Dad should have been there.
Nothing Claire did could change that.
But somehow, the day no longer felt like it had a hole in it.
We’d made room for his absence instead of pretending it wasn’t there.
“I spent months thinking about him not being here,” I said.
Claire rested her head against my shoulder. “I know.”
“I never told you how much.”
“You didn’t have to.”
That was Claire.
Sometimes annoyingly so.
A few weeks later, we got our wedding photos back.
There were hundreds.
Claire in the white dress.
Us cutting the cake.
Aaron giving his speech.
Our families dancing.
But the first one I framed wasn’t any of those.
It was taken immediately after the ceremony.
Claire is still wearing Dad’s suit.
I’m holding her around the waist.
The jacket is too large. The pants bunch at her ankles.
Her hair looks beautiful, somehow
And we’re both laughing.
You can see the folded cuff.
You can’t read the writing.
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But I know it’s there.
“Richard’s Wedding Suit.”
And beneath it, stitched by the woman I married: “Danny.”
I’d spent the entire engagement thinking about all the ways my father would miss my wedding.
I never imagined that, because of Claire, a piece of him would walk down the aisle.
I still got the traditional wedding.
The dress. The photos.
The cake. The terrible dancing.
Everything I thought I wanted.
But when I remember that day now, the first thing I see isn’t Claire’s white dress.
It’s that oversized black suit coming toward me beneath the trees.
And the moment I realized the woman I was about to marry had found a way to honor someone she never had the chance to call family.
