They divided into vehicles with the logistical fuss of families who love each other and also keep score. Sloane rode with Felix and Judith; Dale and Vance took the overflow of luggage and Estelle, who sat in the back like a visiting magistrate. Judith talked about flowers that had arrived bruised, about Porter's mother who meant well and rearranged centerpieces as a love language, about the cousin with the wrong-decade toast who had already been assigned a sober buddy. Felix answered where answering was required. Sloane watched North Springs unroll past the window: the bakery with the same green awning Felix had described in early dating stories; the hardware store with a plywood Santa whose nose had been repainted too many times; the turn onto Maple where Felix had learned to ride a bike and where Sloane, on her first visit as a girlfriend seven years ago, had understood that loving him meant loving a place that already had a complete story about who he was supposed to become, and that her role in that story was still being edited in pencil.
The Merriweather house smelled of rosemary, lemon polish, and the faint sweetness of something baking that would be called rustic in the city and simply cake here. Audra came down the stairs in sweatpants and a silk robe, hair in rollers, and screamed softly with joy, a sound carefully modulated for neighbors and for her own throat on wedding weekend. She hugged Sloane hard enough to rearrange ribs and then held her at arm's length.
"You brought the good coat. I knew you would. Porter's aunt is already judging hemlines like it's an Olympic sport. Also Mom said the trains were late and I told her snow has better timing than most relatives, which Mom did not find charming."
Audra was twenty-six and luminous with the particular courage of people about to change their names on purpose. Porter Ellery appeared from the kitchen with flour on his cheek and the expression of a man who had been assigned pastry duty by a future mother-in-law and had accepted it as a spiritual trial. Introductions blurred into wine. Someone mentioned the rehearsal dinner's seating crisis. Someone else mentioned Vance's firm in the tone people use for weather they expect you to dress for. Sloane excused herself upstairs to the guest room that had been Felix's childhood bedroom, now stripped of posters and model bridges and fitted with quilted neutrality and a mirror that made everyone look slightly accused.
Felix followed with the bags. He shut the door. The house noises became distant weather: Audra's laugh, Dale's bass complaint about tape, Judith's instructions about shoes on the rug.
"I'm sorry about Vance," he said.
"He said destiny in front of your mother and my boots."
"I know."
Sloane set the blue thermos on the dresser like evidence entered into the record. Beside it she lined up the three pairs of heels: black for rehearsal, nude for ceremony flexibility and possible dancing, maroon for the toast and for Eloise. The lineup looked like a small jury. Felix looked at the shoes and then at her, and the room suddenly felt too narrow for five years of marriage and one unsaid March.
"I didn't accept," he said. "I need you to hear that as a full sentence with a period."
"I hear it. I also heard March is still open, and destiny is wearing sensible shoes, and Miriam saved you a corner."
He sat on the edge of the bed that was too short for his adult height, the same bed where he had once drawn entire neighborhoods on graph paper. "What do you want me to do? Say no by text from the train? Burn the letter in the fireplace during cocktail hour while Audra opens a toaster?"
"I want you to want our life as much as you want their approval."