So many things could have happened differently and changed everything for poor battered Rayna and Deacon. And my consequentially poor battered heart.
Nashville TN, September 2012
The label in the back of Rayna's shirt is itchy. It rubs against her neck, determined in its mission to irritate her, and she shifts in her seat, crossing and uncrossing her legs and tugging at it. She tries to concentrate on the man sat across the table, his suit starched to within an inch of its life.
'Your record sales are slipping,' he says, and her smile is clipped.
'So you've been telling me for the past hour, Marshall. I appreciate what you're saying, but I'm not doing it.'
'It will boost your sales, Ms Jaymes. Edgehill merely wants to restore your career - it's in your best interests.'
'No,' she says, not quite able to hide her irritation, 'it's in your best interests.'
Marshall Evans huffs, and his coffee-stale breath reaches Rayna's nose and makes it crinkle involuntarily. She looks over at Deacon, who has been silent for the majority of the meeting, not because he is being unhelpful, but because he thinks Marshall's idea is as ridiculous as she does, and he has no comment to add. Deacon always has been sparing with his words - if he doesn't mean them, he doesn't say them.
'Edgehill's interests are your interests Ms Jaymes.'
It takes considerable effort not to bash her head against the table, and rather more not to bash Marshall's, and she wonders quite seriously which would be the more satisfying option. She feels Deacon squeeze her knee discreetly, and she manages not to test out the theory. His hand inches a little too far up her leg and she gives him a seriously Deacon, now? look; even when he innocently means only to comfort her, he can't help himself. She's no better.
Deacon pulls his hand back, clearing his throat. Rayna twists her body towards him and focuses on Marshall's shiny forehead.
'I am not opening for Juliette Barnes.'
'America loves her, and they love you - they just need a little reminder,' he says. He gestures between Rayna and Deacon. 'And this doesn't hurt. America loves a love story too - we can sell this. It's been a while since you've done any joint interviews - I'm thinking we take it a step further: a TV special to coincide with the tour kicking off, inside the home, kids round the dinner table, you know? A Nick and Jessica kind of thing.'
Deacon is still in his seat when the door slams behind Rayna. The glass shakes precariously for a moment, and he looks across at Marshall, who is blinking rapidly, his stunned expression frozen on his face. Deacon smiles to himself, marvelling not for the first time at the balls Rayna packs into the barely-there underwear she favours. He nods at Marshall and excuses himself from the room, leaving Bucky to awkwardly wrap things up - not that there is anything to wrap up.
Rayna and her angry Louboutins are already halfway down the hall and jabbing impatiently at the elevator call button. Deacon jogs to catch up with her before she disappears through the doors when they ping open, making it just in time.
'That man is an asshole,' she fumes, hands on hips, eyes wild. He refrains from telling her she looks cute when she's pissed, and besides, she has reason to be - waste-of-time suggestions aside, her album sales are of concern, and he won't tease her for her bad mood, however playfully, because he knows that's what's really worrying her.
'Yes he is,' he agrees, studying her for a moment. Her eyes flick up to him, and she calms the smallest fraction, her jaw loosening enough for a sigh to escape.
'Juliette Barnes, Deacon. Juliette fucking Barnes.' She punctuates every syllable, disgust dripping from her tongue, and Deacon moves closer to her.
'Imagine it Ray,' he says, slipping his hands around her waist and feeling her loosen a little more. He knows how this goes - small steps, gently does it. He takes another, backing her towards the mirrored wall. 'The glitter, the pyrotechnics. We could learn all the words to Boys and Buses.'
Rayna scoffs, but the wrath is draining from her and it is without real feeling. She looks at Deacon from beneath her long lashes, eyes as curious, as in love, as the day she first met him. 'He's an asshole,' she repeats, softer this time, and he nods as he lowers his mouth to hers. He kisses her once, nuzzles the tip of her nose.
'Mmhmm,' he murmurs, and kisses her again. This time she forgets entirely what her problem was.
By the time the elevator doors open onto the sunny, blindingly white foyer, Rayna's knees feel like they are made of strawberry jelly and are quivering on a table while a kid's birthday party rages on.
Still. 'Open for Juliette Barnes,' she mutters, and Deacon takes her hand and guides her outside.
#
Nashville TN, September 2012
'Could I have some privacy please?' Rayna asks, her tone polite - as she always is - but very clearly not amused.
The men in their shiny, off-the-rack suits vacate the room. Watty and Bucky stay, but she doesn't respond to their mollifying. Before long they back out too, closing the door to her dressing room behind them.
She stares at her face in the mirror. It started out a great night: Watty was being celebrated, and she can think of no one who deserves the honour more. She'd played to a packed crowd, Deacon at her side, the air around them electric.
How it has all gone so wrong in a matter of minutes is beyond her. She picks up her phone. There is a message on the screen, and for a moment her stomach gives a small flutter. It stops quickly when she reads it - it's Teddy.
Good luck tonight, it reads. It is sweet, thoughtful even. But it is no Baby, hurry home, I want you bad. She shouldn't be surprised; it isn't Teddy who has ever said those things to her. It isn't Teddy who has made her tremble with only words, burn and smoulder with only hands. There isn't a trace of Deacon Claybourne in Teddy Conrad.
She replies, tells him it went well. She says nothing about the mess that has unfolded since her set wrapped, and her text-voice is airy and non-committal.
She puts the phone down on her dressing table and lets her head fall back, hair trailing down her spine while she looks up at the ornate ceiling rose. There are hairline cracks in the plaster that belie how old the building is, its fame and the care afforded it not enough to hide its scars. She knows how it feels. The phone is back in her hand in seconds.
Did you leave? she types. Feel like ice-cream?
He knocks on her door a minute later, opening it before she calls him in. He doesn't need to wait for an invitation, not with her.
'Juliette Barnes, Deacon. Juliette fucking Barnes.'
When Rayna makes it home that night as the clock's hands creep towards 2am, Teddy is sleeping, and she slips in beside him. He is snoring lightly, and she looks at him, at the frown sunken into his face; he must have grown tired of waiting for her. If she's honest with herself - and she isn't - she'd hoped as much. She hopes he will grow tired of waiting for her. She is tired too.
###
Highway 65, March 2014
Luke's hand stays on her knee as they drive. His grip is a little too tight for the casual expression he has adopted since he convinced Rayna it was sensible that he accompany her, and she glances at him sideways, trying to gauge what he's thinking.
'Drivin' pretty fast there,' he says, and Rayna's eyes flick down to the speedometer.
She ignores it. Her foot stays on the pedal, but she flicks her hair over her shoulder and smiles at Luke, a vague attempt to reassure him that she's not as desperate as she feels.
The cabin is an hour and a half's drive out of Nashville. It feels like a year and a half to Rayna. She bites the inside of her cheek, impatience and worry sending tremors through her. A hundred images of what might lay in wait creep maliciously into her mind and she pushes each one away. Please let him be sober, she begs of anyone who will listen, and she repeats it over and over, a mantra; it gives her something to hold onto.
'So you used to live up here,' Luke says, and she nods, giving him no further information. If he wants it he'll ask, and she hopes he doesn't. 'With Deacon,' he continues, and her heart sinks.
'Yeah.'
'For how long?'
'A few years,' she tells him. More like seven, but she doesn't need to go into detail.
Luke turns towards the passenger window, his jaw tight. 'And he kept it after you broke up.'
'It was his, so yeah, he kept it.'
'Deacon bought the place?'
Rayna's hands grip the steering wheel and she tries not to picture them walking into that house for the very first time, how much promise was ahead of them. If she'd known how it would all turn out, would she have stepped over that threshold with him anyway? Would she have run and never looked back?
There is no question. She's been trying not to look back for fifteen years. And still Deacon is all that she sees, behind, ahead, all around her.
'He bought it for me,' she says quietly.
Luke's huff sounds like disbelief, but she doesn't know why he should be surprised; he was around back then, he knew her and Deacon together. She looks at him and feels guilty, though she isn't sure why - it was so long ago. It occurs to her that his disbelief is more current, more about finding himself at her side headed to the aid of the man he has always seen as his competition.
'How do you even know he'll be there?'
'I just know. It's where he goes, when he needs to get away.'
'Right,' Luke says, somewhat dryly, 'and it's where you follow him.'
'I have to,' she replies, trying to control her sudden annoyance. 'I can't let him hide away and drink. For the sake of my daughter, I can't.'
It has always been Rayna who has picked up Deacon's pieces, who has spent sleepless nights full of grief and dealt with the consequences of his addiction, always Rayna who has ignored those who told her he was no good. She prays that Maddie won't have to know how it feels.
'For the sake of Deacon's daughter.'
Rayna knows that whatever Luke may have said about wanting to move forward, he isn't over it. It is an older battle than his pride will allow him to admit; she had Deacon's baby, back when he was a drunk who loved her with all he did and didn't have, back when Luke, she now knows, was in love with her too. He thought he had won, that he had proven himself the man more worthy of her affections. And yet here they are.
They are silent for a while, the hum of the engine and the grit on the road beneath them a constant, something to fill the space between them that is the width of the console and a crater. Luke is a good man, especially towards her. She may not have known quite how much he cared for her back in those days, but she sees him now. It means something to her; he means something to her. So she doesn't like the feeling in her stomach that tells her this will never work, that asks why she is even trying.
She wonders if she will die still wishing for all that she and Deacon could have had. She knows that whatever comes and whatever doesn't, she will die loving him. It is the only thing she has ever been certain of.
'Rayna,' Luke begins. She didn't notice him take his hand from her knee but it is in his lap when she turns to look at him. 'This is where it happened, isn't it?' They are navigating the narrow tree-lined track that leads to the cabin, the smell of lakewater seeping through the open window.
'Where what happened?' she asks, but she already knows his question. This is where Deacon got you pregnant, this is where your life changed.
'Maddie, she was conceived here. I'm right, aren't I?'
Though Luke knows nothing of what happened at that time, of Deacon's proposal and the ring she kept for so long, and though she will tell him nothing of it, she realises that he must have thought in some detail about the timeline of it all. Maybe it's intuition on his part, maybe just a lucky guess, but he knows, and there is no point lying to him.
So she nods, just once, and whispers 'Yes.' And then she is quiet.
/
When she pulls the car up on the grassy verge, Rayna jumps out of the door before the engine cuts out, and Luke jogs around to catch her, but he doesn't take her hand, and he doesn't touch her. He seems to know that she is a lit match, that she could blow up in his hands if he pushes.
When she ascertains that Deacon is in fact not drunk, that the empty bottle on the grass was a red herring, relief near cripples her. She doesn't plan to ask Luke to leave. He isn't happy, and his acquiescence comes reluctantly, she is well aware. She has a fleeting image of him going outside to call Teddy and ask how in the hell he put up with this all those years, but she forgets it all when Deacon speaks.
He didn't drink. She won't have to console their daughter, she won't have to explain things a fourteen year old shouldn't know. He didn't drink, and Rayna knows it's because of Maddie that he won't again.
Every second she stays in the house, she fights the furious urge to hold him close and bury her face in his warm neck.
He stands with her by the door while she bids him goodbye. For a moment she thinks he remembers, that he knows it is right here that he laid her so gently down on the rug that is still under her feet. A flicker of recognition passes over his face, and he opens his mouth to speak, but the words don't come out, and the flicker is gone before she can hold onto it.
#
Highway 65, March 2002
Rayna drives quickly. Her stomach trills with nerves, her fingers absently tapping out the ghost of a tune on the cold steering wheel.
The night is black, and she knows she should slow. Her foot holds firm on the pedal though, and she listens to the sound of the dusty road beneath her.
It is an hour and a half's drive and it feels like the better part of forever.
When she pulls up outside the cabin it is in darkness, and she frowns as she jumps out of her car. His truck is parked up - he is here.
'Deacon?' she calls, hesitating at the open door, but there is no reply. A log fire spits in the corner, the only sign of life. It throws restless orange streaks across the floorboards, its reflection glowing in the windows that front the house; the world outside is engulfed in flames.
'Happy anniversary Ray,' he says, appearing from the bedroom, and she startles.
'Deacon,' she half-scolds, 'what are you doing with all the lights out?'
He grins and shrugs his shoulders, advancing towards her. 'It's more romantic like this.' He pulls her close and kisses her, and she leans into him, breathing him in.
'Happy anniversary,' she whispers.
'I got you a present,' he tells her, and she cocks her head at him.
'I thought my present was you getting Tandy to watch Maddie for the night so I could ravish you?'
'Ravish me, Ray?' he teases. His eyes twinkle in the firelight and Rayna is gripped by a wave of fondness. She lifts her hands to his face and strokes his jaw, and he looks at her for a moment, just looks, his eyes soft and serious.
He turns her around and loops his arms around her waist, the palms of his hands coming to rest on her stomach, his chin on her shoulder. 'Up there,' he says into her ear. 'There's your present.'
She looks at the sign he has fixed above the door, the simple piece of wood she knows instantly that he made himself when he was chopping kindling last weekend. It is painted with black lettering, spelling out just one word, and really, there are no others they will ever need.
Eternity
She waits about three seconds before she ravishes him.
###
Vanderbilt Medical Centre, Nashville TN, July 2004
Daphne is born on a Saturday.
Of course she is; she is a good-time girl, a whirlwind of blonde, of loud cries and insistent kicks.
Teddy stands by Rayna's side, beaming with pride. She is his second daughter, the first that shares his blood.
Maddie hovers by the door, her escape route close by if she needs it. She clings to the doorframe, her small fingers white.
'Baby,' Rayna says softly, beckoning her closer. She hesitates, glancing out into the corridor, but follows her mother's voice, her eyes fixed on Rayna's exhausted, smiling face.
When she sees her little sister properly for the first time, she smiles too.
Teddy lifts her up onto the bed, and Rayna holds out an arm, pulling her close when she scoots up to her.
'Do you think we'll be friends?' Maddie asks in an almost inaudible voice, peering at the squirming baby in her pink blankets.
Rayna kisses her forehead and nods, looking into the eyes that her daughter shares with Deacon and feeling the ache in her chest that has become as familiar as breathing.
'Yeah,' she whispers, 'I think y'all are gonna be the best of friends.'
'You sure are Maddie,' Teddy adds, sitting down carefully on the edge of the bed. 'Our family is complete now.'
Later, when Teddy has taken a sleepy Maddie home and Tandy has been by to gush over Daphne and decorate the room with extravagant bouquets of flowers, Rayna lays in her bed, gazing down at her perfect baby in her basinet. She is unable to close her eyes for fear of missing a single scrunch of Daphne's nose, a flex of her tiny hands.
And there, in the midst of Rayna's joy, it lingers, just as ever.
There is always someone missing.
#
Vanderbilt Medical Centre, Nashville TN, July 2004
Daphne is born on a Saturday.
She has a perfectly pouty bottom lip that quivers in confusion at her new surroundings, swaddled and cradled to her mother's chest though she may be. Where Maddie was curious in those hushed moments after she was born, Daphne is defiant. I want back in, her cries say, and Rayna rocks her and murmurs comfort.
Maddie is equal parts fascinated by and terrified of her sister. She cowers behind her daddy, holding on tightly to his leg, her small face peeping out as she looks upon the bed where her mother lays. Her eyes are wide with wonder, and she chews her lip, the way Deacon does when he is unsure, when his mind is weighing up the options.
'C'mere baby,' Rayna motions, and Maddie's eyes turn positively to saucers. She looks up at Deacon when he twists to face her, and he crouches down to her level, putting a reassuring arm around her.
'Daddy, I don't know,' she says uncertainly, as though it is the biggest decision in her universe whether to accept this very small stranger, or whether to ask the midwife if she could possibly re-allocate her a sister who doesn't have quite such big lungs.
'It's okay Maddie,' he says gently, 'I'm scared too.'
'Why are you scared?' she whispers back, cupping his ear with her hand.
'She's so little,' Deacon says, and he isn't simply placating his daughter; Rayna recognises the look in his eyes. He is worried; worried that he will not be good enough, that he will fail them. He never has.
Maddie is Deacon's sidekick, the tiny Robin to his Batman. They are alike in almost every way: their love of guitars, their shyness, their need for solitude. And sometimes, Rayna has noted with some alarm, their darkness. Maddie is serious, solemn, a playful little girl but one with a soul far beyond her handful of years, and her shoulders sometimes share the weight that pulls her father's down, though she couldn't know; her own childhood is happy, healthy. Rayna sometimes thinks Deacon is reliving his own young years through her, setting right the wrongs done to him by making her the happiest kid there could be.
She was a beautiful shock, Maddie. Daphne was a little less impromptu, though not exactly planned. They don't plan much, these days. Life will take them where it may regardless.
Daphne's cries calm when her big sister delicately pats her shoulder, and she grasps Maddie's finger with her fist. Maddie is amazed, her eyes learning every unfamiliar feature: the soft hair that is dark like hers, the nose that looks remarkably like a stuffed piglet her aunt Tandy gave her on her second birthday.
'Daddy,' she says, in a voice that is suddenly certain, 'I don't think we need to be scared. Well…' she amends, a frown on her face, 'not until she poops her pants.'
###
The cabin, August 1999
He tips the bottle upside down, the honey-coloured liquid glugging as it empties into the sink. The smell is pungent, and for the first time it repels Deacon.
He proposed to her, and he doesn't remember. He doesn't remember. The only girl he's ever loved, the only person in the whole world who truly has ever loved him too, and the only one he wants to spend every day of his life with. He knew it before he even knew her name, that from that moment on he wouldn't be able to breathe without her, and yet she said yes to being his wife and he can't remember.
She left the next morning, after she hurled the modest ring at his feet and told him through racking sobs that she couldn't do it anymore, that he had finally pushed her as far as she could bear, it hurt too damn much.
He turns on the tap and watches the water dilute the whiskey, cleanse it away. It cleanses him too.
He hates the drink.
It robbed him of a family, of happy memories of a childhood filled with imagination and laughter. More cruelly still, Deacon Claybourne has known love, real, boundless love, and he wishes with all his might that he didn't know the despair of having it ripped from his grasp.
But he does have a family. She is a feisty redhead with a twinkle in her eye and a smile that he feels down to his toes, and in her still-flat stomach grows his second chance. All the years of struggling, the battles he's fought, and all it took was one fateful night for everything to change. Within Rayna lies the promise of everything he thought he would never be lucky enough to have, everything he believed he never deserved.
He smacks the bottom of the bottle to get the dregs out and watches them fall into the sink. Each drop is a tear he has cried for all he has lost, all the pain he has felt.
The drops pool and disappear down the drain.
Enough.
###
Nashville TN, April 2014
They're on a talk show. A fucking talk show. Teddy is on one side of her, Deacon on the other. There is no way in hell Rayna would have ever seen herself agreeing to this, but for the sake of her child she sits pretty and answers the questions with grace.
Later she will cringe, will rue stringing her dirty laundry up for everyone to crane their necks at, but for now she tries not to look at Deacon the way she wants to when his eyes light up as he talks about Maddie. She is aware of cameras rolling and Luke's watchful stare, of Tandy shooting her warning looks and Teddy gritting his teeth in the other chair.
Teddy's fist clenches on the armrest and she sends up a silent prayer that they can get through the next few minutes without anyone launching punches.
She's the single best part of my life.
Rayna hears it over and over.
She remembers the day she found out she was pregnant. She'd been throwing up violently - all day, every day. It had been easy to put it down to stress - there was a hell of a lot of it flying around, and for the first week she truly believed Deacon's forgotten proposal and everything that had happened had made her physically ill.
It was halfway through the second week that Tandy brought up the P word, and Rayna shot it down, refusing to talk about it any further. But she knew, and no amount of denial could help her.
She watches Deacon walk away, and it takes everything she has not to run after him. She doesn't see Luke watching her eyes as they follow him.
Denial can't help her now either.
#
Nashville TN, April 2014
The TV is on in the kitchen, tuned to GMA, and Rayna butters toast while she vaguely watches Robin Roberts interview some actor she doesn't recognise. She is thinking about last night, about Deacon hovering over her, how much time he'd taken with her. It isn't anything new, but even more than usual she burns for him; she cannot get enough.
'You're watchin' a talkshow?' Deacon asks, coming up behind her and kissing her neck. She giggles at the feel of his stubble, and he nuzzles her playfully and dips his fingers into her shorts.
'Deacon,' she admonishes half-heartedly, 'I'm makin' breakfast.'
'Mmm,' he says, 'good, cos I'm hungry as hell.' He reaches lower, and she drops the butter knife with a clatter.
Deacon is permanently horny around her. Some things never change.
'Your children are asleep upstairs,' she tells him, but it's no protest.
'Then you better hurry up and c'mere.'
She turns towards him and takes in his messy morning hair, his five o'clock shadow. His eyes are sleepy and satisfied, a look he wears often these days; he is satisfied, ridiculously so, with his lot - he doesn't take a single second for granted.
'You are the best part of my life,' he murmurs, his breath making Rayna's skin prickle. She rifles a hand through his hair and kisses him, the sound of the TV fading into nothing.
He's unhooking her bra when she feels the nausea. He's startled at first when she pushes him away, but it turns to concern as she hurtles past him and makes for the downstairs bathroom.
'Rayna?' he calls, following her quickly, but she shakes her head with her hand over her mouth and throws the door closed before he can walk in after her. Nothing kills a mood quite like seeing your wife with her head down the toilet.
It's the fourth day in a row this has happened. As she sits on the floor after she's cleaned herself up, the cool tiles soothing her heated skin, Deacon gingerly eases around the door, knowing the coast is clear when she doesn't shoo him away. He sits down beside her and strokes her hair, biting his lip.
'Baby,' he says, ever so carefully, 'I think we need to get one of those tests.'
'Tests, Deacon?'
'Yeah, you know - tests.'
He can't say it, and he raises his eyebrows, as though that will do for an explanation. Rayna almost laughs, but if she does she will throw up again and it will have nothing to do with the seasick feeling that has taken up residence in her stomach.
They boxed Daphne's baby things up and stored them in the attic a long time ago; by now they will smell musty, just as they should when their youngest child is old enough to be learning maths equations beyond either of their comprehension.
Rayna doesn't need to say it. The lines on their faces tell their stories of sleepless nights and dirty diapers, of number one records and school talent show recitals, and she puts a hand on Deacon's knee, trying to work out how to tell him there is no fucking way.
But somewhere in his eyes there is a hopefulness that she cannot look away from, and by the time she lets him help her up from the floor, she has agreed to let him go to the drugstore anyway, as long as he brings her back a tub of ice-cream and a trashy magazine alongside one of those, you know, tests.
While he is gone she sits on the couch and looks through a ragged album Maddie and Daphne made them for Christmas a few years ago. It is photograph after photograph of the four of them: at the carnival, sticky cotton candy smeared into Deacon's shirt, Daphne guiltily holding an empty stick; the girls with Tandy at a one-off show Rayna and Deacon did at The Bluebird; Maddie's first guitar lesson with her father when she was so little her feet poked over the edge of the couch.
When Deacon returns, Rayna leads him upstairs to their bedroom without a word, the ice-cream forgotten and doomed to melt.
'Just for good measure,' she tells him, as his look of surprise subsides to a grin.
###
Memphis, May 2014
She calls his name in the rain; there is no answer. She can hear only the sound of the drops on the ground, and they deafen her. She wants to cover her ears but she will not hear him if she does.
So she runs. She will keep going until she finds him.
Maybe she will run forever.
The water splashes her bare ankles, dirty and cold, and she has no shoes on, but she doesn't care. She keeps running. It is quiet, the streets deserted of people.
Sometimes even the ghosts hide.
He is here somewhere. He must be. He is never more than a breath away from her.
The rain blinds her and she is gripped with fear; she cannot see him. What if he is not here?
And yet he is everywhere. He is on her skin, his hands are in her hair, his blood pulses through her veins with her own.
They are always kept apart, hidden from each other, always to suffer.
Always to run.
/
When Rayna wakes she is panting, her chest aflame. The desperation does not fade when she sits up and digs her fingers into the mattress, the dark hotel room swimming unsteadily into view.
Luke is asleep next to her, oblivious. She wishes she could be. She wishes she could sleep one night without seeing him, without pining painfully for him. She slips out of bed carefully, not wanting to wake Luke, not wanting to answer his questions.
In the bathroom she leaves the light off. She drinks water straight from the tap, gulps it down as thought it will quench her longing, splashes it on her face as though it will wash away her secret. When she looks in the mirror she is deathly pale, her skin clammy to the touch.
He is somewhere out there and she does not know where. Perhaps in his own bed, perhaps in some other woman's. Perhaps in a bar, face down with chipped Formica tattoos on his face. They search blindly, both trying to feel their way back to each other; it has been that way for so long. That he is not here beside her is wrong. That he is an inch away from her for a moment of their whole lives is wrong.
It is all wrong.
'Rayna? Come back to bed,' Luke calls, and she looks again at her face in the silver of the moon that illuminates the mirror. The diamond on her finger flashes at her as she wipes a tear from her cheek, as though it wishes to scold the disobedience of her heart. It is ostentatious, expensive, there to tell everyone that she is his, now, that she will marry him in three days at a ceremony bigger than she would ever want.
It is everything she and Deacon are not.
It is all wrong.