Author's Note: Spring break! I'm puttin' 'em to the wall, if you know what I mean, with this thing. I know it's just a bloody awful ending to leave you with, but I'm workin' as fast as I can! And sorry for the confusion with the conclusion of chapter 14. Hopefully this will clear things up. Thanks again for the continued support!
Chapter 15
All around her, there was white.
The ribbons, the flowers, the vestments: everything gleamed enough to make her eyes water, and she lifted a hand to press against her lashes. She froze. Mascara. White glove.
"Shit." A black smudge ran along the finger of her expensive silk glove, and she glanced up to see a bewildered alter boy staring at her, wide-eyed. "Sorry," she muttered, and replaced her hands by her side.
Oh, god, the dress. If she had ever believed any snowfall in upstate New York to justify 'white', she seriously reconsidered 'gray' as more appropriate now, looking down at the folds of fabric flowing from her bodice. Even the pearls embroidered neatly onto the hem of her neckline seemed to emmanate their own source of light.
Her mother had outdone herself. Samantha would have been happy with the simple dress her mother had worn to her own wedding.
Would have been happy.
Her throat stuck when she tried to swallow, and someone touched her on the shoulder as the organ swelled.
"Samantha," her stepfather whispered, "it's about that time."
She squeezed out a smile and took a step forward. The doors to the cathedral opened and a breath of air swept the delicate veil against her face. Beneath it, her eyes widened to take in the massive amount of people on both sides of the aisle. Tuxedos, gowns, hats, jewelry, corsages, and a stifling scent of perfume and incense nearly overwhelmed her. But she kept walking without telling her feet to follow one another, a talent she had mastered in the past month.
As the organist sent "The Wedding March" echoing to the sharp, expansive ceiling overhead, and since she no longer needed her mind to spur her to motion, she found it beginning to wander, and barely heard her stepfather's occasional whisper of encouragement.
She found herself thinking of the very last time she had entered this church, almost fifteen years ago. She had been nineteen and it was the first time she had come to the church separate from her family. Her granddad's funeral. Sam had been seated next to her grandmother, who would sit with no one else besides her. Samantha had been her favorite.
When they went to the coffin to pay their last respects, her grandmother seized her arm and nearly made her nineteen-year-old self yelp in surprise.
"Listen to me, Sam," she hissed in her ear, "Sunday after Sunday, it's just pretend. You sit and you listen, and it's all well and good, but there's two times in your life when you're gonna come here and it will be real. The first time you'll be wearing white, and the second, black. Don't fuck it up when it counts, Sam. It ain't worth living for, if it ain't real."
Sam had never heard her grandmother speak that way, and would never again. The lady died, barely three months after the funeral.
She'd never told anyone that story. And, until now, she never knew why. But fifteen years later, it was as if the woman stood next to her once again, scratching blood to the surface of her arm, and breathing raspily into her ear.
"It ain't worth living for, if it ain't real, honey."
Hands lifted and slowly folded the translucent veil high up and behind her face. Light diffused around the frame of the man in front of her. Martin's face, somber but not unhappy, filled her entire field of vision. Her lips parted.
"What's that, honey?"
The music had stopped, and people on either sides of her stirred, the rustling of chiffon and silk amplified by the resonant cathedral acoustics.
"Did she say something?"
"What did she say?"
"Is she all right?"
"George, the camera."
"I heard she was pregnant."
Martin was looking at her dumbfounded, still clutching her hand in his, ring dangling from the tip of his trembling finger. The priest placed a hand on Samantha's arm and squeezed.
"Make it count."
"What?!" Samantha gasped, jerking her head in his direction. The wrinkled face rose its eyebrows.
"I said 'Are you all right, child?'" he repeated concernedly. Martin's eyes moved to Samantha's forehead were followed by his cool fingers.
"She's burning up!" Martin exclaimed, shaking himself out of the mini-stupor he'd fallen into. "Sam, are you okay? Do you feel weak?" He took her by the arm, and pressed her to his chest. She was grateful, surprisingly, despite the fact that she felt no worse than she had in the days leading up to the wedding. "Deborah!"
Her mother jogged up the steps in front of the alter. "She's just overwhelmed, Martin," she said, and Samantha looked from her mother to Martin. "Just give her a few minutes. She just needs some water, that's all. Jack, will you take her? Thanks."
She turned to the throng of people straining to hear what was happening and smiled broadly. "Everything's fine, everyone! Samantha's just a little over-heated, that's all...and wouldn't you believe it with this weather! Just a few minutes..."
Samantha's eyes slid from Martin's face as she was delivered as a heap of heavy silk into two broad arms. This time, she had to tell her legs to move forward.
The smell of incense lessened, the white sunlight faded, and she was standing in the parish rectory, and Jack was handing her a drink.