Emily wore her mother's blue ribbon in her hair, which had been Harriet's idea, and she held herself with the particular grace of a young woman who had carried too much too young, and was finally being allowed to put most of it down. Jacob stood beside his father, straight backed in the clean shirt that had been pressed three times because he kept finding imperfections and doing it again. He shook the minister's hand before the ceremony with the gravity of someone taking a formal responsibility. Because to Jacob this was a legal and logistical arrangement as much as an emotional one and he wanted the logistics to be right. Lily had opinions about everything and expressed all of them and then stood perfectly still during the actual ceremony which was the most impressive thing she had done in her 9 years.
Noah stood beside Lily and held her hand which was technically backwards. She was older but which felt right to both of them and they stood like that through the whole ceremony. And Ben. Bon had decided that George the Rabbit should attend and had made his position on this clear and firm. And after 30 seconds of family debate, Thomas had looked at Clare, and Clare had shrugged.
And George the Rabbit attended the wedding, held carefully in Ben's arms, and was the best behaved member of the party. During the ceremony, when the minister asked if anyone present had cause to object, Ben said, "George doesn't object. The assembled people of Cedar Hollow laughed, and the laughter was the warm kind, the kind that comes from people who are genuinely happy and are not trying to be quiet about it." The minister continued. Thomas looked at Clare.
He said what he said. The words the minister offered and the words he added at the end which were not planned and were entirely Thomas plain and direct. I didn't know what I was asking for when I put that advertisement up. I thought I was asking for someone to keep the house. A pause.
Turns out I was asking for someone to keep us and you did. You kept all of us. Another pause. Thank you for walking up that road. There was not a dry eye among the women of Cedar Hollow.
Morrison looked at the sky. Daryl appeared to be reviewing legal documents in his coat pocket, which he was not. Clare looked at Thomas Walker, and she said what she had been saying to him for months in all the ways that had not been these words. I didn't come here looking for a family. I came here looking for work.
She stopped, smiled. I found better. He smiled back. The minister said the words. Thomas kissed her.
The assembled people of Cedar Hollow made a considerable amount of noise. Ben said to George, "That's my mama now." Emily heard him. She reached down and took Ben's hand. The ranch was different in the months that followed, and not in the ways that were easy to point at.
The fences were repaired. The garden came back. Clare had known what it needed all winter. Had planned it through February and March. And when April came, she and Lily and Noah and Ben spent three Saturdays on their knees in the dirt, putting it right, Thomas stopped correcting their planting choices after the first Saturday, when it became clear that Clare and Lily had between them a fierce and specific conviction about where things should go and were not open to counter proposals.