The words hit like cold on bare skin. I don’t move. I feel my face heat. The insult is lazy—that’s what stings. Lazy and easy and a thing that will be said again if someone doesn’t teach the room new rules.
Cayce doesn’t stiffen. He freezes. It’s different. The lines don't change on his face. The way he’s holding himself doesn’t change. The temperature does. He leans a fraction and says something in Tiernan’s ear that I don’t catch.
Tiernan nods without looking over. He steps away from his post and crosses the floor with that particular patience that has made men pray. He doesn’t touch the offender. He says something I can’t hear and the laughter dies like someone cut power to the lights. The man who spoke blinks at Tiernan, blinks at his friends, and then follows Tiernan out of the hall like he just remembered an important call.
I breathe. Not because I’m afraid they’ll drag someone outside and end a life. I already know they will. I breathe because I know Cayce has to act now in order to end something else—the habit, the permission, the tone of disrpect—and I am suddenly, wildly grateful to be married to a man who doesn’t let any of that get comfortable in our house.
“Look at me,” Cayce says, quiet.
I do. I expect to see anger. I see something worse. I see the part of him that hates that this touches me, the part that would burn and salt the ground to prevent it, the part that remembers everyone who ever said something they shouldn’t and thinks about the cost.
“I’m embarrassed,” I say, because I am and because I refuse to pretend I’m not.
“Don’t be,” he says. Not soft; corrective. “He’ll learn. They’ll all learn. You won’t have to carry it alone.”
“I can carry things for you,” I say.
“You don’t have to carry that, either,” he says, his tone final.
We stand there for a second like the eye of a storm that keeps circling but never quite lands. Then Nan appears on my left like she heard nothing and everything at the same time, tucks her arm through mine, and glares at a tray of stuffed mushrooms like they owe her an apology.
“Come,” she says. “The band is murdering a love song. We will save it by dancing to something with a beat.”
I let her pull me away. I look back once. Tiernan has not returned. Roisín has drifted to the door where he went. Cayce’s hand rests at my waist—not pushing, not claiming, just there.I see you,it says.I will handle this part.
We dance until my shoes hurt. People tell us stories about our families that are almost certainly lies. My father watches me and occasionally looks like he recognizes his wife. Pru steals a centerpiece. Aoife pretends not to notice.
Later, much later, when the cake has been cut and the aunts have blessed me twelve times and someone’s niece has fallen asleep under the gift table, Tiernan returns to the edge of the floor. Cayce looks at him. Tiernan nods once. That’s all.
“What did he do?” I ask when we have a sliver of quiet.
“Brought him somewhere for me to handle it,” Cayce says. “And that’s all for now.”
When I slip out for air, the November cold kisses the sweat at my temples and makes me feel new. The church steps are damp with condensation and bad ideas. I stand there with my hands in the pockets of my dress like a girl who didn’t grow up being watched.
Cayce follows me out. He doesn’t crowd. He looks up at the sky while I take the minutes that I need.
“I meant what I said,” I tell him, without throat-clearing, without a joke to soften it. “You’re my family now. No one hurts you. If they try, I’ll hurt them back and make it ten times worse.”
He studies me like he did earlier when I pulled him into a storage closet and promised a future I don’t know how to build yet.
“You don’t know how,” he says again. Less resistance this time. More wonder.
“I’ll learn,” I say. “Faster than you think.”
He leans his shoulder into mine. The cold gets less bossy as I’m surrounded by his warmth.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay,” I say.
The doors open behind us as laughter spills out. In one corner, Pru is bargaining with the DJ. Somewhere, Nan is pocketing extra mints with the stealth of a fox.
I look sideways at my husband, at the line of his jaw where my thumb fits, at the mouth that called megood girland made me believe it. I think about the radiator and the leather and the two minutes that were never going to just be two.
“After the send-off,” he says, as if reading the thought, “we’re leaving the cousins to drink in peace.”
“Where are we going?” I ask.
