The Wedding That Finally Felt Like Home
We got married in Everett’s backyard a few months later.
He insisted on hosting it.
“This is where the first ridiculous marriage started,” he said. “Seems fitting the sensible one starts here too.”
Brielle walked ahead of me carrying flowers.
Everett walked me down the garden path.
When we reached Reid, Everett took my hand and placed it in his nephew’s.
“Take care of her.”
Reid nodded.
“I will.”
Everett narrowed his eyes.
“That wasn’t a suggestion.”
Everyone laughed.
After the ceremony, Brielle threw her arms around Reid.
“So does this mean I finally get to call you Dad?”
Reid knelt down beside her.
“Only if that’s what you want.”
She hugged him tighter.
“I already decided.”
I cried harder in that moment than during the vows.
We eventually moved to Charlotte for Reid’s work, but we came back to Raleigh often.
Brielle spent school breaks with Everett.
They kept playing chess.
Worked in the garden together.
He secretly gave her chocolate and called it his constitutional right as a grandfather.
Slowly, my own life expanded too.
Everett pushed me to go back to school once he learned I’d once dreamed of becoming an elementary teacher.
“Why are you treating your dream like it expired?” he asked.
“Because I’m thirty-eight.”
He just looked at me.
“I rebuilt my entire life in my seventies. Try a better excuse.”
So I enrolled.
A few years later, I graduated.
Everett cried harder than anyone there.
