Chapter 4: What the Guests Felt text
Word moved through a wedding party the way scent moves through a closed room—uneven, incomplete, impossible to stop.
An aunt asked an usher whether the mother of the groom had been taken ill. A bridesmaid adjusted flowers with sudden concentration. Camryn’s parents stood in a tight conference of posture and whispers. The violinist held a note too long and recovered.
Trevor returned alone. Camryn stayed near the chapel doors with her phone, managing a delay she had not scheduled.
“Sit where you were always going to sit,” Trevor said to me. His voice was rough. “Front row. Family. I’m sorry.”
I searched his face for the kind of apology that only relocates the exclusion to a quieter hour. What I found was a man who had read his father’s handwriting and recognized a line he had been about to cross in formalwear.
“I will sit there if I am welcome,” I said. “Not as a favor to a dead man’s letter, and not as a problem being managed. As your mother.”
May you like
He nodded. “You’re welcome. I was wrong.”
Camryn’s soft smile did not return when we passed her. Peace, it seemed, had required a different arrangement than the one she preferred. I did not offer her a lecture. I entered the chapel on my son’s arm as far as the family pew and took the seat that had been mine before it was reassigned for comfort.
