"You are here," I agreed.
"I'm the flower girl."
"I know you are."
"That means I'm in charge of the petals."
"You are."
"The basket has to be at the angle I said. Not the angle Aunt Lily said. The angle I said."
Lily put a hand over her heart with great solemnity. "I have been overruled."
"You have been overruled," Rhea confirmed.
"By a professional."
"By a professional."
Rhea climbed onto the little stool next to me and held Beom-Beom up so he could see himself in the mirror. She frowned. She adjusted the ribbon on his ear. She nodded once, like a director approving a take.
"Can I tie his ribbon a little better?" I asked.
She considered the question the way a queen considers a foreign envoy.
"Yes," she said finally. "But just the loop. Not the whole thing. The whole thing was me."
"Just the loop," I promised.
I tightened the small white bow and smoothed her hair off her temple, and I watched her watch me, and I thought, this is one of my children. This face, right here. Officially. On paper. Mine.
She pressed her cheek against mine for one second, then hopped down, announced she had to go check on the petal situation in the chapel, and was out the door again before I could answer.
Lily exhaled. "How does she have that much energy?"
"Sugar," Jade said.
"You gave her sugar?"
"One tiny pastry. Crumb-sized."
"On the morning she has to walk down an aisle?"
"Builds character."
The chapel space at the compound was on the east side of the main house, off the long gallery, a room with tall narrow windows and a high white ceiling that I had only ever seen used for boring things like meetings and standing receptions. Today it did not look boring. Today it looked like someone had loved it on purpose.
White candles down the side walls in glass hurricanes. White flowers in tall arrangements at the front, simple, not too much. Two rows of pale wooden chairs lined up on either side of a long aisle of white runner. The light coming through the windows was the cold late-autumn gold that only happens this time of year, when the sun is low and clear and the trees outside have given up most of their leaves.
I stood at the back with my grandmother's hand tucked into the crook of my arm. The string trio at the front shifted into something slow. My heart did something stupid inside my chest.
"Steady," Halmoni said under her breath.
"I'm steady."
"Good."
We walked.
