Chapter 10 - The Ceremony They Chose
Lila did not want to revisit Marco's wedding. She wanted to stand in the hotel doorway again, this time knowing she could walk away whenever she pleased.
Dana called the manager, who remembered the day with an apologetic sadness. The ballroom was empty on the morning they came. No string quartet, no photographers, no anxious bride upstairs. Sunlight fell across the polished floor. A cleaner pushed a cart through the far corridor and nodded as they passed.
Lila stopped between the double doors. For a moment she placed her hand on the wood exactly where Dana remembered it from the day she returned. Then she let go.
"I thought if I reached you, the next thing would be easy," she said.
"I thought that too."
"It hasn't been."
"No."
Lila looked around the room where Marco had tried to explain her away. "But I get to be tired of this room. I get to decide never to come back. That's different from being told I can't leave."
Dana waited while Lila crossed the floor. Her sister touched the edge of the altar table, still marked by a pale scratch the hotel hadn't polished out. Then she turned toward the exit without looking to Dana for permission. It was a small movement. Dana knew how much it cost.
Over the following months, the civil process concerning Lila's marriage continued, informed by the new record of coercion and contested consent. Lila attended counseling on her own terms and found part-time work in a small library. Some days she could stay through an entire shift; some days she needed to leave. She practiced telling her supervisor when she wasn't well. She learned the bus routes between her apartment, the library, and a grocery store that sold the orange marmalade she liked.
The criminal case remained pending, with motions, hearings, and the slow testing of evidence. Dana attended when Lila requested her company and stayed away when she didn't. Nora received support after making her statement. Celeste wrote once to say she was working with a new attorney to untangle her own financial arrangements. Marianne began visiting for tea instead of demanding explanations. None of these developments made the years disappear, and no courtroom could promise what Lila would feel tomorrow.
Dana and Ben rebuilt their planning company with smaller events. They stopped accepting clients who demanded that every disagreement be hidden until the guests went home. The first wedding they planned after reopening took place in a public garden, with fifty people, folding chairs, and a cake that leaned to one side. The couple laughed when it started to rain. Dana laughed too.
Late that evening she went to Lila's apartment. Her sister had invited her for dinner without their mother or any legal documents. Two mugs stood on the table. Lila had made spaghetti and bought store-brand cookies. They ate by the window, discussing a television program and whether a plant on the sill had enough light.
"I found another photograph," Lila said, after they had finished. Dana stiffened out of old habit. "Relax. It's one from when we were little. We were wearing those awful matching sweaters."
She handed Dana a picture of two girls standing in snow, grinning at a dog just beyond the frame. Dana remembered the day. They had tried to make the dog pull a sled and he had refused.
"You got angry because I wouldn't stop crying," Lila said.
"You were cold. I kept telling you winter was supposed to be fun."
"You pulled me inside anyway."
"Of course I did."
Lila looked at the photograph. "For years I wondered whether I had imagined being somebody's sister. Not a patient. Not a wife. Just somebody's annoying little sister."
Dana reached across the table but stopped with her hand resting beside Lila's plate. She waited. Lila slipped her fingers over Dana's.
"You're still annoying," Dana said.
Lila laughed, a real laugh that took them both by surprise. The phone on the counter rang; Dana ignored it until she saw Ben's name. He left a voicemail about a family anniversary party that might keep the company solvent another month. For once, Dana let the ordinary business problem remain unresolved while she sat with her sister.
Lila looked out at the street, where strangers hurried home with grocery bags and umbrellas. "Tomorrow I'm going to take the early bus to the library," she said. "I want to open the doors myself."
May you like
Dana nodded. "Then I'll see you when you're done."
It was not a promise to save her sister, or to recover the years they had lost. It was the kind of promise they could actually keep: two women with their own keys, choosing to see each other again.
