The wedding took place at a vineyard outside Charlottesville, Virginia.
Grace wore a simple ivory dress with tiny embroidered flowers on the sleeves.
Daniel cried before she even reached the altar.
Not graceful tears either.
Full, shameless crying.
Grace laughed at him.
“You’re ruining the pictures.”
“I don’t care.”
“You will when I put them on Christmas cards.”
Everyone laughed.
Even I did.
And somewhere between the vows and the first dance, I finally understood something.
Daniel wasn’t looking at Grace like someone performing a duty.
He looked at her like she was home.
Whatever feelings I had carried for him began to loosen their grip.
Not immediately.
But enough.
Four years later, I was engaged to someone else.
Grace and Daniel had bought a modest blue house near Richmond.
Grace worked three afternoons a week at a children’s bookstore.
Daniel had started a residential construction company.
They fought about laundry.
They argued about whose turn it was to buy groceries.
Grace complained that Daniel left cabinet doors open.
Daniel complained that Grace owned fourteen decorative pillows nobody was allowed to touch.
In other words, they were married.
Really married.
Then Grace called me one Tuesday morning.
She was crying so hard I thought someone had died.
“Lauren.”
“What happened?”
“We have two.”
“What?”
“Two babies.”
I sat up.
“You’re pregnant?”
“Two!”
Twins.
She and Daniel had been trying for nearly two years.
Grace had wanted children since we were teenagers.
My parents had always changed the subject whenever she mentioned it.
But that day, none of that mattered.
Grace was going to become a mother.
She spent the next several months buying tiny socks, arguing with Daniel about baby names, and sending me photos of nursery paint samples at inappropriate hours.
The pregnancy was considered high-risk from the beginning.
By the seventh month, her blood pressure had become dangerous.
At thirty-three weeks, Daniel called me at 4:38 in the morning.
“Get to St. Catherine’s.”
I knew from his voice that something was wrong.
When I reached the hospital, Grace was already being prepped for an emergency delivery.
Daniel stood beside her bed wearing a disposable gown.
Grace looked impossibly small beneath the blankets.
She smiled when she saw me.
“Don’t make that face.”
“What face?”
“The funeral face.”
“I do not have a funeral face.”
“You absolutely have a funeral face.”
Even scared, she was still Grace.
I took her hand.
“You and these babies are going to be fine.”
She squeezed my fingers.
Then she looked past me at Daniel.
