“I gave her the suit so that she could have something made from it.”
Claire gave a weak laugh. “That was the plan.”
My mom looked at her outfit. “Clearly, the plan changed.”
People around us laughed softly.
It broke some of the tension.
I wiped my face.
“And now you’re wearing the whole thing?”
Claire’s voice shook. “Because a little piece didn’t feel like enough.”
That nearly destroyed me again.
She reached for my hand.
“Your mom told me your dad wore this when he married her.”
I nodded. I’d seen the pictures.
Dad had been 28, with far too much hair and a mustache that my mother spent decades mocking.
Claire continued. “She said I could use the fabric for anything. I thought about making a hair ribbon. Or lining my bouquet with part of it.”
“So what happened?”
Claire looked down at herself.
“I decided to put it on.”
I almost laughed through the tears.
“You just put it on?”
“About two weeks ago. Your mom had already given it to me, and I was trying to decide what part of it I could use without ruining it.”
My mom called out, “I told her she could cut it.”
Claire looked horrified. “It just didn’t seem right to do that.”
That made everyone laugh again.
Even me.
Claire squeezed my hand.
“I put it on as a joke at first. It looked ridiculous.”
“It still does,” Aaron muttered.
Claire pointed at him. “Thank you, Aaron.”
Then she looked at me again.
“But when I saw myself in the mirror, I thought about you.”
Her voice softened.
“You’ve spent this entire wedding pretending you weren’t sad your dad couldn’t be here.”
I swallowed. “I wasn’t pretending.”
“Really?”
“Okay. Maybe a little.”
“You barely talked about it.”
“I didn’t want everything to become depressing.”
“I know.”
She took a breath.
“And I know nobody can replace him. I wasn’t trying to do that.”
I looked again at the writing inside the cuff.
Richard’s Wedding Suit.
Then the little stitched Danny beneath it.
“I just wanted one part of him to walk down the aisle today,” she said.
That was the point where my mother completely lost it.
She sat back down and started crying into a tissue.
I couldn’t look at her because I knew I’d start again too.
The officiant, who had been standing patiently beside us for this entire emotional disaster, finally leaned toward me.
