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By Root 474 0

turned around as the man Pam was about to marry walked between the chairs and took his place at the center where a clergyman was standing. Ryan looked well into his forties, tall, tanned, with a salt and pepper beard, his handsome features lined. And then Pam appeared, coming down the aisle with her father, then her mother and her brothers behind. Mrs. Borden was unchanged, her cropped sandy hair styled in the same practical way, her figure still trim. She turned her head to smile reassuringly at the guests on either side of her. All their lives the Bordens had presided over similarly large gatherings, weekly assemblies and homecoming games and graduations, and in a way this was no different. The only person he didn’t recognize was a girl of about twelve or so, with a long, pretty face and a somber expression, carrying a bouquet of flowers. He guessed it was one of Pam’s nieces or younger cousins. Pam wore a sleeveless dress with a train, made of crumpled ivory material. The effect was not so much a dress as a long bedsheet that she had wrapped around herself, a careless yet perfect vision. She carried yellow freesias casually in one hand, smiling and waving to people with the other. To this day she was the most beautiful woman he had ever known.

The couple stood with their backs to the guests, facing the minister and the mountains and the setting sun. It was a brief, simple ceremony, without bridesmaids or a best man, as Amit had predicted. Someone got up and read a poem he could not hear because there was no microphone. Still, visually, it was spectacular, the sky deepening into a combination of dark peach and plum over the mountains, the lush grounds of the school unpopulated save for the spot where the wedding was taking place. He watched strands of Pam’s hair, loosened by the wind that had settled over them, causing women to put shawls around their shoulders, that cold mountain air that always replaced the day’s heat. She was thirty-seven now, his age, but from the back she looked like a girl of nineteen. And yet she was marrying late, so much later than he had.

As he witnessed the ceremony he felt grateful for the faint connection he and Pam had maintained, enough for him to be sitting there, watching her marry, witnessing the very beginning of that phase of her existence. Amit anticipated only a continuation of the things he knew: Megan, his job, life in New York, the girls. The most profound thing, having Maya and Monika, had already happened; nothing would be more life-altering than that. He wanted to change none of it, and yet a part of him sometimes longed to return to the beginning of his relationship with Megan, if only for the pleasure of anticipating and experiencing those things again.

There was a round of applause as Pam and Ryan kissed, their eyes open from the excitement, and then the music started up and the wedding party receded down the grassy aisle. Amit rose, this time positioning himself on Megan’s left without having to be told, and together they took their places behind the others in the receiving line. Pam tossed back her head and laughed at things people said, leaning over to kiss them or put a hand comfortingly to their upper arms. “Where are your beautiful little girls?” she cried out as soon as she saw Amit, extending her neck so that he could kiss her on one cheek, then the other. Her skin was the same, disconcertingly soft, but now that he faced her he saw Mrs. Borden’s crow’s-feet forming around her eyes.

“We left them with Megan’s parents. It’s our weekend of reckless freedom.”

“I want to stay up until five in the morning,” Megan announced cheerfully. “I want to celebrate all night and watch the sun rise from our balcony.”

Amit glanced at Megan, puzzled that she’d never mentioned this to him. He had assumed her main objective for the weekend was to sleep undisturbed. “You do?”

Megan didn’t answer him. Instead she said to Pam, “You look lovely. It’s such a pretty dress.” She said this genuinely, not intimidated by Pam as she’d been in the past. Amit wondered if it was because Pam