenery, and small twinkling lights reminiscent of Christmas mornings lined the
edges of the tent. For some, it might seem like too much – but with Angela, it didn’t feel
extravagant. She wasn’t showing off; she just wanted it all to be beautiful and elegant and
simple. And it was.
As Vanessa watched the photographer stalking delicately around the yard, standing
between the tables or moving silently through the guests, camera always at the ready, Vanessa
remembered the large wedding photo that had adorned their fireplace mantle for so many years;
her mother’s modest and beautiful lace dress and long veil, her father’s tuxedo with a crisply tied
bow tie and their bright and proud faces lit and glowing with happiness. Their wedding –
Richard and Madeleine’s – had been small. They’d gotten married in a chapel not too far from
where she was raised, and then had gone out to a fancy dinner with their families to celebrate.
That was it. At the time, they’d both agreed that all they needed was each other, and the
ceremony, and then they’d be happy.
How things had changed since then.
Vanessa stood at the bar, watching the bartender pour her the drink, wondering what he
thought he was seeing. Did he think this was a happy family? Beautiful tables, well-dressed and
chattering guests, seemingly-endless supply of food, gentle music underscoring the night as the
guests of honor moved around the tent happily greeting those they saw. They did look happy
from the outside.
Angela came and stood next to her, looking at her intently.
“Vanessa,” Angela asked questioningly. “Will you do something for me?”
“What?” Vanessa asked.
12
“I want you to make a toast.”
Vanessa looked at her, genuinely unsure Angela was certain of what she was asking her
to do. “You want me to make a toast? Like, to you and Richard?”
“I just want you to say something nice in front of everybody,” Angela said. She moved
closer to Vanessa then, slipping her arm around her soon-to-be stepdaughter’s shoulders in a
motherly stance. “Please,” she said. “It would mean so much to your father and me. We’d love to
have the formal blessing of all three kids, and Adam and Rebecca already said they had toasts
planned.”
She pulled herself away from Angela’s attempted embrace. “Look, Angela – I appreciate
what you’re trying to do,” she hesitated. “But I just can’t. I can’t do it.”
“Why not?” Angela asked. “It’s been years. Isn’t it time to move past everything and
reconnect with your father while he’s still around?” She looked at her firmly. “Please. This is our
wedding. We’d really like to have a nice, meaningful weekend,” she said. “The whole gang is
back together!” Then she smiled and slipped away back to her guests.
Vanessa looked away, then, across the tent, and her eyes fell on Greg where he stood
speaking to Rebecca and Jennifer. He looked handsome in his suit, and he was getting along well
with them. She watched the tender touches they shared, with Rebecca’s hand gently tracing
along Jennifer’s back. They both held out their hands in front of them, letting Greg see their new
wedding bands, clearly telling him about their elopement. Greg turned, searching for her, and
waved. They were all getting along so well – except for her. She knew that Greg was a charmer,
and she usually loved that about him, but Vanessa felt uneasy as she watched him interact with
her siblings, and with Richard. He was fitting in. He was liked. He was welcomed. He smiled
13
broadly at her, and she wondered if he was thinking of this weekend as a test run for joining the
family.
Richard and Angela looked so happy with their guests; they were circulating through the
crowd and laughing, reminiscing over the good old times and receiving wishes for the good
times to come. Vanessa couldn’t watch it anymore. She didn’t know the inside of the house too
well, not after all the years of distancing herself from it, but she went inside to find a moment of
peace. But she didn’t want the caterers to see her, so she snuck up the stairs in the kitchen, and
then followed the upstairs hallway. She found herself looking into her father’s office. She
entered quietly, noticing the piles of documents and briefs littered all over the couch and the
tables against the wall, and sat in his chair. It was plush, and comfortable, and familiar – she
remembered sitting in one just like it as a child when she’d visit him at work.
And then she looked to the desk, where there sat just two framed photographs: one, of
Angela. The other, a family photo of Richard, Madeleine, Adam, Rebecca, and Vanessa.
The original family.
The whole gang is back together.
Later, the delicate shadow of the lights against the edges of the tents flickered with
movement as a shallow evening breeze blew. And as Angela stood up, glass in hand, clinking her
knife against its rim to call for a toast, Vanessa wished to call the group’s attention to that, to the
stars, to anything but the reason they were all there.
“Hello, everybody,” Angela said sweetly. “Thank you all so much for coming – it moves
me tremendously as I look around at this group and realize that you are all here for us, and that
we are surrounded by all those we care about. This is a joyous reunion for many, and because of
that, I know the children each want to say a few words. But since Vanessa traveled the furthest –
14
all the way from the West Coast – to be here, why don’t we start with her?” She smiled, locking
eyes with Vanessa.
Vanessa did her best to ignore the sudden numbness in her extremities and the empty
lightheaded feeling trickling its way down from the crown of her head. She pushed herself up
shakily from the table. Surely she could find something to say. “Hi, everybody,” she started off.
“For those of you who don’t know me, um, I’m Vanessa.” She had never given a wedding toast,
and she felt unsteady in her stance. She gripped her champagne glass tighter, hoping to ground
herself. The glass was cool against her fingertips, but the silence around her, and the eyes on her,
were unbearable. She tore her eyes away from the bubbles rising and bursting in the champagne.
“I’m Richard’s daughter. The one you probably don’t hear much about except for when he’s had
a little too much whiskey.” She let out a small, uncomfortable laugh.
What should she say? How could she, after all this time carrying this grudge, this
bitterness, stand up in front of so many people and pretend that she was proud and elated for
him? She tried to draw on memories as inspiration. Where was that nostalgia she heard so much
about? What did she remember about her father?
One: the way his brief case’s spot on the entryway hard wood was outlined by dust after
he took it and left. Two: the last voicemail he left her before disappearing into radio silence
ended, “I’m not sure where you are, so give me a call back and I’ll try to find you.” Three: the
way he came home one day while she was in school and took all of his clothing and valuable
items, leaving only a short note that he was “sorry to have missed her.” Four: the silver wedding
band left on the hook by the door where his keys were supposed to hang. Five: the fact that he
forgot only a few things of his belongings throughout their whole childhood home, and one of
them was a gift she had just bought him for Christmas. Six: the clean smell that slowly overtook
15
the house again as its only smoker left and didn’t come back, and the way she grew to miss the
secret smell of cigarettes wafting inside from where her father stood in the dark of the porch.
Seven: the muffled crying at night from the next room, night after night, in his absence. Eight:
the way the ice that first winter froze and hardened across the path dangerously without him to
shovel and salt it, the way that his chores went undone, and his side of the couch was left empty.
Nine: the ringing, ringing, ringing of the phone as the outside world slowly stumbled through
learning that he no longer could be found there. Ten: consciously trying to unlearn his phone
number, to forget his email address, to erase the need for the man who seemed to no longer need
them.
“So, a toast,” she said uncomfortably. “To Richard and Angela. My father, and the
woman who finally made him happy.” The hairs on the back of her neck prickled at her own
words. “Angela, you are a kind and caring woman. Years ago, when you met him, you had no
clue the sort of family you were stumbling into, but you stayed around anyway. You’ve even
tried to patch us back together at the edges. You deserve happiness, and I hope you somehow get
it from all this. And Richard – Dad – all I can really say is, I hope you do better this time
around.”
She raised her glass: cheers.
*
*
*
“Vanessa?” Madeleine’s voice shakily came from the bedroom. She sounded weak; it
was only days after Richard had told her he was moving out, and Madeleine had barely left bed,
barely eaten, barely spoken since her fit in the living room.
“Yes, Mom?” Vanessa leapt up from the couch and ran to her mother’s room. Only the
vibrant red hair was visible; Madeleine had pulled the comforter up to cover her face, and she
16
whispered through it. “I hope he’s never happy, Nessa. I hope he doesn’t find someone else. I
want him to regret all this.”
Vanessa sat on the edge of the bed, pulling the comforter down to reveal her mother’s
pale, tear-stained face and red eyes that stared deeply into her own. “I know, Mom. I’m sure he
will.” She stroked her mother’s cheek tenderly. “I’m sure he will.”
*
*
*
“Vanessa?” Rebecca’s voice broke her from her pensive reverie. “Angela asked me to
have you pass these along to Adam. I’d do it, but I have to fix my hair. The clip’s not holding.”
She extended her arm towards Vanessa, then opened her hand to reveal the wedding rings.
Vanessa took them gently from her sister’s hand. Her gaze lingered just for a moment on
Rebecca’s arm. The lettering was too familiar to simply accept without question; the phrase held
the same curves and spaces as their mother’s cursive, and the intermittent connections and spaces
between the letters echoed the way her mother’s attention and commitment to cursive would wax
and wane over the course of the same word. It was tender, spontaneous, and honest; it was not
scripted or for public consumption. It was just Blue skies, plain and simple, and it read with the
hopefulness their mother had once worn. “Okay,” she replied simply.
She turned the wedding bands over in her fingers; before she turned them over to Adam,
she needed to hold them, to see them. Just for a moment, to understand. She had not seen a band
on her father’s finger in just about a decade, and now a gold one would replace the empty space
where a silver one sat in her memory. The gold was shiny and new, and in her mind, she could
still see the dirty fading of the silver band where it had sat on his finger.
Vanessa made her way from the suite where the bridesmaids were getting ready to the
room where the groomsmen were and knocked gently on the doorframe. “Adam?” she called him
17
over. “I have the rings,” she said. She placed them into his palm. “You’ll take care of them until
they’re needed?”
“Yes, Vanessa,” he answered, sliding them into his jacket pocket. He looked at her
seriously. “You going to hold it together today?”
“What?” she asked.
“This is a wedding. Our Dad’s wedding. Are you going to mess it up with your childish
shit?”
Vanessa stared at her older brother. “No,” she said.
“Don’t say anything. No follow up to that toast of yours last night, no outbursts, no
causing a scene.”
A wedding is a wedding. And it was a beautiful day for a wedding; the air was crisp and
fresh in the best spring way and the venue was flooded with sunlight. Angela had meticulously
planned each detail so that it went smoothly and quickly and beautifully. She moved down the
aisle gracefully, holding her dress tenderly in her hands, her eyes were locked on Richard as he
stood at the end of the aisle.
“Have you both written your own vows?” the officiant asked them.
Yes, they both replied.
“Angela, you start, please.”
Angela smiled, the sheen of tears building in her eyes. “Richard,” she said, taking his
hands. “We are so good together. We have both had our lives and our highs and our lows, but
when we met, things started making sense – more than they ever had before. You have
brightened my days, comforted me in the dark ones, and given me love back into my life. I am so
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grateful to be here with you, and I want to spend the rest of my days by your side. So I take you,
Richard, as my lawfully wedded husband.”
The crowd let out contented sighs. She and Richard looked so happy as they stood there
in front of everyone, staring at each other.
Richard cleared his throat. “Angela – I have been a mess of a man many times in my life,
and I have made mistakes, but nothing in our relationship or our life together has ever been one
of them. You made me want to be better, and I am so grateful for that. I have never been happier
than with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. So I, Richard, take you, Angela, as
my lawfully wedded wife.”
As Adam handed over the rings and Angela slid on Richard’s and Richard slid on
Angela’s, the officiant spoke again, with a smile. “If any of you has any reason why these two
should not be married, speak now, or forever hold your peace.”
Vanessa stood silently.
They looked around at the crowd, smiling widely.
“Then I now pronounce you husband and wife.” They kissed, and the crowd cheered.
*
*
*
The reception was held back at Richard’s and Angela’s immediately after the ceremony.
The decorating team had come and freshened up the place, setting up a new buffet table of hors
d’eouvres and finger food, new flowers, and coordinating with the band.
The siblings were back at the house, watching Richard and Angela take photos in the
back yard. The guests, for the most part, had not yet arrived yet, and Greg, Sharon, and Adam
were chatting with the bartender, the servers, and the valet respectively to help make sure
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everything ran smoothly. Vanessa, Rebecca, and Jen were standing on the porch watching the
photographer and the happy couple.
“This must be difficult,” Jennifer said. “Watching your dad get remarried, and be so
happy with someone else.”
“It is,” Rebecca replied hesitantly. “But… I actually think Mom would have liked
Angela. If they had met on the street, or in some normal way, they could’ve been friends.”
Vanessa nodded, looking again at Rebecca’s arm. “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe.”
Rebecca turned to Vanessa thoughtfully. “Greg is fantastic,” she said. “He’s so funny and
kind and interesting. He seems like a real catch, it’s like he’s one of the family already.”
“Yeah,” Vanessa echoed. She paused, staring out at the lawn where the guests were
streaming in through the side gate, then turned back to her sister. “Where did the tattoo come
from, Becca?”
Rebecca looked taken aback by the question. “It’s from a letter Mom wrote me during my
freshman year of college. I was homesick, and she was trying to reassure me that everything was
going to be okay, that my family would always be here to come home to, and that when we were
apart, we were still both under the same blue skies.”
Vanessa remembered the photo on Richard’s desk. Maybe they were all under the same
blue skies, she thought, but that family didn’t exist anymore. They were frozen in the picture
frame, and in the past. And as she looked out at Greg, climbing the porch stairs up to her, she
realized there they would stay.
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