Then she said, loud enough for the front rows to hear, in that clear carrying voice children have:
“Mom… why does that suitcase have my name on it?”
I stopped walking.
“What?” I said. “What suitcase, baby?”
Lisa pointed behind me. I turned as far as the
dress would let me, twisting at the waist, trying to
see.
Megan was already moving. She rushed up from her spot as maid of honor and bent down and
lifted a section of my train up off the floor so I could see it.
And for a second, my brain simply refused to understand what my eyes were showing me.
Sewn all over the train of my wedding dress, all along its length, were little fabric suitcases. Tiny
ones, cut and stitched from scraps of cloth, made to look like luggage. I counted them later. There were eight. Eight little suitcases stitched across the white fabric.
And the largest one, sewn right at the very end of the train, at the part that dragged furthest behind me, had a little paper tag hanging off its handle.
The tag said, in neat handwriting:
LISA.
For several seconds I genuinely could not
