My family.
My mother, wearing a pale pink dress and holding a tissue to her cheek, her hand trembling as she gripped my father’s arm. He sat straighter than I remembered, jaw tight, eyes fixed on the aisle as if daring anyone to doubt they belonged here. My sisters clutched each other’s hands, both of them wide-eyed and radiant in their borrowed Charleston finery, and my brother had the nerve to give me a crooked thumbs-up and a wink, like we were still back in Arkansas and I was sneaking out to my first real date.
I felt my breath catch. For a moment, the jasmine and salt air disappeared. The noise faded. All I could feel was the weight of belonging.
They’d come.
All this time, I’d thought I had to choose—past or present, roots or wings. But now, as I stood at the edge of a life I’d never dared to dream, I realized I didn’t have to choose at all.
They were here. I was still me.
And I was finally whole.
I walked toward Silas alone. No one gave me away. I gave myself.
The aisle was lined with white rose petals, but all I saw was him. All I heard was the thud of my heart as I reached him, his hands slipping into mine.
“You’re late,” he whispered.
“You’re lucky I showed up,” I whispered back.
He grinned—slow and devastating—and that was it.
The officiant spoke. Vows were exchanged. The world held its breath. And then?—
“I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
He kissed me before the sentence was finished.
And just like that—I was his.
Mrs. Dane.
The seventh bride.
The last ceremony.
The one I never planned for, and the only one I’d never forget.
The receptions spilled across Dominion’s sprawling lawns and terraces, lasting all day—music, dancing, toasts under starlight. There were fireworks. Lanterns. One of the brothers dared another to jump into the reflecting pool. Someone broke a crystal flute and blamed it on the breeze.
It was the happiest chaos I’d ever known.
And in the quiet, after the last toast, I stood beside Silas on the steps of the estate where everything had started and ended and begun again.
His hand found mine. Steady. Strong. Everything I hadn’t known I needed.
“You ready?” he asked softly.
“For what?”
“The next life.”
I turned to him, the weight of everything behind us—and everything ahead—settling in my chest like a promise.
“I was born ready,” I said.
And I was.
