“Are you okay?” I whispered.
She nodded. Then she reached out and touched my face. Just for a second. Just her fingertips against my cheek.
“You’re shaking,” she said.
“I told you I wouldn’t.”
“You’re shaking.”
I put my hand over hers.
“I’ll stop,” I said.
She smiled. It was small and tired and it cost her something to produce, but it was real.
“Let’s go home,” she said.
I stood up and offered her my arm. She took it. We walked together toward the side exit of the ballroom, the navy jacket around her shoulders, her bare head held up straight.
Behind us, no one spoke.
Lucas took one step forward.
“Dad.”
I didn’t turn around.
“Dad. Wait.”
We kept walking.
“Mom.”
That word stopped Mary. Not me. Her. She turned her head just slightly, just enough to see Lucas standing there in his white wedding suit with his wet eyes and his shaking hands and his opened mouth full of everything he should have said an hour ago.
Mary looked at him for a long time.
Then she turned back to me.
“Take me home,” she said.
And I did.
The drive home was twenty-two minutes. We didn’t speak for the first fifteen.
Mary sat in the passenger seat with the jacket still around her shoulders. The window was cracked open, and the night air moved through the car, carrying the smell of cut grass and someone’s charcoal grill. She had her head tilted back against the headrest, and her eyes were closed, and for a terrible moment I thought she had fallen asleep or worse.
But then she said, “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
“People were watching.”
“I know.”
“Some of them were laughing before you stood up.”
“I know that too.”
