Nathan standing alone behind the church doors.
Nathan holding one arm out as he waited for me.
Then came the walk.
Page after page.
Nathan concentrating fiercely.
My hand wrapped around his arm.
His lips moving as he counted.
The moment he glanced at me to ask whether he was walking too quickly.
The moment he whispered something that made me cry.
The moment Daniel hugged him.
Then came the speech.
One photograph stretched across two full pages.
Nathan stood at the altar holding his folded paper in both hands.
Behind him, almost everyone in the pews was crying.
I stared at that photograph for a long time.
Then I cried all over again.
Part 6 — Margaret Saw What I Saw
The following Sunday, we hosted dinner.
Mom came.
Nathan came.
Daniel’s parents came too.
Nathan spent most of the evening discussing football with Daniel as though he had not brought an entire church to tears only eight weeks earlier.
I placed the special album on the coffee table.
I didn’t announce it.
I didn’t carry it to Margaret.
I didn’t say, Look at the photographs you didn’t want.
I simply left it there.
Then I went into the kitchen.
When I returned, Margaret was sitting on the couch with the album open across her knees.
She had already gone through nearly half of it.
I stopped behind the sofa.
She was staring at the photograph of Nathan waiting behind the church doors.
His arm was extended.
His expression was focused.
His lips were slightly parted.
You could almost hear him counting.
Margaret didn’t look up.
“He practiced this?”
“Every day for three weeks.”
She turned the page.
Then another.
And another.
Eventually, she reached the photograph from his speech.
Nathan at the altar.
The paper in his hands.
Me crying beside Daniel.
She stayed on that page for a long time.
