“Hello, wife,” Declan said, when we finally broke apart.
“Hello, husband.” I was going to say those words every day for the rest of my life and it was never going to get old. “Have you told me I look beautiful yet?”
“Not today.”
“Declan Kingman.”
“You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”
“So are you,” I said, and he laughed, surprised out of it the way he sometimes was by a compliment, and I filed that away to fix for the rest of our lives.
We walked back down the aisle to the sound of our family, hand in hand, snow falling like in a fairy tale snow globe, and Pooh trotted alongside us, still wearing her cape, sleigh abandoned somewhere near the altar. She had very strong opinions about when a job was done.
At the entrance to the dome we stood together and greeted everyone as they headed out and up the path toward the ski lodge where the reception was waiting. Gryff and Artie, Isak with his camera up again and filming, the twins elbowing each other, Hayes with an arm around Willa. Nana, who cupped my face exactly as my mother had and told me I’d done well, and I felt that all the way to my bones.
Aunt Inanna caught my cheek in her fingers with terrifying speed and precision for someone of her age. I had been warned. I was not prepared.
“Has anyone seen Jessica?” Great Aunt Yvaine, scanning the line. “She just missed the whole wedding. Jessica?” She craned around in both directions. “Where has that girl gotten to.”
Great Uncle Jett steered her gently through the door. The mystery of Jessica remained unsolved.
When the last of our family had made their way out, it was just us.
Declan and me and our snow globe.
I walked back up the aisle, because I couldn’t help it, because I wasn’t done yet. I stood under the northern lights and tipped my head back and let myself just be inside this thing he had built for me. The cellist was packing up quietly at the side. The fairy lights were still on. The snow at the base of the altar was starting to settle but the pine trees still smelled real.
I found the small bundle of wildflowers Jules had tucked at the base of the altar. Mountain flowers, the kind that grew in July up on Bear Claw, purple and white and simple. Not part of any florist’s arrangement. Just from the mountain itself.
I touched one petal.
“How did you do all of this?” I asked.
Declan had come up behind me and he wrapped his arms around me from behind, pulling me into the warmth of his chest. I leaned back into him.
“Jules,” he said.
“That’s not an answer, that’s a name.”
“It’s both.” I felt him smile against my hair. “Also, for the record, we only lost one reindeer.”
I turned to look at him. “How many were there?”
“Technically just the one.”
“Declan.”
“Flynn tried to put a nose on it.”
I stared at him. He looked completely serious. “Like, a fake light-up nose.”
“He thought it would add something.”
“To a live reindeer.”
“In his defense—” Declan paused. “No. I’ve got nothing. He has no defense.”
I started laughing. The kind that came up from somewhere low and didn’t really stop, the kind you could only do when you were safe enough to completely let go. Declan watched me laugh with the expression he reserved specifically for this, warm and private and quietly delighted, like he was watching something rare.
