Theo watched, smiling.
But when Elena invited him closer, his expression suddenly changed.
**“I didn’t ask you only for me,” he whispered.**
“There’s someone else who needs to see this.”
Then he hurried toward the children’s table.
**And returned carrying a tablet against his chest.**
Elena thought he wanted to show her a photograph.
Instead, Theo carefully turned the screen toward her.
A little girl appeared.
She had dark curls, enormous brown eyes, and a purple blanket tucked around her shoulders.
Behind her was a familiar living room.
“Elena?” the girl whispered.
Elena gripped the arms of her wheelchair.
“June?”
The little girl smiled.
Then her eyes filled with tears.
“I saw you.”
Elena looked at Theo.
He was practically bouncing with excitement.
“She’s been watching the whole time!” he announced. “Dad helped me call her before the music started.”
On the tablet, June Bennett wiped her cheeks with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
She was eleven years old.
She was Theo’s older sister.
And she used a power wheelchair because of a neuromuscular condition that affected her strength and stamina.
June had been invited to the wedding, but a respiratory illness had kept her home.
Her father, Owen, had stayed with her while Theo attended with their mother.
Elena had known June for nearly a year.
They’d become friends through an accessible arts program at the local community center, where children and adults with different physical abilities took part in music, painting, and movement workshops.
June was funny, stubborn, and unusually talented at remembering choreography.
She was also the person who’d once told Elena that dancing was the thing she missed most about feeling carefree.
