We all stood outside for the ceremony, beneath an arch of willow branches that represented a willingness to bend when the storms of life inevitably raged against our new unions.
Andre’s hair was a rich hickory in the sunlight, like the fur of a beast that was now only memory, and I saw in his eyes the same certainty I felt inside my heart.
The priest blessed our marriages and declared them valid in the eyes of God.
Callista burst into laughter as Thomas swept her off her feet, spinning them both in dizzy circles while our family and friends cheered.
Andre only slid a wooden band onto my finger and gently pressed his lips to mine. While I was still breathless, staring at the ring, he traced his finger around it and then down my palm, sending shivers all the way to my core.
“The circle of eternity,” he said quietly. “The existence that never ends.”
It was a philosophical teaching. I must have shared it one afternoon, and he’d tucked the details away as he always did.
Suddenly, though I possessed all the words in the world, none were enough to describe everything he meant to me.
The wedding party lasted all afternoon, with feasting and wine, and enough dancing to regret all the feasting and wine. Callista sang in a way to shake the rafters and open a path to the heavenly chorus that surely harmonized. Her new husband was moved to tears, and his older brother tried to tease him for the display only to have his own cracked voice betray him.
Rob shook Andre’s hand and gripped his shoulder, saying something I couldn’t hear but that my husband later assured me wasmostlynot a threat.
My husband. As a fairy had once told me, I knew the weight in a word, and the more I ran “husband” through my mind while watching Andre’s amber eyes and crooked smile, while feeling his hand in mine and his arm around me, the more I liked the weight of it.
Thomas had managed to secure a small house already, so as soon as the festivities ended, he and Callista set off. Andre and I were, quite literally, starting from the ground. With help, he’d laid the foundations as soon as the ground thawed, but it would be a while yet before we had walls and a roof. In the meantime, he and I had the room I’d previously shared with my sisters in the cottage.
Only once we were alone in it did I fully realize the weight in the word “husband.”
Everything began with our wedding night, when I was trembling too heavily to even unbutton my dress, and Andre gathered me into his arms and whispered there was no rush. He traced the ring once more and told me there was time enough in eternity to wait until I was ready.
I didn’t mean to, but I cried into his nightshirt because every time I thought I’d found the end to Stephan’s path, it seemed to begin again, always in the worst places. But there was comfort in Andre’s understanding—in his steady patience—and reason enough to keep walking.
Father accepted my husband like he’d had a second son all his life. He was particularly eager to address religious topics, and he found a more captive audience in Andre than Rob, because Andre could be prodded to read scripture for more than ten minutes at a time and never complained about being dragged to church, which Father did often after discovering his poor son-in-law’s childhood had been robbed of any religious exposure.
Sometimes, Andre and I would lie awake in the dark of night, and he would recount whatever mountain of information my father had most recently buried him in, and we would sort through it together, forming our own questions and drawing our own conclusions.
As the nights passed, it grew easier to lay by his side with trust, until I even looked forward to waking in his arms.
“Youarea prince,” I told him once, squeezing his hand in the dark. My own barely trembled. “Your wealth is kindness and your castle, consideration.”
“Hmm?” he murmured, half-asleep.
He snuggled closer, head knocking softly against mine.
I bit my lip, grinning to myself. “Nothing, wee beastie.”
Though never hostile, Rob was more stubborn in his acceptance, as if waiting for some kind of sign to tell him his new brother-in-law was more than a barely trustworthy, reformed beast. The lightning must have struck without him even realizing because somewhere between helping Andre lay the foundation of our new home and helping him nail the shingles, my brother’s smiles grew easy once more, even in Andre’s company.
“Did you say something to him?” I asked curiously.
Andre only shrugged, reminding me that silence was still his companion more often than speech. A mystery, then, but I contented myself with the result. Even I couldn’t expect to know every reason in life.
At last, the door was affixed and our home completed.
“One rickety hut,” Rob said, dropping his hand on my shoulder. “You wanted it rickety, right?”
“It wouldn’t be home otherwise,” I agreed, though our new cottage was steady on its foundations.
And maybe I was too, because after Andre and I moved in, I kissed him that night and said I was ready.
Everything began with an adventure, and there were adventures aplenty—the adventures of a daily life, of working and saving, of gathering scattered notes of hope until we had a melody. Marriage was not always easy. We were both haunted by ghosts, though they took different forms.
