“I got married.”
I freeze.
“…You what?”
Across the room, Delilah’s head snaps toward me. Her mother goes still with one hand half-raised toward the fruit tray she’d been eyeing. Will’s eyebrows go up just enough to tell me he’s listening now whether he means to or not.
“Courthouse. Tuesday. Fifteen minutes. Witness was the clerk and a vending machine.”
Will snorts. Actually snorts.
Delilah gasps. “MOE!”
“I know,” Moe groans through the phone. “Raylen wanted small. Then smaller. Then microscopic.”
I press a hand to my forehead. “You’re telling me you skipped the biggest wedding of the century?”
“Listen,” he says. “I panicked.”
That does it. I laugh. Real, loud, unrestrained laughter that breaks the tension in the room clean in half. Because of course he did. Because it is painfully on brand. Because somewhere in the middle of death and fallout and ghosts, my son went and married the girl he loves in a courthouse with fluorescent lights and a vending machine as witness, and somehow that feels exactly right.
“Congratulations,” I say, still laughing a little. “I’m proud of you.”
There’s a beat on the other end. Then quieter, “Thanks, Dad.”
My chest tightens at that. It always does. Still new enough to sting. Still precious enough to wreck me when I’m not braced for it.
We hang up.
Delilah is staring at me. Not casually. Not curiously. Softly.
“What?” I ask.
“You sounded… happy,” she says softly.
“I am.”
It comes out without hesitation. Because I am. Because not all endings have to look like war. Because sometimes kids survive us and build something anyway.
Her mom stands. “We’re going to find the cafeteria. I want whatever dessert they’re pretending is homemade.”
She grabs Will’s arm with the casual authority of a woman who has spent decades steering military men without asking permission. “Come on, soldier.”
He hesitates.
Then looks at me.
“Five minutes,” he says.
The warning in it is clear. The permission in it is somehow worse.
The door clicks shut behind them as they leave Delilah and I alone.
The room feels smaller instantly. Hotter. Charged in that way a room only gets when two people have spent too long pretending not to be exactly what they are to each other.
She tilts her head. “What were you about to say before we interrupted?”
My heart slams hard enough to make me feel it in my throat.
