nobody in the whole room moved. We all just stood there in the wreckage of it.
Then Lisa lifted her head off Brandon’s shoulder, sniffed hard, and said, in a small hopeful voice:
“Are you still getting married?”
And a few people actually laughed, this surprised, grateful, releasing laugh, because leave it to a
seven-year-old to ask the only question that actually mattered.
Brandon looked at me over the top of her head, still holding her.
“Are we?” he said.
I looked down at my train. At the eight little fabric suitcases still stitched into it, and the big one at the end with my daughter’s name hanging off it like a cruel joke.
Lisa followed my gaze. She wriggled down out of Brandon’s arms, walked over, and pointed at the suitcase with her name on it.
“Mom,” she said. “Can you take my name off? I don’t want to
be a suitcase.”
My throat closed up so tight I couldn’t answer for a second.
And then Megan was there beside me, my sister, appearing out of nowhere the way she always
did when I needed her, holding up a tiny pair of embroidery scissors she must have grabbed from somewhere.
I looked at all eight of them. That woman’s careful, poisonous handiwork.
“Cut them all off,” I said. “Every last one.”
So my sister knelt down in front of me, and two of my bridesmaids knelt down too, and right
