The Bouquet My Sister Handed Back

The Bouquet

The phones swung around to follow me. I could feel them, the way you can feel the sun on your neck. Somebody near the bar said, “Uh oh,” and somebody else laughed nervously.

Kelsey saw me coming. Her face went white, all at once, like someone had pulled a plug. She had a new ring on her left hand, and she was holding that hand against her chest like it hurt.

Tanner was still down on one knee. I do not think he knew how to get up.

He looked up at me with his mouth a little open, and for the first time I noticed how young he was. Twenty-seven, and he looked about fifteen.

I stopped right in front of them. The room got very quiet, except for our song, which was still playing because nobody had told Josh to stop it.

“Congratulations,” I said. “Thank you both.”

I meant that part. I want to be clear about that.

Kelsey is my only sister, and I had been waiting for somebody to love her right for a long time, and Tanner did love her. I could see it.

Then I held out my bouquet. The peonies were heavy and soft and smelled like my mother’s yard in June.

I had carried them down the aisle three hours earlier, past all those same people, with my dad on my arm.

Kelsey just stared at them.

“Take it,” I said quietly. “You’re the bride now.”

She took it. Her hand was shaking.

It was the hand with the ring on it, and the little diamond caught the string lights, and I remember thinking that it was a pretty ring and that I was glad for her even now.

I turned toward the DJ table. Josh was standing up behind his laptop, half crouched, like he was waiting for a tornado siren.

“Keep playing,” I said.

He nodded and sat back down, and the song kept going. Our song. It filled up the whole barn, and nobody in the world was dancing to it.

I turned around and looked at Ryan. He was still standing in the middle of the floor where I had left him, in his vest with his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, waiting for me.

He did not look embarrassed. He looked like a man waiting for his wife.

Behind me, I heard Kelsey say my name.

What Kelsey Did

When I turned back, Kelsey was holding the peonies against her chest with both arms, the way you hold a baby someone has just handed you before you are ready.

She looked down at the flowers. Then she looked at the ring.

Then she looked at me, standing there in my lace dress with nothing in my hands, and her chin started to wobble the way it did when she was four years old and had broken something of mine.

She raised one finger toward the DJ table. Josh saw it and paused the music. The barn went so quiet I could hear the crickets outside the big open doors.

Then my little sister walked over to me and put the bouquet back in my hands.

“No,” she said. “No, Meggie. This is yours.”

She turned to Josh. Her voice was wobbly, but it carried, because Kelsey has always had a voice that carries. She sang the solo in the Christmas program four years running.

“Can you start their song over?” she said. “From the beginning. Please.”

Josh did not say a word. He just leaned down to his laptop and clicked something.

Kelsey reached back and took Tanner by the hand and pulled him up off his knee. He came up red in the face.

She led him off the edge of the dance floor, back toward the tables, and on her way she stopped and wiped her eyes and looked at the room.