It felt like we’d made room for the absence instead of pretending it wasn’t there.
“I spent months thinking about him not being here,” I said.
Claire rested her head against my shoulder. “I know.”
“I never told you how much.”
“You didn’t have to.”
That was Claire.
Sometimes annoyingly so.
A few weeks later, we got our wedding photos back.
We had hundreds.
Claire in the white dress.
Us cutting the cake.
Aaron giving his speech.
Our families dancing.
But the first one I framed wasn’t any of those.
It was a picture taken immediately after the ceremony.
Claire is still wearing Dad’s suit.
I’m holding her around the waist.
The jacket is too large. The pants are bunched at her ankles.
Her hair looks beautiful, which somehow makes the suit look even more ridiculous.
And we’re both laughing.
You can see the folded cuff in the picture.
You can’t read the writing.
But I know it’s there.
“Richard’s Wedding Suit.”
And beneath it, stitched by the woman I married: “Danny.”
I had spent the entire engagement thinking about all the ways my father was going to miss my wedding.
I never once imagined that, because of Claire, a piece of him would walk down the aisle before she did.
I got the traditional wedding too.
The dress. The photos.
The cake. The terrible dancing.
Everything I thought I wanted.
But when I think about that day now, the first thing I remember isn’t Claire’s white dress.
It’s that oversized black suit coming toward me beneath the trees.
And the moment I realized the woman I was about to marry had found a way to honor someone she never had the chance to call family.
That was when I knew, even before we said the vows, that I’d chosen the right person.
