Chapter Ten
Let No One Put Asunder
Siobhan O'Mallory locks her bedroom door even though her partner's long-standing order forbids anyone other than themselves to enter the Rectory's second floor. Private as these living quarters are, she needs the extra reassurance that her solitude won't be broken. She looks down at herself; her gown seems a sea of glittering white, the glitter coming from a myriad of tiny crystals that enhance the off-the-shoulders dress. Her long red hair tickles her bare shoulders, she keeps the sensation in the midst of a thousand others, trying to impress every second of this day deep in her memory where she'll have it clear and sharp for all time.
She turns from the door and her heart is hit hard by the realization of something she's known in her head for three months.
After today this is no longer her room.
x
The past few months in this room were only supposed to be temporary, a few days or weeks, an emergency stop-over until she'd found an apartment to replace the one that madman had blown up. The parish, particularly the Vestry, had had little tolerance for male and female priests in the same Rectory, 'What would people say?' having become a familiar refrain.
But so much had happened in nearly half a year that she's been here which had changed so many expectations. This room became no longer a stopgap or a temporary lodging; through adversity, and through the willingness of people to overlook certain overblown 'concerns' because of that adversity, it had become home. Some people hadn't been understanding, having only seen the impropriety existing mostly in the deep recesses of their own minds and had still objected to a woman priest living in the Rectory. And George Donaldson - dear George - had diplomatically dismissed the concerns and objections, never openly displaying how thoroughly he'd ignored them.
But now this truly is no longer her room, and it's happened in such a way as, in the beginning, none of them could have conceived. Not by her moving on to another apartment - bless the Vestry who couldn't find a suitable one the parish could afford and especially the members who hadn't even looked. Nor is it through any other means she could've foreseen half a year ago. She's moving out into an apartment, all right, but it's one she'll share.
x
The room has been stripped of almost all her personal belongings, what little she has having been moved to her new apartment, only one last small suitcase remains upon the bed, and up top in that open suitcase is an open box containing the hand carved wood Wedding Cross that James and Michelle Palmer had brought her from their Honeymoon in Hawaii. Her fingertips caress the wood and the two interlinking rings set in the junction. She'd kept it to the end, had wanted to see it, to touch it one last time before sending it on. Tonight she'll place it on the nail already set over the bed she and Timmy will share for the very first time before….
She looks down at the white gown that flows from her bare shoulders to the floor. The dress sparkles in the sunlight streaming through the window beside her.
"Oh God," she whispers, unable to contain the joy that fills her to overflowing, "it's really real." Her breath quickens. She can barely believe, though she's been preparing for almost three months, that: "I'm really doing this."
But no matter how she's longed for this moment, she's leaving a comfortable – no, almost comfortable, a stable – no, almost stable – life and going into one that scares her almost as much as it thrills her.
She crosses the room to the wooden prei dieu set facing the corner and, gathering up the gown out of the way so it won't get wrinkled, she kneels.
She'd purposely set the kneeler this way months ago, leaving herself no distraction, nothing to see but her favorite crucifix, the one she's already arranged to be transferred to over her Chaplain's office desk at Enkiss while she's gone. Christ is before the brown wood but He's not nailed to it. Instead, His arms are extended to her and His face is wreathed in a beatific smile.
x
"Father," she whispers, emotion robbing her voice, "you've led me here and allowed me to come to this. You've guided me in all things and I thank you always." She closes her eyes, tries to feel peace rather than the myriad of emotions that make her voice quiver.
"I love you - and I love Timmy. I think I've loved you both equally long. Sometimes ... sometimes I'm not sure..." She can't say it. It's blasphemous. It must be wrong to admit that sometimes she's not sure who she loves more or longest, but to think it is to express it so she thinks it - and tries to let it go.
"Please ... I don't know what to do anymore, and I can't wait to do it. I want this with all my heart, for longer than I can remember. I'm happier than I've ever known ... and more terrified than I can stand."
She reopens her eyes, focuses on the tiny ones before her. "I've tried to learn how to be a wife, and ever since he asked me I don't know how. Seminary, and so much more, taught me how to be a Priest but sometimes, looking back, that one seems easy. In a little while I'll be a wife and I still don't have any idea how. Please. Please teach me how, how to please him as I've tried to please you."
She longs to feel the peace that prayer normally brings, but this time she realizes her own fear, her own confusion, her own joyous apprehension and anticipation keep her from feeling it.
No, not fear, she's not afraid of the life she's embarking on, seemingly without rudder or mast or oars, or rather it's not just fear. It's like, in the past ten minutes, she's lost all the bedrock that'd supported her for so long. It's as though the closer she gets to her wedding, to Timmy, the more the world tries to tip her off.
"So much is changing" she whispers with shuddering voice. "I knew it would, but I didn't know it until now. Being a priest is the only thing that won't change and that's going to change more than I can imagine. I knew who Mother O'Mallory was; I have no idea who Mother McGee will be. I don't know her - and I can't wait to be her. But where am I when the world is dumping me off?
"I love Timmy. I've always loved him even when I wasn't supposed to. A priest doesn't love a man committed to another woman but even when he was I did. I couldn't help it. I tried, I really tried not to love him but I did. But then she was gone, out of his heart and I could love him openly and truly. And he loved me - and now I'm going to marry him.
"I knew him as a girl, in the first rush, but now ... he'll be my husband. I'll be his wife. How do I be a wife? I don't know how to be a wife. I can cook, I can sew, I can - I can bear his children, all those nice little traditional lyrics, but how do I be his wife?
"How do I love him? Love him like he deserves? He was my first - my last - my only..."
x
When they'd separated they were 18 and 17, he went to college - MIT - to fulfill his life and she'd gone to seek her fame, her fortune, her Destiny. She'd had all her dreams to be the next Great American Author and none of the discipline to make them real. Those dreams had led her to New York, to Greenwich Village, to the Author Capital.
She hadn't found fame, she hadn't found fortune, she'd found hunger and too much stubbornness to go home. She'd found eviction and shelters and the street and a Church in Brooklyn and a priest who inspired her with his dream of a community where white, black, straight, gay, rich, poor, democrat and republican could live in harmony in God's family. She'd worked in that church, watching the reality of his dream at work as she swept floors and polished gold and silver and prepared the Altar. She'd decided she'd wanted his dream and found it in the Seminary.
She'd gone to New York at 17 to seek her Destiny, never imagining that, at 22, her destiny would be within a white collar.
x
Now eight years later, thirteen after they'd separated, fifteen since they'd met but two since they'd been reunited she's come full circle - but she's still as lost as when she'd been hungry, dirty and begging on the street; for in focusing her life on the Spiritual, turning her back on the carnal, she'd told herself she could never completely fulfill–
"I don't know men," she whispers, surprising herself, feeling almost blasphemous to realize that she reminds herself of the Annunciation when Mary, told who she would bear, had replied 'How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?' "I could've, I didn't want to. I told myself I had to be careful of my place, my reputation as a priest and now I'm getting married and I don't know how to anymore. How can I make Timmy happy when I barely remember what made him happy in the first place? I don't know how to make him happy - make us happy - and I still can't wait to do it."
She shakes her head, not even sure this is what she's asking. She doesn't know what she's asking, feels she's only giving in to heartfelt babbling. Prayer for her has always seemed so focused, so clear, and now she doesn't even know what she's asking.
x
"I've counseled so many new wives, new husbands, and until now I was so sure I knew what I was talking about. They came to me later saying marriage wasn't what they'd expected - how could I have given them advice? How dare I have given them advice when now I know I never knew what marriage is?" Her mind flashes back to the last Star Wars chapter, when the wizened, hooded Emperor is killing Luke Skywalker and says, so faux sadly, 'young Jedi, only now, at the end, do you understand'. "How could I have done all those Pre-Canas and think I knew what I was talking about?"
She'd done almost all the Pre-Cana sessions, even the ones for weddings George officiated at, and then it felt so strange to be sitting with Timmy while George led her own three, an hour on each Wednesday evening. There was no getting around them even though she'd led so many, but to be sitting in the Rectory living room, being on the receiving end...
None of the advice had seemed familiar, though she'd given it. None of the counseling seemed familiar. Family. Children. Communication. Openness. Trust.
Sex.
She only remembers blushing all through that part, her liturgical partner of these past two years talking frankly about sex with her and the man she'd be doing it with at her side - and blushing even more because she had blushed.
x
"I'm so stupid. I'm sorry. I didn't know. I gave advice and it was right and now I'm kneeling here and I don't have any advice for myself."
She tries to swallow back the apprehension, the uncertainty. She wants to feel only the joy she feels, the good anticipation, but apprehension keeps flaring, keeps undermining her. Even when she wasn't in control, wasn't sure, when she'd prayed she always came away feeling sure and now nothing is sure. "How do I be a wife? Please tell me. You taught me how to be a Priest, eight years you've sustained me in your service and now I'm totally lost. 'Love will find a way', I tell so many people. I'm such an idiot because how can I find a way when I can't even find myself?
"God, I've spent the past two years here looking like I've got it all together, and now that I really need it, I'm coming apart.
"I love Timmy. I'm sure of this. I want to marry him, spend every minute with him, spend all my life with him and I've known for months what I'm doing and now I'm so confused. Pl–"
There's a rap at her door. Too soon. Today the 'no visitor' rule is turned off - at least for her Maid-of-Honor - but it's too soon.
"Mother?" Melanie Velez's voice filters through the wood. "It's time."
Siobhan sighs, crosses herself, stands up and lets the copious material of the white gown fall before her. She clutches her hands before her lips, warming them by her shuddering breath.
'I had a thousand plans. I dreamed of today when we were in High School and it's nothing like my dreams. We used to go to movies and make out and never see a bit of the film and I knew then what kind of wife I'd be and now I can't find her. I used to write 'Siobhan McGee' over and over in my notebook with hearts and stars and flowers but I never imagined 'Mother McGee' and now it's going to be and I don't know who she is. Please Father, tell me who she is.'
"Mother?" the soft rap comes again. "Mother McGee?"
The voice seems to smile, but Siobhan looks up to the ceiling, 'Oh God, I want that so badly.'
x
She descends the stairs behind the black woman in her royal blue gown, but at the base she stops at the tall mirror on her left, no longer only afraid, having opened herself and allowed confusion in to mesh with her joyous anticipation. George had placed this mirror here long ago for final inspections, she now inspects her image, searching for flaws. She adjusts the useless glasses she's held onto until today and brushes back her flame-red hair from her bare shoulders with trembling hands.
"If you check that thing anymore," Melanie Velez says from behind her, "your eyes are going to wear out the material."
Siobhan can't help but laugh, though it comes out quivering. Her Maid-of-Honor, closest friend and confidant here as a Eucharistic Minister, has always been able to break through to her. With Melanie she has the most casual relationship, more so than she has with any other woman in the parish since Tina - dear Tina - had died. Oh, how she wishes Tina had lived to be here today. They were a trio, a true trio that could only be parted by death but still, in her quiet moments, she feels the spirit of Tina Dumas with her even now.
She's shared secrets, she and Melanie, thoughts and dreams and so forth, such an easy relationship built over these two years that she can be herself even when they're vesting for Mass. But now they're not in the Sacristy, not preparing for a Service - at least not a regular one - and her friend wears her off-the-shoulder blue gown with far more ease and confidence than she feels.
She's not the one getting married.
x
But it's not right to be nervous, Siobhan chides herself. She'd always thought she wouldn't be, had always been sure that, if this day could ever possibly come, somewhere in a distant dream, she wouldn't be.
But it hadn't been a distant dream. It had been a girlhood dream, then an impossible one when, for years, they'd gone their separate ways, then a distant one again when they'd found each other and found out how separate they'd grown - NCIS Agent and Priest - then a real dream when he'd declared his love for her and then a true dream when he'd proposed, and now – now….
But preparation for the wedding hadn't immunized her from this apprehension. 'I'm going to be a wife. How do I be a wife?'
"Mother?" Melanie glances at the grandfather clock ticking loudly in the far right corner, sure Siobhan doesn't hear it, and not only for familiarity.
"I've done more than twenty weddings," she says in shuddering voice, trying to break the feeling. She's done eight since being appointed here as Curate, including the Palmers' nuptials at the Lincoln Memorial, and hadn't ever been a bit nervous.
"But you haven't gotten married twenty times."
"God forbid." She tugs at her left sleeve. Three fittings and it's still an eighth of an inch shorter than her right.
"Not nervous, are you?"
Siobhan glances up into the mirror at her friend behind her. "No." She pulls at the horizontal 'neckline'. It just will not stay straight.
"You're not?" Melanie's tone, her knowing smile, drags the truth out.
"I'm scared to death!"
"I know you are," she says in an atrociously heavy imitation of Siobhan's brogue, emphasizing that it's even grown heavier in her nervousness. "It shows."
Siobhan hates that she's so easy to read. Until now she can't fib, even a tiny falsehood and look someone in the eye, so she used to telegraph it, all unconsciously, in taking off her glasses. And when her emotions get the better of her, anyone who knows her well can read it in how heavy her brogue becomes. And unlike the glasses that she can do something about - that she will do something about - her words give her away when she's unaware of them.
"You love him?" Melanie cuts in on her silent self-assault, bringing her back to the moment.
"Such a question!" she turns on her friend, pushing her useless glasses back up to the top of her nose. "Of course I love him."
"Then you've nothing to be afraid of."
x
This stops her. She can't think of a thing to argue the point, so she turns back to the mirror. "Except this dress!"
"Why? It's perfect."
"It's–" she tries to counter, but can't. A neckline she imagines not being perfectly straight across an upper chest that's not either, a sleeve an eighth inch off that probably isn't... "perfect."
"Look, the dress is the least of your worries. Ceremony, reception, then tonight he gets you out of it and you jump his bone."
Siobhan isn't quite startled, it all goes with their casual ease built up over two years of friendship, but perhaps this is just a bit too casual. Delightful - and distracting - as the thought sounds, Melanie is still her acolyte. She turns back on her. "I'm still your priest," she reminds her archly, trying to preserve some decorum.
"You were a priest," Velez replies with a salacious grin. "Tonight you're the virgin sacrifice."
Siobhan is certain her face reflects her shock - this time she is shocked - but Velez's grin just widens. "At least you forgot the dress."
"Yes, well..." It was a good distraction, but she's never going to tell her friend that 'I haven't been a virgin since Timmy's parents took that long Labor Day weekend.' Instead she reminds her firmly "There is such a thing as perspective."
"And a firm bo–"
"That's e–" The chimes of the grandfather clock in the opposite corner of the living room beside them sound the hour. 'Three o'clock!' She's lost track of more than the dress.
x
"Last seconds as a free woman," Velez says as she picks up her blue and Siobhan's white bouquet from the large table beside her.
"That's something I'll never miss."
"So, Miss O'Mallory," Melanie hands her the white flowers, "ready?"
"No." Siobhan takes off her glasses, holds them in her hand and considers them for a moment. "I've needed these since I was thirteen."
"So?" Velez can't see the point, not now.
Siobhan drops them onto the hardwood floor where they land open. She looks down at them, her needed aid for so long. Legally blind for years, fearful of going completely blind as her vision gradually deteriorated, she'd used the glasses as a crutch until the day her vision - or lack of it - had nearly destroyed her. Because of horrendous vision that she hadn't countered because of misguided piety, she'd nearly died without seeing the face of her murderer.
Never again. Never, ever again.
She hadn't told even her best friends beyond Timmy but, after a set of Lasik treatments, for the first time her face is bare and the room is clear. She'd worn plain glass, first in one frame, then both, since the treatments until this moment, this long-anticipated gesture symbolic of how much of her old life she's leaving behind.
The glasses used to define her, and for years she'd allowed them to without realizing it. Since the Lasik treatments she'd kept the glasses, held on to them, just for now, for this moment, for this gesture. No one knew it, but her eyes are clear and now she turns her back on blindness, turns her back on her old life. Goodbye to the wild, thoughtless girl she'd been, goodbye to the woman who'd believed that if God meant her to have perfect vision He'd have given it to her. Goodbye to the woman who wouldn't see a man's love when it was staring her in the face. Goodbye shortsighted Siobhan O'Mallory.
She holds her gown clear, raises her foot and brings it down hard. The glasses make the most satisfying snap, shattering in a tinkling of glass.
When she looks up, Melanie's staring at her, mouth open and eyes wide. The look is a nice bonus.
"Now I'm ready."
Smiling, Siobhan leads her astonished friend down the short corridor beside the staircase and out of the Rectory.
x
Her five closest friends, each gowned identically to Melanie, meet them in Hamilton Hall. Each does a double-take and Siobhan, revealing nothing, thinks they probably assume she's gone to contacts. She'll clear this misinterpretation up later. They don't know she's not the same woman they saw an hour ago.
Siobhan hears the organ in the loft next door through the open foyer door beyond her blue gowned friends and her heart races, not with fear now but excitement. She doesn't even hear the quiet words that pass among the friends; her mind is next door, in the Sacristy where Timmy, Agent DiNozzo and George await their cue. She's in her body but her soul is next door, watching, waiting for her body to catch up.
The organ begins the 'Trumpet Voluntary', the notes wafting through the open door to the foyer and she knows Timmy and Agent DiNozzo in their black tuxedos are leaving the Sacristy ahead of George in his white vestments to genuflect before the tabernacle and take their places before the Sanctuary, before the white and gold fronted Altar.
Her nerve deserts her. She can't move.
x
"Ready, girls?" Melanie's voice cuts through the knot of blue-gowned women as she marshals them into position, reaches back and gives Siobhan an unnoticed tug on her arm. Siobhan's grateful for her aid; she can barely think two sentences together.
"Twenty weddings..." she says shakily. "It's all so different from here."
"And you couldn't be happier," Rachael reminds her as they start out the door into the foyer that links Hamilton Hall to the Church.
Siobhan can't find the words to answer, but her friend is right.
xx
She doesn't even remember, moments after it happened, entering the foyer; her thoughts are on the image of Timmy waiting for her and they're just suddenly there, gathered in the foyer out of sight of those in the church. Rosemary steps out, crosses the narthex to the beginning of the aisle to lead the individual, two hundred foot walk toward the Sanctuary while the others wait to take their turns.
As the music builds, one by one the women depart, Rachael moving out when Rosemary has taken her position before the front left pew, Nicole taking her place before the large doors when Rachael is a hundred feet away, midway through the huge Gothic chamber. The music grows richer as her friends take their turns, then swells as Melanie leaves her.
Siobhan, alone too soon, sure the bouquet is trembling hard enough to shake all the petals off, steps to the rear of the church before the huge bronze doors, to where the tuxedoed Donald Mallard awaits. She holds the flowers before her, certain she could water them with her palms.
"You look lovely, my dear," Ducky tells her softly, taking her arm.
She wishes her father could do this, but knows he's watching with the Saints while her mother's up front with her sister, cousins...
She sees the Sanctuary far away and suddenly the church seems to have turned around. Since coming here she's performed eight weddings - from that end of the aisle.
Melanie has taken her position, hundreds of people are looking back, and above her the organ music changes to Lohengrin's 'Wedding March'. Her heart pounds harder, thumps in her chest as she looks into the sea of friends with naked eyes. She's not sure if she's floating, it's more like she's light-headed - or is ecstasy confusing her? She can't find a word for her feelings, all of them crowd into her at once. She looks up the long aisle where Timmy stands watching her and a blast of joy almost knocks her off her feet.
Timmy.
"I'm scared, Ducky," she whispers, her trembling voice testifying to the depth of that emotion in the confusing maelstrom.
"You will not be frightened in a moment," the venerable man assures her as he guides her forward, skillfully making it appear as though she's leading him.
x
She takes the first steps into the Wedding March, feels the notes vibrate through her body and her apprehension - her fear - switches off.
Just that, one step and there's no room left in her for fear. Timmy's up there looking at her. George waits at the center of the Sanctuary, vested in white and gold, a line of black tuxedos to her right and blue gowns to her left, hundreds of people watching her – hundreds. Timmy. Timmy!
She notices - peripherally - as she passes the first of five sets of stained glass windows, how the multitude of crystals burst into color when she crosses the stream of late afternoon sunlight.
'It's real,' she thinks, gasping, unable to breathe fast enough. 'It's really real! I'm getting married! Timmy! I'm really getting Married!'
"Are you all right, my dear?" Ducky whispers.
She realizes he feels her trembling, hears her gasps. She fights to bring them down but joy won't let her; her heart slams about in her chest and tries to reach the Sanctuary before her. Her eyes are moist with happy tears. "I'm getting Married, Ducky!" she whispers on a wave of ecstasy, her voice unable to carry all her joy.
He looks up at her with a knowing smile. "Yes, you are."
x
Far away at the end of the miles-long aisle George Donaldson, clad in gold-trimmed white vestments, awaits. Timmy and Agent DiNozzo and a line of five tuxedoed friends disappear into the crowd on the right and Melanie, Rosemary, Rachael, Nicole, Francine and Alexandra, aligned to her left, are also lost beyond the front row.
There are nine white on black clad acolytes to fill the duties of five - no one wanted to be left out and she couldn't bring herself to exclude anyone. Behind and above her, she knows the choir loft is equally overstaffed. As she walks slowly to the music, feet barely touching the floor, it doesn't seem that one more person could squeeze into the pews that surround her without rupturing the ancient marble walls.
The Wedding March swells, the reverberating notes play through her until she feels her body can't contain all her joy.
She's not sure how the light-years are traversed but she's at the step to the Sanctuary, bends slightly for Ducky's kiss on her cheek. He puts her hand in Timmy's - so warm - and magically vanishes.
Bill Landros, dressed in cassock and cotta, stands at the priest's right, the boy holding open and turning the pages of an extra-large red book should Donaldson need to reference the familiar passages.
Timmy's black lapel bears a tiny green shamrock, the lone flower striking in the shiny material, but Siobhan can only look up the three inches into his green eyes, lost in them, willing to be lost forever. She hears George, beside her on her left, commence the traditional opening words, but she can't bring herself out of those eyes.
x
He blinks and the world switches on. "...union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy, for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God's will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord."
Siobhan feels her heart nearly burst when George says 'children'. Her children - Timmy's children - her and Timmy's children!
"Therefore marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God."
She's waited for these next words for fifteen years and her soul and body tremble with the hearing. So long - so very long - and now:
"Into this union Timothy McGee and Siobhan Marie O'Mallory now come to be joined." Through the tiny microphone attached to his chasuble, Donaldson's voice fills the vast nave. "If any of you can show just cause why they may not lawfully be married," his voice fills every corner and crevice, "speak now, or else forever hold your peace."
He waits the required moment, then his smile vanishes and he addresses them firmly. Siobhan only looks at him through the corner of her eye, because she can't turn away from Timmy. She doesn't ever want to turn away from him.
"I require and charge you both, here in the presence of God, that if either of you know of any reason why you may not be united in marriage lawfully and in accordance with God's Word, you do now declare it."
Siobhan has said everything she ever intends to say, and this man is still before her, and still silent.
x
Satisfied, Donaldson's smile is back. "Siobhan," his voice reminds her, emphasizes rather, that she should be facing him. She turns forward but still keeps her right hand in Timmy's, her soul resonating with the words. "Will you have this man to be your husband; to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful to him as long as you both shall live?"
She looks up to Timmy at her right and is astonished. He's the young High School bookworm who'd just worked up the nerve to ask the wild child cheerleader on their first date. She blinks and he's the man she'll date for the rest of her life. "I will."
Her voice is almost lost, riding the surf of ecstasy. She turns back to George, attentive to his words, wanting them in her heart forever.
"Timothy, will you have this woman to be your wife; to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?"
Silence.
x
Something's wrong.
Nothing can be wrong!
Siobhan stares up, wide eyed, to the man beside her, the man who's always been beside her. His lips are moving, but nothing's coming out.
Shielded by their close bodies, DiNozzo jams his elbow into Timmy's ribs. "I will!"
'We'll laugh about it later,' she thinks. She'd gone from rapture to her heart seizing, but now it beats again and all joy is back. Through the corner of her eye, she sees George turn his attention to the congregation.
"Will all of you witnessing these promises do all in your power to uphold these two persons in their marriage?"
"We will" seems to fill the world.
x
Siobhan stands beside Timmy through the familiar prayers and readings. She'll never forget them. She wants them, all these moments, in her every dream. And though she'll cherish these memories forever, it's the hand of the man in hers that fills her life.
Then, facing one another, Tim takes her right hand and, at Donaldson's direction of each phrase, repeats to her: "In the Name of God ... I, Timothy ... take you, Siobhan ... to be my wife ... to have and to hold ... from this day forward ... for better for worse ... for richer for poorer ... in sickness and in health ... to love and to cherish ... until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow."
He releases her hand, she takes his. In the depth of her emotion her brogue is strong and she doesn't need George's prompting, the words are engraved on her heart. She feels she's waited her entire life for the chance to say
"In the Name of God I, Siobhan, take you Timothy to be my husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow."
Donaldson, smoothing his wry smile at having been left behind, turns to Tony. "Do you have the rings?"
x
From his jacket pocket DiNozzo brings two gold bands and hands them to the priest. The larger, wider one is gold, glittering in a line that forms intricate Irish knots. It'd take a microscope to reveal the line as hundreds of ultra-tiny hearts. The band is engraved within Gra anois agus go deo: 'Love now and forever'. Siobhan's is a golden Claddagh ring with a diamond in the heart and the same dedication within.
Ann King comes to Donaldson's left holding an ornate golden water bucket two inches filled, while Bill continues to hold the large red book at the priest's right. Donaldson holds the rings in his right hand, takes the balled rod and sprinkles Holy Water upon the rings.
"Bless, O Lord, these rings to be signs of the vows by which this man and this woman have bound themselves to each other, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." He then gives the Claddagh ring to Tim.
Tim takes her left hand, holds the band in his right and repeats "Siobhan, I give you this ring ... as a symbol of my vow ... and with all that I am ... and all that I have ... I honor you," he touches the band to the tip of her thumb, "in the Name of the Father," to her index finger, "and of the Son," to the tip of her middle finger, "and of the Holy Spirit," he slips the ring down her finger to its place, "Amen."
Siobhan then takes the larger ring and his left hand and, again unable to wait for her partner's guidance, says "Timothy, I give you this ring as a symbol of my vow," her voice catches, tears of joy glisten in her eyes but she fights the catch down, "and with all that I am, and all that I have, I honor you, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen."
She carefully wipes tears from her eyes, cautious of smudging her blue mascara.
x
Donaldson, nearly as happy as they, directs them to kneel, to join hands and he wraps the white stole that hangs before him about their hands. His prayer over them, his hands on their heads, concludes "and as you are bound forever with God, may you also be bound together in heart and soul in His love." Then they rise, he unbinds them, has them turn to face the crowd and his amplified voice fills the huge church.
"Now that Timothy and Siobhan have given themselves to each other by solemn vows, with the joining of hands and the giving and receiving of rings, I pronounce that they are husband and wife, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
"Those whom God has joined together, let no one put asunder."
"Amen."
o
Next Episode: Nothing Ventured: Mysterious deaths spark one of NCIS' strangest cases, while in Ireland...