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“That is still winning.”

My mother watches from the chair by the window with her bag on her knees. She taught me piano from a chair like that once her hands stopped letting her play, and she supervises this the same way, silently and with standards.

At breakfast she asked whether the letter had come. It has not. There is no decision and no work authorization, and Silas’s pilot is waiting behind both.

The dress does not know any of that. It is white and it is not practical. That was the only instruction I gave the woman in the shop. The courthouse got a dark coat. This gets my shoulders.

Gabi steps back and looks at me for a long moment without a single opinion on her face, which is how I know she has several.

“Okay,” she says. “Now you can be late.”

Gabi goes in first, and then Tova with her basket, and the doors close behind them.

Nobody walks me in. I did not want anybody to, and for once nobody argued.

I wait with my flowers in one hand and nothing in the other.

When the doors open, I see Colt first. Then Mack beside him. Then the empty chair next to Gabi, with a ribbon on it, where my daughter is supposed to be sitting.

Tova is standing beside Colt.

The room gets to its feet, and I walk.

My mother is in the first row with her chin up and her face wet and a tissue she refuses to use. I do not cry. She is doing enough of it for both of us.

Ruth is on the aisle beside Gabi. Behind them sit the men who spend their winters hitting people, and the women who came with them. Ryan and Peyton. Evan McKinney and Sam. Zach “Brick” Novak and his fiancée, Tessa. Finn and Catalina, and Finn is wearing a cowboy hat indoors, which nobody has asked him to remove. Sully is in the back row with his tie already loosened.

Tova sees me see her, and lifts her chin.

Colt raises both hands an inch from his sides. It was not him. I know that before they are all the way up.

I reach them, and Tova moves between us before anybody can tell her where to stand.

“I wanted to stay up here.”

“You were supposed to sit with Gabi.”

“I know.”

She did not ask me. I look at her for as long as it takes her to understand that I know it. She sets the flower basket at her feet.

Then I hand her my flowers.

“All right.”

She takes them in both arms. My hands are empty. Colt takes one before I have decided what to do with it.

The officiant has a kind face and a card in his hand. He asks whether we come here freely, which is a reasonable thing to ask two people who are already married.

“I do,” I say, when it is time.

Colt says his louder than anybody requires, and Mack says, “Shocking,” just loud enough for the second row.

I look at Colt. “Do not encourage him.”

“I’m standing right here,” Mack says.

“I know.”