Two days later, I woke up in a strange bed with strange light shining through a different window. I put on my slippers (familiar), and tiptoed down the stairs of the rental house toward the kitchen. Only a couple of steps creaked, but, early as it was, I still half expected doors to fling open and bleary-eyed groomsmen to leak into the hallway, complaining and castigating. I made it down to the kitchen without disturbing anyone, only to see that Ned was already awake, drinking coffee at the counter and reading over his notes.

I stopped short before he saw me and watched him for a moment. He seemed relaxed now, far more so than he had been the night before. I had arrived after everyone else, driving up after my work day ended, to find the house in revelry and Ned quiet, contemplative, and uncomfortable. Dr Bertram's admonishments not to worry were, of course, utterly useless.

Ned took a moment to add something to his writing, and when he was done, I knocked on the door frame. "Mind if I join you?"

He turned to me and gave me a smile that half met his eyes, "Good morning." I watched as tension slunk back into his shoulders. "Of course–there's plenty of coffee." And then there was nothing for it but to come into the kitchen and grab a mug, anxiety singing inside me.

How do you put that feeling into words? I've thought about this moment in particular several times over the years since, and I've never been able to truly give a name to this moment–-knowing he didn't want me there, knowing I had no idea why, knowing that, after asking to join him and being invited to do so, the polite, normal thing would be to sit down across from him and try to be comfortable, knowing that the only escape was a hasty excuse, knowing that I had done nothing, in my recollection, that he would be angry about. There may be a word for that, but it is not in English, and even if it were, it wouldn't explain the sensation of the sixty or so seconds that seemed to stretch into years.

Coffee in hand, cream in the mug, fear a living thing in my chest, I turned back to Ned, "I don't want to disturb you, so if you need time alone, I can just go somewhere else."

His eyes swung to mine, and for a moment he looked horrified, then sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. "No, I'm so sorry, my mind is just somewhere else. Please, I'm sorry, I want you to join me." He gestured to the stool across the counter from where he sat, and I perched, ready to run.

When had it started, this thing between us? It hadn't been there when I left Mansfield the last time, or when Ned had given me the notebooks. It hadn't been there over the two years after that, where we had been close, texting and calling each other, visiting each other. It hadn't been there over Christmas, even, where he had come to Uncle Liam's house instead of to his own parents', and we had made mulled cider and watched Muppet Christmas Carol and he had fallen asleep on my shoulder. The next day, he and Susie had gone sledding on Robin's Hill in Arlington, and had come back red faced and triumphant.

It must have been after that, slowly. March? April? After I started working at the new firm, or when he became the assistant minister for his new congregation? Susie and Billy started hearing more from him than I did. When had that started? Was it before or after Gabe asked me to move in with him? And why, why, had I waited for it to change? Why had I let months go by without asking him what was wrong? Why was I sitting, with a cup of coffee I didn't even need, miserable but afraid to ask? I had grown up knowing instinctively who wanted me around and who didn't–that's a skill you never lose, apparently. I couldn't ask. The words stuck in my throat.

For something to do, I took a sip of coffee. My mug was a tourist souvenir with the words Merry ChristMoose on it in big, red bubble letters and snowflakes that were half rubbed off by too many times in the dishwasher. The countertop, a cranberry-red tile, had been poorly mortared on my side, and there were gaps between the tile and the wooden border. I traced them with my eyes.

"I'm not sure why, but I'm more nervous for this wedding than any other I've officiated." Ned's voice was quiet, and, when I looked over at him, his eyes were kind.

"It's probably normal. Your brother isn't just some normal parishioner."

He smiled ruefully, nodding and looking down at his notes. "I feel like every time I think I have it figured out, I reread it and there's something I can add, or change, or switch around to make it better. I haven't really figured it out yet, and it's only today." He shook his head, took a sip.

"Have you been up long?"

He watched me a moment, smiling slightly. "About an hour."

"That's early."

"You're not wrong."

There was a moment when we paused and looked at each other. Then I went back to the mug, where my thumb was tracing a rough edge of badly-done lettering. "I don't know if this helps at all, but my guess is that if Tom and Simon are happy, and nothing, like, catches on fire, no one will remember the details of exactly what you said or exactly how you said it. They'll just remember that they're here to celebrate two people in love." Ned nodded, watching his fingers turn his pencil, over then under. Upstairs, I could hear people moving around, the day really starting.

"You're probably right. I'm probably overthinking it." He scrunched up his face at me, smiling again, too kindly, too warmly.

Alarm shot through me, and I opened my mouth to ask him, finally, what was wrong, but he looked back at his notes, saying, "So no Gabe, huh?"

Completely blindsided, I blinked at him. "We broke up. Didn't I tell you that? I thought I'd told you."

"You told me," he said, glancing at me under his eyelashes, "but he seemed so serious about you. I didn't know if it was for sure."

I huffed through my nose. "It's for sure."

Ned raised his head to get a better look at me, his eyebrows creasing. "Did he hurt you?"

Again, I blinked at him. Didn't he know–but then, had I told him everything? Or had I assumed that Tom or Susie would? "No, he didn't hurt me. Actually, I broke up with him."

"Oh."

I nodded, looking down at my mug again. "I hurt him, as it turns out. Which was awful, to put it mildly. But it was the right thing to do, so…Tom didn't tell you?"

A muscle twitched in Ned's jaw, "He didn't. Must have assumed I already knew." We fell silent then–of course Tom would have assumed Ned knew. He would have assumed Ned and I were still close, that we still talked regularly. A tight band of misery settled over my chest. Was it better to know what was wrong, to hear Ned say he didn't want to be my friend anymore? Or was it better to just let him go without telling me? Because whatever he had to say would break me, and he clearly wanted me far, far away from him at that moment. Nothing had ever been clearer to me before.

Tom and Simon descending on the kitchen saved me from having to figure out what to do next. Tom blazed in, in his usual way, throwing his arm around my shoulders and pressing a large, smacking kiss on my temple.

"Good morning, my darling! How's my best Best Man?" He took one look at my face, then flicked his eyes to Ned. "Neddy-Ned, good morning to you, too." The flash of annoyance was as clear as it was puzzling, but Ned seemed to have gotten whatever message Tom was sending.

"That's Reverend Doctor Neddy-Ned to you, and don't you forget it," Ned said, and Tom bowed ostentatiously before strolling to the pantry, socking Ned in the shoulder on his way past. Short, stocky, handsome Simon hugged both of us in turn as if we were just seeing each other for the first time in years, which was Simon all over.

"Good morning, beautiful," Simon peered at my face as Tom rustled around in the cabinets. "Was it a late night or an early morning?"

"Babe, it was clearly both. We know how to throw a good party," Tom's voice echoed oddly from the pantry. "Where the fuck is the oatmeal?"

"Watch your damn language on your wedding day," Simon shot back, before muttering out the side of his mouth "this fucking guy, I tell ya."

I couldn't help it–I laughed, and though the bubble of panic wasn't gone, at least I wasn't choking on it any more.

"I need to keep at least one of my vices, Jesus Christ. If I can't drink and I can't smoke and I can't drive my car too fast and I can't swear like a sailor, there's no point in living, is there?"

Simon made a gesture that very much communicated What about me? to which Tom rolled his eyes and said "Present company excluded, of course," before blowing Simon a kiss.

I had never been around a loving couple on their wedding day. I could see why people said they should be kept apart.

The duties of a best man, apparently, are to give a speech and to keep the groom out of trouble. Tom had assured me, repeatedly, that I would never have to make a speech, that, in no way, ever, would he make me stand up in front of people and say things. So that task, appropriately enough, fell to Susie, who was practically glowing from all the praise people had given her after she and Ben, Simon's brother, had given their speeches. Billy, Ben's coworker and the one who had introduced Tom to Simon in the first place, was the other groomsman on Simon's side, and seemed just as comfortable staying silent as I was. Ned, seated between Tom and Susie, had exchanged a smile with me during the speeches, but had stayed quiet otherwise, only leaning to listen to Susie when she talked his ear off, and not saying much in return. Tom had occasionally sent him exasperated glances, but seemed too set on enjoying himself as much as possible to worry about it during dinner and the first dances.

I learned on that night what is, perhaps, obvious to everyone but me: that when family units aren't intact, weddings are uncomfortable, especially during the traditional wedding that Tom and Simon wanted. Simon's family was all present and accounted for, but the Betram family was not. The reception had been too much for Mrs Bertram, who was in the hotel room now. Mireille, who had never checked in with Tom, not once, during his recovery, hadn't been invited. Julia had eloped the week before and written a breezy "Sorry to miss your wedding!" card. It was just the Bertram men, now, a loving and uneasy triptych. No one commented on it, but before Susie and I pulled Tom out to the dance floor during Simon's mother/son dance, anyone who knew Tom could see it. I tried and failed to hold back my anger at Mrs Bertram. She had promised, and you don't make promises you can't keep.

I've never been much of a dancer, so I joined in the crowds playing Twister and jumbo Jenga and bocce in the little courtyard the mansion event space had to offer. Dr Bertram came around to kiss me on the cheek and clink glasses with Susie–he was drinking an old fashioned, she was drinking lemonade with a custom-made crazy straw–then trounce us in bocce three separate times. Simon and Ben came by to pull us out onto the dance floor, which Susie loved and I resisted. And, a little before midnight, Billy sauntered up to me, holding out a glass bottle of Coke.

"This is where you've been hiding."

"Not well, if you found me."

He clinked his bottle with mine, then took a swig. "You having fun?"

"It's way better than the last wedding I went to. Mireille and Rush.""

"Yikes. Doomed from the start." He paused, looking up at the little sky the courtyard revealed. "Didn't actually answer my question, though. Are you having fun?"

I sighed, just looking at him. He grimaced, shaking his head. "Can I do anything?"

"Part of it just comes with the territory, I guess. Dressing up? Being in front of people? Having them look at me? Thank God I didn't have to give a speech, too."

"I think Tom would appreciate knowing you address him as the Almighty." Billy took a long look at me. "That the only reason you're not having fun?"

I scuffed my shoe on the ground, the bag that I had been wearing since dancing began bouncing off my hip. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay. Not if you don't want to."

Susie stumbled back to us, sweating and smiling. Her shoes were obviously bruising the balls of her feet–she walked like she was stepping on bubbles. "You were right, Flan, probably should have worn smaller heels. Where's my Coke?" she demanded from Billy, who drank long and deep from his own bottle, maintaining uncomfortable eye contact the whole time. "Brutal. This is why fratricide was so popular in Roman times, you know."

"I think that was about who got to inherit land."

"Well, I'm just saying it could make a comeback, that's all." Susie tilted her head back to the sky, breathing in. The door to the reception hall closed, and we were momentarily closed in a pocket of silence. "Hey, you think you guys will ever get married?"

"What, like, to each other? That's not Roman, that's Egyptian."

"That's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard. No, not to each other, you unforgivable ignoramus. Like, in general."

Billy and I glanced at each other. "I don't know, maybe? Kind of hard to call it from here." There it was again, that prickling sensation, that bubble of fear. "I don't want to call it either way, really."

"Smart. Que sera sera, all that."

Billy was staring at her hard. "Why?"

Susie huffed out a breath. "You know, Mom and Dad. Uncle Liam. Dr Bertram and his wife, that girl Mireille and whatever I mean, maybe it's better not to get married? Look at how miserable Tom was tonight before we danced with him. His parents did that to him. Why do that to someone else if you don't have to?"

I had no idea what to say, but Billy slung his arm around Susie's shoulders and held her tight against him. "No one has to do anything. They choose to do things, which means we choose to be happy. As happy as we can be, I mean," he shrugged, shaking Susie a little bit. "Chin up, kid. Life's hard but it's not that bad."

"Besides, Tom would be so disappointed if his wedding was what made you doubt the sanctity of marriage."

"By the way," Billy said, turning to me, "Tom was looking for you." There was something in his voice, something that felt serious. Susie looked at him sharply, but Billy kept his eyes on me.

"Was he? When?"

"A few minutes ago. I told him I'd find you, then came out here. I think he went to the veranda out back," he nodded through the reception hall to the veranda beyond.

"Is he okay?"

Billy shrugged, seemingly uncaring. "Pretty sure. Think he just wanted to be outside for a minute, and I guess he needed his best man. Said you left your phone in your room." Susie was staring at her too-tall shoes, biting her lip, but from my vantage point, I couldn't tell if she was smiling or crying.

"You two'll be okay?"

"Flan, we're fine. I get this idiot to take her shoes off, we'll be even better." Susie elbowed him and straightened up, clearly not crying. I adjusted my bag and walked off, through the crowd, around the dance floor, and opened one of the smaller side doors onto the veranda.

The gardens had been built in an approximation of a French style, with several small sets of steps leading to a gravel walkway and off to different paths, but the veranda itself was almost entirely New England, except for its width. Unevenly-sized wooden floorboards, an overhanging roof, and dark wood made its origins unmistakable. In the middle of the veranda, thirty feet away, Tom and Ned were in the middle of a heated discussion.

"...but if I have to watch you sit around and be fucking miserable for one more day, I swear to God, Ned, I'm going to fucking lose it."

"I'm sorry, I really am, I just…" Ned ran a hand through his hair distractedly. "I'm not good at lying, I don't want to lie, and I didn't want to risk ruining tonight for you. What if she didn't want to be here? What if all three of them stayed away? That really would have ruined it, and you know it would have."

"Yeah, yeah, not a lot of good options from your point of view, I know, I know. Except you know what I think."

"You're just being optimistic because you're happy. Be reasonable. Actually think about it logically."

"Okay, let's talk logic for a moment. Let's do that. Logically, you can't possibly already know the outcome of a scenario you've never lived, so logically, you don't know how this is going to end, so logically, you walking around like you're headed to your own fucking execution is just putting yourself through useless misery. Just say something to her. She knows something's up, you know she does."

Ned sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I know."

"So just tell her. No more secrets, Ned. I'm fucking done with secrets. It's exhausting, and I'm not even the one who has them anymore."

I took one step, two, then two more toward them. I shouldn't have been listening in the first place, but now that I had, I couldn't keep eavesdropping. My stomach had plunged to my ankles, and I felt a yawning sense of vertigo. How high off the ground was I? And where was the ground in the first place?

Ned saw me first. His face, already a shade paler than normal, drained of all color. "Flannery."

Tom turned, then walked over to me, pulling me into a hug. "Sorry, honey, we're just talking about Ned being a fucking idiot."

Ned huffed from behind Tom, but didn't say anything.

"Billy said you were looking for me." I fought to hide my trembling by clenching my fists, but my knees gave me away.

"Did he? He must have been mistaken. It was Ned, not me."

"Tom–"

"Happens all the time," Tom ignored Ned, smiling down at me. "Even to friends of the family." He leaned in to kiss the center of my forehead, then whispered, "Steady, now" into my ear. Then Tom disappeared, enveloped by the lights and noise from the party inside, and we were alone.

I watched Ned as he turned to look out over the dark garden, his face in profile. Had he been looking at me, I knew I would have seen that familiar crinkle in the middle of his brow, the one that said that he was thinking, and that he was troubled by his thoughts. I watched him and I waited in silence.

"There's something I need to tell you." His voice was quiet against the velvet blue of the evening as he turned slightly toward me.

"It sounds serious."

His mouth flattened in the approximation of a smile. "It is."

Here it was. I tried to breathe around the beating of my heart, tried to soothe the panic that had lived in me for days, the panic that was rising in the base of my throat. I had learned to watch and wait from a young age, and so that's what I did. When Ned sat down on the top step and patted the space next to him, I could have wept with a relief I didn't understand.

We sat like that for a moment, close but not too close, looking up at the few stars we could see. My hands were trembling; I clasped them together.

"You–" he cleared his throat, "I've been avoiding you. You know that."

"Yes."

"I…I'm sorry. That wasn't fair to you. It's–" Ned paused and pulled slightly at his sleeve, trapped inside his suit jacket, "It's not you. You didn't do anything."

I watched his sleeve, the white corner blinking out from the bottom of his jacket. In my mind's eye, I could see it twisting and bunching inside his coat, wrapping around his arm like an angry octopus. It must have been bothering him all day. It must have been bothering him all day, and he hadn't fixed it.

"I was worried you didn't want to be my friend anymore." We were close enough for him to hear me whisper.

His head sagged, his eyes fixed on the ground between his feet. "I love being your friend."

Now, I looked at him, at his face. His hair, freshly cut for the wedding, still flopped ever so slightly on his forehead. It looked black in the moonlight, washed of all its red tones. His face, too, seemed pale, almost ghostlike.

I watched his Adam's Apple bob as he swallowed, then cleared his throat again. "I love being your friend, but I…" He said it to the top step, his shoulders hunched. "I don't just want to be your friend."

There was a moment, and I don't know how long it really lasted, where I sat staring at him. He still wouldn't look at me, and so I watched the corners of his eye, the shape of his ear, the slight stubble of his chin, as I waited and waited for his words to make sense.

"What?"

Ned closed his eyes then, and breathed out, then breathed in again before turning back to me ever so slightly. "I'm sorry. I know it's not fair. But Tom was right, it's not fair for me to not tell you, either. You should know." He started to pick at his thumbnail.

This time, when silence threatened to stretch out between us, he rushed to fill it. "I'm not asking anything from you, and I'm not here to pressure you, so—if you don't want to see me anymore, I understand. I never want you to feel uncomfortable or awkward, and it's my problem, not yours. If I can kick it, I will, and we might be able to just be friends again, but I don't know, so–"

"What are you talking about?"

He juddered to a stop, and finally, finally, looked at me, his eyes sweeping over my face, over my hair, to my hands clasped tightly around my knees. Something must have calmed him, because he looked me in the eyes again, his chest rising and falling a few times as he breathed. "What I'm trying to tell you, very badly, is that I love you. I'm in love with you. That's what I needed to say."

Now I looked away from him, across the garden and up to the moon, the beating of my heart so loud it drowned out all the sounds of the party inside. A salty breeze picked up, brushing the hairs on my arm, sweeping up the nape of my neck. The night was heavy; there would be dew tomorrow.

His voice was quieter now. I didn't need to look at him to know his face would be wretched. "I'm sorry. I know. I tried to be reasonable, but I couldn't change it." I watched the leaves of the fragrant lilac shrubs that ran along the walkway, watched them shudder under the weight of some nocturnal creature.

I tried to speak but my throat was closed. I stopped, breathed, then: "Tell me how you knew."

"What?"

"How did you know?"

"I–well, it's…I mean, I guess it's a long story." Ned's hand went to his sleeve again, pulling, twisting, fiddling.

"How did you know?"

"Well…when you left, I–not that I loved you like that when you left. It was way after. But when you left, I…I don't know how to put it except that I felt…"

"Felt what?"

"Blank? You were gone and I was blank." He must have seen the trouble on my face, the frown starting to darken the space between my eyebrows, because he went on, "But it wasn't… it wasn't like I feel now, not really. It was just that I finally understood at least a part of what you were to me, that you were gone."

"That was seven years ago."

"Turns out, I'm remarkably slow."

"Ned."

He sighed then, quick and sharp, frustration painting the lines of his hands as he twisted his watch to the right position. "I can't tell you how I fell in love with you, I just can tell you that I felt it when I saw you crying at the tree, do you remember? That last time at Mansfield? And I thought I could just fit it in with the rest of my feelings for you, that I could get over it. At first it just seemed like it was a new way I felt love for you. I've loved you all my life, you know, just not like that. It wouldn't be the first time I'd felt love for you in a new way. But it's not going away, Flannery, and I don't think it's fair to expect it to go away," his voice dropped in pitch, and his eyes, wide in fear, came back to meet mine. "I've been avoiding you because I've been realizing that if we keep on the way we've been going, it's not going to be possible for me to get over you, and then I'll try to keep you to myself, and it's not right. I was too jealous of Gabe, and it was obvious to everyone but me that it was becoming a problem. So Tom made me face it, and I had to accept that telling you was better, even if it means that I lose you as a friend. I really love being your friend," his voice broke, and he turned away again as his lip trembled.

"Tom knows."

The laugh that escaped Ned wasn't quite a laugh. "He knows."

And your father, I almost said, but didn't. And Billy, too, probably, and Susie, and Simon, and Liam, and–

"Tom told me, when he was still in hospital, that Mary tried to get you to choose between her and me," Ned grimaced, rubbing one eyebrow with his fingers in an echo of a gesture Dr Bertram had made just days ago. "He didn't tell me what you said. I mean, she broke up with you, but that's all I know."

"Um, yes, she did."

"What did you say to that?"

The breath Ned released was exhausted, but he straightened his shoulders and said, "She said that I needed to drop you if I wanted to be with her, and I told her—I told her that there was nothing in the world that was worth losing you over. Then I told her that she could keep the ring if she wanted to, which she did, and then she left. And that was it."

That did it, I'm afraid. I had been fighting tears for the whole conversation, but now they tracked down my face, hot and painful, spilling over to land in fat, plaintive drops where my dress covered my knees.

Ned watched me cry in alarm, but didn't reach out to me. He nodded, looking down at his knees.

"Like I said, I'll leave you alone. I won't–"

I made a frustrated sound somewhere between a growl and a gurgle. "Leave me alone?"

"Don't you want me to?"

"Why would I?"

"Be–because. You're not in love with me." I turned then, and met his eyes, and watched his face change. "Are you?"

And the air took on a different color, and, suddenly, somehow, I was even more afraid than I had been before. I wiped away the tears on my face, praying that my mascara was waterproof, that I wouldn't, on top of everything, look like I was melting.

"I broke up with Gabe, I told you."

"Yes," Ned's voice was quiet, careful.

"I told you that I was the one who hurt him. Because it turned out that he cared about me more than I cared about him, and that wasn't fair."

From the corner of my eye, I saw Ned flex his hand, then clench it, then flex it again. "Yeah."

"I can't tell you if it happened before or after you stopped reaching out to me so much, but I realized that…that you were the person I wanted to share things with. How my day went, what I felt. I wanted to talk to you in the morning and at night, and if it was you I wanted to speak to, only you, then it wasn't fair to Gabe. I didn't tell him that, though, and he didn't understand, but I think telling him would have hurt him more, so I just…I understand what Mary meant, is what I guess I'm trying to say, but I think she was wrong on a few things. There's nothing wrong about having someone else be your best friend. But I didn't want anyone else, and I think that's what it was."

A breath, then another. Then, "Flannery?"

I didn't look at him. I turned away to open my bag and take out the three thin, black notebooks I had hidden inside. I turned back to show Ned, and, not daring to meet his eyes, handed them to him.

"You did read them."

"Some. Not all. There's a lot of writing there, you know. Not all of it makes sense. But I had a lot of time on my hands, and…" I shrugged.

"Which ones are these?"

"They're from when Tom was in the hospital, and right before. I dug them out originally because I thought they might help me write the Best Man's speech, but thankfully I didn't have to do that."

"Ah."

"When did you start writing them as letters to me?"

Ned had flipped open one of them, and was paging through his careful, handwritten notes. "I don't really remember, honestly. It was after you left Mansfield for sure, but I don't know when after. By this point," he held up the notebook, "it had been at least a year, I think. It comforted me, to be able to talk to you in some way."

We sat in silence for a moment, watching the pages flip past little note after little note. Sometimes, he'd drawn pictures or maps, too, his handwriting as dear to me as his face was. Then his hands stilled.

"Flannery? What does this mean?"

I cleared my throat, breathed, cleared it again. "It means I'm in love with you. And while I was in love with you when I was eighteen, I haven't been in love with you since I was eighteen. Just to clarify that."

Ned sobered, eyes shining at me. He reached out his hand to me, but I held mine up to stop him. "But do you mean it? Really? I don't want to go through all of this and have you take it back. I can survive a lot, Ned," and my lip quivered, and my voice broke, and tears spilled down my face again, no matter how hard I tried to hold them back, "I can survive a lot, but I can't survive that. Do you understand?"

Slowly, carefully, breath by breath, Ned put the notebooks down on the step, and then reached out his hand to me, palm up; an offering, an invitation. He let it hang between us, and his voice, when he spoke, was a raspy murmur. "I said that nothing was worth losing you, and I meant it. The only thing that would convince me would be if you don't want me. Or if you change your mind later and don't want me anymore, though I hope to God that doesn't happen."

Tears running down my cheeks, I looked from his hand to his dear, beloved face. For the first time in a long time, Ned's eyes were peaceful as he looked at me. There was fear there, for sure, but there was hope there, too. And something that looked like love, if I could just trust myself enough. His voice dropped further, to a breath. "When we can't see something or touch something or hold something, we have to believe it's there. You can't hold the way I feel for you in your hands, any more than I can. But it's here, Flannery. It's right here," he held up his palm again, and now he, too, was crying, if slightly more elegantly than I was, "and I have to believe, too. Please…" his voice cracked, and he cleared his throat, "please believe in me."

"I'm scared."

"Me too."

The wind picked up, a wind that had blown across the ocean and up the coast, that had touched countless faces, had combed its fingers through tall grass, had crashed against lighthouses and caressed the bark of trees so old they knew all the secrets of their landscape. The salty, heavy perfume of midsummer dried some of my tears, cooling the heat of my face, and I put my hand in his, laced my fingers through his. "I love you."

And then he kissed me.

Here is a story, a true story, I should have been told as a child, and it's a story I will tell you, when you're born: you deserve love, you deserve to be loved, and you deserve to love. You deserve to wake up bathed in love, and to sleep wrapped in it like a blanket, and you will be. I can promise nothing else, you know that I can't, but I can promise that. I know the meaning of a promise; I would never break one, least of all this one. You were loved before you were born, before you were even an idea. And you will be loved every minute of your life.

From the moment of your father and my first kiss–weeping and clinging to each other on the back steps of a millionaire's summer mansion in Maine– to the moment of your birth, almost exactly five years will have passed. The details about where we moved and how we moved, about timing and rent and new jobs, those are things that either you'll already know by now, or that won't be interesting to you or to us anymore. How we learned to love ourselves and each other is a story for when you're older. But the pictures of our wedding–-one Tom called "laughably small" and "distressingly simple"-are all over the house. You'll have recognized them before you even knew to ask questions, but maybe, when you're eleven or so and ready to start thinking differently, you'll look closer at the photo of your father and me together, the picture Billy took, and you'll see the tears of joy on his face, the ones you've never noticed before. You'll be more able to read the love in my eyes, the way our hands are locked together, as they will be whenever we all walk down the street together, whenever we sit next to each other, even in public, even in church, even at school: our fingers laced, our grip gentle. You might find it nauseating at some point–-Susie certainly will–-but you'll know how I was raised, and you'll know how your father was raised, at least the major points until you're old enough to know everything, and you'll let it slide. Your siblings, the ones we hope you'll have, might have different opinions. That's what siblings are for, and you'll be all the better for it.

But even if we never have any other children, and even if your father and I stop loving each other–-it won't happen, I promise–even if the worst happens, the worst won't happen, because you are and always have been precious to me. You always will be.

Here is a truth, truer than true: you are perfect, you are loved, you are wanted. Forever.

My children will have everything I didn't. You will have the only things that really matter.