She closes the door behind her and looks at me. Her eyes move from the dress to the locket to my face, and she takes a breath, and for a moment I think she's going to say something clinical. Check my sugar. Ask about my breakfast. Make sure I have glucose tabs in whatever passes for a pocket in this dress.
She doesn't.
"You look beautiful, Sadie."
My throat tightens. "Thank you."
She steps closer. She takes both of my hands in hers and holds them, her grip firm and warm.
"I spoke with your groom man this morning," she says. "He asked me to come back here before the ceremony. He said you might need someone to walk with." She pauses. Her eyes are bright. "I would be honored to walk you down the aisle, Sadie. But I also understand if you'd rather walk alone. Some women prefer it. There's no wrong answer."
The tears come before I can stop them. I hold her hands and I let them fall.
"I don't want to walk alone," I say.
Dr. Mehta squeezes my hands. She nods once, the way she nods when a decision has been made and the path forward is clear.
"Then you won't." She releases one hand and moves to my left side, threading her arm through mine. The green silk of her dress is cool against my bare arm. "I don't have a speech prepared. But I will tell you what I told my wife on our wedding day, which is that the woman I was walking toward was the bravest person I'd ever met, and that I was going to spend the rest of my life trying to deserve her."
"You told Anita that?"
"I did. She told me to stop talking and kiss her." She looks at me sideways. "Anita is practical."
I laugh. It comes out wet and shaky but it's real, and Dr. Mehta smiles.
The music starts. I hear it through the doors, the low, resonant opening chords of something traditional that Father Konstantin chose. The murmur of voices quiets.
"Ready?" Dr. Mehta says.
"Yes."
The doors open.
The church is small. Stone walls, arched windows, light falling through stained glass in long colored beams that stripe the aisle and the pews and the altar where Nick is standing with Dmitri beside him. I see him first. I always see him first. Dark suit, white shirt, his hair pushed back from his forehead, his hands clasped in front of him. His eyes find mine the instant the doors part, and his face does the thing it always does when he sees me, the sharpening, the focus, the quiet recalibration of a man whose entire operating system just narrowed to a single point.
Then I see the pews.
The right side is his. Captains and their wives. Gregor. Yevgeny. Irina in the second row. Mikhail near the back with a bag at his feet that I know contains a glucometer and a juice box and everything else a medical professional brings to a wedding when the bride is a Type 1 diabetic.
The left side is mine.
Only it isn't empty.
Priya is in the front row in the blue dress she bought specifically for today, her dark hair loose on her shoulders. Beside her is Denise, tall and calm, wearing a suit the color of smoke. Then Dr Mehta’s wife, Anita, saving the seat on the aisle for the woman currently holding my arm.
But then on the second row stands Sarah Kowalski.
My breath catches.
Her red hair, shorter now, cut to her jaw. Her face, older, thinner, but the same. The same wide mouth. The same green eyes that used to find mine across every room we were ever in together. She's standing in a pew in a church in a city she doesn't live in, wearing a pretty dress, and she's crying. She's already crying before I've taken a single step, her hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking.
Beside Sarah, another face. Ruby Laiken. Ruby who drove me to the hospital to say my goodbyes to my mom. Ruby, who sat with me in the cafeteria and didn't say anything and didn't need to because she understood that sometimes the only thing you can do for a person is stay. She's in a pale pink dress and her eyes are red and she lifts her hand in a small wave. Barely a wave at all, just a movement of the fingers, but the gesture is so exactly Ruby that my vision blurs.
I don't understand the third row for a moment. I see faces that are familiar but out of context, faces that belong on a freeway in the middle of wreckage and sirens and shattered glass.
An elderly couple. The man's hand is around his wife's shoulder. They're composed with the quiet dignity of people who have been married for forty years and understand what they're watching.
Beside them, a man with broad shoulders and a careful posture. The shoulder. The dislocated shoulder. The man from the pickup who I told not to move,help is coming.
