The Mother in the Back Row

“Jill. Come stand up by me for the next one.”

“No, honey.”

“It’s not right, you back here. I told her that.”

“I know you did. And I gave her my word, and I’m keeping it.” I straightened his boutonniere, which did not need it. “A bride gets one day. You go on back. You can be mad for me on Monday.”

His jaw worked. He looked over at Rick, and then at me, and then he did what I asked, because he is the kind who will. But he did not smile much in the next six pictures, and I noticed his own mother, Kim, give me a long look across the doorway that had a question in it.

There was never one of just Lauren and me. It was not on the list. I had read the list upside down on my own kitchen table, and I knew it wasn’t, and I did not ask for it. I had said I would do exactly what she asked, and I meant to be able to say afterward that I had.

Supper was at six. The roast beef was tender and the potatoes were hot, which at thirty-eight dollars a plate they had better be. I sat at the family table as promised, down at the far end from Rick and Sandra, next to Matt’s father.

Jeff is a big, slow-talking farmer with hands like fence posts. He ate his whole plate without a word, wiped his mouth, and leaned over to me.

“Fine supper.”

“The Columbus people did it.”

“Mm.” He folded his napkin. “I’ve put on a wedding. I know about what this ran. And I know who to thank for it, whatever row they stand a person in.”

I could not answer him. I patted his arm, and he let me, and then he went to check the radar on his phone because his beans were still in the field.

Rick danced the father and daughter dance with her. It was a George Strait song. He was stiff, he never could dance, but she looked up at him like he had hung the moon, and I thought: there, that’s what the beige bought. She got that, and it was real to her, and I would not take it back.

Donna leaned in beside me. “You all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re a better woman than I am.”

“I’m a tireder one,” I said. “Go get me a kolache before they’re gone.”

They were gone by eight. All forty-eight.

The cake got cut. The young ones danced, and the dark came down outside the big doors until the string lights were the only light there was.

At a quarter to ten the DJ announced the last song, and after it a sparkler send-off out front. People started gathering up their coats and their children and drifting toward the doorway.

I had one job left.

The photographer’s contract said the balance was due on the wedding day, $2,400. Every other bill for that wedding I had paid by moving money into my daughter’s account and letting her write the check. This last one I wanted to hand over with my own hand. Call it pride. I had the check in my purse, in an envelope, written out the night before at the kitchen table. I had carried it around in that little clutch all day long. It was the one thing in there besides a comb and a roll of mints.

I found Paige back by the gift table, kneeling over her camera bag, fitting a lens into its slot. She had been on her feet for nine hours and she still had a smile for me.