The ring cooled between my fingers like a small, honest coin. For a few days after Mark’s question, I caught myself looking at it in unexpected moments—while I poured coffee, when I wiped sawdust on my jeans, when a client called to ask if we could start a day early. It was a private punctuation that made the ordinary sentences of our life read new.
We agreed, almost at once, on the kind of wedding we wanted: small, serviceable, an afternoon under the trees on our parcel with a borrowed pastor, a potluck of pies from Maria, and people who’d stayed when rumor had wanted to eat us. The idea felt right because it reflected what our life had been: improvised, sincere, and stitched together by friends who could carry a folding table without ceremony.
But life—stubborn and practical—kept filin
