Hollis Farm is an hour north, past two Dollar Generals and a hand-painted sign for fresh eggs.
I pulled in Thursday at six with the garment bag over my arm.
Emma had texted that morning.
Can you bring the dress tonight? So it's in the bridal suite for Saturday.
The mother carries the dress.
I hung it on the brass hook by the bridal suite mirror, tag out.
HADLEY, J. — PAID IN FULL
The rental company had already set two hundred white chairs on the lawn for Saturday.
For the rehearsal, the wedding party used the first four rows.
I sat in the last one.
Nobody told me to.
Nobody told me not to.
Judge Hal Whitcomb, retired, was officiating as a favor to Rick's family.
He ran the rehearsal like a sentencing.
"Mothers light the candles," he said, reading from his sheet.
"Mother of the groom."
Denise stepped up.
"And mother of the bride."
He looked at the paper.
"Brooke?"
Brooke stepped up beside Denise and lit a battery candle with a little plastic flick of her thumb.
Denise glanced back at the last row.
I looked at the arbor.
I had picked the arbor.
Rick walked Emma down the aisle twice.
The first time he went too fast, and she had to grab his arm.
The second time he stopped to wave at somebody.
"Who gives this woman?" the judge read.
"Her mother and I," Rick said, out of habit from somebody else's wedding.
Then he caught himself.
"I do."
Brooke laughed.
Everybody laughed.
"And the reading," the judge said.
"Jill Hadley?"
I walked up from the back row with Brooke's printout folded in my hand.
The microphone was set for someone taller.
I didn't adjust it.
"Your children are not your children," I read.
My voice didn't do anything.
I didn't let it.
"You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth."
I read it to the end, the whole thing, at the speed you'd read a lease.
Then I folded the paper and stood there.
It was very quiet on the lawn.
Somewhere behind the barn, a caterer dropped a sheet pan.
Emma was looking at me.
Not at Brooke.
At me.
For a long second, she didn't look away.
Then Brooke started clapping.
"See? Perfect."
"Short and sweet."
Judge Whitcomb took off his reading glasses.
"Nobody ever reads that one like they mean it," he said, to no one in particular.
The Tasting Room is the farm's restaurant, all reclaimed wood and Edison bulbs and an antler chandelier.
Six long tables.
The head table sat under the chandelier.
My table was the last one, against the wall, beside the kitchen's swinging door.
The servers stacked their trays on a metal stand at my shoulder.
Every time the door swung, it bumped the back of my chair.
My place card just said Jill.
Somebody had been talked to.
I sat down and put my purse in my lap.
Inside it was my driver's license, forty dollars cash, and a Panera rewards card.
That was all.
Rick went up to the bar in a blue blazer.
"Two bottles of the Blanton's for the head table," he said.
"Put it on the wedding."
"On the host tab, sir?"
"Sure. Whatever."
Carol sat beside Brooke at the head table, in her good navy dress.
She caught my eye across the room and nodded, once.
It was the nod she must have used on kids who came in late without a note.
Rick stopped at my table on his way back from the bar.
"Glad you came, Jill," he said.
"Means a lot to Em."
"Thanks for the three hundred," I said.
He smiled with half his face.
"Just keeping track."
Then he went back to the head table and poured his mother a bourbon she didn't drink.
Emma was wearing my mother's pearls.
Every time she turned her head, they caught the light from the antlers.
The salads came.
A server set a tray of dirty glasses on the stand by my ear.
The door bumped my chair.
I ate my salad.
It was the beet salad I'd chosen at the tasting in June.
It was very good.
At 7:50, Brooke stood and tapped a fork against her glass.
"I just want everybody to relax tonight," she said.
"Everything's covered."
"Eat, drink."
"It's on us!"
Rick raised a bourbon.
Sixty people cheered.
Carol patted Brooke's hand.
"You're a saint," I watched her say.
I looked at my watch.
At 7:58, the side door opened.
Marisol walked in with the folder.