Claire and I had talked through every serious thing I could think of before getting married.
Money. Children. Careers. Where we’d live.
How much we wanted family involved in our lives.
Neither of us was running.
By the time the ceremony started, I was nervous in the good way.
Everyone took their seats.
My mom was in the first row.
The chair next to her was empty.
That chair wasn’t officially for anyone.
But in my head, it belonged to my dad.
My father, Richard, had died four years earlier.
A heart attack. Quick and unexpected.
He had been 62.
I had spoken to him on a Tuesday evening about replacing the brakes on my car.
On Wednesday morning, my mother called me screaming so hard I couldn’t understand her.
He was gone before I reached the hospital.
I didn’t talk about him much during the wedding planning.
Claire knew I missed him.
She also knew I hated making emotional moments about myself.
Whenever people asked whether I wished my dad could be there, I usually just said, “Of course.”
What else was there to say?
I had spent the entire engagement imagining him at the wedding anyway.
I pictured him adjusting my tie too aggressively.
I pictured him complaining about the price of drinks.
I pictured him trying to give a speech even though Aaron was supposed to handle that.
I pictured him pulling me aside sometime during the reception and saying, “You did good, Danny.”
Nobody called me that anymore.
Dad had called me Danny my entire life.
Even when I turned 30.
Even when I told him I was too old for it.
The bridesmaids started walking down the aisle.
Everything looked completely normal.
Then the music changed.
Everyone stood.
I looked toward the back.
And for a few seconds, I honestly thought there had been some kind of mistake.
Claire was standing there holding her bouquet.
Her hair was pinned up. Her makeup was done. She was smiling.
But instead of a wedding dress, she was wearing an enormous black suit.
An old one.
The jacket was so large that the shoulders extended past her actual shoulders.
The sleeves covered part of her hands.
The pants were loose and slightly bunched at the bottom.
She was even wearing a dark tie.
Behind me, people started whispering.
Someone said, “What is she wearing?”
Someone else laughed nervously.
I looked at Claire’s mother.
