Brandi Arrives
Brandi came early, at ten after four, with Nora asleep in her arms in a pale blue romper. Ryan’s brother was behind her carrying the folded stroller.
She wore navy. Her dark blonde hair was down around her shoulders, not even curled, and I could see from ten feet away that she had not slept.
She came down the rows toward the front, and she saw Grandma in the chair, and she saw me bent over her, and she stopped right behind Grandma’s chair.
Grandma did not turn around, and she did not get up.
In twenty minutes two hundred people would be sitting in those white chairs, and half of them had already heard about the punch table. Brandi knew that. I watched her know it.
What Brandi Did Behind the Chair
When I straightened up, Brandi was still standing there.
She was holding Nora against her, and her face was calm, and she was looking down at the back of Grandma’s head.
Then she leaned over the chair, with the baby between them, and put her free hand on Grandma’s shoulder. The same shoulder. I saw it, and so did Megan, who had come down the path after me.
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“I’m sorry, Grandma,” she said. She did not whisper it. She said it plain, in her regular voice. “I’m so sorry. I was wrong.”
Grandma reached up with her bandaged hand and covered Brandi’s hand on her shoulder, and held it there. She did not turn around. She did not need to. She just held on.
Nora woke up, reached out and got a fistful of Grandma’s white curls, the way babies do, and Grandma laughed out loud in the empty orchard, and so did Megan, and so did I.
Then Ryan’s brother set up the stroller by the Stroller Parking sign, and Brandi sat down in the second row, directly behind Grandma, and Megan marched me back up the path before Ryan could see me.
The Ceremony
Guests filled in. Ryan’s side was all Vos cousins and seed customers in pressed khakis.
Our side was Krolls and Kent City church people and half the teachers from my school. Two hundred chairs, nearly every one full.
Mom came at twenty after four with Aunt Sue. Megan told me she stopped at the end of the front row when she saw Grandma, and her hand went to her chest.
She looked at Brandi in the second row, and Brandi shook her head at her, just once. Mom sat down in her own seat beside Grandma and did not say a word.
Two hundred people watched my sister sit behind the seat she had pushed our grandmother out of, and by cocktail hour every one of them knew why.
The music started at four thirty-two.
It was a fiddle and a guitar, two brothers from Sparta who play weddings and funerals and the Sparta Fourth of July, and they played the hymn Grandpa used to hum in the barn.
I walked myself. I had a small photo of Dad pinned inside my bouquet, wrapped in the ribbon, where nobody could see it but me.
Ryan was at the end of the aisle under the arch with his brother and the pastor.
He was crying already. He did not try to hide it. That is one of the reasons I married him.
When I passed the front row I touched Grandma’s shoulder, and she patted my hand twice, the way she did when I was little and had a nightmare. Then I walked the last twenty feet to Ryan.