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"Oh, no," I said.

Then it went sideways along the seam.

Now, a sailcloth marquee has a specific property, which is that the interior is one continuous surface of pale canvas, so that anything on the far side of it becomes a large moving silhouette. What the nine of us in that meadow were now watching was a shadow puppet of a chipmunk sprinting across the ceiling of my ex-husband's wedding.

Somebody said, "Is that a rat?"

"It's a chipmunk."

"That's a huge rat."

"It's a chipmunk, it's nine feet from the light, it's the size of a—"

The chipmunk reached the apex, panicked, and ran one complete circle around the entire crown of the tent.

Two of the grips began to applaud.

I put down my coffee and got up on the platform. I want it noted that I did this in a jacket and shoes not designed for it, and that I was at that point the most senior person at that location by roughly a decade.

"Does anybody have a broom?"

"You're going to hit it?"

"I'm going to encourage it."

Somebody handed me a light stand.

What followed was four minutes I would prefer not to describe in detail. The short version is that a chipmunk and I disagreed about the exit route. At one point I was standing on a folding chair on a platform holding a nine-foot aluminum pole over my head. When the animal finally came down, it came down directly onto my shoulder, stared into my eyes at a range of about six inches, and then jumped into the grass.

The noise I made was heard by every person in that meadow.

Somewhere behind me, a man coughed.

I turned around.

At the top of the meadow, at the tree line, hands in the pockets of a very sensible coat, stood my ex-husband.

I have no idea how long he'd been there.

Blaine looked at me for a long moment. Then he looked at the two enormous marquees standing in the cathedral where none had been that morning. Then, eyebrow up, at the staging truck, the lighting package, and the nine strangers assembling it all. Rhoda was down at the far end with her hands pressed together in prayer.

My jacket had a brown smear of chipmunk shit across the shoulder.

I want to be honest. I lit up. God help me, I did. I stood on that platform holding a light stand and felt my entire face open, because for one second I was thirty-four years old again and I had built Blaine Cauthorne something to be proud of.

"I fixed the tent," I called.

He looked at it a moment longer, shaking his head slowly.

"I know," he said. "Mother's told everyone."

"There were pineapples—"

"I heard about the pineapples."

"Blaine—"

"Benny had it handled."