Chapter 20 - A Tradition We Chose
I didn't answer Martha's note. I folded it, handed it to Mara for the file, and put the braid away in my mother's silver box.
On our first wedding anniversary, Nick and I invited forty friends to the Riverbend courtyard. We were already married; this was not a second ceremony to erase the first. It celebrated what we'd protected afterward. Elliot came early to set out chairs. Sloane brought flowers and told me she'd found a job that didn't involve anyone else's expectations. Rosa adjusted the small white roses clipped into my now shoulder-length hair.
“Want me to braid it?” she asked.
I thought about that first dance, the terrible sound, the room going silent. Then I thought about my mother's hands, moving gently through my hair while she told me to keep something beautiful for myself.
“Yes,” I said. “But ask me before you pin anything.”
“Of course.”
Nick found me by the open garden gate. “You look like you,” he said.
“I feel more like me.”
He held out a narrow blue ribbon. “I found this in the box with your mom's letters. I figured you could decide what to do with it.”
I tied it around the end of Rosa's tiny braid. Then I took Nick's hand and walked into the courtyard. Marisol's grandson played guitar. Children chased bubbles across the grass. Nobody announced a family tradition. Nobody claimed a right to change somebody else for their own amusement.
When Nick asked if we could dance, I said yes. His father watched from the first row, wiping his eyes. We moved slowly, laughing when Nick stepped on my shoe.
“I can't give you back that day,” he whispered.
“I don't need you to. I need you here on the hard days after it.”
“I will be.”
May you like
Around us, the lights came on one by one in the building my mother had helped save. Marisol raised a glass. “To the family you choose!”
I squeezed Nick's hand. My hair brushed my shoulders, lighter than before. It would grow however I wanted. And when the music ended, I knew something Martha never had: no one else got to decide who I became next.
